Labradorable

Eef U Leev Ur Knittin Alown

 

Dogz will sleepz on it.

   

Can you see the blue blob?  Loco finds it very soft for sleeping and will incorporate it into his frequent naps if I don't put it away when I'm not actively knitting.  I know that the alpaca/silk yarn is soft and warm, but More Importantly, it is navy blue and his light colored fur shows up all over it.  I think that is the true reason why he likes it.  He seems to like dark colored things.  And, yes, the black dog prefers light colored things.  Maybe they realize that we humans don't have the best sense of smell and want to make sure we know they were lying on our stuff by leaving very visible (and copious) amounts of fur on items that highly contrast with their fur.

Speaking of alpaca. . . I don't have a photo of one, but I do have a llama and a sheep, which are just as good, being fiber bearing animals who are not going to come into my house and lie on my knitting.

 

DD likes the sheep, DS found the sheep boring.

 

He liked the llama.  The llama did not like to be touched.  I can't blame him.  Fortunately, DS is young enough to have little common sense about petting animals who don't want to be petted (and who can bite or spit) but also to be easily distracted from petting those animals.

 

DD knows how to treat a llama right. . . feed it.  And that's DH on the right, buying more super tasty pellets to feed the llama.

 

 

We also got pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.  Over on the left in the back of the photo of DD are the peach trees where we picked peaches a couple of months ago.

Last, but not least, we picked apples.  That always brings me back.  I grew up in a former apple orchard.  Guess who got to pick up all the fallen apples every week so my dad could mow the lawn?  Believe it or not, I actually missed doing that when I got older, and I used to love to go over to my parents' on the weekend and pick up the apples.  I grew to appreciate the time it afforded me to think, and, given that I have almost always had a desk job, it was also a nice break from a more sedentary work week.

This work week is almost at a close.  Have a great weekend!

Socks, Like the Yankees, are Done

So, the Yankees are out of the playoffs, more or less done for the season, and my Yankees Ikat socks are done, too.

You knew the dog in the photo would be Yogi, right?  Oh, I was sad on Sunday, watching the last game at Yankee Stadium.  And there was Yogi Berra, in the dugout, socializing with all the Yankees past and present.

 

I like these socks.  It's hard to tell from the photos, but they do have a little pinstripe running through them, just like those Yankees uniforms.  This was a made up on the fly pattern.  It works for me.  I have a lot of yarn left over, so I guess if I could change one thing, it would be to have made the legs longer.  Live and learn!

The yarn is Yankees Ikat from Cabin Cove Mercantile.  If you see it anywhere, scoop it up.  Dave is out of the yarn dying business, so Cabin Cove is no more.  I am sad about this, because I loved my Dave yarn, but I understand why he made the decision to focus his energies elsewhere.  Fortunately, I have a few skeins of Cabin Cove left to ease me through the transition.  Do you remember the sock at the left?  I am glad that I procrastinated about making a decision about whether to gift it to someone with smaller feet or frog and reknit it to fit me, because its made out of Cabin Cove yarn and it is now most definitely getting frogged and reknit for me. 

And now, a sock meme, which is from Nancy.  I usually just steal her memes outright, but this time she actually tagged me.  I'm feeling the love, baby!

When did you first learn to knit socks?

January 2005

What’s the first sock you ever knit?

Broadripple

Favorite Sock Pattern?

Hmmm, where to start?  I've knit two pairs of Conwys.  I also have liked I Love Gansey, Pembrokeshire Pathways, Monkey, Baudelaire, Hedera. . . I can't pick just one.

Favorite needle method?

I like my Brittany dpns, even though they break.  Short, wooden dpns are my preferred sock needles.

Favorite sock needles?

I tend to use my size 1 and 2 Brittanys most frequently.

Who do you knit socks for?

I knit them for me.  DH has yet to wear the pair I knit for him a few years ago, and no one else seems sock worthy.  The kids are clamoring for them, though, so that might change.

How many pairs have you knitted to date?

22

What is on your sock knitting to-do list?

