Knitwith Homespun

This is Lucy.  She is the best dog I have ever had in my entire 44 years of existence. She takes care of us and hangs out with us and is truly a family dog.  She loves it when the three of us humans are home together with her.  She is happiest on that day.  When I pick up Bella from school, she is waiting there wagging her tail to see her friend come home.  They play together and take care of each other.  I have never had such a well behaved dog.  Lucy was 5 when Bella came along and I think that added 2 years or so to Lucy’s life.  They played together all the time and really enjoyed each other so much.

A week or more ago I found a mass on her chest.  It was about the size of a tennis ball and was very soft and mooshy.  This scared the crap out of me.  Did I take her straight to the vet?  Nope, cause I was too scared.  A 14 year old dog with a mass on her chest can’t be good, right?  I was too nervous to take her.  Well, today I took her.  The news wasn’t too bad.  It does have to be removed and it grew very quickly the vet said.  It will continue to grow if it’s not removed.  So, she will be fine.  The scare is over. She will get her teeth cleaned and get all kinds of other good things done while she is there.  I am relieved and happy and thrilled.  The vet said we could get many more years out of this kind of dog.  They live longer than other dogs of their size he thinks because of their temperament.  She is having her surgery next Thursday.  Whew!  What a relief!

On the spinning front, I finished up some Icelandic wool from Spunky Club, January 2008.  It is so beautiful!  I love these colors.  They are so wide and blue.  I love these colors but I am not a fan of this wool.  It is very stiff and scratchy like an old fashioned kind of wool.  There are bits of softness that I like but it’s certainly not consistant.  It may take me a while to figure out what to do with it.  I do love it.  I will keep it.  Thanks Amy!

My daughter is 8 years old and apparently, very funny.  She announced from the living room while I was cooking my dinner, “Mom, I have a wedgy that aparently requires some surgery!”  I nearly died laughing!  I made her come give me a high 5.

My husband needs knee surgery from his accident racing in December.  Torn maniscus and ACL with a torn MCL (which the doctor said will heel on it’s own).  Just reporting the news and bragging about my daughter.

Well, I have said it on Twitter and on Plurk but not here.  So here’s the story:  We have a mouse (or a family of mice).  We saw it last month once.  Last week, my daughter and her friend saw two in the kitchen, running along the wall.  Since that time, I have seen the mouse every day.  It’s slow and lazy and toying with me. We have 5-6 traps set up.  Sticky ones and snappy ones.  The mouse just eats all the bait and leaves the traps unsprung and empty of food.  Today, I saw him grab the sticky one with the peanut butter on it and try to take it away.  Smartest mouse in the world!

We have a dog that has seen the mouse one time and she tried to get it but she is very old so she gave up quickly.  We have a cat.  The cat is a million years old two but who cares, she is supposed to catch the mouse, right?  The cat doesn’t leave our bedroom though except for maybe twice a day to eat and annoy the dog.  She sleeps all day and night in the middle of our bed and waits for us to come to bed and pet her.  If we stay up too late, she comes out to yell at us and tell us to come to bed.  Well, at this rate, the cat has to see the mouse, right?  Even though the cat only comes out a moment or two a day, right?  The mouse is slow and that cat is old.  Well, my friends, we have lift off.  today, I was watching Burn Notice and heard a comotion in the mousey area.  It was the cat B-lining to the spot the mouse hides.  It was awesome!  She has been out here ever since sniffing around all the mousey spots.  She has never spent so much time out here with us since she adopted us in 1997.

The question is my friends, how long before we have a mouse in the middle of our bed in the middle of the night?  The clock starts now…….

This is my time to frog. My Old Shale Smoke Ring (Rav link) is going the way of the frog pond. Not because I don’t like it or I made a mistake, but because I want it in a little tighter lace pattern. I am knitting these in a light fingering (very light) weight yarn and using a size 7 needle as the pattern calls for. However, I don’t think I want such a loose fabric. I think my yarn (Aspen Love Rav link) is lighter than required and the gauge is wrong. I didn’t knit a swatch for this puppy because I think it doesn’t matter so much for a project of this type. I love knitting this and I will continue to love knitting it but on smaller needles. I think I am going to try US 5 for this. Here is a close up from before I am frogging.

I love these colors and I want to see this project finished.  I am much further than this already and it knits really fast.  I’ll keep y’all posted!

I was gonna do this tomorrow, but since I just got home from being out all day shopping, I was reading my blogs and there apparently are a bunch of people getting and giving these awards.

I received the Kreativ Blogger award and the Lemonade Award both form Zuleika.  Thanks Zu!  I love you to death!

Kreativ Blogger Award

Lemonade Award

Here are the rules for both awards. They are surprisingly similar so I am only listing them once:

1. Copy the award to your site.
2. Link to the person from whom you received the award.
3. Nominate 8 other bloggers.
4. Link to those on your blog.
5. Leave a message on the blogs you nominated.

I will nominate those blogs I love to read and look forward to reading.  You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just know I admire you all for your creativity, enthusiasm, and immense talent.

