Just one Stripe

There are days when the world is just too busy to knit.  That was my day yesterday.  Just too much other stuff on my mind.  Anybody who has been around for a while here, reading this blog knows that doesn't happen too often, though it has been more lately than ever before.  That will come to an end soon.  We are getting so close to the end of all the things that needed closing and settling.  

Here you can see the sum of my knitting yesterday and this morning.  One set of stripes.  about 10 rows, 8 of which were done this morning.  What you can see is how wonderfully subtle the change in colours is.  I am just so pleased.

There will be more knitting this weekend to be sure and maybe an adventure or two.  I am looking forward to whatever will come. I know that softer purples are on the way and for now, that is enough.

Wowza

I knit a little yesterday.  I had very early routine tests in town and then had a couple hours to sit at a coffee shop and knit till it was a decent hour to go to play with my kiddies for the day.

I am hoping you can see what is happening with the yarns.  The gray stays the same soft colour and the purples slowly change getting lighter and lighter.  I have just started on the third colour and even though I've only knit a few rounds you can see how different the colour is from that first rich, dark purple. I absolutely love the way the choices of colours from Pigeonroof Studios . such wonderfully soft changes!  Also, I see that she has these 240 yard sets as well as 480 yard sets.

It won't be as long as I dreamed of, but it will do a double loop and is wide enough that even worn single loop, it will do just what a cowl ought to do.  If you wanted a long three loop scarf, you should cast on only 50 stitches.  It is narrow, but the extra loop will give you the right warmth.

Gratuitous second photo:  Because you can't have too much of pretty knitting.

I've progressed much farther than I thought I might.  It moves along so fast. It is similar to knitting two at a time socks and coming up on the ankle on the pair.  It is as if I was well past the heel the first sock after one day of knitting one sock at a time.

I am right at 1/3 complete and it took no time and no effort at all. It is like the two rows stripe scarf all over again.

It is perfect stress knitting.  No thinking is involved, just a little row counting but 7 row stripes are right for me to track where I am and fit the yarn perfectly.  Only inches are left from the two mini skeins after a set of three stripes.

My hope is that my stress is all over before the knitting is.  I have yarns for another cowl, and I am very seriously thinking of combinations of things from the rest of my stash that will work for this.  I know I have some.  I would just have to decide on colours I want for myself.

Or I could just settle and knit another Undercurrent.  All stripes.  All the time.  That seems to be my motto these days.

Not My Usual Tuesday

This morning finds me luxuriating in an entire Tuesday at home.  It came about because I had forgotten to get some tests done and changed my regular doctor appointment.  Without the doctor appointment, I talked with my spinning compatriot, Frazzledknitter, and we are skipping spinning this week.  I think I will bake some muffins later.  I haven't done that in a really long time and my landlord, Son2, has always loved muffins.

Yesterday was quiet too, but I got a bunch of things done.  I worked on my stash project on Ravelry.  I am convinced photos are going to be as much of a benefit as the original work inputting all my yarn.  It will allow me to shop my stash more effectively for colour combinations.  I also did the second sleeve of my top.

I might stop there and call this done, except the neckline is really wide. Really wide.  I took off some stitches at each side but not nearly enough.  Had I followed the pattern exactly, this neckline would have been off my shoulders.  As it is, it goes beyond my straps, which is never a good look for me.  This isn't a real problem because from the start, I planned on coming back to the neck to finish it.  Now I just have to decide how.  Still I am pretty pleased with how it came out. It would have been better if I had had equal amounts of gray and the multi, but still, a pretty favourable result.

I started something new too.  After my contemplating purse knitting the other day, and with time flying by, I decided it was time to begin something I have been planning for a while.  Several years ago, I went to Interweaves Knitlab. One of the things I came home with was some Pigeonroof Studios Mini packs and coordinating full skeins to make cowls for my daughter in laws.  It struck me that the cowl or eternity scarf I intended would make darn good purse knitting.  

I had seen the most divine loop at another market vendor.  She had been selling kits where the mini colours reflected Downton Abbey colours.  It was really lovely, but the kits were sold out. I loved the idea and bought yarns to make something very similar for my lovely young women.(The vendor may have been Canon Hand Dyes with the Downton Abbey colours in their Charles Sock yarn.)

The gray is a skein of Invictus Yarns Beyond, a merino nylon and cashmere blend.  The Pigeonroof Studios minis are Silken Sock, a blend of Merino and silk.  Both are just lovely to work with.

