Sunday, April 27, 2008

Make Work Projects

Make Work Project #1:
The men in my husband's family have this springtime ritual. The go outside with their shovels and they "spread snow". It's a labor intensive process involving moving snow from one part of the yard (that gets less sunlight) to another (one that gets more sunlight). He always comes in sweaty and exhausted. "Oh I think one or two more days and it should all be done," he tells me. Wow, as opposed to the 3 or 4 days it would have taken without the spreading snow maneuver. Good thing you spent hours out there working on it. And all of them do it. They like to discuss snow spreading techniques at family functions. They like to comment on one another's finished products. To me, the snow is gonna melt no matter what. It's a fact. It will get warm and it will melt, snow spreading or otherwise.....


Make Work Project #2
Well, these 2 make work for me all the time....



Make Work Project #3

I'm not actually sure if this is a make work project or not, you can decide and let me know.

My Picovoli is basically done. As it is knit in the round, there are no seams to sew up (sooo nice). Just the picot edging needs to be finished - this ones involved sewing down live stitches. Supposedly this leads to a less bulky edge (and it seems to be the case). It is time consuming, but I'm following what Lucy Neatby taught us - just do one bit of finishing a night. That way it doesn't seem too daunting or picky to deal with.

So it's going pretty go, if a little bit slow. The only problem is the sleeves. They are flaring out in a very unattractive way. I went down a needle size to try and stop this from happening (as suggested in a thread in Ravelry). This doesn't seem to have made much of a difference.
















My options are this: keep going on sleeve #2 and not worry too much about it OR rip out sleeve #1 and redo it, going down a needle size AND decreasing by a few stitches. I think it sounds like a little bit of a make work project, but I'm not sure. Will it make a difference or not??

Help me, oh smart knitting people....you're my only hope.....

7 comments:

dog mama said...

I actually saw your hubby out there doing this and thought "Oh, no he's one of them! That's all we need in this neighborhood, another snow mover". Tell him he's got a soul mate, the house across the road from me that borders on this side of the alley. That guy spends DAYS moving snow. My neighbor to the left also. I'm with you, but all the snow movers got me curious today, so I tried it in my front yard (more because I wanted to be outside and it was too wet to tinker in the garden). I moved two shovels-ful and then decided "Yup, this is as idiotic as I thought it would be". Done, won't try that again.

Anonymous said...

That happens in my house too. On the rare occasion that I'm not the one shoveling snow. I can't be bothered, that's valuable knitting time!

catknip said...

We are a no-snow throwing house. Why make more work?

As for the sleeves I'm clueless but will blocking help fix that? They don't look too bad to me ...

T. said...

I just want to stress - I don't condone his behaviour. He's just weird, or as Dog Mama said "one of them". Good thing he's cute and lovable. That makes up for his other faults.

J. said...

My Dude does it. So does my Dad. Freaky.

On a knitting note, I think you should go down 2 needle sizes (cause I like to be difficult) and decrease a few stitches for good measure. The worst that could happen is that it will be a little puffy but that might be kinda cute.

BOSSY said...

What is this Snow you speak of? Looks cold.

Anonymous said...

Dude. BOSSY commented on your blog? Wow. You've hit the big time now!

As for the snow spreading, I've never heard of this before. How very strange. Of course, I'm married to a man who's incapable of even shoveling a walk so what do I know.

And I have no knitting advice - you trump me in knitterly knowledge, methinks.