Tuesday, April 25, 2017

At long last knitting... plus simplicity in tea and packing

It's true, this is a picture of a handknit!  On a knitting blog!


I almost forgot I write one, and not just because I hardly get to post more than once a week right now.

Again, this is the same fingerless mitt pattern I've been working on for - what, 18 months?  Yeesh.  Well, the house is nearly done and after I have packed us up and moved us there, I will have more time for writing Hugs.  Also, I will have a beautiful and bright space to take Huglike pictures in.


The yarn is what really makes this project, in my opinion.  The mitts are fun to knit - just repetitive enough to be mindless for TV watching, but with regular shifts to mark your progress, and a pretty speedy conclusion so you feel you've really accomplished something.  But when you do them with Viola yarn... well, that stuff looks so beautiful in plain stocking stitch, and there is plenty of that in this particular pair.

(I would like to apologize for again linking to Emily's yarn shop when it has no yarn in it.  Her stuff sells out so fast, what can I say?  and probably she is holding on to stock ahead of the annual Knitter's Frolic here in Toronto, which I am missing, because I will be packing to fly to Frankfurt, and yes I am apologizing for that too, to myself!  I can't BELIEVE I am missing the Frolic. AND the season premiere of my guilty obsession, The Good Witch.)


Knitting these mitts got me more excited about knitting than I've been since Christmas 2015.  That is a LONG time not to have knitting mojo don't you think?  But at this moment, if I could justify not typing, I would cast on a second pair in my 'Jasper' (aka brown) Viola sock yarn, since I have some caked.  It was that nice to work with the blue.


Speaking of which: the blue was a one-off.  Sometimes Emily experiments with colourways and doesn't like them enough to make them official. If it were up to me, this one would be a Forever stock item.


I only have a few days left before I have to wheel a suitcase out the door and you know what, I am not really ready.  In my dreams, I am a person who can travel with next to nothing and just pick up what I need en route and wash the rest in Soak in the hotel sink, and every time we do a big trip like this I try to get closer to making that a reality.  And I find this confusing, the heartfelt hopefulness that drives me - because who aspires to do laundry on a daily basis??

I had a friend years ago who aspired to that kind of mobility and trained himself to drink tea without milk so he could pack more easily for camping.  I thought he was taking things a bit far, but recently I stopped putting sugar in my tea in an attempt to cut back my overall consumption and the world did not end.  I mean, milk does have some natural sugars in it.  Then the other day I read that the many health benefits of tea are pretty much washed out when you add milk to it, because of some chemical reaction I didn't understand, and I thought, Right Then.  No Milk Either.  Pretty sure the world survived that shift as well and now here I am, drinking my tea without anything in it but tea and water.


You know those awful diets they put you on before you have a specialized medical test, or after surgery, which feature black tea or coffee?  Whenever older relatives had to comply with that I was horrified, but now here I am, able to drink black tea on a daily basis.  Life skillz!


But I digress.  Because I will not have time to stop and shop for things once I arrive, I decided on a travel wardrobe made up entirely of black and white clothing that features three cardigans - one is a thin linen blouse, one is a linen/cotton cardi, and one is a heavy Merino wool sweater - and three pairs of pants, several of one particular T shirt to wear under one of two smock things, and three sleeveless linen tops that I can wear as a base layer or even solo, on a warm day.  This feels like a LOT of clothes to me but then I glanced over at the pile they created and thought - really?  Because there was still space on the sofa to sit down beside it.

Then I did a test run packing my carry on bag.  My carry on for this trip is a RUME All bag - a small reuseable tote that folds into your purse, which I like because it has a zipper and two pouches at the ends for a water bottle.

Actually it's this exact bag, because I got obsessive about the black and white thing.


RUME bags weigh nothing and hold 50 pounds, and the ALL is not very big - it's about half the size you're allowed to carry on.  So you wouldn't expect to fit a lot in it.  I packed it with enough clothes to get me through three days without deprivation on the off chance my checked luggage is lost, and then I put in what I will need for the river cruise we are taking to kill time until our hotel lets us check in.  And then I thought - really?  Because there was still space in the bag for my Ziploc of liquids and my makeup AND my purselet, which I plan to wear cross body during the flight as it's just roomy enough for a book, my iPods and earbuds, my phone and its charger bank, and a few sweets.

