All At Once

 These are not things that have happened all at once since I posted last night; but I did photograph most of them today. I did in fact sleep in the interim.

I'm not sure what possessed me, lo these many years ago when I was a new spinner, to buy pale bluish-grey roving, though I guess I know why I spun it fat (I was into that for a while as rebellion against all the thin yarn I was spinning prior to that). And I suppose that once I had the yarn, it wasn't all that much effort to knit it up, but I'm pretty sure I didn't wear the resulting cardigan more than once.

The colour is hideous, it's scratchy, and it has a cosy shawl collar - the last two facts do not play well in the same garment.

I guess I haven't knitted at my usual pace in the past year, because I find myself with only two new handspun sweaters, and one of them doesn't fit well, so I probably won't take it to SOAR. One new sweater. The horror.

On the other hand, I have this yarn, doing nothing in the sweater in the box on top of my bookshelf, and I'm pretty sure it'll be easy to undo.

Yup.

 Pretty easy to dye, too.

Easy (of course) to knit, but I leave in less than twenty-four hours and all I have is one sleeve and part of the yoke and an inch and a half of a second sleeve and sitting around in the airport, sitting in a plane, sitting in a shuttle, and probably a day or two before I run out of time, so I could make it.

I'm being optimistic - and why not?

If I finish in time, I have two sweaters (instead of one) in the gallery, and if I don't, I'll have something to do with my hands while not in class.

Win-win, right?

I had to get a new sofa to match the chair I covered.

It's insanely comfortable and I think not hideous. Only problem is the old sofa. I'd thought to store it in my daughter's now-empty room for the day when my son gets his own place and needs furniture, but my hallway is too narrow to slide it to her room, though I suspect that two strong people could carry it, tilted, successfully, but I only have one slightly feeble me, so right now it's not contributing anything positive to the overall decor of my house, though the cats seem to find it quite entertaining.

Speaking of cats, my daughter's cat visited for a few days while my daughter went to New York and had a grand time. The cats? Less so.

The kitten took a couple of days to warm up to me (she went from hissing to purring and presenting me with her belly), but my cats remained freaked out, and my easy-going surfer-dude cat pretty much ate nothing while she was visiting.

By the time the kitten left, all three could stand to be in the same room without hissing (mostly), but it was a somewhat uneasy truce. Two more days and they may well have been playing together though.

Or not.

More than a few years ago I bought some fabric that I thought would have made awesome pants. Perhaps so, but the skirt I made instead is none too shabby either.

It's been worn and vetted.

This is the coat with the melted fabric, now thankfully hidden by a pocket. It looks large and lumpy, but it's in fact a-line in shape. Swingy.

 Back in May in Krakow temperatures were way below the average, and the city was full of inexpensive shawls with adverstised fabric content running the gamut from cotton to silk to cashmere to angora, though I'm pretty sure they were all rayon.

So I bought a shawl which did indeed help mitigate the effects of the cold, but it rubbed against a piece of velcro for a few hours and then it was ruined by a large snaggy, puckered section that I could not fix. I did try.

So I bought another shawl with which I was far more careful, and brought the original shawl home, intending to use it to make a tunic (with sleeves made from some other fabric), and this is the only thing I have started and completed since I posted yesterday, because apparently I do in fact love deadlines, much as I rail against them.

Seems they motivate me. Who knew?