Kai

Thank you for your kind words of condolence. My husband keeps assuring me that it could have happened to any of us, at any time. I really thought that UPS or FedEx was going to run over her someday. She chased those trucks out of our yard and halfway to the gate whenever they came.

Kai was a stray who found us several years ago. My husband and son were clearing fence row in one of our fields, and my husband stepped over a log and saw what appeared to be a coyote standing there watching them. He finally realized she was a dog, and they got her to come over & get acquainted. When they came back to the house that evening, they came to the door and said, "Look what followed us home!" So we started feeding her on the porch. After awhile, we tried inviting her into the house. She'd stick her head in, look around, and back out. Then head & front legs, and back out. Eventually she came into the house, and gradually worked her way into our lives. It took her a long time before she'd use any of the other doors into the house, though.

On one hand, she was quite prissy, scared of storms, petite feet, which she usually placed one on top of the other (front feet) when she stretched. She looked like she was doing some kind of dancer's curtsey. She "swam" like a grandma with a once-a-week shampoo & set -- can't get the head wet. She would wade into shallow water, lie down, and make paddling motions with her front feet. Silly dog! Loved Ritz crackers. She could identify the crackle from those cracker sleeves from the other end of the house, and always sat and pretended to be a good girl so Greg would give her a cracker. Pretzel sticks were good, too, but only with ranch veggie dip on them.

On the other hand, she hated strange vehicles in our yard (as in the previously mentioned delivery trucks), and chased them out, barking the whole time. Got into snarling, teeth-baring arguments with our black lab, also female. Regularly slept with her head in her food bowl to keep the other 2 dogs out of it.





She always wanted to be wherever people were. She'd go "help" with the cattle, or over at the sawmill, or just hang out in the house with me if the boys weren't home. Always had to ask her to move so I could get stuff out of the kitchen cabinets, or trip over her when I got out of bed in the morning. She looked so much like a coyote that we bought her a child's orange sweatshirt, cut the sleeves off, and dressed her in it in the fall, so she wouldn't be shot by someone who didn't realize she was a pet. She came home without her sweatshirt one day, and we wondered what she'd done with it. The next day, my son was out wandering around in the woods, and found the sweatshirt hanging from the fence. She'd hooked it on some barbed wire and wiggled out of it, like Peter Rabbit with his lost jacket. Can't find any pics of her in it.

Back to knitting content next time. It's all socks, anyway. I think I have 5 pair going right now.

Sad Day

Things were going along fairly well today. I finally finished one Big Black Sock for Socks for Soldiers. I made a men's large (shoe size 11 - 12), and weighed the sock when I finished it -- a whopping 96 grams! It's sportweight yarn, but still.... So I now have a guideline for winding the rest of that ginormous 2 lb. 13 oz. skein into manageable chunks.



It took me most of the morning, but I now have 11 100g center-pull balls of black sportweight yarn, and the twelfth one is 128g. I did some calculations, and figured I could get 13 1/3 socks out of the whole skein, but since 1 1/3 socks wouldn't do much good (I'm knitting for people who still have both feet, after all), I rounded up and made 100g balls.




Wouldn't want to have made 96g balls & found myself a few feet short of making a sock to match the first one. I had to drape the yarn over the back of a chair, and unwind it a loop at a time. It completely overwhelmed my swift -- there was no way to put that much yarn on that poor little swift. I put a piece of paper around the center of my ball winder, so I could take the ball off occasionally to weigh it, and put it back on if necessary (the paper tube keeps the center open). Most of the time I was a few grams over when I took the ball off, but a few times I had to put it back on. I weighed them on my handy-dandy digital kitchen scale. I have a love/hate relationship with this thing. It's great for measuring yarn weights, and occasionally even food. But the thing eats batteries, and it uses 9V batteries. Anyone else hate 9V batteries? Is it just me?
So I finished winding, went to run a few errands, stopped in our storage building on the way home to find some accessories for the Princess, who is attending a '60s-themed party at her sorority in a couple of weeks. Our Kai dog went with me (this is a building across the field from our house -- remember, we live on a farm). I found what I was looking for and headed back to the house, with the dog running alongside the vehicle. Then I lost sight of her, and then thump, bump. Oh, no... I stopped, saw her trying to run toward the house with one leg held off the ground, yelping. I went to the house, got the phone book so I could call the vet, put a mattress pad in the back of the vehicle, and went back out there, and she was lying very still. Not breathing. So sorry... why didn't I stop when I didn't know where she was?

