It’s been yet another quiet week, and I’ve barely been out of the house. This is mostly the weather, and indolence. Most of the week, rain has been forecast, and most of the week, the forecast has been correct. I’ve been staying indoors to avoid it, as being caught in a downpour and slogging home soaking wet is just not my thing.
Approaching Storm cell
I did slip between the showers to walk into town for my regular hearing test. I started having one yearly when I didn’t have anyone at home to tell me how deaf I was. The good news is that my hearing has barely changed since last year, and the measured change may be due to annoying static on the headphones.
A new mis-spelling
On Thursday, instead of going to the museum, I went down to Inverness for the day to take the car for its first year service. One of the other volunteers from my museum shift came along, as she coincidentally had an appointment at the hospital the same day. We were lucky with both the weather and the traffic, with no rain to speak of and no slow vehicles. I trudged around town window-shopping while she went to her appointment. Then we ran into each other, twice, just when we needed to liaise. The car was ready mid-afternoon, with no work necessary, and we were home by 5 p.m.
Rosebud in June
I’d taken the gansey with me to Inverness, hoping to sit somewhere quiet for a while and knit. Alas, this didn’t happen. Despite this, there’s been good progress. The front is now complete, and the first shoulder strap has been started. The last rows of the shoulders were the set-up rows for the strap, when the stitches were decreased by 1 st in 4. Otherwise, there are too many rows in the strap. The reasoning goes like this: each stitch on the body will have two rows of the strap associated with it. By decreasing the body, the number of rows on the strap is reduced. Say, for example, you have a 4” wide shoulder and a gauge of 8 sts and 12 rw per inch. This would give you 32sts for each shoulder (one front and one back), and 48 rws on the strap. However, as you will be knitting two rows of strap for each stitch of the body, you will have 64 rows over your 4”. If you decrease the last row of the body to 24 sts, hey presto, you will have 48 rows, which is exactly what you want. Too many rows on the strap causes the shoulders to widen.
Kitchen still life
Unfortunately, as the gansey lay one the floor ready for its photos, I spotted one small mistake and one really obvious one. Most of the strap has now been ripped out, and the next step is to ladder two stitches down about 8” and reknit them back up. But even though it will be tedious, it’ll take less time than re-knitting the whole front yoke.
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