snow

All the things:

Selling the car (now on Autotrader)
New solar panels being fitted (April 6th)
Heat pump being fitted (before decorating)
Decorator coming to quote – and that will involve new carpet, curtains and upholstery afterwards
Specsavers have cocked up my glasses one time too many so have an appointment with Vision Express next week (that’s the short version!)
Clearing out loads of stuff so getting it ready for Freecycle and/or the tip (recycling centre)
New dentist – first appointment last week, appointment for a filling for me made
Getting a man to quote for a network cable round the outside of the house
Four new tops ordered from Weird Fish’s sale (that’s exciting rather than worrying!)

I have had to write it down in a list in my “list book” so I don’t have to carry it all in my head.

Now it’s written down it’s slightly less intimidating, and I can cross things off as I go.

Anyhoo. Last weekend we went to near Guildford in Surrey to stay with ES and his wife. It was lovely. They went to great trouble to make sure I could eat (I’m a real pain to feed what with the IBS/dairy intolerance etc) and their house (part of a converted barn) is wonderful. The setting is beautiful too. We hired an electric car to make sure we’d have the range to get there, and that worked really well.

View at the back of the house. That’s hubby, right there.

The day before we travelled down, we had snow. Not what you’d call heavy snow if you lived in, say, Canada, but heavy for us. I was worried our little daffodils’ stems would be broken, but no! phew.

The printer has now decided it will print stuff. Thankfully.

The jumper which needed mending arrived, I sorted out what needed to be done, undid what needed to be undone, and fixed it. I have learned two things from this. One is to make sure I always pick up all of the stitches for the neck, and the other is to always make a note of what size needles I’ve used! I knit very tightly so always use a bigger size needle. On DK, that’s easy, I just use 4.5mm for the body and 3.75 or 4mm for the welts. But this is Aran, and Bergere de France to boot, so I wasn’t sure. The neck wasn’t so critical, because it’s all one piece, but the sleeve . . . I really needed to be sure I wasn’t going to spoil the look with a sudden change of tension. I looked everywhere. Ravelry (hadn’t made a note on the “project”), the actual pattern (nope), and decided I’d just give it a go with size 5mm for the neck and 6mm for the sleeve and check after a couple of rows. Luckily I guessed right, but have made a note on the pattern now!

The best representation of the actual colour is the first one below on the left. It’s the top of the sleeve. I think LCS caught it on something and just yanked, and then picked at it a bit. The picture on the right shows I clearly missed a stitch on the neck.

Neck taken down, stitches on holders. Sleeve removed, 16 rows frogged, stitches on holder.

All back together again, as good as new.

Being collected by postie tomorrow for delivery to grandson. Phew. An interesting little job. I had to be very careful not to snip the wrong thread . . . and I managed not to. I can pick up one stitch at a time from several rows down, so that was lucky. The hole in the sleeve – well, the yarn was broken in three places. I checked all my finishing off and that seemed ok, and I tend not to do knots in the middle of a row – for this very reason! So some learning, and some vindication, and all in all I’m very pleased with it. Grandson loves this jumper, and he’s very particular about clothes, so it was important for both of us that it was fixable.

Also, here is a picture of our 11 year old cat, who was very, very wary of the snow but has decided it doesn’t hurt, it’s just a bit cold on the old paws.