For those who wish to knit or crochet, try starting with the larger needles. It makes the item go quickly. Big is anything over a size 15. Some needles are huge, almost broomstick size. I got into knitting a couple years ago, DD wanted a pancho for school. Panchos were just starting to get popular. I made it pretty fast, loose weave was pretty, so garment was light and not overly hot in school. Just a couple rectangles sewn together, so there was a point in front and back, head opening. I crocheted an edging with real fluffy yarn in a nice contrast color. Turned out well, she got lots of compliments on it. If you use synthetices, you can run it thru the washer. Wool FEELS so nice, but does take extra care and summer storage for moth prevention. For kids, synthetics are the way to go, keep clean easily. I also crochet, actually prefer it. But finding a large hook, size S, made it fun crocheting rugs with strips of old cloth. I have made a number of rugs now, and they are fast to do, wash wonderfully. I just hang them on a lawn chair to dry on the porch. I just make the pattern up as I go along. I have squares and ovals, all about 36" x 24". Seems to be a good lap size, bigger is harder to handle and heavy. Sizes will fit well in front of the sink, bathroom shower, back door for the dog to lay on. I might put a piece of no-slip stuff under it, to keep rug still on a vinyl or wood floor. So if you are considering doing knitting or crochet, try just doing some easy squares, in a large size like 36"x36", using a big hook or pair of needles. You might want the needles with a string between the ends, easier to use with wider knit projects. Knitting is just back and forth, so the string/cable needles are very handy with bigger pieces. You only need to know one stitch to start, get good at it, to finish the piece. I did some with knit on one side, purl on the other. Really basic, but pretty with nice yarn. Pieces that size or slightly longer, can make lap robes, baby afghans, or be put together for a larger sized afghan. Really go quickly to finish. I tend to watch TV when working, don't need a lot of attention to project with only one stitch on each side, just keep doing the same thing. Other good, fast projects are hats. They can go quickly, done in a couple days or less. Can be done knitted or crocheted flat, then sew the edges together to be round. I consider myself a beginning knitter and crochet person. Only have a couple stitches in my skill list, but you can do a lot with just basics. Very fun to produce an object, rug, hat, with these basics. I HAVE learned to do cables this winter, so am moving up the skill levels. Cables are surprisingly easy! Now on to learning to do pattern reading! My SIL was making scarves a couple years ago, just one stitch. Now she does FANCY socks, lookes almost embroidered. Needles are so tiny, that she can do pictures on the socks. Huge jump in skill, just trying new stuff. I think she keeps all her socks, wears them to show off! As well she should, they are amazing. The knee socks shown above, are very attractive. I will try some one of these days! I am planning to work on mittens first though. We can always use mittens around here. Have to get the thumb part down. Maybe then I will be ready for sock heels and 4 needles like my mother does them. I do some painting of items used in the gardens. Stepping stone enhancement, coloring some statues, ironwork that I have around. Not really original stuff, not the artist. Painting is a winter thing, too busy in summer. Also do some sewing, with fancy pillowcases being an inspiration this year. LOTS of elaborate lace trim, which is fun to look at on colored cases. Make good gifts at Christmas and other occassions. I am using the few inches left over as trim on a case for the couch pillow. Just many kinds of lace on a piece of material, to be used as an accent piece. Kind of fun doing fancy, after using the sewing to mostly repair work clothing. Made some tank tops for DD, all the kids need a lot of them to layer. I had the material, she chose the colors she wanted. I will be letting her do the next ones, pinning neck and arms takes all the time. Then she can make more when she wants them. About an hour each shirt. Rolling knife is a big time saver there. We used her purchased shirts as patterns, just cut around them, so they were just the right style and sizing. I don't want any clothing to look "homemade" because no one will wear it. My "Arty" skills come out in putting things together, some designing talents, not a pictoral art skill. I did a lot of picture framing over winter to get the art stuff up on the walls. We had gathered quite a lot, not hung it before. Priced getting it professionally matted and framed. ACKK!! The PRICES THEY WANTED!! I checked out mat cutters and got one, bought some frames to do it myself. That was fun, picking matting colors, cutting the mats, double layers or fancy cutting, framing it up. Very satisfying to see them all finished up. Those who have seen the walls of pictures, like it too. Good thing Art can cover a lot of talent and skills!

