Black

Sleeve two continues apace.  

I am actually at four complete sets of the squares but I wanted to show you what is happening to the yarns on the needles.   If you  look at the knit stitch sections you can see the darker yarn clearly.  On the purl sections, the darker yarns impact is split by a bit of the lighter colour. That wee bit of a spread between helps to blend making the overall effect mottled and muted.  I am really quite pleased.

I am not sure if I will work on the Utkiek sweater today.  I might opt for a lighter weight t shirt.  I really would like to have this for summer and if I don't start working on it, it will never be finished.   

The other big news here is sofa slip covers.

I bought a loveseat and chair after coming to Mundare.  My other furniture just did not fit the room.  I went with the lovely bright yellow and mustard checked covers that Ikea had at the time. That light fabric showed every bit of dirt and had to be washed often.  I would still have them but the fabric was wearing on the loveseat arms. The threads were breaking leaving a large damaged area.  At first I was going to do some embroidery to hide the damaged area and to stabilise the fabric, but the other arm was also disintegrating.  

I looked at covers from various manufacturers but the prices were beyond what I wanted to pay.  Most places would have cost as much as a new Ikea sofa for just the covers.  I looked at new sofas for a long time but that too, was more money than I wanted to invest in furniture.  I did find a few less pricey replacement cover makers but it still would have been about 700 dollars.  

I looked at sewing them myself. I could take the pattern from the current covers and sew them.  I priced out various fabrics including denim and realized that the price was in a range I would pay, but I would have to do all the work and I am not certain my machine could do it.  While I was thinking about this option, I decide to see what other generic covers were available.  

And voila.  I managed to find covers designed to fit my sofas in the same price range as if I made them myself, through Amazon.  I jumped on it.  The fabric is not the heaviest but is at least as good as Ikea's cotton.  It is a polyester and the seams look well sewn.  They are at least as well made as I could have done on my own with none of the endless work of flinging heavy covers about.  Not perfect but I can live with them.  

They are rather dramatic though.  I chose the very dark for posterity (Keith is going to be stuck with all my stuff eventually) and the dark will be much more effective at hiding stains and spills and spots from kids and grandmothers goofing around.  And coffee spills.  It makes sense though the colour is very dominating.  It is going to take some getting used to.  It looked more navy online but it is what it is and I am long past the phase where I need perfection. What it needs is a blue and white blanket draped artfully over the back.  

And I am working on that.  

Enough for today.  I am midway through a doc on Paleolithic life in China.  Time now to go off and watch the rest of it while doing my workouts and then I can get down to knitting and seeing what will happen on one or the other sweaters today.