It's never done that before!

Right in the middle of my short-row heel, I heard & felt a crack! Then I was holding 2 short pieces of needle. Fortunately, I was able to pick up the stitches & continue the heel without losing anything, which is quite an accomplishment. I've had short-row heels come out quite wonky without any help from broken needles. I found the phone number for Brittany (these are Brittany birch needles) and left a voice message about my broken needle. Haven't had a return call; I'm hoping I left them enough info that they could send the replacement, and they just didn't need to call.

These are the finished Scales Skin socks for the Six Sox Knitalong. The yarn is Fortissima Cotton Colori, 75% cotton/25% nylon, very soft, easy to work with. Color is #0004. I seem to remember it was called "Tapestry", although that is not printed on the label.


I know I said the Fleece Artist Mahogany was going to be my next sock, but I seem to have taken a detour. I started the Conwy socks from Knitting on the Road (see link in sidebar). I'm using Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, color is "Jeans". I've had both the book and the yarn for quite awhile, and this is the first sock pattern I've made from the book. It's also my first Lorna's Laces sock. The yarn seems a bit thinner than other sock yarn I've used. I'm easily getting 8 sts/inch on size 0 needles.














Just in time for my birthday (tomorrow), the new Socks That Rock sock club package arrived. The yarn is beautiful! The color name is Titania, and there are 2 (two!) patterns in this shipment. The more challenging Titania's Revenge has cabling across the foot, and the Central Air pattern is simpler, but also very pretty.

Socks, again (still!)

I got a lovely package yesterday, my order from The Loopy Ewe. My first-ever skein of Fleece Artist Merino (sock yarn) in Mahogany -- gorgeous fall colors! They will probably be my next socks, as soon as I finish the Scales Skin socks. I just need to find the right pattern! The new Knitty is out, with a couple of sock patterns I like (Cable Net and Diamante, or there's always Sensational Knitted Socks (link in sidebar). Oooh! I also recently purchased the Eleanora Socks pattern from MimKnits.com.
Yesterday's package also contained Snip Tipz, by Zecca -- I'd seen them in a magazine, I think over a year ago, and finally ordered one -- pretty cool, no?


Bad news/good news on the cashmere socks: it turns out that ColourMartUK did not, after all, have a cone of the same yarn I'm using. Apparently, they forgot to update stock as they sent out those generous 50g sample skeins. Since I had ordered and paid for a cone that was not in stock, they offered me either 2 cones of any other yarn, or a $50 refund. I found another cone of yarn that looks very similar -- I'll have to wait till I get it to decide how I'm going to do these socks (alternating stripes of each color, or some other arrangement). I'm also getting a cone of laceweight, Highland Green. All in all, a favorable outcome!

Big Black socks are ready for heels. I tried the sock leg on Bigfoot my son this morning, and it seems to work. He said it was very warm -- I guess I could make legwarmers for soldiers. Hmm, maybe not.

Socks!

Another hour on the Big Black socks brings me to about 8.5" on the leg; I'll need about another hour to get to the heel. Three hours of work so far:









Yesterday I was browsing the ColourMartUK eBay store, and remembered that I had ordered samples from them a few months ago.
Along with a generous supply of samples of various weights, they sent 50g of fingering weight cashmere. Sounds like a sock to me! So I started a sock... people, I think this is my new favorite sock yarn (keeping in mind there are a lot of sock yarns I haven't yet tried). Cashmere socks... so soft... I thought about putting some wooly nylon in the toes, but it was entirely too fiddly, so I quit messing with it. Of course, 50g is only going to make one sock, so I had to order more. Fortunately, they had more of this color (yes, I checked before I started the sock).









