Tiger Eye

I finally got my Tiger Eye scarf blocked. Once it was blocked, I unpinned it, then measured it (when it wasn't tightly stretched out): 5.5" x 69" (14 cm x 175 cm).



But I'm tired of a camera that takes blurry pictures and gets the colors wrong. Surely a camera ought to get at least something right. (Color on the lower portion of the picture is pretty close.)

They're home.

The vet had a couple of difficult cases earlier today, so he was running behind schedule. Then there was Sam, who was no trouble and whose teeth cleaned up very nicely. But the vet wanted to give the boy time to wake up slowly on his own, since hurrying dogs sometimes leads to the hound flailing around and perhaps getting hurt. So while Sam slept off the drugs, the vet got going on Jacey.

Jacey's back teeth were far worse than the vet realized. The girl won't chew--anything. Sam at least gnaws on a durable Nylabone every now and then. Jacey won't touch the thing. She got off with no extractions this time, but the vet said if she continues at this rate she's going to need more than one dental a year.

Yeah, I know. And I do brush her teeth. But she's got a mouthful of plaque magnets. So she had a rough time, and she probably has no idea why her mouth aches so much. Her gums bled quite a bit, and while she was waking up I think she probably licked at her front legs. The fur on her legs is pink from bleeding gums, and her face looks pretty nasty, and the rest of her doesn't look so lovely, either. (The perils of owning a dog with lots of white on her.) Much of her fur looks like it got wet , got mushed out of place, and then dried that way (which is probably exactly what happened).

So I picked up the dogs about 6:30. They aren't happy that the vet is still limiting their food and water tonight. They're quite sure they aren't going to get sick from the anesthesia (and they're probably right). So far, Sam's had his small bowl of water--and Jacey's, too--and both dogs have had less than half a cup of their kibble. If all goes well, I'll give them another half cup before bedtime.

I've got a couple of furry zombies for my bed tonight. Hurray! (And if someone breathes in my face, I won't gag.)

My vet's bills are quite reasonable. $135/dog for the cleaning, and he didn't send them home with pain pills since he didn't have to pull anything. (The pain meds would have run $40/dog.) But I also needed Interceptor (heartworm meds) for them, which runs $106+ for a six-month supply for two dogs. This is on top of their annual check-up, heartworm tests, and vaccinations two weeks ago. I think they need to get a job.

Tomorrow: The Vet

Sam and Jacey go to the vet's tomorrow for their dental cleanings. I'm not thrilled about having them under anesthesia, so I'm a bit stressed.

The vet's office called. They wanted me to drop the duo off tonight by 7:30 so the vet could start them really early tomorrow. (He comes in early to beat the traffic.) But I told them that I'd had Sam sleeping in my bed for 5 and a half years, and I wouldn't be able to sleep without him around. I also wasn't happy about the idea of having the dogs at the vet's office for nearly 12 hours before the vet even started on them. So they're still home with me tonight. They're getting a few treats this evening; all food and water stops at 11 pm.

I drop the dogs at the vet between 8 and 9. Then I can run a few errands. I'll probably wind up back at the vet's early--maybe with my knitting in hand--to wait until the dogs are ready to come home.

Finished "Fetching"

The pattern is called "Fetching," and it's knitted with Red Heart SuperSaver (acrylic) yarn in Piñata:



I've finished the knitting on my Tiger Eye Lace Scarf. I really, really liked the yarn, dyed by Lisa Souza. I need to finish the blocking and weave in a few ends. Pictures when that's done.

I went up to my mother's and helped her clean out her basement by taking away yarn she didn't want any more. There isn't any truly gorgeous yarn here, but the potential for a scrap afghan is here. I've always wanted to make one, but I generally find myself with scraps in about three colors, which is not enough. Now I have colors. And weights. And textures.

Doggies having fun

It's a video of lure coursing. The black dog is Cole (named for Cole Porter, officially named "SummerWind's Jazz and Cocktails FCh"; the fawn dog is Sweeney (wanna take a wild guess?); the white dog is Splash. Cole belongs to friends of mine. Cole finished third in the country in 2007, but Sweeney outscores Cole this day. (Dogs get points for following the strips properly.)

Who'd have thought that chasing a trash bag could be so much fun?

