The stairs in front of our house need to go, because the wall behind them is wet. A very simple sentence. A causal clause, if I remember right (it has been a while since I learned that at school).
However, realization is not as simple as the sentence makes it look like, but rather complicated. Because those stairs – sandwiched between the house and the garage – have a substructure of stone and concrete up to at least 2 feet below the earth’s surface. Solid concrete. To quote one of the workers: „Tanks can go over there.“
That may come in handy for some – not for us. The stairs have to go.
Hence, we’re no longer talking about 12 days of construction work, but (a long guess) probably 20, costs are twice as high as projected, we need a second container for construction waste, the basketball is at the neighbor’s and since Thursday the jackhammer has been in constant use.
The whole house is trembling and so am I.
Ultimately, Saturday morning the glass shower partition gave in. Bits of broken glass everywhere. It had been too much.
I might add that the front door we ordered January 11 was finally delivered last week (after 5 months and countless visits at the store) but turned out to be 2 inches too short and 4 inches too narrow (due to their mistake in measuring), so now we’ll have to wait another six weeks. But why would I care?
Afer all, the old stairs are not yet gone and the craftsman who should build the new stairs has bailed out because of a herniated disc. Hence, we might be without stairs for a while. Therefore, access to the house is only possible on a rack in the driveway, then through the garage (gate on one side, door on the other), through the garden and across the porch. All of this s*cks! Pfft … no problem.
There hasn’t been much knitting lately, rather frogging. And I don’t feel like blogging. Especially since the new blog and I and GDPR are still having some sort of stranger anxiety … (I might write about that at some point).
Be it as it may, at some point everything will be okay. Eventually.
Take this as a sign of life
From now on, there will be just one blog (instead of two), where you can decide whether to read what I wrote in 
Because – as if it had been agreed – EMF publishing house sent me the book 
Hence, I decided on making her a stuffed animal. The son voted for Edgar Unicorn (no surprise), I am tempted to try Adele Alpaca (no surprise either). (The German version of the book has names for every character. The energetic otter is Oswald Otter, the gentle rhino is Rhino Rocco, and so on. However, I assume that all instructions are alike in the different language editions of the book.) So far, I have not decided which one to crochet, as we’re still reading the book. And there is a lot to be read.
Each character comes with a story. There is Fred Ferkel (i.e. Piglet), who is afraid of the dark and afraid to be left alone, Oswald Otter, who was born at the Irish West coast. Pia Panda is a gourmet. Then there is Norbert Nasenbär (i.e. coati), a ranger and soccer fan, Vektor Wolf, who may be a hipster, Piet Papageientaucher (i.e. puffin), a specialist when it comes to sailing yachts, and 15 others.
No pig in a poke, no nasty surprises, no boring book. Quite the opposite. Whether you’re working on legs or sweaters, horns or ears – every single detail can be looked up.