Busy doing nothing

I thought it must be about time to write a post, we seem to have been very busy the last few weeks but when I tried to remember what we have done I’m struggling to have come up with anything to write about, it has all been very ordinary things but there have been a lot of them. I’ve got an earworm of the song now, I only know the chorus really, I just looked up the rest of it and I like the line, ‘I must rehearse the songbirds, To see that they sing in key.’ I’ll have to learn the rest of it next time I have nothing to do.

Tiny was sick a couple of weeks ago. A week after that the Man in the Shed took Small and Tiny off on family camp with the Scouts, I still haven’t managed to remove all the mud from the strange places it has found its way into. I got out of camp by going on a training weekend for Joey Scout leaders (Joeys are the equivalent of Beavers in the UK) and it felt very odd to have a night to myself with nobody else in the house but I did enjoy the quiet. This week, when home was being hit by a bout of freezing weather just when it should be warming up, we got hit by a 39°C day just when I was getting used to it being in the 20s again and my body said, ‘No, too hot!’ and promptly sent me to sleep on the sofa all afternoon.

I got all my squares joined together, it didn’t take as long as I thought it might. I had to hold the yarn in my left hand to make the join work because you had to keep the working yarn under the bits you were joining and I usually hold it in my right hand, (I was going to say I hold it the wrong way but then I decided it isn’t wrong, just different and it works perfectly well most of the time) so I had the option of putting the yarn round to the underneath after every stitch or holding it in my other hand. The first couple of squares were slow going but once I had done a few it was quicker. The border wasn’t very interesting to do, most of the rounds have a spike stitch every fourth stitch which messed up my rhythm and slowed me down a little and the last round has 1408 stitches so it was a bit of a slog but I really like the way it looks. It fits nicely on the bed too but if I took a photo if it there then I would have to tidy up the rest of the room for you so here it is on the floor. You can click on the photo if you want to make it bigger.

The pretty cardigan with the pockets is coming along nicely. I got to the end of the body and because it is stocking stitch all the way down with an i-cord cast off it is a bit curly at the moment, I am really hoping that once it is blocked it won’t curl up so much but I am not sure. Maybe I’ll have to weigh down the pockets with all my pocket detritus, that ought to do the job.

The pockets made a lot of ends to sew in because you have to cut and rejoin the yarn in various places and I thought I would sew those ends in before I start the sleeves so instead of doing that I got distracted making a secret thing for Tiny’s birthday. The pattern matches her blanket but it is in different colours, here is how far I have got with it so far. I had to redo the back because I did the number of rows in the pattern and it was humongous (is that how you spell that? It doesn’t look right whatever letters I put) and when I checked the size of the squares for the front from the blanket I realised there was no way they would ever fit together and I unravelled a load of it and redid it smaller. The Man in the Shed earned himself a look by suggesting I could have measured it before I had done the whole square and made it the right size in the first place. He’s right really but don’t tell him or he will be smug about it.

The only other exciting news I can think of is that my mending and sewing pile has reached the critical mass where I decided I really should do something about it. At the moment it consists of a sleeping bag with a ripped seam, a pair of Small’s shorts with a hole in the bum, one of Tiny’s skirts which looks like it has been through a shredder (I’m not really sure it is mendable, maybe a patch will have to do), a hermit crab which I can see nothing wrong with but apparently is coming apart at the seams and has holes in, and a pile of Scout badges. A couple of them are Small’s and the rest are mine – having sent me on my training weekend to make my Gilwell woggle our group remembered that they ought to invest me and give me a scarf to put in the woggle and some badges to sew on. So now I’ve told you I am going to do the mending pile, I’ll have to get on and do it, won’t I?

We’re busy doing nothing,
Working the whole day through.
Trying to find lots of things not to do.
We’re busy going nowhere,
Isn’t it just a crime?
We’d like to be unhappy, but
We never do have the time.

2 thoughts on “Busy doing nothing

  1. The crocheted blanket is a superb piece of work as I have come to expect from you. Beautifully made & finished off. I can understand your pain at the 4 stitches then a pointy one, that would really ‘funk with your chi’ as a friend says unless it was 1,2,3 long that scans fine, but 1,2,3,4 long doesn’t. Well not for me, it sends my chi into ultra crazy mode.
    The cardigan too is coming along nicely. Never done an icord cast off and am intrigued enough to look it up on YouTube! As for the mending/sewing pile, in order of importance I would suggest, but no more than one per day. Can’t have the small people thinking it’s all you do all day!! Blessings fromthecold country – which is getting warmer by the minute. Xx

    • Thanks, it was 1,2,3, long but I am slower at doing the spike stitches and I always seem to have to stop and untwist them! I’ve done an i-cord cast off before but it was on garter stitch so much less curly. They think I just knit all day (not that far from the truth) I regularly get orders for knitted octopi, dragons, minotaurs etc!

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