This cowl is gray and purples.  The colours are perfect for the eventual owner.

I am knitting this on 3.5 mm needles, possibly a little loose for the yarn.  I might take it back and restart on 3.25s.  I am going to knit just a little farther so I can pin it out and see it clearly before I decide.  The cowl is a tube so each inch of it will be two layers, plus it is going to be long enough to be wrapped at least three times around her neck. Warmth is not going to be an issue but I am not 100% convinced the yarn will look it's best at this gauge.  

A couple of structural notes.  I am using a pattern, Matilde Skår's Striped Cowl.   The pattern is using 8 rows of each colour, but I am going with 7 for the same reason that I used 7 on my monster socks.  It feels natural.  Plus, this way, each colour from these lovely little sets (I have two) will make three stripes.  I hope.

You can also see the bit of yarn I knit instead of a provisional cast on.  I knit 3 rows with a waste yarn.  It's going to be a very long graft at the end and I want it to be as clean a graft as humanly possible. The pickup of stitches will be so much cleaner this way.

As I am sitting here now, I do see that I have more than 7 rows of gray at the start, but that will be sorted out later.  Or it will change if I go down a needle size.  

Anyway, on to a good days work.  Knitting and a little baking and maybe by evening a little spinning when my hands wear out.  Not my usual Tuesday.

One Step. Step One.

I put my house up for sale last week.  I am a little bit stressed but it is time to have it done.  Things will go how they go and that is that. It made this weekend a hard one to sit through.  I had trouble focusing on anything.

Most of the weekend was taken up by the big yarn project.  Every ball of yarn in my stash has now been photographed for posterity.  It will be a while till I get them all loaded to Ravelry but it will come.  

It was a lot of fun in the end.  I got to take out and play with things in ways I haven't since I purchased them.  I piled them and stroked them.  All in all, a lot of fun!

I thought about yarns.  How some yarns you never forget, 

and some remain faintly remembered surprises hidden at the bottom of the box. 

 I remember the things that drove me to buy them.  Some because I needed a sweater or socks. 

Some are from the deep fervour for a good sale, 

some because of goofing around with friends at the store.  

Some were the implosion of colour that working at the store was.  Some because of the way they felt. Some because of the way I felt.  Some because if you are buying from 

Iceland you darn well fill up the shipping box and love the result when you do. 

Yarn is memories and mementos and in a funny way a history of me, a part of the story of my life.

I don't regret any of it.  Not one single speck of it.  I don't think I wish for more, but I sure do appreciate what I have.  I have some stunning stuff and very very little that I don't love deeply.  The last stuff I did not completely love, a box of sock yarns I did not think I could use, went off to some friends a couple years ago.

And when the playing was done, I was calm enough to watch a little TV and sit and knit. I finished a sleeve.

It is a short short sleeve, almost a cap sleeve, but really, that is what this top will get.  The yarn is running low.  The gray that is, and I do need some for the collar. The sleeve looks a little pouffy right now.  That will ease out in blocking and wearing.     

One step at a time.  One step in knitting, one step in the yarn project, one step in real estate.  I just have to keep my mind focused on one step.

Purse Knitting

When I was still working at a regular job, I carried up to 3 projects with me at all times, and very often my only purse was a knitting bag more than a purse. These days, my purse is often more of a junk bag than a knitting bag or a purse.  I really need to clean it more.

I always carry a project with me, though I very seldom get time to work on it. It generally only gets knit on when I am with my kiddies.  I don't wait in lines.  I have the luxury of picking slow times to do my shopping.  Then again I don't do very much shopping.  I have almost everything I need.  My doctor gets me in to her office incredibly efficiently.  I have only waited once but it doesn't count.  I went extra early so I would have time to knit.  Most of my purse knitting time is when I am with my kiddies and there is just too much to do with them, to get a lot of time to knit.

But still, there is progress.

A pair of socks for Marcus and I ought to be able to get another pair for Cassie out of this too.  I think there will be some left to make Carter a pair, but we shall see.  It is entirely possible that he will get his own colour of yarn with his big brother, Isaac.

The yarn is Meilenweit Cotton Fun, a 45 % cotton, 42 % wool, and the rest nylon blend that is one of my favourite blends of yarn for socks.  It is perfect for summer camping and playing outdoors on cool spring days.

