Hair of the Dog

Last week, my Stitch 'n Bitch page-a-day calendar (a very thoughtful and cool present from GK) offered this knit bit: "An old superstition says that knitting one of your hairs into the garment will forever bind the recipient to you" (9/6/07). If that's true, then anyone I've knitted for in the past 5 years must be forever bound to Katie, because her dog hairs get into just about everything--including wet paint, which there is no shortage of around here these days.

A few months ago when A. and I decided to save some money on our remodeling project by doing the painting ourselves, it seemed like a good idea. Now that we have to actually do it? Not so much. But this weekend I started things off by bravely painting one (very expensive) pocket door. And I learned a few things in the process:

1. Having the right tools is key (I did, thanks to A).
2. Having to stop and pick bugs out of the wet paint really slows things down.
3. I could never be on one of those DIY shows where you make over a room in a weekend, because even with no bugs I'm the slowest painter ever.

Katie was eager to "help" by following me around with her tennis ball and offering to chase it.

I did do a little knitting over the weekend, but not much. Here is the beginning of Dashing (from Knitty Spring 2007).The yarn I'm using, Crystal Palace Aran, is bulkier than the Gedifra English Tweed called for (and which I wanted to use, but had trouble finding). But on size 7 DPNs, it's close except that I get 7 rows per inch instead of 8, which is the right gage. SO I'm going to see what happens if I do fewer rows for each section of the pattern. The cuff, for example, is supposed to be 18 rows of ribbing--about 2 1/2 inches. So I'll try 15 rows instead. Not sure yet what I'll do when I get to the cables, which are 10 row repeats (cable row + 9 ribbing rows). I'm having a little trouble keeping even tension on the cable rows, and I'm not sure why. I've never had this problem before with cables.

The piece of fabric in the background above was an impulse buy last week when I also, impulsively, signed up for a quilting class. I'm a little nervous about this because I don't really know how to sew.

:O