the big painting effort

Thanks so much for all your wonderful well wishes! The professor and I appreciate it so much! I've been longing to tell you a funny story, and now that I've revealed the big news, the other stuff can follow.

In the spring time, we moved around all sorts of furniture to clear out a small room for our summer undergradate resident student. She got this (storage) room on the 3rd floor which didn't have a radiator. Time passed, she went home, and over winter break, the professor took on a big painting project. He decided to paint our bedroom.

The bedroom color was a yellowish brown which could only be described as looking vaguely (in my view) like, well, baby poop. I found it dark and depressing, but I can't seem to find a photo of it to share with you, so you'll have to take my word for it. The professor thought the paint job itself was atrocious, and we would lay in bed and discuss how awful it was.

This is the new light blue color of our bedroom...the professor did a great job. Such a good job, in fact, that a friend is using the room for a photo shoot for her new book this morning! (Then we'll move back into it.)

In order to empty out this room, we had to empty out the "loom room" next door so we'd have a place to sleep. We then moved all that fibery stuff up to the 3rd floor, into the little "student" room. Early on in my pregnancy I moved all the lightweight boxes filled with wool upstairs. Two or three weeks later, I went to rearrange those same boxes and they had become very heavy! The professor announced my box moving days were over...and friends helped us move the loom upstairs.

During this massive reshuffling of wool (I have a lot), the resident student from Kentucky scheduled a return visit to Winnipeg to do more work with the professor. She was absolutely crushed that she couldn't use her "old" room. I told her I could not let her sleep there in winter since there is no radiator in the room. It isn't warm enough! She'd never been to Winnipeg in winter so hadn't quite cottoned on to what I was saying. Then, feeling frustrated, she asked why the loom wouldn't be moved right back downstairs when the painting was over.

That's when the professor couldn't keep the secret any longer and said, "But then where would the babies go?!" (we've planned to leave this other room, next door to our bedroom, mostly empty after the painting shuffle until the babies arrive.) The student was so surprised she nearly cried. I laughed a lot. Luckily, the student has been ok in the guest room so far. :) She hasn't complained about the extra space, the larger bed or the radiator. Not one bit.

PS: I haven't been spinning or weaving much in the last several months since getting pregnant. Turns out that these activities relax me and lower my (already kind of low) blood pressure. Then I would stand up from spinning or the weaving bench feeling so teetery that I thought I might keel over. (Yes, I have fainted in the past, though not lately) The doctor also suggested I only take showers when someone else is home, because I might keel over in the warm shower, and hit my head on the cast iron claw foot tub. So, you know, knitting is still safe because I mostly do it sitting still!

PPS: I am doing a lot of teaching, booksignings, and even a lecture in January and early February! I will post more about that soon. For now, there is more information about a spinning class, booksigning and Knit Green talk here and about the January 30th handcarding class here.