What isn't?  I think most of the socks on my must-knit list were designed by  Nancy Bush, Laurie Lee,  and Cookie A, if that helps.

What kind of socks to you like to knit?

I like socks with some sort of texture, whether it's twisted stitches, cables, lace, or a combo. 

Striped? Yes

Colorwork? Haven't done, hasn't really pulled me in, but I wouldn't rule it out

Plain Stockinette? Yes

Cabled? Yes, love them!

Lace? Another favorite

Anklets? No, I knit wool socks and I have cold feet, so anklets don't do it for me.

Knee Socks?  Not yet, but I have my eye on a couple of patterns.

Solid colors?  Absolutely - the best thing for complex patterns

Bright and crazy? I guess so, though I don't know if I've knit too many pairs of bright socks.

Faux Fair Isle (the yarn doing all of the work)? Yes

I'm not tagging anyone, but if you do the meme, let me know so I can make sure that I read it.

Dog Tired (Doggedly Tired?)

 

We're more than tired here at Labradorable.  Yogi couldn't even be bothered to lift his head when I came at him with the camera.  I tried petting him and talking to him to see if he might move, but no luck.  And Loco is zonked out in my bed, similarly exhausted.  I haven't done a Dogs on Thursday post of the dogs in ages, and I don't have much to show for it this week, either.  *sigh*

I do have a question, though, and it's knitting related.  At my new job, I park my car in a public garage.  There's someone who parks there who has a vanity plate that reads KNITTER.  I have no idea where this knitter works, as there are quite a few office buildings in the vicinity, though I do know that I usually see the car in the morning but not at night.  It's always parked in the same spot, right next to the elevators.  It's been making me crazy to know there's a knitter nearby but not to know who it is.  I was thinking of leaving a note on the car telling KNITTER that I am a knitter, too, and asking about whether there are any lunchtime knitting groups in the area, and leaving my e-mail address.  Do you think that's too stalkerish?  Do you have any other suggestions?  You can tell me to leave it alone and not do anything.  That's an option and it's been the way I've been handling the situation, but the curiousity is killing me.  Any and all opinions welcome!

Not Dogs on Thursday

I haven't taken a photo of the dogs since we returned from vacation, so today I offer other animals (all mammals) from vacation in lieu of dogs.

I think I misspoke earlier.  There is in fact a dog:

Are you starting to figure out where we are?  You are correct that those are the Budweiser Clydesdales, but were not in St. Louis.  And we were not in Manchester, where another team is kept.

I think the photo with the dog is a dead giveaway that we were somewhere a little more tropical.

The next photo should make all clear to you.  And I'll also tell you that this was one of only a couple sunny days on our trip, though by 3:00 on the day these photos were taken, we were having more torrential downpours.

These are false killer whales.  I don't know why they teach them to do a marine mammal version of a French kiss, but they do.

Did you guess?  The Labradorable family hit Florida at the same time as Tropical Storm Fay.  There will be more on that later, but one last photo of more mammals.  (Note Labradorable parents in the background with other whale.)

Do you like my braids?  Have a wonderful Thursday!

I Finished One Sock and I Need a New Project

I have survived the first of the Celtic Braid Socks.  The joy I felt at binding off the top of the sock (and feeling that I had finished one sock at long last) was tempered by the realization that I had the afterthought heel left to knit. 

The photo at right shows the needles all queued up and ready to go for the afterthought heel, waiting for me to rip out the waste yarn.  I'm not terribly enamored of this style of heel for two reasons.  First, I don't like the way it looks.  Second, I don't like the fact that it gives me two more ends of yarn to weave in as part of the finishing process.  One of the joys of sock knitting (for me, at least) is that minimal finishing is involved.  I don't mind kitchenering toes and weaving in the last end of yarn, but more than that makes socks too fiddly for me.  The other possible reason why I might not like the afterthought heel is that it doesn't look too comfortable.  However, I can't speak from experience as these socks are not for me. 

