Or a pair of socks rather.

Mr. Ink’s socks are done. They are over 10 inches of leg, and for size 13.5 wide feet. In the end, I had to purchase another skein of Cascade Heritage 150 prints, despite the fact that each skein has 592 yards in it. I did make them match, but that wasn’t the reason I ran out of yarn. In order to make them match, I only had to pull out less than half a stripe twice. In order to complete the socks, I had to use an additional 8 stripes from the new skein.

Unfortunately, this means I’ve got a skein of yarn for socks in the same color. And at the moment, I’ve NO interest in knitting that color again. I guess it goes in stash.

In other knitting news, I began the Tibetan Clouds stole from Knitter’s Book of Wool. I figured that could be my complicated lace knitting. I was so eager to show it off, as I’d made my way through enough rows to begin to see its potential. Except then I realized I’d been making a mistake in the pattern. I was sad, but I also realized that I wasn’t completely pleased with my cast on either, so in the end I got over it. I am not good at following charts when I cannot cross off the row I just completed. So, working out of a book isn’t good for me. I have now made a copy of the chart, and should have far better luck when I begin again.

And in house news, I began scraping the peeling paint around the garage door. Then I moved to the windows and scraped at them a bit. While I spent at least an hour at it, this was mostly a reconnaissance mission. I wanted to really see what I was getting myself into. Now, I’ve been hemming and hawing for a year now about purchasing a heat gun for this project, but never brought it up with Mr. Ink. I found a good 7 layers of paint peeling around the windows though, and I thought “I most certainly need that heat gun.” So, when Mr. Ink came home from a grocery store run, I informed him that I was planning to purchase a heat gun. He said “No need, I’ve got one at work I can bring home for you!”  Now, why didn’t I ask for this sooner?!?!  He then asked if a heat gun worked better than chemicals, a question I’d asked myself as well. I said “Well, I don’t really know, but if you already own a heat gun, I can try that first before spending money on chemicals for the project.”

The reality is, I want to do this project once, and well. I mean, I know that scraping and painting is a thing that must be done from time to time, but I want a really good fresh base start. I was able to do that with the attached garage 2 years ago and I’ve no signs at all of peeling paint there. But, that was one layer. This is multiple layers and a real mess. If I can get back to the wood, sand well, and start over I think that’ll be the best plan of attack.

So, now I’ve got a plan of attack, and a start to the project which is more than I’ve had for a year. (Though to be fair we had the big fence repair last year, so it’s not like I had no big project.) The hard part for me, I think, will be focusing on one frame at a time.

It’s Friday, the weekend is calling with beautiful weather around here!