Bits and Ends

Mostly clean dishes, mostly clean laundry, the spouse employed ... not a bad weekend overall. A bit snorfly, as the Viking brought home a cold from work (silly man. Bring home dinner, bring home flowers, bring home a kitten ... don't bring me your germs!) but I started sucking on the zinc lozenges as soon as he came down with it, and that seems to have helped.

Or at least I've been more feverish and snorfly in the past. And since the Viking himself was legitimately unwell all last week, and the person he thinks he got it from (a patient at work) was hospitalised, I don't suppose I have much to complain about. Still, I could have done without it.

What with the snorfles, and the garden being mostly in, I limited my outdoor hobbitsing to being pleased that the Rosa Mundi and Zephirine Drouhin had opened blossoms (Zephirine is the most amazing shade of deep candy pink, and if I can, in time, coax her up the fence and get her to hold hands with la comtesse the silvery-pink clematis, they should look stunning together). Veilchenblau is full of buds but hasn't opened up quite yet. Iceberg and Gru� an Aachen are on the verge of a really good show.

I did a bit of knitting; I've promised myself I will absolutely finish two projects on the needles before I start anything new. Neither project is terribly difficult, and both are at least half done, but I'm sometimes distressingly bad about finishing things, and since I have a couple of things I'm eager to start, holding those projects for ransom until I finish the current two might be the only way forward. Two rows a night, two rows a night ...

One of the things I want to knit is the 1940s Weldon's Fair Isle Cap from the V&A's knitting site. Not the gloves, though, the stripy fingers make my eyes hurt, and I'm swapping colours since two shades of yellow, blue and red are not my preferred hues. I've got some of Knitpick's Palette line in 2 shades of purple, grey, and black, so I will probably use that.

(I've been happy with Knitpick's yarns, by the way. They're so cheap I half expected them to be terrible, but they're actually very nice, very pettable).

I'm also trying to work out what to do with the 20 balls of raspberry pink Jaeger 3-ply which emerged from Grandmaman's storage locker in a cloud of moth ball dust. It's lovely merino yarn, about a fingering weight, and with 20 1-ounce balls I have enough to do a couple of projects. I'm thinking about doing the Viennese Shrug from last summer's Interweave Knits as one possibility. Or a shawl of some kind. Or possibly a bit of both. I have a lot of yarn to work with.

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