It's curtains!

Yesterday I began the excavations. Our house won't have to wait 5,000 years to have archeologists digging down through the midden heap to find interesting treasures; they could come over today and get enough artifacts for a good-sized dissertation.

I took a few more boxes out of the shed and brought them into the house. I took the boxes of wrapping paper back into the shed. I cleaned up a few small bags of trash. I burned a bit more. I organized the yarn. (That took quite a while. I included the many many balls of silly fuzzy yarn that I received for Christmas--great stuff.) I organized more interesting cloth bits, getting them ready for haulage OUT of the house, and then Amy came to get me and we lugged two garbage bags' worth of cloth up to the Stone's.

Amy is helping me make curtains for my windows. I've lived in this house for, oh, ten years, and I have no curtains. We have one blind, but no insulated curtains or shutters. Now, how silly is that? Windows are the most amazing heat-loss and heat-gain devices ever invented. We've got double panes in most of the windows, but the main living room and bedroom windows are triple-pane, plus a couple of smaller windows. Lots of heat loss in the winter, in other words. And they're dark at night. Wonderful in the spring with all the light and heat coming in, and sweltering in the summer.

I've been very interested for many years in alternative energy, passive solar design, all that good stuff, but simple, low-tech stuff that I can do myself (or with the help of a friend and a sewing machine)--duh! It's funny how, now that we are using the wood stove again, I'm realizing that there are a few easy things I can do to brighten up the place and make it warmer and cozier.