Knitting, with Dogs

Off on vacation

Boy, it's been kinda busy lately!  I've got some news, but no time to tell it.  I'd hoped to make a real post last night, but it didn't happen.  Sorry, y'all.

Anyway, quick pictureless knitting update:  I thought I was done with the baby blanket.  I bound it off, but when I measured it, it was about 3" shorter than I'd thought it was.  *smacks forehead.*  So I put it back on the needles, and I've got about 2" to go.

I've got a new lace project, the Whisper scarves from Fiddlesticks Knitting.  I'm working on the top one first, in Douceur et Soie in the Soft Seafoam color.  The other Whisper scarf will be in the Deep Garnet shade.  Envy me!  With any luck, I should be able to finish both next week during vacation.  I'll come back, with pictures.  And updates on the newness happening in my life.

If I get lucky and find some internet access at the beach, I'll post an update.  But that hasn't happened in past years, so I'm not optimistic.

Y'all have fun while I'm gone!

Tagged!

Hockey Mom tagged me for a meme.  Since there hasn't been much meme activity lately, I thought I'd bite.  And no, Sandy, I don't hate you.  :)

So, in the Mundane and Pointless category, here we go!

10 years ago:  We'd been in our first house for about 6 months.  I was still enthusiastic about decorating then. 

5 years ago:  I was working in user support in a job that was stressful, but kinda fun, at least some of the time.  

1 year ago:  We'd just come back from a cruise to Alaska, and were getting ready to go on vacation to the coast of South Carolina.

Yesterday:  I watched tv with my husband and started knitting a new sweater, even though I’m not finished with my baby blanket yet.

Today:  I untangled yarn that Jasper had snarled and spent lots of time on the internet.

Tomorrow:  I'll go over to my friend Paula's house and spend time with fiber friends.

5 snacks I enjoy: 
Toasted almonds
Blackberries
Watermelon
Ritz crackers with pimento cheese
Cookies, esp. chocolate chip and sugar cookies

5 bands/singers that I know the lyrics of MOST of their songs: Uh, none, really.  I've never been very good with lyrics.  I don't pay close attention to them. 

Things I would do with $100,000,000:
Invest
Travel
I love to play the "What I'd buy if I were rich" game:
Buy: new house with hardwood floors, 5 acres of land, and lots of privacy
Lots and lots of NICE bookcases
a new car AND a motorcycle
leather furniture
a new mattress set
a table saw, because I've always wanted a table saw

5 locations I'd like to run away to:
Maui, HI
Hilo, HI
Alaska
The Outer Hebrides
Prague

5 bad habits I have:
Procrastination
Thinking about doing things instead of just doing them
Not exercising
Not putting things away when I'm done with them
Being snarky sometimes

5 things I like doing:
Reading about anything and everything on the internet
Knitting
Helping people out
Learning new things
Hanging out with the dogs

5 things I would never wear:
Very low-slung jeans
Tight sweaters
Most really bright colors

5 TV shows I like:
Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Robot Chicken
TCM movies (various ones)
Star Trek: TOS
Deadwood

5 movies I like:
My Neighbor Totoro
Roxanne
Strange Brew
Airplane
The Abyss

5 famous people I'd like to meet:
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Cory Doctorow
Neil Gaiman
Brendan Fraser
Terry Pratchett

5 biggest joys at the moment:
Being able to be home with the dogs a lot of the time
Having plenty of knitting to do right now
Having a nice stash of yarn
Having a great husband
Having great dogs

5 favorite toys:
Ball winder and swift
My Palm Zire 71, even with its faults
The internet, via broadband
DVD players
Spinning wheels

Harry Potter content only

In other news:

I spent almost 5 hours at Dear Robert's store last night, snapping pictures and helping out a little.  I thought the store personnel handled the crowds really well.  They had an outside tent with various activities like face painting, some craft-y sorts of activities, "potions", and samples of Bernie Botts' All Flavored Beans.  (Warning:  the dog poop flavored beans have been known to make strong men puke into the bushes.  True story.)

