As a very proud Canadian (no, that is not an oxymoron) I celebrate my country and her beginnings way out east in 1867. Nice of them to let us West Coast folks join in a couple of years later too, wasn’t it? The most common word used to describe Canada and Canadians is “nice” and really that’s not so bad, eh? We aren’t perfect by any means but we live in the best part of the best country in the world. But don’t tell anyone that, OK? They might think we’re boasting or something. Poor T-Man has to work today so my celebrations today will consist of wearing red and white clothing, perhaps a toast to Canada rendered in local beer and cider, and then we’ll both attempt to get deeply asleep before the fireworks begin at 10:30pm. I’ve resisted painting a maple leaf on my face however.
So I’ve been working on the Peeenk Cardi and have the sleeves attached now and I’m just getting into the eyelet part of the yoke. It was a bit tricky to do the 3-needle bind-off at the underarms but it looks pretty good except for some holes on either side that will need remedial action to close up. Better than sewing all the side seams and the underarm seams, that’s for sure. The holes mostly happened when the stitches at the sides of the underarm got stretched out some because it was tight going for the first 4 or 5 rows of the yoke. For the tightest first row where I was taking in the sleeves, I used a spare dpn to help spread out the stitches more. I knit a number of stitches off onto it and then transferred them to the right-hand point of the circular and it worked quite well. Onward to the neck now.
I finally managed to cut the 10 yards of Circus Blanket into 3 pieces and am starting to lace them together. With a blunt needle and a long piece of yarn, I pick up a selvedge loop from one side and a loop from the other side and draw the yarn through. On my original Marigolds & Feverfew Blanket, you can barely see the joins but it’s a bit more conspicuous on this one. I’m somewhat regretting my shortcut of just tying the tails together at the colour changes but there’s no way I was going to weave them in every 8 picks. However that leaves knots at the seams that I’m not sure what to do with. If I cut them off, they will leave a spot where the lacing thread will pull out. If I leave them in, they will be lumpy. If I untie them and try to weave them in, I’ll be back to the gazillions of ends to deal with that I was trying to avoid in the first place. If I machine stitch to secure the ends, the thread might not shrink up with the wool and I’ll have wavy seams. Any ideas? I was planning to just leave the knots on for now and full the blanket first and then decide what to do with them afterward. Though I just thought that if I change the overhand knots to square knots they will be less lumpy. Then maybe they will be relatively unobtrusive if I leave them in. Hmmm…but that means picking out and retying 446 knots. Erp.
Remember my woad? It’s grown a lot especially in the last few days while we’ve had some nice hot weather. Come to think of it, so has the rest of the garden. There are baby peas finally! And baby tomatoes and yellow pattypan squashes too. I’d show you pics but I’m too lazy to go out there in the sun to photograph anything. Later maybe. Right now I wants me some lunch.
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