In a rather unexpected twist, I currently have something in common with Prince William (!), in that my wife is self-isolating after being a contact of a positive Covid-19 case. So until next week that means separate rooms for sleeping, no hugs, staying 2m away from each other when we are in the same room and all the windows open – even when it’s teeming with rain outside. I’m rather keeping my fingers crossed that her PCR test comes back negative tomorrow otherwise I will have to isolate as well…
I have to say Sue is coping well with working from home at the moment, especially since the help of the lovely ICT chap linking her up to the school network. It is strange for me though. I’ve been self-employed now for nearly three years, and have been working from home since the pandemic began as all pop-up shops, craft fairs and workshops stopped. I’ve got used to being in the house on my own on weekdays and pottering around to my own (sometimes eccentric) timetable. I’m just not used to someone else being here between 7am and 6pm – even though that someone is my favourite person in the world. Does that make me a bad person? I really hope not.
Because of this spanner in the works to everyday life, I’ve also cancelled my trip this week to visit my mum as I can’t risk even the slightly chance of passing Covid to her. I was supposed to be making my first ever batch of chutney there today – the apples, garlic and onions are waiting patiently at Mum’s for when I can go down, and the vinegar, sugar, jars and other assorted items are sitting here.
One bonus to these changes of plan (apart from seeing my lovely wife for more hours than usual) is that I’ve had more time to get to grips with Excel. What on earth does *that* have to do with knitting design, you may think? Well, the rather excellent course on grading designs that I’m currently taking (have I told you about that?) is teaching me some whizzy Excel tricks. I now know how to use (some!) formulae, lock a particular cell into a formula and I’m gradually getting to grips with CONCATENATE, which is one of the fiddliest things I’ve come across, but which could prove to be one of the most useful. Geeking out over spreadsheets is not something I imagined myself doing as a knitting designer, but it’s so satisfying when it works! See that little line of “TRUE”s along the bottom? That means I’ve got what I was working out right, for each of the ten sizes.
There’s been a really lovely response to the launch of Into the Vortex. Lots of happy knitters, some sharing their progress on social media and some by message. The colour combinations are all beautiful and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they make of Part Two this Friday.
It’s stopped raining, so I think I might venture into the garden now and see how the courgettes are getting on. I’ll report back next week.
Stay safe and keep knitting, K x