Floored

My brother and I laid a new concrete floor yesterday. Ian and I work well together since we both possess the McPhee family work ethic, which I admit is a hard one. It’s a peculiar mix of realistic, obsessive and determined, although I admit that to the casual passerby (or your spouse) that it might look like it was “Happily work until you can’t work anymore and then drink coffee until you can work again and then feel frustrated with the other people involved for wanting to quit.” (This is also the exact way that McPhees party. Just insert “party” for “work” in the sentence above and you’ll have a pretty accurate picture of our families celebrations.) There are people in the world who have sworn off working with McPhees. (We call them lazy.) There are people who call us workaholics (they don’t know that we take time off as passionately as we work) and there are people that understand us, do their best to keep up and stay out of the way and laugh at the whole thing. (Those ones we either hire or marry.)

Though there are many who work well with us, it remains true that the best person to work with a McPhee IS a McPhee, and Ian and I make a wicked team that really gets things done.

Concflsu1

What we got done yesterday was a pretty rippin’ concrete floor. I am going to beg your forgiveness here. I understand that looking at my new concrete floor is probably the most boring thing you have ever been asked to do on the internet. I have tried to make it more interesting than it is by putting the second tinks sweater atop it for dramatic interest. I know that it isn’t working, but I’m so enchanted with the concrete floor (that’s not a good sign is it?) that I have to show it to you. Isn’t it great? Isn’t it a nice grey? Doesn’t it just fill you with joy and happiness and make you think that there is hope that the world someday will be a fully renovated place and nobody will need a hammer drill for anything unless it really, really makes them happy…and doesn’t it make you feel like maybe one day when the sun is shining and it isn’t a million degrees below zero, that that day there will be a sudden end to dust and insulation and what kind of hinges open in what direction and that you’ll just look at your home and think “Wow. I think we’re finished” and then that sort of tight feeling will start in your chest and you’ll realize what it means to you that you don’t have to buy primer anymore and…

No? Just me? Sorry.

Subfltin1

This is the subfloor we’ll put down today. It makes me pretty happy too. (Knitting once again provided for dramatic interest.)

Other stuff I don’t know how to fit in.

1. I’m still adding names to the athletes list.

2. I forgot the specs on the green sweater from yesterday, so for those of you who asked: Pattern “Lace Leaf Sweater” from Loop d’ loop, Yarn: Cascade Pastaza, colour 042.

3. I have a great new button:

Teamcaffeine2

I found it here. (There is “Team Merlot” and “Team Chocolate” too, but I have decided to focus on one vice right now.)

4. Gifts for TSFers!

(As always, I have emailed the winners.)

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These two balls of the Opal Tiger I get all obsessive about were donated by Marie S. One is going to live with Kerrie and the other with Martha H.

Purpbouc1

Five balls of a beautiful purple boucle (From Sally G.) are going to live with Rana.

Barb B. is donating a hard copy of Stranded, plus the materials to make the “Blue Willow” socks and mitts she designed for the issue.

The random number generator says she’ll be mailing it too Judith O.

Amie spun some beautiful suri

Amiesuri2

I am (really, regretfully) sending it to live with Wendy P. (I wanted to keep that one.)

5. The Amie who sent this suri is doing a really cool thing on her blog where she’s looking for 2000 socks. She doesn’t want you to send them, just tell her when you knit them during 2006. It’s a fun idea, but I think she’s really underestimating you guys. 2000 socks in a year? I laugh at 2000 socks. (Well, not me personally, you know.) Show her what you’re made of.

6. I am not normally the type to mention this sort of things, but I have been advised, notified and counseled through my inbox, that this sort of thing is “a big deal” and that I should mention it here.

I still wasn’t going to, and then yesterday in the comments Rams started threatening people with stash weasels, and I got sort of nervous. (You don’t want to mess with a woman with that sort of imagination…you know what I mean? Stash weasels? Who thinks of Stash weasels?)

I am very flattered to be a nominee for the 2006 Bloggies in the “Best craft weblog” category.

You can vote on this page if you like (scroll down)…but remember. I will never know if you vote or not, so vote your conscience, and take a look at the other blogs in the category before you do. They are very cool and some stiff competition indeed.