I have continued to voraciously knit Westbourne, which I started the weekend before Christmas. I was desperate to get the body done and knitted on the flights home, only to realise I didn't have enough yarn or the right sized needle for the final rows. However, today (which is Sunday, I lost a day to travelling) I caught up with Christmas Poirot and finished the body. I am thrilled with it. It is a little longer than I was expecting but it's such an excellent fit. The stripes sort of blend in the middle and then come out again as the colours get brighter. I thought I would be annoyed about this but actually, I think I like it better. Secret squirrel stripes.
I've tried to weigh down the bottom so you can see the curved hem. Even though I changed the last 4 rows to garter stitch to try to ward off the curl, it is still curly. Hopefully blocking will help. The neckline is a lost cause though, I feel; but it's also very wide so I'm not too sorry about picking up for a neckline that isn't in the pattern.
Now, to rewind the colours a bit so I can knit my sleeves two at a time. I am afraid I am not going to have enough grey yarn for full-length sleeves. I have 3 skeins and I had to break into the 3rd for the final few rows. When it comes to it, if I'm unhappy with the sleeve length, I can always frog back some of the body. We'll see.
Going to:
I spent the week in Vegas, being spectacularly lazy. Mr Z and I went to see Lady Gaga's show, Enigma, and for a wander around Red Rock, but other than that our excursions were limited to IHOP and various shops. It was a very lazy holiday.
It's odd, being at Father Hand's. I always feel like we should be doing things but it is also like being at home, where I mostly don't do anything other than relax. I couldn't be bothered to go skiing in the end, because I decided it's just not fun to go on your own and Mr Z would not be convinced. So I spent much of the week feeling slightly guilty for not going out and making the most of Vegas, but, meh. I've been there a lot. I'll go back. I saw a very good show. I ate some pancakes. I slept a lot. It was a win.
On Thursday, I decided to put a price on how much I didn't want to drive back to LA and it turned out that flights to LA + the penalty for returning the rental car to Vegas airport instead of LAX was less than this price, so we didn't have to do that drive again. Hurrah. I was so relieved about it. The drive isn't awful but it is long and we would have had to have left very early because the car rental people wanted a whole day's fee for returning the car after 2pm, even though our flight wasn't until 8.35pm. It was much more civilised doing it this way. I really must not repeat this folly next time. It was a big saving on flights initially, but not worth it.
Entertained by:
As always, when visiting Father Hand's, many movies were watched and series tasted as he reacted with horror to my lack of broad movie viewing. We watched Three Billboards outside of Ebbing, Burn After Reading, Gold-diggers of 1933 and probably others that I have already forgotten. I got through the rest of series 2 of The Crown, all of the IT Crowd (still don't understand why I didn't watch this the first time round) and half of American Gods. Good to see Ricky Whittle has moved on from Hollyoaks. In return, I introduced Father Hand and Frankie to Whiplash and Killing Eve.
I didn't get much reading done. It was all about the knitting.
Feeling:
Slightly harassed by my workload. So much to do for tomorrow. Those mock papers are haunting me. Two classes and two papers - I knew it was going to be painful, but I wish I had been a bit more motivated to do them before the holidays. The data deadline is tomorrow so time really has run out.
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