Sick day

I’m home sick from work today with a massive headache. I really didn’t want to use the time off, but I suppose that’s what they give me the days for. Last night I seamed up the body of the On-Deck Pullover. It fits really well, so I’m happy so far!

Please forgive how gross and sweaty I look. We just got back from the dogs’ walk and it was humid out.

Speaking of the dogs, Viking passed the small-dog-test with a B+. He didn’t want to eat the other puppy, but he did want to play and he is kind of nippy when he gets excited. Viking isn’t the greatest at recognizing when the other dog didn’t want to play either. But he listened well when I said no, and I had no qualms about unmuzzling and unleashing him in the house.

(Apparently, I haven’t uploaded any new dog pictures. This post will have to go without!)

WooHoo!

I got my Ravelry invitation today! I definitely think it will be as exciting as everyone has already said, but I haven’t explored too much yet. I started organizing my stash in anticipation the other day. I only got as far as the “leftovers” – extra from projects.

Yes, this really is just the leftovers. Wool and wool blends are in the big bin, cotton in a small bin, and acrylic and novelty in another small bin. The bag on top is something I knit from strips of fabric and sewed together. It was a kit from Walmart. While I love the bag, it really hurt my fingers to knit it. The bag holds scraps of yarn that are big enough to maybe do SOMETHING with, but not much more than a few yards. Tiny scraps get tossed in a tea jar as they are produced.

And check out what someone left in the magazine exchange rack at work today!

As far as I can tell, these are from the late 70’s and 1980 (one mentions the “trend of the style Winter ‘80). I will almost certainly NEVER make something from these – aside from a baby sweater or two – but I think they are neat to have.

The front and the back of the On-Deck pullover are done, but I am too lazy to go block them. The live stitches for the neckline are still on the needles, or on a KnitPicks cable.

In doggie news, the pups LOVE each other. They are playing together and nuzzling each other. Viking keeps jumping up to Trillian to get her to play with him. I’m so happy they get along. We will most likely be keeping Viking, and will need to give him a forever name (can’t have a Viking here in Packer Country apparently. . . ) I am leaning towards Odin, because I would like something pronouncable and Viking-esque. I haven’t been able to come up with much else. We are taking him to meet my in-laws Yorkie this weekend, and that’s pretty much the only test he still has to pass in order to stay. Keep your fingers crossed for him!

The New Guy

We finally got our new foster! I LOVE this dog already. His name is Viking and he just had his third birthday. Viking retired due to a knee injury and now he has a metal plate in his knee (called a stifle on a dog). Isn’t he just the cutest?

He is just a tiny guy at 73 pounds – he is barely taller than Trillian! He is very happy, well-behaved, and mellow. He enjoys a nice walk and taking every toy out of the basket to a bed. See?

Trillian was feeling a bit under the weather just before he came, but already I think she will warm up to Viking sharing her space. She had a bath a few days before he arrived. She has such a thick coat for a greyhound that she always stays damp for quite a while afterwards.

You can see that she’s still a little wet in this picture, especially because those black spots on her nose are so noticeable. As soon as she was dry I gave her a really good brushing. I’m beginning to think that maybe I should save her fur to spin (but I don’t really need dog yarn!) just because she produces such a large quantity!

(Kind of hard to see all the hair on the dog bed in this pic, but check out that pile of stuff I pulled out of the brush!)

Not a lot of knitting progress to report, but I did finish this crocheted greyhound.

They had a few of those life-size greyhounds for auction at the fundraiser where we dropped off Dexter, and K asked me to make one for us. There was no gauge on the pattern, so this guy is more of a whippet, but it is just a toy for Trill anyway. She alternates between shaking it like a toy and carrying it around like a mother. Crochet is definitely not my strong suit, but I think it turned out ok.

I’ve made some progress on both the On-Deck Pullover and my Pal’s socks, but no pictures yet, so I will save that for next time.

Well that was quick!

I finished a sock pal sock already! It was really fun watching the stripes take shape, so I just kept going.

The second one may go a bit slower, since I’ll probably save it for “breaktime” knitting for awhile.

I had a fantastic weekend this past week! Friday we went out for dinner to a local “family restaurant”. We have been trying to make Fridays date nights, and we are checking out all the rundown little diners and restaurants in town in hopes that we find the hidden gem. This week wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t bad. Saturday we went to the farmer’s market and bought strawberries and peas. Both taste fantastic! I hope that at least the peas are still in season next week. Sunday we ran some errands and I weeded the flower beds in the back. We settled down in the evening with a glass of wine and watched Silent Hill. I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I LOVE horror movies, and this one was quite good. I like horror movies when they are really bad too, but this didn’t fit in that category. The wine is a great Moscato D’Asti that I bought at the Mall of America (yes, there is a liquor store in the mall) last Labor Day.

