Something Else

We have built a kennel for our dear dog Jessie. She needs a place to stay while I'm at work. My husband is now traveling more and is away for several days at a time. This project went together fairly simply. The kennel itself was a kit from Home Depot. The hardest part was gathering the materials. The stones alone required two trips from the hardware store. Its a good thing that my husband finished the trailer kit last summer. We have used it alot for hauling things such as building supplies and even stage scenery for my daughters plays. For our kennel, you can see my husband and daughter did most of the base assembly. They were working on the stones and pavers while I carted over them all over from the driveway. My shoulders hurt the next day. Jessie is quite comfortable in the pen. My first two days at work I was worried since we didn't get a chance to try it out before Jessie needed to stay inside. She did fine! This week it rained a bit while I was at work and with her umbrella and the dog house Jessie stayed quite dry and comfy. Its two weeks now and I'm not as worried as I was at first.
By the Way:
I have been knitting. I am working on my shadow knit vest. I'm almost done with the front left panel.

Eye Candy Friday 4.13.07

Isn’t she cute? Well, sometimes! I was trying to photograph the Lace Top directions picture for this Blog and Jessie couldn’t resist being the center of attention.

I must say, being black, she is very hard to photograph. I rarely get a photo with good detail. She usually ends up being a black blob. This one was made using a flash, which sometimes washes out the rest of the picture detail.

It’s Friday the thirteenth. Should I be worried because my black dog crossed my path? (Or sat on my work?)

I wanted to show an idea for a future project . . . . I like it, but might not look very good in it because of arm flab. My daughter really likes this sweater also. I first saw the finished sweater as a completed sample when our knitting guild had the “Yarn Tasting” in the Fiber Loft. (I wrote about that in the last blog entry.) The pattern is in the Nashua Handknits North American Designer Collection No. 4. Pattern book.

It is planned to knit using Nashua Natural Focus Cotton yarn but I might consider using some of the Bamboo yarn that I sampled. We’ll see when I get there. . .

Spring Sampler

Wow, it’s been awhile since I added into my Blog. I hope they won’t kick me out from the knitting rings. I started a new job and I’m trying to get my schedule squared away. Alas, my knitting is low on the totem pole. This past weekend we drove to my parents on the Cape. I usually like those drives because I can get two solid hours of knitting in. I’ve been slowly adding rows onto my Shadow knitted vest. The size two needles make the going slower than most projects.

I did sneek-in a bit of a different project. You can see the pictured sample swatch that I made.

Our April guild met in the Fiber Loft instead of our usual library room. Jessica Oas from Westminster Fibers provided a 'Yarn Tasting' of yarns. She brought samples of many yarns, including Gedifra, Yaeger, Nashua Yarns and Rowan. She set them out on a table with the name, fiber content and stitch sizing. There must have been about 30 samples of Spring yarns. We could select any of the samples to knit-up. Jessica supplied white tags so we could record the yarn information and attach it to that specific stipe of yarn. I used only two needle sizes of 9 and 11 since I was mostly knitting to check out the “feel” of the yarn. I must say I enjoyed this project. It was fun to try many of the new “springy” pastel shades of yarns.

There was an interesting selection to choose from. I deliberately chose some yarns that I might not normally knit with. I knit two samples with bamboo fibers. They felt soft and I really liked the last extra soft “RYC” yarn I tried.

My daughter asked me to knit her a sweater using this RYC bamboo soft yarn. (One of the other Guild members brought up a point about this yarn, one that I didn’t suffer too strongly from. Since the yarn is twisted from eight small thread it does tend to split easily if stabbed with the needle.)



For a fun textured sweater I might try this Rowan Cotton Braid.



I personally liked the Jaeger Roma yarn sample that I knit. It knit up as a smooth, soft sample. I’m not sure how I feel about the 63% Viscose content since I tend to be a “natural” fiber knitter. So all in all I like the sample to use for trying to select yarns for future projects.