"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either." ~ Elizabeth Zimmerman

7/13/19

Margaret Update and a Spider

Doing the knitting update first. I finally finished the first side panel for a Margaret Tudor sleeve.



This is the piece I was trying to get done on the camping trip. I could not work on it after I got home because it smelled very strongly of stale wood smoke. Last Wednesday I dumped everything out of my knitting bag onto the deck table for the day to air it out in hopes of getting rid of the odor.

Everything lost the odor except the sleeve piece and it's accompanying ball of yarn, so I put it in it's ziploc bag (I've been keeping it in a ziploc bag to protect it from dirt and damage when not being worked on). I added a fresh cedar block to the bag. By Thursday morning, the smell was gone.



I washed the knitting bag, which was taking a chance because it was very expensive when I bought it, made with high quality upholstery fabric. I wasn't sure it would machine wash without some form of destruction, but I decided if I couldn't get rid of the odor I'd probably toss it anyway. It machine washed, and dried, beautifully. You can see it in this photo taken yesterday.



I spent several hours out on the deck knitting and got that sleeve piece done. I immediately cast on for the second one, of course.



I paid royally for all that deck knitting time. I had an asthma attack just before I went back into the house for the day. I coughed for hours. I ended up taking a Musinex D tablet to get it to stop. I don't understand why my asthma inhaler doesn't stop the secondary coughing. To explain, when I have an asthma attack, I get a funny tickle in my throat, my lungs start to ache, and I start coughing. It's a dry cough. I take my inhaler and it stops. Then a little while later I start coughing again, this time with tons of phlegm being coughed up. I cough so hard sometimes I actually throw up. It's exhausting. My doctor has been giving me various prescriptions to try and control that second cough but nothing seems to be working. Sigh. I don't want to have to stay inside all the time.

Okay. About a spider. I don't usually post about spiders. They're too creepy. However, this morning I stepped outside to check on some plants I'd planted in the boxes on the deck yesterday. We got a very hard downfall of rain during the night and I wanted to make sure the plants were okay. (They were.) I spotted this fella on the railing.



I had not seen a spider like this around here before. It was about half an inch long, and it's so pretty I went and got the camera. It's a male Red Back Jumping spider. It's didn't jump when I was taking pictures, thankfully, or I'd probably have dropped my camera and ran. I have a complicated relationship with spiders. They creep me out something awful, but I appreciate their purpose, which is to eat other bugs. It didn't like the camera.



I don't blame it. A large black menacing eye making clicking sounds just a centimeter or two from me would freak me out too. He actually turned around and charged at the camera. I got a really good shot of his face. Freaky looking. But also interesting. Look at those eyes, and those teal fangs. I'm so glad these creatures are smaller than me.



My friend Becky will love these photos. She actually has spiders for pets.

Live long and prosper. \\//

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