Sadly, I knit a smidgen too much yesterday without checking if it was time to go to ribbing.  A couple rows will have to come out today.  Which is going to be a lot of fun, if Marcus 'helps' and decides to run with it. 

The other socks that have not been purse knitting so far, but that might become such, today, are these interesting things.

For the life of me, I can't remember the name of the company this blank is from, but it is very cool.  I just love how random it turns out knit up after starting from this.

This sock is a rather simple pattern, the Lichen Ribbed Socks,  from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks.  These are the pattern with a twist because that is how I roll.  Toe up but with a basic rounded toe, a slip stitch heel flap using Maia Spins still excellent after all these years, Toe Up Gusseted Heel turtorial, and the ribbed pattern starts as soon as possible after the heel turn, because it occurred to me that I could.

As ever, there are always interesting things to knit, even more or less plain socks because all knitting is interesting.  To me and I hope for you too. 

A quick one

It's going to be a quick one today.  It should be a day of rest for me, but I have  things I must do.  I have a little time this morning and though I will knit on the lovely shawl or perhaps my sweater to get that finished, I feel I would like to spin.

I have always wanted to get into a routine of spinning a little bit everyday.  Knitting is so natural to me and has been from the first, but to fit spinning in has been harder.  So to feel this way in the morning is unusual.

I am working on a silk and wool pencil roving that has a very different feel on my hands.  It is just so smooth.  It is a little intriguing. 

So I might spin. Till it is time to go be busy.

I'd rather be spinning and knitting and quiet in my day today.  With a little luck, it will go fast.

After that

After the sorry events of yesterday, I sat down and did some soul soothing knitting.

I have begun.  

I love lace knitting.  I don't love errors in lace knitting, but I sure do love knitting lace.  There is just something so musical in it.  It is hypnotic and soothing and mystical in all kinds of ways.

It is as I suspected it might be, I present the Lilac Leaf Shawl by Nancy Bush.  To be honest, I was not 100 percent sure that would be it till I sat down to cast on.  

I looked over my fairly long list of shawl possibilities and each of them was cast aside for one reason or another.  Some were too ornate and too fussy.  Hard to believe I am saying that, but there are some that I might wear but my much more conservative, with respect to shawls, sisters might think were like wearing a table cloth.  I think too, that my sisters will see them more useful if they consider them scarves.  Simpler designs.  Wider rather than deep shawls.  And very few beads.  No matter how lovely they look, beads against a cold neck in the deep of winter doesn't work.   

This shawl answered all my questions.  I simply love it.  There is such an elegant simplicity to it.  Large motifs.  Airy. Light.  These are the most striking features of this design.   One day I will make it for me.  

I am making one change to the shawl as written.  I have lots of yarn so I am making it wider by two motifs (9 instead of 7).  While I want it to be useful as a scarf, I also want it to be deep enough for really significant wrap.

So, onwards.  Most mornings I get a good chunk of time to knit and have a quiet coffee before heading off to babysit.  The sun peaks in my north east facing window at just the right angle.  It's an unexpected little bonus.  Onwards.

Darn it

No not socks.  I am thinking the bottom of the sock repair bucket just might be a good place to hide for a while, though.

I continued working on my yarn photo project on the weekend, and when I did that, I pulled out the yarn that I wanted to work with next.  Next as in lace next.

 I thought to pull them and wind them later. It was a good thought.  Monday was laundry and laundry means I am in my room for large parts of the day.  (My laundry is in my very, very large master bath). Monday would be the day to wind this batch of yarn, a good day to baptize my new studio for ball winding.

And I did wind one. And then disaster.

I just sat and looked it for a bit.

Had you been here, you would have just sat too. Snapped clean off and not a thing I can do about it.

I am loathe to replace it.  To purchase locally, they cost a fair bit of money.  To purchase online, possible, but really, it ends up costing almost the same as local, unless I spend enough money to reach the free shipping level.  And that defeats the whole purpose of saving funds by ordering online! 

I am seriously thinking of going the nostepinne route, where by you make the balls by hand on the most basic of tools.  In other words, a stick.  Much of the hank style yarn in my stash is already wound.  There is always more to do, but nothing is urgent.  There are at least 50 sweaters worth that are already wound or are in commercial skeins.  I don't really have sock yarn (my kind of sock yarn) that needs winding, and the fancier fingering weight is almost all wound up already.  It makes for tidier storage.  

