week two

The second week of quarantine, and the knit along with Arne & Carlos, has come and gone. I find myself getting a lot of little chores done at home. It seems there are no excuses anymore! Not to say that it's all been productive and full of accomplishments; there have been a fair share of hours sitting on the couch with the cats trying to stop reading the increasingly worrisome news online and plenty of time on the phone with friends and family. The higher frequency of phone calls especially seems to be a nice side effect of the strange times. 

Most days I get my patch done, sometimes I don't and then I catch up with a couple the next day. The ones in the photo above are steam blocked, which worked really well instead of wet blocking (the colors didn't run at all) and had the wonderful effect of evening out some of the wonkier stitches. A couple of the ones I wasn't super happy with because the contrast with the variegated yarns wasn't great improved a bit upon being tamed with the steam. They still aren't perfect, but I like them all. 

It turns out we will be making a cushion! I mean, folks are making whatever they want at this point, but A&C have set out with a cushion in mind and I'm curious to know how they will approach the construction, so a cushion these will be. This green and gray vine patch is the last of the nine for side number one. They have decided to continue the knit along for two more weeks beyond their required two weeks of quarantine, so there will be nine more patches for the second side. Mine are small because I'm using fingering weight yarn so I will have to see if they make a decent pillow size or if I should make more patches for each side. Not sure what I'll do yet. 

I could of course just use all 18 patches on one side, but there's this. In a clever nod to the isolation protocol, the "Love" patch is intended for one side and this "Hug Me Later" patch is meant for the other. So when we're all done with this mess, we can all love each other and stop forgoing hugs! I enjoy the tongue in cheek nature of that design feature very much.