Another greyhound...

...eventually.



At present, the dog is earless, eyeless, and bodyless. Brainless, too. (I can't stuff the head until I get the eyes in place, and I'm not up to that wrestling match tonight. Safety eyes are hard to get out--or in. That's what makes them "safety.")

Progress on this dog is likely to be slow. Crocheting in the round is rough on my wrists, so I will have to limit the time I work on this.

This dog will go to Second Chance Greyhounds for "adoption" (i.e., fundraising).


The Sunburst doily is still alive and well, and hanging on to its shape. As long as it continues to behave itself, I'll be happy.

I also finished a baby sweater I was working on. This one (toddler-sized rather than infant-sized) is going to a little girl.



I've started another BSJ as my lunch-time project. I may start another one to work on at home when too much crocheting is bothering my wrists. Friends are having babies faster than I can knit.


Finally, Jacey's doing better: no stomach troubles since the incident on Saturday. This morning was full of errands--blades and shears for work to be sharpened, then the bank, Costco, gas, Michael's, Target, Walmart, recycling, and Subway ($5 foot-longs!). My next day off is Monday--when I have to go back to the blade-sharpening place to get my stuff.

Hanging by a thread...

The future of this doily is in doubt.



The Sunburst pattern is supposed to make a doily that is 22" in diameter. This puny thing is 17" right now--fresh off the blocking board.

Worse: this doily, when first finished, rolled, waved, and rippled like the Atlantic Ocean, and a seasick doily is not a very useful one.

I've blocked it, let it dry (at least 3 days), unpinned it, measured it, and photographed it. Now I'm going to let it sit overnight and see what it's like in the morning. If it's staying flat, I'll weave in the loose ends and take new photos. If it has shrunk up much more, or if (as I fear) its present flatness turns out to be temporary, I'll frog this. The doily took way too many hours and uses a ball and a half of good DMC Cébélia thread. If this turns out to be a useless doily, I'll recover the thread; the time is gone for good.


I'm nearly finished with the current BSJ. I've taken a while with this one, and while I've been working on it, I've learned of three more babies (one of which was born already!). So, just a request to my friends: I'll knit as fast as I can, but no more babies until I get caught up. (I've ordered yarn from KnitPicks for the new sweaters, and the yarn shipped Thursday.)


Work has been frantic. Saturday was hectic, and today was long and unpleasant.


Jacey has had a couple of incidents of diarrhea. The first time was two weeks ago, and the dogs had had chicken backs. After they both had issues with some soft, um, output, I defatted the next backs they had. Sam was fine; Jacey was not for a day or so.

Since then, the dogs have had no chicken or anything else off their usual diets. Sam has been fine. Jacey was fine at 9 am Saturday morning, but at noon she had a full-fledged blowout. I was due at work 30 minutes later, so there was no time to go to the vet's to pick up any meds. I called in a request for meds I can pick up Monday (tomorrow) morning. I gave Jacey an Imodium AD before I left for work Saturday, and she did fine on it. Both dogs had rice for dinner Saturday night. And Jacey's been okay since then. But there's something going on with her GI tract, and I'd like to knock out this bug--whatever it is. I'll check with the vets--tell them she's better now--and see if they think I should go ahead with the meds. But I'm sure she didn't get into anything she shouldn't have: she's crated when I'm not home, and both dogs are leash-walked outside and don't get to run around, snarfing up whatever little goodies they find.

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.

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.

Flowers and crocheting and yarn

My father's birthday is tomorrow. I went up to the farm today to see my parents and have an early-birthday/belated-father's-day celebration. We went out for BBQ at a place where the owners know my parents by name. (They holler out from the front counter when your order is ready--and they didn't have to ask what name to holler.)

I took lots of pictures of my mother's flowers on the back deck.



(The flowers are purple--not blue. The camera isn't good with purple. And the unusual flower in the lower picture is an African daisy. Or--so says my father. But when I Google "African Daisy" I don't get anything that looks like this.)

While I was there, we had some bird visitors:



(There are more Cardinal photos--plus a Wren and a Chickadee--and lots more flower photos on Flickr.)

The family is planning a 4th of July get-together at my parents', and I actually managed to get off work on that day. (The manager often gives me Friday off--and the 4th falls on Friday.) I'm planning to take Sam and Jacey with me that day.


I finished a doily for a birthday swap with other helpers on the Ravelry site. The woman I'm swapping with likes purple, so I made a purple doily and got her purple yarn:



The camera got the purple totally wrong, so I've faked it in Corel Paintshop to approximate the actual thread color, which is pretty accurately indicated by that color chip. I swear, I'm going to take this camera and a skein of purple yarn to Best Buy (where I bought the camera) and tell them I want the camera to get that color right. The camera is so far off--in every light, with every background color and every camera setting--and it's ridiculous. (Really, those blue flowers up there should be about the color of the color chip. And the correct color doesn't even show in the window before you snap the photo; it's obvious it's going to be wrong.)

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.

Yarn-y stuff

I finished the Mother's Day sweater I was making for my mother--finished with a week to spare.



I'm picturing mother maybe wearing this under her suit jackets on Sundays. (It isn't a vest, but it was easier to photograph if I put a dark shirt under it.) The yarn is a cotton-acrylic blend, and not too hot. Which side is the front? Well, that's just it. You can have a square neckline or a round one, whichever you choose.

I had to modify the pattern. The original stitch pattern for the yoke of the sweater was destroying my wrist--and taking forever to do. So I ripped it back and substituted a different stitch pattern, one that was kinder to my wrists and worked up faster. (Four rows/inch instead of six.)




I have two of three baby sweaters knitted, but not stitched up. That will happen...soonish. Sweater 3 is underway. No pictures here. So there.


I went shopping for yarn Friday. I wasn't particularly looking for sock yarn, but three different kinds shoved themselves at me. One, in fact, leapt into my hands and refused to leave. Oh, boy!





My next crochet project will be a doily for my sister. In June, she and her husband will be celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. There's an unusual doily pattern I have, and I have garnet-colored thread to use (the lower part of the wall in their dining room is that color). I alternate crochet with knitting to give my wrists a break.