Six is Not Enough

No pictures today.  Most of yesterday was sewing and not the inspiring kind.  There is a bit more to do of that sort today, but then,..

I have a few other errands to do as well as go through some material for some classes I am taking and then, before i know it, it will be time for The practise sessions at the Grand Prix in Mexico.  The day will be full and busy and interesting.  

And there will be knitting.  i have a blanket to work on that I have been forgetting for far too long and it would be great to get that out of my way.  

Sock Monkey Cabin Blanket, you are calling my name.  Six is really not enough.

Any Day Now

After being energised by the ghost costume, I sat down and did a bunch of household sewing yesterday.  There is more to do.  there is always more, but still, it filled a need and I am happy to have that done.  There is a bit more on that pile for today, but after that, sewing will get interesting again for me, if not for you.

When the sewing was completed, I wanted something simple but interesting to knit.  The lovely striped sweaters were not it.  I wanted socks.  I really could use them too.  This is always the time of year when socks die and the sock drawer assumes I have some new socks waiting in the wings.  Usually I do, but not right now.  Right now, I have nine different sock events on the go, but only one has a single sock complete.  

I dug through the depths of the sock project bags, but couldn't find the one I was thinking to work on.  I settled for this one, which was ready for a heel.

Unfortunately for this sock, I was looking for a second end from the sock ball so I could double strand the heel and before you know it, half the ball was out on the floor.

I thought I was working with the inner end, but no, contrary to common practise, the ball had both inner and outer ends coming from the center, all mashed up together.  The ball had obviously been looked at somewhere along the way to me, and it took half the day to sort it out.  I ended up cutting the  sock off the ball with a good long tail, and rewinding a good socks worth.  Then with two ends coming from places I understood, I started the heel.  

It will be fine, better than.  I just need to get some socks done.  Winter will be here any day now.

In Defense of Old Books

I know what to knit next, and yes, it is the things for Carter and Marcus.  But I have to wait for a budgetary opening to be able to get the material required.  sigh.  Life happens and sometimes the knitting does indeed have to wait.

In the meantime, it isn't like there isn't plenty to knit.

I pulled out this pretty thing and worked on that most of the afternoon.  It is now over nine inches long so I am just over halfway on the body.  This is thrilling because with the very lacey mohair, its a slower knit than most.  Still, it is a gift and I can't wait to see Luda wear it.  Christmas maybe?

I am also thinking hard about the next thing I really want to work on, and surprisingly, it may very well be one that is already in the stream of WIPS.  

It is the Scandinavian Star Vest from Chryl Oberle's Folk Vests.  This was one of the first books I bought when I started knitting.  It was a bit 'old' even then, but it is filled with timeless things.  My fingers are looking forward!

Do take a look  at these older project books.  There are some really wonderful pieces in them and I hate the thought of them going missing for a generation till the knitter's of the future find them on some dusty shelf in an abandoned library.  Find them now.  Enjoy them now.  Get the word out.  

Today's idea

One of the very few things I can do for mom and dad , living far away as I do is to try to keep up their spirits with the weirdness and silliness of the world.  So every time I think of something they might enjoy, I am off, writing a letter to my dad.  I have been doing this for a while now, so if the blog is spare and odd, that is why.  They are getting the best stuff (if I have best stuff that is).

But writing letters takes time.  I am surprised at how much time.  When you watch characters in Jane Austen write to their loved ones, it seems there is always stuff to write and it is done on an elegant afternoon, in front of a sunny window with a good view and ones hair curling effortlessly over ones shoulder, dressed to the nines in a simple but stylish garment.  If you read any decent biographies of people of the day, you will find letters often took days and it was something that was done quite carefully.  Austen has several samples of such things in her books as well as in her letters as collected.

I tend to write once a week, though sometimes, subject matter fails me.  Keith is a not too bad source of things, but the kids, the kids are a treasure trove of good stuff to write about.

There is always some one doing something goofy or weird.  Or worse!  But finding the subject matter is something I try to do with great care.  

This next week and a bit is going to be a treasure with Halloween coming up so soon.  And fast as ever things follow along, Christmas.  So much to tell before those days.

Sadly, this does leave the blog with not a lot to write about.  Take today, for instance.  Zip.  Nada.  I haven't knit in three days nor done anything else remotely craftlike.  What I have done is cut some fabric for an around the house project and sewn the sides of some old white curtains for a ghost costume.  

What I can tell you today is that this tiny venture into the sewing room is making me hunger to do some more work in there.  As ever pants!  T-shirts!  Sleepwear! More dresses!!! I still have a long list on my list of things I could really use to dress properly.  