I'm thinking of taking a break from this pattern, but I'm afraid that if I do I will never go back and knit the second sock.  I have a good excuse for taking a break in the Tour de France KAL, which starts in two days. I am a green jersey knitter in the TDF KAL, which means that I should be knitting something of average difficulty for me, but I should be knitting it quickly so that I am done before the end of the KAL, which is three weeks long.  Based on the time it took me to knit the first of the Celtic Braid Socks (11 days), I should finish the second sock and start/finish a second pair of them.  That would work, except for the part when I fly into a homicidal rage and injure someone with my needles. 

This ennui about my TDF KAL project is getting worse as the 5th July start date grows ever closer.  I suppose if I had an organized stash, it might be easier for me to choose something.  I know, if I documented my stash on Ravelry, that would help, too, and lots of people could peek into my stash and come up with ideas and things that I probably would not have figured.  Instead, here I sit at the computer on the evening of 3rd July, thinking that I should buy new yarn for a new project. . . nevermind the fact that it could not possible be here in time for the 5th July start because tomorrow is a federal holiday and there's no mail delivery.  And, well, at this point, most yarn shops are closed, too.

I'm wondering if I could get away with knitting two pairs of socks for the TDF KAL.  I know there are people who can easily knock out a pair a week, but I am not one of those people.  Plus, I am not inclined to pick a plain stockinette or ribbed sock pattern.  I'm thinking two pairs of lace, cable, or twisted stitch (or a combo of those) socks during the three week KAL.  I could also knit DD's Harry Potter sweater.  What do you think?  Is the sock idea a cop out?  Any suggestions for two sock patterns that would keep me on my toes knittingwise for three weeks?  I *do* have sock patterns I like queued on Ravelry.

And, now, because it is Thursday (and I know this for a fact), here's this week's Dogs on Thursday.  See how patiently Loco is waiting for his blueberry pupcake?  I made them last night.  The plan was to make them earlier in the week, but there was a run on blueberries at the grocery store.  I did finally find them at a different store, but that store didn't have guava jelly or empanada wrappers, so I went to yet a third grocery store today.  And the only empanada wrappers they had were "con color" and I don't like food with unnecessary colorings, but I sucked it up and bought them because I just could not bear to visit four grocery stores in as many days.

But, getting back to the pupcakes, Loco likes them a lot.  You know who else likes them?  Me!  They are somewhat bland but they are so good.  I usually share the pupcakes, half for Loco, half for me.  He has accepted this arrangement, probably because he's not aware that this is food meant for him.  He most likely thinks that I am being extraordinarily generous with my food.

Yuck!  I know some people are thinking that.  But these pupcakes really are good.  No one else in the house will try them, but that just leaves more for Loco and me.  The ingredients are: flour, milk, oatmeal, blueberries, baking powder, canola oil, honey, eggs, and sour cream.  It's the same stuff we eat on a fairly regular basis.  If I can get myself organized, I will get a copy of the recipe to Paula later this week so that she can put it up on Dogs on Thursday next week.  I did not make the recipe up, but it's similar to many other dog muffin or pupcake recipes.  I often get several recipes together and mix and match ingredients to synthesize them into one mongrelized recipe.

I might make more of these pupcakes.  I had no idea when I was making them that I'd like them so much.  I did freeze some for the future, too.  However, it will also be nice to have some fresh pupcakes ready because on Saturday we'll be welcoming a new canine addition to our family.  I am going to be getting up early in the morning so that I can be on the road to get this new dog back home in time for DH to see him before he goes to work. 

We did go to visit the dog earlier this week, and the 250 mile round trip to see him and return home turned into a six hour ordeal, thanks to interstate highway paving, two accidents, and a thunderstorm.  And I will confess that I was also partly to blame for the delay, as I decided to stay very hydrated due to the hot weather, so we had to make bathroom breaks.  Loco was with us and he appreciated the chance to get out and stretch his legs at each potty stop, too. 

