Knit Addict

I do like my weekends. I started this one early - took half a mental health day Friday afternoon. Just because. And to make up for a Sunday we worked recently.

Ate lunch, got the car washed, pulled last years dead flowers (yeah, my neighbors love my yard keeping…), took out this HUGE ivy plant that’s been turning into a stringy mess for a long time, played a bit in my yarn room, picked up a little…ya know, just stuff. It was an afternoon of “Oh look there’s (noun), I think I’ll (verb). No shoulds. No need tos. No ought tos. Just what I wanted to do. Including “Oh look, there’s a chair and some yarn. I think I’ll knit.”

I’ve got a raised flower bed in front of my house. You can even see the ivy through the window, along with some of the spider plant feelers from the one above it on the rack.

When I pulled some of the bachelor buttons I saw a big hole. Then I noticed something moving down there. Since it was too big for a spider hole, I didn’t run, I leaned over and looked. It’s one of the toads. I hadn’t thought of them being holed up there for the winter, but I stopped pulling around him and put some loose bark over the top of the hole. I’d hate for him to freeze because I finally decided to do some clean up. I may have to revisit my plans to totally empty out that bed and replant this spring too. Or at least be very careful when I do. We like our toads - they eat lots of bugs. We’ve tried to move them all to the front because Brandi and Rhett like playing with them.

Beyond that - I’ve stayed in all weekend and just done whatever I wanted to. Cooked, finished the laundry, did a little more cleaning and a little more picking up in the yarn room. It’s gotten pretty messy over the last few months. But - the blanket is done and the card printed and it’s going to be dropped off at the Salon tomorrow for Tiffany.

I think it worked well. After I finished it I washed it, but decided it was still a little too rumply.

So I semi-killed it. Didn’t go as far as some with stretching and pinning, I just used the iron and board. Normally I use a thin tea towell for a pressing cloth, but I wasn’t sure that was enough for this. So I took an older towell that’s fairly thin and used it. Put the iron on the lowest steam setting, used my hands to spread it out like I wanted, and then steamed the crap out of it. While I did have the iron on the towell, I kept the worst of the weight off of it. It worked out very well.

For the border I picked up all the way around (took me three needles to do it), knit two ridges of pink, one green, then two more pink. I did miter the corners, and actually like the way that turned out. They came out rounded instead of square. Square was what I wanted to avoid, which is why I originally thought I wouldn’t want to miter the corners.

I did bind off the pink, then did a round of reverse single crochet (or crab stitch) around the outside. I thought about not binding off and working through the loops, but I thought I’d like it better with the firmness of a bound off then crocheted through edge instead of working through the single loops. Plus I’m pretty good at not binding off too tightly, so that wasn’t really a worry for me.

I’m terribly impressed with how it turned out. I forget between the times I use the stitch how well it edges knitting, and it’s really easy to do. Often just a couple of rows of crochet are enough to prevent edge roll, so it’s an option to consider for cardigans, etc.

So that’s it. Been working on the Six Sox today, but am about to spend some time with my VLT shawl. Hope your weekend was as nice and productive as mine.