Now That the Boxes Are Finally Unpacked

..not really. That was just wishful thinking. Though yes, the house is beginning to come into some kind of order. The rooms are different and full of lots of furniture from the previous owners. We have been playing a shuffle game that is slowly sending things up into the attic bedroom to be stored in the storage room back behind it eventually. The room that is to be my studio is a fright. Boxes and odd pieces of furniture stacked in piles taking up most of the room....except the small area where the leak was discovered and the wall was torn apart to discover the source. I don't see me getting into that room any time soon.
My hands are full with everything here. Rooms that need to be organized, garden areas that need to be prepared, just the basic everyday tasks are monumental here at times (we still dont have the washer hooked up, no oven or dishwasher) And yet, despite all this. my fingers itch to create again. All my supplies are packed away somewhere in that huge pile in the studio. SO...I have decided to make some rag rugs. My floors are cold. I need rugs and really I WANT rag rugs. I love their look, their cozy feel they put to a room. So I must make a loom. I think it can be relatively easy. I looked at a few in videos on youtube and on websites. I really love the ones that use a nice thin bar along the edge that they wrap the strips of cloth around as they weave so you dont get the hourglass shape when you are finished. How clever! So this is my next task, to convince Frenchie to take me to the hardware store to buy the supplies I need to make a loom and then I will have something to satisfy my creative itch! And if any of you have some good tips to help me along the way i would certainly appreciate it. This will be my first rag rug adventure!

Where the Adventure Starts Getting Real Interesting

I have hinted at big changes for over a year now and I have posted very little about what is going on but I want you to know I am still here, still very happy and have just went through the biggest change of all! We decided to settle down and buy a small chalet up in the mountains of the Vosges!

It is not far from Colmar and the wine road. Very close to Kaysersberg up the mountain side towards the pass. We are within 4 km of a ski station and a few others not much farther. It has a bit of land with it...not much but enough that I can have a garden, maybe some chickens and plenty of space to do dye experiments outside. Something I have wanted to do for a long time but the constraints of apartment living just kept holding me back. Now if I want an indigo vat I can have one! Sun dyeing...no problem. I have a nice big studio with a separate entrance from the house so any smelly experiments are not going to gas us out of the whole house LOL!

I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to be up here in the mountains. It has a different rhythm, a different feel, quiet, calm...tranquil. We also just became the proud owners of this beautiful little girl, Iota

She is a German Shepard and will be my faithful companion and protector when I am here alone. I adore her! She is such a baby still and shows me how much with her clumsy playful antics. She makes me laugh out loud every single day and has already brought such joy to my life. 

Right now we are still in the middle of settling into our little home. We had a long extended move from the apartment, doing it all with our van. The drive was an hour each way and once arriving here at the chalet Frenchie had to bring the 4x4 down from the house to the church parking lot and load it up to bring things back up. It normally took three loads to get the van empty. We did quite a bit during Christmas vacation and then afterwards each weekend we would bring another load up. I am SO glad that is over and I think Frenchie is even more so! 

For now my studio is a scary jumble of boxes and things that had no where else to go right now. It is quite cold up here and the house has no heating system. They had been relying on electric and gas space heaters though I dont think anyone has actually lived here for a long time, it was mainly a vacation chalet.

Anyway I hope to get in there as soon as possible...after the rest of the house gets sorted. Then I can finally satisfy this itch to sew again. I have ideas screaming in my head like you wouldn't believe. In the meantime I will be planning my first real gardening adventure. I hope it isn't a total failure. I did alright with my balcony gardening. Nothing spectacular but I proved I can keep my plants alive. Some of my fall plantings are still plugging away in their planters where they were dumped by the house, even surviving the snow dumped on them. Surely I can keep a few veggies alive in the ground? Who knows? It's another new adventure *grin*