Odds and Ends

Today is the last day of vacation. Filia starts an 11-credit load at Bethany Lutheran University on Monday, and Filius and I will dive back into his books. That makes today a perfect day to continue tidying, straightening, decluttering, and preparing for a new year.
One thing that needed doing was the Emptying of The Yarn Labels Bag. Over the course of 2011, I tried to keep all the yarn labels from my various projects. The final count is 77 labels. They will now go live in the recycling bin until Thursday, at which point they will join the ranks of post-consumer content. Maybe in some yarn?


One of my lesser-favorite things to do around the house is to clean the corn stove. I should probably call it a pellet stove, since we're burning wood pellets this year instead of corn ... but old names die hard. Wood generates a lot more soot than corn. Corn generates more ash than wood, at least on the (in)sides of the stove. Corn produces a 'clinker' - a nice solid chunk of spent fuel that can be pryed out of the firebox and popped into an ash can. Wood produces a bunch of ash which has to be scooped out. Both make my hands very dirty during the weekly deep cleaning. And since I have some heirloom-quality LIGHT colored knitting to do this year, I splurged and got myself a pair of gloves. Here, they are pictured in their original, clean state. They will never look like this again.

Any of my stove-owning friends know how to get soot off of hands and cloth? How about glass? (Ammonia, water, sudsy ammonia, elbow grease, magic eraser aren't working around the edges.) And is there any good way to clean the inside of a stove without producing airborne particles that make me think about wearing a face mask while cleaning?