So - I feel like I might be getting closer to the dream. What was left on the sofa after I packed all that will fill about a quarter of the suitcase I am sharing with Pete, even after I throw in the socks I cast on to knit on bus rides.  The secret may be "lightweight linen", but I prefer to take the credit for myself.


Where, you might wonder, will the fingerless mitts go?  Neatly inside in the pocket of my smock thing, to clutch or meditate over during takeoff and turbulence.  Them, and a tiny stuffed bunny, of course.  Can't fly without a bunny.


So: today's lesson is, you can make do with a lot less than you think you can.  Less stuff in your tea, less stuff in your suitcase, and - shockingly - less stripes in your knitting.  Amazing!



Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Yarn luxury, temporarily thwarted

There has been a lot of yarn stuff going on here at Hugs Central, but it hasn't all been knitting.  Watch this:


This yarn has a gorgeous, gorgeous colour - several colours, in fact, all muted, featuring everything I want to pack in fingerless glove form to go with my green raincoat, new blue jeans, and white handbag when we're on holiday and heading into the Alps or somewhere else that's chilly.  It's dyed by Emily at Viola, whose yarn I save for super special occasions.  And... oops!


Okay sometimes tangles like this happen, but it's not always a total disaster.  If you're really lucky, you can catch a big yarn snarl before it gets worse.

Not this time though! 

Thankfully Pete was on the other side of the yarn winding table watching TV and offered to try to fix it for me, so I went off to make us supper.  When I came back, he looked like he was caught in a yarn snarl blizzard.  He stuck with it all through the evening but that yarn did NOT want to cooperate!

After a couple of days, between the two of us, it got wrestled down to this:


And on the third night I couldn't sleep so I got up and worked at the remaining knots and tangles until it could be caked properly. 


Whew!  All ready to be knit, and not a moment too soon because we leave at the end of the month.

By contrast, the brown yarn I wanted to pack for travel knitting took 15 minutes to cake.


Isn't it beautiful?  There are SO many gorgeous coppery colours in here.  In fact I am struggling with that now because I don't think I want to waste this colour on feet.  Also, this yarn is just a bit finer than my beloved Vesper Sock, and I would have to cast on more stitches to make a comfy sock, which I don't feel like doing.  I think I should make more fingerless gloves with it instead, don't you?


I absolutely love the fingerless gloves pattern I'm using.  It's so simple to knit, just a hand and wrist warmer stripped to the essentials.  And I've been wearing my original pair so much lately, to keep the now-healed fingers on my left hand pliable as I got through the physiotherapy stage, so I am constantly reminded that they super comfortable and pretty to wear, too.

Which leaves me with more decisions because I have rather a lot of Vesper sock yarn already caked for sock-readiness and, since it would be in use only on the ground in places people don't mind knitters, I can just throw some in my bag.  But - which to bring?  I didn't take a picture of this because they are all in little baggies that don't photograph well but there are fourteen possible sets.  They literally spanned the back of our sofa as I set them out to consider what colour combinations I would most want to look at while on a bus on a highway. 

Finally I narrowed them down to three and showed them to my whole family for input and here is what they said - all of them, I mean, even though I asked them independently and they weren't influenced by each other:

First choice, the Vespers that look closest to the colour of the German flag

Second choice, a colourful stripe that is my second choice too

Not even on the leader board: the lovely stripe that is my first choice.  GAH! and this is why it's good to be independently minded.  I mean at least they confirmed my preference for that one colourway.  Still not 100% sure it's the one I'll take, but it's a start.

Or it will be once I get this yarn knit up!


Have you got yarn you can't wait to knit?


Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Tiny travel things

I guess if I traveled more, or was less particular about taking as little as humanly possible while still having access to every sort of thing I am likely to need while away, I would not find packing to be such a production.  Things being what they are, though, I've spent the past few days spending irresponsible amounts of money on things to make our fast-approaching trip to Germany a breeze.  And here are the finds that thrill me the most! the things that cost the least.  TYPICAL.


Yep, a tiny purse-sized pack of dental picks is up there with the gorgeous black lab coat I found on the clearance rack at Eileen Fisher.  I am telling you, the older I get, the more I appreciate a good dental pick!  I have sort of registered that these purse-sized cases are available, and the single-use toothbrushes you see sometimes too, but the lightbulb only lit for this trip. I prefer biodegradable wood ones, but I like the little bristles on these for long days far from my toothbrush. 

