Bad Dogs

Summer 2008 104, originally uploaded by yummystitch.

God knows that I love my dogs, to an insane degree, but they are walking on thin ice right now, especially my dearest Bertie. Last night, while working on a difficult part of my current sock project, she decided that it was the appropriate time to jump into my lap for cuddles, causing me to slips about 15 stitches off the needles! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! I immediatly shoved her off, while continously shouting the F-Word. I managed to recover the dropped stitches, and after about a half hour, said sock had fully recovered. But the icing on the cake was when I went upstairs and found the beagle with my ball of Noro in his mouth, getting ready to tangle it, with several other balls of yarn at his feet, ready to be destroyed. Not a good night for anyone involved.......
Now I have no idea what is going on with my babies, but I think that they are getting jealous of the yarn. Bertie often gives me the look featured in the picture ABOVE: the ever-pathetic, "Why are you playing with the yarn instead of rubbing my tummy?" To make up for it, they both licked my face off as soon as I sat back down, but I still had some yarn to de-tangle that evening. I love my dogs, but sometimes I think that they know exactly how to push me. Much smarter than they look at all.....

Malabrigo Smiles!

This was the expression on my face after a pleasant Saturday spent with a friend, Herman, who took me to two new LYS, Lovely Yarn, and A Good Yarn, and bought me some nice yarn as a belated birthday present. He bought me three skeins of this gorgeous hand-dyed Malabrigo in a deep spruce color. Its a little bit hard to see in this picture, but its lovely in person. This will probably be made into something for me, because I love love love blue and green in anything. I also picked up some lovely Ultra Fine Alpaca in peacock blue, which I also love. I have no idea what to do with it, but I had to have it. I've also inherited a lot of yarn from my mom, mostly Lion Brand, and a ball of Noro leftovers, but I will always take free yarn! I'm glad there is going to be room in my suitcase for my new and improved summer stash. The real question will be what do I take back to HK with me in 3 weeks, and what to leave behind for another day.

Summer of Socks

This will be the summer that I will master socks, or at least the easier types of socks. I've been avoiding doing this for as long as I've known to knit, but now is the time. For too long I have feared the socks, but no longer!

I picked out some cheap wool/acrylic blend from Jo-Anne's and got down to work with a pattern suggestion from one of my HK knitting friends, Ingrid, who I consider a Jedi-master of socks. Its going well so far, and the pattern is easy to read. The one problem here is that the back of the ankle and the heel have turned out to be freaking HUGE! I need a friend with unusually large heels and ankles, which made me think of my friend Big Tom- A sweetheart of a guy who is 6'7" and over 300lbs, easily. Not fat, just.....BIG! So they might go to him.

The other possibility is my friend Jason, living and working in St. Louis. He has unusually large feet as well, so they might work for him. I'm almost finished with the second one of the two, and I'm debating about agitating it in some warm water to get some shrinkage. I'm going to use the same pattern for the Vanna's Choice yarn that I picked up as well. I just couldn't resist, since it is Vanna White, and it was only 87 cents a skein. So sue me.....


So here is a picture of the socks in question. The pattern is Beginner Socks, Magic Loop Variation by Liat Knits Oh, double-plus bonus about knitting socks? I've learned, and become a huge fan of magic loop. Take that DPNs!