My brother and his wife are coming to visit next week. Yeah! I was planning on cleaning my house this weekend, but I'm going to St. Louis to help clean out my great aunt's apartment and to celebrate Father's day instead, which means I've got to step up the cleaning game. So, I drove home from St. Louis on Tuesday and cleaned the spare bedroom and put new sheets on the bed. Last night I came home from knitting with Teri and cleaned both bathrooms and did 1.5 loads of laundry. Tonight, I finished the other 1.5 loads of laundry. Which will leave me with cleaning the family room, kitchen, my room and vacuuming through the house sometime next week (or actually Monday & Tuesday since I'm going to a T-Bones game (not sure what kind of sport they play, but they are apparently semi-pro some-thing-or-other, on Wednesday. Got to love work). I also need to drag the shower curtain from the cedar chest upon which my extremely heavy TV is currently sitting on. It was supposed to be a "temporary" solution while I searched for a more permanent entertainment center, but as you can very well see, I haven't made much progress towards selecting an entertainment center yet... I also need to hang up some pictures. I don't live in a trendy loft or anything, so all the pictures look weird sitting on the floor propped up against the wall. :-) Are we laying odds as to whether or not all of the above will get accomplished???

The reason I mention all this cleaning, is that between the cleaning and traveling back and forth to St. Louis, my knitting is really suffering. I'm not getting much done. I keep starting and ripping out socks. It's weird.

In other crafty news, I've inherited my great aunt's sewing machine. Does Gwen sew you ask?? Well, she knows the basics and once upon a time in a Home Ec class, she made a surfboard and another time, she started making a pair of shorts, which are even now, probably languishing in a drawer somewhere at my mother's house half finished. I understand the mechanics of sewing with a machine, it's just the machine that freaks me out. I've never been very technically inclined, which is why I'm a hand knitting snob... But, as I've been knitting, there are many things that I want to do that require a sewing machine, or that a sewing machine would make easier. For example, making one of Beth's Leetle Bags or lining for a felted purse. All of these things , while possible by hand sewing, would be so, so much easier with a machine... Teri has graciously offered to help me learn to use my machine. We love her. So, I finally hauled the machine upstairs this evening after sitting in my car for 2 evenings and for Teri's information, the machine is a White, for whatever it's worth... In actuality, what it really is, is really freaking heavy... It's got a tag on it that says it was recently fixed, so I'll have to hook it up in the near future (read when I actually stay in town) to see if it works. So, this is a very exciting development in life.