And there will be long days, because we aren't just flitting off to Cologne, Regensburg, and Munich for no particular reason, but to be groupies for a choir we especially like with singers we know and love.  It's more of a social thing than a vacation - our particular group will be traveling together with a tour guide and going to museums and concerts and, I hope, some restaurants.  But I've done this before and I know - they will get us out the door early and drop us back at our hotel very late before doing it all over again the next day.  This little dental pick case will be a good friend I'm sure.


I'm also completely besotted with the Venus travel razor I found in the travel-size section of a local drugstore (it's at Shoppers', fellow Torontonians - I found mine in the TD Centre.) 


The little pink case has drainage holes and fits in the palm of my hand; the actual razor can be refitted with blades readily available the next aisle over.  I have been using a standard man's razor handle since I started shaving my legs lo these many years ago and I am not used to the Pink Overload (or do I mean, Pink Overlord?) but omigosh it's so TEENY!  I can't wait to use it.  And believe me that is not something I normally say about shaving devices.


You know what I really love though is this phone charger from Kate Spade. 


I found that at a Winners store about five minutes before a physio appointment this week and had to line up right away to buy it even at the risk of less hand-fixing time.  I can't stop looking at the stripes!  I really, really love stripes.  And it's so much lighter weight than my current tubular one.  It's not even as big as my phone, which is the outdated and miniature-compared-to-the-6 iPhone 5.

And... it should be able to charge my phone fully a couple of times, which will prove extremely helpful I am sure.  I say this because I am testing it out on my phone as I type, and the charging is happening superfast.  Thankfully I also tested the cable and discovered the one supplied is for an android phone.  So, I will leave that at home.


To extend the battery life of my phone and avoid the expense of the noise canceling headphones I had wanted for this trip, to block out the sound of plane engines, I decided to make use of these little iPod Nanos.


I'm not sure why I have two.  Probably one is Pete's, but another possibility is that when we traveled last time I couldn't find my original Nano and decided to spring for another because they are really not that expensive.  Now that I have two, and located their chargers no less, I have charged them up and loaded them.

The grey one implies sleep to me, so it's housing eight hours of the sound of rain falling on a river, with the odd roll of thunder in the background.  This is ideal for sleeping in a room near an elevator or over a busy street; I just clip the Nano to my pyjamas and lock in my earbuds with the headband I knitted myself for our trip to Italy, and I am good till morning.

The green one - green means go! - is for daytime use.  I loaded that up with my unabridged audiobook of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, narrated by Juliet Stephenson.  I mean if that woman and her wonderful voice can't get me through turbulence, nothing can. And because I've watched the miniseries so many times I will be able to follow the plot easily no matter how many extra bits were cut for the screen, in practically any stressful circumstances.


Pete and I are hoping to share one checked suitcase, plus daypack-sized carry on bags.  So, the small stuff is the biggest thrill for me!


Per suggestion - I looked up our airline's guidelines for knitting needles and the answer was 'Pack it in your checked luggage or say goodbye to it forever,' so I am going to pack sock knitting in my checked luggage.  I mean we will be in a bus a LOT for 10 days, so I am pretty sure I will be reaching for it a fair bit. 

Instead of flight knitting I am hoping to make do with the two Nanos, a stack of good reading, and a cute miniature sheep I bought myself for Easter and promptly misplaced, but will find again in time I hope.  And I am thinking about bringing a little sketch book and a felt tip pen for drawing or possibly even writing with.  Pretty sure a watercolour pan set is impractical in Economy.  Even without one though, I can create shapes to colour in later.  Carol says I should pack delicious little food treats too, so I don't feel so hard done by when the plane starts bumping a lot.

And also: sleep.  Our flight over is at night, and with luck, that will be possible.


What's your favourite way to stay amused on a long plane trip?



Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Sewing a rain poncho

The ponchos that little girls wore when I was small were usually bell-shaped, with pom-poms at the end of a drawstring threaded through the neck opening.  Picture a lot of kids leaping around a skipping rope with their arms pinned to their sides and pom-poms whapping them in the eye, and you'll know why I have steered clear of them as an adult.  But... in a Boxing Day sale this year, I saw a gorgeous length of 100% cashmere cloth sewn into a boxy poncho and I couldn't resist.  And even if I hadn't broken my fingers the following week and found myself wearing a splint that didn't fit through any of my coat sleeves, I am pretty sure I would have been wearing it constantly because it is so wonderful.




