I've had a productive and fun weekend. I slept badly and woke up early on Saturday morning so got up and, wearing my pyjamas and apron, did all my weekend cleaning. By 7.30 I was done and was sitting with a cat, a blanket and a piece of knitting on my lap, with the front door wide open for the fresh, rain in the night air. I took the opportunity to work out the shaping on the long cardigan I'm making for myself, which I got stuck on earlier in the week. The answer came to me in a dream! In my dream I remember picking up the unfinished left front and thinking "Ah ha, it's like raglan shaping". So when I woke up I knew what to do.
At 9.00 Mr Crafty Blueberry woke up so I made a pot of good coffee and we drank it in bed whilst talking and knitting. He's making me a scarf to go with my new red coat and he's become a neat knitter and a competent one, sorting out any little mistakes that crop up. I'm proud and also excited that someone I taught to knit is making something especially for me.
Once I'd worked out the cardigan shaping I finished off the left front but remain baffled by it; the shoulder shaping is like nothing I've ever seen and I don't understand why it's the way it is. I'm trying to trust that all will become clear when it comes to sewing all the pieces together...but I'm not so sure. I would have taken a picture of it to post here at this point but it's irritated me so I'm ignoring it for a couple of days. So let's just pretend that I have posted a pic here and that it looks baffling.
As well as the cardigan I made good progress on a pair of socks for my niece's birthday in a couple of weeks, finishing the first one and casting on the second. I worked furiously on the boarder of the granny square blanket (one week until our holiday and I want it finished for chilly evenings in the caravan) and also made a tea cosy. I didn't need to make a tea cosy - it's a Christmas present - but I had the idea for adapting a design in my head and had to make it. It's knit in chunky yarn so it knit up in a couple hours. Now I need to put it on a teapot to make sure it fits before sewing it up and embellishing it.
Further productivity came in the form of de-cluttering. I got rid of another foot high stack of magazines and a couple of feet of dvds, cds and books. Most of them, along with the knitting magazines, will go to a charity shop, but I've got a few to sell. I also cleared the pin board of all the out of date leaflets, coupons for things we'll never buy and masses of takeaway leaflets that we never use. After that I pulled out the overflowing medical box (ok, the big biscuit tin with all our paracetamol and stuff in) and chucked out all the out of date things, of which there were a worryingly large amount. Then I cleared off the top of the microwave (why were there so many tools on top of it?) so I'd have somewhere to keep my snazzy recipe box and the bread. We live in a small house with a tiny kitchen so finding space for such things as a loaf of bread and the kettle takes the skill of one hundred dedicated Tetris players. I don't have this skill but I'm attempting to learn it.
Today was a far more chilled out affair. I sat in bed and worked on the granny blanket for absolutely ages whilst it chucked it down outside. We went to Manchester in the afternoon so I scored ample sock knitting time on the way there and back. Sometimes I love not being able to drive.
And finally, I picked these wee little sweet tomatoes from the plants growing by my front door, which are fruiting extravagantly now that Autumn's arrived. They've taken an age to ripen and I was worrying they never would, but it turns out they were just teasing me.
Naughty little teasing tomatoes.