Velma
Daniele
Cristi
Ms. B
Amy
Adam
Kyle
Bonnie
Jerry
Joce

Well I finished the scarf.  I fixed the part where I knitted it backwards for 12 rows.  That was sooooooo much fun! I love how it turned out but it is a bit short.  It reaches the top of my hips without wrapping it around my neck.  I love it and the blocked scarf looks beautiful.  I love the colors and the pattern.  I would love to knit one of these again in some other handspun that I will spin in the future.  It was mindless (unless you are drugged) and easy.  The pattern really allows for the color changes to go through each row separately (if you know what I mean).  The waves really give this scarf movement and life.  I can’t wait to wear it.

Next I am knitting a new project.  This is called the Old Shale Smoke Ring (Ravelry link) and I am knitting it with my Aspen Love yarn I finished last week.  This is also very mindless knitting but it will end up being a beautiful lacey cowl.  It looks delicate and charming but so easy to knit.  I can’t wait to finish it and wear it also. Here is my progress so far.  I love how the colors are working. 

I put the names into a hat.  That wasn’t big enough cause I couldn’t shake it up and mix them up so I put them all in a basket I bought at BSG this summer.  I shook them up for quite a while, ok a minute, and put my hand in.

First prize:

Second prize:

Third prize:

Thanks to everyone for playing.  I really had a good time this week.  I will sure do it again.  I will be contacting you to get your addresses for shipping yor prizes.  And for the outcome of the goodies in the shots, the scarf is finished and I fixed it.  That was surely something I couldn’t live with.  The Bon was the first person to actually pick the correct error.  I had actually starting knitting backwards.  That is, I switched sides on the scarf making the right side the wrong side and vice versa.  It wasn’t actually reverse stockinette.  The second error was pointed out by everyone correctly in that I started the cable early missing one of the yarn overs in the center part.  I can live with that and I love wearing these gloves.  Not only that, but the designer asked to use my photo on Ravelry for the pattern page!  Yippee!

Tomorrow I will do the FO post for the scarf as it is just now dry from the blocking.  Have a great weekend and Congratulations to the winners!

So I am nearly finished my Sunshine Surf Scarf for the Ply by Night group.  I wanted to do a satisfying project like this one for my next one as well and I think I have found it.  I used to have a sweater that I wore all the time and my husband used to call it my schizophrenic sweater.  It was polka dots on the front and big bold stripes on the back.  I found a sweater on Ravelry called the Dollar and a Half sweater and this sweater reminds me a lot of that one I used to wear (and still have).  It’s a more mature version of the schizophrenic sweater and I will spin the yarn for it from this fiber. The sweater has one panel in the front that has a wide cable down the front.  The other side has horizontal stripes and they go around to the back.

I’m going to call this fiber dulce de leche because it looks so sweet and carmelly.  I have split the two pounds into two equal sections.  Then these sections are split into three equal weight piles for two skeins of three ply yarn.  It should look lovely with the cables and the patterns of the sweater I have picked.  I can’t wait to get to it.  I have already started spinning and it looks kind of beige or tan in the spinning like golden thread.  I am very excited and looking forward to starting the knitting of this one.

Next, we have my goofy husband.  We went over so David could meet Savvy Rose.  Bella’s advice to Jeff, the new dad, was to be silly.  I have no idea where she would have gotten the idea that dads should be silly.

Friday I went to Craft Night for the first time with some people I know and love who aren’t crafty typically.  They wanted to get together and do some things they liked so I played along.  My friends Julie and Jacqui where there.  I have known them since 1980ish and they introduced me to my husband.  Yay!  Julie’s friend Stacy was there and my sister, Susan.  Stacy’s sister in law Heather came too.  My sister in law, Sandi, came too and brought some yarn but didn’t knit. We had a pot luck dinner and no kids (wooo hoooo).  Julie and Susan did something called punch needle which I don’t get.  Heather is a knitter.  Stacy quilted while Sandi and Jacqui pretended to knit.

I wanted to spin since I can talk and spin at the same time.  I also wanted to possibly finish the project I started while I was there so I started my spinning early in the day so I would be more than half done by the time I went there Friday night.  I took 4 ounces of merino/tencel which is so soft and shiny I can’t even stand it.  I was very intimidated by this fiber when it showed up here for my fiber club in September of 07.  I didn’t have my Rose and I was a very new beginner at spinning so I put it away and didn’t look at it again until recently.  Now I wasn’t so scared and I am glad I picked it up.  The colorway is called Aspen and it’s a beautifully heathered colorway of green, tan, brown, turqoise and blue.  I am so in love with this and I don’t know what to do with it.  I finished it up yesterday and plied it and washed it.  I hope to spin some more merino/tencel in the near future because it is so so so soft and pretty and delicate.  I am also pleased with my spinning with this fiber.  Here are some shots of the finished yarn:

Merino/tencel 4 ounces
S spun and Z plied
20 WPI approximately
No special preparation other than to split the fiber into two equal weight bumps.

We will be having craft night every other Friday night until we get sick of each other.  It was so much fun and we all got time to ourselves.  I can’t wait until the next one on Friday the 13th!  Scary!