the outlook is gray
1 Mar 2024 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneWe've definitely slipped a bit on our walking-every-day-schedule-and-no-precipitation-permitting recently.
I'm going to chalk that up to February being the worst month of the year in terms of weather. We actually did go for a few walks with ice cleats on, but it's just very unpleasant to go for a walk over sheets of ice. Everywhere in town is also quite ugly and gray with melting ice covered in road dirt and gravel, although the slipperiness is decreasing just now. Apparently the weather people have said it's not going to get very cold again this year (I assume they mean staying significantly below the freezing point; it will almost certainly snow again, but the snow at the end of the season doesn't stick). So maybe that means the dirty ice and the gravel is truly on its way out and it will only get better from here. Although the lack of sun is about 50% of the problem, for me at least. I think the last time I saw a sunbeam was two weeks ago... maybe three weeks ago.
The lack of sunbeams, or sun visible behind the clouds, is true in spite of increasing daylight hours, which is definitely better than nothing. It's just that the daylight hours in question are sort of dim pearl gray, which isn't as energizing. I presume there's still some increase in vitamin D though.
According to the goals we set ourselves at the beginning of the year I think we are supposed to go today - it depends if the sun has set or not in the next half hour. And it is now above freezing, and has been all week, so one doesn't need ice cleats to walk MOST places. But I don't have a good feeling about it. Maybe the problem is that we live too centrally in town. If we walked in the forest that wouldn't be ugly (though it would be EXTREMELY muddy...), but it takes a good ten or fifteen minutes of walking to get to the nearest patch of forest.
In other news I still haven't ordered the buttons to replace on my new sweater, because I still haven't picked my next project. I haven't had enough time in the evenings this week to make the decision. And I also still haven't ordered the sewing machine oil. I'm now considering doing an extremely laborious surgery on the sweater I just finished. I DID do a gauge swatch just as I was supposed to and picked a size that should've been safe and followed the directions, but the bottom ribbing of the sweater is knitted on a smaller needle size and it has a lot of contraction, which is great for a bomber jacket style like this, but means that it doesn't sit properly and the bottom button doesn't lie flat. Unfortunately it was knitted bottom up so the very bottom edge of the garment is the cast-on row, and it was cast on for those slimmer needles; it could stretch more if not for the cast-on being too tight! But ideally I think there should just be a lot more stitches. The bottom stitch count is just right to lie flat with no stretching at the larger needle size of the body; it SHOULD lie flat with no stretching at the smaller needle size for the ribbing. Ribbing is supposed to stretch, but when you have a cardigan with buttons and not a zipper, if the tendency to contract in the ribbing is trying to create negative ease, the result is just that it pulls on the button. It's a huge hassle, nearly impossible with fragile or hairy yarn, to unravel knitting from the cast-on edge. Because this is a bottom-up sweater, I would be pretty much guaranteed to lose a fair bit of yarn if I tried to unravel the bottom ribbing and reknit it. I have several extra balls of wool, though, so I could increase those needed stitches and then also bind off the bottom hem more loosely.
I'm going to chalk that up to February being the worst month of the year in terms of weather. We actually did go for a few walks with ice cleats on, but it's just very unpleasant to go for a walk over sheets of ice. Everywhere in town is also quite ugly and gray with melting ice covered in road dirt and gravel, although the slipperiness is decreasing just now. Apparently the weather people have said it's not going to get very cold again this year (I assume they mean staying significantly below the freezing point; it will almost certainly snow again, but the snow at the end of the season doesn't stick). So maybe that means the dirty ice and the gravel is truly on its way out and it will only get better from here. Although the lack of sun is about 50% of the problem, for me at least. I think the last time I saw a sunbeam was two weeks ago... maybe three weeks ago.
The lack of sunbeams, or sun visible behind the clouds, is true in spite of increasing daylight hours, which is definitely better than nothing. It's just that the daylight hours in question are sort of dim pearl gray, which isn't as energizing. I presume there's still some increase in vitamin D though.
According to the goals we set ourselves at the beginning of the year I think we are supposed to go today - it depends if the sun has set or not in the next half hour. And it is now above freezing, and has been all week, so one doesn't need ice cleats to walk MOST places. But I don't have a good feeling about it. Maybe the problem is that we live too centrally in town. If we walked in the forest that wouldn't be ugly (though it would be EXTREMELY muddy...), but it takes a good ten or fifteen minutes of walking to get to the nearest patch of forest.
In other news I still haven't ordered the buttons to replace on my new sweater, because I still haven't picked my next project. I haven't had enough time in the evenings this week to make the decision. And I also still haven't ordered the sewing machine oil. I'm now considering doing an extremely laborious surgery on the sweater I just finished. I DID do a gauge swatch just as I was supposed to and picked a size that should've been safe and followed the directions, but the bottom ribbing of the sweater is knitted on a smaller needle size and it has a lot of contraction, which is great for a bomber jacket style like this, but means that it doesn't sit properly and the bottom button doesn't lie flat. Unfortunately it was knitted bottom up so the very bottom edge of the garment is the cast-on row, and it was cast on for those slimmer needles; it could stretch more if not for the cast-on being too tight! But ideally I think there should just be a lot more stitches. The bottom stitch count is just right to lie flat with no stretching at the larger needle size of the body; it SHOULD lie flat with no stretching at the smaller needle size for the ribbing. Ribbing is supposed to stretch, but when you have a cardigan with buttons and not a zipper, if the tendency to contract in the ribbing is trying to create negative ease, the result is just that it pulls on the button. It's a huge hassle, nearly impossible with fragile or hairy yarn, to unravel knitting from the cast-on edge. Because this is a bottom-up sweater, I would be pretty much guaranteed to lose a fair bit of yarn if I tried to unravel the bottom ribbing and reknit it. I have several extra balls of wool, though, so I could increase those needed stitches and then also bind off the bottom hem more loosely.
