Knitting, with Dogs

Stashbuster Spirals

My Stashbuster Spiral socks are done.



This is the penultimate sock in the Six Sox knitalong.  I'm not crazy about knitting socks, but I have to say I've learned a lot in the course of the KAL.  One more sock to go.  It'll be interesting to see what the last sock pattern will be.

Now I can concentrate on the Frill scarf.  I think it will go pretty quickly.

Warning:  grumpiness ahead 

Do you ever have times when you feel like you just don't fit anywhere?  Jeezopete, I thought you were supposed to get over angsty stuff like this in your teens.

Cripes. 

Second Pink Scarf done!

Well, it's not exactly a scarf.  It's a mini-shawl.  It took 2 skeins of 2nd Time Cotton. Here it is spread out:



And a crooked picture of the back:

And the front:

(You may notice that my shawl doesn't have the row of yo's along the bottom that the pattern has.  That's because I forgot about them till I was almost out of yarn, and I sure was NOT going to frog back just so I could add holes!) 

It's long enough that you could tie the ends if you wanted to.  Or use a pin to hold them together.  I'm no fashion maven, but it looks possible to me.

I'm already at work on the next scarf.  It will be Knitty's Variation on a Frill.  The yarn I'm using is the Brown Sheep Cotton Fine that I got on sale last week at Main Street Yarns.  I didn't have any trouble stringing the beads on the yarn before I cast on (hint:  a bit of nail polish on the end of the yarn makes it just stiff enough to pick up size 6 beads).  However, casting on with one bead between each cast-on stitch was a bit of an aggravation.  Not hard, just slow and tedious.

Here's the progress picture.  I don't think you can see the beads, though.

This is actually quite a nice pattern.  I think it will go pretty quickly once I get the lacy rows stuck in my head.  Short-term working memory seems to be in short supply chez moi these days, dangit.

In Other News:

Three of the Usual Gang of Suspects from the Tuesday night group went trooping off to Magical Threads in Dahlonega yesterday.  (Stephanie got sick at the last minute and couldn't come, alas.)  As Jane noted, Saturday 3/26 was an absolutely lovely spring day .  Marilyn drove us to Dahlonega and bought yarn for a poncho.  Cindy, who'd swore she wasn't going to buy any yarn, got seduced by a really good deal on a white mohair blend yarn.  Me?  I looked around, decided there wasn't anything I had to have (or could afford), and ended up with only the new issue of Vogue Knitting magazine.  We stopped at the outlet malls in Dawsonville so Marilyn could pick up some goodies for herself and her grandkids and got home by mid-afternoon.

Saturday night, Dear Robert and I got to see his nephew Wade play baseball.  Wade's a good hitter and a pretty darn good first baseman for a 6 year-old.  Here he is standing at first, waiting.

 

Wade hit a home run at one point, and his team won handily.

[Aside] Some of the kids playing were so little!   Little-bitty guys!  There was one kid who was just tiny, but he was a pistol ball.  He could hit the ball well, and he ran like the wind.  I, who am pretty unexposed to and inexperienced with kids, was amazed. [/aside]

It was A Good Day.

Well crap...

I'd really intended to be done with another pink scarf today.  I actually finished knitting one.

And I didn't like it.  Crap.

So I'm frogging it, the whole 9 hours worth of knitting on it, and starting over.

But I think I know a pattern that will work with this recycled cotton now, though.  And it's easy.

Wish me luck!

Whew...

We had a little excitement over here this morning. 

Whenever I'm on the computer, I usually shut Bouncer and Jasper up in the bedroom with me.  (Jasper, because you can't leave an 8 month old Aussie puppy unattended, and Bouncer, because he loves me, and because he gets along pretty well with Jasper.)

While I'm reading blogs and email, these two will often play and wrestle.  They do this all the time, and rarely have any problems.

But this morning, while I was sitting peacefully at the computer, and Jasper and Bouncer were wrestling as usual, Jasper suddenly starts screaming and crying.  When I looked over at them, I thought at first that play had gotten a little out of hand, and that Bouncer had jumped on Jasper and was biting him.  Rough play happens occasionally, and it's not a big deal to break it up.  So I shouted at Bouncer.  But they didn't break up, and Jasper kept screaming.

