It Works!

Yesterday was an amazingly busy day and I feel so rewarded by every single thing I did.

First up the knitting.  

I was whining about needing wristwarmers.  In real life, I have actually been whining about them for quite some time.  The cold aching hands thing has been going on much longer than just the last couple of weeks. I had a couple skeins of Mission Falls 1824 Wool close to hand, and that seemed to be the right kind of yarn.  I wanted a yarn that was superwash.  I expect hand things, used daily, to need regular washing.  I wanted a colour that wouldn't show too much daily grime. This yarn was black.  Perfect.  

I cast of 42 stitches for my pudgy hands.  The plan was to knit tightly and to rib.  As I finished the first row, I realized that the easy thing to do for these would be to knit this project with twisted stitches.  It's a very natural technique for my general style of knitting and the project moved along swiftly.  Voila, wristwarmers!

These are exactly right.  They are not too long in the hand, just to my knuckles, leaving them well out of the way for practical work, but long enough on the wrist that they cover where your blood runs near to the surface of your skin. Keep that area warm and you will keep your hands much warmer.

And it works.  I put these on when I went to bed at night.  Part of feeling sleepy for me is feeling chilly and sometimes my hands ache.  With these on, no ache.  This morning, I put them on as soon as I got up.  And no ache.  I still feel a bit of a chill but the cold ache in the bones that makes it feel like I can't move them for being cold is gone.  And that is exactly what I wanted. And yes, these are short enough that I am typing with them on.

The rest of my day produced just a good of a result.  The landlord said  something the other day that made me realize how badly I was using my space.  My spare room seemed to be a catchall and really wasn't doing the job it was supposed to do at all.  The original plan was to set my quilt frame up in that room and if I ever got one, a loom. The closet was full and the room was lined with stuff that did not fit anywhere else: furniture, boxes, excess pillows.  Every time I turned around, I found myself saying, 'I'll just put it in the spare room'.  Using the daybed was becoming a pain which meant that the room wasn't doing anything from my original list of needs for a second bedroom.

In one of those lightbulb moments I realized that my old display cabinet from the front entry at the house could hold the china dolls from Auntie Lorraine again, as well as most of the bits and pieces that I'm not ready to let go of.  With a few exceptions, everything else could be used or be put away in the kitchen cabinets till I decide if they are garage sale material. If that little cabinet could  do the heavy lifting, my white cabinet could go back to its first purpose, as a yarn cabinet.  Hooray!

The net result is that I can get rid of the yarn containers for next up projects and the projects that are in the debate stage (to keep or not to keep) and keep it all in one tidy place.  That stack of  easy to get to yarn is now not just easy to get too, but it is pretty too.  Without that stack of boxes, my room feels better too.  You can see the loom just sitting there in front of my shelves blocking my yarn closet.  It won't stay, because...

once the daybed is not set up for guests, there is lots of room for the quilt frame.  There is even a corner for the quilt and frame to sit when guests visit and use the room.  But most of all, once the quilt frame is out of the closet, the loom can sit in its own corner and all of its accoutrements can be tucked into the closet. There will even be room in said closet for the loom to be tucked away when future guests come, which was one of the prime reasons for getting a table loom, in the first place.  The spare bedroom will be what I had hoped it would be, a useable multi purpose room.

January is a good time to do a check to see if your living space is doing what you want and need it to do.  That it happened that I have a completed knitting project at the same time is wonderful.  That all these small changes are making everything else work better is just a bonus.  It Works!