Goofy kids

My little Emmett was performing for Grandma today.  He is a sweet genial little stinker!  He took off to hide when it was nap time and had a very good time.  Grandma eventually caught him, fed him and put him down for a good nap.

He likes to explore everything.  Just before this he was stuck on top of the green box under the coffee table and was just starting to worry when grandma saved him, and dumped him out so he could beat a hasty retreat out of his predicament.

Sweet release.

He also likes to vacuum.  Mommy can never find the crevice tool but there it is, right where he put it,  in his toys so it is near to hand when it is his turn to vacuum.  It is also an excellent ball whacker.

He has shown that he is very good at tickling and really likes the old family tickle game we call krizel mizel.  We have no idea why it is called krizel mizel.  My dad, who invented it, said it must have been just made up words.  For made up words, it has enormous play power for little kids and all my grandchildren know it well. 

Not a bit of anything happened today except playing with kiddies.  I can always knit tomorrow.

Stuff and Knitting

It's one of those days where there are a dozen little things to do and I am actually doing them.  I am repairing snaps, some of which have been waiting for months, and sorting toys and doing laundry and coming up this afternoon, I will be starting to tie the quilt.  

There has been knitting.

The collar looks odd but as a whole, it is starting to look very sweater like.  I've made it down to the third garter row set and yes, it feels fast.  Not quite the perfect stripe sequence but close.  The perfect stripe sequence is seven for me.  When I start looking for a row count, I am invariably at row five or six.  Seven is great for socks, but at sweater scale, seven rows is too little space between the edges.  It would make the sweater feel busy, fussy and not quite right.  

There will be knitting after quilt tying.  It's nice to do some knitting right before bed for a change.  Bed will be early today because tomorrow , I start really, really early so I can get over to play with my sweet kiddies who live a little farther away.  My favourite thing!

Felting Adventures

Yesterday it was time to say goodbye to another old sweater.  

This time, the sweater biting the dust was a Shalom vest knit back in 2013.  It was worn a lot over the years but it had some issues.  In adventures in renovating before I sold my house, it caught on a nail or something mid back.  I always planned to repair it but once I settled in this house, I realized that the round low yoke wasn't  keeping me warm enough.  It sat and a few weeks ago, I decided  I could let it go.  

As much as letting go, I needed a few other things.  I needed pot holders.  Mine, sewn years ago, back on the farm, are pretty much gone.  I have been using my cotton dishcloths for taking things out of the oven, and a single layer of cotton is not enough.  At all.  

I also need pads for setting hot pots and dishes on  counters.  I used to have a bunch of cork pads for this but the standard cork hot pad is pretty useful for other things.  Like under a coffee pot that stays very hot below.  And as nerf gun target.  They also have broken over the years.  From my stock of 5 or 6, I can only find two to use.  

I also needed coffee coasters.  I have a sweet set of cut glass coasters that I use, but not all my coffee cups fit in them.  I made a set of felted coasters when I lived at the wee house, and was using them routinely.  I actually like them better than my glass coasters.  I had four and really need a few more.

I threw the vest into the wash yesterday morning and did a good long hot cycle.

I was a little concerned that the garter ridges of the yoke of the vest would not felt smoothly and that the ribbing wouldn't be useable. But no worries! 

I love when I felt a garment.  It brings a whole other character out of the wool.  It becomes so clear how the boiled wool jacket became a thing in some parts of the world. I have got to investigate how they make a true "boiled" wool fabric in the traditional way.

Meanwhile back at my felting.  It worked beautifully.  

I managed to recover enough of the colourful yoke to make ten, roughly square coasters.  Not perfectly square might bother some people, but not me. My others are mostly rectangle shaped and no one ever commented on their mildly wonky nature.  These imperfect squares are just fine.

Plus I have five hot pads / pot holders of various sizes.  Some are big enough for under my largest casserole,  and some are just right for my smallest pot.  All will be great for using as pot holders and I for one, am looking forward to not burning my hands in the spot between knitted or crocheted stitches.  

Delicious knitting

I did think I would do a bit of tying of the quilt on the weekend, but my weekend did not quite go like that.  My company, which was expected next weekend, came this weekend.  They may also come next weekend.  Knitting works better with company so I knit. 

It's  very good for the sweater though and less good for the quilt.

I just made the first of the second significant design feature on this sweater, the garter stitch rows.  

