Hmm.. where to start

We've been busy around here, trying to get things cleaned up and organized so that it feels like home. We're getting there. At least, we think we are. And then again.... you know how the old saying goes, right? It never rains but it pours? We have no heat.

Yup, the furnace is obsolete, quit running on Monday and the repairman has refused to turn it back on. We will, apparently, be having a new furnace installed this week, but right now it's a bit chilly. Thankfully, the weather's quite a bit warmer now than it was in January. It seems the furnace has been problematic for a while now; it's running at 40% efficiency, we've been told. That means that 60% of the gas meant for the furnace has been going directly into the rest of the house. The repairman said that he couldn't, in good conscience, turn it back on and perhaps be responsible for the deaths of 6 people in the house. I do appreciate that. In the interim, we've dragged out the space heaters for the cooler times of the day... like when we're watching TV in the evening.

Anyway... that will sort itself out by the end of this week; we'll have an efficient new furnace in the house and we can all get comfy.

On to knitting.

As promised, I have pictures of Icarus. I still haven't blocked it, but did pin it on to the bed for it's portrait.



The yarn I used is Jaggerspun Zephyr in a lovely copper colour, on 4.0 mm needles. I used about 1 1/2 skeins. It's a pleasure to work with. I love this yarn!

Incidentally, on my monitor, the colour in the above picture is pretty close to the actual colour. The colour in the next picture is somewhat washed out, for some reason.

Now, for the rest...

Do you see the "blot" with the strings coming from it? That's where one of the holes was/is. I managed to repair the other hole to my satisfaction (it was to the left of the visible blot, in the "line") but I'm not at all happy with the way I executed the repair of the hole in the stocking stitch section. Any suggestions will be gratefully accepted. As it is, I'm not going to block it until I'm happy with it and, right now, I'm not.

I was quite ready to frog the entire shawl and re-knit it at some later date. John, however, talked me out of it. He suggested that I just put it aside for now and come back to it later, when I can look at it a little more objectively. Good advice, no?

In other projects, now that Icarus is off the needles, I can concentrate on other things. John's sweater will be one of them. So will my Sally Melville top; there's still not much to show you. Picture an 8" length of garter stitch, 120 stitches in width in aqua Super 10 Butterfly cotton and you get a pretty good idea of where I'm at on that project. It makes wonderful TV knitting, as there's no patterning to work on. Just knit and knit and knit. I'm thinking I will make it slightly longer than the 9 1/2" called for in the pattern. I like my tops to reach at least to the top of the hip bone, and 9 1/2" will barely reach my waist. (This body really doesn't need to be revealing it's "fluffiness" around the mid-section.. yanno?)

Another project has made it on to my needles (all by itself.. I swear!). This one is intended as a gift; I don't think it will take too long to knit it up.

This is Fibertrends, Estonian Garden scarf. I started it yesterday and have already knitted up 4 of 41 pattern repeats. Incidentally, those 4 repeats were done while watching TV after work and before dinner. It's an 8-row repeat that's easy to remember.

The yarn I'm using is Skacel's Merino Lace in red, on 3.75 mm (US 5) bamboo needles. I'm thinking I'm going to switch to metal needles as I'm finding the bamboo too sticky for this yarn. I find the lace knitting to be very soothing and rewarding. I know a lot of knitters are intimidated by the fineness of the yarn, but once you get used to the feel of such fine yarn, it's really not a big deal.

This morning (or sometime today), I'll be sewing the buttons on the little sweater I knitted for my grandson (I knitted it at Christmas; it still has no buttons). John will be driving out to the coast tomorrow to visit his Dad and to drop off some stuff for my kids. He'll be taking the little sweater with him. I'm working Thursday and Friday, so I won't be going with him this trip. That does give me some un-interrupted knitting time for two evenings; that will be nice. ;)

Ok, let's see how much knitting I can squeeze into today.