“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 673 (Saturday)

A dental appointment in Fitchburg at 11:00 meant having to go out into the cold temperatures and potentially icy roads from the snow on Friday. It was discovered earlier in the week that there was also a hair salon appointment in Worcester scheduled at the same time, which was pushed out a couple weeks in favor of the dental cleaning.

At 8:00 this morning, while drinking coffee and scrolling through emails, a text came in cancelling the dental appointment. The message said it was due to the illness of the hygienist, and rebooked the cleaning for two weeks from now at the same time. As in, once again at the exact same time and date as the previously rescheduled hair appointment. The idea of not having to go out was totally acceptable, but now I need to change the dental appointment. Sometimes it feels like I need an administrative assistant.

Super long pull in a sweater.

With the day suddenly free, I had the buoyant feeling of a kid on a snow day. It was time to evaluate the entertainment options. Art open house? Read the book for book club? Household tasks? Cook? Then I spotted my alpaca sweater in a heap.

It’s a creamy white, fine gauge cable knit from a Central Mass alpaca farm gift shop, and is the most expensive sweater I’ve ever bought for myself. It’s lightweight and warm, and  has been a cold weather favorite since moving back from Tennessee. At least it was, until last winter. One day while I was working at the desk,  Winston caught a nail and made a gigantic pull in it. Since then, it’s been relegated to the mending pile where items tend to languish for ages while solutions are contemplated and avoided. 

Except for a fine horizontal line a couple inches from the bottom edge, the pull wasn’t visible from the outside, but it was easy to see from the backside. The long loop had been tucked to the inside and was so long it hung below the edge of the sweater where it was in danger of catching on things and becoming worse.

All fixed. from the backside.

There was an idea to fix it by pulling the yarn back along the site using a crochet hook which wouldn’t damage the fibers. A search began this morning for the crochet hook I swore I had. It’s green and was my grandmother’s. Drawers in the sewing desk were rummaged. There was rifling through the button tin which holds an amazing collection of buttons, hooks, needles, small scissors, and assorted tidbits from my grandmother and great aunt, supplemented by buttons left over from my old sewing projects. I had no idea I possessed a mattress needle until this morning. There was no crochet hook found, but crewel needles were located. 

Coffee was topped off. Hulu and a British series were turned on. The eye end of a crewel needle was used to carefully pull the delicate two-ply yarn stitch by stitch back along the route of the pull. 

The next thing I knew, it was 12:30. I wasn't really hungry, but I felt a little broken from hunching over the work. A container of macaroni and cheese was pulled from the freezer and heated for lunch. After the quick break it was back to the pull. And in another  blink it was 4:30. 

Salmon, spinach, farfalle reward.

Somehow, I spent an entire Saturday with dogged focus, working an eight or ten inch piece of yarn back though a sweater. When I paused for supper, after the many hours of close work on the tiny stitches, my vision was blurry. Reading the instructions on the pasta box to know how long to cook it was difficult.  

After a week of meals of reheated pizza and soup, it seemed there should be a grander reward for Saturday’s tedious task. Supper was salmon on a bed of spinach, with farfalle, capers, and kalamata olives. Dinner was great and my beloved sweater is repaired and can safely go back into the wardrobe rotation. It was a good day.