367 days ago Don** tested positive for COVID.^^

1 day ago Don tested positive for COVID again.

He’s feeling pretty poorly, but much better than that first time. And is currently in bed watching a calculus lecture. No, I don’t understand why either.

And we we’re only just talking about getting our 5th dose of vaccine ahead of winter.

I’m so far testing negative. Joe/Frank is also testing negative, but he is away and has had minimal exposure.

Hopefully I remain unscathed. Or that it does not take me a week to catch it in an awful repeat of last year.

♥

** and Joe/Frank

^^ feels so very much longer

casting a long shadow

Autumn might finally be upon us!

We enjoyed some cooler weather today after an unpleasantly hot and very humid March. The air felt almost crisp.

It’s wildly exciting!

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As part of ThePalace(OfLove) Improvement Program, we’re replacing our two remaining ancient and horribly inefficient air-conditioners. This is wildly exciting and hopefully will result in a reduction in cooling and heating bills.

Ahead of the installation we needed to move two cupboards so the installers could gain better access. We’d not had any reason to move these cupboards for years and years and it was a bit of an undertaking to unpack everything.

When they were unloaded and we slid them out of the way, along with an embarrassing amount of dust, we discovered …

The missing piece from the 2016 Xmas puzzle!

♥

I’d never tried kitchener stitch before today, but I was really surprised at how simple it was after following this excellent VeryPink Knits tutorial

My practice yarn is quite splitty – good to know** – and result a little (lot) messy, but a really satisfying first effort! It’s like magic.

I definitely feel confident taking my newly acquired provisional cast on and grafting skills into a project. Jogless stripes in the round are next!

Possibly another replacement item for the 60before60 list – tackle those crafting techniques I’ve been avoiding.

♥

** I was considering buying this brand for the cowl, now I won’t.

Why yes, I am mending a 14(ish) year old tea-towel.

I my defence, it dries dishes very well.

♥

Now that I’m all enthusiastic about knitting again I’ve been considering the rayures cowl for my next knitting project. It’s been in my ravelry favourites for years and 900+ other knitters surely can’t be wrong.

But before I invest in yarn I sensibly decided that I should familiarise myself with two of the called for techniques that I hadn’t used before – lest I loathe them or find them impossible to execute.

So this afternoon I grabbed some scraps of yarn and learned a provisional cast on using this tutorial.

It was delightfully straightforward with my 15 practice stitches. Hopefully it is equally as straightforward at scale!

Tomorrow I attack grafting two live ends together.

♥

Last weekend Don and I were back to the pottery studio for trimming.

When you first throw your pot, it’s a cylindrical(ish) shape and flat at the bottom. You let it try to leather hardness for a couple of weeks and put it back on the wheel to trim down the excess clay at the base and carve out a foot-ring. Don likened the process to sculpting, which is a pretty good description.

With all the action going on it’s very easy to forget to take progress shots, but I did grab a couple.

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Don’s absolutely magnificent pot. Brilliant first effort.

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Mine. You can carve out quite a bit if you’ve left a chonky base. I’m quite pleased with the transformation.

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Ready for bisque firing!

Don’s at top, mine at bottom.

I don’t know why my pots are invariably fairly small when we start with the same amount of clay.

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We’re back in a few weeks for glazing, and then we’re done!

I’m almost (almost) tempted to return to throw a few more and finally defeat pulling, which is my nemesis.

Almost.

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Another finish!

Still needs blocking of course, but very pleasing result. Both cowls knitted up quite quickly and were a fun knit.

The cream cowl was already pushing the boundaries of sensible length so I didn’t do the second lot of pattern repeats on the blue, lest I end up with something resembling a beautiful, snuggly, squishy, cabled sleeping bag.

I still have the knitting urge, but don’t have any yarn kicking about to start anything new. I was in the store yesterday trying to make decisions on colour combinations for a new project, but couldn’t settle on anything.

Unless I am unable to resist the siren song and go to a yarn store tomorrow or Sunday, it will be on to other projects until mid-next week.

♥

Don left this afternoon for a weekend golf trip to exotic southern locales.

When he was away on a similar trip last year I packed the weekend full of projects and activities.

This time … my energy levels are quite different and ideally the weekend will comprise a ton of quiet and rest.

I say this every week, but I’m still utterly astonished at how exhausted I am after 3 consecutive days in the office.

♥

Recently Don decided he’d had enough of knee, ankle and foot pain after a round of golf or a long walk and sought out a new physio and podiatrist.

He’s had such excellent results that I’ve made an appointment with his physio for Friday morning to chat about my long standing ankle saga.

Before my visit, I plan to make a long list of what I’ve spent way-too-many dollars discovering it isn’t.

My real and perhaps delusional hope is that there is something rehabby that will get me running. But even discussing a plan to claw back some fitness would be wonderful.

♥