Baby booties

Another set of booties for the baby of my friend Libby:



I'm hoping to get a better picture of them tomorrow, in better light. The flash flared back from them, so the stitches are hard to see. The booties are a pale, creamy yellow.

Dog stuff

Jacey started thyroid pills 9 August: .4 mg morning and night. I had both dogs at the vet last week (for bordatella vaccinations) and had blood drawn from Jacey to check the thyroid levels: barely any change at all, which is what I expected. She hasn't lost any weight on the pills (although weight loss is common, mostly because dogs needing thyroxine usually have put on weight--and she did); and the situation with the hair on her back legs wasn't any better.

So the vet wants to go up 50% on her dose. She'll be getting .4 mg in the morning, but .8 mg at night. I have a supply of .8 mg pills for her and Sam, so this way I don't have to go get pills with a different dosage level. (Sam currently gets .8 mg in the morning, 1.2 mg at night.) About Thanksgiving, I need to remember to compare her condition now with her condition then to see if I think another vet visit and blood test is warranted. (The blood work is $40; I'd like to not have to do it again.)

Yellow Sneakers

I've finished one set of baby booties for my friend Libby.



On to the second pair...

Sam's Hero

Sam's hero eats sweet potatoes.

Greymates Calendar

http://www.greymates.org/

I'm not in the calendar, but friends of mine are. The calendar is a fund-raiser for the local adoption group.

Sock yarn!

The yarn I ordered Monday arrived today.



I'll keep using my cheap stuff for now--my first pair of socks is bound to be wonky, so we'll save the new yarn for after I've had more practice.

Sweet Dreams

I finished the doily I was making. It's called "Sweet Dreams," and it was made for a friend who will be getting it as a surprise.



The doily is about 19" x 14", size 10 thread, worked with a size 7 hook.

I've started knitting socks. Not fun, so far. I'm used to working with two hands and one hook. Now I'm working with two hands and four needles. I don't like those odds. ;

Alas, poor Yorick...

Yesterday, I went to two local yarn shops looking for good sport-weight sock yarn (I don't want wool, but 100% cotton hasn't got enough stretch. So I was looking for cotton with a bit of Lycra.) One shop has very little yarn--lots of "fabric embellishment" stuff, though--paints and trim. The other shop had lots of yarn--but most of their cotton was 100%. I'd been told Cascade Fixation had what I needed, but I haven't found a local store that carries it. Someone online in a chat room recommended Elann Espirit or their Espirit Print. I ordered yarn in their Print version--Berry Garden and Indigo Gold. I don't know if I'm going to love making socks, but I really like looking at the yarn.

Last night I finished the vest for my sister. It's okay, but I'm not in love with it. ("In love with it" generally means I want to turn around and make another one right away.)




Also, I was chat-room chatting with another Raveler late one night about the Cephalopodalong while I was watching the Branagh version of Hamlet. I commented that it seemed funny to be chatting about the -along while watching everyone and his brother dying in the movie. The Raveler commented: "Just had a strange vision of Hamlet holding up a fibery mollusk instead of Yorick's skull." I couldn't resist the temptation, and this greeted her in her morning email:




Off to see if I can finish a doily today...

Craft-y bits

I got invited to participate in two -alongs on Ravelry. One is a Cephalopodalong. Yeah, I'm crocheting an octopus. It's silly. And relaxing. I just picked some yarn from my stash--something I don't have enough of to make something serious. The pattern is here. Here's how far I've gotten:



The marker is the point where the increases stopped. The ceph will be ten inches below that before the legs start. This is a nice, no-brainer project I can work on during my lunch break at work.


In an effort to get at least one WIP out of the way before I started the octopus, I finished my socks:




The second -along I've joined is My-First-Sock-Along. It has a community here on LJ as well as a group on Ravelry. It's for encouragement and coaching for knitters attempting their first socks. Since my actual first socks were crocheted, I qualify for this group with my first-knitted-socks attempt. I think I'm using this yarn:



It's a very soft yarn. 100% acrylic, which may not be wonderful to wear, but this is in the nature of an experiment, anyway, and if they look nice I may want to frame them rather than wear them. The pattern I'm planning to use has a tiny cable in it, so I think the pattern needs this very plain, one-color yarn.


I finished a simple dishcloth from this pattern. I didn't make it very large. It's an interesting pattern, but I don't think I love the way it works up: there are gaps between the blocks of the stitches that I'm not crazy about:




I got pictures of my sister's vest. It still needs to be seamed, and have the ribbing added at the necks and the armholes. And buttons, of course.



