Sweater weather

At last! The temperature around here has finally dropped enough to reach for a sweater before heading out the door. I know summer is a popular season for a lot of reasons but for me: it's all about autumn.

I've been such a snail with my knitting the last few years, not only in speed but in terms of finger agility (as in, sticky where it isn't zero). Still, I couldn't help noticing this particular project - not a sweater, it's another Hatcowl - is almost done.

You may recall me moaning about this thing a year ago - and likely on many other occasions - because I'd cast on with lace-tipped needles and they are SO STABBY. But I also loved the Viola-dyed yarn enough to persevere well into last spring. And it's paid off: I'm pretty close to doing the eyelets, which immediately precede another few rounds of ribbing. Which, by the way, will not number as many as the initial very deep ribbing section. YAY!

If I sit down and focus, I could have this thing ready to wear out on a walk next week. Which probably isn't necessary as it's not *that* cold yet, but still. A girl can dream, as I always remind myself when imagining the impossible.

No pictures to accompany this bit of exciting news, but our tiny home is, at last, on its foundation! Turns out putting even a lightweight shed on twenty feet of sand takes some extra intervention. Like, for example, helical piles that go down even deeper, with engineer-designed bracing at the top. Next week with luck we'll also get power, something that involves serious trench-digging by Pete and company before our electrician arrives. We won't have water for the foreseeable. However, we don't need to wait for that for the septic hookup, and we might even be able to harvest rainwater for non-potable uses, so it feels like progress.

Crossing my fingers I actually get out there to see it and take a bunch of pictures for you this fall... the actual building is quite plain, but the land it's on is gorgeous. As proof, here's one of the few images I've been offered that doesn't feature a tractor, taken from our cousins' driveway next door on balmy day in September:

I mean HONESTLY. Who wouldn't want that view every day? Admittedly it's theirs and not ours, but I gotta think there's another vantage point further in that's just as stunning.

Okay that's it for me. Random episodes of exhaustion are still pocketing my Covid recovery, but I'm feeling good enough right now to take a magical sweater-weather walk, and I've learned to grab those moments.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend (and a wonderful Thanksgiving if you're Canadian like me!) and I look forward to meeting up again next Saturday. As always, thanks so much for stopping by!

ITube YouTube WeAllTube

I have been hard at work writing this week, which means I have been procrastinating heavily online this week.

When I am writing, all my other interests come crowding in.
Like, look guys, she's awake! Let's play!
It is so inconvenient.

 

One of my tasks this year is to work up some enthusiasm to participate in social media, so some of my dawdling is done on various sites to see what might appeal. It's not coming easily to me. I suppose I might just not bother in the end, but I'm conscious the right space might allow me to pursue a fresh form of creativity, and that would be fun. Mostly though, I just keep drifting back to YouTube.

YouTube: a leafy path to anywhere.

The algorithms there just really GET me. Interior design, things to cook in a skillet, rescue animals finding safe haven with loving, lucky humans, tiny toddlers inadvertently leading a dance class, unlikely adults killing it in a dance class, hilarious Carol Burnett sketches, carpentry experts building cabins in snowy woods, perfect writing music (and yes, sometimes it's playing against the backdrop of a cafe on a rainy night), people sewing elaborate garments cut from linen and wool - you know what I mean. It's endless riches.

I do have to ration the sewing videos though as I am very quickly filled with envy and self-loathing for not installing an elevated cutting table when we renovated our house. Or insisting on a dedicated, gorgeously-appointed sewing room.

Also, it would be risky to reignite my interest in sewing my own clothes. I did it for quite a while before I drifted into knitting, even to the extent of a Chanel-style suit and my own wedding dress, so I am well-versed in that rabbit hole. No writing happens in there.

Meanwhile, our tiny home has arrived at its rural home.

It's pretty much sitting there like a stack of building supplies, unconnected to anything and without a permit to be installed, but the permit should be coming in the next week or two and then it's Septic Bed And Ground Screw Party Time! 

