Sneaker-Booties

One of my favorite coworkers is pregnant.

She's 21 years old and has had two miscarriages, so this is a high-risk pregnancy. They're scheduling her for an ultrasound as soon as possible (she's only about 5 weeks along) because one of the previous pregnancies was ectopic, and they want to make sure the now-baby has taken up residence somewhere safe.

While I'll be making a baby sweater and/or an afghan for the baby a bit later on--once we know whether it's a boy or a girl and the mom chooses some favorite colors--I wanted to make something quickly. Waiting until later felt, superstitiously, like I was waiting for things to go wrong. Making something right away felt like an act of faith.

So I made baby booties and gave them to the mom on Saturday.

Playing catch-up

I need to catch up on some craft stuff.

My sister was at a craft fair and bought me two balls of this:



She didn't see anything she wanted for herself, she wanted to buy something to benefit the fair's hosts, so she said, "Yarn! Kathy!"--even though it's a strange "yarn" to work with. I paired the Tiki with Bernat Satin yarn in pale yellow and made a scarf for my sister's mother-in-law for Christmas:



It measured 62" x 5", and the Tiki made an interesting texture:




I used the same stitch pattern--but a more conventional yarn--to make a scarf for my sister (6" x 66"). This is a hand-dyed yarn that I had a hard time finding a workable pattern for; the yarn just worked up in such a busy-looking batch of colors (nice colors, but busy) that I tried half-a-dozen patterns before I found one where the yarn and the stitches weren't absolutely at war with each other.






Currently, I'm working on a BSJ in sage-green cotton yarn and on a coin-lace clapotis in Kraemer Sterling Silk & Silver.

Miscellanea

That's a screen shot of a post on a Ravelry forum. That post contained another screenshot from the forum. The avatar I use on Ravelry is the same one I use here (and on LJ, too). On Ravelry, there's a feature that shows a thumbnail screenshot of a Raveler's blog. I figure a screenshot of my blog, which contains two screenshots and the avatar, too, might be fun. Or dizzying. We'll see. (With my luck, the thumbnail-grabber thingy will be broken. I may have to leave this post at the top of my blog for quite a while.)


I've started giving the dogs raw chicken backs or turkey necks occasionally in an effort to minimize the gunk on Jacey's teeth. (Sam's aren't too bad, but they're not great, either.) The dogs had chicken backs last week. Yesterday, I found turkey necks at Kroger, and the dogs each had half a neck for breakfast this morning. Sam's next to me on the sofa, and I was petting him and said, "Did you have a nice breakfast this morning?" Sam just gave one of his sleepy/happy-grunts and snuggled down deeper into the sofa. Six feet away, however, sleeping Jacey heard the word "breakfast" and her head snapped up and she started licking her lips before she even opened her eyes.

(And before someone panics: "Chicken bones! Ack!" Cooked chicken bones are dangerous; they are brittle and can splinter in a dog's stomach or intestinal tract. The bones in raw chicken are softer, and chewing those bones is very good for a dog's teeth. Just don't overdo how much raw chicken you feed your dog. A sudden, extreme change in diet can have a disastrous, um, outcome on your dog's output. My guys got one back each last week, and didn't get another yummy back until three days later.)

(And if you're worried about Salmonella, I'm careful. The raw chicken gets dropped into boiling water for a bit before I give it to the dogs. And I'm a big hand-washer. And if you're worried about Salmonella risks and dog food in general, you might want to look at this. And that's with dry dog food.)


I've gotten some crocheting done. I finished a couple of doilies for friends. There is this one:



The pattern name is "Extravaganza." The doily is 16" x 24" and is white (although the photo looks like it's ecru).

And there's this pinwheel doily:



It's actually a very nice purple that my camera can't handle. This one is 17" in diameter.

I've got several pieces here that I need to package up and send off to people. I should get organized and do it today, especially since my next day off is Tuesday, 11 November, and I'm pretty sure that's a postal holiday.* But I'm pooped (up late last night doing some freelance proofreading), and I just want to vegetate here on the sofa with warm dogs and some knitting. Maybe I'll get the mailed pieces out next Friday, 14 November. Or maybe I could get my butt in gear and mail them before or after work one day.

Nah. Organized? Moi?

*Yes, I just looked it up to be sure. Tuesday is Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day. The ceasefire at the end of World War I occurred (London time) at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

When I kill 'em, they stay killed.