I finally got some pictures of the Amore plum and the Homespun prairie yarns I'm planning to use in the coat pattern I found:




I still have the doily to work on. No pictures, yet.


Work's been fine. There's a new academy class, but I'm taking my vacation time next week (after Monday) and the week after, so I won't have to struggle to get dogs. I have plans for crocheting, genealogy, cemetery-searching, and greyhound stuff during my time off. (Greyfest is next Saturday.) I've stayed busy on Ravelry in my free time...hanging out in their Help! chat room to coach newbies through problems and chat with other Ravelers while I crochet away, and I've set up several states' worth of local yarn store data for Ravelry's data base. (Ravelry is up to more than 16,000 members, now, with another 17,000+ on the waiting list.)

The post office delivered my latest pick from Netflix today: Hamlet (the Brannagh version) finally is available on DVD. It's lovely. I've got pictures to post on Ravelry, then some needlework to do. Maybe I'll get that vest finished. Or work on the needlepoint stocking. Or something.

Craft-y Bits

I ordered some grab-bags of yarn and thread from Elmore-Pisgah, makers of Peaches & Creme cotton yarn and Grandma's Best crochet thread. The bags had some of the crochet thread, which is pretty awful stuff: it's way too fuzzy. If you stitch with it, there's no stitch definition. I may try unwinding some of the balls to see if they get better further in--they may just be fuzzy on the outside from wear and tear.

There also was some yarn--odd lots of various colors, including five balls of this stuff: a cotton yarn in a discontinued colorway called "Passion" (the colors in the picture). I wasn't impressed with it in the ball. (It's paler than the photo: weathered red, light purple, dusty rose, orange, and light green.)

But I had a pattern for crocheted socks that called for worsted weight yarn. I don't want to make socks in wool that I'll have to handwash to keep them from felting. And socks in acrylic yarn--yech! So I figured I'd try some cotton yarn--and there's enough Passion yarn to make a pair. (And one grab bag contained a solid-color weathered red yarn that goes with the Passion, so I can use it at the heels and toes.) I'm being pleasantly surprised by how the yarn works up. The sock pattern might not be great--the jury's still out on that one--but I like the color combination made up much more than I liked it in the ball. Quite often, my feelings about ombre/variegated yarns and threads go the opposite way. And fat cotton socks should be lovely in cold weather. (They'll fit inside my Crocs, even if they don't fit inside other shoes.)

I'm also working on a doily for a friend: I've done halfway through round 18. It's 21 rounds for the main doily, then 6 rows for the two "wings."

And I got two gorgeous sets of yarn for a coat pattern: TLC Amore's plum for the body of the coat (the solid down the page, not the print near the top) and Lion Brand Homespun in Prairie for the edging. (I can't find a good color swatch of Prairie: it's mostly olive green with bits of brown, red, blue, and plum in it.)

I was at an odd spot on several projects (need to seam the vest or do little add-ons on another project) and not in the mood to work on them, so I started another doily yesterday.

I had looked at the picture and glanced at the pattern info. The pattern included lots of cluster stitches (easy to do), V-stitches (also easy), and picots, but the picture didn't look alarming. But then I got into it. 36 picots per round. For several rounds. And for about half of them, I've forgotten to do the chain stitch needed after the picot, so the stitches looked crammed together. Ouch. So I'm frogging what I've done (about 10 rounds) and going to another pattern. It has picots, but they're kinder picots.* And it's a cool-looking doily.

I haven't felt well today--upset stomach. I was lying on the couch, and Sam wanted his dinner. He stood and barked at me for a while, finally decided I wasn't budging, and got up on the couch with me and slept. But I've fed the dogs, and Jacey's on the couch with me now. Yesterday, I went out to pick up the mail. There was a piece of junk mail and on the way to the trash can I tapped Jacey on the head with the envelope. You'd have thought I'd whacked her with a two-by-four. In the 16 months she's lived here, I've never popped her with rolled up paper or anything like that, so her flinching and looking for someplace to run from an envelope has to be something leftover from her previous life. Well, she's going to get tapped on the head by an envelope every day from now on until she understands that it's nothing to be afraid of. Sam's getting tapped, too, by way of a demonstration. He just blinks and looks at me like I'm nuts. Maybe I am, but I hate that Jacey flinches from so much stuff, and I want her to learn that loud noises or pieces of paper tapping her head are not--in themselves--things she needs to fear.

*Picots are worked however the instructions for a piece say. The ones I was doing were chain 4, slip stitch in the third chain from the hook; doing a slip stitch into a little chain is a pain. But the new doily calls for chain 3, slip stitch in the stitch just made, and slip stitching into a real stitch is a lot easier; it's a bigger target. And the picots are only on the last round.

