Ongoing sagas
I spent all day yesterday on my feet – as opposed to, in bed with the seed catalogues. And lived to tell the tale. But still not entirely well.
Mr. Muscle has not solved the bathtub problem – the washing machine did back up into it. As hoped, however, I wound up with one more load of clean wash. We bought another bottle of something similar to Mr. M. at Poundland (a favourite haunt of my husband’s), baled the bath out this time, and poured it down. Results as yet unknown.
I reached the gusset of the Round-the-Bend sleeve – and have hit the buffers, mentally.
The pattern is essentially eight large mitred squares, four front and four back, with a garter stitch passage in the middle to add length. And sleeves. I realised yesterday that I’ve got enough (I think) of an Araucania Multi in greens and browns to knit the whole body. We’d have a picture of the yarn, if I weren’t short of time this morning.
In that case, it would be best to have the sleeves uniformly dark. Do I have enough darks for that?
Having got that far, I have sort of fallen apart. Perhaps I will have to cast on Joe’s socks tonight, to provide some thinking space. Forget the whole thing and make another ASJ? I’ve even trawled back through my January 1 Project Lists for earlier years, to see if I could find any unknit ideas that grab me now. Could the February Lady Sweater be translated into lighter yarns (it’s meant for worsted)?
I am in the grip of despair, knitting-wise.
And a new one
The President has nominated my niece-in-law Jenni as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of the Treasury. That’s Theo’s wife, ever since the wedding I went to last July. Now she’ll have to have a hearing.
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Jean - I really recommend the Eleanor cowl, from Knitty. It is a small piece of heavy lace, with a very clear chart. I am on my third one now. It would knit well in sock yarn - just add an extra pattern repeat. There is something about the rhythm of the YOs and decreases which is deeply satisfying. I have gifted two and understand that they are in use already.
ReplyDeleteOh don't despair - make something easy to soothe the brain while your creative juices percolate. (That is rather a disgusting sort of mixed metaphor, sorry.)
ReplyDeleteI hope a little sock knitting will show you the way with Round the Bend. No need to despair - inspiration will come - it always does!
ReplyDeleteWere you going to knit the stripe shown on so many Rav projects in the dark yarn you used for the cuffs? If so, it seems to me that the sleeves could very well remain in the current yarn.
Regarding your bathtub, this seems to happen to us distressingly regularly - I think it is our hard water here. Usually, DH futzes around with it until the situation is much, much worse, usually on Saturday night at 10 PM. I end up calling The Man to come for emergency middle-of-the-night-on-Saturday service at twice the cost of just calling them Friday morning when the problem started.
Beverly
I would call and just ask the plumber to snake the tub. That is usually all it needs and its a relatively easy, inexpensive process (the house I lived in in Oberlin had old plumbing and I had to have the front sink snaked a few times.)
ReplyDeleteWhenever I need something easy to knit I usually make a pair of plain mittens and send them on to a friend who lives up north. Mittens soothe the savage knitter's soul...
One of the many reasons I so enjoy your blog is that I can be sure to see words like "baled" used and spelled correctly.
ReplyDeleteAlso, "I" and "me" are always used appropriately.
Ahh, all that and knitting too. Heaven!
I sympathise with the plumbing problems. Australia needs a plumber right now. We have water backed up across quite a bit of the country.
ReplyDeleteDid any of your house guests have long hair and wash it in the shower? I ask because that may be the immediate cause of the problem.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I lived in a house that had been poorly plumbed, so that there were unseen interior projections from the stuff used to seal the drainpipes together. (That was the root cause of the problem.) I have long hair. The hair that inevitably comes out in the shampoo would catch on the projections and eventually clog the drain. The first sign of it was a slow tub, then a blocked toilet. The direct cure was not to snake the toilet but to open the tub drain and remove the hair clog (nasty job involving a long wire hook). Prevention involved a plastic strainer thing that sat over the tub drain to catch the hair, and occasional use of 6-inch tweezers to pull out clogs that got past it before they went further. Eventually I had a plumber redo the pipes properly.
A friend's house in Kansas had the same problem.
As to suggestions for knitting - sorry about your being in a trough - I got bored when I reached the halfway point on the body of the sweater I am knitting for my husband (a foolish thing to do=knitting for one's husband). Anyhow I have put it aside for a while and am doing what I think you would refer to Jean as a dog's dinner bit of knitting. I think it will be a scarf - I'm just using a strand of that patterning sock yarn and then another strand of something else. I guess I just like changing colours in an easy way. Of course, I also like using yarn from the stash.
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