I’ve been meaning to post about what’s been going on in my life for the last few days, but haven’t. I don’t have any real excuse for it, apart from the cold I’ve been battling for the last week.
It’s spring here and I have a cold. I’ve managed to successfully avoid them all winter, but as soon as spring arrives and we get a bit of a cold spell, I get a cold. A really snotty cold. One that goes straight down my chest and threatens laryngitis. Now, I didn’t end up losing my voice entirely, but when it’s almost gone, talking is exhausting. But singing, well, that’s hilarious and since I haven’t been able to carry any sort of tune until today, has had me laughing every time I tried. Actually, it has had me attempting to laugh. I haven’t been able to manage much of that either.
I didn’t manage to get much in the way of uni stuff done last week. The cold got to me and with the tiredness from the laryngitis, I kept looking at what I was supposed to be doing and going, huh?
I did manage quite a bit of knitting though. I finished my simplicity cardigan and after blocking tried it on today. It looks good, just the way I hoped and the starching of the edges has worked like I had hoped it would. I have one end to tie in and then it’s done.
I also finished my Zephyr Cove shawl. I cast that on friday week ago and knit it over the previous weekend, then put it aside during the week to finish the cardigan once I realised how close to being done that was. I bound off the shawl on saturday and I still have to block it. I’m happy with it, although the CC, woodsmoke has turned out more muddy than the soft grey I had originally hoped it would be. But that’s okay. I love the finished piece.
One more thing. Winding two skeins of lace weight yarn, by hand, without a swift or ball winder, and only using four upside down cups on a table, followed by two skeins of fingering weight yarn might sound like a brilliant idea when you start out. But it is not. By the end of winding yarn I was threatening the poor skeins with being cut up into tiny pieces when they wouldn’t behave. I wanted them to stay put around the cups but they just wouldn’t. They kept slipping up.
Most of the time I don’t mind winding by hand. Sometimes having a swift would be nice. But four skeins that take hours and hours and hours to wind so you are still winding late into the night is not fun.
On the bright side I can now cast on for my Bridgewater Shawl (I’ve been wanting to knit this for a while but I had to wait for a second lighter skein to arrive since the first one I bought was too dark and muddy for the CC) and my Mary Mary. Well, I still have to swatch for that one, but that’s okay. Means I get to play more with the bridgewater and I’m really looking forward to that one. Have been for a while.