I do have a lot of lace to wind, but with my new yarn bowl, there is no reason not to simply wind balls.  I have done that before and it was a kind of nice change from the struggle to make a cake with just enough tension so the ball would stand neatly but not be so tightly wound as to stretch the yarn.

To say that I  am not upset about all this would be wrong.  I am in mourning and I am miffed that it happened at all but it is a ball winder.   Generations of women and men used either a ball or a nostepinne and there is just no reason I can't too.  I am made of sterner stuff. Right?   

Truth or Dare

That point in the project where it is time to face the music, where you play a little truth or dare with yourself.

So, here I am, binding off the bottom. It's actually where the bottom is almost done, and it is time for a first free of everything try on.

Oh don't get me wrong.  I love this part.  It's close to complete.  Love.  It is where you know if it works or not, but it is also where failure can whack you upside the back of the head, and can laugh and laugh and laugh.

This one is complicated.  I adore how this yarn feels on my skin.  Soft and really great.  But yes, the colours are not quite perfect for me and I can feel it as much as see it.  That, more than any other thing is really clear to me. I knew that going in so I am not overly bothered by it.

It also did not need as many increases as I did on the lower body.  That is a little wider than I would like.  The length is perfect though.  The collar is a little wide on my shoulders, but I am not concerned about that too much.  I planned for a few changes once I had the body done.

The only thing that will be addressed, maybe is the sides.  I think that taking it in about 4 stitches on either side will make the world of difference.  I will probably create a faux seam at the underams without steeking.

Unless this becomes a cardigan. If it becomes a cardigan, all these small shortcomings might be exactly the thing it needs.

And that is the truth I am looking at this morning.

 

Taking that first step.

I don't know how many people still are avid Knitty watchers.  There does seem to be some small cooling of knitting and a little upswing of other crafts.  Do you still wait eagerly for the new issues?  I sure do.

The spring issue just dropped and I already know one thing that I would love to knit.  The white shawl.  I love that.  It is just a little unique.    Only one problem for not starting it right this minute.

It is a fingering weight shawl.  I am wanting to do a series of lace wieght shawls.  Now I know that there is not reason that I can't just make it in a lace weight, but it means I would have to wing it for gauge to get a size that works and muddle around trying to enlarge it.  I'm not quite sure that I want the very first shawl in the series to be something I have to modify heavily. But it sure is a lovely thing.

Another pattern that I am leaning to heavily is Nancy Bush's Lilac Leaf Shawl from Knitted Lace of Estonia.  I have loved this delicate thing since before I had my own copy of the book.  From that same book, there is also the Lehe shawl.  I started one for myself a long time ago, but I made a poor yarn choice and was never going to have enough yarn.  But I do remember knitting it, and remember how hard it was to face up to that fact that it was not going to work out.  Lehe is still very much in the game too.

And then there are some of the other lovely things from Knitty.  Bitterroot, which I have knit before is in the running.  Lilaceous would continue my pleasure in knitting leafy things. Regenerate is right up there too. Torryeanna would be challenging but oh so very lovely.

The problem with knitting shawls is where to start.  With a garment, I know what I am aiming for and deciding usually comes down to which yarn I really hunger to work with.  But a shawl.  I don't know where to begin and I am not sure how to choose.  

Perhaps the best ting is to put the names of the shawls in a bowl and do a little draw.  And then I can knit the one I draw, or not.  But it would be as much a start as looking at the many many patterns and designs.  

Time to go to the yarn I guess, and pick one.  And begin. 

A very busy day

This morning I had no where to go and nothing to do.  It was a very busy day.  

I knit a bunch on my sweater.

The sweater is beginning to look very sweater like.  A couple more inches and it will be long enough I think.  I want it comfortably long enough when I sit but not tunic like.  I have a little bit to go on this skein and then an entire other skein, so I do have some room to play.  There will be some colour on the sleeves and a touch of gray to finish them off.  That will leave me with just enough gray for a bit more of a collar. I hope. If not I can add a little colour there too, but only enough to accent it all.

It is hard to see it here, but I am letting it pool.  I love the splotches of vibrant gold and cherry interspersed with the much more solemn gray.  If you are going to wear colours that aren't really good with your skin and hair, do so with wild abandon but away from your face.

This afternoon I spent a good long time spinning.  I have that nice reddish braid that I want to finish.  Then I can free up that bobbin, and get set up for some plying. I have only a very very little to do and I can move forward.

