Entertaining myself

It has been pretty busy here at Chez Needles these last few days.  The schedule isn't going to plan, but the tasks I have set myself are still getting done.  

So is the knitting.  The March sock is speeding along. I'll get the heel done today, and then it is just a few cable sections.  But yes, it is the March sock.  I am a little disappointed in that, but the April one is going to be plain with a strong patterning to carry me through.  I am really looking forward to plain.  It is't that I don't enjoy the fancy socks.  I do.  It is just that I like plain ones, where the yarn is doing the talking, more.

Then there is my pretty new thing.  It is a top of some kind.  What kind will be determined as I knit.  Its working well, going along without a real plan.  I don't have to make any decisions till it is time to do the first set of decreases for whatever shaping I do and that is a couple inches away.  

The blanket is moving along.  Right now I am working on the toast section on the bottom.  The entire time I have been working on this blanket, I've been finding I have only been able to knit 6-8 rows a day.  My hands would cramp up and that would be it for the day. The yarn is Comfort Chunky and the ball band says to use 6 or 6.5 mm needles.  I'm using 4.5mm.  Generally that would be the number one reason for the hand cramping - needles too small for the yarn - but these last few days, no hand issues.  I have no idea if I am holding the project differently and it is relieving the issue, or if it is just that even now, when it is huge I am still really enjoying the simplicity of counting garter stitch ridges.  Marker of sanity:  I am enjoying it, and will enjoy it even more when it is done.  

But mostly, these last few days have been fun for the other things I am doing.  The other things I am doing is cleaning.  I don't generally enjoy cleaning, but this is different.  There was a time when our family moved 4 times in just over 2.5 years for Mr. Needles' work.  By the time we arrived here, at this house, there was nothing extra, nothing that we had that did not have meaning to us, or that did not get used regularly.  We still had many boxes of books, boxes of rocks (don't ask), boxes of little collections and toys but there were none of the things that accumulate when you have been in a place for a long time.  

Things like the boxes of National Geographic that you saved in case your kids needed them for research in school and haven't bothered pulling down off the shelf because they are not in the way. Things like stuff that gets tucked into closets and then never ever looked at again. (I would say what those things are, but I have no real idea of everything in some of them.  Not deeply connected to the stuff in the closets at all.)  I am going through all the things that accumulate when you live in a place for 20 years, and I am having a really good time.  

Every book on every shelf is getting looked at and pondered over. Every paper is getting looked at and tossed or saved. (The toss pile is way bigger than the save pile!)  Everything is dusted and and cleaned and washed.  I am reading little notes from times long past.  Odd bits of things that the kids once wrote or gave me and notes from our ordinary lives, like "gone to town, will bring KFC home" (which usually meant the house got tidied by the kids so they could eat as soon as I got home) that lived on tucked inside an anonymous pile of literature that has not been read in 15 years.  

Day to day cleaning is tedious, but this kind of cleaning is fun.  This deep cleaning and sorting is more like an archeological dig. It takes you back through all the places you have been and the many little things that have happened that make up a life.    

So I am just going to keep right on doing this.  I'm going to keep on entertaining myself, digging through, cleaning out, tidying up.  It is all accompanied by knitting and that makes my days very very good.