Remember those essays we used to have to write the first week back in school -- "what I did on my summer vacation"? Well, here's what I did the first week of summer:
That's right, I stained 4x4's, 33 of them, with two coats of oil-based stain. The second coat went on 1 - 2 hours after the first for maximum penetration into the wood. It was a real pain in the *** working down low like that, but I did not have enough room on the sawhorses for all of the beams.
And yes, I DID finish a knitting project! Aiko is done. Here she is sunning herself on the newly painted (and dried) lumber:
Now there was a small problem with Aiko, namely that I did not really like the neckline when I finished it. As you can see in the original pattern Aiko sweater the neckline is kind of a wide mock neck, meant to frame the face but not hug the neckline. Well I should have realized from the artful photo, that they couldn't get the neckline to hang so nicely. The model probably has a bunch of knitting pinned up behind her neck. Either that or she has a much wider neck than I do. If I had been thinking when I read the pattern I would have realized that 8 inches wide across the neckline is too wide for me. I may not have narrow shoulders but either I have a narrow neck or they design patterns way too big. Usually 6-7 inches across the neckline is all I want. I should have adapted the pattern for less width and perhaps a liitle more depth if I needed extra room to pull it over my head.
I ripped and redid the neck as a close-fitting turtle
which did not work because the neckline edge was still too wide and I thought it looked funny. Then I went back to the original design and just picked up the stitches and knit the ribbing straight up, making it a little longer than suggested, and going up one needle size at the halfway point so I could turn the collar over.
I actually like it this way, with the collar folded down and I like the way it sits just off my collar-bone, framing the face.
It is too hot to wear heavy cashmere today so this is all you get to see. The only reason I could tolerate this photo was that I just came out of the pool and my hair was wet (personal air-conditioning) and I went right back in the pool as soon as I got this hot thing off.
I am progressing on my other projects. Bettina has been put together and I just need to crochet the edges. I might do that tonight. I have been working on other things today, cutting out a bunch of sewing projects, but if I get tired of that I might go back to knitting.
Wine&Roses is still on Matilda. I think I will weave in the ends with her on the dressform. At the moment I am going to leave the fringe along the front edge, because I really like it there, and try to think of a way to incorporate the fringe into the front band. I haven't really addressed what I am going to do about the front band anyway.
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