The time in the car was productive knittingwise.  I finished the body of the Celtic Braid Sock but couldn't bind off because I didn't have the I-cord bind off instructions with me.  I could see DH looking at me out of the corner of his eye as I muttered and cursed and pawed through my knitting bag to see if I had just misplaced the instructions.  We were still an hour (which stretched out into two hours) from home when I hit the dead end on the sock, so I know he was a bit worried about my demeanor for the rest of the ride home.  When I started to repeat to him that we absolutely needed to stop at the next place that sold dark chocolate, and they'd better have clean bathrooms and unsweetened iced tea, dammit, I knew he was thinking that perhaps he'd drop me off and leave me there.  But then I triumphantly reached into my knitting bag, held something up, and said, "But I brought another knitting project with me just in case I hit a dead end with the sock!  I'm okay on the chocolate now, but I do need some iced tea, and a bathroom."  The fact that I actually worked on my extra knitting just this once will forever justify my packing extra skeins of sock yarn in my suitcase even when I am only going away for the weekend. 

Creeping Towards Sanity

I know my grasp of reality is tenuous at best on a fairly regular basis, but lately I think the connection has been more faulty than usual.  I blame the rain.  We're having another rainy day.  I've lost track of them now, though I am very much aware that today is Saturday and it's time for Saturday Sky.  See how grey it is at midday?

I did eventually realize (perhaps after being reminded by somebody) that my last post was posted on a Tuesday but was written as if it were posted on Wednesday.  I had no sooner adjusted to the correct day of the week when I had a phone conversation on Wednesday afternoon with someone who closed the call with, "See you tomorrow!"  I had plans to see her on Friday, so she really threw me and I had a moment of complete and total confusion before I finally, timidly, said, "Isn't today Wednesday?", fully expecting that I was date challenged once more.  Fortunately, she was the one who was confused, so I am in good company and feeling a bit more connected with reality.

You'd think I'd be spending more time knitting because of the rain, and it's been somewhat true.  I've sort of lost enthusiasm for the Celtic Braid Socks.  I'm also now feeling the pain as I see lots of Summer of Socks 2008 participants having finished one or more socks in the one week since summer began. 

Here's where the sock stands today, about halfway done.  I am not knitting on gauge for this sock.  My gauge is off.  That said, I'm not 100% sure of the correct gauge for the sock, as the pattern merely states 28 stitches to 4 inches. . . horizontally, vertically, or both is not specified.  The author of this pattern must be a very, very loose knitter, because she used size 0 needles to get a sock to fit a US 10 1/2 women's shoe size.  I am usually a midrange knitter who usually gets gauge on the recommended needle size, and I have a size 8 1/2 foot, so I am knitting with size 0 needles.  I have been knitting away and the sock does fit on my foot, but when I got to the heel placement for the afterthought heel, the sock was at least an inch too short.  The afterthought heel instructions in the pattern didn't make a lot of sense, and it was after 10:00 at night (and beer had been consumed), so I put the sock into timeout and worked on another UFO for the rest of the night.

Today I got some very, very helpful afterthought heel advice from Karen, so I figured out how I'm going to make the heel work.  I also decided to try the sock on DD.  It's a pretty good fit, just a little too long for her, so this sock is now for her.  It does fit on my foot, and I could have knit more length in the foot before I started the heel, but I was also concerned about how the sock was going to work with my high arches and didn't want to go crazy tweaking the pattern.  I thought about frogging the sock and trying again with size 2 needles, but it looked so good on DD and she was so thrilled about me knitting socks for her that I decided to keep on keeping on and gift it to her.  I feel a little bit crazy about knitting such labor intensive socks for an almost seven year old, but this way I can salvage what I've already knit and look at it as a learning experience. 

I've also been cooking during our rainy weather, but not too much -- let's not get the impression that I like cooking or am good at it.  I ran out during a break in the rain the other day and cut some rhubarb and made sUsAn's Rhubarb Crunch.  It is *so* good.  I highly recommend it.  My kids won't eat it and DH only likes rhubarb a little bit, so there's plenty for me.

