One Things Leads to Another

Do any of you remember the song by the FIXX, "One thing leads to another?" Well, I've decided, after dealing with home repair in two houses now, that nothing could be truer. On the whole, being in this newer house has been much less of a headache than our first house. We bought our first house six years ago. Since we didn't have a lot of money, we bought a fixer upper. This house had potential to be a nice little starter home, but it had no curb appeal, and had suffered from lots of deferred maintenance. In five years we relandscaped both the front and back yards, replaced fencing, replaced a front door, upgraded the electrical box, put in a new HVAC, among other things. Every thing we did to house would open another problem that needed to be fixed first. We learned that the basic fix cost about a thousand dollars, and the big stuff, significantly more. This leads me to the house we now live in. We love our home. We love our neighborhood. In the scheme of things that we had to do to our old house, this one has been a dream. But, since Christmas, we've had to do a lot of work on it. On Christmas the sink disposal blew. We also learned that our furnace needed service and the ductwork needed to be sealed. Last month, the water heater had to be replaced. Now a valve needs to be replaced under one of the sinks. How does one thing lead to another in this latest episode? Well, in the process of fixing the valve and a running toilet, I noticed that a small lead started where the toilet meets the floor in one of the bathrooms. Yep, I'm going to need to get that fixed too. The joys of home ownership. Now, what does any of this have to do with knitting or beading? Well, I was going to bead last night, especially since Jill, who is a bead temptress as well as a fiber one, sent me a wonderful package full of kits to make temari balls. The house stuff has so messed with my mind, that I just couldn't concentrate on the beadwork, and I ended up knitting for a couple of hours last night on Rogue. I love this pattern! Of course I don't have any WIP pics because I just couldn't get it together, but trust me, the Jaeger Shetland Aran is nice to work with, and the burnt orange color shows the cables well. You'll just have to take my word on it. Since I couldn't leave a totally pictureless post, here's a pic of the yarn I dyed for the Project Spectrum Yarn Swap. I used Wilton's Cake dyes and think it turned out pretty well. My swap pal, Tara seemed to like it.