That Time

Time to haul out the woollies from the coat closet and sort out which ones need washing and repair. Yes, I should have done this in early summer, and bagged them away from moths, but somehow I didn't and here we are.

No moth damage, thank goodness, only a little wear on the elbows of my aqua Willingdon (my camera, as usual, is making this look grey). I did a quick and not very careful darning job (see below). It's on the underside of my arm and no one will notice that it's a little sloppy.

 

 

The leaves are sticking around strangely late this year.

Must get out and do some raking. If only the glow-in-the-dark ginko in the backyard would drop its leaves.

 Hmm, just as I wrote that, a huge wind blew up, so it looks as though I'm about to get my wish.

Almost There

Considering the paltry amount of time I'm spending on this new Wheatsheaves cardigan, it's amazing that I've got this far.

In truth, if I gave this thing the attention it deserves, I could be done this evening. But, life intervenes. Meals need cooking, family members need drives to the train station, and leaves need raking (sort of, because most of them STILL haven't fallen -- climate change?)

I'm also putting some effort into making a few more of these.

The pattern for my favourite 3-layer mask with a filter pocket is here. You can now buy flexible metal clips, meltblown polypropylene filters, and comfortable mask elastic through many online sewing companies. Much easier than 18 months ago when we were all improvising these bits and pieces. I machine wash my masks and handwash the filters in lukewarm dish soap and water. 

Had the kids over for mid-day dinner on the weekend. Beautiful sunny late fall day, perfect for lingering over tea at the end of the meal.

Turns out the the paint colour on our dining room walls, Farrow and Ball's "Setting Plaster", has suddenly become popular with the interior design crowd this season. For once we were ahead of the curve!

Wheatsheaves: Sleeve #1 Done!

I made a concerted effort to get the first sleeve done today. Here is the sweater resting in the late afternoon November sunshine. I love the way the angle of the sun at this time of the year floods our normally dark living room (because of the porch) with sun for a glorious hour late in the day.

You can see the garter ridges I added at the top of the sleeve. Very pleased with the effect, although I might not recommend it for someone with chunky upper arms as it tends to draw attention to that area. A few rounds from the end it became apparent that my ball of wool wasn't going to be sufficient to make it all the way to the bind off, so I decided to do a splice on a plain knitting round just before the last lace round.

Problem solved, except that just now I've discovered that my splicing tutorial needs to get added to the links in the sidebar of the blog.

In my last post I showed how to close the cardigan front using locking stitch markers. Sometimes those can cause a stitch or two to pull out a bit. Here's an even better solution for keeping a floppy cardigan together while knitting the sleeves. Simply thread a smaller size needle up through the fronts.

Works like a charm.

At It Again

I couldn't live with the cheap plastic, taped- together shutters on our kitchen windows anymore. It made no sense that the previous owners installed them there since they were forever in the way of the counter top underneath. So, off they came, courtesy of a Robertson screwdriver, and today I'm using wood filler and sandpaper preparatory to painting and installing curtains. I already have ones from a previous house and so the cost of this "improvement" is low.

Not much knitting action today.