So I jumped up to go see what was up.  It turned out that Jasper, who likes to grab the other dogs by their collars, had grabbed Bouncer collar.  But this time, somehow, he'd managed to get the collar wrapped around his lower jaw.  And he couldn't get loose.  And I was worried about poor Bouncer getting strangled as well.  And then Ivan, who was in the bedroom with us this morning, thinks that dogs making terrible noises is a reason to jump in and pile on in the "fight."  So I'm having to shoo him away while I try to remedy the jaw-and-collar situation.

Whew.

I finally managed to get on top of Bouncer enough to pin him down and hold him still.  Then I was able to twist Jasper's head enough to get a tiny big of slack in the collar.  The next trick was reaching inside Jasper's mouth to release the buckle on Bouncer's collar.  As soon as Jasper had a little more slack, he pulled his jaw out of the collar and stopped screaming.  A quick check of the two dogs let me know that there was no real damage.  They'd both been frightened out of their wits, and the collar wrapped around Jasper's jaw couldn't have been exactly comfortable. 

So we all had a good pity party with each other.  Both dogs got lots of comforting, and Bouncer got to go to the store with me.  I came away from the whole encounter with nothing worse than some bruises on my left hand where Jasper was chomping in panic while my hand was in his mouth and a certain amount of post-adrenaline-rush shaking when it was all over with.

I repeat -- whew!

In other news:

On Saturday, I drove over to Watkinsville to attend the GAASC club meeting.  On the way home, I got to visit Main Street Yarn and Fibers.  I picked up some sale bin Cotton Fine in pink for another breast cancer scarf, but that was the extent of my yarn buying.

Sunday was the Handspinners Guild meeting.  It's always good to check in with them and get my handspinning fix.  Sunday night Robert had a softball game.  I took Jasper with me.  He really watches for Dear Robert out on the field.

She-Blogger

From Tild~:



Tee hee...

Cafe Press items available here.

When you need an excuse...

to buy yarn, any excuse will do.  Right?

In this case, I have a Good Excuse.  One of our LYS (Yarn Garden Knit Shop in Lawrenceville) has a Knitting for Others group that meets on the second Sunday of each month.  For the next two months, we're going to be knitting items in support of a local hospital's drive to raise money for a new mammography machine, one capable of digital imaging.  The shop has volunteered to provide VolleyFest 100 knitted items to be raffled or auctioned off.  Since the project is in support of breast cancer treatment and prevention, they request that there be pink in the donated items.  They've got a good sale on yarns you buy in the shop if you want to knit for this project, and the more you knit, the more you save.

Here's the deal:

We will offer; 10% off materials to knit the 1st scarf, 20% off to knit the 2nd, 30% off for the 3rd, 40% off for the 4th, 50% off for the 5th+, that you would knit or crochet to support this wonderful effort. 

I bought the materials for the first two scarves last Sunday. 

But first, a word about pink.

The women in my family have a thing about pink.  We don't like it.  In fact, anything pink is a hissing and a derision in the distaff side of my family.  So for me, buying pink yarn, knitting with it, and then GIVING IT AWAY is a good thing.  This way I can buy yarns (on sale!!!), knit something I might not knit for myself, and GIVE IT AWAY!  And of course, since the scarves will be raffled or auctioned off, I want to make Neat and Exciting Things that people would really want.

My first scarf is the Ruffles scarf from Scarf Style*.  Now, I am not a ruffly person.  I had a teacher in high school that chided me once for wearing tailored (read "not very feminine") clothes.  I thought she must have lost her mind.  I don't DO ruffles.

But the Ruffles scarf looked... interesting.  And I thought it might be intriguing to someone looking for a different scarf.

Here's a bit of it in its in-progress state:

The yarn is Cascade 220.  And I gotta say, for pink, this color isn't too bad.  Not that I'd own it myself, mind you. 

I'm still thinking about what other patterns to make.  I know I'll make the Backyard Leaves scarf.  Maybe this would be an excuse to make a Clapotis?  Hmm... I'd have to find the right yarn for that.