Work Stuff

I'm spending the last few days of chilly January cuddled up to a cold-pack. A German Shepherd pulled me off my feet yesterday at work. I twisted as I fell to avoid landing on my hands (great way to break an arm). I intended to land on my well-padded butt, but my back connected with the corner of the door frame before my butt hit the floor. (Contact was along the ribs, just south of my shoulder blade.) Nothing broke, and I'm just having muscle pain. Sorta like a crick in your neck when you move wrong, but this "cricks" when I bend over or pick up a dog--things I do fairly often in my line of work. I filed an accident report, so that I'm covered if this doesn't get better. The Medcor nurse said large muscle injuries can take a week before they feel better. Yay. (But I was able to answer "no" to the nurse's big questions: Sharp pain? Difficulty breathing? Walking funny?)

Stuff

I must be a serious typist. This laptop is less than 18 months old, and paint is coming off some keys. The D has a chip out of it. And the Shift key...oh my!



Finished the hat:



I was going to crop it differently, but what the heck...that really is my chin.

Idiom of the day

I bought the edition of Interweave Crochet that had the hat pattern I liked. I bought it on my day off (Tuesday), when I was out running errands that included recycling, Home Depot, grocery shopping, and the post office. (I was errand-running from 11:30 am to 4:30 pm--a marathon of 60 miles and 7 stops. Some day off.) The magazine, purchased from a yarn store 20 miles away, cost $7.99 and had only one pattern that I really liked--the hat.

So imagine my displeasure when I discovered last night that the milk that leaked in the trunk on Tuesday had damaged the magazine. By the time I discovered the damage, the milk had dried, leaving pages stuck together and un-pry-apart-able. (Yeah, I tried. Half the instructions from one page are stuck to the facing page.) The milk also hit the yarn, which, thank heavens, is washable. I washed the yarn last night (it's still in a skein, which makes it easy to wash), and it's hanging to dry. (By the way, I've forgiven Sam for showing an inordinate interest in my bag of yarn...and the milky magazine.)

The magazine is useless. I'm not inclined to buy another copy, and I don't think the local library has a copy I could make a photocopy from. So--I'll just make a different hat. There's a pattern I've done before, very easy, and I probably can knock it out pretty fast. This pattern is in a Leisure Arts book I already own: Caps, Hats and Helmets to knit and crochet--32 patterns for $2.50.

Yeah, you can see the idiom coming at you: No use crying over spilt milk.

And a side note: I probably will not buy another Interweave magazine. This was the first one I'd bought, and nothing impresses me nearly as much as the inflated price. The photography isn't even useful. Imagine a lovely shawl on the front cover--photographed from the back of the model--and the inside photo of the shawl also is a back view. There's no view of the front of the shawl, and unless the wearer plans to walk around backwards (or just wear the shawl that way), she probably wants to know how the thing looks from the front!

Stuff...

I frogged that hat. P2, K2, forever. Can you say boring? Besides, I found a neat crochet pattern after someone in the crochet community posted on LJ. She was using the same yarn--even same color--as the hat I was making, and I love the way hers looks. So I guess I'm going to crochet a hat.

(The hat I frogged)

I got more Kraemer Sterling Silk & Silver in black (I had one skein of it, shown below) to use for a cabled scarf. I also bought some in white to use for the Charlotte's Web scarf.

(Silk & Silver)

Several Ravelry Helpers proposed doing a knit-along for a lace scarf pattern called Tiger Eye. I've been plugging away a little almost every day since 15 January, but several of the other Ravelers have abandoned the project. The pattern is just a 16-row repeat. Sometimes it goes like clockwork. More often, though, I wind up frogging the repeat and redoing it. And re-redoing it. I've finally finished the 13th repeat (10 repeats are shown in the photo, with lots of lifelines), and the unblocked scarf measures about 6" x 24". I'm aiming for 6" x 60" unblocked, which probably will block to 72", but I may wind up going shorter for the sake of my sanity.

(Tiger Eye Scarf in Lisa Souza's Pumpkin fingering)

I bought a set of Addi Turbo Lace circular needles, 47-inch size 3 needles, from another Raveler. Along with the needles, she sent a bottle of coffee syrup and a skein of lovely sock yarn.


The dogs are fine. So is the family. Mother wants me to come help her clean out her basement, where she has too much yarn stored. I can help with that. ;)

A miracle greyhound

Her name is Genie.

If the link doesn't work, search the site for "old greyhound".

Greyhound blood donors

Article posted on the greyhound group.

Knitting lesson two: Know when to quit.

Holy smokes. I frogged the hat and reknitted. And did it again. I ripped the whole hat and started again with different (more cooperative) yarn and lifelines every four rows.

Today, finished with row 12, I looked carefully at what I had: A cable twisting the wrong way back on row 10. And one overlooked wrong-way twist back on row 1!