When you stitch something with a natural fiber like cotton or wool, you block it when you've finished, to make the piece assume the proper size and shape. Usually, this involves washing the piece (usually by hand), squeezing out the extra water, and laying the piece out at the right size and shape, often by pinning the piece. (It's what I've done to doilies.) You let the piece dry, and you're done...until you wash the piece again. Any time you wash the piece in its long life, you probably will have to block again. (An exception is something like a sweater that might not need special shaping. But doilies, or lace--yep, you have to re-block.)

But man-made fibers are a whole different game. Acrylics don't block well. You can wash, pin, let dry, unpin, and just watch the whole silly thing curl up or go back to its original shape and size.

But there's a procedure called "killing the acrylic."* You wash your project, pin it out nicely (so far, like regular blocking)...and then you steam the livin' daylights out of it. You have to be careful not to touch the yarn with the hot iron (there's a difference between killing the acrylic and cremating it), since acrylic will melt under that much heat. (It's why they don't make potholders out of acrylic yarn.) But you can put a damp towel over your piece while you iron, or you can just hold the iron over the piece and shoot steam jets at it. Then you let the piece dry again before you unpin it.

People who have done this to acrylic yarn say that the yarn becomes softer and has a nicer drape, and that it holds its blocked shape--permanently. (The good news is that you only block once. The bad news is that you only block once. You'd better get it right. And don't, for cryin' out loud, wash an acrylic item in superhot water and dry on a high dryer heat.)

So--does nylon count as an acrylic? "Acrylic" is such a generic name. Are there some acrylics that killing doesn't work with?

I once bought some nylon crochet thread. (The thread used for doilies usually is 100% cotton.) In fact, I've bought a few spools of it, but I'd never used the nylon for a doily. But in the interest of scientific research, I thought I'd see if killing the acrylic works for nylon.

So I crocheted a doily. I had a variegated thread in bright colors, so I chose a pattern than didn't have lots of textured stitches on top of other stitches (that doesn't show well in variegated thread). The nylon thread is a bit thinner than conventional doily thread, I think, and my doily came out a bit smaller than the size specified:



At this point, the unblocked doily measured about 12 inches; the pattern specified 16 inches. So I washed it and pinned it out. Stretched out for blocking, it was about 13.5 inches--still smaller than the pattern specs. I steamed it some while it was pinned. I let it dry overnight while pinned.



After it dried, I steamed it--with my Rowenta Steam 'n Press iron, which has a protective piece you can put on the bottom of the iron to make sure the baseplate doesn't touch the fiber. I let that sit overnight to dry. I took it off the blocking board and let it sit. The doily drew up some after it was unpinned, and went back to 12 inches unless I stretched it again. So, figure it really wants to be 12 inches.



Then I rewashed the doily and just tossed it on the blocking board, spread it out by hand, and made sure none of the picots were bent out of shape. I let it dry overnight, and it stayed nicely round, picots flat, and 12 inches.





It's not going to take special efforts to block it, so it looks like I've successfully killed the nylon. It's nice to know this is going to be possible on future doilies; I've just got to compensate for the size issues since this thread is finer.

*The joke goes like this: An inexperienced knitter asks "What's 'killing the acrylic'?" and the smart-ass knitter answers, "Red Heart." This is a knitter's in-joke; Red Heart Super Saver yarn is sort of the fast food of yarn. It's reasonably inexpensive, comes in some pretty colors, but is uncomfortable to wear (hot and it feels rough) and doesn't block at all. But it does wear well--machine wash and dry--making it a very good yarn for afghans.

Making progress

The two baby-sized BSJs are finished. They're worked in Lion Brand Cotton-Ease on size 7 needles. They'll fit 18-month-old babies (19" chest):





The grown-up sized BSJ is nearly finished. (It's just been too warm to hold a lapful of yarn.)



I've started a doily in variegated nylon thread. I'm planning to try to "kill the nylon" after I finish the doily, to see if that activity makes a permanently-blocked doily. I'll document my results. I've worked 24 of the 29 rounds. This picture is just through the first 10 or so rounds.



Believe it or not, the thread is even brighter than it shows in the photograph. And it's shiny, too. (Ooooo, shiny!)