I've got till May 8 to make at least 5 scarves.  Think I can make it?  I routinely over-estimate my knitting speed, but I'm pretty close to being done with Ruffles.  If I kick into high gear like I did before Christmas, I should be able to do it.  I hope.

Gratuitous Dog Picture of the Day:

Dear Robert** has one of those gliders that has a matching gliding footstool.  When Dear Robert plops down into his chair, Jasper likes to come and sit on the footstool.  Then he climbs into Robert's lap.

The dog's not spoiled.  Nah.  Nuh-uh.  No way.

Well, maybe just a little.

*And yes, before you ask, I did email Interweave Press and get permission to make the scarves to donate. 

** Dear Robert is a world-class rocker.  He's a Leo Mazzone class rocker, and, like Leo, tends to rock even when he's not in a rocking chair.  This behavior is contagious, by the way.  Sometimes when we're in a restaurant, he'll start rocking in the booth.  I tend to pick it up from him, and we sit there, gently oscillating together.  And no, it doesn't embarrass me at all.

Neps

The blog's been quiet, but I've been busy, actually.  Knitting, spinning, reading, and listening busy.

I'm almost half-way through spinning my scarf fiber.  I mentioned before that the fiber has lots of neps.  What, you may ask, is a nep??

(Apologies for the fuzzy pictures.)  A nep is a little clump of short fibers.  If you leave them in your spinning, you get lumps.

What to do about neps?  Why, pull them out!

You pinch the little sticky-out bits of fiber between your thumbnail and finger and pull.  Here I'm pinching with my left hand so I could take the picture with my right hand. 

Here's what you get:

Sometimes you find big neps:

But these pull out too.  After you've been spinning a while, your leg may look like this:

Yes, I spin sitting with my legs crossed (single-treadle wheel).  I just pull them neps off and they stick to my jeans.  Every so often, I pull them all off and throw them away.

In other news: 

I found this yarn at JoAnn's the other day:

It's got that shading thang going.  It's also got lots of yardage (800 yds +) for a low price.  This won't make a heirloom article (yarn's not that nice), but it should make a nice lap afghan.  That's what I'm using it for.

And Jasper likes to listen to Dear Robert on the phone:

Why yes, we talk to our dogs on the phone.  Doesn't everyone??

The Book Meme thang

I've seen this meme floating around for a while.  Nobody's tagged me (that's fine by me), but I wanted to post about it anyway.

Last book read:  Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, on audiobook.  A wonderful, wonderful book.

Where it came from: Audible.com

Books read per year:  Probably about 45 or 50.  I was keeping a list last year, and I think I had about 59 or something.

Favorite genre:  Science fiction and fantasy, no question.  I've read books in this genre since I was in grade school.  These days I tend to read a little more fantasy, but I think that's mostly because more good stuff is being written in fantasy than in SF.  I particularly like books in which the fantastic realms are just around the corner from us (metaphorically or literally).  Charles de Lint, Robert Holdstock and Neil Gaiman write this kind of thing very well.  Susanna Clark did a lovely job of it in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell too. 

The books I read have to be well-written and/or have a really good story.  And I'm kinda picky and a little quirky about what I consider "well-written."  Stephen King, for example, almost always tells good stories, but he doesn't always write well (IMHO).  I'll even venture outside my genre ghetto for well-written stuff (see Patrick O'Brian novels, mentioned below.)  I don't read much non-fiction; if I do, it's usually a popular science book, often on physics or astronomy.  History bores me, alas.  It's a personal failing.

Five favorite books: 

The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle.  This has been my favorite book almost since I first read it in 1968.  I have lost track of how many times I've read it.  I read it for heartsease. I read it for fun.  I've read it so much I've thoroughly internalized lots of phrases and sentences in the book.  Whenever I'm concentrating really hard and the tip of my tongue sticks out of my mouth, I think of Prince Lír.  Whenever I see something that amazes me enough that I laugh out loud, I think of this passage, where two men see the unicorn (who they think is a white mare) leap over a fence:

But the men had not yet reached the pasture gate when the white mare jumped the fence and was gone into the night like a falling star.  The two men stood where they were for a time, not heeding the Mayor's commands to come back; and neither ever said, even to the other, why he stared after the magician's mare so long.  But now and then after that, they laughed with wonder in the middle of very serious events, and so came to be considered frivolous sorts.

