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Ten years into widowhood, after one year of incredible happiness and nearly 14 years of single blessedness. Retired, and mostly enjoying it. Still knitting. [Zen]tangling.again after a brief hiatus.

Monday, February 09, 2009

I thought I would be cooking all weekend

But instead I spent it puttering and knitting. I have cast on for the Morningside neckwarmer. Twice. Blithely ignoring brooklyntweed’s counsel to swatch first. Because I’ve been knitting for almost 50 years, and swatches are for sissies, right? The size 6 needles which I chose, because I knit so loosely, yielded a circumference more suited to BittyBit’s head size than Brother Sushi’s. So I cast on again, this time with my new KnitPicks Harmony DP’s in size 8.

Something stuck with me during the KnitPicks podcast yesterday, while the Chocolate Pecan Tart that I took to dinner, was baking. I learned the backwards-loop cast-on over twenty years ago, from Saint Elizabeth of the Circs. I somehow missed out on the crucial point that when knitting that first row, you should knit into the back of the stitch, twisting it an extra half-turn, and then the bottom edge will not be so loosey-goosey.

I remembered this advice about 5/8 of the way around the second cast-on.

I will be casting on ~ again ~ on the train this morning. [Hubris: it’s what’s for breakfast.]

When I came home from dinner last night, I was pleasantly weary. And my bed was piled high with all the things I had hauled up from the floor and the chair and on top of various lingering boxes, in order to photograph the new bookcase and the other one. Which meant that I had to have a fold-and-stow-fest before I could go to bed. Rather a pain, but how sweet it was to flip on the light when I woke up this morning and see a boudoir which was somewhat tidier than it has been for the past couple of months. There are still piles, but they are smaller, and I have more or less broken up the rest of the work into manageable portions: ten minutes here, fifteen minutes there.

It rained last night, a quick shower during dinner at my home teachers’ house, and a longer, more audible storm that woke me ahead of my alarm. But I am not dismayed, oh no, because I have my wonderful raincoat, and I will be both dry and chic. And there are pigs in blankets which are nearly ready to take out of the oven, and I was sent home last night with the last few squares of cornbread that my younger home teacher [son of the senior companion] had baked for dinner.

I wonder if Trainman got his living room painted this weekend, as he had planned?

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