Nov. 29, 2025

I’ve been working a lot this week on the knitted cardigan. The back piece seems to be taking for ever, and because of that, I started to think it was taking too long… Maybe my calculations were off… In most of the previous iterations of this cardigan I always end up making it too big. I decided to wash and dry the first finished front piece, as usually the fabric grows in this ‘blocking’ phase to settle in its final shape. When I made my sample gauge swatch I didn’t wash and dry it, which I’m now realising is a key step in sampling. The piece grew 10% - noticably bigger vertically. So yes… I need to adjust my sizing. I should have thought that through earlier, but I’m not too late to fix it. The back piece is still fine, I haven’t knit too much, but the front piece needs to be redone by half.

It’s not too painful at this stage and I can be more confident that I’ll be getting the right size, which is the main goal of this mission. So progress, and some back pedaling, but so be it. 

I did some experimentation with candlestick-making this week. I’ve been wanting to try it for a while. I’ve done candles in jars before, but not dipped candlesticks. You take a long string of wick, fold it double and attach two small weights on the ends, like a small metal nut. Then dip them in melted wax, over and over again. It takes quite a while and I was doing the wicks one at a time because I’d chosen a small jar for the melted wax. It was my first attempt and it went ok. Although I stopped before the candles reached a good size. I realised that I should probably take a bigger jar of wax and dip at least six wicks at a time, or it will just take way too long. You need to dip like 50 times. Next time, I will also have a bucket of cold water to dunk the wicks after each wax dip, that way I can cool the candles more quickly to make them ready for the next dip. If you keep dipping hot wax into the melted wax, it won’t stick to the candle as well. Anyways, I’m going to attempt a round two next week, with some better tools and strategy… 

I made one visit to the field. I finished mowing everything and installed a new storage box by the bore hole area, where I will keep the generator, the electric cord, fuel etc. It frees up some space in my other storage box. I initially wanted to make a bigger storage unit myself, but I needed to get the eletric borehole cord out of the rain asap, so I went with this plastic box again. I’m also not allowed to have any large storage structure like a shed, so this will do for now, until I have some more hedge protection. 

I put down some tarp in the vegetable patch area to kill off the grass. Last time I tried this the sun destroyed the tarp, hoping this new one is better quality / won't get so damaged over winter.

I just ordered some flower bulbs like tulips and crocuses, which I’ll be planting around the field. I’m hoping it will add a really nice dose of colour next year. Maybe I’ll get some cut flowers out of it. So a few big bulb planting days in the coming weeks. 

Total Likes: 0

Comments

---

No comments yet.

---