I’ve been busy this week, and I have almost nothing to show off for it. I did a lot of cooking: more pumpkin bread, cheesy potatoes and ham casserole, shortbread cookies. The cheese grater attacked one of my fingers, though, so there wasn’t all that much knitting going on while I healed up. (Yes, I took a picture. No, you don’t get to see it!) I sewed more masks and gave some away. I got another quilt all sandwiched together to move onto the sewing machine to start quilting. The state where I live is starting to make a transition to opening some businesses very carefully, but the city where I live has suddenly become a Covid-19 hot spot and I’m not so sure that there will be any opening of restrictions for me next week. I am so very grateful that I am better prepared to spend time at home alone then most people are because… yarn stash!!
Knitting
I did manage to get more work done on my V-Neck Boxy Sweater; I’m now about 3″ below the join below the V-neck and am knitting in the round towards the lower hem. This is great binge watching knitting, but not so great to show off until I get much further down the sweater. I do have some nice progress to show off on my Sweet & Tartan socks.
Since I wasn’t knitting as much as usual while I nursing my injured finger I spent some time cleaning out the craft room. I located the directions for another couple of quilts. Casapinka published a new shawl pattern created to support local yarn shops called Breathe and Hope. Wow! I really like this little shawl. I dived into the yarn stash and started pulling out several combination of yarn possibilities. I actually have 4 combos in the project box, but this yarn is the top candidate:
I have another couple of yarns that are really calling to me too. This will be more subtle and faster to work. What do you think?
I organized the yarns and bought the pattern last night, but I’m not going to cast on until I have made more progress on the projects that I already have going. As soon as the socks are done and the sweater is a little further along it is going to happen!! Besides, Casapinka, who seems to be exhausted from developing this pattern and organizing the LYS event, issued two updates to the pattern today and if I give her another couple of days I’m sure that all the issues will be resolved. The last update swears that all is now fixed and that she was in Witness Protection with a bottle of gin…
Garden
This is the sad transition part of the gardening year for me. Plants that have been indoors all winter are being transitioned to life outside right now. I carry about 10 plants out for several hours each day and let them get some full sunshine. A couple of them are not happy and are dropping leaves and carrying on like babies. Seriously! They will toughen up, but right now they are looking kind of pathetic.
My outdoor flower beds are all pretty pathetic too. It is still too soon to clear out all of the winter mulch as there is sure to be another freeze or snow event; the lawn is starting to grow but it is still patchy. Ugh. Mostly I have developed a healthy flock of dandelions in all of my flower beds around all of the perennials that are just now starting to put up new shoots. I thought about weeding out one garden but there were a lot of bees swarming among the cheerful yellow dandelion blossoms, so I decided to do the right thing and let them have at it. I’m not lazy. Really, I’m not! Besides, I should give the perennials a little more time so I don’t accidently rip one of them out too.
Books
Yeah. I’ve got nothing. I’m still reading The Splendid and the Vile. We’re all the way up to 1941 and Churchill is still soldiering on through the bombings and scheming on ways to convince the US to enter the war. I am impressed by the drive, clarity of vision, and long range strategies that were employed by both leadership teams in the war, but especially by the British who had a strong culture of service to the nation. I’d feel a little better about things right now in the US if some of that was being projected by the leaders giving our nightly Covid-19 briefings.
Yarn, Books & Roses 
I hugely enjoy your posts. Do not THINK of abbreviating them, OK ?! 🙂
Your tartan socks really look great, I’m nearing the end of my current socks, so tartan socks will be next once I’ve dyed some yarn for them. Those two fade sets you have are soooo beautiful and would definitely have come home with me if I’d seen them on sale. So obviously that’s my preference for the new shawl, and I think the 2 fades would work very well.
First I love the socks! They are stunning:)
Second I hope you recover quickly from your cheese grater incident. I just ordered a plane cheese grater. I will be extra careful using it.
Do be careful… these graters have a mean streak in them! Partly it was my own fault because my fingers are a little pudgy from scleroderma scaring and I should only use the food processor for stuff like that, but I was in a hurry. My cheesy potatoes were yummy, however!!
I trust your finger is OK now. That is a book I don’t know
It looks like it is healing okay. Because of my scleroderma every finger injury is fraught with the risk of becoming an ulcer, but I’m keeping knitted finger guards on and it’s doing okay. The book is a new one that my book club selected; I’m glad they did. We may be holding our meeting on Zoom…
I love the two fades, and I think it would make for a stunning shawl. I hope your finger is better. I think I need to make a pair of sweet and tartan socks.
I love the fades so much I’m just chomping at the bit to cast on, but I already have 5 projects going. I’m going to really focus on finishing up a couple so I can get to it. The socks are so fun! I found two more yarns I can use to make more… as you can see, I have more yarn and ideas than knitting time. 🙂
love how you are busy and productive!!!
It’s all about the lists! They keep me going.
🙂 i make a daily list too……….I don’t always get to it but I do enjoy crossing things off my lists.
