This week has involved lots of scrubbing and hauling. Scrubbing of walls, floors and other surfaces and hauling around of furniture. We had decided that it would be more sensible to have a sofa bed in the spare room rather than a full double bed that is used once in a blue moon and takes up most of the space.
So, we visited all the shops in our area (in the same retail park, fortunately!) to look at the sofa beds on offer and chose the one most suited for our needs (and space) which was, of course, the one we saw first. We have removed the old bed and cleaned the room thoroughly, including moving the wardrobes with heavy sliding mirrored doors which hadn’t been moved since we built them over a decade ago! We moved the Clavinova (full sized electric piano) into the hallway to be squeezed around until it can go back in and we even hired one of those Rug Doctor machines and cleaned the carpet!
The room is now refreshed and awaiting the delivery of the sofa-bed tomorrow. Not only will this free up more space in the spare room, it will also turn it into a room we can make more use of, either for playing music or even giving music lessons, or for my lovely wife’s coaching sessions, or just for somewhere else to ‘be’ in the house. We even took the opportunity to go through the contents of our wardrobes thoroughly and be honest about what we were or weren’t going to wear again, since everything had to come out of them anyway before we could even try to move them.
So, unsurprisingly, I’ve been aching a bit since the weekend when most of this took place! This may also be due to having spent an hour or so in the garden on Friday – the first gardening I’ve done in months. I pruned the apple tree, cut back the autumn fruiting raspberries, pruned the blackcurrant, one of the gooseberry bushes and one of the roses and made a start on pruning the redcurrant.
Spring must be well and truly on her way and we are hearing her siren call!
I finished my Haori Cardigan last Tuesday, spent a couple of days weaving in the ends and then wore it the very next day – without even blocking/washing it (shocking!). To be fair, the main thing that blocking this will do is possibly to straighten out the neckband for a short time before it heeds its own siren call of stocking stitch and rolls inward again. I’m really pleased with it and I know I will be wearing it a lot.
Finishing this (and awaiting the arrival of yarn for a couple of commissions) means I’ve returned to knitting my new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl.
This new sample is in a superfine lace weight (1200m per 100g) but the shawl can still be knitted in ‘standard’ laceweight yarn (800m per 100g). My old sample had become a bit bobbly and had lost some of its stitch definition as it’s something I wear often – it certainly isn’t fit for being a display sample, which this new shawl will be!
Do you remember I showed you the beautiful Tencel yarn from Penny Stitch Craft that she kindly gave me to design with at the North West Winter Wool Festival? I’ve knitted up a basic stocking stitch swatch on 4mm needles to see how it behaves and it has a lovely drape and sheen.
The next task is to experiment with a lace swatch, probably on slightly larger needles and see how it holds the stitches after blocking. It should work well, judging from the stocking stitch swatch. I wonder what final design these skeins will become?!
As we have now left February I have been able to count up the number of Bodelwyddan copies sold during the month, both online and at the North West Winter Wool Festival, and I am delighted to say that you bought 12 copies which has enabled me to make a donation of £36 to Treasure Chest YGC. Thank you if you were one of the people who bought a copy. YGC stands for Ysbyty Glan Clwyd which is Welsh for Glan Clwyd Hospital and the Treasure Chest charity raises money to support those having breast cancer treatment there. I originally wrote the Bodelwyddan sock pattern as part of a fundraiser for this charity so it made sense to me to use it again for the same charity during the month I had my first mammogram! (It all went smoothly and I’m just waiting for the results now).
On Sunday night we went to a concert in Manchester at Aviva Studios. We were going to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter singing with two other people of whom I’d not previously heard. It was fantastic! We were far nearer the front than “Row L” suggested (2nd row!) and all the musicians were phenomenal.
I was particularly entranced by the multi-tasking of the percussionist (he did way more than calling him a ‘drummer’ might suggest). This photo was taken before the concert began, from my seat! If you get a chance to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis or Karine Polwart at all (they were the other two singers – both Scottish folk musicians), then do! The three of them and their band have a new album called “Looking For The Thread” which is simply beautiful.
Today is also Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday, if you prefer), so I am hoping to make pancakes later. This is a slightly more complex task when they’re vegan pancakes, but I know I have a good recipe somewhere! I just hope we’ve got all the ingredients we need. I’ll let you know next week! Until then, take care and I hope you get the chance to do some things you really enjoy and maybe listen to the siren song of spring. K x