Don't you just hate it when you are too busy to Knit or blog!
We seem to be having nothing but bank holidays here in the UK, May has had two for a long time now but with Easter being a moveable feast no sooner than I am back to work from one along comes another and another.
Easter weekend involve shed sorting and the filling of a small skip with (some of) the contents of my mother's garden shed. As you can see I achieved some measure of success.There was also the obligatory shopping trip to one of the various M&S stores that can be reached without having to walk too far from the car park. At 88 she is not so nibble on her feet any more and now has a disabled parking badge. These trips do not usually happen very often so when they do she likes to stock up. And stock up she did but as she never tries anything on there are sometimes rejects.
So on this bank holiday off we went to another of the local branches to get a refund on the item she didn't like (because it had a zip) and to buy yet more things.
To aid her walking she needs to push a shopping trolley and an elderly woman in possession of a shopping trolley can move surprisingly fast in pursuit of a purchase! One minute she is standing next to you looking at something and the next minute she is gone!
At one point I really did think I had lost her as while I was paying for my purchase I caught sight of her disappearing out of the shop door. Not knowing where she was going I rushed outside to find her nowhere in view. There were another set of doors a little further along so thinking she may have gone back in I entered.
It is little wonder that mothers get frantic when small children wonder off in stores as they provide many and varied hiding places for a youngster, you would think an old lady with a trolley could be easily spotted but you'd be wrong.
Having wondered around for about ten minutes I eventually bumped into her and was promptly asked where I had been.
When questioned about the fact that I had seen her going out the shop door she said that she was looking for socks and the assistant in the underwear department had said 'you need to go outside'. Quite why my mother thought that they meant outside the actual shop rather than outside the department and back into the main part of the store remains a mystery.
Apart from nearly pushing her trolley into the glass wall next to the exit we finally managed to get home unscathed.
Later in the evening I got the inevitable phone call to say that, somehow, she had managed to buy two items the same but in different sizes, she didn't know how that could have happened but the larger one needs to go back.
That's the next bank holiday sorted then!
And what's on my needles right now?
I started using size 4 mm needles and cast on about 72 stitches, working in stocking stitch it produced about 3 cms of dense knitting which has formed a band on the bottom edge. I then changed to 6 mm needles and knitted two stitches together across the width which has given me a looser, lighter fabric. I added strips with a different colour of the same yarn until that ran out, am continuing plain until there is just enough left to add another dense band.
I had an idea about felting it with little puff's like in this Nicky Epstein scarf but I'm not sure if the yarn will felt. I probably need to try it out.
But what ever I do I think it has turned itself into a hat!
I will post a photo of the finished item when it's done.