Without giving away the design mojo, these rows are repeated as the body of the sweater grows and the result is stripes of garter stitch texture. 

You know how it is when stripes happen.  Knitting feels fast.  It is more than my usual number of rows between these garter stitch rows but not so much that it will be hard to count or feel different than stripes do.  I'm looking forward to this just to see if these garter stripe rows work their magic and make it feel as if you are not hardly knitting at all.  

I've done a vest for a small man, a banded pattern striped lopi sweater and a gentle repetitive lace in a very short time.  Is this sweater going to feel just as fast?

The elephant in the room.

It took all day, but by the end of yesterday, I was over the grumps.  I hate spending time feeling like that. Grumpy, cranky leads me where I do not want to live.  If you allow it, it can eat up all the good things in life and all you are left with is dark corners and the shapeless wasted spaces.  

My childhood fear of the dark has taught me nothing if it did not teach me to always look for the light. Even in the darkest corners, there is some light.  Even if the only light in the corner is the scent of your coffee, it can be enough to tip your day to something better.  If you let it.  

And for me, part of the way past cranky is to figure out just why I was feeling cranky.  I was correct.  Gratification Glut was a problem but there was more.  

I did knit on my green sweater for a bit.  I did 4 rows to take it to the next increase and congratulated myself and moved to my pretty blue sweater where I knit contentedly for the rest of the day.  

I felt it was ready for the sleeves to be separated but I wanted to be sure.  This morning I put everything on wool strings and I gave it a good try on.  I usually wait to try on till I've knit an inch or so below the armpit but I had to know.  All is good.  With that out of my head, I looked up and it caught my eye across the room. 

This seems to be the elephant in the room.

The blanket.  I had to set it aside when the kids came and I haven't really thought about it since.  It has just been sitting there, minus all the batts and minus the very large container the batts were in.  

I set myself the goal of getting it done before the end of the month and that certainly still is doable.  There is some toy putting and a good sweep that must be done before I begin, so that will be the housework du jour.  

Cranky

I'm cranky this morning.  It started when I woke to an old alarm.  At 5:30 a.m.  It is one thing to wake at 5:30 naturally or when there is some reason I needed to wake at that time and quite another when I don't need to wake early at all.  I couldn't get back to sleep, so I watched a program and then got up.  Cranky.

I asked Keith to make coffee because there has been weird stuff going on with the coffee pot.  I think it hates me.  He sorted it out and made a perfectly fine pot of coffee.  At least I have that.  Cranky.

I picked up a sweater to work on and found that made me feel guilty.  

I know that I need my green coat 

and I know I ought to be working at it, but I seem to be picking up the pretty thing instead.  Knitting should not be something I feel guilty about no matter what I an knitting.  

Cranky.

I think it is a end of big project issue more than anything.  Doubly or perhaps even triply so.  I finished dad's vest (he loves it) and the Hun sweater in October and then this speedy gradient of blues and never really addressed the end of a big project lull on any of them.  

Each were so fulfilling in their own ways, each a boost to my spirit in a dozen ways.  Gratification abounded and now that they are done and every WIP I have needs lots of work, I face a gratification deficit.  Maybe I should knife some mitts.  Or socks but the thought of those makes me cranky.

I obviously need an attitude adjustment.  Or more coffee.

Sweater Heaven

It is indeed done.  Pleased cannot begin to describe it. 

There is part of me that is a farm girl, who did not grow up to be a lady who likes plain simple unfussy things, whose idea of things is that it has to be useful and that useful is true beauty and a beauty unto itself.   There is part of me that adores the most feminine of laces, the ruffles, the bows, the satin, the velvet, the Edwardian perfection and folds of delicate handkerchiefs of lawn fabric so thin as to be made of air.  This sweater is everything of both sides of me. 

The lace is just right for this very substantial yarn, though it is a good thing that I did not do the garter stitch from the pattern.  That would have been too much texture and would have made it bulky and heavy.  It isn't light and airy though.  It is substantial.  It is warm.  It is not boring and that is exactly what my wardrobe needed right now.  It is also perfect for displaying my highly valued turtlenecks.

I did add a few more rows to the bottom, to give that edge a bit more weight.  I had to do it in a band of colour though.  There wasn't enough of the darkest blue to do three rows of garter, let alone the three ridges I wanted.