That's right. We are fancy and getting flush toilets. Or one of them, anyway.  And instead of a concrete foundation which would take a while to cure and is likely to crack over time, we are having helical piles driven into the soil. These are basically giant screws made from galvanized metal, inserted far enough down into the ground for the house to remain totally stable, even when we launch into spontaneous dance parties. 

From the inside, looking out

Still no progress on the well, but even without running water the time is fast approaching when I will have to sew a lot of drapes and furniture skirts and throw pillow covers. Probably the home textile production will cure me of any desire to sew a linen tunic with dropped shoulders, but you never know. It might be a gateway project.

Let's leave today's look at the house with one more view from inside. Since it's not in it's final position the actual trees will change... I believe there will be more of them, as well. I don't know about you but I can never have too many trees to look at.

The banquette against this window
folds down into a twin bed...
or do I mean writing chaise?

It's a lot of white walls in there, but I've found that's best for the way we live. I'm a textile fanatic so drapes are a thing, we have a huge slew of bright red vintage stuff to bring in, everyone but me reads their books in paper form, and there's a lot of art and other things from the cottage needing a home. After the dark brown panels in the cottage, it was time to bring in the light.

Hope you've had a wonderful week, whether you spent it living your own life or enjoying another's vicariously on everyone's favourite Tube! See you back here again next Saturday.

 

Come and watch some paint dry

After all the excitement of the last few weeks, I don't have much to offer you today. Let's start our nothing time with a look at the darning threads malingering on my desk, instead of magically fixing holes in socks for me while I sleep:

By contrast, our tiny home is coming along super fast. By the time I post this it will probably have interior wall finishes up, but let's make do with this earlier-in-the-week photo of the exterior insulation and windows.

The double window toward the left side will be over the sink!

It's amazing to think that this place, which has existed in my head as a fully finished kind of clubhouse, will be something I can step into, on site, in just a few more weeks. 

We're not likely to have water at that point, however. We haven't been able to get a call back from anybody who does wells.

Also we now realize we have to have the site graded into a level surface. This is where I'm really happy you need the same equipment for foundations, septic beds, and grading and retaining walls: one contractor can do it all, and our contractor is good at it to boot.

 

Meanwhile, things at home are green and leafy - bucolic even:

The leafy bower in the corner of the yard,
where one might lie in a hammock to read a novel
if one wasn't busy sitting in a chair writing one

 Pete's current round of grass seed has been no match for the clover and wild violets, but I'm happy for Not Mud.

By contrast, there's been shrinkage in the stack of stone in the driveway (a local landscaping business puts its overage out on the curb for neighbours' use, always a thrill)... 

 

Pete takes a little with him every time he goes to the property where the tiny home will go, because we're going to use it to make a patio or maybe even paths around a kitchen garden. I have a terrible feeling it's going to be me doing this job, so I'm trying to stretch out my leg muscles now. Every time I set out a stone path it's like they retract by fifty percent or more.

And the white flowers on our neighbours' rosehip-like shrub are in full bloom, which means they are also dropping their adorable heart-shaped petals:

Warm feelings and happy thoughts among the debris, is how I see them.

I hope you've had a wonderful week since last time - see you next Saturday!

We are getting a tiny home

sort of! We aren't moving into it, which is kind of the point of a tiny home, but it's still very exciting and it's a big part of why I haven't had a lot of knitting to show you lately. 

not our tiny home

This is the only building currently standing on the legacy property we're responsible for until the next generation takes over. It houses tractors and a work bench. That door on the right side accesses a walled-off section in the back serves as a lounge with a kitchenette and a three-piece bathroom. Unfortunately, being attached via an interior door also, the bathroom and lounge space smell very strongly of everything that's stored with the tractors. It's not very pleasant there for hanging out, or even getting tidied up after a long day's work. This problem has only gotten worse over the years.