I'm also working on the Scales Skin socks for the Six Socks Knitalong. They're coming along quite nicely. This yarn is also very soft -- it's Fortissima Cotton Colori, 75% cotton/25% nylon.

Big Black Socks, Manos progress

I got a little ahead of myself on those socks. The yarn is sportweight, and when I did a gauge swatch I got 6.5 sts/inch. Which would make an 80 stitch sock over 12" around. I looked at the specs for the fingering weight socks and recalculated for my gauge, and restarted with 64 stitches. A couple of hours worth of work:

Yes, that's a lot of ribbing. The Army's new socks are ribbed all the way down to the ankle, but it's much finer ribbing than this, so I don't think I want to do that. I'm going to try 6" of ribbing and 6" stockinette before I start the heel and see how that looks. I stuck a ruler down inside my husband's boots and got 8" - 9" from the bottom of the foot to the top of the boot, so this should give me smooth stockinette inside the boot, and maximize the amount ribbing above, which I hope will result in socks that stay up.
I have also been working on my Manos throw:

Finished block 6 and started block 7 yesterday.

Big Black Sock

Here's my first 20 minutes of work on a Big Black Sock for Socks for Soldiers:

That's 80 sts cast on, and 3 rows of K2P2 ribbing. This is going to take awhile.

I looped the ginormous skein of yarn around the back of a kitchen chair, and I'm just unwinding as I go.







Another hour's worth of knitting while listening to a podcast yielded half a diamond. Today I was listening to About Time, which has, unfortunately, been discontinued. She did do 6 episodes, which are still available to download & listen to at the podcast website.

Hmm? Wot is zis?

It's a dishcloth! Started it last night (only the cast-on and part of the 1st row) and finished it a couple of minutes ago. It's the ballband dishcloth from Mason-Dixon Knitting; if you don't have the book, the pattern is also printed inside the label on Peaches & Creme cotton yarn, available at your local Wal-Mart. Obviously, a very quick little project. Why did I do it? I started it thinking I could work on it at my son's baseball game without looking too weird, then didn't even touch it -- not that the game was that fascinating.



This is 2 lb. 13 oz. of sportweight superwash black wool/nylon for socks. I joined Socks for Soldiers last week, and this is what I'm going to use. It just came in today's mail, ordered from Chamomile Connection. Now I have to figure out what size needles to use, and how on earth to handle this huge honkin' skein. I'm thinking I'll see if it will fit on my swift, and just knit one sock with the yarn on the swift. Weigh the sock, then wind off balls of yarn about that weight. I'll let you know how that goes. The group's founder is a mom with a son in the Air Force, and she has set a goal of getting 100,000 pair of hand-knit socks to our military members overseas. She's asking everyone to spend 20 minutes a day working on a Big Black Sock -- I'm thinking about actually timing myself to see how many 20 minute sessions it will take to make a sock.


Yesterday I was listening to Cast On, blithely knitting away on the Manos block. At the end of the podcast, I measured my square, and I had made it too long! I had to rip out only two rows, though, and started the next square. Le voila:

Mmmmmanos!

So I dug out a WOOP (work out of progress, thank you Sheri, for the new acronym), and started to work on it. The yarn is Manos del Uruguay. Here's the pattern:
It was copyrighted in 1997, written by Anne Simpson. I can't find any links to it where it might be currently available. I probably bought it about the time it came out, and started working on it. As you can see, it was intended to be a block of the month. The patterns for the 12 squares are on colored cardstock. I have them all in a neat little envelope:

The first 4 squares have been done for years.
I'm not really sure why I stopped, why this project has been in time-out so long. I have all the remaining colors. Each square takes most of a skein of Manos. I think I was having gauge issues. I do remember having to re-do the square with the staghorn cables, and running out of yarn before I got to the required length on one of the other squares. They're supposed to be 13" squares. They are 13" wide, but only about 12" tall. I'm hoping they'll block out ok.
The new square has cable panels:

I just wanted to work on something different, and hadn't done anything like this in a long time. So we'll see how this goes.
And just because I know you were biting your nails, worrying about the yarn from the previous post, I did get the tangles out, and rewound it. Lost only about 10 yards, all from the outside of the ball. The "lost" yarn is in 5 pieces of varying lengths.