I decided not to bake Loco a cake.  We went to the dog bakery to get him a birthday cake, but the owner wasn't there and she's the only one who can decorate cakes.   So, we got him a pupcake for his birthday, as well as an apple pie, cheese cake, and quite a few other delicious treats.  We came home and sang Happy Birthday to Loco.  I think he found it incredibly frustrating to have us all standing around him, crowding him, serenading him off-key with a song he didn't understand.  Dogs, labs especially, aren't really enamored of anything that delays eating, especially anything as pointless (to them) as singing.  Loco stood and looked at us all as though he couldn't believe we were wasting so much time when what he really wanted was to immediately commence the eating of a treat.  I'm glad we didn't put a candle on it as we had planned, because he made several attempts to liberate the pupcake.  This is the only photo I got of him with it -- it was impossible to get it anywhere near him without him attempting to snatch the pupcake out of my hand. 

Once he got the pupcake, he took it into the family room, because it's better to eat something messy on the carpeting versus on a surface that the cleaners (that would be DH and me) can more easily tidy up.  Like most other kids his age, Loco ate the frosting first and then ate the cake.

The second photo shows Loco actually taking the pupcake from me.  Never fear, my fingers were not harmed and there will be no disruption to my knitting.  There should be plenty of knitting going on this evening, but I don't think I will make the knit one sock in one week goal.  I started the Celtic Braid Sock last Saturday evening, but evening is rapidly approaching and I have 70+ rows to knit.  I'm going to get moving on it, but don't expect miracles.

Before I close, I wanted to mention a swap that I've signed up for, my first swap in a long time.  You have to be a Dogs on Thursday person.  DoT will be celebrating its one year anniversary next month.  I can't believe it's only been one year.  I've met so many wonderful bloggers through DoT.  As for the swap, I couldn't resist after seeing the photo of Elise with her ears flapping in the wind -- so cute!
 

Into Every Life a Little Rain Must Fall

It's been crazy rainy here of late, complete with thunder and lightning.  Yesterday, the kids put on their bathing suits and ran around in the rain (between bouts of thunder and lightning, of course). 

My outdoor knitting corner has been vacant for the past few days as a result of the rain.  I don't actually mind the rain so much now that I am not working.  If I don't have to deal with Boston commuting traffic and the havoc rain wreaks, and if I don't have to get all dressed up and go out in the rain, I am actually quite fine with it.  DD and I spent some time last week weeding and planting more flowers outside, so the rain will be lovely for them.  However, some of us would like the sun back so we can spend more time outside.

Like most labrador retrievers, Loco doesn't really mind going out in the rain and getting wet.  What he doesn't really like is that he cannot go out and lie on the porch.  If the weather was nicer, this is what he'd be doing:

Unfortunately, for most of the past two and a half days, he's been cooped up inside with the rest of us.  He's been good company while I knit, but I can't say he's enjoying himself too much.  I think that today, the boredom has gotten the better of him.  We had a nice morning, but the afternoon has been gloomy and rainy, and he's been reduced to this:

The poor thing!  He had his birthday this week, too, and we didn't do anything fun due to the rain.  I was planning on taking him to the dog bakery to pick out some treats, but I'm really not keen on wet dog in the car unless absolutely necessary.

I did talk to DH about getting another dog and he is actually amenable to it.  It's been about two and a half months since Beast died.  It's still difficult to think about him, but I think we've all been missing having a second dog around the house.  And, being the resourceful individual that I am, I found a couple of suitable candidates for adoption.  We're not looking at getting a puppy or a young dog, but someone who would be Loco's peer, agewise.  This has a bit of symmetry to it, as Loco should be getting a new dog right after his birthday, and we originally went from a one dog household to a two dog household just after Beast's birthday, way back in 1996.  (Oh, that explains my e-mail address for those of you who are in the know!)  Other than the two periods of one dog house that we've had after one of the dogs died, we've been a two dog house ever since. 

Now that I've said all that about dogs, I'll likely have nothing canine related to report tomorrow for Dogs on Thursday.  But, many people won't read this post until Thursday, so I will be okay.  Here's a Wednesday Sky shot.  You can see the raindrops coming down.  Yes, they were that big.  Some places in New England were expecting large size hail, but we haven't seen that yet.

