Cimorene

I got the brilliant idea to knit wool socks with cats for Christmas for every adult in my wife's family (2 brothers, 2 SILs, 5 niblings). First pair were accidentally okay, but I just spent a week making a second pair all the way to cutting the yarn and starting to weave in ends when I realized they were too fucked up (I didn't have enough short rows in the heel, so instead of a 90° angle between the foot and leg it was more like 130° and the extra fabric was bunched up on top of the foot) and had to unravel them all the way. I don't know whether to try again immediately or make some for myself or Wax first so I can have a win. Very humbling.

I have also (successfully) knitted two sweaters for myself since my dad died, both stashbusting! (Yay! But it turns out the stash still doesn't fit in our barrister case even though it's like six feet tall, and even now that there's not enough of any one yarn to make another sweater.)



First I made this natural wool sweater (from the Stripe Hype Sweater pattern by Veronika Lindberg). This is from a batch of undyed lanolin-in wool that we bought at a local sheep farm two Easters ago (although I had to add stripes of the leftovers from my Stentorp fair isle vest because it turned out we only bought 700m; now there's a bunch of it left in several colors, though I think not quite enough for another whole sweater).

Then I made this chartreuse sweatshirt (from the Marseille sweater pattern by PetiteKnit). I unraveled a merino cardigan I had made several years ago (cat snag damage & wouldn't stay buttoned at the top button), washed the yarn, discarded the messed up bits, and bought a little more to make contrast stripes.

It's not really quite cold enough yet to wear either of these inside without having to pull it off and on alternately several times an hour. It's just the season for them outside!... Except it's also VERY windy. Also not cold enough for my wool socks.

Wax wanted to buy a 60 cm square of glass and trim it to size ourselves (our pane is about 55 by 32 cm). We both did lots of web searching yesterday, and she drove to a different suburb of Turku (Lieto), ten minutes in the wrong direction, because the branch of the hardware store on the way home didn't have glass in stock.

So apparently it's semi-normal to use hand tools to trim sheets of glass for things like building greenhouses (as well as the work of stained-glass artists). There are specially hardened cutters that you use with a straightedge to score a line, after dipping in oil for lubrication. Then you turn the sheet upside down, brace it on the table edge, and gently but firmly tap the back to break it. I guess this sounds doable but still intimidating.

The cutter was less than 10€, and the glass was 30€. But NO hardware stores around here have glasscutting oil and all the online glass stores that sell it don't say what it is on the page, they just display a long list of warnings. Finally a separate search informed me that glasscutting oil formulas are all slightly different patented mixes formulated for precise viscosity. Vegetable oils are too thick, it says. The only single substitute suggested was kerosene, which was what people used to use before glasscutting oil. It has a good viscosity etc, and is deprecated because it's dangerous and super flammable.

Kerosene is easy to obtain, anyway, right?

waxjism wouldn't buy it because you can only buy it in big containers, which would be bad because it's dangerous to store and dangerous to dispose of, and we would have no other use for it.

If we can't find a small container of it, we will order the glasscutting oil online, I guess.

My aunts and my grandmother before them have been making stained glass art as a hobby for decades, and now I'm really wishing I had asked for a lesson or two. I could also really use a craft room. There is not a good place in our house for stripping this window frame.

So, did you know that windows (at least in Finland) can just be a sort of... flat panel that's friction fitted into the frame, with nothing holding them in place at all?

Well! I didn't!

i. The Prelude.

Most of the windows in our house are casements that open like little doors with hinges on one side (or rather, most of them have one casement next to a big pane that doesn't open). Upstairs in our house, the attic level, there are big wide windows positioned centrally under the peak of the roof on both the east and west faces of the house (the gable ends), and then on each side of each of these, under the eaves, there are sort of miniature single-pane windows as well. Of these four little mini windows, the SE and SW ones are in the unconditioned attic space; the NE one is next to the head of the bed, and the NW one is in the library (Wax's WFH office). The mini window at the head of the bed is opened and closed frequently, for ventilation and rain and cold; as the house is from 1950, the windows are all double glazed, but the inner window opens inward on its hinges and then the outer one opens outward on its separate hinges. In the summer, we remove the inner windows for all the windows which we frequently keep open (lift them off their hinges) for easier opening and closing of the outer ones. And the mini window by the head of the bed has a slightly different hardware for holding it open and closed than the big ones; it only needs one latch for holding it closed and one latch for holding it open.


ii. Act One.

