Take Two, and TIG

David and I worked things out last night. I keep trying to write a simple overview of what happened, but the words just won't come to me, so I'll use his: we were both emotional and hasty, and we're trying it out again.

Thank you all for being so supportive. It really means a lot to me. I feel kind of stupid for delivering bad news and then taking it back... but I know that y'all want me/us to be happy, and we are. We have things to work on, but we're happy. Thank you again for being so caring and comforting.

The tough thing about being upset with someone who's a big part of my knitting life was that it was nearly impossible to look at any of my UFOs/WsIP without crying. So yesterday morning, both for want of a memory-free project and out of necessity at school, I cast on something new.



It needs a snappy name, but for now I'm just calling it the TIG glove. TIG is Tungsten Inert Gas welding, which I started learning last Monday. It involves electricity, argon gas, a tungsten electrode, and steel filler wire that gets fed into the puddle of metal melted by the electrical arc. Here are some examples of what I can do with it.

The biggest problem I've been having with TIG welding is that when my hands get even a little bit damp (and with the amount of heat coming off the metal, sweating is inevitable), the filler wire gets stuck on the skin between my index finger and thumb and on my middle finger. This makes for a really crappy weld.

Rather than get a full leather glove, I decided to make a cotton glove suited to this specific need. It's going to have a full middle finger and half a thumb, but no other digits. I'm making it out of RBC mercerized "Parisian" cotton, which is probably older than I am. I think I inherited it from my father's late mother. It's navy blue (or "Neptune") to match my school uniform (and because that's the only crochet cotton I have that isn't pink), and I'm working it on US#1s.



Yes, that's the manual for the new camera on the left. I love the camera (in spite of it being a Nikon... I'm such a Canon snob) and will be using it on a regular basis to show y'all what I'm up to. Thank you, David. You saved my blog from an image-less existance. ;-)