Time sure flies when you are busy......

Whatever happened to my weekly updates? They went the way of my spare time, there is none.

We had planned to open the store on Oct 31 as a pre-opening and officially open on Nov 3. Well that plan fell through. Now we ARE opening Nov 14 as a pre-opening and the official is Nov 17.

Things are coming along, although slowly. We spent 2 months just on the floor, but it is all done and looks cool, I think. It is rustic looking since it is 118 years old and has not had an easy life. When we were sanding it, it smelled like it was cedar. We have no idea what it is, we just know it was a real pain in the behind to finish.
We have the front room painted. We now need to get the trim cleaned up and painted. The kitchen area and the hall still need some TLC.

D and I have been working on the hot tub patio here at the house. This morning we finally got all the pavers laid. So we are almost ready for the hot tub. Good thing, since we have to have it delivered by Oct 31.
These long days spent working at the store we could really have used it to relax in and soothe sore muscles. Soon.....

Well, back to work.
I will download pictures and post them later.

Byeeee......

About Fred Carr......

We tried googling him and didn't really find anything that would help us. As Marit found out, there are several of them. Since we have no idea where he was from or if he worked on the building or was family to someone who did we can't find a definitive answer as to who he was.
Maybe someone will come in the store who will remember having a great-great-great grandad, uncle, whatever and can tell us about him. IF I ever find out, I will let y'all know.

Weekly update....

The work is coming along nicely. We have almost all of the old flooring covering the original flooring torn up. We were not going to tear up the flooring in the kitchen but when we took the old carpet up the sub flooring under that had all gotten wet at some point in time and had just disintegrated. So we had to pull some more flooring up. We have a piece about 3 feet wide and 7 or 8 feet long to tear up and then we will start counter setting nails and then be ready to sand and finish with poly. We hope to get that done this week so we can let the floor cure for a few days and then start painting the walls.
When we finally start painting the work load should lessen quite a bit. We have about a month and a half to get it all done. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. :)
I have some pictures but I need to download them. Maybe I will post some more later this weekend.

Tomorrow we are going to be working here at the house on the hot tub patio. We really need to get that done as the hot tub has to be delivered by Oct 31. D's brother is bringing over his excavator tomorrow to help us dig out the area we need to lower. Should be a nice dirty day of work.

Later......

Poor Fred Carr.....

Poor Fred Carr. We decided to take all the plaster off of the wall (it was very loose we discovered) and use the brick behind it.
I tried ever so carefully to cut around him so we could take it down in one piece and frame it for display. I was doing so well when it all just crumbled. There was a large square nail right in the center of it and that is what caused it to crumble. I have the pieces and am going to try to piece them back but I don't have much hope that it will work. I did get a better closer picture before I started taking it down though. So a picture may have to do. :(

I don't have time to upload any pictures right now, but hopefully later this evening I will have the time to.

Things are going really well workwise in at the store. Since we decided to take the plaster down that means we don't have to try to patch the wall and then paint it. Now we just have to clean it up a bit and slap a couple coats of poly on there so it will be easier to clean when we need to do that.
We may be ready to paint the other wall by next week. I hope so. I am so anxious to get rid of the dirty blue that is on the walls now. We are thinking of going for a light green, in mint green or soft sage green. The trim will all be white as it is to intricate to try to clean off the many layers of color on it and just varnish it (which is what I would do if I had unlimited time to do it).

We are going to Cincy today to pick up a bakery case and an L-shaped stainless steel table. That will give up pretty much all the large equipment needed since we already have our oven, sink, and fridge. We still need to decide if we want a range or a burner. We think a range, but the cost will be the deciding factor.

Time to be off. More later.

BIG NEWS!!!!!!!

I know it has been a bit since I last posted. Been too busy living life. LOL

But do I have big news now.... My DIL and I are opening a pet bakery! Yep, we are going to be baking the treats ourselves and selling them from a storefront in town.

We will be in the bottom of our Masonic Temple in town. The building was built back in 1891 so it is very old and has a lot of character that has been covered over in years past. We are in the process of uncovering that character and bringing it back to its original glory. We have already taken some rough cut cedar down off of one wall and revealed the original plaster and lath that seems to be in pretty good shape. We will just have to skim coat it with plaster and then paint it.

