Wednesday, 29 January 2025

Disasters and Other Things

I did things yesterday  and am generally pretty happy with what I got done and yet, it was the most miserable day I have had in a while.  

I sewed in the morning. The only thing left to do is to put the elastic on.  It is ready to go and I started to pin it on but there was something in the air that said wait.  I went and made some tea.  I have learned to listen to that voice when I sew.  Every time I don't listen to that voice, I end up regretting it.  New pants will be mine shortly but maybe not today.  The sewing room sits over Keith's downstairs office and today is a work from home day.   I try not to work on that side of the house when he is working.  

After I stopped sewing for the day, I picked up my knitting.  As much as I have been trying to stay monogamous to the Hacho sweater, I needed to knit on my grey sweater with the Mrs. Hunter's pattern.  

When last you saw it, it looked like this. 


I wasn't very happy with the fit.  It felt as if it was too wide.  The body is stockinette and I wondered about gauge.  The Mrs. Hunter's pattern part is resolutely coming in at 5 stitches per inch.  The stockinette gauge is 4 stitches per inch.  That's a problem and I knew I had to do something.  It was a hard decision but I pulled back to the underarm.  I changed my needle size and my sweater now looks like this.


The debate now is do I do the garter stitch to border the pattern areas.  I liked the way it looked at the divide between pattern and stockinette but where I had it beside the center front panel of lace, there was something wanting.  The garter stitch band overwhelmed the pattern section.  I was thinking about switching out the garter stitch for a reverse stockinette band.  I have been waffling and trying to decide but this morning as I write, I know what to do.  I am sticking with garter bands, but I am going to add a few purl stitches to my front patterning band.  I will add two purl stitches between the garter stitch and the pattern at each side.  The main body will stay stockinette.  I am not sure if the pattern stitches will be done on 5mm needles or on the 4 mms I am using for the stockinette.

And then the day got worse.  So much worse.  I decided to wind some of the new yarn I got for Christmas.  That shouldn't be bad and yet...

I pulled out a skein of the olive green grey brown glory that is Steam Trunk and started.  I don't know what I did but it was a weird wind.  The cake had a lot of bloopy bits so I thought it needed a rewind.  It was looking good but as I started winding, a floop pulled up and pulled out the center from the original ball.  Okay I thought.  If I go slowly, I will see where the tension is pulling from and I can free the mess.  When I picked up the cake to do so, the middle fell out to the floor, leaving about a quarter of the thing in my hands.  I had about half of the yarn on the winder, a good size blob on the winding station, a blob on the floor and a part of the mess in my hands.

I wanted to take photos but my tablet was on the other side of the mess and I couldn't reach it.  It took over 2 hours to wind it by hand to free itself from itself. And I still have no idea how the original cake got so messed up.   


It is sitting in a nice rather well mannered cake now, pretty as you please.  I am not sure how I feel about the cake. The yarn is great. I don't resent the yarn, just the cake and the caring process.  I have pretty deep feelings about that.

It was a day of feeling as if it was time to step away from things and doing other things that I should not have begun.  It had its ugly bits.  Oh well.  The good is balanced by the bad overall and at some point I will have new sweaters and comfortable clothes to wear.  

Today is baking day.  There are bananas to use up in banana bread and it feels like a good day for a chicken pot pie with home made buns.  I feel good about it and will be nice and cozy warm in the kitchen.  Socks are good kitchen knitting between all these things, so socks it will be.

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