Whew - what a summer I had! I was looking forward to some nice chats here at Hugs about the thrill of making it through a heatwave with broken air conditioning, when a broken hip happened to an older relative Pete and I are responsible for. Usually a broken hip is the start of a sad story but not this time: she got right back up walking, and we got her moved into a residence with much more attentive care. It's much closer to our place, as well, which means we can see her a lot and catch small things before they get bigger. So many wins! It was a ton of work though, hence the dusty silence and cobwebs in the corners around here. I hope your summer was full of so many good outdoor things you didn't even notice.
Now that almost everything is settled down I find myself in my absolute flat-out favourite season. The weather is cool at night for sleep and perfect during the day for long walks - the kind that lead to a well-earned stretch in an armchair beside a bag of neglected knitting. What's not to love? Especially once I finish the white alpaca bed socks pictured above. I started making these for myself last year to wear on Boxing Day (aka the one day of the year when I do nothing whatsoever) and clearly, I never finished.
I always knit a pair of socks for Jan for Christmas and she'll notice
if I don't, but Jan only wears purple. When I showed this
stripe to anybody who was passing the aforementioned armchair the
feedback was, 'It's not purple enough'.
So I'm finishing them a few rounds longer for me, to free up the needles and start a new pair for her out of this yarn from the 2016 (!) Knitterly Things yarn club:
This stripe isn't really 'more' purple, but the purple is brighter, which is something?
Given my current knitting speed and commitment to interrupting my seated time with bursts of upright time, it will be a challenge to finish them, but I'll do my best. I suspect there is an audiobook in my future which I will forever associate with walking around the house, needles in my hand and a sock in progress dangling from them, slowly getting dizzy from covering the same loop over and over.
While hunting through my project bags for the socks I thought I'd already started for Jan, I also found this sad crumpled hat in progress...
and this hat, which got farther because it's not on lace-tip needles (omigosh, the stabby factor with lace tips)...
... and remembered my ongoing struggle with hats, before I gave up and resorted to lifting the hood on my parka whenever I went out. I spent years designing hat patterns looking for perfect finished object for my face, and my hair colour, and my coat colour/s, and different weather conditions, and still haven't quite hit the mark. (Clearly I needed to buy more yarn, amiright?)
I'm sort of hopeful about these ones though. They're both versions of my Hatcowl pattern, an easy knit that feels super comfortable and seems to suit my head best. Maybe if I get a really engrossing audiobook, I'll manage to finish one of them before the weather is terrible.
In fact I am listening to a super engrossing Tana French novel at the moment, while sewing yet another round of 3-layer masks - this time with defogger flaps to keep condensation off my glasses. This is basically just a fold of fabric stitched into the top seam on either side of the nose bridge - any warm, exhaled air rises and gets trapped by the flap.
Simple, yet effective. But it drags out the sewing and is the reason behind my machine still hogging the dining room table after six weeks of effort. I only have four more hours of narration in the current novel which probably won't get me through the finish... thankfully, there are still a few Tana French books I haven't yet read or heard.
I expect any knitting progress I make will continue to be slow, despite our entering Perfect Knitting Season, because I am also writing every day and drawing or painting little doodles.
I love being able to do that. It's such a plus to have this odd work area I've snuck into our dining room - just big enough for plotting out a novel on index cards or setting up cutting boards to make a mess of paint on ink on top of, and the ideal setup for spontaneous Making with quick cleanup to follow.
I think I'll leave you with this image of my surprisingly healthy plants and creative tools, and wish you a wonderful few weeks till I pop in again! Take care of yourself and thanks for stopping by.