When Wax's aunt was coming to visit this summer, and Wax was at work, and I was furiously and industriously cleaning the house before the beloved aunt's visit, I got the idea to open the mini window in the library, which is at the foot of the guest bed, for ventilation. I was convinced that it had been opened many times (this wasn't true), so I just pried at it until the inner window came off - not off of hinges like the NE window, just popped out of the opening. "Wow, another example of very sloppy and careless housebuilding!" I thought.

But with the inner window off, I could see that the outer window had the one little latch at the right that the bedroom mini window has, so I pushed on it. It was stuck tight, but I thought it was just stuck, and hit the edge of the frame carefully with a hammer over a folded towel until it opened a crack. Only then it didn't open any more, and I could see that the reason it was sticking was that somebody, at some point, had STAPLED a bunch of thin plastic over the outer edge of the window, the face that was wedged into the window frame. So that's when I realized that this window had NOT in fact been opened since we moved there, and decided to close it again. I pulled on the latch to close it as violently as I am able, and it didn't close all the way, but it did close enough so there was only a thin crack left. And it was the middle of summer, so that wasn't an issue at that time.


iii. Act Two.

Yesterday Wax finally got switched back from only working in the office to 50% WFH again (yay!), starting immediately. Today. She plugged in her computer late last night and started working early this morning without taking full stock of the window situation (stuck open a crack) or the temperature situation (about 15°). So it wasn't until she finished work for the evening that we could tackle the window.

Wax edged between the bookshelves and the seaman's chest, leaning forward and around the massive hoya carnosa which stands at the window on a wooden plant stand in a very heavy ceramic pot with its tendrils twisted around the bookshelf, the hanging light, and the curtain rod on the big window. She did not have firmly planted feet, she did not have a good center of balance, and she could not clearly see what she was doing, is my point. She started trying to just tug the window closed. That didn't really work. She noticed the stapled on plastic I had told her about. Then I guess she... pushed instead of pulling? And just threw the window... out the window.

There was a popping noise and then a tinkle of breaking glass. "It didn't have any hinges!" she said. "We're too stupid to own a house," we mourned. We stuck the inner window back in place (or rather, just sort of set it in place, since there's nothing to hold it there since it has no hardware attached to it at all, it's just a rectangle of glass in a wooden frame) to keep the rain out and went downstairs.

As soon as we walked out the door, it started raining on us, and when we got to the bed of flowers under the window, we found that the window had somehow landed on a vent pipe coming out of the side of the addition and stuck on it, well above my head, so I could not possibly lift it off, but the ground slopes down so it's not going to be easy to even get a ladder there. It also broke a chunk of asbestos shingle off the addition while it was at it! (So in that sense I guess it's good that it was raining???) We picked up the loose glass from the ground and got ready to trudge sadly back inside when I looked up and saw Tristana's tiny face sticking out of the hole in the wall. Then she stuck her whole head and shoulders out, and given that she's tiny and fearless, clumsy, and not very smart, I panicked with the fear that she would fall out of the window. Apparently the inner window had just fallen back out as soon as we left. (It was caught between the wall and the plant pot and unharmed.) We taped it up with blue painter's tape for the time being. (Tristana didn't fall out the window. She came when I called - from inside - and then, due to being excited about us moving furniture and windows around, started yowling and zooming around the house.)


iv. Act Three.

I guess that will be whatever happens when we try to retrieve the window frame, reglaze it, and cover the hole in the wall with whatever kind of weatherproofing we can manage, since Wax has to work 50% of this winter just out of arm's reach of the tiny NW window. I didn't want to end the post after two acts, though, because that just seems like bad dramatic structure.

Sent the passport application off last week with no problems.

Waiting now. No date has been set for the memorial yet. We haven't talked about buying tickets.

Feeling weird, a little surreal at times, kind of behind myself - that sounds like it's describing dissociation, but I don't think I'm dissociating - at least not normally. On the contrary, I've been ruminating on my dad almost constantly (in between reading, which I do compulsively when upset). But I don't feel up to tasks like deciding what to cook and timing it when Wax gets home, like I did the week before. Or like scrubbing things. I did do some laundry last week, but I forgot it in the machine two days in a row.

