It was an interesting pattern. This was my first pair from Cat Bordhi's book "New Pathways For Sock Knitters". It worked out well, the socks are very comfortable. I'm looking forward to making my next pair, but first ...
... that was my first attempt at the lace shawl. I think I could benefit from smaller markers. This pattern is especially tricky because each repeat ends with a yarn-over, which means you have to worry about losing your marker sliding around that yarn-over. Or perhaps, this is better - larger markers may be harder to "knit around" but may also be harder to lose stitches around.
I had only gotten a row or two past this when I already had a mistake, so I just ripped it out, and haven't started it over yet. I started it at a bad time, though - in a rush Tuesday while waiting for it to be time to go see the farm house. I'm sure my concentration was off. I may try it again tonight, and see if I can do better (and get a little farther).
Something else very cool that I haven't gotten to post about - my friends Ray and Su got me this!!
How cool is that? A real, honest-to-God loom. Okay, it's marketed as a 'toy' but, pshaw. It's made out of wood, sturdy, and is a perfectly working loom ... I can make a variety of things on it, and I'm really looking forward to trying it out. With all the flurry of activity this week I haven't had a chance yet - warping it is going to be the trickiest bit to begin with, and I need a time when I'm awake (i.e., not exhausted as I've been a lot lately), have several hours to spend with it, in quiet, with no distractions. Maybe tomorrow.
So the house project. Well, here's the update. A friend of mine is kind of an expert on renovating old houses - he's done that type of work in the past, and lives in a renovated Victorian house. He generously offered to come out to the property with us today and do a walk-through, and check the place out - look for any serious structural problems we may have missed, advise us on just how much work the place is, and give us tips on making the heating costs bearable.
Oh yeah - gas. Because the house had free gas from a gas well, but when they sold off a large chunk of the land to the church, they transferred the mineral rights. So no more gas to the house. Which means no free gas and enormous heating bills - a definite down-side.
Anyway, Troy gave the place a thorough going-over, and his thoughts on it were that it would probably be worth fixing up, if we could get it for far less than the current asking price. But at the current price ($59K), no way. It needs many thousands of dollars worth of work, too much to be worth that price.
The good news is, the basement is sound, and the roof is mostly in good shape - he said there were maybe about 25 slate tile that need replaced, and some drip-edge repairs - but for a 120 year old slate roof, that was very minimal, and the roof is generally in very good shape.
Those were two good pieces of information, because if either the roof or the basement had serious issues, I was writing the place off.
But that leaves us in a whole new place, because while the most major issues aren't structural, they are still serious. One is that gas problem - not just the cost of heating, but the fact the the house doesn't have public gas run or hooked up (due to having had free gas all this time). So we'd have to pay to have all that done.
The second major expense is the septic upgrade. That alone can cost between $12,000 and $25,000, but we have an additional concern - since they parceled off the property so close to the house, and the septic system is now basically on the property line, we don't know that some part of the adjacent land (which doesn't go with the house) may not be used for the septic - and if so it would have to not only be upgraded, but moved. More major expense.
Then there are interior water issues, which appear to be coming from second-floor plumbing problems. Fixable, but a pain in the ass (involving taking up floors, etc.). Worse, apparently people have come in through the broken basement window and just cut out all the copper pipe in the basement, meaning much of the plumbing lines have just been cut and stolen.
Well. I haven't written the place off yet, but I will say my hope for the place is dwindling. I've decided the next step is probably going to be seeing if we can get a septic company to come out and review the situation with us, for free (I'm certainly not putting any money to any of these inspections or estimates), and finding out some info from the gas company.
Once we know how bad those two situations are, we'll reasses things, and consider making an offer - one far, far below the asking price. But hey - if we could get this place for $25,000, it may well be worth all the cost of upgrading and repair.
Because the house would be very beautiful inside - most of the original woodwork remains, and is in very good repair. Most of the wood floors remain and are in mostly good shape. The rooms are beautiful, large, and three of them have bays - like a bay window, only that is the full height of the room from floor to ceiling. The house is in good enough shape over-all to deserve fixing up and restoring, and it would be a beautiful place to live afterwards.
But meanwhile, we're going to have to continue to look at other houses.
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