After almost a week of knitting on that blasted pattern, I had four decent rows of ribbing...and nothing else right.

Enough.

I frogged it and neatly rewound the yarn (yay, ballwinder). I got out some sport weight yarn and a totally different hat pattern (k2/p2 around and around to infinity). I've got two inches of ribbing done--and done right.

I'll get more cable practice later, preferably on something with sane cables. I think I might make Fetching, which has two kinds of cable stitches (not four) and looks sensible. There's a cable vest I want to make (from the same book as the accursed hat), but it's rated "easy" (rather than the hat's rating of "intermediate") and has the same C4B and C4F that Fetching has. If I can survive Fetching, I'll have some encouragement to attempt the vest.

A knitting lesson

Knitting is done with two points--or more. They can be individual needles or one big circular needle. The point in knitting is to keep all of one row of stitches on the needle(s) at one time.

Crocheting is done with one hook. Generally, you keep one stitch on the hook at a time.

This becomes a critical difference if you have to undo a part of your work because you've spotted an error. It's easy to remove your crochet hook from your work and just rip back to one particular, precise point, stick the hook back into your stitch, and start up again.

Knitting? Not so much. You have to get all those fiddly stitches back on the needle(s), preferably in the right order and with the right twist. You can try to "tink" your work (that's "knit" backwards--basically you unpick one stitch at a time and hook it back on the other point), but it's time-consuming and, if you're knitting cables, it's a nightmare since the whole point of cable stitches is to work the stitches out of order. If you're knitting a four-stitch cable, you don't knit (or purl) 1-2-3-4; you knit (or purl--or both) 3-4-1-2. Fun.

So if you anticipate problems with your knitting, you run a lifeline. At some point in your knitting, when you're sure you've got a "good" row, you run a bit of yarn or thread through all the stitches. Then you keep knitting, knowing that if you have an error you can just unravel your work back to the lifeline, run the needle through the stitches along the line, and pick up your work at that point.

But there's a desire not to run a lifeline. Running a lifeline is an admission that you expect to screw up somewhere, and I didn't run a lifeline on the cabled hat I'm knitting.

The cable pattern is 20 rows long, then you work a repeat of the first 10 rows. I made it successfully through row 20, screwed up row 21, and only spotted my problem when I was on row 25. I spent hours tinking on Sunday night, carefully backing up stitch by stitch and row by row. Supposedly, I only needed to back up a few rows, but when I got to the point where the problem had occurred, I was missing a stitch, and every time I tinked back a row or two more, I wound up short a stitch, or with twisted stitches, or with an unexplained hole. I had run a lifeline after the ribbing, before I started the cables, so I finally just ripped the cables out completely--clear back to the lifeline.

So I've got a new rule if I'm knitting cables: Run a lifeline every fourth row. And leave the lifeline in place until the piece is nearly finished, and periodically examine the cables carefully to make sure they all twist properly. (I have some crochet thread that's too fuzzy for me to use on a doily--I'd get no stitch definition--and it makes for an inexpensive lifeline that doesn't leave yarn fuzzies behind on my knitting.)

I've gotten back through row 18. After all these hours of tinking and reknitting, I'm still not to the point I had reached early Sunday morning. But I will finish this hat, and I will get the cables right.

Yeah. Run a lifeline every fourth row.

All kinds of stuff...

I need to catch up on craft stuff:



This is the doily I made for my sister's mother-in-law for Christmas. It blocked to 17" x 30", so I'm sort of thinking of it on the dresser in her bedroom. The thread was size 10 in ecru.





This is another doily I've finished. I had this "Ocean" colorway of variegated thread, and I wanted to find a doily pattern that wouldn't fight with the color pattern. The doily pattern is called "Extraordinary," and it's designed by Mary Werst, who did the doily pattern I made last summer for Daniel and Ashley.



And I made these armwarmers--the first time I've knitted cables. The yarn is Red Heart's Farmland colorway (worsted weight yarn), so they're machine washable/dryable. I like the pattern, but I think I might try again on smaller needles. I knit very loosely, and these could be less "chunky" looking.



And I've finally knitted a pair of socks (third try). These are supremely boring (ribbed cuffs, stockinette foot), but I now can call myself a "sock knitter." The next pair will be something more exciting...and will not be in this yarn (Elann Esprit), which is pretty but is stretchy (cotton + Lycra). Since you need to pull stitches snuggly between DPNs when you knit socks, stretchy yarn is a nuisance because you can't pull it snug enough without stretching it too much. Next time? Conventional yarn, even if I use an icky acrylic.

