In which we cover shoulder escapes, medicating felines, Ancient Egyptian marriage ceremonies, and a knit-a-long blanket.
I'm off work today, as earlier this week my shoulder joint decided to make one of its regular bids for freedom. Fortunately since my last surgery these attempts have been less frequent, but are still pretty unpleasant. More so in a way - when escape was a daily occurrence I could relocate things with a swift knock (amazing the things you get used to!) - nowadays the surgeons have built me a shoulder-joint-Alcatraz, so if it wants to throw itself out you know it really means it.
In an attempt to find something useful I was capable of doing amidst waves of painkiller haziness, I decided to give the cat his monthly bug treatment (like spot-on, but from the vets and I can never remember what it's called. Some catchy Latin translation of 'spot-on', probably... 'Spot-on-ocet' or something). He hates it. Which is not all that surprising really - it he enjoyed having foul smelling oil dunked on the back of his neck it would be a bit odd.
Anyway, despite bribing with Dreamies and an extra bowl of wet food, it ended in a brief wrestling match (which he won, as I have one working arm and he has four). He stormed out though the cat flap yelling about how I'd betrayed every trust he'd ever held sacred. I did get most of the stuff on him though.
Having being thus abandoned, I went for option 2 in the 'useful things to do on codeine' list. (To be fair, it's a very short list). I've been working on the 'Secret Garden' blanket knitalong since it started in 'Let's Knit' magazine in January.
My project 'to do' list is so long now that I've developed a real hang up about knitting things that are just for me. I have so many things I want to knit as gifts for other people, as well as trying to get some designs finished and written up to sell, that I feel really guilty sitting down to work on something for myself.
However, I justified this KAL (besides "it's pretty and I want it!") by telling myself that I would learn a lot of new stitches and techniques, that it would be really good to finish a big project, and that the squares are small and quick enough to finish between other projects. All this has turned out to be true, which is nice! The squares are simple enough to do between other things, which makes them good 'knitting palette cleansers', particularly between wildly different projects, or two fiddly ones.
Some of the patterns are a bit complex, with quite a bit of cabling/counting etc, but on the whole once the pattern it set you can merrily go backwards and forwards with minimal thought. Hence why they are useful go-to projects when feeling useless and foggy brained.
The wool I'm using is lovely, which helps. I used the recommended yarn, which is
Rico Design Essentials Soft Merino Aran. It's 100% Merino Wool, and is so soft and springy. The colours are gorgeous too, although the ones I'm using are different from those in the magazine (they were a bit bright and acidic for me, I've gone for deeper tones).
I'm a bit behind as I've had so much else on, and I'm making the larger size blanket, which involves knitting two of each square. The first three months are now done though!
January:
Honeycomb and Double Parallelogram
Colour - Blackberry
February:
Twisted Pyramids and Knotted Cable
Colour - Sage
March:
Diamond Lace and Garter Stitch Steps
Colour - Dusky Pink
An idea of the colours together so far...
I've picked 3 'red' shades and 3 'blue' shades, and a light, medium and dark of each, Hopefully they will work well together!
In a rather lovely display of life intertwining with knitting projects (as it always should do, in my humble opinion), shortly after I started this blanket my boyfriend asked me (and The Cat) to move in with him! He has been away in Afghanistan for months (feels like YEARS!), but was back on leave in February. We were watching a documentary about the Ancient Egyptians by Dr Joanne Fletcher (a personal heroine of mine) in which she was describing marriage ceremonies. Part of the marriage proposal was the ceremony of 'Bringing the Bundle', where one partner would bundle up their possessions in a blanket, and present themselves at their partner's front door. If they are let in, then *huzzah* - the two of them are now living together.
The Boyfriend was joking that I would be turning up on his doorstep with a huge pile of wool, a shedload of books and a cat (and not much else!). Given the way that things are going, I should hopefully finish this blanket around (or before) July, when I'm due to move in. We have decided that I will ceremoniously wrap the blanket around a book and The Cat and step over the threshold, thus marking the moment we move in together. The blanket can represent my knitting, as well as a shared obsession with history and documentaries!
I should go and knit some more of it now...
P.S. If you want to watch Dr Joanne Fletcher talking about 'Bringing the Bundle'
you can do so here... This particular clip is for the school's version, so not what we originally saw, but still interesting!
This cowl is designed to show off the best of two shades of variegated wool, blending them together to create lovely colour shifts all along the finished piece.
