How I Spent My Week

The title could be how I spent my month since it is the last day of January, and I have not posted at all during the month, but frankly, it hasn't been a month to remember fondly, so I don't really want to memorialise it.

I did pull myself together for some serious "let's start the new year off right" resolutions. I sorted through my side of the bedroom clutter and have held to the resolution to put clothes away instead of making piles 'to be dealt with later" — usually much later when they topple onto the floor. I also sorted through cookbooks, admitting to the fact I never look at half of them. Limited shelf space should be the limiting factor for collections. So there are piles to take to Oxfam.

Every January, Bob and I say we really should go to the cinema more often, and then we go once or twice during January, often find ourselves disappointed, and that is it for the remainder of the year. True to form we have been to two films this month, The King's Speech and The Social Network, and we loved both of them. With that encouragement we will now see if we follow up with a film in February, finally breaking the January-only cycle.

I am most proud of finding the courage to pull out into the daylight, all of my unfinished knitting projects or objects (UFOs). A few were finally frogged — knit-speak for ripping it out — or as the frog says, ribbit, ribbit. The remaining 24 UFOs were sorted into piles on a spectrum of "this can be finished in 30 minutes" to the infinities projects that will stretch into eternity — e.g. the granny square afghan of the 1980s.

This week I finished the 30 minute projects:

A bag that needed lining

A felted bag that needed lining and a button closure

Everyone should spend their days padding hangers . . .

. . .unless they are knitting dishcloths (from a Ravelry pattern). Although in this case I used wool, felted it lightly and made it into  a hot pad instead.

An exercise in learning Domino Knitting that I accepted would never go further. I also threw this into the wash to felt lightly, discovered that the geometric arrangement of attached squares let me sew them into this shape which probably has some topological name. I decided to simply call it my Shetland Artifact since I made it from Jamieson and Smith Shetland wool, bought at the shop in Lerwick when we were there. 

But the next day, this little fellow emerged!

The disastrous coat, knit nearly ten years ago, when I began knitting again.   The sleeves were too long, so I cut them and hemmed them, but it never fit, was too heavy to wear, did not have pockets. Last summer I threw it into a hot wash and a hot dry, and miracle of miracles, it came out as a perfect felted jacket! All it needed was a new button. The old button (see green bag above) was too large for the shrunken buttonhole.

And finally, this week I made marmalade. From organic Seville oranges in the mayonnaise and peanut butter jars. It would have been smart to get some jars before actually cooking up the marmalade. And from some old blood oranges and lemons in the Kilner jars. Now we just have to remember to put marmalade on our toast to use it up.