This is a long and rambling post. You have been warned. Today has primarily been spent doing laundry. Yeah, I’ve done a lot of other little things, but mostly? Laundry.
Now don’t get me wrong. Laundry is actually a task that I enjoy. You start with dirty smelly wrinkled stuff and wind up with clean neatly folded nice-smelling clothes.
But riddle me this, Batman: At one point tonight, I started a load in my washing machine, on a setting that displayed at 1 hour, 25 minutes. So I set the dryer on a manual setting for 1 hour and 25 minutes. A while later, I headed back downstairs only to discover that the dryer had 5 minutes remaining and the washing machine had 18 to go. How is that possible? Parallel universes separated only by a
slop sink? Seriously!
Between trips to the basement for Laundry purposes today, I did actually get a few other things done. One of which was blocking my Steelers Scarf!
It is currently happily drying in the 42 degree, 56% humidity on our enclosed, carpeted back porch. With the windows open so it can catch a breeze or two.
Both of the LYS’s that I considered to be “home” during the resurgence of my knitting career, first
Jennifer Knits and then
Beach Knitting, were not dyed-in-the-wool blocking fans. Yeah, you could steam something if it was giving you issues, but blocking was optional, not critical. You blogging folks (and apparently, all of my new-found knitting friends here in Pittsburgh) block WAY more than I ever have.
BTW, do any of you use a blocking board? Or do you just pin to carpet or a mattress or something? Lemme know. I'm Gadget Girl, but those suckers are expensive!
So when I was at
Yarns Unlimited in Sewickley on Saturday (field trip with my mom. We also went to
The Quilt Company. I’ll get to that eventually), I bought a blocking kit, complete with a whack of wires, more T-pins and a yardstick. After dunking the scarf in a sink with some
Soak, squeezing out most of the water with some towels and transporting to the back porch, I used the T-pins to encourage the ends to not curl quite so much and I used the yardstick to make sure I was blocking the thing relatively straight. If it’s dry in the morning, I’ll take it with me and add the fringe so it will be ready for a real FO photoshoot.
I turned the heel on my first Jeweled Steps sock in the Steelers yarn last night and am now working on the leg. I’m hoping to get it essentially done on the drive up to the Lake tomorrow with my mom. We’re doing a 24-hour trip to close the cottage for the winter. Weather looks promising for sunset shots, so wish me luck.
Remember when we got
grown-up furniture about six weeks ago? Well, we have finally finished transitioning the dressers. My stuff into the new one, Hubsters’s stuff into my old one and his old one into the dining room to hold tablecloths and the like. Progress!
OK, so now back to yesterday’s field trips.
Mom needed to to pick up a needlepoint pillow at the
Porcupine in Sewickley, so we also checked out the stock at
Yarns Unlimited. I got the blocking kit, a pattern and six skeins of yarn and yes, I’m too lazy to bust it out now for pictures.
The big issue is this: [
YES, this is most certainly a PLEA FOR HELP/ADVICE!] Remember the
Twizzle I got in August? Well, I got two coordinating skeins of Twizzle in a different colorway on Saturday. But now I’m thinking that I should use some Google-fu and find me two more skeins in the same colorway to make the Mountain Colors
pattern that I picked up. What do YOU think?
We also went to
The Quilt Company, but I’ll leave that for another day. Hope you had an enjoyable weekend, whatever you did!
