Clean-ish complete-ish chart of the leaf pattern. Only because I didn’t take any other photos today. Not because I expect anyone to be interested, or this to even be understandable to anyone – I had to make up my own symbols for “purl two together through the back loop” and fuzzy concepts such as “make one purlwise, leaning in the direction that fits the situation”, and I didn’t bother to note down the obvious middle bits.

I don’t mind most chores too much. But I really struggle to enjoy vacuuming.

Groceries and cooking? Usually fun, or neutral if I’m tired or rushed. Loading and unloading the dishwasher? Doing the dishes by hand? Watering the house plants? No problem. Dusting, cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom? I can get myself into a mindset where I enjoy it. But vacuuming I just never manage to enjoy. The vacuum itself is bulky and in my way. The furniture is in my way. The cord is in my way. It’s noisy. I need to pause to switch the nozzle between carpet mode and floor mode.

During my “rich people years” the one service we paid for was cleaning. I really miss that. I looked into paying for it myself but even the cheapest options (sticking to the legal ones and not “under the table” deals where the employees have no rights) are more than I can justify paying in my current situation.

While I was waiting for my replacement computer and the blogging backlog was getting all out of hand, I just threw all my photos up here without any commentary. I’ve now gone through all of them and added words. There’s no earth-shattering news there, but if you were wondering why I posted about blood on my floors, or what the deal was with the cheesecake, well, now you can scroll down and read all about it.

A single dose of analgesic was enough to make a visible difference in Nysse. Two more daily doses and he’s back to normal. Eating three full portions of food and asking for more in between; going out for hours; looking relaxed while he sleeps. While he was in pain, it looked like he could never quite relax: even when he was resting, he didn’t dissolve into a puddle of cat. That turned-up chin and upside-down head is the clearest sign of deep relaxation.

Board game night at work. We warmed up with Dream On (a recurring favourite), then played a round of Wavelength and finished off with a few levels of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.

My new new not-new computer arrived. This one has no problems with the keyboard so I’m working on the assumption that I’m keeping it. Going through the whole exercise of installing tools, downloading my files, etc.

It’s a Lenovo Thinkpad, which I selected for its build quality, according to the collective wisdom of the internet. It’s not shiny and beautiful like my Macbook Pro was, but it seems pretty solid.

I like its keyboard even better than the one on the Macbook. It already feels really good to type on.

The trackpad is not yet agreeing with me. It’s not at all as responsive as I’m used to. I have to press harder than I think I should, and when I forget and use the light touch I’m used to, it doesn’t move the pointer or doesn’t scroll. That’s going to take some getting used to.

The screen doesn’t seem small but somehow feels small anyway. It feels like I could fit so much more on the Macbook screen, especially when editing photos. I’ve fiddled with the zoom level (Windows is much more flexible about the screen zoom level than Mac OS) but somehow no setting feels quite right. I guess it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

Nysse still seems unwell. No appetite, no energy. With the wound on his ear looking all healed, something else must be going on. The online vet service guided me through inspecting all of Nysse’s body for invisible damage, and we found out that his tail is somehow hurt. Today I got an emergency appointment at a local vet clinic. They confirmed damage to the tail, but couldn’t see through his thick fur if there was an actual wound or not.

Off with the fur, then! Luckily there was no wound hiding under the fur, so maybe there’s “just” some internal damage. (Nothing too serious, because he is using and moving his tail quite normally.) Might be this isn’t even related to the fight he had, just coincidental timing. Anyway, he came home with a naked tail and a prescription for painkillers. Hopefully that will get him on track to heal.

The vet was going to tidy up the haircut, but Nysse wouldn’t have any more of that, so this is what he gets to live with.

I figured it out!

The two tweaks that I couldn’t think of yesterday were (i) changing the total width of the panel and (ii) shifting things vertically.

Yesterday I tried to add increases and decreases to shift the 11 + 11 stitches in the two halves into 12 + 10 and back, to make a curve in the middle. Today I took away two stitches from one side, so the curve is between 11 + 9 stitches. That left me with a shorter stem for each leaf. To make the stem actually reach the leaf, I put the leaves vertically closer to each other. In my first attempts, there was only ever one leaf going on at a time. Now the right-hand leaf starts before the left one ends. Not only did this give me that curved vine that I was after, I also got a tighter pattern overall, with less dead space.

With the white dress done and the striped sweater feeling like a bit of a slog right now, I think I might want to start a new project. In my stash I have yarn for a green cardigan (bought at the crafts festival in October). The green colour is crying out for a greenery-inspired design – something with leaves, maybe.

I saw pictures of a knit pattern with leaves on a vine that I liked. Too bad it’s only available in a book published in the US in the 1970s. Then I saw pictures of a sweater with leaves that was kind of close to what I had in mind… and turned out to be discontinued.

Could I reverse engineer one of the leaf patterns based on the photos? How hard can it be? Knits for the smooth surfaces, purls for the bumpy parts. Increases and decreases to make them grow and shrink; cables to make lines slant and cross.

With lots of trial and error – mostly with pencil and eraser on graph paper, and a few attempts with actual yarn – I feel like I’m 90% there. It would all look smoother and tidier if I wet blocked the knit fabric but I don’t even need that now, I just want to see the shapes.

The leaves definitely look like leaves. My inspiration photos had eyelet increases like in the lower pair; I think I prefer the smooth surfaces of the upper pair.

The vine on the other hand needs more work. It’s a stick, not a vine; way too straight. I made several pen-and-paper attempts at making it curve – increase somewhere on one side while decreasing on the other – but couldn’t get it to work. Whenever I adjusted one part, it threw something else out of whack. The stem wouldn’t reach the leaf at the right row, or there wasn’t anywhere to put a decrease without distorting the entire panel.

Time to sleep on it.

Time to top up the brownie stash in the freezer again.

I have recently come to realize the awesomeness of a precision baking thermometer. The fancy recipe for wort bread strongly suggested using one to check that the bread is done, and that made it clear to me just how difficult it is to eyeball the doneness of a loaf of bread just by looking at it. (Especially with wort bread that is dark before it even goes in the oven.) When I thought it looked done, it still had a good 10 degrees to go, and that took about 20 minutes if I remember correctly. It would definitely have been underbaked if I had taken out based on just the timer and my own eyes.

Now I’m a convert. I bought the thermometer on Adrian’s request – he has a very scientific book about baking – but his baking enthusiasm comes and goes, and now I’ve using it more than he ever has. For my sourdough bread (done when I thought it was), cheesecake (done when it still looked way to liquid), karask (needed more time than the recipe said), brownie (also needed more time). So very convenient.