Still I will save that for tomorrow.  If I wrote about that today, I would have little to say then and I wouldn't have gotten anything done today but writing.  

Not that that is a bad idea.  It just isn't today's idea.

Better but is it Done?

And done.

It's such a small difference and yet, it is so much better.  

Now the question is Do I make it longer?  It is cropped, and looks good but it still needs to be a sweater and keep me warm..I'm not a hundred percent sure if it does that.  

I will wear it today and then I will decide.

Cutting!!!!

Yesterday's chores involved taking a scissors to the knitting and cutting.  Harsh, but necessary to make this a really wearable sweater for me.  

It's my version of Threipmuir and no matter how much I loved it, I wasn't wearing it and you can see on this photo why.  It bunched up at my neck and no amount of blocking kept it out,.  It is probably knit a little to tightly at the start leaving me feeling choked.  It is a bit short, I think too, though honestly, I am not sure I wore it long enough to really know for sure.  Still more length wouldn't hurt and I do have the yarn.

The firs brave snips took a whole section right off.  

After that it was a matter of getting one leg of each good stitch on the needle and pulling off the excess partial rows above.  

The yarn here is Briggs and Little Sport, on of the best stickiest yarns on the planet.  It wasn't going anywhere...not even when I wanted it to.  There were bits and pieces of the cut row to pull out and two rows of knitting to get me right where I wanted to be to start knitting a new neck ribbing.  It took all afternoon.

In the end, the job is done and I am kind of looking forward to making this one be even better than the first go round.

My next up trick is going to be getting the ghost costume started.  Yup.  A ghost factory is what we are.

Winter green.

There is nothing like wearing a sweater you have just finished, particularly when it is a warm an cozy garment.  It's perfect from the deep but not wide v neckline, to the flash of rust at the hand pocket, to the rolled hem wihch is the perfect longer in the back than on the front.  Sigh.  Perfect and it is mine.

You still can't really tell the rich deep green from this picture.  It's just not a colour that works well in photography indoors.  Now outdoors is a whole other thing.  

Normally, this is where I would be pounding off to start Marcus sweater , but it seems I got that wrong.  He wanted a red mitt and a blue mitt and a yellow sweater.  Which means I am going to have to ask Carter what he wanted, because he was talking about some weird stuff earlier that same day.  I shall consult with the boys and then I guess go shopping for yarn.  I do not have any yarn in yellow for boys sweaters.  

A whole week of blogging too!

No pictures today.  The sleeve still awaits.  I had several things I had to do yesterday. You can only put some things off so long.  Those things are done, but it didn't lead to more knitting.  I have been sitting up routinely this summer till at least 9 before heading off to my room, but now, as fall comes in, I feel the urge to crawl into bed once it is dark.  So seven p.m. was my crawling into bed time last night.  And I did sleep.  Long and peacefully.

So today I face the sleeve and once that is done, the v neckline finish and then, the sweater is done.  I am looking forward to it.  I needed another good workday sweeater.  My good things like my Hun were starting to be used that way, and i Love that too much to waste it on dishes and chores.  There might be another workday sweater for me before Christmas too.  You never know.

But first Marcus' sweater.  I am really looking forward to getting going on that.  I love that he loves his sweaters.

The green and the next thing.

Sleeve two is a go.  I got a decent way along it, though not as far as I dreamed I might.  My dream was unrealistic, if I am honest, particularly with the state of me and napping these days.  Napping has become my superpower and one of these days, I do indeed hope to resolve it so I can get more of the things I dream of done.

But as you can see, sleeve two is well underway.  I am just about to switch over to dpns and that is when knitting goes really fast.  

I usually keep the sleeve on my short circular tips till I get to the point where I don't have to turn the entire sweater to work around.  Once the sleeve is long enough to turn back and forth to work on and I don't have to worry about all the points and possible stitches slipping off,  I move to the dpns.  I don't know if I knit faster on them, but it seems to be faster and I really do enjoy it more.  

And that is what it is about, isn't it?  

Now for the next big thing, Marcus has asked me for a red sweater.  I want to give him a red sweater but I really don't want to have to buy more yarn.  But it needs to be superwash.  Really superwash.  I have a couple of lovely reds but not superwash.  I have one possibility but it is a four ply, in other words, fingering weight.  It's all cotton and would wash up like a jeans yarn and should be a great choice but fingering?  I may have to see what it looks like doubled.    

I will also need to make it a growing sweater and it is going to need some size.  My little boysand girls are all growing fast.  And so it goes.

Little mysteries.

