cimorene

I've finished the body of the cabled hooded sweater jacket Fickle Heart by Justyna Lorkowska and half of the hood and ordered a zipper and some decorative ribbon to trim it with, but the yarn is extremely springy and right now trying it on is difficult. If I tried to wear it right now it would be way too tight, but I know it will block a lot bigger - it even gets bigger when I just stretch it manually. I can't stop and block it right now, because I haven't even started the sleeves! But that means it could still turn out to be slightly too small when it's all done and blocked and then I guess I'd have to actually start over? The problem is I gauge swatched and cast on last September and didn't write much of it down, and then right after that all that... everything happened, so I don't even remember the results of the gauge swatch or what my size calculations were. I just have to hope that past me did the correct math and picked the correct size.

My brother-in-law was here with the two youngest nieces at the beginning of this week and he found a water shutoff in the basement room with the electrical box that previously had a leak so they jackhammered the floor halfway out to fix it, but they never got around to installing the floor drain they were going to put in to meet code for a washing machine to go there for our future tenant. But as long as the machine doesn't leak that won't matter. So he hooked up a washing machine there - my mother-in-law's, which is a miniature washing machine (okay, a "compact" one) that loads from the top. I'm not used to it and I don't like it and our basement smells mildewy - not the kind that makes me choke, I haven't had an allergic reaction to it, but because I'm paranoid of allergic reaction and because I am hypersensitive to the smell of mildew apparently, I can't really make myself breathe normally while in there, so it's a trip down to the dirty mildewy cement room with the floor jackhammered up and the creepy dirty furniture the previous owner left at the other end of the room with a scarf tied around my face trying to breathe only through my mouth and as little as possible, and also trying to do everything as quickly as possible to minimize inhaling.

But it's still better than not having a washing machine! I mean, it's way cheaper than a laundromat. I'll probably feel much more grateful later; we'd just been to the laundromat last weekend so we barely have any dirty laundry yet.