Keeping alive a sense of wonder is really important to me.  There's magic out there, people, if only we can see it.

Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart.  Subtitled "A Novel of an Ancient China that Never Was,"  this book is a delight.  Master Li (a sage with a slight flaw in his character) and Number Ten Ox go through lots of adventures to try to find the elixir that will save the children of Ox's village.  I haven't read it as many times as The Last Unicorn, but I've read it a lot.  Barry Hughart used bits and pieces from Chinese legends in his story.  It's a lovely story, and I always cry at the end of it too.

After the first two, the choice gets a little trickier.  Lemme see...

The Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian.  Ok, this is cheating.  There are actually 20 (yes, 20) volumes in this series.  And they're dense, 19th-century style novels full of obscure terms from the age of sail.  (There are companion books that contain definitions, maps, and even recipes for things found in the books.)  But most of all, there's the two characters Jack Aubrey* and Stephen Maturin.  While some books are more engrossing than others, in 20 volumes, I was rarely weary of what was going on, and when Patrick O'Brian died, I grieved that I wouldn't see Jack and Stephen in their future lives.

Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett.  This was my first exposure to Terry Pratchett, and it remains one of my absolute favorites.  One of its themes is Myth and primal things, and how we tone them down just so we can look at them.  It's also really funny.  Terry P. is an absolutely amazing writer, and laugh-out-loud funny lots of the time.

Speaking of laugh-out-loud funny, I guess I should include my favorite P.G. Wodehouse book.  The Code of the Woosters is a Bertie and Jeeves novel, and one of his funniest.  It has all the usual Wodehouse trademark stuff -- cow creamers, soppy girls and not-so-soppy girls, Bertie getting pulled out of the soup by Jeeves, etc.  P.G. Wodehouse is someone else who has greatly influenced my use of the English language.  When I got married last year, I kept looking to see if someone would give me a fish-slice, but alas, no one did.  :-)

Addendum:  Favorite books sources
In these latter days, I find it hard just to sit down and read without doing anything else.  I used to be able to knit and read at the same time, but the combined difficulties of keeping a print book open and out of the way of the knitting, and the sorry state of my bifocals have mitigated against doing much of that anymore.  More and more I find that most of my reading is done on my PDA (a Palm Zire 71).  I have two ebook programs:  Mobipocket Reader and eReader.  I get ebooks from both Mobipocket and eReader, as well as from Fictionwise.  Lately, since money's been tight, I've been picking up some older stuff at Project Gutenberg.  I've read the wonderful books by E. Nesbit they have available, as well as some vintage books by A. Merritt, Lord Dunsany, and William Morris. These texts are free for the download.  And Mobipocket Pro has a utility that will convert .txt files to files that are readable on your Palm device.  I go to bed with my Zire71 in my hand.  I can turn off the light and read by the light of the Zire.  Since I hold it close to my face, I don't need my glasses to read.  If I fall asleep, 2 minutes later, the display turns off.  I get a surprising amount of reading done this way.  And if I wake up in the middle of the night (not uncommon), I just grab my Zire and read till I fall asleep again.

I bought my first PDA (a Handspring Visor) about a week after I found out that you could read books on PDAs.  I can also listen to my Audible files on it as well.  I heart my Zire. 

And I have a Preferred Reader membership at Audible.com.  It's much easier to use now that I have a fast internet connection, and I can download the audiobooks straight onto my own computer.  You can listen to books and do other things at the same time.  A win-win situation, in my book.  (heh heh)

Of course, my husband is the manager of a bookstore, and he brings stuff home for me too.  Sometimes I get to see advance reader copies of books and read them before they actually hit the stores.  Woo hoo!

I won't pass this along to anyone in particular.  I just like to read, and wanted to blab about books.

*You don't want to know what I think of Russell Crowe as the lead in the movie.  Trust me on this.

The 8 hour bear

Here's a teddy bear made from the old pattern I found in my files.  I figure it took about 8 hours total to knit and finish.

Whaddya think?