I ordered some DPNs from Knitpicks and some laceweight yarn. The DPNs were a set on sale (sizes 0-3, for socks) and a set of #5s I need for another project. I ordered 880 yards of laceweight merino yarn in white; 3 skeins (440 yards each) of Knitpicks Shadow, Oregon Coast Heather (greys, greens, and light tans); and 5 skeins (440 yards each) of Knitpicks Shadow, Midnight Heather (dark blue). That was just enough to put me over $50 to get free shipping.

I found gas today, at the 8th station I checked. This means I have enough to get me safely through the weekend.

Start-itis

Monday was my day off. I was up late Sunday night working on a proofreading job. Then I got up early Monday to work on files for the greyhound group (premium lists for upcoming lure coursing events...I've got one page of forms left to create). I worked on the files all day, but by evening I was itching to get my hands on some yarn.

I've been asked to test a dog sweater pattern. The pattern is for a crocheted sweater. The pattern comes in 16 sizes (or something like that). I've looked at the pattern, and I don't like it. Crocheting to the gauge given is going to create a very stiff sweater that nearly could stand up on its own (armor-plated winter wear, anyone?). Crochet doesn't stretch the way knitted fabrics do, and this pattern is going to require you to haul the dog's feet through armholes, something that's do-able on a knitted sweater, but not-so-much on a crocheted one. And because greyhounds are such big dogs, making the sweater would take a lot of time. I don't want to invest that kind of time on a sweater I'll never force Sam into. So I think I'm going to bail on testing the pattern. I know the designer will be disappointed, but I'm not going to feel guilty about this.

So, of course, having been all-kinds-of-disappointed with this crocheted sweater project, I started a new sweater for Sam--a knitted one. I got some lovely Lion Brand Wool-Ease (80% acrylic, 20% wool, and machine washable and dryable) in a blue heather:



There's forest green heather for Jacey:




The pattern is a side-buttoning sweater designed specifically for greyhounds. It has a turtleneck that can be folded down or left unfolded for better protection for the dog's ears. Rather than forcing the dog's legs through armholes, there's a chest-flap that goes under the dog's chest and buttons at the side (no fumbling for buttons under the dog, where you can't see them). It's a very simple rib-stitch pattern, but there are nice finishing features that make this a very professional pattern. The pattern is available as a free PDF.

At this point, I now have three sweaters on needles: a tank top and an adult BSJ for me, and the sweater for Sam. I don't have any crochet projects in the works right now, although I need to make a Kitty Squid for a coworker's cats. I finally got photos of the Square Flair doily once the blocking was finished:



That's 21" square, in ecru thread.

Wednesday night I'll try to finish the greyhound files so I can email the PDFs to the event field chairman. I work an early shift on Thursday, and after work I want to go to the Hobby Lobby in Austell. (I've never shopped at that one; among other things, I want to get aluminum size 8 DPNs if I can find them.) I'm off work on Friday, and I hope to get some knitting done. The weather forecast this week calls for thunderstorms, and I hope we'll get some nice rain. But, in the usual way of forecasts, today's "60% chance of thunderstorms" translated into overcast skies--and no rain.

The dogs are fine. And lazy. Jacey's weight may finally be starting to budge...in the right direction.

Tonight

Today, I worked some more on my tank top as I listened to a Mansfield Park audiobook:



Now I've also started on a complicated doily: three charts, complicated instructions--the works! And I'm watching Notorious, with the original mother-in-law from hell, who sits and stitches neatly as her daughter-in-law drinks poison. Back to work tomorrow.

2008 Ravelympics--Day 3 (or 6)

Sweet Dreams is finished and blocked; it's a housewarming present for a friend:



Another bookmark is finished and blocked; it's a surprise for a friend:



Those were completed yesterday, although I didn't get photos until today.

And this evening:



These booties are for Trina's baby boy (due 21 November); there's a matching BSJ:



I'm headed off to bed. Work early tomorrow. Then I get off about 3:30, and I'm off all day Friday. Looks like some good Ravelympics time coming up.


Sam is still sick. I haven't heard from his vet, but the boy is drinking more tonight than he did last night. And he's a bit whiny, which is totally unlike him. I gave my work schedule to the vet's office, so I might get a request to run the boy into the office on short notice if something opens up on the vet's schedule.

2008 Ravelympics--Day 1

In the past week, I started and worked on a couple of my Ravelympic entries, thus disqualifying them from "competition." I made a small, thread bookmark:



And I finished the redo of the vintage* doily...but I'm probably going to rip out that last row and redo it. I think the leaves are too long. Much as I hate picots, I'm going to put little picot-like leaves on it instead of the spikes. And I may try to reblock it. I like the colors well enough, but I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out. At any rate, it can sit for a couple of weeks--until the Olympics are over--and I'll decide then.



