House Hunting and other unfun tasks

Also aptly titled "You know I am stress out when.... I crochet random motifs and start knitting for no reason."

Isn't house hunting supposed to be fun? We love traveling and getting to know new locations. We are an architect and former structural engineer, so we can look at structures till normal people are blue with boredom. This process, though, has been, well, depressing. Heart breaking, really.

We love Pittsburgh. Mr CBF is from south of the city, and ever since we started dating (oh 13 years ago) we have done nearly everything there is in the city. From the museums, to the zoo, to the Pens/ Pirates games, festivals, restaurants and more. We knew the city would be for us, so we naturally thought this should be a no-brainer in terms of finding a house. We don't need much. A little yard for Faye (tiny is perfectly fine too) and a safe neighborhood close to the city. That's it. And oh my, has it been anything but fun. We have spent nearly every waking moment for the last few weeks researching homes to buy or rent, we have seen at least 40 houses, we've driven nearly every area of the city, and nothing. It is so frustrating. For the most part we have found either great houses in terrible locations (like in really unsafe areas or built on RR tracks), or horrible houses in nice locations (horrible in that they are pretty much falling down). As for rentals, good luck finding anyone with a clean place that also accepts large dogs.

So now we are less then a month from moving here, and we have no place to live. Certainly does not put me in a good mood. And less of one, when you are trying to run a creative business on the road.

But the way, life works out is funny and you never know what may come up. On Tuesday, I stopped into Knit One in Squirrel Hill for a little fiber retail therapy. I wanted pretty yarn to play with to take my mind off our "fun" situation. And as it goes, I started talking to one of the lovely managers at the store, who as it turns out used to be a realtor. She got so upset over our situation, immediately called a couple of her contacts and found us new houses to look at today. But more importantly, revived our faith that we were originally on the right track and our house is out there for us.

So cross your fingers today. Hopefully our new home is out there today and we will find each other. B/c wouldn't it make a great story. "I walked into a yarn store for yarn, I walked out with a house."

(The yarn above is Claudia Handpainted Worsted in Forest. I thought CJ could use some mittens now that we are moving back to the cold. The motifs still don't have a plan yet. The yarn is Red River (I think) that I picked up in CO a long time ago.)