Ahhh to install a vessel sink or not install a vessel that is the question! I have two in my house, one Zen white ceramic style and the other a more traditional round white ceramic. Both with glass waterfall faucets...love both...can never decide which bathroom I want to use! Clean up is really no diff than any other sink...chances are if you splash in a drop in sink you will splash with a vessel! In the case of children check out a site htt://www.cribcandy.com (they have thousands of cool bathroom items) I saw a vessel sink expressly designed for children...are you ready...its made of a rubber material in kid colors! As far as height...that is where some people get hung up ...the "suggested" ergo height for any bathroom sink is 33". However this may or may not work for you with a vessel...in the case of a 7' tall Norseman...he would be banging his knees on the sink...conversely someone 5' tall may not be comfortable with any sink at 33" let alone a vessel. There are a few ways to easily get a custom height just for you but the method depends on which type of vanity you select. I dig custom and I love DIY...I do clever one of a kind vessel sink vanity installations that are cheap, easy to do and look fantastic. As far as going out of style...well, as one person said "they have been around forever". I will add that if that is your main concern stay away from wild colors or weird sink configurations...think functional with a simple clean look and accessorize it to add some bling. You will create a "timeless" bathroom vanity rather than a trendy one. My final thought on this is if you DIY the vessel sink and vanity and go to the right sources for the fixtures etc...you will save so much cash that who cares! You can redo the bathroom vanity in 5 yrs and you will STILL be ahead of the game. If you have some specific questions shoot me an email. cheers to your install a vessel sink. Karl Eberhardt aka The Bathroom Daddy Here is a link that might be useful: Bathroom Daddy

josieindc-I was also concerned about no overflow & possibly a slow drain with kids blasting the water. The vessel sink I fell in love with is glass so no overflow. My plumbing supply store rep kept telling me I wouldn't have a problem with it & they were 100% right. Due to the lower flow rates in the newer faucets the blasting of water is much less of an issue. You can either get the stopper style drain (good point above about it being a powder room sink so you likely won't need to stop the sink up), or you can go with a grate style drain. With normal use, with the grate style drain the only thing that would cause an overflow would be a clogged drain, which would probably mean that an overflow wouldn't work anyway as the water has no where to go. The grate style sounds like the way to go and then you don't have to worry about whether or not the sink has an overflow--you can just go with what you like. With a vessel sink, size is important due to splashing water issues. I'm not talking about kids here, just the normal splash that occurs when the water hits either the sink or your hands. The larger & deeper the sink the less splash out you have. The smaller & shallower the sink, the more splash out you will have. From what I've read, you can generally recess most vessel sinks into the counter top. Hope this helps!

I think that a factor in the triangle analysis is whether you are a one-item-at-a-time fetcher or if by habit you gang your hauling tasks within the triangle/zones. That would affect how tolerant you would be of a long-side triangle. Studies show that general movements within the home add to the caloric burn that keeps us healthy. I'm trying very hard not to make ease so important to me that I become a bore and a blob. I must have stool seating at the chopping stations and rubber-heeled shoes when I work, no matter how much walking I do in a kitchen. Keeping the stools out of the other person's triangle is important. We do a lot of commuting inside our lakeshore house. Never mind the logic. We were restricted when planning the kitchen because of shoreland building code rules and investment in a former addition which put living room and bedrooms on the lake side. We decided to leave the kitchen on the street side of the house. A large deck and a patio are on the lake side, but will continue to require a commute to the kitchen. A formal dining room featuring fireplace and deck door is next to the kitchen. Because we eat in the dining room or on the deck or patio, I had to put the refrigerator on the path to them. The rest of the kitchen triangles sides are inside the newly expanded kitchen space. I have planned 'plunk spaces' where things wait to be toted to another place. Bags of groceries arriving from garage, dishes headed out for usage or back for cleaning, condiments for the current meal, etc. Trays are useful sometimes but a bother other times. We think through what we need before we launch toward a destination. Because one triangle has a long tote to and from the refrig, I will have to think hard when I'm in front of the refrig with the door open. A pull-out breadboard will lie just to the side of it so that there is plenty of plunk space coming and going from the refrig. Even now in my little kitchen, it's not unusual for such a surface to have most of the salad makings, the dressing, and the cheese plunked on it before I begin to make the salad, so I'm acclimated to this procedure. We sure try to keep the refrig door closed as much as practicable. As I indicated previously on one of the forum topics, the new design was driven by a mistake--the technical designer we hired for this sweat equity project claimed that I could not vent my stove from the position I had chosen, so the stove was moved and then the vent was still in wrong place and now vent is replumbed so it exits from the roof instead of the soffits. The tail that wagged the dog. Anyway, his design forced us to rethink lots of things we had originally planned and now I think I will enjoy this kitchen a lot because we put so much thinking into it. At some point in the planning, we had a Better Homes Kitchen Mag which ran a great