Just another Denny story ....

I've been meaning to tell you this little story, where I felt quite silly at the time.
I was in the kitchen, chopping veggies. I saw Denny from the corner of my eyes, lying there, waiting for some veggies to fall off the counter, as usual.
All was quiet, the White ones were downstairs, sleeping, not doing anything bad for sure, when it suddenly hit me!

Wait, that's not Denny!


Where the heck was Denny? Never a good sign, you can't let him out of your sight (still, maybe once he's 8 years old?).

Well, I found him in the dog bed in my studio, chewing a dish towel. No photographic evidence for that one. I asked him to join me in the kitchen, for real this time.



Anybody could have made that mistake, right? Meanwhile, Happy has come upstairs to check on things. I threw Denny a veggie, to keep him from getting bad ideas.



Celery? Are you kidding me?



That's not one of his favorite treats, that's for sure.

♥ ♥ ♥
edited: I forgot to say, and this is quite important to the story, that it was Denny who dragged the stuffed dog downstairs, from Maggie's room into the kitchen. Did he do that on purpose, to fool me? Placing a decoy, so he could slink off, to do bad stuff, with me off his back? ;o)

Handspun Friday - Old Rose

This was a fun spin. May's colorway of the month from FatCatKnits was Old Rose. I ordered mine on Falkland. So as it wouldn't feel to lonely on the long trip from New York to here, some semi solids jumped into the package too.



I decided to spin it for socks, a true 3ply, with one ply Leaf Eater (green) and 2 plies Old Rose.



This is what I've got: a huge skein of 3ply, 654yds.




I'm quite happy with it. But I had some left over Old Rose on one bobbin, and an equal amount of Leaf Eater on the other. I also had some left over from another spin on another bobbin, so I decided to make another 3ply with the left overs. The blue ply was spun a little thicker, and I didn't have as much on the bobbin.





Still some left over of Old Rose and Leaf Eater (I really spun it thin). So I made a 2ply, and chain plied that.




I REALLY liked how this came out.

Now I wondered what the little skeins would look like all knit up, so I knit them up into swatches.



Both are knit with 2.75mm needles, but the right one could have used a larger size needles, but I was too lazy to go upstairs to get some. Still one can see how it looks just fine. I love both of them, but others who saw the swatches on Ravelry liked the blueish one better. Too bad there's not any more of either yarn.

A comparison of the skeins: big one 654yds, blue one 60yds, green one 23yds.



***

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

♥ ♥ ♥

New Chew Toy

It's always so exciting to get a new toy, right Denny?!



Oh, wow Happy! You get to play with it too?! (all smiles)


Do you like it?


Heh! What'cha doing?



Nothing!



The END!



♥ ♥ ♥

Mothers Day

Mothers Day was over too fast, as all weekends are. It was a lovely day, inside, and outside.
At the end of the day, shortly before the sun was down, she made our tree glow.


So beautiful! The blossoms in the shade looked purple.

During the day I had fun with the dogs.


Denny was worried that I was going to take away the new toy, since it was a present for me. It makes me happy when I see them playing with new toys.



The day before Mothers Day my DD and I baked a carrot cake. It's gluten free, and I was not sure how it would turn out. We've used coconut flour for it. (this above photo was taken after the cake was in the fridge for a while)



I shouldn't have worried, because this was the best carrot cake I've ever tasted. Especially right after we had assembled it, and cut it, the cream cheese icing was still a little soft. Yum!



In the afternoon, I finished spinning some fiber, which will be sock yarn soon. Here's a bobbin shot.



Oh, and I've got a new sheepy coffee mug, look, it's eying my piece of cake!



With all that cake eating, we finished the day off with a nice walk with Denny, Happy, and DD and I.

♥ ♥ ♥

Handspun Friday - Shipwreck & Longest Night

April's SCF fiber club had two beautiful colorways to offer:
Shipwreck


and Longest Night:


Both are superwash Cheviot, new to me fiber. As soon as I took it out of the bag, and handled it, I knew it would turn into something other than a garment or anything else near the skin. It was just too rough for my taste.
Spinning it was super easy, but there were a lot of coarse hairs to be picked out, which I did in the beginning, and eventually let some of them go.
I also knew, that I wanted them to be together. I spun a 2-ply yarn from each colorway, and plied them together to get a cabled yarn. 279yds total.

 


Now, what to do with it? I loved how it looked, but was pretty scratchy yarn. I decided to make some kind of container with it. I haven't done any crochet in a long time, and I'm happy to report, that my hands could handle the whole bag without too much pain. Well, yes, I made a drawstring bag.


Here it is! I love it! Open:

and closed:


I asked Denny to come with me to do a photo shoot!
Nudge, nudge!








His payment was in the bag. :o)
And here it is on my desk.


This was a fun, fast project. I started out with this pattern, but modified it. I really like the look of single crochet, it's almost like woven. The base is not really round


I could have made it round, but I was following the pattern. The base is 6 1/2 inches. Then I crochet up for 7 inches, did the eyelet to get the leather bands through, and after that crochet another inch or so using a 4mm hook. I'm quite happy with it.
***
Wishing you all a lovely weekend!
♥ ♥ ♥

Scarface Happy!

When they run after the Frisbee or a ball, they don't look where they run into. That's how Happy got his wound, just missing his eye. He was lucky, but now my beautiful boy has a scar.
edited to add: I should have said it earlier. When it happened, we thought Maggie was injured, because she had blood smeared all over her face, and neck, but we couldn't find the source on her. Then I looked at Happy, and saw blood running down his face. She must have rubbed up on him, when they fought for the Frisbee. During the next days, he scratched off the scab twice, opening up the wound again, with his usual goofy "Frisbee on his head" way of carrying it.


I still love him! ;o)

Handspun Friday - Fire on the Water

I had great fun spinning up this fiber. It was hard to decide how to spin it, but in the end it turned out to be a 2-ply yarn.

The fiber is FatCatKnits Day's End "Fire on the Water", 3.6oz Polwarth (my new favorite fiber base).




This yarn is so springy, and poofy, it was hard to keep it in place. I've got ~ 400 yds of it.


I think I will knit a Jeweled Cowl with it, without the beads, and with less yarn, but nothing is carved in stone.


Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

♥ ♥ ♥

Sundown - Old Forge # 3

I'm so happy that my Old Forge # 3 is done! I've got tons of photos to share:


This is it's temporary place for a while. The dogs leave it alone, even Denny.







I love how the color transitions look.


I love how the zig-zag border came out.




The knit on cast off edge took forever, so it seemed.
I didn't have to spin more yarn, in fact I had about 3yds left over of the Pale Aqua yarn. :o)


I used handspun yarn again.
This as the main color: Pale Aqua on Falkland, dyed by Ginny of FatCatKnits: I only needed 24oz of this, ten ounces less than for my first one, which was made with thicker yarn.


and the contrasting colors: I have enough left over from these to make one or two hats.


pattern: Old Forge by Stephen West
yarn: handspun by me, fiber from FatCatKnits, Falkland, 3-ply
needle: 5mm
size after steam blocking: 53" in diameter
mods: I left out the lace pattern again and added the stitch pattern earlier instead. I made the spokes the same length this time. I did the stripes where the stitch pattern should have been. Used smaller needle. Didn't do the purl rounds in the inner circle, just plain stockinette stitch rounds.

I think I'm done now with this pattern, but I must say, I loved knitting all three of them. That I made them with my handspun yarn was one reason for it. I don't think I would have done this three times with commercial yarn.
I'll move on now.
Oh, and since somebody always asks, if I were to sell this blanket, I would ask $ 1,200.00 plus shipping and handling for it. :o)

***