Now, go check out Sheri's new online sock yarn store, The Loopy Ewe. She's got some great stuff!

A Mystery

I found this when I got up this morning. It had been on the coffee table, and didn't have crunchy knots attached to it when I went to bed last night.














I'm pretty sure this is the culprit:

She doesn't even try to look angelic! She has lived with us for about a year and a half, since someone abandoned her at the end of our road. In all that time, she has shown no interest in knitting. Never once asked for lessons. She did snatch a wad of roving and try to run off with it once, though,with the other end of it still attached to the spinning wheel.

A couple of nights ago, however, she hopped up into my lap and tried to sample the ball of yarn I was knitting from (Manos del Uruguay). So I carefully put all of that yarn away before I went to bed. I never thought she'd try to knit socks. I guess I should be glad she didn't find any needles. It would be hard to work them without opposable thumbs, so I'm sure teeth would have been employed, and the needles just wouldn't have survived, I'm afraid. 

Colorado pictures

I have tried twice to post this; I'm hoping 3rd time's the charm.
The mountains are so beautiful. We took a little hike up to Hanging Lake on Sunday, after we'd arrived on Friday evening. No problem -- just 1.2 miles each way. Except that you're starting at something over 6000 feet above sea level, and gaining over 1000 feet over that 1.2 mile hike. I thought they were trying to kill me! The lake & waterfalls are gorgeous ... I'm just not sure I'd be willing to do that again. Afterward, we drove over Independence Pass -- that was a snaky road, sometimes narrowing to one lane wide! We did have quite a bit of stormy weather during the week, so we didn't get to go white water rafting, but we did stay busy and had a lot of fun. We went with my husband's brother and his 2 kids.

Back in the real world, today is the first day of school for my husband (a teacher, the tall guy standing in the center picture) and son (a high school freshman). We'll be taking the Princess to school this weekend (college freshman).

On the knitting front, not much is happening. Just a few rows here & there. I even went & got an old "unfinished object" out of storage, thinking that's what I might want to work on, but it remains in its box. I think I just have too many UFOs, and I'm whirling around trying to figure out which one I feel like working on, instead of just doing something.

I'm back!

Didja miss me? Probably didn't even know I was gone...

Thanks to the generosity of my mother-in-law, we had a week's vacation in Colorado.
A bit of hiking (which felt more like climbing), tours of a gold mine & some caves, a day at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and above all, a lovely break from the heat here at home.

I took some knitting with me, of course. I decided my big project would be Mom's stole (Leda's Dream). Unfortunately, the only time I touched it was to move it out of the way so I could find something at the bottom of my knitting bag.



I brought along some sock yarn, and started the Mermaid Socks from Cool Socks, Warm Feet. I finished the leg and the heel, then tried it on -- too tight! So now I have to decide whether to rip it all out & do over with more stitches, or to see whether someone (like my niece, J.S.) with skinnier legs, might like these.

The new Six Sox Knitalong pattern was posted August 1st, and I was able to find a computer to download & print the pattern. I started it on the way home. This yarn seems to be working really well with the pattern.

Photo collage

Playing with Picasa!
A collage of the month of July... playing golf on July 1st (my first time); the Current River runs next to the golf course; the front of Sizzle; Rock & Weave socks; a blue-tailed lizard that got in the house; baby bunny; swimming in Current River (the big splash was a rock the kids were trying to "skip"); Big Spring; a big brown bat (that's really the species name) that got into the house. 

Big Foot lives here

These are the finished Rock and Weave socks, in Socks that Rock mediumweight sock yarn; the color is Fairgrounds. This was the May club kit -- the new one is here, already -- arrived Saturday.
The sock blockers are new, too. They're made by Chappy, and sold through her ebay site, CHAPPYS-FIBER-ARTS-AND-CRAFTS. There are several other designs available, and 3 sizes. 

Nothing to see here, folks...

Aw, dadgummit, the Mars thing is 3 years old. My apologies for not checking it out. It never occurred to me that I needed to. Our eagle-eyed correspondant, Becky, pointed out the error. Thank you!
For more info, please check this link: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Mars Spectacular

And another thing...