That’s the best part! I think that it is also about having goals, so if something doesn’t get done right away it becomes a goal for another day. 🙂
absolutely!
Hope your finger heals quickly. Your socks look beautiful. What kind of needles are you using if you don’t mind me asking?
The finger is getting better, I’m always disgusted that it takes so long. I’m almost done with the socks and they even look better when they are a matched pair!! I’m using size 1 (2.25 mm) ChiaoGoo needles with lace points, and to do the sock I’m using two 16″ cable needles. It makes it easier for me to do patterns like this since the top of the foot is on one needle and the bottom is on the other. Plus, I can keep trying on the sock to make sure I get the fit that I want.
I haven’t tried using two 16″ inch cable needles. I’ve read good things about ChiaGoo. Doesn’t sound like there would be a lot of slack. That’s interesting about keeping the top separate. I like how on dpn’s you can arrange your stitches and see where you are going to decrease.
I just love ChiaoGoo needles as they cables that don’t get twisted and the needles (lace) dig into the stitches really well. I used to only knit with double points before I switched to two small cables. I made the switch after knitting a pair of half-finger gloves and I got the fingers twisted. I read another blogger who explained how she put the stitches for the top of the hand onto one needle, and the ones for the bottom on the other and suddenly everything worked perfectly for me! I had the gusset for the thumb on the bottom needle and it was a lit easier to handle it too. There was a little learning curve when I made the switch, however, as I was really fast on those double points!
I tried two pairs of knitter’s pride. The first was I think a 40″ nova platina. The yarn wanted to snag at the joins, and I think the 40″ inch was a bit long for socks. I also bought a nine inch circular. It worked better, but I was pinching the needles so hard my fingers hurt after a while. Two 16″ sounds interesting . I like my dpns, but I’m wondering if a circular would be more comfortable.
I had experiences like yours. The little short circular needle hurt my hands to use. I am just awful at Magic Loop and don’t try to use it any more. I go crazy if the yarn gets caught in the joins too, but I have never had that problem with ChiaoGoo needles. The two 16″ needles work the best for me. I thin that I am a little slower with them, but I never drop stitches anymore like I sometimes did with the double points and they are really comfortable for me to use.
Sounds interesting!
Your socks are beautiful – love them! I think I need to knit a pair myself 🙂 I like the two mini-skein sets for your new shawl 🙂
They socks are really fun to knit. I thought that the pattern would be hard but I it is just one color at a time and I caught on pretty quickly to what was going on. It’s hard to ignore something that is so happy looking right now, huh!!
Yes, for sure!
I love the collection of yarns in the pink shades. As for that dandelion…when my boys were young, I told them the dandelion was one of my favorite flowers so they would pluck them instead of the ones from the beds. They would drape them all over me and through my hair. I looked like a garden nymph!
Those two fade sets are really nice together, and the shawl will go with my new sweater, too. You would look like a garden nymph for sure with my dandelions… I have quite a few and they are all in the flower gardens!
Ouch! I’ve injured myself before with a cheese grater so as soon as you said it I felt sympathetic pain. I hope you heal quickly. I’m sorry you’ve had to take a break from your beloved knitting, but look at how productive you’ve been in other ways. Good for you.
I hope you enjoy you week. Don’t worry about your plants…they’ll toughen up. I’m sending warm vibes your way from California. Alys
The plants are starting to look better already. I just noticed that the roses outside got a little fried in our last frost. Hopefully they will pull themselves together and put out new leaves.
My finger is much better and I got busy knitting again last night. Yay. The second one of the tartan socks is almost done.
You really have come around quickly. As for the roses, I think they can handle a freeze. You may see damage to the bloom, but more should follow. I’ve got my green thumbs crossed. 😉
I deep watered the roses in the yard today and I can see that lots of new growth was killed in the last frost, but the canes are green so I am hopeful that they will put out new shoots.
I hope so, too. Any updates?
There is new growth emerging on the front roses, so I think that I am okay. I’ll cover them if there is another frost. I’ll take a good look at the side roses later on today.
I’ve used frost cloth for years for tender succulents. It’s amazing effective. I guess what’s tricky for you is that you think Spring has arrived and then it turns on you.
Exactly! It is so nice and sunny right now, but we could get a snowstorm and a hard freeze next week. I’ve had good luck by putting tomato cages around the roses and then draping the cloth over everything.
Tomato cages over the roses is inspired! What a great idea. We’re so spoiled living in this California climate. Our night time lows are geneally around 50 this time of year with highs ranging from 67 to 80…which is too hot for me. That’s another story. I hope Spring arrives for good shortly.
I used to live in San Diego before coming to Colorado. Adjusting to the climate here was a huge transition. Here people wear shorts when it’s 45 or 50 degrees because that seems warm after the crisp cold days of winter. All the plants that I used to know in San Diego can’t survive here, poor things.
PS…just in time for summer, actually.
🙂