Windows and floors [housekeepery]

Even though it's just me in a sizeable apartment, I'm still finding that I need to sweep all the floors about once a week. It's not an especially terrible chore, really, and vastly better than having to vacuum! Just interesting to observe. I really HATE walking on crumbs.

Yesterday, before and after work, I did some window-washing, at least partly inspired by reading this Apartment Therapy about five things to clean. The windows had been nagging at me anyway, especially the smudged glass doors in the living room and what looked like either animal or small child smudges in the front bedroom. If I wanted to be super-meticulous about things, I think I'd need to do at least two more repeat cleanings, but I don't know that I'll be all that inspired. It reminded me of window-washing as a kid. It's really a great chore for kids.

Cleaning the windows here also reminded me of cleaning the windows at the Villa Maria house, although the ones here feel slightly less like manure-polishing. Only *slightly* less, because they also have badly flaking paint that gets everywhere. It makes me sad to see things reach that sort of state, although I understand how it happens.

The kitchen window was the most crazy. Apparently at some point, someone thought it was a great idea to plant some vines that would grow up the brick exterior of the place. This person must not have realized that the vines would happily grow up and over the window screening. Everything was dead and mostly removed by the time I moved in, but there were clumps of rootlets that had grown through the kitchen window screen. It took me a little while to realize that the windows in this place all have proper storm windows, although the storm windows don't seem to have substantially improved the apartment's insulation, to judge by the first month's $300 electricity bill (though equal blame probably goes to an ancient, failing furnace). When I originally checked the place out, I tested out the main windows in every room, but not the storm windows, so it wasn't until later on that I discovered that the storm window in the kitchen would not budge.

I will just sum up and say that I spent a considerable amount of time yesterday basically sitting in the kitchen sink, and eventually I got that kitchen storm window out, with minimal damage to the screen. It wasn't a pretty process, but the outcome is more fresh air for the kitchen, and a much cleaner window, hurrah! I spend enough time at the sink to warrant a nice view.

If only I wasn't experiencing such terrible pollen allergies. No sinus headache, but a whole lot of congestion.

I should also note that I haven't been noticing the sour milk smell. I suspect I've just gotten used to it, but it could also be that I'm doing a decent job of replacing the mildew spores with other interesting microorganisms as things warm up and I open the windows more. The worm bin has been happy, and the sourdough cultures and yogurt, too.

Sock plans

I have decided on sock plans.

This Knitty article had some good thoughts on sock durability and holes in socks. Sometimes it's hard to decide whether to bother with repairs or let an item go, but S still wants those mothy socks, so I decided to go ahead and get some darned darning yarn and a darned darning mushroom. I'm somewhat tempted to use some of the bright-red darning yarn I pinched from my mother's yarn stash (sorry, Mom, but I can give it back if ya miss it!), but I'm going to try and have some restraint. Sometimes S has unusual aesthetic standards. :-P He wants to keep things limping along for as long as humanly possible, and I can respect that, from a resource-use perspective.

Second to that, I am going to knit socks. I might even knit some for S. But I also just want to knit socks, and see how they fare. dichroic had some useful suggestions for how to deploy softer yarn in the knitting of socks, and the above article does, too, so we shall see how that goes. I'd been thinking about knitting socks even before this repair job, so off I go.

But I might also take a bit of a break from knitting to get back to quilting for a while. A less sweaty project for the summer.

Craft projects, man.