Wildlife Wars

The netting barrier that we put up to foil the raccoons worked for only one night! By the next night they were back:

Curses!! They must have climbed over the railing from the top of the barbeque below. So now we are trying this:

The spigot has to be put inside the pot and this board on top. With the Auk looking very grumpily on guard! The board is too heavy for a raccoon to move. Every morning Thom has to remove it, fish out the bamboo spout and put the board aside. Every evening before bedtime, he does the reverse. Boring! But sadly necessary. You never know when those bandits are going to show up. They’ll leave things alone for weeks and then…bam! Could be worse I suppose. It could be deer! Or bears. And someone spotted a bobcat in nearby Burnaby recently. Gotta love living with the wildlife.

Anyway, in crafty news I’ve finished my Rainbow Dark Cardi and I love it! It’s still waiting on Thom to finish a toggle button before the big reveal. Meanwhile, here’s an illustration of what I was talking about with the cuffs. When casting on 4 stitches for the i-cord bind-off, I merely forgot to move those stitches back to the left-hand needle before beginning. So instead they were left to knit at the end instead:

So I bound them off and tucked them underneath the beginning. It actually looks quite nice I think:

Of course I had to deliberately make the same mistake on the second cuff! It took less yarn than I thought to make this sweater so now I have 400 metres of this yarn left. And I don’t want to waste all that prep and spinning! I think I know what I can do with it but I need to spin some contrasting yarn first to have enough for my plan. More on that later.

But first, I started something else. After my Buonasera Tunic (which showed up prominently in the photo of the Annual Woolie Wash from the other day) I still had plenty of that navy blue Italian noil silk left on the cone. I also had this pattern:

This is the Ophicleide Cardigan by Kamicha. She has sadly discontinued her free pattern though I luckily snagged it before she did. I’m getting a little larger gauge but to compensate I’m making a size smaller (91 cm). Not sure how long I’ll make it but I kind of like the little puff sleeves. Do I have a fondness for these top-down open-front cardigans lately or what? I spent some time re-charting the yoke pattern for myself because I found the original kind of hard to decipher from my printout. Her symbols are somewhat unfamiliar and the image isn’t high enough resolution to see well. It all became much clearer in my mind as I worked it out. I also tend to use a cable needle for the crosses even when everyone else is trying to avoid them. I’m more proficient and actually faster with a cable needle than without.

Naturally I had to look up the unfamiliar title: Ophicleide (pronounced something like “offa-clyde”) and found that it’s an antique brass instrument, the successor of the serpent and the ancestor of the tuba and euphonium. Lovely bass tones! I’m sure the designer was inspired by the brass-coloured yarn she chose for her sweater. Mine is not going to evoke the same musical romance but never mind.

In weaving news, I’ve wound 3/4 of the warp for the waffle weave towels. I’m not working very quickly obviously but progress is being made which is good. Some of the skills are starting to come back to me after such a long time/no weave! The last thing I did was my bedroom curtains back in 2012 and that was the first woven project in many years. I’ve been telling everyone that I will weave more but still got sidetracked with other things. I’m trying to rectify that by starting with one little project. Hopefully more will follow.

More soonest! I’m off to go wind the last part of the warp.