I've been in the house a lot, working on my new socks.  I must confess, when I first started this sock, I was a bit discouraged about it.  The pattern is available for free on the internet, and it's written by a Finnish blogger.  I think it's a lovely finished product, but there are typos in the pattern as well as places where it wasn't completely translated from Finnish to English, so some of the knitting has been slow going.  Still, it's free, so I can be patient about the issues I'm having with the pattern.  I was a bit worried that instead of Summer of Socks 2008, I was going to end up with Summer of Sock 2008 because I was only going to be able to manage the knitting of one sock during these months.  Fortunately, the rain has kept me inside a lot and that, along with the satellite tv blackouts we keep having due to the cloudiness of the sky (usually a negative, but I'm thinking of it in a positive way for this purpose), has given me quite a bit of time where I can sit with the pattern and the sock and really concentrate on my knitting.

So, here's what I have so far.  I'm on row 70something out of 170something rows, so I'm making progress.  This is my first sock with an afterthought heel, so I will be learning something new with this sock, which is always a plus.  This is also the first sock I've ever knit on size 0 (2.0 mm) needles.  I think that it's also the first toe up sock I've knit using waste yarn to knit a little tube on which to knit the sock, but I can't remember for sure.  In any case, there are some firsts with this sock, so it's keeping me interested.  I still think I might cast on for a simpler sock to have for knitting when I can't concentrate or don't have room to spread out the pattern.  (Can anyone say Stitch N Pitch is coming up in another week and a half?)

Now, for the details on this sock.  The pattern is Celtic Braid, by Tuulia Salmela, and can be found here.  The yarn is Patonyle from Patons Australia, in color 1003, which I have dubbed Cream.  According to Ravelry, Patonyle is discontinued, but I think they will be making more of it.  This is my first time knitting with it and, although the huge skeins remind me of Opal yarn, this is much softer than Opal.  I think it's perfect for this project.  It's showing the stitches very nicely and it's easy on my fingers for all the cabling.  Plus, for those of you who recall my two sad Socks That Rock stories where I ran out of yarn on the toe of the second sock, there is *plenty* of yarn in this 1006 skein to knit two socks, 409 yards to be exact.  I wouldn't be surprised if there is actually more yardage to the skein than it states on the label, though, as even after I've knit this much sock, the skein doesn't look any smaller.

I'm going to finish this post now, as the thunder and lightning are making me a bit nervous that we are going to lose electricity.  I don't know if I can knit this by candlelight, but I'm not beyond giving it a try!

Where's Loco?

He almost blends into the sand, doesn't he?  We took Loco for his first solo trip to the beach the other day.  We were supposed to go last week, but the nice weather didn't coincide with our schedules.  He enjoyed the beach, but he did not swim.  He did, however, get his feet wet:

I swear, I have the only labrador retriever on the planet who doesn't like to swim.  Still, he enjoyed running on the beach, to an extent.  He decided on his own that he'd had enough of the sand and he ran up the stairs to the sidewalk that borders the sand and walked along there.  He had a good time, if only because it was something different.

I had a good time, too.  I knit My So-Called Scarf in the car on the way there because my current project is a bit too complicated to knit on the go.  Here it is:

That's the back of the Debbie Bliss Pure Silk Lace Shrug.  That piece, and one of the front pieces, are done now.  I need to figure out how to block them, and there aren't any suggestions in the pattern book or on the yarn label.  This is 100% silk yarn, and the pattern is lace and cables.  I'm of the mind that steam blocking would be a disaster, so I'm thinking wet blocking would be the answer.  However, I'm worried I might be missing something.  Does anyone have any suggestions or words of advice?  Thank you!