Kind of a quick post tonight – I’m just trying to make this habit!

We bought this bed for Trillian after she kept trying to sleep in our friends’ dog’s bed when they came to visit. Their dog is a Bichon, so the bed was a bit small for Trill, to say the least. I’m glad she likes this one in her size just as much.

In which I actually write a blog post

Wow. I am REALLY not good at keeping a blog. But, I really want to have this as a knitting project record, so I’m going to keep trying.

Dog news first: Dexter has moved on to a new foster home. He is a really great pup, but definitely not right for our home. Not small dog safe, so we couldn’t visit the in-laws, and hated his crate (I am not a trusting person – I wanted him to crate but he refused). Trillian never wanted to play when he was here and she is SOO much happier now. We had some houndie friends stay with us last weekend and she liked having them around (there were full out races in the backyard!), so it’s not that she doesn’t like company. She just didn’t like Dex. We are trying to wait patiently for the next foster, but it seems like it is taking forever!

In other news – I finished the beach socks. FINALLY! These were still fun to knit but towards the end I was getting antsy to cast off.

Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepard Sock
Colorway: Sand Ridge
Pattern: 72 stitches around the leg in a seed stitch rib pattern, knit toe-up with short row heels and toes.
Start Date: sometime in April 2006
End Date: June 27, 2007

I think they look great with jeans.

These took me about 15 months to complete! I would really like to have a hand-knit sock wardrobe, so I need to pick up the pace on future pairs :) This is my fourth pair of socks (for myself – I’ve knit lots of gift socks) and one of those pairs doesn’t fit inside my shoes, so I don’t ever wear them.

Since the sock needles were free, I cast on my sock pal socks. I know I said that I freed up sleeve needles for this, but I just couldn’t bring myself to have two pairs of socks in progress. I am just not a multiple project kind of knitter.

I hope my pal likes the colors and wide ribs (I didn’t stretch out the sock for the picture, but you can kind of see where the rib is). She said that she likes stripes and interesting color combos, and her blog is full of bright colors, so I think these will be great for her. I am having a lot of fun watching the stripes grow, even though this isn’t a sock I would knit for myself. I decided to knit top down for these, because I am doing an afterthought heel and I want the decreases on the heel to match the decreases on the toe. I started with an inch of 1×1 rib so I could cast on tubularly. Is that a real word?

Well, I guess that’s it for now – I will be trying to make more regular updates in the future. I didn’t mean for a whole month to go by!

I swear to you that Trillian is sound asleep in this picture!

She likes him!

Today Trill and Dexter tried to lay down in the same spot at the same time, and no one got up and ran away! What cutie pies!

I finished up a ball of yarn on the On Deck Pullover, so instead of winding up a new one, I decided to spin for a while. I’m working on a Lorna’s Laces roving in the circus colorway. There was no label on the roving, but apparently I have the same color yarn in stash! I didn’t realize this until I spun some up and the colors intensified. Everything looked very different in the roving form.

This is a pretty good representation of the mix of colors. There is a bit too more purple here than will be in the finished yarn, but you can see a little of the green and yellow peeking through.

I haven’t checked yet, but I suspect that my handspun will be a bit different than the true yarn. There were three different bundles of this roving at the yarn store, so I pieced together a color repeat that has more sections of blue and purple than yellow and orange.  I will most likely navajo-ply this, because it preserves the color repeats, and uses up all the singles.  I spun it pretty fine, so hopefully it will turn out a workable weight for socks.

On Mother’s Day, we ordered flowers for my MIL from ProFlowers.com. They were delivered here, since the in-laws were visiting. The flowers looked fine, but not super-wonderful like all the advertising said. They sent me an email survey to fill out and I told them essentially “flowers were fine, but not fantastic.” I am super cheap about flowers (I mean – they die in a week! How can they be worth $50+?) so they would have had to be some pretty awesome roses for me to think they weren’t a waste of money. Since I didn’t give them super wonderful reviews, they called my husband and said that they were sending out a new bouquet! And while we gave them the MIL’s address to send them to, they were still delivered here today. But, these are pretty gorgeous. I stripped all the leaves, because all 24 roses didn’t fit in the vase I had nicely with them on. This bouquet (well, the first one) was only $40 after the shipping costs, which I suppose is pretty cheap (but still, if I bought yarn today I’d still have it two weeks from now. . .).

Here’s one more picture of the cutie-patootie foster dog, just for good measure. This angle makes his head look enormous!

Lists

I’m not really a very good blogger, apparently. I mean to post more often, but I feel obligated to take pictures, and that would involve me getting off the couch. Oh well. Here’s a list of WIPs:

Poetry in Stitches – no further progress
Neverending Socks – almost to where I increase around the leg (after the ankle) This picture was taken a few days ago.