I didn't obsess over buttons too much.  I knew it had to be something from the box and I knew it was going to be something different and a bit more showy than I would normally use.  What I found in the box, is as perfect as if I had planned it.

The size that fit best through my buttonholes was fairly large, but that suits the scale of everything else.  If you look carefully at the buttons, you will notice that though they are the same pattern, they are slightly different colours.  I had three decorated with white, three with a coffee colour, and two of the middle tone of this same button and I had five button holes to fill.  It only seemed right to do a gradient for the buttons.  I wouldn't have ever thought of that had I not had a stash of a billion buttons and yet, I love the quirkiness of it.  It very much is part of my sweater love.

It hasn't made it to final blocking yet, but that is only because I am wearing it right now. I wore it most of the day yesterday too.  Blocking can wait.  I am in new sweater heaven.

Ten Days

By the time it was bedtime, there was this much left.

It is done!

I haven't tried it on yet, but from my earlier test runs, I am pretty sure of what it will be.  And it will be good.

There are still ends to weave in and buttons to sort out, but then I will have a second new sweater to wear. I just realized I didn't even make time to obsess about buttons!  What is the world coming to?  

Almost

I have about 4 inches of sleeve left to finish this sweater and you know what?  I am a little tired of it.  Weird how it happens now.  Still, I am going to work like a son of a gun to get it done tomorrow.  And I do not expect it to be a hard goal at all.

I have talked about the state of my wardrobe many times before.  I have talked about the age of some of my clothes and how so many of my old standbys are getting threadbare.  I have even talked about how sewing cannot keep my beloved turetlencks together anymore.  

The other night I was awake at 2 a.m. .  I tend to stay quiet in my room at night.  The landlord wakes if I make too much noise so I cruise the Internet for cool things or read in my room or watch movies or shop online.  I rarely buy anything in these shopping adventures.  It is window shopping.  I might fill a cart but I generally don't do anything till morning and nine times out of ten, the cart is emptied and I merrily go on my way.

I was searching rather seriously for replacement turtlenecks.  I had put a thumb through the fabric of my basic black and that means I can no longer avoid replacing it.  It isn't that I haven't looked, but it is rare to find turtlenecks at stores catering to women of size.  It is also rare to find nether garments or tights that are not pants, but are rather more a footless long stocking.  There never is a category containing winter underwear.  Apparently to the garment world, we do not get cold.

After several years of watching my stores, I had kind of settled on buying a mans turtleneck and sewing it down to fit.  I went to Marks, a work wear chain that ought to carry a good selection of what I wanted and I looked at various things.  

While I was there, I decided to see what they had for women's wear.  And they did have the right kind of thing but since they really only do average fits, I didn't think I would be buying.  It was worth the look though just in case.  And there you have it.  They do have a size that will do well enough.  They would be one size down but in a stretchy garment that can work.  I thought I would chance it.  The worst thing that could happen was that it would get sent back.

When I placed the order, there seemed to be some hijinks going on.  Each shirt was 25 dollars but my total including tax was fifty for 4 shirts delivered to the local store for pickup.  I checked again.  Nope.  There was a sale going on plus there was 30% on top of that sale.  I saved more than I spent but for the taxes.

I placed the order and then I went to sleep.  The landlord went to town today and picked them up and they are going to do just fine.  New warm shirts and a really good deal besides.  I win!

When Things started around the house this morning, my first wish was to knit the few rounds that were left on the sweater body.  It should have been quick and easy, right?  

Not.  I had a little lace problem.  The first repeat had a dropped yarn over.  Shouldn't be a difficult repair.  That's what I thought too.  I did it and then...

The next repeat had a dropped yarn over.  Or so it looked.  I tried dropping back and repairing it but it didn't work.  I did it again and it still was one stitch out.  I did it a third time and then tossed it in the corner.  Not literally, but I did put it down.  And had a coffee.  And made pancakes for breakfast.  And made lunch. 

In the end I dropped a third repeat and included those stitches in the repair and magically, the whole thing resolved itself.  And then I cast the whole darn thing off off.  

It was the happiest I have ever been to finish a sweater body.  I seriously thought about knitting a nice garter stitch edge around the sleeves and calling it a vest.  I have a skein of each colour of the three colors though and no way are they going back in the stash.  Since throwing yarn out is not an option, I must keep knitting.  

So slee

Thursday morning, the 6th day of this sweater event brings me to this.