The cashmere poncho is not just warm and soft and special-feeling.  It's actually flattering!  It drapes beautifully and the asymmetrical grey stripes knitted into the cloth make it look kinda glam.  It's the opposite of a frumpy sweater, while having all the assets of a frumpy sweater.  Well, except that it's easier to take a pan of roasted sweet potatoes out of the oven when you're wearing a frumpy sweater than when you're draped in a giant poncho.

(Don't ask me why I kept needing a sweater even when I was pulling something out of a 400 degree oven because I have no idea.)

So there we go: I am in love with my black and grey cashmere poncho.  I love it so much I bought a second one in a later sale, so that when the first one wears out I will have another in the queue.  And it's now April.  Soon it will be simply too hot to wear, not to mention depressingly dark in colour.

I was all set to part with regret until the fall when I started planning my travel wardrobe for our trip to Germany.  I have a sensible black raincoat I can bring, but it's not something I want to take off and carry when the day warms up or dries out; it's waxed cotton, so it needs a little care lest it look worn, and also, it's got lots of zippers and snaps that are heavy and prevent it from being easily rolled up into a pillow. 

A much better idea: comfy sweaters plus a fold-down rain shell.  Or better still, a fold-down rain trench!  So that my legs stay dry in the rain, too.  But I couldn't find any... until after I acted on the brilliant idea that occurred to me next.

Yep: I decided to make my own rain poncho!!  I mean, I already had the basic design, right?  I could just copy Mr. Cashmere.

It was surprisingly easy to find a Canadian supplier of black ripstop nylon and you know what, that stuff isn't even expensive.  I bought two yards and some sharp sewing machine needles and then about an hour later, found a pretty good-looking pocket-sized fold-down trench coat online which I also ordered, just in case.

Because, you know, I have some experience with my bright ideas, and I wanted insurance.

The fabric arrived within days - actually, on a day when I had a free evening and was able to get right to work.  So that's what I did.  Go me! 

I trimmed off the uneven edges and cut the piece into two 1-yard segments.


Then I used an eye dropper on the scraps to confirm which side was water resistant...


and folded the edges in for a nice clean hem on three of the four sides of each piece.


Then I fussed around with the neck.  On the cashmere poncho, it's 10 inches wide, so that's what I chose for the rain poncho, except I forgot to hem the neck opening before I started the French seams for the shoulders.

And also, after I did both lines of stitching for the shoulders and added a third in topstitching, I realized I hadn't tested the neck opening, which OF COURSE was too small because ripstop nylon does not stretch and cashmere knits do.

Duh.  How many hats have I knit anyway? How could I forget my head is 23" around, and that 23 >20?

So I ripped out the neck edges of the French seam and sat down to finish them properly


and then I thought - Wait.

Maybe I should try this on and see how it looks.  And maybe I should ask Pete what he thinks.

I looked in the mirror and thought, I look like a giant bat.

I showed Pete and he said, You look like you're about to get on the Maid of the Mist and go under the falls.  You know, in one of those cheap plastic rain ponchos they sell there, but black, like a garbage bag.

And I considered whether either of these looks is really what I want to go for while we're on holiday, any time it rains over the twelve days we are away.



Then Pete, who was still considering the black water resistant shroud I was wearing, asked, "Isn't it kind of hot?  I mean, it's rustling like it's really airtight fabric.  Are you going to go crazy wearing something hot?"

Which is why the poncho is now folded up neatly in my sewing bucket, waiting to be made into some lightweight waterproof bags.

Isn't it lucky I ordered that trenchcoat?  Won't it be great if it actually fits?

Something else I learned while making the poncho is that I don't love running seams as much as I remembered.  It felt kind of like work.  Maybe it would be different if I were sewing something other than stiff black nylon taffeta.  But - I'd been considering whether I could sew some of my own curtains for the 'new' house, to save some money for back yard landscaping, and now I'm thinking No.  Just - no.  Somebody else should do that job, who likes it.

And how is your week going?


Saturday, April 1, 2017

Task lighting and other LED bulb adventures

This week there was a very exciting development on the home renovation front: I was asked to deliver the lighting fixtures for the second floor!  Excitement illustrated below with my favourite light fixture, which is not only not task lighting - it's going over the kitchen table - but also not on the second floor:
Hudson Valley's  Odessa flushmount - doesn't it look just like a retro spaceship??