For Christmas, I got 8 pattern books--lots of doily patterns. Woo hoo! Right now, though, I'm knitting myself a hat. Sitting with the hood up on my sweatshirt isn't always comfortable, but it's been cold around here. (Winter finally found Georgia. For a few days.) I've found a pattern with cables on it, and this is a good way to practice cables without committing myself to a huge sweater. On the other hand, this pattern uses some unconventional abbreviations for cable stitches (the pattern is in a book by Bernat, which is a Canadian company), so I'm having to pay close attention to what I'm doing. I've been knitting while my laptop reads me the Bleak House audio book.

What greyhounds do in bed

This is not one of mine...but it might as well be.

Stuff...

Craft-y stuff? I finished the doily for my sister's mother-in-law. That thing is huge! It's blocking right now, and I ran out of blocking board before I ran out of doily. (About 17" x 28".) Bits are hanging off both ends of the blocking board. I've started a color doily (Caro's doily was ecru--pretty, but borrrrr-ring) and it's going quickly. It'll be about 16"...or probably smaller, since I'm way under the gauge. This doily uses a solid medium blue and a variegated aqua/light blue/medium-blue. This is one of the few patterns I've seen where a variegated thread might not battle the stitch pattern to a mutual loss. I've also had an idea for another doily, this one in two solid colors...

I've postponed work on Sam's sweater. I have a coat he can wear if he thinks he needs it (he'll let me know, the fuss budget). That can wait until I need some mindless knitting for Christmas day, while we're sitting around and talking after the presents are opened and before lunch.

In reading, I've finished the sixth Harry Potter. At lunch I'm reading Chocolat, and I'll start the last Harry Potter at bedtime. I got the fifth Harry Potter on DVD last Tuesday, and I've enjoyed it. (I don't go to theaters, so I hadn't seen it before last Tuesday.) I got the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet for my birthday (along with three doily pattern books; Caro's doily came from one of the books). And I just got the Charlotte's Web DVD from Netflix.

Most of my Christmas shopping is done. Mother discovered something I can get my father: flannel pajamas. His current set is getting threadbare, and the elastic is shot. Just think: flannel jammies for my father. I think I'm not allowed to buy him jammies with animals on them or with feet in them. :)

I HAZ COOKIEZ!

Unfortunately, I said that really loudly at the front door when I saw who the package was from. The dogs don't know the difference between "I haz" and "We haz." They're learning the hard way. (Jacey is sitting next to me on the sofa, with her head by my shoulder. Sam is standing in front of me with his head on my knee. Ah! Togetherness!)

Thank you very much, florafloraflora. The cookies are wonderful.

Craft-y stuff

Sam has a leash burn on one thigh. He did it to himself a week ago. Saturday, he licked and worried at it and made it bleed. He's muzzled when I'm not home, so he can't mess with the sore place while I'm at away. But I'm making him wear his muzzle when I'm home, since that's the only way to get him to leave the thing alone. I'll try to get him to leave it alone tonight; I don't relish the idea of sleeping with a dog wearing a hard, plastic muzzle.

The custom-dyed yarn I ordered arrive, as did my new ball winder. The results:



I even managed to tame the purple tumbleweed. Before and after:



I didn't much like the doily I made my sister's mother-in-law. So Thursday I suddenly decided to make her a different one. This one is 17" x 28", 34 rounds, and is the biggest doily I've ever done. In two days of work, I've done 18 of the 34 rounds (each round gets bigger than the previous one). This one is going so well it's a bit scary...

It's a sweater!

As I was wrestling with DPNs to knit the armbands, it suddenly occurred to me: Why am I fighting with these stupid things when I KNOW HOW TO CROCHET!?

< My "berry" good girl.

I crocheted the armbands.

On Sam's sweater, I'll crochet the whole band around the body of the sweater, too. It's starting to curl on Jacey's sweater (because I knitted it instead of ribbing, it), but I'm okay with that.

Also, make a dog's sweater longer than you think is necessary. Dogs are horizontal, not vertical, and sweaters don't "hang" on them. You can smooth the sweater down, but the second the dog moves, the sweater's gonna inch back up the spine.

Some pig!

Jacey's sweater is going well, although the tumbleweed reared up and bit me. (Actually, it just snarled-up beyond belief and I had to cut and rejoin the yarn.) I just have the bands around the armholes left to do. I'm thinking I might try to work Sam's sweater from the outside of the ball rather than the inside...although that would mean voluntarily removing the ballband and creating another tumbleweed; but working from the outside probably would eliminate those monstrously big, snarled up bits, which grow more frequent as you go. Maybe I'll hold off on starting his sweater until the ball winder arrives (it's been shipped). My custom-dyed yarn has been shipped, too. I'm excited about it.