I think I can get one more full repeat from this final bit of yarn, but only a partial repeat of a second.  So this is where I have to go back to the pattern and see how Ysolda wrote the bottom bind off. 

I had hoped to be showing you sleeves today but it took forever to get the shopping done yesterday.  I put my winter tires on the car, but then, in order to have room for groceries, I had to drive home and dump the summer tires into storage, and the go back to Vegreville to get groceries.  Plus shopping with kids took longer.  It just did.  

So knitting was the last thing I had time for.  Today, I am going to hold out for getting the bottom done and if I am lucky, starting one of the sleeves.  

I have left myself one ball of each of my 3 shades for sleeves, and I think, I will split the balls before I start to knit.  I am certain I have enough, but I want to be sure.  Till I start it remains in the realm of 'I think'.  There isn't  any security in 'I think'.  It feels like there is going to be better security in being forced to switch when I have to because the yarn is used up.  

I doubt that this will make it in 7 days.  Having the kids here changed that vague idea.  But 10 days on an F1 weekend?  Totally do-able.

Reasonably well done.

It wasn't hard and using that roll method to put the stuffing in place in the "bag" wasn't difficult at all.  It is such a sensible process to get something into a large fabric bag.  Laying things together is the only step where you need to take care.  If you can get everything laying just right, square cornered, it is going to work out.  Last time, I mentioned tacking the batts to the blanket at the top corners, but this time I didn't.  It just wasn't needed.

There is a lot of work to be done on it though.  One side needs sewing closed and another needs redoing to fit the bats a bit better.  I will do that by hand after some of the knotting is done.  I have to get the batts firmly in place before the whole thing is handled too much.

I cannot do that till next week though.  There just is not enough room with the kids  and toys and stuff.   To say nothing of the pile of my stuff which was already threatening to eat the love seat and chair.

I will work on that quick sweater just to get that one out of the way, and then will address my green coat.  Funny how my poor green coat gets shunted aside so easily when I really do need it.

Need versus want.  Ever the epic battle.

That magical sweater in a week thing

Do you recall how I wound all that yarn?  Well Friday morning this happened.  I swear by all that I am that it was only going to be a swatch.

By Friday evening, it was here,

and that was it for the day.  My hands gave out though my heart really really wanted to keep knitting.  Saturday took it to here.

I couldn't stop.  If you have not recognized the design, it is Ysolda Teague's  Liesl .  I have knit this twice previously and just like those times, this is a great knit.  It hooks you with it's interesting chart as you increase down from the cast on neck line, in the lace pattern.  It's 3 plain rows and one pattern row make each section feel as if there is almost no work at all involved and before you know it, you have a sweater.  Seriously, this is a hard thing to put down.

I am making  a couple small changes to the pattern.  I did add two extra stitches to the high neck cast on.  I am knitting all rows stockinette because of the weight of this yarn.  It looked overly bulky with the garter stitch row.  I also added extra stitches at the underarm to make an extra pattern repeat as the sweater grew longer to accommodate my hips.  I added four stitches and then just knit them plain until it was time to increase.  But the time I needed them, I realized that I would only need one pattern repeat extra on each side, so I adapted where I started the lace chart to work.   

By Saturday evening, I had knit a healthy third of a sweater.  It survived two try ons and if I can just say, it will do.  It isn't perfection.  If I was doing it over in this yarn, I would take off two stitches at the cast on, but those extra two stitches and the relaxed fit they give, mean this sweater will be seriously great at wearing over loose shirts.  That is probably a good thing because this lace design needs to be worn with something underneath and my vast wardrobe (not) contains only a few white shirts, none of which look right or feel right under most of my other sweaters.

I knit only desultorily Sunday, not really doing much knitting at all until Sunday evening.  Obviously, this is going to be one of those sweaters that is done in almost no time flat.  It's a chunky yarn so of course it will go fast but there is so much more.  There is a really lovely feel to this yarn.  It is the angora, I suspect.  It is only 15 % angora, but it completely changes the way the yarn feels running through my hands.  And yes.  Yarn love.  Big time.

By Monday evening, I had the two balls of light blue used up and it was time to face my colour problem.  In the end, that was easy. 