All in all, a good but very busy day.  It was really really nice.

 

It's Tuesday!

That means I get to spin!  

I still haven't managed to get my green singles plied, but I live in hope of getting there one day.  C'est la vie.

But spinning.

This is what I am working on right now. 

It is a long way from perfection but all in all, it is turning out very nicely. I am so close to finishing braid one and then, I think I will take a break for a while and play with some of the techniques from Yarnitecture.  I have some fibre that I bought for purposeful play, rather than yarn.

Good things come to those who spin.

Brier Knitting

That did not go quite like I planned.  I am beginning to wonder why I bother planning at all.  I seem to get much more done when I wing it.

I did not knit on my sweater at all this weekend.  It was the final weekend of the Brier, the Men's curling championship here.  Let me set the record straight.  I am not a huge sports fan.  I am barely even a fan of competition of any kind, but when Brian was here I watched curling and golf with him because he was interested and he made it interesting for me.  Eventually you become schooled and interested on your own behalf.  That happened with curling, but since he is gone, I just did not have the heart to watch it.  

But this year, I caught part of a draw just as the ladies championship was beginning and I watched.  Not all of it, but at least a draw every day.  And when the men's started, I was interested a little more seriously.  I watched morning and evening every day.  And I had a lot of fun.

It is a great sport to knit to, and I did knit as you saw last week.  Dishcloths.  I was sure I was done that and over dishcloths by the time Friday rolled around, but not so.

I present Saturday and Sunday. 

One from the tail ends of skeins and one from a ball of cotton that had no match and was slightly lighter in weight than the regular kitchen cotton.  

Slowly this bin of generic kitchen cottons and bit of things I won't use for anything else is disappearing and getting used up. Once it is gone, the chances of keeping a bin of it on hand are pretty slim.  I just don't see my purchasing it very often.  Dishcloths can last a long time. 

The Brier is done, the cotton is almost done. On to some very interesting knitting.  Shawls and summer tops, I think.  All good, all much more fun than dishcloths (YMMV) with no Brier to watch.

The Friday File

Friday is a day I wish I had interesting stuff to say.  I don't.  But I wish it.  Dishcloth de jour.

I was running out of the turquoise.  Ah well.

I had so much fun digging out the laceweight for pictures the other day.  I did go through boxes when I moved, but more to clean them and ensure everything was in good condition, but I did not actually play with the yarn.  There were too many other things to do.  Digging for specific yarn was play and it reminded me of something I have been thinking of for a while.

There was a point last year, before I moved, when I realized that my stash was woefully out of date. I really would like to address this. I use the Reverly stash feature as a starting point in searches for things and for inspiration. I had been thinking of taking pictures of the yarn for my Ravelry page too.  I know, in general, the yarns I have, but I don't really have a visual and I wanted to change that.

I don't think in pictures.  I seem to store information as words or perhaps it is that words are my brain's table of contents. If I think of my stash, I think, 'that skein of Merino Silk', and then, once the words in in my consciousness, I can pull up the picture of it.  It's blue with the slightest of sheen from the silk.  I recall the lovely time I had winding it.

But, when I start from the picutres, even yesterday as I was putting it all together, I got some wrong.  It was a rather interesting experience in understanding just how my brain works.  Illumination is never a bad thing.  For all that I know what I have, it would be nice to see the blue ones and the red ones, and the green.  It would be nice to have a point of reference that isn't just in my head.

In a way, taking pictures and updating my Ravelry stash page is my anti- Kondo statement to the world.  Perhaps it is not an anti-Kondo statement but the pinnacle of Kondo-ism, know what you love.  I just truly love yarn.  Who says love should be minimalist?

Yesterday felt like a good day to play and play was a good place to start.  

And so many many more.

It wasn't a day of rush or urgency.  I had no where particular to be.  When I woke in the morning, I had no particular agenda or plan.  I played just like kids surrounded by their toys.

I had fun.  There is more fun  on the horizon.  The weekend promises to be very very good.

Diversions

Long before I even knew how to knit lace, I fell in love with laceweight yarn.  I loved how delicate and dainty it was and I meant to make it mine.  All mine.  My stash will tell you I have accomplished this.  It is mine.  

This was the beginning of my significant and much adored lace yarn collection.  It is all Knitpicks Shimmer, Shadow or Alpaca Cloud.  I think I purchased almost all of the blues I could that very first time.  It was almost all sale prices and I had quite simply fallen in love with the colours.  