I have some advice on working with this silk yarn.  At the left, you can see what the lovely center-pull ball that I wound looks like after I've been knitting a bit.  Sometimes, I was spending more time untangling yarn to knit than actually knitting.  That got my wheels turning, and I decided to knit the next ball from the outside in.  Voila!  No time wasted untangling yarn.  So, even though the point of using the ball winder is to have a center-pull ball, sometimes it just makes sense to knit the yarn up from the outside.  And I also have to relay a tip from Cookie on winding slippery yarn on your ball winder -- she puts a knot in the end of slippery yarn so that it will hold tight when she starts cranking.  I never would have thought of that on my own.

Finally, I have a meme, shamelessly stolen, from Stephanie.  As you may have noticed, I've had much more time for reading lately.  I was going through this meme for the fun of it, without thinking I'd post it, when I realized that the next book I'm going to read is on the list.  I think this list is accurate, but I also think that I have read some of these books and forgotten about them, so perhaps I have read more.  And you? 

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies (have it at home, might read it)
War and Peace
Vanity Fair

The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations

American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Always the Last to Know

Last night, after completing yet *another* knitting project (That's three in three days, not that you'd know from reading here. . . yet.), I decided to reward myself with the pleasure of winding the yarn for my next new project.  I'm knitting with Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, which I bought a couple of years ago.  It comes in really beautiful, tightly coiled skeins.  In does not wind beautifully, however.  For one thing, this 100% silk yarn is very, very slippery.  I couldn't even get it to stay in the notches on my ball winder for the longest time.  Then I realized something that probably is known by every knitter who owns a ball winder, and perhaps by some who don't.  Can you see what I finally saw?

I've owned this ball winder for probably four years and never, ever noticed this before, even though I have wound many, many skeins of sock yarn on it.  One of the notches at the top is deeper (and gets narrower) than the other.  If you put the tail end of the yarn in the shallower notch, a slippery silk yarn will fly right out as soon as you start cranking the handle of the ball winder.  If you put the tail end of the yarn in the deeper notch, it will hold when you start to wind the yarn.

All this is not to say that having that knowledge made the winding of this yarn any easier.  My skeins have been wound into a lot of small, lavender birds' nests.  I'm really, really hoping that I will be able to knit without them turning into tangled clumps of yarn.  I won't be surprised if that doesn't happen though.  Last night, DH came home from work at 11:30 pm and found me in the kitchen, untangling yarn and muttering, "Knitting is my hobby.  It brings me joy.  Knitting is the new yoga.  I feel relaxed and renewed.  Knitting is my hobby.  I like to knit. .  ."  You get the picture.

And DH must have taken pity on me, because today he offered me the item at the left.  If you think that looks like a chocolate Easter rabbit sans head, you are correct.  My darling spouse gifted me with the rest of his Easter rabbit today because, to quote him, "otherwise, I'm just going to throw it out."  Well, *that* makes a girl feel special.  With Mother's Day only a few days away, I'm on the edge of my seat anticipating what wonders await me from him. . . maybe he will give me candy (or coins) that he finds in the cushions of the seats of his car. 

Mother's Day weekend won't completely suck, even if my spouse fails to deliver.  I am planning on going to the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool Festival on Saturday.  Last year, I had my plans all made when I sprained my ankle badly and ended up on crutches.  This year, I'm being a bit more last minute about it, though I'm going to have to bring the kids so I can't be totally spur of the moment.  Is anyone else going on Saturday?  I haven't read anything about it in blogland or on Ravelry, but then again, I'm hopelessly out of the loop on these things.

I leave you all with Loco, enjoying the lovely spring weather on a visit to my outdoor knitting spot.  He can't come to NH S&W, but we've got a very special excursion planned for him for next week.  It's something he will enjoy.  I'm not using some sort of special code for going to the vet's office.  I will bring the camera and take photos for next week's Dogs on Thursday.