Sam

There's a reason that boy's muzzled when I leave the house.

My company has an employee shopping day (double the employee discount) twice a year, so I tend to stock up. The last one was in June, and I bought big. We're still working our way through the goodies, and when I went to work this morning, the front room of the house contained four 40-pound bags of dog kibble and five 60-ounce boxes of Nutro Lamb & Rice treats.

Sam knows this stuff is there. When we're about to go outside, he dashes into this room and lovingly sniffs the bags and paws the boxes, then hustles back to the front door when I snap, "Sam!" Ordinarily, the foyer and the front room are blocked off from the rest of the house by an ex-pen--a sort of doggy playpen made of metal--that's propped in the doorway of the living room. It stands on end, accordion-folded, and I just pull it open to block the doorway, or fold it back out of the way when we go outside. In four years and eleven months in this condo, Sam's never gotten to the other side of the ex-pen on his own. He easily could leap the thing--and never has.

Tonight I got home about 9:45 pm (I left for work at 10 this morning). My first step through the door--something crunched underfoot, and Sam greeted me at the door--on the wrong side of the ex-pen!

Happily, there are still four 40-pound bags of dog kibble in the front room. However, there are only four 60-ounce boxes of dog treats; the fifth box fell victim to Sam.

Sam pushed the ex-pen to the side--got it to slide on the carpet--and got into the front room. (The front room also leads to the pantry-area, which he explored. But he didn't find anything he liked, so, aside from leaving claw marks in the paper towel rolls, he didn't do any harm there.) The Nutro treat boxes are glued very, very well. Then they're shrink wrapped. I've had to take scissors and a knife to hack my way into the box. Poor muzzled Sam couldn't even use his teeth. He did it all with his front feet. Once he got into the box, he spread the treats on the floor of the foyer and on the carpet in the living room. He pushed them under the bathroom door and into the closet where the heater resides. He finally managed to trap a few of the treats against the baseboards in the foyer, and he battered those treats to powder and crumbs with his muzzle.

Clean-up from this incident was much easier than some of the other Sam-episode clean-ups have been. Except for the pulverized treats, the treats were easy to pick up, and there's now a full-to-the-top treat container in the kitchen. (This container is in Sam's reach, he knows the treats are in it, and it would be much easier to open--just flick the latch. He hasn't figured it out...yet.) The pulverized treats were vacuumed easily, while a muzzled Sam watched sadly. (Jacey, still upstairs in her crate, couldn't figure out why mom wouldn't come let her out.)

An exhausted Sam is now asleep on the sofa--on his back with his feet in the air. The poor boy worked very hard today...and didn't get to reap the reward.

But what will happen tomorrow? Will he try to get past the ex-pen again? And if I secure the pen so it won't move, will he just jump over the thing? (He did that when he was penned outside one time and he just decided he didn't want to stay in the pen.) And if he gets over the ex-pen, will he attack the kibble? Or another box of treats? Either way, I'm running out of storage containers. And the only room downstairs that has a door is the bathroom--which isn't big enough to store 160 pounds of kibble and 15 pounds of dog treats. If I have to haul these 40-pound bags upstairs to store them in a spare bedroom, I'm going to be pissed.

Maybe I need to buy another dog crate. Not for Sam--who destroyed a crate (and hurt his feet) in his first foster home--but for the dog food!


An old photo...

Craft-y Bits

Sam and Jacey went to work with me today. This means they missed lots of nap time. They're both sleeping like the dead now. But they're clean, and they smell good. I'm pooped and about to turn in.

I'm going to rip out what I've done on Jacey's sweater. This patten probably would work on a big, round dog. It isn't going to work on a long, skinny dog who's just got a big chest. (That's right: a sweater pattern that doesn't look terrific on a busty girl!) Both dogs have fleece coats. If they need extra warmth, I can put one of my tee-shirts on each dog before I put the coats on them. But this is the second time I've tried to make sweaters for the dogs, and I think I'm going to find something else to do with this yarn. (I already have plans...) Enough! already.

I finished the front-right of the vest I'm making my sister. It works up very quickly, although there are some glitches in the pattern. For one thing, following the pattern would have resulted in armhole shaping at the waist rather than at the shoulders. (Details, details...) Nothing like having a pattern that keeps you awake. The yarn is a lovely cornmeal color, and my red-headed sister is one of the few people I know who can wear yellow without looking jaundiced.