I don't know if I planned it as I did the purchase or if it happened as I was unpacking the box, but I knew that I was going to use the lovely blues for shawls for each of my sisters and my mom.   After the fact, my mom told me she didn't like wool, so I found an alternate plan for her.

The very large skein of soft gray was purchased with my mom in mind.  It's a double skein of  Handmaiden Sea Silk which I purchased locally, at River City Yarns. That was the first time I took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I was paying for a double skein of yarn, but I was having it and expense be darned.  My mom was worth the good stuff.  I still feel this.

All this happened sometime in my first year of knitting and 2017 marks 10 years of knitting so I have had these plans for 10 years. Maybe time to do it?

I am a little reluctant to knit sweaters right now, even considering the next big thing, I am starting to wonder if this might be a good time to immerse myself in shawls.  I have waited till I had time, waited till I had space, waited till I moved, waited, till, for ...and so on.  Shawls would give me everything I am looking for in terms of challenge, maybe more than I am looking for!  It is always time to focus on sweaters, but maybe it is time to focus on this large project too.

So, that explains the pile of books the other day and why they are still on my footstool.

I am on the hunt for the first pattern.  I know that my sisters are not generally shawly people, but I also know they are living in Canada.  Winter is cold and every person can use a good scarf like object at the nape of their neck.  What would be nicer than an airy warm shawl?  I am leaning a bit towards that very popular crescent shape, or possibly a  wide v shape.  

Boo Knits is on my radar and there are some truly stunning things on Knitty.  Twist Collective has some really lovely things too that would work nicely.  And then my books.  I would love to knit something from my books for this project too.  The first thing I thought of was Victorian Lace Today, but the shawl I was thinking of is a rectangle.  Still, that would work with my criteria for a shawl/ neck warmer wear.  Estonian?  Victorian?  Shetland?  Japanese influenced?  There are such lovely things out there for this large, long term project.  How on earth will I choose?

It is a big project.  Four shawls in total.  Certainly doable if I set Christmas as my deadline.  Or not.  Whatever else this diversion is or isn't, it is time to start.

Just a little addendum:  As I was taking yarn out for the photo, I had such fun.  The feel.  The colours.  Such a variety of different textures and colours.  It struck me that though I saw the world in sweaters, I dreamed of lace weight shawls.

Housekeeping

Maybe it is spring.  Maybe it is the brier, that end of the winter season event.  Maybe it is that box of cotton sitting on my coffee table.  It may also be that as I cleaned and sorted my home, I found there are things I needed.  Housekeeping things seem to be weighing big on my mind.

As I was sorting through odd small boxes, organizing my shelves, I came across this,

a reuseable swiffer sweeper cloth.  I made it quite some time ago and did use it regularly, but it has some issues.  It needed to be wider and slightly shorter to be a really great fit. I'm not so sure that the the way I did the slip over the sweeper ends is the best way to get it to stay on either.  Possibly a velcro closer on one side would be a better solution.  The way I did it, the cloth eventually will stretch too long no matter what you do.  With all the hard flooring here, I could use a few sweeper cloths.  

I need a tea cozy.  I cannot find this one.

It's a tremendous shame because it kept a pot of tea hot for hours. I cannot imagine that I would have given it away or tossed it out and yet I must have. It was huge and really hard to miss.  With me starting my coffee consumption earlier in the day, and liking a late afternoon hot drink and with the landlord's personal preference for tea as an evening hot beverage, the house needs it far more than I ever did when I was living alone.   Last time, I was just using up a yarn that was sitting there, taking up space.  This time, I think I will put a bit more of an effort into it.  I might even purchase a pattern!

And this morning (curling starts at 6:30 a.m. this week) I am working on this.

I cast on this morning after a false start last evening.  The false start told me that I did not have enough of either of the 2 colours I started with, to make a whole dishcloth. The third colour was added and it looks like it should work out.  It is going to be a close thing with the turquoise blue though.  Very close.  So close that I might switch out the green for the turquoise for the last half of the cloth.  

There are other things on my mind too.  Like this pile of books over on my footstool.

It's all lace books but for one embroidery book.  That was just a diversion, but if this week has been about anything, it has been about following a different path than the one I started the week with. 

Housekeeping was not huge on my agenda this week, and yet here I am.  Contemplating housework. 

Not what I thought.