I think it came out ok.  The head is a little longer than a truly "teddy" head, and I think this gives it a little more of a rat-like appearance.  And in retrospect, it would probalby look better in a yarn that was a darker brown. 

He definitely needs a sweater and a scarf, too. 

But on the whole, I'm happy with him.  I did change the "feet" so that they matched the way the "hands" were done.  The original pattern had you do some short rows so that there was a heel, but to my eyes it didn't work very well.  So, hands and feet alike.

Now I'm going to go try one of the bears from the knitted teddy bear book.  Or maybe I'll make this one a sweater first.  How long could it take?  :-)

Same bear, after 2.6 hours of sweater knitting:

He looks a bit more bear-like with the sweater, doesn't he?  I just made the sweater up on the needles, starting at the lower front edge.  When I got to sleeve height, I just cast on extra stitches for the sleeves, and left an opening for the neck, and knitted on down the back.

The sleeves have gussets on the bottom. The way I made the sweater there was no way to make the sleeves big enough for his arms to go through and still let the sweater look half-way decent.  But that gave me a chance to try something different, and that was fun.

Now I want to make another bear!

5 hours

Here's what about five hours at the spinning wheel with the scarf fiber gets me:

I'm thinking I'll make a 3-ply yarn.  It's spinning up fairly fine, but a little fuzzy.  It looks like this fiber is made up of a couple of different kinds of wool.  One wool has long shiny fibers, and the other has shorter, fuzzier ones.  The shorter fibers have taken the dye more than the longer ones have.  You may be able to see some of the shiny bits (lurex?? I dunno what it is, but it's shiny gold) that show up here and there in the yarn.  Ok, I admit I'm fairly conservative when it comes to yarn and fiber.  I don't care for lots of foofy things.  And these metallic little bits just say "scratchy sections in the yarn" to me.  Especially as one of the shiny bits that was carded into the wool is a metallic yarn wrapped over a core of something else.  The only problem with a core-spun yarn like that is that it doesn't hold up real well when you cut it into 2 or 3 inch lengths and card it in with some wool.  The metallic outside bit tends to separate from the core.

This is probably about 1/4 of the fiber.  I'm doing a lot of pre-drafting before I spin.  That way I can get a little ahead of the curve on the metallic bits and can pull out the worst of the neps and the little bit of grass and vegetable matter that's in the fiber.  The occasional long wool fibers that come along are going to stick out a bit though.  I'm afraid this wool may be a little scratchy.  And that's odd, because one of the criteria for this exchange was to use high-quality wools, like merino or merino-silk blends or something equally soft and interesting. 

Oh well.  It's a good learning experience to spin something that I wouldn't have chosen for myself, and to try to make the best yarn I can out of it.  That's part of the reason I signed up for this, isn't it?

In other news:

We had a good time at the Atlanta Knitting Guild meeting last night.  Chris Bylsma was there to show her designs and tell us about her journey into knitting designer-hood.  She was pleasant and entertaining.  And it's always good to see folks there that I don't see elsewhere.  Elizabeth, a newcomer to our Tuesday SnB group, rode over with Marilyn and me, and we had a good time.

I watched Hidalgo on DVD last night, and enjoyed it.  Not a great movie, but a good one, and it's always nice to see Viggo Mortensen in other roles.

I also finished listening to the audiobook version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (or the link in Amazon, in case the audible.com link doesn't work) today. 

Holy cow.  I loved that book. Loved, loved, LOVED, LOVED it.  Last night I was torn between listening to the last section right away (to find out how it would end) and waiting a bit (because I didn't want it to be over yet).  Susanna Clarke did a wonderful job in this book.  The narration on the audio book was wonderful too, except that, surprisingly, the narrator didn't seem to know the correct pronunciation of the term "Sidhe."  As far as I can tell, it should be "shee" not "sid-he."  That's an odd miss in a book where fairies (real Celtic kinds of fairies, not the tiny precious Tinkerbell-type fairies) are pretty important characters.  Not all fairies or elves are benign.  Ask Terry Pratchett.

And my tailbone is better today, but my neck is stiffer.  I've got sore muscles on both sides.  But I am no stranger to neck pain, and I bear it with as much dignity as I can muster.