These pictures were made with my old camera; the Sony is still in the shop. But I had a terrible time getting the old camera to produce photos with decent color and focus.

Today, at 8 am EDT (the official kick-off time, since that's Beijing's 8 pm), I started my first Ravelympic project. So far, I'm 13 rows into a doily. I'll try to get at least another row done tonight before I stop working on that and start on the bill-paying freelance work. (And speaking of bill-paying, that's something else I need to do.)

The dogs seem fine. Sam's still taking his Cipro, and it's not as rough on his stomach as the Clavamox was. No idea whether it's really working, though. He takes the last pill on Monday, so we'll see how he's doing on Wednesday. And Jacey's backside has cleared up. I'll wait until Wednesday to contact the vet about her thyroid dosage, once I see how Sam's doing and find out whether I need to take Sam back in.


*The Web site the pattern came from called it a "vintage" pattern. The pattern is younger than I am. Ouch.

ETA: Sweet Dreams doily through round 14 at the end of work on day one:

I've frogged a doily

I needed to redo some of this doily to fix a stitch error. (There's a batch of tr where there should be dc.) But I'm not happy with my color choice for the leaves and background. I like the colors individually, but there's not enough contrast for them when paired up. So I'm changing the colors.

One suggestion I've received is to use ecru for the background (lighter than the "linen" neutral I used here), and to use the Christmas green (the darkest green in the picture below) for the leaves. I suspect I'll go with that. I've frogged the background, but left the leaves for now. Feel free to comment with your own suggestions.

Finish-itis

Knitters and crocheters like what they do--the knitting and crocheting part, at least. They often are not so thrilled with the finishing work: the seams, buttons, weaving in ends, etc. Well, yesterday I was hit by a bout of finish-itis, and I've finished off four baby sweaters and a doily in less than 24 hours. It helped that I was running back-up software on my laptop and had to close all other applications. Since I couldn't surf Web sites, hang out in chat rooms, or follow on-line or PDF patterns (my next two projects have pattern instructions on Web sites), it seemed that finishing some WIPs was a good idea. Here's the finished BSJ, now with shoulder seams sewn, neck-opening crocheted, and buttons added:



Trina had an ultrasound yesterday, and she's having a boy. The yarn is Omega Sinfonia, a washable and dryable cotton.

This doily doesn't have a pretty name. It's just called "#2":



It's a house-warming gift for Erin, a Ravelry buddy who moved into a new house in the spring. The next doily I make (probably will start it tonight) will be for Briana, a Live-Journaling, BookCrossing, new house owner. Oddly enough, both these doily/housewarming gifts will be heading for Columbus, Ohio.

For Alrescate's twins I made matching red sweaters. The sweaters fasten at the shoulders (with snap tape), and have a "for-show" button: a cardinal, giving the boys a head start as St Louis Cardinal fans.





The yarn is CotLin, by Knit Picks: a machine washable and dryable blend of cotton and linen.


And for Sirroy and Yokospungeon's baby, this crocheted sweater, with pearl buttons and a flower, will be headed for Ireland:





The yarn is CotLin, by Knit Picks: a machine washable and dryable blend of cotton and linen.

All the in-the-mail stuff is likely to happen on Wednesday of next week. (Wednesday is my next day off.) The next baby sweater I work on will be for my cousin, Shari, who's due in January. I have some bright, pretty cotton yarn:

and


After I got all the craft stuff finished, I went up to change the sheets on the bed. Usually, when I'm busy upstairs, Jacey gets on my bed to watch whatever I'm doing, making it tough for me to change the sheets. Today, though, she settled on the dog bed in the floor:



Sam, on the other hand:



I worked around him as long as I could, pulling off sheets or pillowcases, and dropping the dirty linen on the floor. I finally snatched the last pillow out from under his butt, and he condescended to move for me:



Yeah. Onto the sheets I'd dropped in the floor. Mr Helpful.


After I got the sheets changed, it started raining, with some "nice" thunder and lightning. (The "nice" kind is just distant enough not to make the lights flicker.) I took the dogs, and we went out to sit in the carport and watch the rain. We're tucked back into a corner where we don't get wet:



And we have a nice view out to the rain:



I usually sit and knit or crochet or read. Sam generally falls asleep. Jacey often lies with her chin on the floor, but she keeps her eyes open and her ears swivel like directional antennae as she tracks the thunder.


