Tuesday 5 November 2019

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.
  

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