Review disclosures and follow up

I haven't been a good blogger lately. My husband and I are trying to buy our first house. It sometimes seems like a full time job. We live and want to buy on the East Bay of San Francisco.

So we found a house we really liked. Good neighborhood, nice yard, big enough house with no major upgrades needed. We read through the disclosures. Nothing jumped out at us. It was in an earthquake zone but here in the bay area you would be hard pressed to find anything that's not within 10 miles of a fault.

We decided to pounce. We told our agent to write up an offer. I looked into earthquake insurance and we both decided to pay the non-refundable $600 to have a seismic expert assess the risk.

When we went to review the offer our agent had found a way to create a map that showed the faults in our neighborhood through google earth. Holy crap apparently the Hayward Fault ran through the middle of our next door neighbor's house. Our house is highlighted in yellow and the Hayward fault is the red line. The hayward fault is deemed to be significantly more dangerous than the San Andreas at this point since it is long overdue to shake.

Well lesson learned but boy do I feel like I dodged a bullet.

So read disclosures and follow up.

Lacis in Berkeley

I feel the need to share. I stumbled upon a shop as I was looking for those clamshell frames for purses. I found that this store Lacis carries them locally. Well I stopped in and WOW.

So the store is basically both a museum and a store. Obviously lace is their main focus but they had everything from the hardware to make a corset, stays and ties etc to vintage books, to needlefelting supplies to every kind of ribbon you could imagine. Seriously the list goes on sewn and crochet flowers to add to something, pre-made to an item, felt and straw hats, and of course thread for making lace. And that's note even close to a list of just their supplies.

So of course carry lace as well. Every kind shape form date that you can imagine. I'm not an expert in lace but I tried to get up to speed. I had no idea how many ways there are to create lace, tatting, knotting some special crocheting, knitting and the pilllow method. They even had some work in progress displays showing how (for example the pillow method) it works.

I did not get to see the museum part of the store as they were revving up for an opening. I saw many clerks carefully ironing bits of lace. But they did have a collection of amazing vintage shoes on display and I did get to peek into the exhibit through the door. But I'll be back for sure.

If you are anywhere near Berkeley, CA and are at all interested in fiber arts or victorian fashion check them out.

Lacis