I knit two rows with the more teal coloured of the two dark blues.  It wasn't right.  The difference between the two yarns was so glaringly obvious and it had much more to do with the angora than the slight weight difference.  Had it had angora in it, the soft haze would have camouflaged the difference somewhat. Once I was knitting with the more teal looking Llama Silk, it just looked wrong.  There was no soft haze and that stood out like a sore thumb.  So, a not quite perfect but pretty darn good blue it is.

I knit a few rows this morning so you could see where I am at and so I would have the lace and button hole rows done.  Later in the day, when my thinking cap isn't so fresh, I can start knitting a few plain rows without any complicated rows. 

Not that they are complicated.  The feather and fan is a lovely simple lace to knit even in this chunky yarn.

I won't have quite so much knitting time the rest of this week but it is in a good place to knit while chasing little people (not that they are so little anymore).  Cassie and Marcus have a fall break and mommie and daddy asked if the kids could come here to give the babysitter a week of respite.  Since keeping the babysitter happy is directly in my best interest, a sleepover at grandma's is in order. 

I need to get my other grandchildren here for a sleepover too.  They are an hour and a bit away, but it is winter and it gets dark so darn early these days.  Driving in the dark is pretty much over for me, unless the road is really quiet.  But soon.  Grandkid sleepovers are really the best.  I have to work on their mom and dad.

The Coffee Blanket

I had a problem the other day when I was trying to stuff the new comforter.  It was just not working at all. Everything was sticking to the fabric but not staying in place till I could baste the batt in place.  I ruined a couple batts trying.

I finally gave up and had some Bailey's in my coffee.  I actually took a break and did something else amazing but I will tell you that tomorrow.  

When I made the comforter last time, I didn't remember having so much trouble.  Last time, I was putting the batts into a pre made duvet cover.  If anything, it should have been much more difficult that time.  But I remembered nothing traumatic, other than the knotting taking forever and being hard on my hands.  

There are dozens of blogs out there where detailed information about doing something can be found, but my own? Not so much.  My blog is generally full of enthusiasm and chattiness but there are darn few details about anything.  I can go back for information but all I normally find is how much I loved a yarn!  

Still, it was worth the look.  Maybe, just maybe.  And this time, I found exactly what I was looking for in this post, on my Comforter  made just after I moved here.  

So, last night well after dark, at 6 p.m. (tis the season where I really struggle to find a reason to stay up till 8 p.m.)  I sat down and basted batts together.

I have to sew another seam on the top yet, to fully replicate the duvet part of this process but the quilt sandwich is going to happen. Today.  

I just have to lay it all out on the guest bed and roll.  I am kind of looking forward to this part.  And then there is the knotting.  

November 11

We shall remember them.

As a group, we and them can be large and anonymous.  Make it personal.  I will remember him.  I will remember her.  I will remember them.

Things of today

The blanket is ready to stuff.

That sounds silly when it is said like that, but it is the truth.  I am about to put the batts in place and am ready to start the basting and pinning and putting. 

The only problem is that it isn't one.  It is two.  I have the bottom ready for blanket two, but haven't quite decided about what the top will be.  I am debating between fabrics.  I don't want to purchase more, so all the picks will be from my large shelf of fabrics.  I don't want to chose the blacks even though black is the logical thing to use with the above fabrics.  The vast majority of my black fabric is for pants or skirts in weight and in fibre and quantity on hand.  My plan has always been to use fabric for stuff like this that I wouldn't use any longer for clothing. 

I have this piece of yellow.  It is huge and if I recall right, there are 5 metres of it. Once it was a planned suit.  You could do that in the 90s.    I could do the back of the second blanket in a single swath of yellow.  I would do it at the drop of a hat if it was for me, but if it was for me, I wouldn't be using the black!  I would use only the yellow. That would leave me with weird bits of other fabrics that I have no intention of using for anything else, and that is not the optimal result here.

I think that my biggest job today is going to be sitting in front of the fabric shelf, digging in the fabric stash and figuring out just what I will use.   It may not take long but you never know. 

I hope it doesn't because after all, I do have a blanket to stuff .  

A Colour Conundrum

I have a bit of a colour conundrum going on this morning.

I purchased some Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed Chunky a good long while ago intending to make some colourwork vests.  The urge to make that vest has long gone but the yarn remains. A few stash dives ago, I got the idea that they could be combined in different ways to do other things.  I had a cream and two blues that would work nicely in a sort of gradient sweater.

