When Life Interrupts Art

A little over a month ago, our life got a bit complicated.  On Tuesday, June 9, Bruce had gone downstairs to work in his study, but he quickly came storming back up from the basement demanding to know if I had let Jezebel (our very sweet cat) into his office.  His office is kept closed up, but I will let her in if I am downstairs exercising, if she asks (which she sometimes does, in the most polite manner).  She likes to check it out periodically and make sure no small critters are setting up homes in there.  I said that I had, but that it had been a few days, why?  Did she throw up in there?  He replied that there was some cat barf, but that the carpet was all wet around his chair and accused her of peeing in his study.  I was skeptical as this would be extremely unusual behavior on her part and immediately followed him back downstairs to investigate.  On entering his study I immediately noticed a complete lack of the tell-tale smell of cat pee.  I checked the carpet and it was indeed very wet, but it was water, not cat pee.  We had a water leak.  The water line (the picture above) comes into the basement in his study, behind his desk, his massive, modular desk.  There is an access panel, but it only gives us access to the shut off valve for the water in the house.

The spot where the line comes into to the house is below the 2x4 that you can just see in the bottom of the picture, behind dry wall.  So, we spent the rest of the day clearing out that end of the study, which meant moving his massive, modular desk, as well as a heavy credenza.  We then went to the hardware story and bought a water key so that we could shut off the water at the street, as the water was coming in to the house through the conduit that held the outside water line, which should have been porridged (sealed up with hydraulic cement so no ground water could come in) and obviously was not.

The next day, June 10 (Wednesday), we spent pulling up the carpet, and the sodden carpet padding underneath.  We pitched the carpet padding and rigged up some scaffolding to elevate the carpet to allow it to dry.  First we folded it back so that we could get as much water up from the concrete floor as possible.

We propped the 2x4s that are laying on the floor on the saw horse and laid the carpet on them so that it could dry.  

On Thursday, June 11, we cut open the dry wall to expose the leak.

We also brought the dehumidifier in from the exercise room to help dry things out.  

On Friday, June 12, a plumber came by to check the situation out.  He told us to have the leak detection folks come by and verify the location of the leak.  We were pretty sure it was close to the basement wall, under the front porch, based on the way the water was coming in.  According to our water meter, the leak was 0.29 gallons per minute.  When we called the county services folks, the nice lady told us that it looked like the leak had started on May 30.  We didn’t find it until June 9.  Bruce doesn’t go down into his study that often.  The leak had saturated the carpet out to about 7 feet from the wall by then.  It was bad, but it could have been worse.  We called the leak detection company, and Bruce talked to an AI as it was after business hours.  The AI was really good.  They called us back on Monday, June 15.

That outside faucet is in line with the underground water line where it comes in to the house.

On Wednesday, June 17, the leak detection guys came out and confirmed our suspicions as to the location of the leak.  It cost $600 to tell us something that we were pretty sure about.

We called the plumber back, but apparently there are not enough plumbers in the world today, and he is super busy.  He was not able to come out and fix our leak until Monday, June 29.  We had talked to the builder, who lives just up the street from us and he had said that we had all copper pipe coming in to the house.  When we talked to the plumber, before they started digging, we discussed the possibility of just running a new line of the new plastic they use, as the copper is about 35 years old, and is likely to spring another leak but when the plumber dug up the leak he found something else.

Blue hose, and a temporary coupling, that somehow lasted several decades before leaking.  We don’t know when or how this was done, as we’ve been in the house 20 years, and my husband lived in it before us as we bought his ex-wife out of the house, and it was not done during his time in the house.  We have no idea if we have this blue line all the way to the street, or if there is copper.  If we get another leak we’ll deal with it and probably just re-route the water line.  He fixed the leak, and replaced the copper pipe coming in to the house, and also replaced the inside water valve, as it was also leaking.

The conduit is also properly porridged, so no more leaking into the basement!  It cost us $750.  We also picked up new carpet padding so we can get the carpet back down.  We haven’t done that part yet, but we did lay the carpet back over the floor.  We’ll need to do some carpet cleaning, but that is easy.