Okay, okay - being asked for light fixtures probably sounds like the definition of UNexciting but since I bought the lighting for the whole house last May I am pretty thrilled to be getting rid of all those boxes.  One of them is about two and a half feet square and eighteen inches tall.  They are stored in our bedroom in a 5' x 8' stack because I didn't want to rent a storage locker just for light fixtures.  Oh me of little foresight.

My joy at this news was short-lived because when I looked at the lighting storage zone I realized the second floor lights were all mixed in with the main floor ones, sorted by what would stack most compactly rather than what I would want to get at first.  aiiiieeeee

Also, I am supposed to deliver the light bulbs for all the fixtures at the same time, so they can be installed and lit up in a sort of conga line as the paint dries room by room.  By this logic I will be delivering the main floor lights next weekend, or maybe a little sooner.

But rather than dwelling on how my entire Friday evening was spent on dismantling the storage locker, identifying all the boxes, and then reassembling it to accommodate the four kitchen table stools we had to take delivery of yesterday, let's pause for a moment of smugness, shall we?

See, everybody I know who has renovated has gone through the ACK! moment when they are asked to supply the light fixtures for installation.  Like me before all this started, they only perk up for really pretty lights they see in somebody's house or in a display feature somewhere, and otherwise don't look much at what's on the ceiling until it needs dusting, and then they forget again.  Also, most normal people are pooped after choosing tile and paint colours and countertops and they sit down, forgetting they wanted new lights, and that those lights will have to go in when the trades are still in the house to do it.  Then when they get the go-ahead to supply lights, they have no choice but to run off to a big box store, or perhaps a dedicated lighting store, to pick up whatever is carried by them and in stock.  Then they are stuck with lights they may not love after spending a fortune on renovating their space.

I did not want this to be me, so I spent months researching lighting in online shops and design blogs.  I did comparison pricing.  I thought about a colour palette for the house and a roster of metal finishes that would complement what we were using for doorknobs and cabinet hardware.  I noted trends in fixtures that many manufacturers were doing a spin on, and I thought about how much light I wanted in different parts of the house based on what we would be doing there.  Then I talked to Pete and we doubled up because the old version of our house had such terrible lighting, and we want lots of options this time around.

This is the mindset that justifies two chandeliers hanging over our long and narrow dining table...

Pottery Barn 'Graham' - and you know those swoopy bits will dangle handknit socks at Christmas
... each with six 60-watt candelabra bulbs.

Yes, that's a ton of light.

Yes, I gave in when Ray winced and suggested a dimmer even though I really dislike dimmed lights.

and Yes, I will still be glad I picked those fixtures in three years (I hope??) because a long narrow table is EXACTLY where you want to cut out fabric, and gather your friends for a knitting party.  Or, you know, do paper crafts or whatever.  And I can always downgrade to 40 watt bulbs, right?

Compounding our desire for lots of light, I thought about task lighting.  I mean sure, when there are a bunch of people doing crafty stuff at the dining room table we will want lots of light.  When we are actually dining there, we can use the dimmer.  But what about the piano?  It needs task lighting too, right?  So there are going to be two more lights over in that corner of the dining room, flanking a painting for balance...

Sconce by George Kovacs

... each with a 60-watt bulb.

Obviously I will not put on all those dining room lights at once unless somebody loses a contact.  But it gives us the potential to put on one of two of the swing arm lights with the shade directing all the light toward the sheet music, or one of them facing down to bolster candles on the table or mantelpiece.   Or one as a soft cheery light for somebody who's coming home late, after everybody else is asleep, to light the path to the stairs.  Or one pointed toward the window, as a secret neighbour signal to say I Just Baked Cookies, Don't Tell Anyone, Just Quietly Knock For Your Share.

Or whatever.

So - yes.  Too much lighting in every room.  Overkill lighting, really.

In our kitchen for example there will be four LED spotlights under the upper cabinet at my butler's pantry counter, plus the 2-light version of the cute Odessa flushmount on the ceiling just above where I will stand to sort mail or whatever.  Then as much undercabinet lighting again across the main cooking area, with four or five more LED spotlights in the ceiling over where we'll stand to work, a spot over the sink with undercabinet lights either side, more undercabinet lighting over the smaller sink we'll use to fill the kettle at our tea and breakfast counter, and finally a three-light Odessa fixture over the kitchen table.  Now, to be fair - the kitchen is just a weird shape with several different work areas, several of them quite small.  And while Pete likes to work with a ton of lights on and music playing, I like quiet and very focused task lighting when I work or clean up, so we had to come up with a plan to accommodate our differences.  It's still a lot of light, but it won't all be on at once typically, and it's covering a wide area.