And I've found new patterns on Ravelry, including a clever Charlotte A. Cavatica scarf I'm tempted to try.

My latest Netflix movie has been Amazing Grace. It's a nice costume-drama of the sort the British do so well, and it stars Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney, Toby Peters, Ciaran Hinds, Michael Gambon, and Nicholas Farrell. It's based on the life of William Wilberforce, crony of William Pitt the Younger and architect of the abolition of the slave trade (and, eventually, slavery itself) in His Majesty's empire. It's nice to see the good guys win one. Eventually.

I wanted to buy a ball winder. I'm finally moving beyond Red Heart and similarly mass-produced acrylic yarns that come in pull skeins, and I'm going to need to wind yarn. (And there are all those collapsed, partially used pull-skeins of Red Heart that could benefit from rewinding.) There was a ball winder on Jo-Ann's two days ago, and today a 20%-off coupon from Jo-Ann's arrived in my e-mail. So I went to order and...yeah, Jo-Ann's is out of ball winders.

So I checked out Herrschners, which has more expensive ball winders. And bigger shipping charges. Winder-plus-shipping was going to be close to $50. So I went to KnitPicks. Ball winder for $39.95, and free shipping for orders over $45. So I ordered a 440-yard ball of laceweight Shimmer (alpaca/silk) yarn for $5.99. (I got the Turquoise Splendor.) I'll get ball winder and yarn for $45.98.

But the ball winder is an imperative. The ballband for the yarn I'm using on Jacey's sweater has torn off. Without that restraint, that pull-skein of boucle yarn has blown up to something the size of a basketball. It's now impossible to take this project with me when I go out. I'm hoping the ball winder arrives soon, before this plum-colored tumbleweed rolls around my living room and scoops up both dogs. Frankly, I'm a little afraid to finish this sweater and tackle Sam's, for fear that ballband will break and I'll have warring tumbleweeds...

I spent a small fortune today on "necessaries": A new tire, oil change, emission inspection (which my 14-year-old car passed with flying colors), and tag-fee/ad-valorem tax for my car. The inspection costs more than the ad-valorem tax. And one tire cost more than both of them. And I shopped at Costco to stock up on Diet Coke and get a few Christmas presents for those people you don't know how to shop for. (Chocolate-covered Belgium cookies for the brother-in-law's brother. Stuff like that.)

While I was sitting in the Pep Boys' waiting room--since I couldn't take Jacey's sweater-plus-tumbleweed with me--I worked on the socks I started knitting back in October, then put aside. After the frustrations of working with boucle yarn that hides all your stitches, it actually was satisfying to work on the socks, where I can see what I'm doing. I'm hating those socks a lot less, now. I'll probably use them as my take-to-work project for a while. I'm on the cuffs--they're a top-down pattern--and I can work on them at lunchtime as long as the pattern stays easy.

In other news: I've reread Harry Potter 1-4, and now I've finished #5. (The fifth movie comes out here on DVD in less than two weeks.) I also watched Macbeth--the Sean Pertwee version--from Netflix. And I've watched Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren; I have to look away from the execution scenes.

I'm going to sit up tonight and work on Jacey's sweater while watching DVDs--maybe Monsters Inc., Shrek, Howl's Moving Castle. Non-bloody, non-nightmare movies. Between Elizabeth I and that babycake video I just posted, I've got a brainful of gore and icky images.

I just ordered some hand-dyed yarn from Lisa Souza. It's a lot of yarn for about $30...a fingering-weight wool to be used for a scarf, and other things. It's nearly 1800 yards (8 ounces) in a color called Pumpkin (center of the third row), a sort of milky orange. The scarf only requires about 350 yards, so there'll be enough yarn left for socks...and other things. I'm also going to order an inexpensive ball winder. The idea of winding that much yarn without a winder is daunting, and I have all kinds of partial skeins--collapsed Red Heart pull skeins--that could benefit from being wound into sensible, compact little balls/cakes.

