Time to get ready and get a move on it.

It was another good day of knitting.  

The right front is ready to go.  I got about an inch past the short rows on the left front too.  There would have been more but I had to have a stunning realization first.

I picked up my linen swatching first thing in the morning.

I changed to a 3.75 mm needle from the 4 mm I had started with.  I hoped that would give me a nicer fabric.  It did but I really wasn't enjoying it.  I thought I'd see if crocheting was the right thing.  It wasn't.  I feel bad but I think this is going back in the bin. It simply did not feel right and life is too short for work that is not fun.  Oh well.  

I am going to work on the Geddy Tee again today.  It's is just so much fun to knit.  Then I will get to work on Veera Valimaki's  Piennar sweater.  Swatch first.  I am about 100 meters short for the amount of the main yarn, but I have plenty of the cc colour.  I think I know what I am going to do if I end up short of the main.  

First off, I'm thinking I will make the solid sections a row or two shorter.  I'm also going to use only cuffs instead of making the very short sleevelets and if needed, I will use a section of the multi colour in the bottom ribbing as well as the sleeve ribbing.  With a tiny bit of luck, doing these things will help me finish the top as close to the original look as possible.  

There is still a bit of cleaning to do and if I am really quick about that I will get to finish my current pants over in the sewing room.  If I am not quick with the cleaning, sewing will happen tomorrow.  I realized on the weekend why it feels like I am short of pants.  I have two pairs made in a sweatshirt fabric.  They are a bit warm for summer wear and I have not been reaching for them very often.  So I have pants but not seasonally adapted pants.  Still, I need pants.  And I want skirts for the ultimate summer cool.  I also want something from my red and black flannel and my rose fine whale corduroy  and so many other fabrics I have at hand.  

I have stacks of things to do so it's time to get moving.  

A Full Weekend

Heat one week, very cool the next.  That is the story of the last few weeks.  Somewhere in there big heavy days long rain.  What was looking like a great cherry crop is done.  My poor tree lost all its blossoms.  Oh well.  It is what it is.  That is how it goes with a single, short flowering crop. Overall, the rain was lovely though.  As is the cooler air.

It was a very good knitting weekend.  My hands and my heart were on the same wavelength.  

The back and part of the right front are done on my Geddy Tee.

Work will happen on that today.

By Sunday morning, I needed to do something else.  It wasn't a "I'm sick of you" feeling.  It was to prevent that kind of feeling.  

This does it every time.  I thought about working on some socks but these brilliant colours called my name.  It should be noted that the orange and hot pink photographed to look exactly the same.  I tried to get some variation but nope.  This is what the camera saw even if the top square is part pink and the bottom one is orange.  

Last weekend was the Monaco Grand Prix.  The racing was great in every way, but it absolutely highlights how I am not the same as the average Joe.  They kept doing these long scenic shots of the bay and the mountains and the tiny principality of Monaco at the edge of the sea.  Every time they did, I felt nauseous.  Seriously nauseous.  They kept talking about how beautiful it was but that overly packed humanity, that feeling you could walk across the bay without touching water made me ill.  The city with an emptier bay would have been better, but that mass of human engineered stuff...

If I traveled I would go to far places, empty places, not cities but places where you could see and hear the earth breathe.  I would go where you could see far.  But that is me.  I just want to be.

And that is enough of that for the day.  Time to sew and knit and clean.  I like the first two.  The last, not so much.  Oh well.  At least the laundry is caught up.  

  

Up to Many Things

So much to do the last few days.  I did knit.  I need just 2 more inches on the back of the Geddy Tee till I can start the fronts.  

 It's moving along well though I am looking forward to getting to knitting in the round.  

I also spent some time sewing.  I don't get to do as much as I used to in a day.  It gets too hard to focus closely for long days of sewing.  Still, the two pairs of pants are almost done and there will be more sewing today. 

Because my miniature stuff is all over the sewing room, I pulled out a couple small projects that could easily be done instead of playing games on my phone.  

Many moons ago I found these pendant findings and I felt they would be perfect for old fashioned pictures for my mini house.  And they are.  The three smaller ones are people pictures.  Not my family, just generic, already scaled down photos.  I wanted a floral picture for the bigger one but found a perfectly sized bird instead.  I am really pleased with these and can't wait to get them in my mini house.

Then I played around with some other accoutrements.  

Newspapers and maps and under those, some tiny decorative plate pictures.  Those need work, but it's a start.  

And then what?  Each day I had a " and now what" period where I still had time on my hands.  I went to the yarn closet and pulled out some more yarns for summer tops.  

This is some linen laceweight that I wanted to knit a big beautiful linen lace shawl with a multi colored border lace.  I can't knit that very fine yarn anymore but I do love linen.  I doubled stranded it and did a gauge swatch a while ago, but it was still too fine for my hands.  I knew that somewhere in my stash I had a couple of tubes of cotton that I could use with the linen.  However, when I dug out the tubes, I found they were a cotton linen blend.  Even better.  

I started a swatch with two strands of cotton linen and two of the pure linen but that was too heavy.  I am now working with just one strand of the blend with two of the pure linen and find that is a much better weight.  Swatching will continue today.  

Later in the afternoon I found time to wind up another yarn I want to work with.  One skein fell off the swift three times before I gave up and wound by hand.  You can see which one misbehaved.

This is some long held stash of Louet Linen in a soft grey purple and a mess of balls of Mykonos, a multi colored lavender grey taupe blend of viscose and linen.  The colour is much more greyed tone here than in real life.  I know what I want from this yarn.  

I saw Veera Valimaki's Piennar top months ago and just fell in love.  I knew immediately which of my yarns I would use.  The grey lavender solid and the gentle Mykonos multi are just meant for this.  I might be a wee bit short of the solid, but we shall see.  I have a backup pattern in case I need a slightly different fit that might be more economical in yarn terms.  The spirit will still be the lovely Piennar.  

I think that was everything I got up to.  Who knows what today will hold.