Replenishing and Nourishing

Thank you all for the lovely comments on my last post,  I am glad that you all enjoyed the photos of my part of the world.  My cup is still full from that adventure, it has been further filled by another swim on Sunday, this time with my whole family.  The weather forecast was even better than we expected, once again I swam with the sun on my face the whole time, it makes such a difference, that little bit of warmth, especially when the water is so cold!

I know that wild swimming is not everyones cup of tea, it is good to make the time in our lives for those things that replenish and nourish us isn't it, whatever that looks like.  In recent years I have come to realise how important these things are in my life.  There is a pressure in society to always be busy and productive but this isn't helpful or useful if that leaves us feeling tired and worn out all the time.  I am still holding onto hope that COVID will slowly start to turn the tide on this pressure and we will start to value those things that can't be measured.

So onto another pastime that fills my cup up, knitting.  My shawl is not ready to share more than this, I am still waiting on buttons to come into stock at my local sewing shop, I have sown on the the 24 buttons that I have, I bought 25 but one has mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the house....I need another five, I just need to be patient.  The weather has warmed up here a little so I am not in need of this right now, but I do hope they come back in stock in time for when the temperatures eventually start to drop.

In the meantime I have a whole skein of this wool left over.  I think the amount I needed would have taken me a few metres over the skeins that I used, so the fifth was a just in case skein.  I have been ratching through my stash and found some small balls of yarn, mostly left over from other projects, that I think will work to make some kind of colour work hat, I am still looking at patterns.  I also need to do a few swatches to work out which colours and yarns would be suitable and work together.

My hat is now off the needles and finished and I have been stash diving again and found another yarn for some mittens.  I actually had the ball band from this yarn so I could work out how much I had left without resorting to guesstimating with my, not terribly accurate for the job, weighing scales.  I have a set of traditional kitchen scales, you know the sort with weights.  When I was weighing the yarn for the hat I realised that the scales are not terribly well balanced which is fine for cooking as long as everything is wrong together it won't matter, but for weighing yarn to work out how much I have left, well it is a best guess.  These mitts are a really quick knit, for me, I am sure some people could do them both in a day!

So my knitting is all about small projects at the moment, Alice needs a new cardigan, the last one I knit is now too short in the arms and she has worn it so much she has worn through both elbows!  She is really reluctant to part with it, I need to see if I can get the same yarn and knit the next size up.

I have some birthday knitting to do for a friend, it was my present to her, to knit her a cardigan.  Covid has made it difficult to sort this, but we have finally chosen a pattern, now onto the yarn......it is a 4ply knit so I am keen to get this on the needles soon as I am really slow knitting up in such thin yarn.

What replenishes and nourishes you?

Joining with Kat this week.