Embracing Change: Our Move After 40 Years

October 18, 2025October 29, 2025 annbh3561 Comment

forest green headboard and yellow-orange stained glass lamp shade

whisical car clock, wooden sculpture, and green plant

We kept waiting to be sad. For that tsunami of nostalgia to overwhelm. After-all, we were leaving our first house, our abode of 40 years, where we had celebrated the births of nieces and nephews and mourned the death of beloved family and friends; undertook remodeling and renovation projects, planted and transplanted blueberry bushes and rhubarb, prepared countless meals (the menus for which ran the gamut from a quick bowl of popcorn to gourmet auction prep).

One person suggested that our move was not just a move but a life choice and that distinction felt accurate. This was a decision arrived at over time, necessitated by health challenges and softened by the hundreds of details that comprised our construction project which also served as salve to lighten the mental soreness of loss. While we missed the opportunity of a topping off ceremony on Solstice Place, we carefully monitored construction progress – from the hole in the ground to the final walk-through. Each visit rooted us in the “rightness” of this change.

We spent a comfortable first night in the new house on September 25. We placed the bed slats on floor, having first put down an old flannel sheet to protect the new LVF (luxury vinyl flooring), followed by the twin springs and the king comfort mattress. The result – a tad lower than sleeping on the couch but higher than a futon. This odd predicament, of being bed-less (that is without a frame) was due to our decision to have the two antique metal bedstead that were once in my Grandma’s house, stripped via glass bead blasting and then dipped to powder coat them a rich forest-green. During their 100+ years, the color has gone from chocolate brown (the color in my childhood, as well as Momma’s memories of her early years in the 4th street house) to yellow, to creamy peach, and now to forest-green. Momma estimates these may have been her parents’ first purchase after arriving in the U.S.A. from Switzerland in July 1922, as by October Grandma was giving birth to Billie and most certainly had a bed for this home delivery.

Now, a month after closing, we have most (not quite all) of the boxes unpacked and flattened. Finding a place for everything has required expanding our decluttering skills yet again and each time we cannot find space we admit that we simply have too much stuff.

Still to be done – placing our eclectic collection of prints, paintings, and objets d’art. Once that is complete Solstice Place will be open for visits.

Packing Art

September 14, 2025 annbh3562 Comments

wood framed lithogrpah depicting a girl sitting on a front porch on a summer evening

The realization, last November, that we needed to move from our multi-story, 100-year-old home to a one-level house triggered rigorous study in the current phenomenon of decluttering.

We found new users for Richard’s heavy tools – the table saw with an assortment of blades purchased over decades, a planer, grinder, belt sander, and more. I lost count of the trips to the waste-to-energy site delivering remnants of 40-years of projects that we kept “just in case.” There were also hazardous liquids (turpentine and motor oil) as well as a Maxwell coffee can of 16-ounce lead ingots left over from Dad’s reloading days. But, even after months of work and knowing that all of the sorting and pitching was in preparation for a move, the result of these tasks simply made our First Street house feel more spacious. There was more room in the closets, and the cupboards no longer harbored expired spices. It was not until I took the art off the bedroom walls that the upcoming move felt real.

Having met Richard at an art gallery in June 1981 and with a favorite pastime of visiting galleries, museums, and street fairs, we have a lot of artwork. From lithographs to pastels, from blown glass to hand thrown pottery, our collection is eclectic. While these pieces will never garner millions at Sotheby’s, each offers a story. Our wedding present to ourselves purchased at the Junction City art fair in October 1983; a Murano glass plate – the only souvenir we purchased while on a family trip to Switzerland in September 1991; artwork by friends and Richard’s own creations. With the help of a friend, we will move our collection not chancing any of these beauties to the packers and movers who will pack up our lives in just 10 days.

As I remove these treasures and carefully bubble wrap each one, I remember, with joy, how each piece came to grace our space, making a house a home.

Knitting · New House

Yarn: Sorted and packed

August 15, 2025 annbh3561 Comment

four large plastic bins filled with yarn

I took up my knitting needles for the first time in 32 years when President-Elect Obama asked Americans to volunteer on inauguration weekend 2009. All of those first projects supported a new caring ministry at church, and I was very select in my yarn purchases: three skeins of Lion Brand Homespun for a prayer shawl or a colorful yet purposeful selection of Cotton-Ease for dishcloths. Eventually, I graduated to better quality fibers, but they were always chosen for a specific pattern. At the time, I was a “monogamous knitter” and that was also how I made my fiber purchases, one at a time. It would be five years before I ventured to that slippery slope of purchasing yarn without having already planned a project.

I have distinct memories of that 2014 purchase. For weeks, before the start of each sampler afghan knitting class, I gravitated to the bin of Frabjous Fibers fingering and admired the soft, springy texture. But the weight gave me pause. I had been working with thicker strands (worsted, Aran, chunky) and the fingering selections felt fragile by comparison.

But as brown was Dad’s favorite color and he would have appreciated the dark chocolate hue, I eventually purchased a skein in the Hedgehog colorway without any idea of what it might become. That was my first step into stash creation. Then there were yarn crawls hosted by local yarn stores – each an opportunity to purchase potential. And yarn clubs with boxes of squishy mail arriving monthly from Idaho and quarterly from Germany (although not in the same year.) Each purchase was photographed and inventoried, but organization was slightly haphazard with yarn tucked in six locations around our small house.

In preparation for our move to Solstice Place, that mishmash has been corrected. Each skein (all 115) has been sorted by weight and yardage, the location has been verified in the Ravelry database, and those skeins are stored in new plastic tubs that Two Men & a Truck will move in 39 days.

Happy knitting!