I've been working on Jacey's sweater. The yarn is frustrating--lovely color and texture, but boucle yarns are hard to knit on. There's no stitch definition: you can accidentally knit a purl row (or vice versa) and not even be able to tell. (When you're knitting in stockinette stitch and can't tell the difference between the front and the back: that's "no stitch definition.") I need to do about 6 more inches on the "tail" of the sweater, then the border band and the arm bands. (The bands were supposed to be ribbing, but there's no point in ribbing when you can't see the stitches.) Then it's on to Sam's sweater. I'm going to experiment with doing his sweater on larger needles. (I dropped two needle sizes from the pattern recommendation to get gauge on Jacey's sweater.) Sam's sweater--knit at the same gauge at Jacey's--would require another 33 stitches in the chest area (153 stitches on his vs 120 stitches on hers), and since he's so much longer, too, I'd be knitting forever. If I use larger needles, I can work fewer stitches per inch, and get his sweater done in about as many stitches as her sweater. I hope. Since I have to invent a pattern for Sam's sweater (the pattern book doesn't have a size large enough for a dog with a 31.5" chest), I might as well invent one with fewer stitches.

Craft-y Stuff

I finished the red booties for Havefaith1's godson's baby. (The red is less orange than what you see in the photo.) The baby will be a Christmas baby, so there are two sets of ribbons in the booties. After the holidays, the parents can pull out the green ribbons and have red booties with white ribbons.



I finished the doily for Caro (my sister's mother-in-law). I've got to remember that certain doilies are not recommended for the spatially challenged--10-point doilies, just for starters. The doily is in cream-colored thread and measures just over 12 inches.



I've bought a bit of yarn lately. First, there's the yarn I bought for dog sweaters. Here are the dogs--with their sweaters-to-be.



Here's the Misti International "Pretty in Pink" and the Kraemer Silk and Sterling.



And I got some garnet DMC Cebelia for a fancy doily for my sister and her husband's next anniversary (their 30th in June). The pattern specified two balls of white, 400 yards per ball. I doubt the doily will use all that; it'll just need something more than 400 yards. But since the Cebelia balls are 282 yards each, I ordered three balls. (The color is off in these photographs.) The pattern is a really unsual design, and I'm looking forward to that one.



And I bought some yarn for my Secret Santa on Ravelry, and made a doily for her, too. The yarn is Malabrigo Merino Kettle-Dyed Worsted Weight in the Verde colorway. The doily pattern is "Audrey." The doily measures nearly 20 inches.

Wake up, mom!

Nothing like a nice jolt of adrenaline right before bedtime...

I was sitting on the sofa, watching TV, Sam next to me, Jacey on a bed behind the sofa. Jacey suddenly woke up screaming, and got up limping...not putting weight on her front right leg. Talk about shades of Oreo...

But apparently it was just a cramp. After a few steps, she was willing to put her weight on the leg, and a couple of steps further and she stopped limping. Sam came over to give her a sympathy sniff. (He's done the screaming-cramp thing once or twice--one time at 2 am.)

From the Ravelry (knitters and crocheters) database...

From the designer who brought us knitable Daleks comes Hobbit baby booties.

For my Secret Santa...

Yarn or crochet thread of any kind, any color. Surprise me! Challenge me! (I'll find a pattern to make.) My favorite colors are khakis, greenish-greys, mossy greens, etc. Or tomato reds. But I can always make something in a non-favorite color as a present for someone else. (But, you gotta know: socks aren't likely to happen soon.)

Books! My Amazon Wish List is up-to-date. My sister and family shop from the list for my birthday and for Christmas, and my sister probably already has raided the list to shop for the whole family's gifts to me. (My birthday is at the end of November). If you get me something from there, please mark it as purchased. I promise not to peek at the list.

Oh, and chocolate is always good. ;)

I've been busy...

On my days off, I've been spending time on Ravelry's Help! Chat room or on the Ravelry site itself. I'm editing patterns, talking new users through signing in, and answering questions on forums. Another Raveler with more craft books than she knew what to do with has sent me a huge box of pattern books, mostly crochet--lots of afghans and baby stuff. I've been trying to put together an inventory of the books I have now. Oh, and there's a group of BookCrossers on Ravelry, too. (BCJennyO is there, GreedyReader, Inkognitoh, Tzurriz, Elhamisabel, and a bunch of others.)

And I'm doing craft stuff. I finished a doily last night (I'll block it Monday night and post pictures, Tuesday, I hope). I found a lovely scarf pattern that I want to make after Christmas, and I need to shop for yarn to make it. (Want to express an opinion on colors? I'm looking at this yarn. I sort of like the Melange Moss Grey, which looks much better in the close-up. Or the Tomato on the second page. But I'm planning to shop at a local yarn store, so I can see the colors for real, rather than on-line.) I have a couple of other projects due by Christmas, including that perpetual needlepoint stocking.

