A Project Finished - Nearly

After stopping and starting this project several times over the past few months, it is done! I've finished wallpapering the room we call "the fireplace room" -- basically a sitting room, but not our "living room," even though I spend more time in this room than just about any other. I was very definitely stalled until my sister came to visit a couple of weeks ago and helped me get it going again. She helped me get through the most difficult wall of the room and to a place where I could manage the rest of the project completely on my own. I put the last tiny piece (at the corner of the triangle wall below the stairs) in place this morning -- hurrah!

This last section of wall looked like it would be a piece of cake to do, but when I looked more closely, I decided I should remove the old wallpaper or the new would actually stick out further than the edges of the wood trim. Once I got going on that, I realized that there were 7 or 8 layers of wallpaper on this wall!! Of course, most of the top 5 layers came off easily, but those last two layers involved spraying with water and patiently scraping section by section. Then a bit of sanding, and a layer of wallpaper primer, and, finally, new wallpaper.

Now I need to paint the bricks around the fireplace -- they are bright white and need to be toned down a bit with the creamy Cottage White we are slowly using throughout the house on trim as we replace the trim around windows, etc. And, I've painted the window trim, but not the windows themselves, so should get to that soon. And, I'll have to think about what we'll have on the walls. So, I'm nearly done, but it feels great!

Here's a photo of wallpaper and my knitting corner (all cleaned up for the moment).



ON MY NEEDLES
And, between bouts of scraping, I got one sleeve of the Poonan Baby Sweater done and am about 1/3 through the second. My hands are a bit achy from scraping, and from going bowling after scraping all day, but it doesn't seem to slow my knitting down.

PODCASTS
Working my way through Pointy Sticks (up to #6)and Cast On (up to #9). I'm up to the present with Knit Picks, Ready,Set,Knit, and Stash and Burn. I had my ipod on my little speaker thing that I found at Marden's for $5 a couple of years ago and so Don has been hearing some of these podcasts while I was wallpapering. He enjoyed the music but I think was a bit surprised to hear that knitting is a subversive social activity.