Pot holder

It's interesting to see how our lives have recently evolved. We went from going out on Saturday nights to sanding and stripping off wallpaper. Sure, the glass of wine stayed, but the nice clothes have been traded for a t-shirt and old pants. I'm coming to realize that I tend to underestimate projects, or at least their length. Maybe it's for the best, removing the apprehensions, the questions. I would absolutely choose to do it again, but this remodelling sure is taking a toll. Saturday night, I suddenly had the impulse to rip out wallpaper from the powder room. It was not a rational decision, not a planned one, and I hadn't looked up any tips. I just started pulling. The first layer, blue with stars, came off like a breeze. And then I discovered the many, many layers underneath. There is the New Orleans scene, which I kind of like, and a few layers of flowers. Mostly, there is glue, and a huge mess. I obviously didn't make it very far, and then decided to go to bed. Shortly after falling asleep, I was woken up in panic by the smoke detectors. The fancy ones we got hardwired to be up to code, all connected together, that not only trigger a siren, but also talk: "fire, fire". I scrambled for my glasses, grabbed Noodle, and headed downstairs. When the electricians were installing the smoke detectors, the alarm went off a few times, and I had taken that opportunity to do practice drills with Noodle, taking him outside for a short walk each time. When the alarm went off in the middle of the night, while I was terrified, his tail was wagging, he had jumped off from the bed and was ready to go out. Luckily, there turned out to be no fire, and we suspect that the smell of old glue may have set it off. The moral of the story is, we probably should have gone out on Saturday.

I've been feeling very unproductive, sitting waiting all day for the city inspector, encountering more and more delays and my least favourite, scheduling bid after bid for all the renovations that, due to lack of skill or time, fell under the delegate list. This may be why last week I jumped into the granny squares, because they seemed like such manageable little achievements. Now I'm thinking that maybe I could start off with a pillow instead of a blanket, especially as I'm worrying about joining all these squares together. I figured I should probably get a little more crochet experience under my belt, and master some basic stitch, like the single crochet. I followed this video and made a simple pot holder yesterday with some cotton yarn I had around. I love how quick this was to complete: I started after breakfast and was done before lunch. Since we are not quite ready to repaint our kitchen cabinets, currently an interesting shade of brown-orange, at least now I can try and distract my gaze with something else, something more pleasant. I love the look of the single crochet stitch for this. I'm not ready to convert from knitting over to crochet, but I'm definitely interested. and looking forward to trying out more simple projects.