So what did we do for those 20 days?  We turned the water off, and only turned it on for brief periods of time when we needed it.  That usually worked out to having water 3 or 4 times during the day for an hour or so at a time.  We did use some plumbers putty to try to block the leak, and it mostly worked, until the leak detection folks came by and disturbed things, and then it stopped working so well.  So we always had to have towels down to absorb the water, and then I was dealing with wet towels and swapping dry towels out for wet, and throwing the wet ones into the dryer, or hanging them on our deck railings to dry in the sun.  We filled pitchers with water for drinking, and made sure to fill up the tea kettle and the coffee maker when we had water.  I also kept water in one half of our double sink to rinse things if we needed to.  We have three toilets in the house, but they only got flushed when we had water.  We turned off the valve inside the house before we would turn off the water to the house to keep the pressure up (for the most part) in the house so that we didn’t get too much air in the pipes (the fridge really hated losing water pressure).  Needless to say, it was a bit of a production, and it really makes you appreciate the conveniences of modern life.

And then on Saturday, July 4, during the big storms that hit the East coast, we lost the top of one of our Beech Nut trees, so we’ve been dealing with that for the past week.  We also lost power for three hours, it went out just as we were sitting down to dinner.

All of that greenery is attached to this monster, which managed to miss the electrical distribution box that feeds our house, as well as our neighbors.  It also missed our neighbors cable box.  Once again, we were lucky.

That came off of this spot that you can just see in the top of our tree.

We’ve been cutting off the smaller branches, which have most of the leaves, so that when we call the tree guys they just have to cut up the big stuff for us.  The top was also a little bit into the road, so we had to clear that off right away on Sunday morning.  In this Virginia heat and humidity it is dirty, sweaty work, and pretty exhausting, so we pace ourselves (we’re not so young anymore).  When we come in from working, we strip and throw the clothes into the washing machine, and then we go take a cooling shower.  Despite the heat, we don’t mind the work at all, and kind of enjoy it.  I especially like flinging the cut branches on to our brush pile in our woods.

Lemon Boatneck Top - Cast On!

Onling does these seasonal boxes - patterns, yarn, and some extra goodies, typically tea and lotion, and I like to buy them, mostly because I really like the tea and the lotion, but also because I like the yarn/pattern pairings they offer.  These boxes are a reasonable way for me to try something new in the yarn and pattern department.  I’ve been buying their Advent boxes for a few years now, and have also bought a few of their Spring and Summer boxes.

Lately my knitting mojo has felt a little low and I was looking for a pick me up, so I bought the Summer box and when I finished up Jezebel’s second blankie (which she has been getting a lot of use out of, curling up on it for at least some portion of every day since I gave it to her) I decided to cast on.  The pattern was a simple top that looked pretty boxy from the photo, with twisted ribbing on the hem, sleeves and neck.  There was no schematic in the pattern, and no mention of ease, but I decided that from the photo it looked like it had a reasonable amount of ease and I went with the small size as opposed to the extra-small size.  I did a gauge swatch, and got gauge, and so I cast on.

For my size the pattern has you cast on 192 stitches, and knit 2 inches of twisted rib, on a 3.0 mm (US 2.5) needle.  The body is knit on a 3.5 mm (US 4) needle.  I grabbed a 3.0 mm, 32” circular needle, and cast on.  When I went to join in the round I could barely get the stitches to meet so that I could actually work them.  I managed to work about 10 stitches before I gave up.  I did some quick math, based on the stitch gauge (which is given for the body needle), and determined that on the bigger needle I should have about 33 inches of fabric.  But of course, I was working on a smaller needle, and also trying to work 1x1 ribbing, with a twisted knit stitch.  Looking at the pattern some more I also noted that after working the 2 inches of ribbing, and another three inches of stockinette (on the larger needles), the pattern calls for 11 sets of increases at the side (4 stitches total for each increase, increase every 8 rows), resulting in 236 stitches.  That would give a measurement of about 41 inches around (my size is supposed to have a finished circumference of 40.25 inches).  Looking at the picture of the top, this just was not making sense to me, and there was no schematic to help it make sense.  As I said, the top looked pretty boxy.