We also found the coolest writing on the plaster.....

We have no idea who Fred Carr is but he was in the building June 3, 1901. I want to sort of frame around it and not cover it, but I am being overruled. We will see who wins.

We have been hard at work taking the floor back to it's original hardwood. We finally just last night got all the extra floors that were on top of it off. Now we have to clean it up, sand it a bit and then refinish it.

It will not look brand new but then it isn't. It is over 100 years old and has lots of character. I love it.

So far we have bought an oven, a stainless steel 3 bowl sink and a large mixer. Since we are not opening until November we are not buying too much of the equipment until we have the kitchen in the building ready. We don't want to have to move them too many time. :)

More to come......

Back again?? WOW

Still no pictues, but today is a beautiful day and I am not working so maybe I will get the camera out and have D help me get a pic or two of my sweaters.

Boy do I have the spinning bug badly. LOL It is such fun to do and really not as hard as I thought it was going to be. The basics are really pretty basic, it is just practice, practice, practice. D has said that he can see a big improvement in my spinning. He watches it go on the bobbin as I spin. TV must really be boring him. Hehehe
My merino/silk is truly a treat to spin. Once I started spinning over the fold it is so easy to make it consistent. I love it. Good thing since I have a pound of pink blend and a pound of purple/grey blend. I have spun just over 4 oz of the pink. I really want to start on the purple but am going to MAKE myself finish the pink first so I can get it plyed and then knit it up.

That's all for now.

??????

I don't have a great story to tell or any great pics to post. My life is sooooo boring. Oh, well.

I have gotten a spinning wheel since I last posted (2 months and a day ago). It is an Ashford Traveler and it is sooooo purty! I love it. I have spun a bit of Coopworth wool, some llama from my daughter's own llama, and some merino/silk blend. The coopworth was the first that I spun and it is going to be knit into a scarf. It will be a funky scarf but it will be mine.

The llama I am not sure what to make out of it. The first bobbin I spun I just did it the same way as I did the coopworth and it is so silky that I made a right mess of it. It is totally thick and thin and then some very thin. The second bobbin I "spun over the fold" (thanks to TracyKnits telling me about that method) and it is much more even. I will have to ply the bad with the good but that is ok. It is still new spinning so I don't expect it to be great.

But I am learning. The merino/silk I am doing over the fold and it is coming out quite good. I have a pound of a pink blend and a pound of a purple/grey blend. If I spin it fine enough I should have enough of both of them to actually make something. Maybe a shawl or a capelet. We will see.

I really need to get the camera out and take some pictures. I have 2 sweaters, about 4 pair of socks, a baby sweater, and my spinning to post. Maybe this weekend.

Spring is Here, or is it?

The calendar says that it is spring but my thermometer says maybe not. It is 33F today. That is not quite spring like.

I should have pics to post but I just have not taken the time to take the pics. I have a couple three pair of socks and a sweater that I really need to post a picture of . It is my alpaca "Sweater to Love" and I do love it. I would wear it everyday if my family wouldn't look at me strangely.
I have another sweater almost finished. It is "Tailored with a Twist". I made this sweater a while ago and really loved it. I then washed it and felted it. This time I am making it out of Cotton Fleece from Brown Sheep. Hopefully it will fair better. The other was out of a merion, silk, alpaca mix and was just glorious.

Not much else to say until I take some pics.

Everyone enjoy the weekend and hope that spring weather comes soon to match the calendar.

No electricity, oh my...

We live out in the country and along with the joys of living out here goes the risk that the electric company comes out here last to fix it.

Wednesday morning around 3:20 a.m. our power went out. D was watching tv at the time and he said that when the power went it was like hundreds of blue flashes around the countryside. We just snuggled down under the covers and waited for morning to come and with it probably power. Well, morning came but the power did not.

Since it was exceedingly cold (down in the teens) we called our kids and D's mom to tell them to come up here. We have a fireplace that we had just put gas logs into so we had heat. By 10 a.m. they were all up here along with their dogs.