 I spent the day playing in my study yesterday.  The 'study' is the far side of my bedroom which kind of ended up one side bedroom stuff, one side sewing, knitting, crafting of all kinds.

It isn't that it wasn't set up but as I worked to get the rest of everything in place, the study became a bit of a dumping ground for papers, for boxes of computer stuff, boxes of cords, boxes of boxes, just boxes of little stuff, that had to be gone through and sorted and ordered into place.

Things like two medium sized boxes of crochet cotton that were ordered into one larger box.

 Things like this pretty little box

 which was in a box with some other small boxes of stitch markers, t-pins for blocking, a couple yarn needles, and an old watch.

My day was a lot like cleaning out the junk drawer in the kitchen.

And then I sat down to knit, but I didn't pick up and knit what I thought I was going to knit.  My plan was to knit on my sweater and get the bottom a whole lot closer to complete.  It didn't happen that way.  I didn't even think of picking it up at all.

In my day of going through things, I decided I needed a bag to hold my remotes for the audio visual / computer stuff in my study.  I took out the long suffering box of generic cotton yarn and then changed my mind about how to manage remotes.

It did leave the box of cottons in view.  In it there was an incomplete dishcloth.

I love the way to soft yellow and that brilliant pink look together.  They just are not colours that you usually would put together, but anything goes in a dishcloth.  The contrast is high and the look is peppy and fun.  Before the Brier was done for the day I had another finished project.

Dishcloths are the perfect sort of knitting to watch curling by.  You really don't have to focus on what is going on in your hands at all.  You just do it.  I did have to take out a couple rows here and there.  There were times where I would get so involved in what was going on on the ice, that I would end up with a row or two of extra of one colour or other.  

The dishcloth is not near to the sweater knitting I hoped for but it is a lot like the sorting and ordering of the rest of my day.  A few more dishcloths and this box of cottons will be done.  

I guess that was what the day was all about.  Being done.  So not what I thought it would be in the morning.

How many are enough?

I had company on the weekend.  My brother drove up from Saskatoon for breakfast on Saturday.  Since there are no places open for breakfast, we opted for lunch at the absolutely fantastic Mundare Bakery.  

I lived half an hour away since 1992.  How did I not know this was here?  (Answer:  I never go anywhere) It is really the kind of place you should drive out to, to have lunch at on the weekend.  The soup.  The sausage rolls.  The ...everything.  Note to self:  Go early.  If you follow the link, the little fruit turnovers were already gone, and there was only a few loaves of the utterly divine Mundare bread left on the shelf.  I know from seeing the action, Friday afternoon on the mainstreet is a bit of a zoo.  Bakery to one side of the block, sausage factory store on the other. Seriously fine food.

Anyway, my company and I were talking about getting older and how different our life might be.  Our folks have made it hard.  Dad will be 90 next year and is still pretty active.  He still does little fixes here and there around the house for my brother and sisters, but he does pace himself.  He still finds it fun and likes to keep busy.  My mom, who is 8 years younger still cleans 2 condos.  She just let a third one go, in the fall.  It is hard to think of 75 as old seeing their example.  My brother just turned 60 and I am verging on 60 and what we really need, how we want to live plays into our thought processes a lot.  Mine perhaps started earlier than it might for many, but then I was rather forced into it. My brother is just starting to think of what he wants and needs.  It is good to start thinking earlier in life, rather than waiting till the whole thing is just too overwhelming to face.  After he left, our conversation stayed in my mind.  

I was sitting and knitting, finishing that sock, I was pondering socks and thinking about the sock repair bucket, 

and then the thought crossed my mind, 'What happens when I get too old to knit and repair my own socks?'  Losing the ability to knit is something I acknowledge and accept. It will happen, hopefully much, much later. 

But it made me wonder if I ought to be planning a basket full of plain socks for the time when it happens.  I don't think my need for warm feet is going to go away. 

If I knit sock yarn at 12 socks a year, I have sock yarn in the bin for 6 years worth of knitting.  If I repair socks regularly now, how many socks will be enough for future me?  

Maybe I ought to be torquing out the plain vanilla kind, just so I can do them faster and make a bigger pile for future me.  Yeah. NO.  I think older me is just going to have to take what comes as it comes.  I plan to be here for a long time if my stash says anything about me.

I think I want my epitaph to read 'Knit all her yarn'.  

And that is enough pondering for my day. Have a lovely one, all.