Completing the Circle

What goes around, comes around.  I complained about my mother's poor driving skills yesterday and the gods exacted their revenge on me today.  I took DS out to dinner tonight and couldn't find street parking, so I had to park in a garage.  The driver who attempted to enter the garage before us was having all sorts of trouble getting in, and she was getting really angry about it, so I moved into another lane and zoomed right into the garage, feeling quite superior, really.  As soon as we got into the garage, DS started to ask me about pushing the buttons on the garage elevator, which he loves because its exterior wall is glass so you can watch the street as you ascend or descend.  I got busy talking to him and I started getting annoyed that everyone in the garage was driving in the wrong direction.  That, combined with the lady who couldn't get *into* the garage, had me feeling like the superior driver that I like to think I am.  That is, until I noticed that I was the one who was driving against the flow of traffic.  All of the yellow arrows on the garage floor pointed in the opposite direction from the one in which I was driving.  I was mortified.  And this garage has angle parking, so I was at the wrong angle to pull into a space.  Finally, I found an empty spot and backed in at the proper angle.  I figured that on the way out, the garage would be less crowded and I'd have room to make a wide left turn and align my travel direction with the arrows.  And I was right about that.  But I've never done anything like that before.  I am appropriately humbled.

My driving mojo might have been off today, but knitting mojo was right on.  I started the second Conwy sock today while listening to an online lecture and I finished the cuff before I had to put it away.  I also started to attach the second sleeve to Childhood.  This cardi is at a difficult point to photograph because of the hood and the unsewn seams.  However, since it last appeared on the blog, I knitted the button bands and the hood, sewed the button bands and one sleeve on, and sewed in some other loose ends.  At this point, I only need to sew the other sleeve on, finish seaming, and get the fasteners on the front bands.  It's been a gorgeous week here, too warm for even a cotton sweater, but next week we should be back to normal, slightly cooler temps and DS should be able to wear this, so I will soldier on, even though that sock is calling to me.

Finally, I've got a little Dogs on Thursday photo for the first time in a long time.  This is the Beast.   You can click to make the photo bigger.  We picked up his ashes today.  I remember the first time I saw one of my pet's ashes.  I was surprised that they looked like sand and not like fireplace ashes.  Beast is in a convenience urn while we attempt to order him an urn like the ones our other deceased pets have.  I put a tape measure in the photo so you can see how big the convenience urn is.  Beast weighed 80 pounds when he died.  The cremains of cats and small dogs are returned in convenience urns that are almost the exact same shape and size as a Big Mac box from McDonald's.  Let me tell you, *that* was a surprise the first time I saw it. 

After we picked up the ashes, DH took me out to lunch before he went to work.  I brought the urn into the restaurant with me and put it on a chair at our table.  I couldn't bear to think about leaving Beast's cremains in the car.  We were going to stop at Target on the way home, but when I told DH that I hoped they didn't hassle me about bringing the urn into Target, he said he didn't need to go there as much as he thought he did, so we'd just go straight home. Hmph!  Imagine, being embarrassed that your wife wants to bring your beloved dog's ashes into a store instead of leaving them in the car.  As if that's the worst thing I could do to him!

Here's the last photo of Beast, just before we took our last trip to the hospital:

Today we got a sympathy card from the hospital.  I would like to share with you the quote printed inside the card, and then some quotes from the many doctors and technicians who wrote personal messages on the card.

"We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle easily and often breached.  Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still live no other way.  We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan."

-- Irving Townsend

"We are so sorry for the loss of your Beast.  He was such a trooper and has surprised us all!"

"Beast was such a sweetie.  Always tail wagging.  I'm happy I got to know him."

"Beast was a lovely dog."

"He was a very sweet old gentleman."

"I will miss his cute face and happiness."

"He was a special guy...our friend with blondish highlights.  We will all miss him here.  I have always admired your commitment to him. . . I know much you miss him and how important he was to you -- that bond will last forever."

"He was such a special dog and will be sorely missed.  You did everything you could for him, and may you feel peace in knowing this.  May all of the happy memories of him live on forever."

I have to say, I lost two other pets at this hospital, and this is the nicest sympathy card that I ever received from them.  Part of it is because they knew him for longer and he was a very regular visitor after he got cancer (versus the other two pets, who died after very brief hospitalizations), but part of it also was because of his sunny disposition, no matter what the circumstances.  The Beast is well and truly missed.