But my office is a different story.

It's a small space, about 5' x 8.5'.  A bathroom really, which is what it would have been except I refused to consider stepping into the tub to open and close the window, as that was my big pet peeve in the older version of our house.  Also, if we'd done that, I'd have been working in the admittedly much larger space the bathroom eventually got, which has light tubes instead of windows.  I really wanted a window in my office.

It would be very sensible to light a space that size with a two or three light ceiling fixture and a desk lamp, but where's the fun in that?

I mean yes, there is going to be a three light ceiling fixture.  It is technically a chandelier, which I bought because it was a good colour, enormously sale-priced, and felt sort of 1930s French industrial to me - but was in hindsight a great choice because it will draw the eye down from the rather ugly 18-inch square ceiling cassette that provides additional cooling or heating when needed.

Robert Abbey, 'Aunt Bee'

Also there are two sconces over the daybed nobody believes I have room for in there.  (I do though - I had it custom-made a little smaller than standard and am planning on a 14" deep desk.  Meh, I do a lot of my writing and knitting designs curled up on a sofa anyway, and a daybed also makes a great surface for sorting papers or yarns or sewing pattern pieces.)  This is a modestly-priced fixture by Quorum Lighting - I think I got my two on sale for a little over $20 each - but it's small, it's the right colour, and can take up to a 100 watt bulb.  Also I think the style looks okay with the other lights in the room and will pull in the black metal base of the desk I still have to ask our stair railing supplier to create for me.



And of course you need desk lights... but if all you have is 14" you don't want to waste any of it on a table lamp... so we are putting in two more swing arm sconces, a pair that match the chandelier.

Robert Abbey, 'Aunt Bee' Swing Arm

I cannot WAIT to be able to focus additional light right on the needle bed of my sewing machine!  The one that's in the machine itself is good, but I often find I need more to light the fabric that's on its way to be stitched.


In the end, we decided not to reuse any of the lights we'd had in the house before.  Some were really cute and had the right amount of light, but the new ceiling heights and room sizes just begged for something bigger.  For example, in the hallways, we are using this light, which I think is pretty cool but still era-appropriate, rather than our old selection of a compact metal base with a trio of fluted glass shades:

'Diamond', from Feiss

Notice anything about this fixture?   Or the Odessa fixture?  Maybe you won't think of it - I didn't, when I first fell in love with the style and surprisingly affordable price - but changing the bulbs is going to be a serious drag.  It will mean climbing a ladder and unscrewing the whole thing, which makes the lights we used to have seem pretty fabulous by comparison.

And that loops us back to the second responsibility I have right now.  First, unearth the upstairs light fixtures.  Second, supply the light bulbs.

Want to know how many standard 60-watt A-19 light bulbs we need for all the fixtures going into the second floor?

Twenty-nine.

29 LIGHT BULBS.

There are only 17 on the main floor, but that's because some of what we bought for that floor wants candelabra-style bulbs, which is going to be another project.

And the thing about light bulbs is that if you want incandescent ones, you are really only getting 43 watts now instead of 60.  Which is okay... but they don't last, either, and you have to change them a lot.  Since six of our fixtures are closed (four 'Diamond's and two 'Odessa's) I really don't want to be changing them.

Instead, we are going with LED replacement bulbs.  I found a website here in Toronto that can have them to my door before enough paint is dry to install the first fixture, and their standard A-19 60-watt replacement is a warm white with a super long lifespan and graded for use in closed fixtures.  Not all LED replacements can be used that way, because what little heat they do emit can burn them out faster than in an open fixture.  Bonus: they only need 9 watts to produce the same amount of light as as standard incandescent bulb. That means we'll use a ton less electricity to light our house on top of a ton less gas to heat it, thanks to our underfloor heating/serious insulation combo and our on-demand water heating system.

And you know what all that means, right?  Not just an earth-friendly, sensibly-lit environment for making stuff but -

more money for yarn!!!! 


And that's exciting, even if light shopping isn't, right?


Hope you have a great weekend and I'll see you again soon!