So I ripped out and just decided to improvise a bit.  I cast on 230 stitches, which would give me a bit more ease around the hips, even on a smaller needle in ribbing.  I only managed about an inch of ribbing.  I’m not a huge fan of ribbing, especially 1x1 ribbing, and to call this yarn splitty is a bit of an understatement.  The yarn is Tencel Lycocell which, according to Wikipedia, is sustainably made from wood pulp.  The structure is interesting, it is actually 15 plies, but in the form of 5 3-plies, plied together.  Although calling it plied is also a bit of an overstatement as it really does not hold together that well, as you can see from this photo.

But it is soft, and shiny, and the stitches do look nice, although I have a feeling that snagging could be an issue, so who knows how well this top will wear in the long run.  At this point I have sort of abandoned the pattern and am planning on a simple boatneck top with little, if any, shaping.  I will work the ribbing on the armholes, to finish them off, and maybe an I-cord bind off on the neck.

Pattern:  Improvised, but sort of based on the Gry Top by Katrine Hannibal

Yarn:  Onling No. 14

Needles:  US 2.5 (3.0 mm) and US 4 (3.5 mm)

Jezebel’s Blankie II - Finished!

I finished up Jezebel’s second blanket this past weekend.  Blocking was simple - a soak, a roll in a towel, and then I laid it out on the blocking mats, no pins, just smoothed it out.  It dried in a day, which was nice.  Jezebel approves, taking a long nap on it yesterday afternoon.

Pattern:  None, just a giant swatch

Yarn:  Ewe Ewe Yarns Fluffy Fingering and Magicland Yarn Marvelous Mohair

Needle:  US 6 (4.0 mm)

Jezebel’s Blankie II - About halfway done

I’ve been making pretty good progress on Jezebel’s second blankie, and am about half-way done (based on my usage of the mohair yarn).  This is a pretty mindless knit, even holding two yarns together, and it is an enjoyable knit as well.  Jezebel has already provided her stamp of approval, curling up on it last night.

Pattern:  None, basically a giant stockinette swatch

Yarn:  Ewe Ewe Yarns Fluffy Fingering & Magicland Yarn Marvelous Mohair

Needle:  US 6 (4.0 mm)

Jezebel’s Blankie II - Cast On!

I received the additional skeins of Fluffy Fingering (the purple merino) that I had ordered from Ewe Ewe Yarns last week, so after I finished my Slightly Sassy Rambouillet I cast on the blankie for Jezebel.  This will basically be a giant swatch.  I cast on 100 stitches, and started working in garter stitch.  I thought I might just knit the whole thing in garter stitch, but after knitting several rows I decided it wasn’t as squishy as stockinette, so I switched to working stockinette with a 5 stitch garter stitch border on each side.

Pattern:  None

Yarn:  Ewe Ewe Yarns Fluffy Fingering and Magicland Yarn Marvelous Mohair

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Luxe Shawlette - A Little Progress

I did make a little bit of progress on my Luxe Shawlette last Sunday while we were watching our Sunday news shows.  The fabric is really cool, much softer than I would have expected given the novelty yarn, and it isn’t hard to work with, although you do have to pay attention to make sure that you get both strands.  I do think it will be a really splendid piece when I’m done, although I can understand why it is only a shawlette.  I’m not sure I would want to tackle a larger piece with these yarns, but we’ll see how I feel when I get to the lace part.

Pattern:  Luxe Shawlette by Anniken Allis

Yarn:  Lang Yarns Mohair 21 and Lang Yarns Paillettes 

Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Slightly Sassy Rambouillet- Finished!

I finished this up on Friday afternoon and blocked it right away.  I did I-cord bind offs on all of my edges using the Lilac skein that I had.  I didn’t quite use up all of my handspun, but I did use up most of it.  It is a nice t-shirt, very comfy.  I did screw up a bit on the neckline when I added the extra rows to increase the armhole depth.  I should have done the last two neck increases right away, joined to work in the and then worked the rest of the armhole increases.  I sewed the neck edge together where the slope changed to make a little key hole.  The top still fit without that mod, but it fits a bit better with the mod.  I made a note on my pattern modification in case I knit another one, which I just might do.  It is an easy pattern, and seems to work great with handspun yarn.

Pattern:  Slightly Sassy V by Aimee Sher

Yarn:  My handspun Rambouillet 

Needles:  US 6 (4.0 mm) for the body, and US 4 (3.5 mm) for the I-Cord.