Meeting my tribe

Back in the 90s when I was into machine knitting in a big way, I used to go to a machine knitting club once a month in Surrey.  I enjoyed it and learned a lot but also did very well there because most of the quite elderly members were downsizing so I came home with bin bags of yarn, books, machine bits etc. Eventually with the virtual death of the machine knitting hobby and the shrinking size of the membership, the club folded like so many others. Recently I discovered a small machine knitting club that is still going and I went along to see what it was like.  It felt very familiar, with some similarly elderly members, a few members crocheting while they listened, show and tell of knitted items etc.  It was like revisiting a tribe I used to hang out with. They had two machines set up and made an effort to involve the beginners, plus there was a demonstration on how to use the garter bar.  I enjoyed being exposed to the hobby again, perhaps if I keep going it will get me re-interested in my own machines.  I feel it's a bit of a waste to have part of the attic tied up housing my three machines and their associated stash and gadgets when I've barely touched them for years.  I'm in a curious position of not being a beginner but not really remembering how to do it properly either. These days I never feel the urge to machine knit because, since the 90s I have learned how to handknit properly and now find it so much more relaxing to ensconce myself in front of the telly with my handknitting.  Machine knitting is not relaxing.  It's more like horseback riding: challenging and lots to remember, and the moment you start to relax and think you've got the hang of it, the horse shies at a butterfly and you end up on the ground.  Or in the case of machine knitting, with your knitting and weights crashing down on to your toes.  We'll see.

I've finished gluing all the struts onto my Japanese dollshouse roof eaves.

A view with the top porches open.

However when I took a shot looking upwards with the porches open like this:

... the eye is offended by the unfinished gaps around the underside of the roof projections.  I looked ahead through the remaining 20 or so packages and I can't see any steps for remedying these, so I guess I had better do it now before the black paper gets glued on and I can't turn the roof upside down any more. Also planning ahead, I have predrilled holes in all the corner beams ready for the six lanterns that will eventually hang from them.  And as I've decided to leave the roof loose from the house, not glued on, so that the house will be easier to transport in future, I have glued on some locator blocks to the top of the house while I can still reach through the interior structure of the roof. I put three on each side of the house. So hopefully I can lift the roof off or drop it back on, exactly into place.

I've reached the thumb again on the re-knit of the second fingerless lace mitt.  I occasionally count my lace repeat to make sure I still have 17 stitches this time round.  I've almost finished one sleeve on the Drops Leaf Yoke jumper, I'm just knitting the garter stitch hem but had to pull out a little as it's hard to remember that you have to purl alternate rounds when knitting in the round, in order to produce garter stitch.

The garden has definitely decided it's spring now.  The magnolia tree has great fat buds all over, and even the apple tree has started to produce tiny buds.  The rhubarb is peeping up out of its winter manure blanket and we have quite a few daffodils and crocuses.  I was annoyed to find that slugs have decimated several of the pretty primroses I planted only a few weeks ago, hate those things.  We went out and laid out our three drip hoses before the plants get too high, as I had learned my lesson last year when we didn't lay them until about May and it was a nightmare trying to settle the hose down to ground level without breaking off too many plants.  The drip hoses were such a timesaver in last summer's heatwave because I could just hook the garden hose up to each in turn and go do something else while the garden watered itself.  Is your garden bursting into life?