Unfinished Symphony

I have so much on my to-do list yet last week I I picked up a bunch of project watches in a trade (a porch pickup in my neighborhood but I still agonized about leaving the house at all. There were six timepieces in the lot but I am most interested in repairing the Cardinal Direct Read Watch pictured above. It is missing its winder and I thought I could maybe try and replace it myself but I don’t have a tool to take the case back off. I will have to wait until the lockdown is over before I visit my watchmaker.

Fun fact: Cardinal is a Canadian company that bought parts from overseas and assembled them here. Initially they used Swiss movements but later imported their mechanisms from the USSR. I suspect this watch represents the latter era.

I’m also interested in fixing up this Benrus because I like it’s bark-like texture. It probably just needs a new battery but I don’t know how to get the case off. I should probably just bundle it with a bunch of other non-working watches an sell it to raise money to fix the jump hour watch. But then I look at it and anthropomorphize it and want to give it a good home.

In case you were wondering why I haven’t posted any craft projects lately it’s because I’ve been busy with work and I’ve started too many things and decided to dedicate my free time to my most ambitious creation—a knitted throw for when the hammock times return. It started out as à crocheted blanket but I kept having to rip it apart because I don’t have the chops to make consistently-sized squares. After two weeks I’d say I’m one quarter of the ways there. I also misestimated the amount of yarn required so I will have to visit the Dollarama on my next shopping excursion and cross my fingers that they’ll have more. Above is a photo of how it’s shaping up so far. I like the colour combo.d