The lighter blue looks a little washed out here but it looks quite nice in real life. I like it, but...

It was when I was last organizing the stash and came across another yarn that was very similar in weight in a slightly different blue that I like even better, that the trouble began.

The yarn is Diamond Luxury Collection Llama Silk.  It has 123 meters in 100 grams rather than the 100 meters in the Debbie Bliss.  Not a perfect match but I think it could work as long as I was careful to keep my gauge.

It would mean that the darkest colour would be a little more of an open fabric but I am not all that concerned by that.  What concerns me more is that this mildly less beefy yarn with a healthy amount of Llama fibre in it, would cause it to hang very differently than the other, particularly because it would be a slightly more open fabric.

I am debating if I should worry at all just yet.  These are the darkest colour and would be knit last in my plan.

These skeins were all wound up this morning just to get them off the sofa and ready to do a swatch.  While I did that, I also wound up a sein of very pretty Urth Worsted for another pair of wrist warmers using Cat Bordhi's wonderful designs. 

Isn't  it pretty? 

The work continues on the blanket and some knitting on my green jacket is the order of the day.

The rain in spain

Going back to green

It got quite cold overnight.  It was a fierce reminder that what I really need to focus on is my coat.

It may not be the most exciting project in the world, but it is what I will be knitting on today but I have to say, I am really going to miss working on that pretty blue Willard.

At the same time, work can continue on the blanket.  Or blankets, should I say.  I pulled out the container yesterday and realized that I have enough batts for two blankets.  So, I guess I am making two blankets.  I just really would like this stuff gone, and I have a feeling that I will be able to get rid of a nice warm blankie faster than I was able to get rid of the batts. 

I asked several quilting groups and had no takers.  This mystifies me, because wool is a superior blanket making material.  I think that quilt making these days isn't about warmth in the same way it isn't about the actual quilting part of the process.  These days piecing is all and that is a very sad thing to have happened to such a noble craft.  Something is lost in losing the balance.

Ah well.  Knitting remains and that is more than enough. 

Stop selling things short.

I got up yesterday and knit.  I just knit the whole day.**see note below

It doesn't really look like a whole day of work, does it?   It is pretty significant though. 

I made a second change to the pattern right at the neck.  Rather than going with the raglan the pattern uses, I decided to go contiguous.  Not that anything is wrong with raglans, but I don't think they look as good on me as I wish they would.  It is such and easy way to knit a sweater.  Nice easy increases or decreases till it is long enough, and wide enough, but that nice easy to knit style isn't something I am as comfortable wearing as I am with a more fitted sleeve or a round yoke.  Contiguous is my personal answer to that.  Every row increases till the shoulder width is established and away you go. 

It may not look like a lot of knitting, but it is.  What you see here is about a third of the way down the sleeves, possibly a quarter but somewhere in that general length. Rational me knows that this was a big job,  but there is part of me that feels like I accomplished nothing.  I am going to smack that part hard, and make her look at it till she sees and accepts that it was a lot of work and she did a great job.  But I will also organize my day a bit different today.  There will be knitting, but I am going to make myself go and do a few other tasks first.

What with the winter arriving as it does, I stole the woolen blanket I purchased at MacCauslands from the guest bed and am using it on mine.  It is wonderful.  Why on earth did we ever think acrylic blankets and polyester comforters were better than wool?  They are more easily washable perhaps but they are not as nice in any other way as wool to sleep under.  Not even close.

Because I was a thief and because the guest room is usually a bit chilly at night, the guest room needs a warm blanket.  The cotton comforter it has, paired with a cotton blanket underneath isn't enough even with a selection of throws.  I have a significant number of wool batts and a huge stock of fabric so I mean to put them to use.  I am going to do as I did with my own comforter

and make a simple knotted quilt.  The last time I did this, it took four full days of work to do the tying, but it also took a couple days getting things set up and basted before that.  I was working with a duvet cover that time, where this time, I have to do a bit of sewing before I can even think of basting the layers together. 

There is a bit of a deadline on this project.  I have some company coming the last day of November-first day of December.  I do not want this project to be laying all over the floor in the living room, or tossed in pieces on the bed and pressed into service.  It needs to be complete. 

So the task for today is step one.  Dig out the giant bins that the batts are in and wash iron and sew the fabric I need for a nice big comforter.  I'm going to have to reorganize the closet the batts are in as well.  You can't take big things out without figuring out the best way to put the spinning fibre back in.  If it was just the washing and the sewing, it wouldn't be much at all, but the reorganizing takes time.