The dogs are fine. The increased dosage of thyroid meds is finally helping Jacey. She's dropped some weight--the way she's supposed to on the meds--so I can increase her food quantity back to what it used to be. And her hair is growing back nicely. Sam is--Sam. Still sweet, still goofy, still destructive if you give him half a chance. Now that the weather is a bit colder, both dogs are snuggling with me in my bed all night. They're going in to work with me on Thursday; they need baths.

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.

Oooh, pretty!

On Ravelry, I just stumbled across a link to the world's largest yarn stash. (I no longer feel guilty about six cardboard boxes of crochet thread.) And I love the comments from the woman's husband...

Stuff

Atlanta's weather hit or topped 100 F for the fourth straight day. It's only done that one other time (in 1980). It's never done it five straight days...but tomorrow is forecast to be cooler, so it looks like we won't set a new record for consecutive 100F days.

I was off today, and I've mostly spent the day inside. Outside, I've tried breathing our ozone-alert (orange) and particulate-matter-alert (yellow) air, and I've concentrated on trying to keep dumb animals from standing on black asphalt when they could move six inches onto the grass (or pine straw). Sam doesn't understand why I keep moving him over, but at one point today he was standing on three feet, holding the fourth one in the air, when I gave him a push toward the grass. He looked at me as if I were just making his problem worse. I just checked his feet, and I think he stepped on something sharp; it looks like there's a small puncture. So maybe I was making his problem worse, poor boy.

My brief trips outside have triggered bad breathing and sinus problems. (Our pollen count is up with grass and ragweed, and those always give me a hard time.) Tomorrow I go back to work. My four-footed clients will be coming in with coats full of pollen, and I'm not looking forward to it. (On the other hand, I sincerely hope I get some dogs. We've been really slow, and I need money.) I work Sunday through Wednesday, 10-hour shifts. There's no rain in the forecast for the next week (well, there's 20% chance of rain in the evening, but we've had that for more than a week, and the rain never materializes here); we get a break in temps, though: low nineties before the temps start to climb again. Whoopee.

I've worked on the Rosalinda doily, but with my sinuses bothering me, I've opted to sleep more than work. I only have 10 of the 12 squares done, and I probably won't get another one done tonight.

This may be the last doily I work on for a while. I need to work on a needlepoint Christmas stocking. I've sorted the thread and mounted the canvas on stretcher bars. (I did that week before last.) This one is stitched with thread rather than yarn (last year's stocking for Ashley was tapestry yarn), and it's 14-mesh canvas. That's 196 stitches per square inch--and the stocking is about 16 inches long and maybe 10 inches at the widest point. I've swiped a picture off Jo-Ann's Web site (where I ordered the kit from).

 

There is beading and metallic thread and lots of fiddly little stitches, but at least it doesn't have French Knots as snowflakes! But if stitching it gets to be too much, I'll take a sanity break and work on a doily.

Free vintage patterns (as downloadable PDFs) of cross-stitch, knitting, crochet, tatting...all kinds of needlework. The files are scans of old publications now in the public domain. (Think: Project Gutenberg for crafters. Some of the publications actually are available through Project Gutenberg.)

Just imagine:

Beeton, Isabella. Beeton’s Book of Needlework Consisting of Descriptions and Instructions, Illustrated by Six Hundred Engravings, of Tatting Patterns, Crochet Patterns, Knitting Patterns, Netting Patterns, Embroidery Patterns, Point Lace Patterns, Guipure D’Art, Berlin Work, Monograms, Initials and Names, Pillow Lace, and Lace Stitches. London: Ward, Lock and Tyler, 1870, 592 pgs. Project Gutenberg e-book, converted to pdf format jac apr2006. An enormous and wonderful book, essential for understanding late Victorian needlework.

Dillmont, Th. de, ed. Bibliotheque DMC Alphabet de la Brodeuse, Lettres, Chiffres, Monogrammes et Ornements points comptés suivis d’une série de modèles avec calques pour Broderie de blanc [DMC Library Embroiderer’s Alphabet, Letters, Figures, Monograms and Ornaments in counted stitches followed by a series of patterns with tracings for white work]. Mulhouse, France: Dollfus-Mieg & Cie, [c.1890], 149 pgs., in French. Scans donated by Digital Archive, reedited jac sep2006 Dazzling patterns for cross-stitch and other charted embroidery – alphabets, borders, medallions, monograms, naval and heraldic symbols, hunting motifs, winter scenes, white work monograms.