By the end of the afternoon, I was deep into the swing of knitting.  I really felt like I could do more than a round at a time again, and that I could make visible progress and just sit back and go along for knitting's lovely madcap ride.

I finished sleeve one and sleeve two will be a go today.  I have nothing much else to do for a change and though I could join my online community today to knit I am just going to sit and watch a some old movies and maybe a Poirot or two for my general mental health and knit.  

Yes, once again, the Poirot thing is working.  It's a mystery to me.  Bahahahaha

I am not sure about the bottom edging with the rust on my sweater.   As you can see in the picture I completed the sleeve with ribbing.  I have a feeling I will redo it and change it out to ribbing too.  It has to do with the neckline.  

I wanted a nice deep neck and the v is nothing if not impressive.  But I have a really strong feeling that I am going to like the neck finish to be ribbing in plain green.  It's just a more classic workmanlike finish, simpler, plainer.  And this is a sweater I will wear through all the days tasks even if it has the very cool inside pocket colour detail (A little flash is a wonderful thing).You don't have to be plain to work.  

Anyway, the sweater will soon be done and then there is something special in the wind.

Yes. I still write this blog.  In my head I write it every day.  It's only when I wake in the morning, that I realize I had written nothing.  

It's a bit like that with knitting. 

It comes out and onto a pile and sits like this most of the day.  Occasionally, as I walk by, I knit a row or two.  I have advanced by a few decreasees but it doesn't look like much.  

And yet it should.  It's five inches long, my little sleeve, and when the total desired length before the bottom hemmy bit is ten inches, that's pretty good.  I need to look at this as much as a measure of my success as much as I look at the total length of my sleeve. 

Small knitting and invisible change.  This can be success as much as anything else. 

This is the sum total of my knitting this week.  

I had so hoped to be done.

My mom and dad are doing fine. A few med changes additions and subtraction, and starting to feel a bit more comfortable with the new way of eating and they are doing better.  Personally,  there was a doctoring  day, and a few struggles thereby, and then company for a couple nights while getting some things for mom ABC dad to make life easier, and today some housekeeping so I am ready for Thanksgiving company.

I miss knitting.

I miss it a lot.

Jane and Hercule

I thought I was past it.  I really did, but time and emotions and the way the world works can mess up the best of plans and the best of intentions.

It has been many months now since I had my man, Hercule Poirot in my bedroom all tidy in his boxed set.  For a long time, a movie or show on TV was rare.  I was reading a lot and when that was not enough, listening to my audio books.  I slept better than I had in years and lately, with the change in my medications, even better.  A full nights sleep?  It happened. I know.  What was up with that.  But since mid summer, everything was changing.  I was kind of glad when my little boys went back to school so I wouldn't have to pretend I was brave and could sleep without TV and sleep without a light on in my room.

In the past month, it has gotten so much worse.  I use the timer on the TV.  I know I sleep better without the extra light on, but each and every time it clicks off and the room gets dark, I wake and it has to go back on.  I thought it was just the sound of voices and did try books, but the same with audio books.  As soon as the screen went dark, I woke.  

I am exhausted during the day and  struggle to find the will to knit, even though it is what I most want to do.  But all i seem to be able to do is sleep.  It's light then and I don't need to worry about the dark apparently so it is a good sleep but I feel like an infant with their days and night all switched around.

I have written about it before, that when Brian got sick, I found comfort in the undemanding mysteries of Agatha Christie and how the series of Miss Marple and Mr. Poirot became very dear friends in an odd sort of way.  They helped me sleep.  They helped me not to think.  I am asking the same of them now.  I need to not think.  I need to pop on on and go to sleep comforted in the knowledge that they are there if I need them again.  I have a wee night light filched from the kids room to take care of the dark problem.  

I am going to need this for a while.  My struggles are connected to my mom and dad.  They have always been strong and generally healthy and other than the occasional big thing have not needed support or help from their kids.  But they are aging rapidly and my dad is getting very frail.  My dad, in particular has last the ability to swallow easily.  Everyone says he is so thin and frail and they all worry that his time with us is not long. \He is very anxious and I think he is feeling very alone and scared. I don't want him to feel that way but I worry too.  That is yet another piece of my framework that I may be losing soon and sweet heavens, as much as he fears going, I fear him leaving me to.  I am not ready for it.  

So I am bringing out the big guns to help restore a bit of something, be it the resolutions that Ms Christie always provides, or some other mystery. Poirot carried me through it before.  Maybe he will again.

I will knit tomorrow.  I will start a sleeve on the green sweater.  I will get that one thing done.  And I will have Jane and Hercule for company.