And then I can knit. 

**This is the part wherein I smack myself.  My first thought was that I did not do anything but knit. Ha. Not only did I get a good part of a sweater done, I made a real hot lunch for myself, did three loads of laundry, made my bed, went through my sock drawer looking for socks to repair, did the dishes, put the small garbages together, planned what to make for dinner, made dinner.  Plus I went through me tea box again to weed out yet another tea I should have read the fine print on before buying.  Darn licorice root.  It is everywhere.   This is already a decent day of work before I add in my knitting.  Why do I, why do most of us sell these small, time consuming, tasks so short?  They are the busy work of life, and someone has to do them. They are work and it is time to count them as such.
  

Pretty Blues

I'm lucky.  Really lucky.  I am posting from what may be my new computer.  The landlord was down in his office after answering my interminable list of questions about what my new computer should be, when he looked around and spied his duffel bag on the floor and he realized there was a laptop in it that he hasn't used since at least June.  He pulled it out and came charging upstairs with a deal for me!  I will try this one and if  I like it he will make me a deal. This laptop is larger than I wanted but it is probably the size I would have ended up with.  This relieves my mind some what.

I did knit on my very pretty Myrtle sweater on Saturday but on Sunday, I treated myself to a new adventure.   I pulled a really pretty yarn out of my stash.  It is a lovely blue yarn, but it isn't the one I thought I was going in for.  I started to dig in the stash for my Briggs and Little Regal in Quoddy Blue and came out with this lovely Royal Tweed from Lana Grossa

The goal is to make a Willard in this pretty soft tweedy blue.  That leaves the Quoddy Blue Regal for another sweater like that beguiling  Rusty Tuku (even if it isn't the same gauge, the idea beguiles me!).

I saw the Willard sweater a few weeks ago and with its long tall collar and my need to keep the chill off the back of my neck, it seems like the perfect knitting for a winter that is just setting in.  Willard was also a great pick for Sunday morning knitting because today was another F1 race, this time at COTA in Austin.

The first thing I did was start the pattern by making a change.  As usual.  There is no reason why I shouldn't be knitting this in the round right from the start.  Fitting the neckline is easy enough with short rows and by starting with the collar, the collar itself can be my substantial swatch.

I cast on first thing in the morning and knit till race coverage started at 10:30.  I just kept knitting.  And knitting.  I did measure and I even checked my gauge a couple times, and by the time Valtieri Bottas won the race, and by the time Lewis Hamilton won his sixth drivers championship,

I had the collar completed.  Well two rows from complete, which is good enough for me.  Knitting while watching something so compelling to watch can be a challenge.  It is easy to start knitting fast and so tightly that you almost cannot move the stitches on the needles.  My hands can reveal how I feel far too easily. Not that I had to rip back at all.  Not this time at least.

I did have to put it down though by the end of the race.  I had been knitting from early morning and with the added tenseness in them from watching really exciting racing, my hands were crying 'uncle.'

When I was digging for yarn, I didn't just dig out one kind of yarn.  I pulled out the whole container of yarn.  The container also held this delicious thing.

I have an idea for this very nice bulky yarn.  It might be a little risky.  I am not sure if the weight is going to look right in a lace pattern, but I think it is worth the time finding out.

The green coat will be knit on this week.  The Myrtle will be knit on this week.  But there is some fun and new yarn to play with too.  

Yup.  There are things you cannot escape from.  Some of them, like ripping back a sweater are small even if in the moment they feel huge. It isn't fun but if you do it,it is so much better.  

Some of them, like my computer going toes up, are like the sting of a wasp.  It hurts like heck but in a week or two, it will be resolved.  I am going to get a moderately priced laptop to replace the desktop.  The desktop was Brian's and became mine so when my little lappy's wifi died and could not be replaced, it became my primary,  but it was something to work around.  A new little laptop will be a much better fit.     

 And then there are some things where you just want to pull the blankets over your head and hide forever. But even this, even this, you crawl out and do because there really isn't any other way.  

People I care about are in that last bunch today. They are close and the three of them will lean on each other till it feels right to stand alone.  Me?  I will be like a windbreak, standing just on the edge, being there for when they need a little shade or a place to find shelter.