The banner at the store entrance:

Some of the costumes (the gal on the left in the first picture below won first prize):

I think this gal was supposed to be a dragon:

"Most Likely to Read HP Fan Fiction"

The scene in the back about 10 minutes before midnight:

12:01 am Saturday morning.  Dear Robert looks like he's wishing it was over.  (He'd been at work since 10 am Friday.)

He got home about 3:00 am.  I hope everybody is enjoying their new books!

Babysitting

Daily Knitting Report:

I'm about half-way through with the baby blanket.  No pictures just yet, because I'm saving the camera batteries (more on this later).  I'm at the point where I'm starting to get tired of knitting the same pattern over and over.  But I'm not totally sick of it yet.  That'll come when I get to the last ball of yarn.  I really want to finish up and get back to lace.

Oh, y'all check out Carrieoke's birthday celebration and especially her new tattoo!  I admire tattoos even though I don't have one. 

In Other News:

It's been an interesting week over here at Knitting, with Dogs.  I've been looking after Da Nephew every afternoon this week.  DN is 6.  I have played more rummy, blackjack (by kid's rules), and Monopoly this week than I have is the last few years put together.  I've gotten in a bit of knitting time while waiting to pick him up from baseball camp and while he's playing sports games on his PS2.  (This kid comes from a family of sport-mad men, so he's pretty sports-mad too.) 

He came up to our house one afternoon to visit with our dogs.  Even though he was initially intimidated by four enthusiastic dogs bouncing all over and around him, he settled down and got more comfortable as time went on.

Jasper watches while DN plays baseball.

It's been an interesting week.  I don't have kids myself, and I'm not around them much.  My hat goes off to those who are with them all day, every day.  I've enjoyed it, but I'm glad I don't do this all the time.

Tonight is The Big HP Night at Borders.  I've been recruited to take pictures of the mayhem big event for Dear Robert.  I hope it doesn't rain.  The store will have a tent set up out front for the pre-midnight sale festivities.  We're expecting people in costume and a general selling frenzy.  In retail, this is A Good Thing. 

We'll all be glad when it's over, especially Dear Robert, who will be working about 16 hours today.  Sheesh.

 

Rainy Saturday night

The baby blanket knitting continues apace, but it looks the same as last time, only longer.  I'll wait till I get a bit further along before I post another picture.  I've got to get it out of the way, though, because I'll be having another lace project (shop sample) coming along shortly.  More on that later.

Today was "I can't wait any longer, I've GOT to get my hair cut" day.  When I walked into the hair cuttery, there was a lady sitting there crocheting away.  We had a nice chat while we were waiting to get our respective hair done.  She crochets afghans and vests, and her parents sell them at craft shows.  We both agreed that crochet is set up to be The Next Big Thing.  When she retires, she wants to open a yarn shop with rocking chairs and sofas where people can sit and work together and have fun.  Sounds good to me!

A non-knitting, link-heavy, slightly philosophical aside:

Dear Robert should be bringing me home some books tonight or tomorrow.  Two of the books are by Charles Stross.  The sale of these books is directly due to Mr. Stross having placed his novel Accelerando onlie for download.  For free. 

This isn't the first time this has happened.  A few years ago, Jim Monroe put his book Angry Young Spacemen online for free download.  I read that book and promptly bought his next book Flyboy Action Figure, Comes with Gas Mask.  Cory Doctorow has the text of his books online for free download.  They're also available in brick-and-mortar stores.  I bought Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and enjoyed it. I've downloaded and read his book Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, and I have Eastern Standard Tribe in my reading queue.  I've also started watching BoingBoing.  And I've started thinking about DRM (Digital Rights Management) and copyright issues and started pointing people to these kinds of discussions too. 

I'm slowly coming around to the idea that the current "copyright is sacred" idea may not be in the best long-term interests of artists.  Relax, I'm not going to start copying and distributing the works of current designers!  But if I ever get to the point where I'm designing and creating my own patterns, I don't think I'm going to hold on so hard to my ideas.  There's some neat collaborative stuff that can happen if you don't.  In effect, that's what lots of people are doing with patterns anyway.  Some folks knit the Flower Basket Shawl in Misti Alpaca.  Some folks experiment with other yarns, or with adding a different edging , or increasing the number of repeats, or changing the gauge.  We're all collaborating with the designer in doing things like this.  It's a good thing.