(Please ignore my hairy legs. I shaved right after I took this picture!)

On Deck Pullover – increasing for the waist shaping.

Here’s a list of things I need to get done before Friday:
Wipe off kitchen/bathroom counters
Dust
Vacuum
Pick up dog poop
Finish picking up the basement from Trivia weekend
Clean/organize spare room in basement so I can dye down there
Laundry – specifically blankets from the dogs crates.

I have nothing interesting to say. I’d be better off not posting at all, but this makes me feel like I could be a real blogger. . .
Hope this pic makes up for it! What a cutie! I can’t believe no one’s snatched this guy up yet.

Starting Over

Monday, I turned this:

into this:

It’s since had a nice long soak in the bathtub, and a relaxing hang from the clothesline in the basement. I knit this sweater a few years ago, before I knew much about knitting. Now, if I said “I want to make a nice cardigan to throw on over everything in the fall. I want this sweater to keep me warm and look good” today, I would NOT choose to make it from incredibly soft, drapey cotton/tencel blend. It seems obvious to me now, but this was a poor choice! The sweater is a Debbie Bliss pattern (from Cotton for All Seasons, I think. Is that a Bliss book?). Since it called for a cotton yarn I thought I’d be ok. Turns out the sweater has gorilla arms and is saaa-ggy. Here is a picture:

(Please ignore my cheesy smile)

See how the sweater sits on my shoulders? That’s only because I put it there and then stood very still. The sweater’s own weight pulls it right down. And this sweater has a hood to help it crawl down my back too. Anyway, I will reknit the cabley sweater (probably with Mission Falls 1824 wool, which is in stash) but first, this cotton will become this:

I got row gauge, but would never come close on stitch gauge, so I redid all the numbers. I think this will be a great sweater to throw on for camping, even if it will be handwash only.

I got past the heel on Neverending Sock number two as well! This one is going much faster than the first :)

Why yes, I AM a delicate princess. Why do you ask?

Progression

Many projects (home and knitting) had progress made on them this weekend/Monday. My in-laws came to visit and while K (the husband), his dad and his brother put new doors in our garage, his mother, sister and I went to the bookstore, where I bought this:

It has been a LONG time since I bought a knitting book. Usually there are just not enough patterns I like for me to spend money on. Or, in the case of Favorite Socks, I already have all the ones I like! Charmed Knits, from Alison Hansel, has lots of stuff I like. I like both initial sweaters, the owl, the cloak, and probably some more that I’m forgetting. Now I just have to figure out an excuse to knit a cloak!

Since I wanted nothing to do with installing doors, I also managed to complete a sleeve this weekend.

I’ve started the next one, but only far enough to free up my second set of size one DPNs. That’s so I can start my sockpal’s socks! The yarn arrived on Monday, and while these aren’t my colors, I really think my pal will love them!

I’m thinking that I’ll do toe-up, so I can use all the yarn, and an afterthought heel, so I can keep the stripe pattern in tact up the leg. I’m picturing something like a k2-p1-k4-p1 rib, but only because I think anything else would be too much for the stripes. (There are some Flickr photos out there that lead me to believe that the stripes will be “medium-sized”) What do you think? Can I do something fancier? I don’t mind doing simple – they will be good “carry-everywhere” socks!

This was also in the package from Carodan Farm:

I have been ogling these socks from Knitting the Blues since forever. Since I could get my pal’s yarn AND this Trekking (#110) from the same place, I did!

I have some more news, but I will save it for a post tomorrow.

I can help you get stuff done too!

Spring has Sprung!

Okay, I know Spring has been here for a while, but there are finally things blooming in my yard!

Not much to say today – I worked on the Poetry in Stitches cardigan for a little bit (ie 2 rows on a sleeve) and spent the rest of the night cleaning and picking up for my in-laws to visit this weekend. Hubby is shampooing the carpet now, not so much to impress anyone as because it REALLY needed it. I didn’t even knit on break today because I went to the post office to send my mother a gift instead. (It’s brownies! She doesn’t know about the blog, so I can tell you)

We have a beautiful tree in our front yard that is blossoming right now. I have no idea what this is – but it does produce cherry-like fruit later in the summer.

Here is a close up of the flowers.

And my lilac bush in the back yard.

This plant a co-worker thinks may be a rhodedendron. All I told her was that it had purple flowers, was a woody shrub (bush, really) and that it was blooming now. What do you think? I am completely gardening illiterate, so I have no idea.

That’s all I’ve got for today. Hopefully, there will be knitting content this weekend!

PS – I haven’t received my Sockapalooza yarn yet, but in the last post, I said it was Regia Bamboo. That’s wrong. I considered Bamboo, but I went with the Silk. The color number is still right.