It's been a nicely lazy day, today: didn't have to work too hard at anything, but I feel like I got some things accomplished. Tomorrow I'm working the closing shift, and I won't have to get up until 10:30. The other day, I treated myself to a three-DVD set: Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), and Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). Sinatra was in his early 30s, Gene Kelly was 3 years older, and they're both at the peak of their looks and their skills, I think. It's fun music, nice dancing (Kelly taught Sinatra to dance, the beginning of a fifty-year friendship between them); there's gorgeous color and some classic scenes (Kelly dances with Jerry the mouse in Anchors Aweigh). I think I'll stay up late tonight, watching movies, cleaning up my laptop's hard drive, and doing some knitting or crocheting.

The Flower Hotpad

I saw this pattern today and made it. It works up quickly, although I'm not thrilled with the way it finished. I may need to play around with the final folding and stitching a bit.

Modifications:

1. There's not much I dislike as much as stitching into individual chain stitches. Row 1 of this pattern calls for stitching 175 single-crochet stitches into 161 chains. I changed this: stitched the first 11 single-crochet stitches in each petal's loop, then stitched three single-crochet stitches into the middle chain of the 23-chain loop (to make the tip of each petal), then stitched the next 11 single-crochet stitches into the loop. This is much easier to do, and it means it's not critical if the chain gets twisted on the previous step.

2. Rather than stitch each petal to the next in the finishing stage--and create all those ends that would need weaving in--I just joined the petals as I was stitching the final round.


The instructions for folding the loops nearly drove me crazy. I figured it out and decided I'd better document the steps here so I wouldn't run into the problem again. And the photos might help someone else, too.



In this photo, the first few petals are stretched out. The piece is right-side-up; you're looking at the front of the stitches.



Here, that petal has been flopped over to the left. You're now looking (mostly) at the back of the petal.

You just do the same thing on all the petals. It's not nearly as confusing as it seemed to me earlier. I think the problem I had was looking at photos of finished pieces--where I could see the fronts of stitches on the petal tips--and not being able to see the fronts of the stitches when I was doing the folding. When you fold the petals, you'll see the backs of the stitches until you flip the whole thing over. What was the "right side" will become the "wrong side" of the finished piece.

Edited to add: I may rip the border and redo the folding* just for my own satisfaction, but I'm not impressed with this design. It's cute, but not very practical. Do people really need lumpy hot pads? Won't any dish placed on this hot pad wobble? A lot? I've read lots of posts about people making these as gifts; I wonder how many of those crafters have actually made the hot pad and used it themselves.

*What I did wrong: I made the folded part too horizontal. Each petal's folded part should be on more of an angle--the left side high, the right side low.

Miscellany

Sam has been a bit better-behaved lately. He's raided the trash can, of course, and he sits and stares at me when I eat ice cream, but that's all normal.

When Oreo was the only dog I had, I bought a dog food container for her kibble. But then I acquired Sam, and we started going through 40-pound bags of kibble, which wouldn't fit in the storage bin I had. So I bought a new bin--one that holds more than 40 pounds at once--and put the old storage bin away. I've gotten it back out, though. The bin may be too small for storing dog food, but it's perfect for storing a bag of potatoes. Eat your heart out, Sam.


It's nice to have dogs that aren't thunder-phobic. I like to sit outside in a rainstorm and watch the rain, listen to the thunder. I sit in a sheltered corner of the carport and watch Nature's fireworks...and the dogs go out with me. They lie down, and Sam often falls asleep. We got to do that tonight, during a brief storm.


I've been yarn shopping, again.



That's a cotton self-striping yarn...probably going to be a baby jacket.



Those are cotton, too. Those are going to be the accent colors for a baby sweater, where the main color will be this:



That's a faked, severely color-adjusted photograph that really does come close to the yarn color. (The purple yarn photographs as if it's blue.) The sweater will be for my cousin Shari's baby (her seventh). I'm not sure when Shari's due; Mother just mentioned the pregnancy in a recent phone call. Meanwhile, I'm working on other baby sweaters, but there are no photos to show. :)


I finished a doily for my sister's 30th wedding anniversary:





Her dining room has this color on the wall below the chair rail. The doily measures about 13" square.