And it all started with a free ebook.  Who'da thunk it??

And before I leave, here are a couple of dog pictures:

      
Jasper being silly behind the lawn chair.

Bad counter-surfing dog!  (He's trying to get the bacon dish.)

He thinks being cute will let him get away with this stuff. 

Sometimes it works.

The next project

is a baby blanket.  Here's what 4.5 hours of knitting looks like in my chosen pattern:

It's a really pretty sort of sea-foam green.  The yarn is Sirdar Snuggly.

A detail of the pattern:

It's an easily memorized pattern, and it's just interesting enough that I don't think I'll get too bored through the whole thing.  Not as much fun as lace, though.

Tonight's the SnB up in my part of the suburbs.  I know a couple of folks aren't going to be there, but maybe some of the other regulars will show up.  I hope so -- haven't seen Cindy or Marilyn much lately, and I miss them.

News from the Dog World:

We feed our dogs from stainless steel bowls.  We have a couple of sizes of them.  The larger ones do duty as water dishes; the smaller ones are food dishes.

The other day, Jasper, aka He-Who-Always-Carries-Things-in-his-Mouth was running around carrying a food dish.  He does this especially when he is getting hungry.  Well, he got thirsty, so he did what he usually does when he has something in his mouth.  He dropped it into the water dish.  This works ok if what he has in his mouth is a rawhide bone or a tennis ball.  But dropping one dish into another dish meant he couldn't get to the water.  The food dish was inside the water dish, floating on the water.

Jasper could not figure out where the water went.  He kept sticking his nose into the top dish, trying to drink, but of course the water was underneath the top dish.

We had a good laugh at his expense (i.e., we stood there and laughed till our knees were weak) and then had pity and removed the top dish so he could get to the water.

Jasper wasn't crazy about all the fireworks going off last night.  He wanted to hide inside the house.  Well, I can't be havin' with that behavior, so we took his food dish outside and I fed him by hand and told him what a brave boy he was for ignoring the fireworks in favor of food.  Luckily for me, this dog will do just about anything for food.

It's times like this I miss my Sasha.  Very few things ever daunted that bold doggy soul.  Ah well -- she was the dog of a lifetime.

HP scarf done!

Voilà!

Finished this Saturday night.  I need to trim a couple of ends on the fringe, and then it will be ready for July 15.  Next knitting project is a baby blanket my SIL commissioned me to knit.  After that, back to lace, baby!

Dear Robert had an interesting experience at work the other night.  A kid walked into the store with a big bag, walked around for a minute, dumped a goose out of the bag, and walked out.

Yes, you read that right.  He dumped a GOOSE out into the store, one of the big grey and black Canada geese.  I suspect he hoped that panic and mayhem would ensue, but the goose appeared to be injured, and stayed pretty much in one place.  Animal control was called.  They came out and removed the goose about 2 hours later.  The animal control officer said the goose would probably be euthanized.  Poor goose was just a pawn in some kid's prank. 

Happy 4th of July, USA.  And a belated Happy Canada Day to our neighbors to the north!

   

Large Scale Knitting

But not by me.

Artist Dave Cole has a new project this weekend.  From here:

This weekend, Cole and a team of assistants will be out in the courtyard of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, using heavy machinery -- two excavators -- to knit a 20-foot-wide American flag. The excavators will hold needles crafted from aluminum utility poles. To make the flag, they'll use almost a mile of red, white, and blue acrylic felt.

''I'll be up on a boom lift, throwing the stitches with a 5-foot-long fishing gaff," Cole reports. ''There will be a guy in each excavator, and I'll give hand signals to them: Angle it up, lower it down. A lot of it is just plain fun: Just boys playing with trucks."

If you go to his website and click on Work/Big Projects, you can see some basic pictures, including some scale models.

Isn't this so what a guy would do?  Not criticizing, mind you, but shaking my head in amazement.

My knitting this weekend will be on a much smaller scale.  I should finish the HP scarf and be able to get back to my lace knitting.

Happy 4th of July to all USAians!

UPDATE:  There's a picture of the finished flag here (PDF file; link may expire soon too.)