Errors in the vest pattern

The crocheted vest pattern I'm working from is not for beginners. There are some errors in the pattern that you can figure out or work around if you're experienced, but they'll bite you if you aren't experienced. And they're silly, pointless errors. (If you make the small size and work as instructed, your armhole spacing will be on the wrong part of the front; it's a matter of the pattern wrongly giving the same instruction whether you're on an even-numbered row or an odd in a spot that makes a difference.)

Button, button, who's got the...

Does anyone know the reasoning behind the traditional "worthless" button on a vest--the bottom button (or buttonhole, at least) that doesn't get used?

I'm crocheting a vest for my sister. The instructions quite clearly tell you to buy six buttons. And make seven buttonholes. Sure enough, if you look at the picture of the vest: six buttons, and--if you know where to look--one lonely, unused buttonhole at the bottom.

I've made the seven buttonholes. But I may buy seven buttons and give my sister the option of buttoning the last button or not--as she chooses. At least she won't be left wondering why there's a hole in the bottom of the front band on her vest.

I felt awful this morning--sore throat and allergy trouble. I went to work anyway, but I came home after a couple of hours. I only had two dogs on the books (for a 10-hour day), and this way someone else can get the dogs and I'll actually make more in sick-pay than I would have made in commissions.

I had worked a couple of rows in Jacey's sweater while I was sitting in the parking lot, waiting until it was time to go inside. After I came home, I worked some on the needlepoint stocking. Then I finished up a crocheted dishcloth (experimenting with a strange pattern--it works okay, but it's unusual). So now I'm working on the vest for my sister, which means I've worked on four out of five works-in-progress today. If I work on the fifth one this evening, it'll be to rip out what I've done: I'm so far over gauge on the width, that I need to rework the piece and leave out at least one set of shell-repeats for either front (which I haven't gotten to) and two sets of shell-repeats from the back (which I've started and worked about 4 inches' worth--of 25 inches). I don't mind redoing what I've done since (a) I'll have fewer stitches to work on the redo and (b) I botched the edges in this crocheting-from-a-chart business, but I think I know how it's supposed to go now.

I'm working tomorrow. I expect we'll be dead all day. Sam and Jacey are going with me to get baths.

Craft-y Stuff

I got far enough on Jacey's sweater that I can make it my take-to-work project: now it's just "work even for a zillion rows"--or 23 inches, whichever comes first.

I worked on the needlepoint stocking for Lydia and came to a sad decision: My eyesight is forcing a change to a different stocking. Her stocking was 14-mesh canvas, which I can do, but it's tiny stitches. But that stocking was stitched in embroidery floss, which is harder to handle than tapestry wool. And quite a few of the stitches had floss paired with a metallic thread about the consistency of a human hair. Try keeping two of those threads linked up with four strands of embroidery floss--and get it all to lie flat in the right places. It was a nightmare, even in daylight, with my glasses on, and with the day-light lamp.

I had purchased another stocking kit before I found the angel one that has proved to be so difficult. The stocking I'm going to do is a snowman--worked in tapestry wool on 12-mesh canvas. Yes! This I can do. It's not as devastatingly lovely a design as the angel--although the angel was going to look more devastated than devastating--but it's a perfectly good snowman. I may pick up some pearly blending filament to highlight the snow (which is not done in French knots, thank you very much). The tapestry wool is worked with two strands at once--not six--and since it covers on 12-mesh canvas as well as embroidery floss does on 14-mesh canvas, logic tells me that one strand of tapestry wool is at least as large as three strands of embroidery floss. And since 12-mesh canvas is only 144 stitches per square inch--while 14-mesh canvas is 196 stitches per square inch--you can see that this will work up faster, even if you disregard the floss-vs-wool issue. I'm no longer absolutely dreading the stitching. I have the canvas mounted on stretcher bars and the yarn sorted. I'll start stitching as soon as I finish this post.

Tomorrow I still need to get to the recycler's and the grocery store. (And the lottery ticket people.) The grocery store will be critical since I'm heading into a 5-day stretch of 10-hour work days. Once I drag myself to the car after work, I haven't got the energy to go shopping. I can barely crawl in the house. But I'm running low on bread, peanut butter, Diet Coke, and Lean Cuisines--all the major food groups.

Jacey's sweater: Gauge swatch

The gauge for the half-double crochet section is 20 stitches/10 rows equals 5 inches with an H hook. I'm hitting 15 stitches/12.5 rows in 5 inches with an H hook. I'll live with the width (the sweater can be loose), and I'll work extra rows as necessary to get the length.

And the extra width might help when I have to enlarge the pattern to fit Sam.

