Hiatus

Officially we are still in the midst of renovations even though our builder has taken - with our knowledge and approval - a hiatus and won't return for another three weeks or so. (By my calculations this means we'll be in a super muddle right on Christmas.) Neither room is fully complete: both are waiting on doors of one kind or another, and DH has to sand and seal and paint the existing doors to both rooms.

He has made a start and had a little helper yesterday:

Her older sisters preferred to spend time with two of their uncles:

So while DH sanded and painted, and Sons#4 and #5 played games, I was also productive. One finished square of my Sediment Scrap Blanket has been patiently waiting for far too long to have the ends woven in and so I decided to attack this task as it's not one that requires a lot of concentration. To my surprise, I finished this square and also managed to weave in all the ends on the other three unfinished squares. I'll still have more to do once I've finished knitting but at least the task won't be so daunting.

I think I have been traumatised by past experiences of using a darning needle to weave in all the ends but after discovering last time how easy a crochet hook makes the whole process, I once again used a crochet hook. Done this way it is actually quite a restful and pleasant pastime.

While engaged in this task I had plenty of time to think and realised I've not shared how I join new yarn in when knitting these blankets. The original instructions say to simply knot the two yarns together but I wasn't comfortable with this idea. Instead I knit until I have about 15cm/6" of yarn left. I then take the tail of the yarn and wrap it around the needle with the other yarns. For these blankets I knit with three balls of wool, so now there are four strands around the needle rather than three.

I knit several stitches with the four strands. A loop is formed, and into this loop I insert the new yarn and leave a tail about 10cm/4" long. I continue knitting. At some point, the loop gets knitted in and I find myself knitting with the new yarn. I continue knitting for several stitches before dropping the tail and returning to working with three strands again.

I suspect my explanation is about as clear as mud and my photos are little better. (Do you know how hard it is to take photos and knit at the same time?) However, all in all, it was a good afternoon's work and gave me something to think about other than unfinished renovations, a garden that flourishes despite numerous attempts by the tradies to trample everything, and the fact that we were far away from Son#3 on his birthday (but at least we got to spend last weekend with him).