article with diagrams of the standard kitchen layouts and text that indicated number of cooks. The G-shaped kitchen was listed as a two-cook kitchen but needed a lot of space to prevent being cramped and being trapped in the space. That's what we ended up with. The diagram showed two work triangles that did not intersect but that shared the stove and the refrig on two ends with outrigger angles at each of two sinks. Thinking has been very difficult but very rewarding. I'm trying hard to gang together "same-usage so same storage space" for food and utensils. The paring knives need to be by the chopping space but the ice cream scoops don't. The beverage-related stuff--wine openers, tea balls, beer opener, tea containers--don't need to be positioned near the stove in a single utensil area; now we're putting coffee pot and microwave and auxiliary induction burner in the upper arm of the G where beverage activities will not interrupt the cook and where they will most easily facilitate drinking beverages elsewhere in the house. We can use the area as a temporary bar/beverage station when we entertain guests also, and they won't need to enter deeper into the cooking arena. My relatives are diehard Swedes who swill coffee deep into the night; my husband comes from a cohort of beer drinkers who savor nuances from microbrews. So...beverages will now be dissociated from the cooking area! Beer drinkers will be routed back outside the immediate kitchen as soon as they have found their brew and coffee drinkers can creep in and out at will. The refrig is at the start of the G. with plunk space next to it on left. Everyday dishes and silverware will be in uppercupboard next to it. Toast buttering and sandwich making will now be there also, next to refrig on the right top side of the G opposite the stove on the bottom of the G. Sink for cleanup and dishwasher are on the long side of the G with lots of windows. Baking area and secondary chopping are left of the sink near lower corner of G. Stove at bottom of G with butcher block plunk space either side of it and canned goods and other food storage above on either side of the vent hood. Pots and pans below. Peninsula on the short arm of the G will be launching/receiving space for prepared food and dishes plus will allow casual seating outside the kitchen proper and will house the prep sink and chopping pullout board and "double trash" unit on the inside of the short arm of the G. In our current tiny kitchen, we put utensils of all sorts in one place and all fabric items in another, etc. Often storage was dictated more by depth of shelf or drawer than by relationship to other items on same shelf or in same drawer. The weirdest drawer is the one with batteries, used plastic bags, permanent markers, the least used disks for a chopping appliance, rolling pin, and writing instruments; most likely this collection evolved because all items are shallow. Now am hoping to dissociate stored items so that the groupings will cut down commutes. Flour and sugar and rolling pin and sifter and pie pans will be grouped. If necessary, I plan to make auxiliary containers for things that we use redundantly--bring back the sugar bowl from deep storage, for example, and put it in the beverage area. I am an empty nester. I don't think I would have a use for additional refrigerator drawers even if I had a large family living nearby me. I don't think I would have wanted the when the kids were growing up either. Too many decisions--does this item go in that one or in this one? Where did I put that avocado? A refrig. just for butter and jelly and sandwich meat is silly, an example of American arrogance. I live in Minnesota so I do use the garage for cold storage during the winter--beverages especially, but also for overflow of leftover containers and baked goods, etc. at Thanksgiving and Christmas. In summer, the garage is usually cool enough to begin the refrigeration process for some things. I also have the former well pit room in the basement which is great for wine, cold storage of squash, etc. My children live in Alaska and their visits are in weeks-long spurts. I am not too proud to go buy a bag of ice and use a portable cooler for short-term spare refrigeration space. I don't want to own oversized appliances just because I have a party or houseguests once in a while. Very large cook gear like the blancher, the dehydrator, the auxiliary turkey baker as well as vacuum cleaner and brooms, potatoes and onions, cleaning supplies, and the dog food will be in a new closet in the former kitchen-- a hall behind the stools of the peninsula arm of the G. I still need to procure or design a decent-sized bookshelf for cookbooks, which will have to wait until serendipity renders me the right item. This will probably also be placed on the kitchen hall. I like to give dinner parties and this kitchen is set up for that. I want to retain the restaurant-like ambiance of the separate dining room but will now be able to do a better job of herding guests out of the cooking area instead of simply demanding: "You may stand there or there or leave." My guests are guests, not choppers or waiters, although perhaps I will change this when the multi-station G becomes familiar enough for me to allow others besides the DH and my children into it. The room will allow as many as 6 cooks and assistants, I think, but the sacred triangles will not be honored very much at that time. I demanded that the prep sink be large enough to hold a pumpkin. It's positioned to serve for general hand-washing but also for washing down garden produce and for filling the dog water pail so I bought a one-bin Kohler regular sink. The cleanup sink is a two-bin Kohler sink on the opposite side. Faucets have a high arc and a separate sprayer. I think I would have liked a pot filler to shorten the number of steps between sinks and stove, but the sweat equity contractor said NO more plumbing, please. I talk to the cupboard man today here at our place and we might come to an agreement. He likes our plan and his marketing guy is already hoping to get some photos when we're done. But we're not done sweating yet. Florantha