There has been knitting, in a rather haphazard, short-attention-span style.

The color blox sox are done, and I made a little friend to go with them. Mini sock blocker from Felt-up designs.

I finished the front of Sizzle, and started the back. I chickened out on the deep V, and started it about the same time I started the armholes. See the hourglass shaping?


The yarn I ordered for the Bazaar Socks arrived, so I started those. They are kicking my backside. They start toe-up, with a short-row toe. No problem. But they also have a vertical stripe: 1 stitch of color A, 1 stitch of color B, repeat to end of row. I spent about 3 days knitting the toe, ripping it out, knitting it again, and finally just decided to go with the 7th or 8th version, and continue with the next band of pattern. It's not pretty.

In frustration, I started an easier sock, the Rock & Weave pattern from the Socks that Rock club's May shipment. They start with a sideways cuff in linen stitch, which is easy. I like the "wrong side" (picture on right) better than the "right side" (picture on left).










As long as I was winding the yarn for the Rock & Weave socks, I decided I might as well wind the yarn for Mystery Stole 2. It's dark brown laceweight from Handpaintedyarn.com. I haven't cast on yet, but at the rate I'm going, that'll happen soon.

Happy birthday, Mom!

We will never see this again in our lifetime...

...nor will the people of the next 50-to-1,000 Life Times!
Mars, the Red Planet, is about to be spectacular!

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification...
Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m. That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month.


NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN


This was an email I got from my dad, which came with some pictures that apparently only exist in the email. But I thought it was cool, and the 2 people who actually read my blog might want to know about it!

Starting to Sizzle!

OK, I went ahead and started Sizzle. I found some Tahki Cotton Classic in my stash, started with the front instead of the back, and I'm almost up to where I have to decide when to split for the deep V-neck. I really like the hourglass shaping on the piece; the back gets similar shaping. This yarn is on it's second go-round. It was once the Ripples Top from Cabin Fever , but after I wore it a couple of times, I decided it was too wide & too short, so it became yarn again.

I'm really tempted to go stash-diving again and come up with something to start Mystery Stole 2 . The first pattern was posted yesterday, and it looks gorgeous! Hurry and join if you're interested -- the group is closing next Friday, the 14th!

Not that I need to start yet another project... I count 5 projects within arm's reach of my chair, and there are several others stuffed behind the couch.

Ticker reset

I had to reset my "days since I bought yarn" ticker. Yesterday, in my fit of boredom, I purchased a ball of size 10 crochet cotton, to use in the creation of the Dutch sampler being recreated on the KnitalongSamplerM group.

And today, I got tired of waiting for an order I placed on May 29th and ordered some more Brown Sheep Cotton Fine to make some Bazaar Socks. But I still can't start the socks until I get some Cavern (black) or some other dark color. Apparently, there are a lot of people making these socks.

I did download a pattern today that I'm hoping will help use up stash: Sizzle, by Wendy Bernard.

I'm still here...

I have 2 finished items! The never-ending socks for my husband, from the Red Cross Kit , are finally done.

To the left is a big Booga Bag. Using Wendy's modifications, I enlarged the original pattern. I'm trying to decide whether to sew a lining for it. I didn't make an outside pocket, and the whole thing used just a bit more than 4 skeins of Noro Kureyon (color 92).

Current projects include the Mystery Shawl 4, which is a circular shawl, based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's Pi shawl, Leda's Dream for my mother (it's not going to be done for your birthday, Mom -- sorry!), and the Color Blox socks from the Six Sox KAL. I had developed a case of knitting ennui, and was working my way through it by alternating a round on the Mystery Shawl with 4 rows of Mom's stole, 10 rounds on the olive drab socks, 10 rounds on the Color Blox socks. Now that the olive socks are done and I am up to the gussets on the (toe-up) Color Blox, things are a bit more interesting. I actually considered either starting something new yesterday, or cramming all of the current projects behind the couch and digging out some other UFO (well, digging first and cramming second). I may not have to resort to such drastic measures after all.