Wick – Double Diamonds: Week 10, 6 July

Another quiet week has slipped into history, drifting down the stream of time with few events poking above the surface.  One of these was the dress I’d been making, which is a few stitches away from being finished.  When one of the lapels is tacked down to keep it in place becomingly, it will be complete.

Sea View

The fabric for the next project, a lightweight jacket, has been washed and dried.  The fabric for it, a mid-weight tufted denim, immediately caught my eye when I saw it online.  One of my hurdles to jump in this project, was when I found a shortfall of over half a meter in the amount of fabric I had compared to the amount required. Over the past few days I’ve figured out that I bought the fabric to make a different jacket.  Another hurdle was that the fronts on the jacket are cut double, which won’t work with this fabric.  Online reviews mentioned this, and it had puzzled me.  But these reviews also pointed to a way forward – line the jacket with a lighter fabric.  Fortunately, there was the remains of a large cotton sheet from another project in stash.  Lining the jacket should both conserve the outer fabric and simplify construction.

Thorny galaxy

Saturday’s handbells was a whole day practice.  Many of us are going to a ‘handbell symposium’ in Aberdeen at the beginning of August, and got together to practice the ten massed ringing pieces and the ‘entry’ music.  The massed ringing pieces were provided by some of the countries attending – ringers are coming from as far away as Singapore.  The ‘entry’ piece, an arrangement of the Skye Boat Song, will be played by Scottish ringers as the representatives of the various countries progress into the hall.   We practiced nearly all of the pieces, and it was a long and tiring day.

Rosa rugosa

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed from the photo of the gansey that the two stitch markers have been removed.  When I started to pick up the stitches for the second sleeve, I noticed that the adjacent shoulder strap was different to that of the first shoulder.  The patterning matched, but was reversed.  Somehow or other – inattention, I expect – one shoulder strap was worked from the armhole edge to the centre, and the other from the neck edge to the armhole.  The only solution seemed to be to rip back the 2^nd shoulder strap and reknit it.  Fortunately, the 2^nd strap was worked from the neck edge to the armhole, which meant it was a doddle to frog.  The last few rows were left in place because the neck ribbing was already complete.  Serendipitously, the stitch-marked stitches were directly below the frogged shoulder strap, meaning the two offending stitches could be laddered, corrected, and knit back up.  All told, the strap was re-knit during a shift at the museum, and the corrections took another hour or two.  Currently the 2^nd sleeve is well under way, with the gusset just completed.