Nice, relaxing day off today. I've puttered on Ravelry. I wove the ends in on the shawl I was making for myself. (Pictures later.) I started two new projects. One is a dishcloth--something I can work on at lunchtime since it doesn't require a lot of counting and pattern-following. (The shawl I finished was my old lunchtime project.) The other is a sweater for Jacey.


The picture is the frogged coats...

I started making one last year--a sweater for her and one for Sam. After lots of hours on both (his was nearly finished), I called it quits. I really liked the stitch pattern (and the colors), but I didn't like anything else--like the fit, the way the sweater hung, the coverage on Sam, etc. But I found a new pattern--one that really is a sweater rather than a crocheted, blanket-style coat that just hangs over the dog's back. The pattern comes in sizes from small to extra-large. According to the published dimensions, the extra-large will just fit Jacey (if I add 2 inches to the back length); Sam's will have to be 5 inches bigger in the chest and 8 inches longer down the back. I figure I need to make her sweater first, and measure it against Sam before I seam it. That should help me see how much--and where--I need to change the pattern for Sam.

But I've just worked a swatch in the pattern stitch, and I'm way off in every direction. I'm re-swatching to see if it was a fluke...and to see if I can force something to give. (My stitches are too loose for the width: 15 stitches in a space that should be 20. My rows are too tight for the length: what should have been 5 inches was only about 4. Yeah, I can stretch the piece longer, which will correct both problems--but only if I keep stretching the piece, and Jacey isn't going to put up with mom yanking on her sweater all day.) If I have to, I can live with it, though. The extra stitches in the width will make it easier to make the adjustment for Sam, and I don't mind if hers is loose around the chest. And I can get the length I need for the body by stitching more rows (I have plenty of yarn); I just have to make sure I have enough length in the front section, so the "armholes" fall at the right spot. The pattern shows the "neck length" (from the neck/throat edge of the pattern to the point where the armholes begin), so I just have to match that length (for her--exceed it for him), no matter how many rows it takes.

This evening, after lots of promising thunder and lightning, we got a tiny bit of rain--a nice, gentle shower that lasted about 30 minutes or so. I took two dog beds out to the carport, and the dogs and I sat out there and watched the rain, and the people coming home late from work. I'm off Thursday and Friday, and hope to have nice weather and a relaxing time both days--although, on one day I have to haul recycling and do some grocery shopping. Oh, and I need to get my Mega Millions ticket. The last drawing paid off for me: $3. That's not quite enough to finance my early retirement.

(Maybe you noticed that none of this is the needlepoint stocking I'm supposed to be working on. I need to do something about that...)

Rosalinda

I finished the doily.



Blocking this was a beast. The squares are each 3.25 inches, so they don't fall on the line on the blocking board. I had to keep measuring and shifting pins (at least 200 of them, all total), and I'm still not happy with the result. I think I'll re-pin the piece to the board, concentrating on keeping the outside border straight and letting the inside squares fall where they want. Then I can mist it and let it dry again.

The pattern was fine. I figured out, though, that there are 300(!) cluster stitches in this thing (60 of them in the next-to-last round). And, of course, there are the dreaded picots and treble picots.

Next to work on is the needlepoint Christmas stocking to have in reserve in case Thomas springs a fiancee on me at the last minute. I also have some other doilies in my queue on Ravelry, and a few other projects.

(Yes, my Internet connection is back. It came back on its own about 11 this morning. My living room is much cleaner than it was...)

The week in review...

I spent much of my Thursday-off editing pattern info on the Ravelry site. Today I got the last two squares finished on the Rosalinda doily and wove in the ends. Tomorrow I'll start the borders, and I'm hoping I can get the whole thing finished and start blocking it tomorrow. On the errand-front: I did the grocery shopping today, and I've washed one load of clothes. I need to get them in the dryer and start another load before bedtime. The second load can dry tomorrow. Nothing will wrinkle if it sits in the dryer overnight.

Jacey has been on the thyroid meds for a week, now, and hasn't gone nuts. Since this is the girl who licked herself nearly bald after about three days on PPA (aka Proin), this is significant news. Sam is...Sam. He's moving a bit slower--has a bit of a limp first thing in the morning--and is making me aware of his age. He's only seven, which isn't a lot in greyhound terms, but he's much whiter in the face than Oreo ever was, and occasionally he's less limber than he used to be. Of course, if there's food at stake, he can move just fine. Tonight, there was an episode where he barked at Jacey--something he never does. I realized the problem, though. She was lying across the area where he needed to walk to get to the water dish, and he was afraid he'd step on her. He never worried about stepping on Oreo; she'd just growl but never do anything about it. But Sam is afraid Jacey will do more than growl, and he may be right. Anyway, I called her to the living room; she got up and left Sam a clear walkway.