Dillmont, Th. de. L'Art Chrétien en Égypte: Motifs de Broderie copte, Première Partie [Egyptian Christian Art: Coptic Embroidery Motifs, part 1] Mulhouse, France: Dollfus Mieg & Cie, [c.1895, approx 60 pgs.]. Scans donated by Sytske Wijnsma, photo edited by Judith Combs may2007. Clear illustrations of simple embroidery stitches that quickly progress to patterns of dazzling complexity. 30 plates, many with thread count notes. French text.

Wilke, Harriet Cushman, ed. Priscilla Cross Stitch Book, A Collection of Useful Patterns with Suggestions for Their Use in Various Styles of Work. Boston: Priscilla Publishing, 1899, 48 pgs (cover missing). Scans donated by Judith Combs aug2006. A classic. Detailed descriptions of the many embroidery stitches used in charted patterns, as well as charts for alphabets, historic, formal and floral borders, church and heraldic motifs, intricate birds, butterflies, flowers. Many of these patterns work for filet crochet, beading, charted knitting, etc.

Okay, I'm going off to drool a while... You'll find the goodies over here.

Ravelry vs. Rosalinda

I spent a bunch of time playing on Ravelry today: entering the new thread and yarn into inventory, entering and approving a bunch of pattern information (I got 8 pattern books in the mail today--6 vintage books from an eBay purchase), entering some other projects I've done. That means I spent not-enough time crocheting today. I got through just two more squares on the Rosalinda doily. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to double that output. Then I can work on the last four squares of the doily Saturday. (I'll still have borders to do after the 12 squares are done.)

***

Finally heard from the vet today. Sam's thyroid meds will stay at the current dosage unless we see more significant weight gain or hair loss.

Jacey starts pills tonight: .4 mg with meals, twice a day. We'll check her status in six weeks (20 September) and decide then if she needs further blood work or a dosage adjustment.

Stop me before I shop again!

Michael's is getting rid of some of its crochet thread line. The stuff leaving (DMC Cebelia in anything but white size 10, 20, and 30, I think) is all on sale. Balls of thread that normally go for $4.49 each for $3. Royale size 20 and size 30 thread for $1.50. (I resisted the size 30.) A few colors of discontinued Cameo thread for $1.50 a ball. Two 12-ounce skeins of Lily Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn in Faded Denim for $2 each.

And three pattern books...'cause I really don't have enough of those. *eep!*

I'm heading over to the Ravelry site to enter my stash into my inventory there. Maybe if I see the list in front of me I'll embarrass myself.

Or maybe not.

Rosalinda

Today/tonight on Rosalinda: two square motifs are finished and joined; ten to go.

Running Greyhound Table Runner

Last night, instead of working on the new doily, I spent my time finishing and blocking this:





The table runner will go to Southeast Greyhound Adoption (SEGA) as a fundraiser for the silent auction in October.

Today, the dogs had vet visits. Ouch! $190+ later, the dogs are pissed (they had blood drawn) and their mom's much poorer. (Heartworm preventatives have gone up substantially.) Blood test results are due tomorrow. It's just to see if Sam needs his thyroid meds adjusted; Jacey needs to start taking meds, and the vet wants to see what the lab results are to start with so he'll have something to gauge against after she's been on the pills for a while. Both dogs are having weight issues they shouldn't be having (no one has changed food or [non]exercise habits), and Jacey's suffering some severe hair loss on her thighs and butt. Thyroid meds usually work wonders. (And at least those pills aren't outrageously expensive.)

The Singing Dog

I've always thought the theme from The Godfather sounded quite sad and mournful, but this is a new twist.



(Sometimes, Sam whines along with this dog when I play this video.)

Windflower doily

The doily is blocked and finished. The final measured a bit over 16 inches (specs said 17 inches); I think I might have crocheted a bit tight since I used considerably less thread than was spec'd.

Hallelujah! I can count!

My ability to handle numbers was in question after I repeatedly flubbed the running greyhound table runner I'm making for the rescue group to auction off. Tonight, though, I've passed the screw-up point. I've worked the first row of the checkerboard border pattern, and the squares came out right--nothing left over or running short. There are two more rows to work: one where I work the other part of the checkerboard effect, and one where I work all "empty" filet blocks. Then there's a border to work.

But I've passed the danger zone.

(Of course, I stacked the deck in my favor: I'm not watching Gimli and Legolas count bodies as I try to count stitches.)

It's done!

Ouch! The last two rounds were killers. The last round was loaded with picots. Yuck! (She's posted a new design on crochetville.com. I'm not volunteering for the new one--it's all picots!)



There'll be a final picture once it's dry. But no large pictures will be posted.