So.... when we agreed to sell our cottage to our neighbours, and realized we didn't have anywhere to store all the things we wanted to keep from it, we decided to build something else at this property, under a separate roof. Not very far separate though, because the area is mostly hill and the shed is on the only near-level section. 

Okay, this hill, pictured before the snow melted this spring, might have been another part of what motivated me to coordinate another building project. Having this for a back yard, available for as much walking and climbing and watercolour painting as you like? yes please.

The property is just over an hour from our house, so we don't need a dedicated place to sleep, or laundry facilities. We don't even need a range - a hot plate and a microwave or toaster oven are plenty. Since the magic of a tiny home comes from fitting all those functions into a very abbreviated space for resident/s who live there full-time, we are kinda cheating, as well as missing out on a lot of the really amazing stuff our builder can do. So, maybe it's not a tiny home so much as a tiny *cabin*. 

Or as I think of it, a clubhouse.

Another thing we don't need is a trailer with wheels, because we're staying put. Trailers are custom-built over a period of weeks for each tiny home. About as many weeks as it takes to build a house, which means we don't have to wait long for our tiny home: our builder was able to fit us into the gap formed by trailer lead time and we'll have it by midsummer this year. Yay!

One thing we *did* need was space. We're blending our family histories by housing furniture and knickknacks from our generations at the cottage. I see a lot of tiny homes that run just 24' long, and pack a serious punch. Ours will be almost 400 square feet and have some open space. Less open than this, once the framing is finished, but still, it'll be airy.

check out those beams!
they will be visible in the finished home, too.

 

One last plus-side item: no drywall. Drywall doesn't travel well, and when the house is finished, it will be driven to our site to be connected to the foundation we've set up for it. So instead of dusty drywall, we're getting tongue-in-groove pine and plywood. If you've ever renovated a house, you will totally get what a big deal this is for me, ha! 

I was hoping for something entirely off-grid, but the up-front costs for solar power are steep. Weirdly, there was little enthusiasm for a composting toilet when I proposed it to the folks who will be doing all the hard work maintaining the property, so the solar budget had to go to funding a septic bed. We are future-proofing, though. There is space for batteries and other solar necessities in a storage loft we've planned for over the bathroom, and an empty conduit will make it easy to connect solar panels later, as we can afford to do it.

Water has posed a similar challenge. Turns out there is a shortage of well-drillers in Ontario, and the ones who returned our calls are booked through to next year, so we are hoping the old well can be salvaged. A new well is massively expensive; refurbishing an old one is only painfully so, if you don't count the cost of the space-hogging pump you need to store inside your building because it's nowhere near your building site.

I made lemonade out of that one though. Turns out you can stash a well pump under a banquette, and once you have a banquette it doesn't cost much more to make it a pullout bed, and if you have a window over the back of it too, you're inches from a windowseat.

the finished banquette area will be a different kind of cute,
but this should give you the general idea.

Who is going to want to sleep on a bed over a pump that kicks in every time somebody flushes the toilet, you ask? Possibly nobody. It's going to be great for naps though, or for stretching out on to write, and if those two things don't have my name on them, what does?

We couldn't stretch to a lot of custom finishing here, as one would with a true full-time tiny home. We are getting bookshelves and an entry area with a bench with hooks over it though, for storing boots and coveralls. One of the bookshelves will have a door over an area just big enough for a broom and vacuum; the other will be in the kitchen, just big enough to keep the dust off our dishes. And we're getting a custom bunk bed / loft arrangement at one end, in case anybody does ever need or want to sleep over. Or, you know, stretch out for a nap without disrupting the kitchen table setup. Ahem. At the other end, we'll plant an IKEA daybed that also pulls out to sleep two. Trying to plan ahead.

I could go on and on, and probably will in the weeks to come, but the bottom line is - We are getting a tiny home!

Hope something wonderful is happening for you too, but just in case, I will leave you with this lush image of our lilacs after a long rain. 

 

See you next Saturday!