Wednesday, April 8, 2020

This Week

During this hard week, the world turns toward Spring. The daffodils bloom and the grass grows. The tulips and iris send up green spears. Easter and Passover will be celebrated. Yesterday was a gloriously warm day. My husband mowed for the first time this season as I cleaned out the herb garden. Cutting back last year's lavender, sage, and oregano, I caught the scent of summer and what I hope will be better days.

My knitting is much the same and I am not complaining. I finished the last baby hat. This week I added a couple of lace sections to Kate's shawl. Last night I tinked back two rows to correct a mistake while listening to an On Being podcast. The fix was relatively simple and predictable. I love the perfect patterns of lace so I was happy to take out the rows.


I don't know if you can see it, but this needle is quite springy. It's an old Addi that has been stored in the packaging for quite awhile. If anyone has a remedy that relaxes the cable, I'd love to hear from you. Once I noticed a local yarn shop owner stored circular needles in a fabric case supported on a wire clothes hanger. The needles slid through fabric sleeves with tips hanging from either side. I imagine gravity kept the cables from becoming springy. However it was messy looking and the needles weren't labeled by size although I suppose that problem could be solved with a permanent marker. Any ideas?

I finished Virginia Woolf's, A Writer's Diary. Her comments about own reading and her contemporary writers are interesting. She also often wrote about being "headache - y." I know about bad headaches and am thankful mine aren't terribly frequent and can be treated with modern meds. Woolf lived through World War One and died in 1941. During the early years of WWII, the Woolf home in London was bombed. The couple also dodged bombs at a home outside of London. Of course they were fortunate to have somewhere else to live but watching a second world war develop and having bad headaches without modern medicine must have felt overwhelming. Those things combined with other health concerns, briefly noted now and then, must have become unbearable. All of this gives me a better understanding of her life and death. Sometime soon I am going to read one of her novels and pair it with diary entries about the specific book.

In lighter reading, Jonah and I read Kitten's First Full Moon in honor of the last night's spectacular full moon. My daughter took the three boys out to look at the moon and we looked at it here at the same time. It was a sweet moment.

I am linking with Kat and the Unravelers this week. Thank you to the emergency responders, the medical personnel, the grocery store and drug store staffs, and everyone else who keeps this upside down world from unraveling.  I hope you are safe and that Spring brings you comfort and peace.






9 comments:

  1. I'm trying to imagine the lovely combination of lavender, sage, and oregano scents! I don't know if it will help, but when I used many of my grandmother's older circular needles. They had stiff, springy cables and I used to have to dip the cable in a pot of boiling water for ~10 seconds or so. That usually straightened them out for a while, but it would mean removing your shawl from the needles to do that. I'm glad to hear about your book/full moon synchronicity. It was cloudy here so all I could see was a faint glow. Oh, well, I have a good imagination.

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  2. I was out trimming my lavender this week too. It's coming back very nicely.

    Hope you have a good rest of the week.

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  3. Lovely knitting! (and heat works - so perhaps leaving the knitting and the needles in a sunny window? A hairdryer perhaps in a pinch?)

    Steve mowed here also this week (it was well over due, oy!) and I also smelled summer when I was digging in the dirt doing a bit of weeding!

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  4. Hmmm, I have that same issue with some of my older circular needles (ones that were my Mom's). I think I'll try Bonny's recommendation of dipping them in boiling water! I get frusstrated easily when they kink up. I did some garden chores this week (weeding), and the rains we have been getting smell like Spring rains. A great scent.

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  5. I second the idea of using boiling water -- or even hold the cables over some steam, either from the kettle or something boiling on the stove -- and then letting them hang loose over something. I've found that Addis will eventually relax, but some cheaper needles sometimes don't.

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  6. The knitting is lovely, Jane, as is imagining you clearing those herbs ... I can almost smell the sage and lavender. (and nothing to add about relaxing the Addi cables ... hope one of these ideas worked for you!)

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  7. I used to have one of those "hanger-caddies" for my circular needles. I purchased it from a knitting store (somewhere). It was just as you describe, but mine had printed sizes on the "pockets." It did work to get rid of the "springiness" in the cables, but I hated that thing! I don't use it anymore, and must have gotten rid of it somewhere along the way. When my needles are particularly coiled, I do use the boiling water method, which helps a bit. :-)

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  8. I am heading out to cut back my herbs today. I do love those scents. I find circular needle storage to be an ongoing problem. I have a lot of cables and interchangeable tips and store them in a case I bought at a yarn shop. My tips go into pockets and the cables in a zipper section.

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  9. I think what Bonny said is the remedy. Lovely knitting and isn't spring just that more joyful since we are focused on nature more than ever? My walks are my daily outings and I love them. Happy Easter.

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