The Saturday Update: Week 46

What a good week I had this week. Okay, the Covid-19 numbers are rocketing up into the stratosphere while people on Facebook still vent about governmental overreach and their refusal to wear a mask (!), but the weather was nice and Hannah and I had a very productive couple of days reading in bed and knitting like banshees. (I bet you didn’t know that banshees knit. Of course they do, and they are very fast while never, ever, dropping a stitch!) I got to the grocery store late one evening and stocked up for a few weeks and cooked up some yummy meals that will last me through the next week. I also went crazy and bought a whole package of creampuffs. It’s my pandemic, and I will eat creampuffs if I want to!!

Knitting

Let’s get right to the knitting, shall we? I finished my Misurina!! Early in the week I took the stitches off the needles and onto a yarn holder to check for fit and things looked good!! Boy, did that get me fired up to knit like crazy! The pattern is for a cropped sweater and advised that you knit 5 inches below the armhole before binding off, but I was like, NOPE!, I will keep knitting until I run out of yarn because cropped isn’t the best look for little short-waisted me. To make sure I had a good feel for the yarn amount I finished the sleeves with my second cake of yarn and then blended the two yarns together as I transitioned from the first cake to the second in the body. I kept picking up speed during the week and finished binding off early this morning. Today I misted the sweater with water and hovered a steam iron over it to block it and the finished sweater is just what I wanted. Look!!

It’s a little tee type sweater that just rocks! Seriously, this is such a comfortable item to wear and I couldn’t be happier. The sweater is knit fairly loosely but is surprisingly warm and a nice layering item. Caitlin Hunter for the win again!! My Ravelry notes are here.

I seem to have spent the rest of the week agonizing over the colors and yarns to use in the next batch of knitting projects. Hannah and I went through the yarn stash over and over as I pulled out yarns and tried to dream up color combinations. I would make a decision only to change my mind the next day and back into the stash we would go. I want to make a Solvi sweater. I bought the pattern for Slipstravaganza but never cast on as I was buried in other knitting projects. Okay, I will be honest… Stephen West is really artistically adventurous and I was a little nervous about committing 5 whole skeins of yarn to a knitting extravaganza if I didn’t know what it was going to look like. I worried about where to put light and dark colors. I love my yarn and didn’t want to waste any… but as this week went on and people in the group began to publish their finished shawls I loved what I was seeing! Now that I know what the final project is I can make good choices about colors and knitting order. I need to make one of these!! I maybe need to make two of them! The pattern required 2 skeins of a main color and three more contrast colors, and after much stash diving Hannah and I came up with two combos of yarn and colors.

I think that the yarns on the left are going to be my first shawl, but I am really torn about the yarns on the right as they might be more useful in the winter. I have two skeins of that navy yarn so it will be the main color; that inky blue sort of screams winter, right? On the other hand, the cheery colors of the yarns on the left might be exactly what I need right now. There is a lot of yarn in these shawls so whichever I pick is going to be my main project for the month along with the sweater. So many decisions. So much yarn that I need to wind…

I am also waiting for The Secret Life of Cats (and dogz), the next knitting adventure designed by Sharon from Security, Casapinka’s snarky, sushi chomping, citation writing, but mostly supportive-to-knitters feline employee. This adventure will be coming in a few more weeks, but I wanted to get started on the yarn selection and came up with these happy and wild colors:

I posted the pictures of the yarn on Facebook to ask if they were too wild for The Secret Life and Sharon says they are A-okay. Yay. More yarn to wind!!

There is also a pattern for a Siamese cat wearing a little Fair Isle sweater that is going to be published by Claire Garland next week. I need that too. I think that some other members of my family are going to want one of them also… the cat doesn’t absolutely need to be a Siamese, as other cats probably also wear darling Fair Isle sweaters… So much knitting, so little time…

Books

Did you notice that I jumped right over the gardening? No gardening going on here lately. Most of my plants are still alive, but how interesting can pictures of jade plants and orchids be when there aren’t any blooms. Hey, do jade plants bloom? Why haven’t I seen any blooms? I may have to look into this…

I finished Conspiracy last week (Bruno solved the murder mystery, got his lost knife back, and even connected with that woman he was hoping to find in Paris) and started Execution right away. Hey, Bruno has abandoned Paris and King Henri and we are back in London again. Bruno is once again involved in high intrigue uncovering a plot that threatens the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and wouldn’t you know, there has been a murder. Of course. Bruno must insert himself into the conspiracy to execute Elizabeth to make way for Mary Stuart (and the supremacy of the Catholic church in England), derail the plot, solve the murder, keep his knife safely at his side, and maybe, maybe convince the woman of his dreams to marry him. It’s a lot. I’m reading my way steadily through this latest chapter in Bruno’s adventures. I think that this is the last book in the series for now so I’m going to have to divert to another genre again after this. I do have a nice science fiction waiting for me…

Well, that’s it.

Have a great week, everyone!!

Please stay safe.

Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.

And wear your mask!!