Backwards Brain Day

When knitting with a particular grist of yarn, generally it can be said that more stitches equates with a larger size. So knowing that I was going to make a pair of mittens for my hubby with the same black lambs wool I made the half mitts from, I reasoned that they should be just slightly larger than the half mitts. Knowing that I cast on 54 stitches for the half mitts, using a ribbing pattern that was 4 stitches (2 knit, 2 purl), I'd need to cast on either 56 or 60 stitches to make a men's size small mitt. Knowing this and thinking about it at the time, I re-did the math, just to make sure I had it correct and then I cast on ....... 52 stitches......... yup... 52... How did I not notice that 52 is not more than 54? Then I started knitting. I was half-way up the cuff and thought to myself, this looks a bit small but a 2, 2 ribbing does squish in more than a 1,1 ribbing. I kept knitting. Half-way through the thumb gusset, I thought, hmmm, this looks a tad small, but figured that I still had lots of stitches to go, not to worry. A thumb gusset has generally about 1/3 the stitches as the rest of the mitten. By the time I got to that 1/3, I had half a mitten that I knew would fit my little hand and not much else.
I wasn't going to waste that much knitting though, so I'm now on the second one.

I've been spinning fatter yarn for some reason and it became perfectly clear when my evil research project enabling friend hooked me into looking up information about knitted Tudor flat caps. Start here from the link she sent me, which led to info on the Mary Rose and then to the Museum of London and the V&A where then have online photos of extant caps. I realized that I was spinning to make one of these caps. However, my fat spinning that I figured was a nice worsted weight yarn - that I measured out - all of it- isn't actually worsted weight - which is what I'd likely need for this project. It's fingering weight - it's not fat at all! All that embroidery thread I've been spinning turned my perceptions upside down and now I get to start again. sigh.. all backwards again. It might be easier to do this project by just buying the yarn but EGADS!... buying yarn? Don't know if I can do it.... giggle

On the other hand, the casing trim is up on most of the windows, the baseboards are starting to be cut and painted. The crown moulding will be last. It's needed to hide hide the large and unfinished seam between the ugly stucco ceiling and the nice, newly painted walls! We've used a semi-gloss durable, scrubbable paint for the trim. It's white and looks clean and pretty. Did I mention that the livingroom is almost done? Yay!