Sprung

No, I haven't been sprung from the joint. Nor have I sprung a leak. Nope, what has happened, and it's really most unlikely, is that spring has sprung. We have had two consecutive days of sunshine, blue skies and relative warmth. Two! It's not been raining! Yesterday the kids came running out of school into the balmy 10.5 degree sunshine shedding jackets, cardigans, hoodies like, well, Glaswegians in the spring. And there are yellow things in the garden.

I'm still not feeling 'one hundred per cent' as athletes being interviewed by the BBC always say (shortly after the default athlete sentence opener 'well, I mean..' pronounced 'wellamean'), but a little bit of sunshine certainly helps. And watching Cat1 blissfully expose his belly to the sunlight is both amusing and relaxing. Talking of whom...

Monday afternoon was chaotic.  We were running around getting ready to take Miss M to her dance class, when the doorbell rang and it was a creepily smiling man who wanted to give me a leaflet, not as I initially thought about 'the Good News', but about a service he offered cleaning leather suites. ''Er, no, sorry, we're just going out, bit of a rush.." I muttered shutting the door in his face while simultaneously thinking "I use baby wipes to clean the leather settee, doesn't everyone?"  Maybe specialist leather suite cleaning is a euphemism for something. 

Then we continued to run around like headless chickens, because I couldn't find my keys. That deserves the bold type, it's the kind of thing I get anxiety dreams about. I looked everywhere, even most unlikely places (bathroom), and had the kids searching too, which is usually pointless but worth a try. By this time we're really actually running late and I hate being late. Then as I was looking upstairs for the second time, the kids shouted up "We've found them!"
"Where?" I shrieked, running down the stairs.
"Under the cat."

I'd thrown my keys on the footstool as we'd come in from school and the cat had gone and sat on them. And continued to sit on them while I ran around looking for them. *sigh* Until he got bored and sauntered off.

At times like this I need mindless knitting. Or actually the crochet is good at the moment because it's getting easier and less wonky and therefore more enjoyable, but I still have to concentrate a bit so it takes my mind off whatever my subconscious feels I should be fretting about. But back to knitting and a recent piece of mindless knitting, a facecloth:

I hardly ever knit with cotton as I don't find it the pleasantest thing to knit with, but actually a garter stitch square is fine because you don't need a lot of give in it. What I'd forgotten was what a pain it is finishing off because any ends you weave in promptly unweave themselves and knots tend not to stay knotted*.  So I googled for an answer and found this Youtube video which has an answer that is both clever and so blindingly obvious that I really did want to kick myself. And I hope that if I include the link here I'm more likely to remember it next time.

I can't see a need for a vast number of facecloths but it was a quick enjoyable knit and I learned something useful from it. And at the time I was avoiding a half-turned heel that was not quite right (fixed now - just needed daylight and concentration). It's always handy to have a procrastination knit in the background!

* I'll confess here that although it is considered a cardinal sin on Ravelry to tie in a new piece of yarn, of whatever type, I've done so for years and don't think it matters much if the 'wrong' side is hidden. For example, inside a garment where it's not seen, as long as it's not a huge knot that'll rub, why worry?