He had texted me yesterday in our conversation about antique sf. He was coherent as usual, but my sister says he was cold yesterday and tired, and those were normal signs of building infection for him. ( Read more... )

I've started watching some of Columbo after seeing many posts about it on Tumblr. Season one is from 1971. I'm not saying the writing is bad or anything, but my favorite parts are -

1. light fixtures


2. everything else about the interior sets


3. bell bottoms


4. everything else about the clothes


5. cars


6. hair


7. waterphone, sinister piano chords, and other soundtrack


8. the stories and filmmaking techniques

Puppy sitting

Luci the Havanese dog was here over the weekend, but I only got one nice long walk in the sun with her because the weather didn't cooperate. Our niece has been delivered to Sweden and is settling in and starting to cook badly, and her parents came back and picked up the dog very late last night. Tristana refused to sleep in the bed when the dog was there this time, even though the last few times we had the dog here, she came back after the first night! I had to endure 3 nights without a cat to cuddle, which is incredibly rough and makes it hard to sleep (the dog sleeps by my feet or in the dog bed on the bed, so she does not substitute for a cat). We changed all the dog-contaminated sheets last night and I started washing the sofa covers she lay on today.

Remaking sweaters

I finished unraveling my chartreuse grandpa cardigan in dk-weight merino, and for the first time after frogging I wound the balls of yarn into skeins on the swift and washed them thoroughly. Now they've dried (that was really fun and made me feel like I was reenacting something, twisting the skeins and hanging them to dry in the sun) I've started winding them back into cakes for re-knitting. I needed to wash the yarn, because the sweater was worn a lot, and this way it is also no longer crimped like ramen noodles. I only finished half the cakes today, though. After I have them all I can weigh it to find out how many meters I have left (I had to snip threads and discard various parts a bit more this time). If there's not enough to make a whole oversized pullover, I will add another color and make a striped one. But I will not be remaking the long grandpa cardigan yet, and when I do it will definitely be in a proper wool this time, not merino. It will have slit pockets and a double knit button band, and a higher v-neck as well.

My experience has convinced me that dk-weight merino is just too functionally inferior to regular woolly wool in too many ways, and I'll probably not be making any more sweaters out of it, but it does have the benefit of softness. (And it baffles and irritates me how popular it is on ravelry!!) It makes a nice sweatshirt for lounging around with pajamas, as long as you can compensate for the fact that the ribbing isn't properly elastic and give the shoulders a solid seam to prevent the weight of the fabric from dragging it down and stretching the hell out of the neck. I tried to compensate for that in my 2nd to last house sweater attempt with a turtleneck and very fitted slim sleeves, but the turtleneck turned out to be too warm for me to wear, even lounging, except at the absolute coldest few weeks of the year. The blue merino pullover Wax made me a few years ago is my current lounging sweatshirt (when it gets chilly again), but it has major drawbacks: not being able to push the cuffs up, and the fact that the neck is too big even after I added a seam around the neck opening to limit the stretching. The sleeves are also too long. Both neck and sleeves block to measurements! They just don't stay there when they're on my body and I'm standing up. Because merino is softer than it is elastic. I guess I need to remake this one too, but unfortunately I would not like them striped together.

Wax's vacation is over. Her favorite aunt was here for half a week again, which was also nice. We got around to going driving together (I mean, for me to drive, trying to get used to our van because I learned to drive stick in a driving school car which was a very modern high-powered BMW sedan)! We got around to picking a lot of raspberries and Wax made a raspberry mousse cake (with chocolate) and a raspberry-blueberry Eton Mess.

We did NOT get around to unmounting the wooden outer door so I can strip it. We need sawhorses for me to work on it on, and Wax didn't want to buy them because we have the lumber to make them, but we didn't get around to making them. IDK what we're going to do. It's hard to do stuff when you're kind of... sick! We are just both not doing that well, or like, Wax is doing Apparently Fatigue All The Time, Physical and Brain, and I'm not doing well enough to manage stuff on my own that we usually do together.

We did NOT bleed the radiators, even though we did get around to it. We have both thought for years that bleeding the radiators is a really simple thing you can just do, and that millions of home owners DO just do. But when we got to the date on the calendar and tried to look up in Finnish "How to Bleed Radiators", we both ended up reading for hours and ... it turns out that it's not that simple. I guess. Apparently there are DIY guys who do it themselves, but also, the experts mostly recommend that you don't do it yourself, because you can mess it up by mistake. The only recent Finnish resource written by an expert that DID say how to do it ourselves that we could find started with the expert saying to "just check the pressure in the radiator" first. He didn't say how to do this. We couldn't find how to do this by searching (all the results just went back to the same results as How to Bleed Radiators). We can't find a manual for our radiators; we can't find the names of them to try to look up a manual. So I guess we have to call a plumber if we want our radiators bled????? This seems sub-optimal.

