Today

I was going to resume normal household duties today and perhaps even let the vacuum cleaner see the light of day but I looked out the window and the clear blue sky said I could surely afford one more day "recovering" from surgery. 

So Flynn and I enjoyed a lovely little walk around Bellerive Bluff along the coastal foreshore track. We started at the beach and headed around to catch the views of the city and then back again. 

I needed to pick up some more chook pellets, which of course is just around the corner from the Secondhand Shop where these mini glass titration beakers took my fancy and for $3 they jumped into my bag. 

They were perfect for housing the last survivors of my Hospital flowers.

This yellow dish came home with me too, at just $2 but I would have paid $5.

Back home, more important than any housework was the desire to finish a project that has been called "The tangle of guilt". 

When I picked up the needles to start knitting again a year ago, The Pianoman placed an order for a Beanie. After making 4 Beanies for the Kids I was a little bit sick of Beanies (Guilt #1). I then knitted some baby things and said I would knit him his Beanie after that (Guilt #2). And then I made something for myself (Guilt #3) and then I started my own "make everyone in the family a jumper" challenge (Guilt #4) and then I made Christmas things (#5).

Three months ago I found the perfect ball of yarn in his favourite shade of red to match his love of red wine. I took the paper tag off the skein and immediately cast on and did two rows before getting frustrated with the yarn getting tangled every few stitches. 

I sought answers from my Instagram friends who gasped in horror at my mess and informed me that I need to actually wind the skein into a ball first. Who knew? I tried in vain to untangle the mess. No use. I frogged the project and despite several attempts to try and wind it into a ball since then, I shoved the tangled mess into a cupboard in frustration where it could taunt me no more. Out of sight out of mind.

I bought some new yarn to start Jumper No. 2 knowing full well there was a perfectly good skein of tangled mess that I still hadn't dealt with (Guilt #6). I then started making things for Easter (Guilt #7). There was a comment about it getting chilly in the shed during his band rehearsals (Guilt #8) as well as a bit frosty in the morning up at the Veggie Patch (Guilt #9). And then I had Surgery and my dear Husband had forgone our Easter camping trip to spend our 6 days of Easter Holidays looking after me, the 5 kids and doing everything singlehandedly and it was then that I decided I could not be beaten by a ball of yarn. The very least I could do was make him a beanie (Mother-of-all-guilts). So I spent 2 hours last Monday painstakingly winding it up into a Ball and was just about to give up again when my friend and her Mum popped in for coffee and her Mum took it off me and finished winding it completely. How good are friend's Mums? Thanks Ann!

And, after a short two nights of knitting, I couldn't have been happier to hand over the "Tangle of Guilt" to him this evening. It is the Windschief pattern by Stephen West and I love the way it has come up. I used Cascade Yarns Cascade 220, appropriately named "Claret" and he is pretty happy with it too - immediately putting it on while cooking Bacon and Egg Sandwiches on the BBQ for our dinner (does the guilt ever end???). Details ravelled here.

And so that was today. A bit guilty that I didn't get much done around the house but more importantly I conquered the "Tangle of Guilt".

Does anyone else have "guilty" projects on the back-burner?

Anyone have breakfast for dinner?

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

Mel x

PS If anyone is using Google Reader for their Blog reading, please don't forget to sign up to another service by July. Bloglovin and Feedly seem to be popular. I still do things the old-fashioned way by clicking onto the actual Blogs as I like to visit your actual Blog "home". But thought I better mention this just in case you find your Google Reader has vanished come July. I'm personally overwhelmed with all these changes and social media platforms and fear I'm going to wake up one day and my whole Blog will have vanished into thin air!