I had some knitting fun, as usual. It was warm enough to sit outside and knit on Wednesday, which was pleasant. On Thursday Anne popped into my cubie when she was in the building for a meeting and I convinced her to come with me over lunch for a Yarn Charm run. I bought myself a valentine – a beautiful skein of hand-dyed sock yarn – and a few things for my swap. Anne, who had never been to YC, bought some needles. It was a nice Valentine’s Day treat.
I was a bit overwhelmed by some self-imposed knitting deadlines. I had spinning on Saturday and wanted to bring 2 pairs of felted slippers with me – one as rent for borrowing a spinning wheel from Gina and one as a long overdue thank you for Jeanie’s help with combing my wool. Well, if I’d made duffers for both, there wouldn’t have been an issue but I decided to do a new pattern for Jeanie’s and they took twice as long. I had the duffers done in a few hours but the others weren’t off the needles until Friday night after 9:00, at which point I still had to felt them. Then the 2nd pair, which had some vintage wool along with cone wool, wasn’t felting well. After 1.25 hours in the machine, I gave up and went to bed. Gina’s duffers were perfect and gorgeous. Jeanie’s needed an explanation and hopefully she’ll do some hand felting until they’re right. My hands were aching from so much knitting on big needles but I’d made my deadline and they both seemed happy with them so it was all worth it. Note to self: start earlier next time and stick with tried and true (patterns and yarn) next time I’m under the gun.
Friday was one of those maniacal work days with 3 problems presenting themselves first thing in the morning and then lasting all day. I finished up at 4:00 and was feeling good about my day when the boss asked for a new report that she needed ASAP, which had me cranking right until 5:00. Then it was home to knit and felt. Such pressure!
I had to finish the felting on Friday night because Darla was due at my house at 8:00 a.m. Saturday for breakfast. I picked up the house between felting agitation cycles so was in good shape when I went to bed Friday night. Everything was taking longer than it should have on Saturday morning so the pancakes weren’t even on the griddle when she arrived. She was early though so we were eating by 8:15 and then headed for Fremont.
Our first stop was Goodwill, where we both scored all kinds of good stuff. We were there for much longer than we’d thought (it was really on the list as a filler until the downtown shops opened at 10:00) and even bumped into Denise from the library, who found me a gorgeous LLBean sweater to harvest the yarn from. We headed to Main Street where I used my birthday coupon at the quilt shop to buy swap goodies (nothing for myself but that’s OK), TVP from the health food store and then we stopped for coffee. I walked out with a painting. Then we hit Buck’s Shoes, which was having a great sale and I got a pair of army green slip on Keen’s and even got them free because I filled my Buck’s Dozen card that I started in 1998! Darla dropped me at the library for spinning and headed home.
Spinning was fun and we were the last ones out the door. Andrea was driving me home and I had my rented wheel in hand. How exciting! We stopped at Buck’s to see if Andrea could find anything (she didn’t) and then hit Yankee Peddler Antiques across the street. Guess what I found? Yarn. Go figure. We got home ~5:30 and I collapsed into a chair exhausted. It felt good to be back knitting socks again and after a bit of TV, I went to bed early.
Sunday was chore and cooking day and I got busy early so all the laundry was done and hanging on the line before I stopped for lunch. I had grand plans to cook but got distracted by yarn, ripping out the sleeves of the LLBean sweater, hanking and washing it to hand on the line and then dyeing another skein. I fit the chores between and once they were done, Andrea came over to watch the last 2 episodes of Call the Midwife that I had from Netflix. It was a lovely afternoon of tea, knitting and British TV. The only cooking I got done was a pot of chicken soup but I’ll live. I ended the week knitting socks and watching the season finale of Downton Abbey. It was a nice end to a busy week.
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