Luci the Havanese dog, Wax's brother's family dog, is coming to stay on Thursday because the BIL-family are going to Sweden to take our niece there to start university. Puppy sitting! I don't have enough energy to be a full time dog owner anymore, I think; I always get to a point when dogsitting after a few days where I'm like "Wow I could NOT do this all the time". But I'm always happy to see the dog temporarily. And the weather might actually be nice for walking this week, if only it doesn't rain. Sipuli and Tristana are both Concerned about the dog but not afraid of her anymore.

My dad has had cataract surgery that was successful! He's also been to have an ultrasound on his leg where there was a blood clot before but this month there wasn't. If there's no sign of it next month too, he will be declared Free from Dangerous Blood Clots! They also X-rayed an old fracture in his leg that is healing well and will be checked on again. I feel like we hardly ever get good news about his health, it's always problems and calling 911 and in and out of the hospital. So this was very nice! My dad reads a lot and he likes spending time in the garden and checking on the progress of plants, flowers, birds, bugs, and little lizards (they live in Louisiana where tiny outdoor and indoor lizards are common). He says his vision is clearer.

Seeing the Odyssey, mainly because I wanted to spend the time with Wax, mainly made me nostalgic for the original Clash of the Titans, which I am pretty sure I saw three times at school growing up in the 90s. I was obsessed with Edith Hamilton's Mythology and a Greek mythology nerd in elementary school, peaking in 4th grade when I made a shrine to Athena in my room. So I hated Clash of the Titans right from the first time I saw it, when I was probably 10-12, because of "inaccuracy". (Not that it wasn't, but I didn't really comprehend the issues at that age.) However, I am pretty sure it's the only film interpretation of Ancient Greece I've ever enjoyed.

Since I haven't seen it in thirty years or something like that, I don't remember any details, but I feel confident in saying it isn't that great. Or rather, that it is silly and doesn't know what the word accuracy means. This is not a recommendation. What I do remember, though, is:

-Pegasus
-The goddesses all dressed in glittery pastel 70s disco prom dresses
-The gods playing chess (?) at a party in the sky in what looks like a Masonic lodge temple
-a mullet, and the Perseus guy (was it really the dad from Little House on the Prairie? That can't be right) more or less wearing a chiton. Or, like, a skirt at least. Orange skirt?
-Brilliant colors, well-lit, sunny vibes

Anyway, now I really want to watch it again to check my memories.

And the Odyssey could be improved at least 10% if skilled Tumblr gifmakers could recolor the whole thing along those lines. It wasn't the worst-lit modern blockbuster I've seen, but it was still grimy and gray. When this is the biggest overall complaint about a film, though, it's not bad. Or maybe the fact that all the extras were passably Mediterranean but none of the main characters (nor any of the music) is the biggest overall complaint, in terms of things that broke my immersion while watching. But the color grading comes next.

As a former superfan of Athena, though, I do feel she wasn't prominent enough. Also just as a reader, because the way the gods are portrayed in Homer is one of the most fun and interesting things about it, and Athena's character could've gone much further if they had the time for it. (Admittedly, the run time was already a concern. It should've been a miniseries. More like 6 hours.)

Wax's vacation has started. And we finally put a floor in the balcony (after two years) because we had to in order for her brother to come direct/help us in building a catio on it (her birthday present). The catio is there now, but we have not painted the metal frame of the balcony with rustproof primer as intended. We haven't put slats under the railing, either, so you can just duck under it out onto the porch roof. Not childproof, but it's not urgent.

We haven't done anything about the disintegrating outer door, either, but we do have enough leftover lumber to make sawhorses. It's been cold and rainy since the weekend, and that might continue all this week, I guess. Wax has another 2 weeks of work after this week before the second half of her vacation.

We also need to clean the fridge. We've been putting that off for way too long and frankly I just want to nuke it from orbit. We can't afford a new fridge, though, and it still does work. No special powers of motivation or iron stomach have descended to inspire us to take on that task.

We have baked focaccia twice, though.