We had 2 miniature dachshunds, an English Bulldog, hubby's shepherd/Saint Bernard mix, my St. Bernard, and my 4 cats. Amazingly they all got along really well. For the most part my cats all stayed upstairs away from the strange dogs.

Friday G remembered Crit. I went out to the office to bring him in. He was fine but he had evidently been so cold he had not run on his wheel. He made up for lost time as soon as he got a little warmed up. I finally had to put him in the living room to give us all a break from his wheel. Poor fella.

The outdoors was really beautiful but a lot of damage was done to our trees. I have a Maple in my front yard that I planted when my son was a baby. I have babied that tree, splintted it back together, argued with D that he could not cut it down. Well, I think he has now won the argument. The top and a large limb off of the side came down from the ice.

The voice in the video is me, the background one is my SIL. The video was taken from my front porch. It was really snowing hard and trees were falling in the woods like crazy. It was really kind or surreal.

Luckily with all the extras here it is a good thing that we have a large house. But now that they are all gone the house seems so empty. I am feeling kind of let down. I will get over it but for the evening I am going to be down and dumpy.

Silly Little Crit

I forgot to tell about Crit going missing. Crit is my RoboHamster.
The week of Christmas while we were in VA my daughter called me and asked if Crit had died. I told her not that I was aware of. I had just cleaned his cage on Sat and he was fine then. She said that he was not in his cage now. Since he had not died and I had not disposed of him she and her brother started a systematic search of the offices. (I had to take Crit out to the office since D's dog had decided that Crit belonged to her and would snap at the cats when they would get near his cage.)
I talked to G later in the day and they had not found him yet. I told her to put his cage down on the floor and open the door and maybe he would just find his way back by himself. She did as I asked.
The next day when we talked she said that he had been to the cage as the food that they had put out for him was gone. I laughed and said well that isn't working. They left the cage that way for a few days and each morning the food was gone and so was Crit.
Finally, G decided to take the top off of the cage and make a ramp up to it. Sure enough the next morning Crit was back safe and sound in his cage.
We figure that what happened was when I cleaned the cage and put his wheel back on I got it crowded over to the side and the bars were spread apart enough for him to slip through. He is just a little squirt and he could, and probably did, get out that way. I am glad that he is back. I enjoy watching him when I am in my office. Also, now that it is cold he will let me stroke his belly. I still cannot pick him up, but we are making progress.

About two weeks ago when it was freezing cold outside I saw my cat Velcro at the slider and I thought immediately that "Oh, no, it has started to rain again." Then I looked closer and realized that he was not wet from the rain but he had apparently fallen into the pool ( we had closed the pool as far as taking the pump, etc off but we had not gotten around to putting the winter cover on). I got him inside, got a towel and rubbed him down vigorously. I went out to the office to tell Dale what had happened and that we had to get the pool covered. I came back over to the house and began to rub Belly (Velcro's nickname) down with another towel. He was shivering so I wrapped him in a fleece blanket and sat down to hold him. He was shaking so hard he was making me shake. I was about to call the vet when the shivering started to subside. I continued to hold him for a while longer. He is fine now and did not even get a cold of the sniffles from his escapade. The pool is now covered so I don't have to worry about any more of my babies falling in. Bell was so lucky because he fell in near the skimmer so he had something to get a hold of to pull himself out and also because I was at home and in the family room when he came to the slider. If either of those had not been so I am sure he would have frozen to death. I figure he used up 3 or 4 of his 9 lives on that one.

I have no pics to show. I have been really slow knitting here lately. I am working on a sweater that is really taking some time to do. It will be months before it is done, I am afraid. I will try to take some in progress pics this week and post them.
The pattern is called "Cardigan to Love" #LW1660-WM0312 designed by Lynda Cyr and can be found free at http://www.coatsandclark.com/.
I am knitting it in a sport weight alpaca so it is going to be a lot lacier and looser knit than the picture. So I am making it in a larger size to make it fit. I did a swatch this time (OH! MY!) and got the gauge I needed. I hope I did not mess up in my thinking. So far it looks as if it will be fine.
I made the sleeves wrist length as I just can't handle 3/4 length sleeves for winter and being made out of alpaca it is going to be a winter sweater. I have both sleeves knit and about 4 inches of the body. I am really loving it.

More later.