Well seriously

Interspersed with fetching and carrying for Joe (still feeling rather rugged, but at least adjusting somewhat to his circumstances) I managed to have a lovely visit with one of my favourite knitters. Much beloved That Laurie made her way to Toronto for a funeral, and while the cirucumstances of her flight northward were unfortuanate, the time together was anything but. I made it my personal mission to make sure she got a good dose of fibre while she was here. I took her to Romni and Lettuce Knit (and the Big Fat Burrito, that Toronto knit night institution) and we drank coffee and had a grand catching up.

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She let me try on a single quviut handwarmer that was the most beautiful thing ever. She had a pair but wisely only let me put on one, suspecting, in her brilliance, that if she let me put on both I would have pilfered them in a heartbeat. (I’d have a picture, but I couldn’t work my camera and keep rubbing my hands together.) We had a wonderful, wonderful day, and as always, one of the best parts of being with That Laurie was what she was wearing.

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This time it was the Celtic Lattice Vest (from Cherl Oberle’s Folk Vests) which is a total stunner worked in the two colours the pattern calls for..but That Laurie, being the dye and spin brainiac she is was totally over the top. That Laurie dyed the roving in her own fantastical rainbow way (remember – she did some guest posts her on how she does it? Links here, here, here and here.) and then spun it to preserve the changes and worked it in the vest against her own dark brown handspun.

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(There’s a ravelry link to her page about this project here.) It’s gorgeous. Simply gobsmackingly gorgeous.

Then the wonder dyer/spinner/knitter left me and I returned home to keep working on the Flow tank (Norah Gaughan Berroco book 2) only to reach the armholes and discover that I have made a mistake. A huge mistake. Here the whole thing was, bustling along at a great pace and I got to the armhole shaping and did as Norah said. It is worth noting here, that I did do what Norah said, and that Norah did not make any mistakes. That said…. it didn’t work.

The instructions called for a proscribed prescribed (that’s a very funny typo) series of decreases, which I worked, and then said to work straight after that until I had 3 inches. When I finished those decreases though, I already had 4 inches, which makes it very hard to work straight to 3, if you know what I mean.

Very maturely, I decided to curse a blue streak and keep knitting, in the fond hopes that the entire problem would go away, which…big surprise, it didn’t. Rat Bastard. I have a feeling that there are two words at fault here (Honk if you HATE ROW GAUGE) and that the whole thing is going to need to be reworked, ripped back or snipped into bits and eaten.

When I wake up tomorrow, I want to be That Laurie.

(PS. Romni has lots of copies of Patons Street Smart on the floor in a box at the bottom left of the book wall.)