Ok, the kitchen is done, and it's awesome! The only thing that's missing now is a countertop that isn't mauve, but the rest of it looks so good, I can live with the mauve counter for now.

I've pretty much given up on the garden. My tomato plants went into the ground in June, and now they're still less than 12 inches tall. The marigolds are doing fine, but otherwise, the weeds have almost completely taken over. I may get a couple of beets out of the garden, but I think everything else is a lost cause.

I think there may be a couple of factors. The soil probably needs fertilizer, but I think the big problem is that the garden area just plain doesn't get enough sunlight. How I got any tomatoes last year, I don't know. It's almost as if the trees have gotten leafier since last year.

I think a much better place to put a garden bed is going to be along the back fence. That seems to get more sun than most of the backyard. The front yard gets plenty of sun, but I just don't want to put a vegetable garden in the front. I think it's going to be a few years before I'll be able to really do a vegetable garden. I just haven't been able to give it the time it needs, or had the energy for it, between moving and working on the house last summer and recovering from the accident and finding a new job this summer. I may try to clear the weeds and plant some collards and rutabaga, but I don't know now.

When it cools off, I'm going to do the newspaper thing to control the weeds, or maybe use a plastic row-cover, and then in the spring, I'll sow wildflower seeds in that bed. When I'm ready to grow veggies, I think I'll build a wooden bed, and fill it with garden soil and compost, and maybe put stones around it to make it more permanent. Of course, I'm hoping I'll have a little reason to put this off for a couple of years....

The kitchen has been primed. I need to put another coat on the area over the cabinets, but the rest of the kitchen has had 2 coats. I was going to use the leftover paint from the hall, but I finally found a green that won't look awful with the mauve counte top and backsplash, so I think I'm going to save the other paint for the back bedroom. I got a floor for the laundry room, it's a cross between a floating floor and peel-and-stick. The tile sections have tabs to fasten to each other, like a floating laminate floor, but they are held together with adhesive, instead of locking grooves. It's supposed to be waterproof. I will never understand what would make that dense carpet, with backing that is essentially a sponge, seem like a good idea for the kitchen and the laundry room. Any water soaks the padding and stays forever. I will be so happy to have it out of the house.

The kitchen is almost completely naked now. There's one stubborn spot over the stove, and a little bit of backing paper hanging off the soffett, but otherwise, the only wallpaper left in the kitchen is what's behind the refrigerator. Quite frankly, anybody who would care what the wall behind the fridge looks like is not really someone whose opinion I particularly care to hear. Today, I'm going to try to strip the wallpaper in the laundry room, except what's behind the washer and dryer. Wednesday, we're going to try to get some help moving the washer and dryer, and then Thursday, I'll remove the wallpaper on that wall. I need to wash the kitchen walls, too, so maybe tomorrow I can patch some places. The wallpaper was covering painted-over wallpaper. It stuck to the wall pretty well, there were a few places where it came off, and I can just patch those places.

I bought fabric to make a baby quilt for my niece/nephew-to-be. The design is going to be pretty sweet, if I do say so myself. The center is going to be hexagons, and on the corner blocks on the outer border, I'm going to applique bees.

I have a favorite method of removing wallpaper: vinegar and hot water.

We tried the gel stuff from Home Depot, which is $13 for a jug, is hard to work with and pretty gross, stains the carpet and causes skin irritation. Maybe because it's lye.

The second time we did it, we tried renting a commercial steamer, which was $35 for a day,very heavy, causes steam burns, and can't get into tight spaces because the paddle is really big.

This time, I decided to try hot water and vinegar, because a big jug of white vinegar is about $4, why not? So far, it's worked better than either of the other two methods. The trick is getting the top layer off, and soaking the bottom layer before you try to scrape it off. It's also cost much, much less. We already had the wallpaper scrapers and the scoring thing and one spray bottle. So far, it's cost about $6 for a big jug of vinegar and another spray bottle.

I'm making good progress on the quilted panel I'm working on for Brawl. I've outlined all the figures, stuffed all but one, so I need to finish that one, and do the background quilting. Hopefully, that will go fairly quickly. I'm kind of over SCA projects right now. I'm going to finish this, and then I'm going to work on something else. I want the Irish dress, but I've given up on the leine for now. Instead, I'll wear one of the chemises I already have. I'd like to have spiffy new garb, but with the floor installation, though, we'll see. I've got a new day dress, made off the cotehardie pattern, but looser, enough so that it doesn't need to be buttoned.

I came up with an awesome design for a baby quilt. There's a traditional design, Grandmother's Garden, that's concentric circles of hexagons, usually with a yellow one in the center. I want to do that, but giant, so that one, maybe two rows, with pieces of hexagons to make a square, fill a 36-inch square. Outside of that, 12-inch wide borders with corner squares and appliqued bees in the corners. I think it would be awesome. The question is, should I do that for the nephew, or keep it for ours? No, my sister isn't far enough along to know the sex, but she has a feeling it's a boy, and so far, mom's intuition has a pretty good track record, so I'm calling it "he."

My next project, though will be a sweater for me. I'm excited about it. I found Stitch Nation yarn at Michael's for about $5 a skein. I got "Bamboo Ewe" in teal. It's a bamboo/wool blend, and a really good price for natural yarn.

I've actually been kind of down. My sister is pregnant, and my brother has been accepted to graduate school in Ireland. I'm really happy for them, but at the same time, I'm settling for a job that will probably be a really good experience, but isn't quite what I was hoping for, we still haven't had an offer of settlement from the wreck, so all that's in limbo, and it's getting close to a year of trying to conceive, and I'm starting to worry something might be wrong. The second phone call I got today, after my brother telling me he'd been accepted to the University of Limerick, was from the anesthesiologist's office. They won't accept a letter from my attorney, if they don't get their money in 9 days, they're turning the $62 over to a collections agency.
I put the check in the mail, but the whole thing really soured my day. I'm really fighting the urge to say to hell with it and stay in bed all day.

Taking the Plunge

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I'm finally going to run a game. I'm going to run a 2-3 week mini-game of Legend of the Five Rings. Think samurai wuxia with magic and demons. I'm going to write up all the characters in advance, because character creation takes forever, and I'm pretty sure Neale and I have the only copy of the core book. Not to mention there are certain characters that will be very important for what I want to do, and that seemed like the best way to make sure that the characters would be useful. After all, a courtier who's a master of Go and ikebana would be an oni snack. Someone is already bitching, but he can kiss my ass. Or get a core book, make a character, and if it won't work, something will kill him.

Now to make my master villains, mwa ha ha!



I didn't think I'd come up Dragon clan, but ok.