Burning stripes socks!

What a weekend! I must admit, we've never had a puppy like Denny before. He's cute, he's cuddly, he's smart, and he's also snarly, growly, and nasty. I'm concerned what will become of him, when he's like that as a seven week old. I'm thinking of getting some professional help, to hear what ideas others have regarding his aggressive streak. What can we do to make him a happy, well-behaved, healthy puppy?

But as I said, he's got his lovely moments too:

This basket tastes yummy - nom, nom, nom....


Denny!
Uh, yeah, that's me ...



Chew a bone instead!

Thinking ....



Yeah, alright.


Chew, chew, chew ....


Two minutes later. Snooze.
Oh, Denny, why can't you always be so easy going?

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I've also got my first finished "Burning stripes socks" to show you:







pattern: by Susan Luni
yarn: Drops Delight, color # 04 and 12 (contrast could be better in places, but I didn't want to cut the yarn). The yarn itself is single ply, softer than Noro Kureyon sock yarn, and splitty.
needles: 2.5mm DP
start-finish: March 22 - 27
The heel is a jojo heel or also called boomerang heel. I've made those before, but Susan Luni has a new spin on it. I like her heel better, but still don't' like this kind of heel much. I love the contrasting stripe that goes down the back.
I'm on my 4th pair now. Could have stopped after the third pair, but Hannah asked me for a pair so I could not say no, but it's kind of dragging on. Will be glad when that's over.

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Since both pups sleep right now (in separate rooms), I'll be doing some quick housework.

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Handspun Friday - Columbia

Yesterday we had Thai food, and I ate something I didn't order, because what I ordered didn't make it into our bag. Anyway, I feel grown up (even though I really am), whenever I eat something with Cilantro in it. I don't like the taste of it at all. Just so you know something about me. :o)

Well, I haven't spun in a couple of weeks, but have still some finished yarn to show you. This is made of fiber I've dyed last year. I figured it's time to start spinning fiber from last year, before I get to this years dyed fiber. And now I don't have quiet time for spinning at all. :o(

Here it is: The fiber is Columbia.


Don't know why I used the colors in the first place. I spun it around Easter time this year.



3skeins, 2 are 3-ply yarn, and the third one was navajo plied from the left over singles.
Altogether there are 506yds, 16WPI, from 8oz of Columbia fiber.



This is how I like my pups the best right now: sleeping!


I missed taking a picture which was the cutest ever. Happy had his head over Denny's body. The little one's sleeping very deeply, otherwise that would not be possible. But to make up for it, Denny did the same thing later:



Just one look at what I was doing, before he was to tired to keep his eyes open.

Yesterday I was close to tears. It was nice, and sunny outside. I was home alone with these two. I thought, lets go out into the back yard. Denny has to be on leash, because the first time we went out he went straight for the pool, and was already mid air, when David caught him.
So I was throwing the Frisbee for Happy, and watching Denny who was always underfoot.
Then he pooped at one end of the yard, we moved over to the other side, where he pooped again. Meanwhile Happy had pooped too, on another spot, you could have triangled them. Now I had to keep them from stepping into either poop, before I could clean it up. (they are really gifted that way)
Meanwhile Happy had discovered that there's still a lot of mud in the ditch along the fence. He looked even worse than last time! No kidding. Of course since he's not out that often these days, he does not want to go inside, or come to be cleaned up. He drove me crazy!

Meanwhile Denny was rolling around like a crocodile, to get rid of the harness, which he hates.
Then my son called, and I told him to get home, I'm out back and need help.
He took Denny inside, who wailed like a siren, we could hear him outside even through closed doors, and windows. Happy didn't want to listen at all, and we chased him all over the ground, cornered him, and finally got him to the wading pool to get off the worst of the dirt.

Then I had to rub him down, and get him upstairs into the bathtub for a real bubble bath. I was wet all over, the Gremlin was screeching downstairs, and I'd had quite enough.
So once again, no free running around the back yard for Happy, and since it looks like it's a full time job anyway to take care of those too, I have to do more firm training with Happy, because his recall sucks.

So you see, the best pups are sleeping pups.

PS: Of course there were sweet moments too. The one were Denny stepped into the wading pool and made bubbles with his nose, to get the dynamite stick out. So cute!

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Exhausting!

That's what they are. They are exhausting. Even thinking is too much for me right now. All I want to do is SLEEP.
I like them best like that: napping, or just quiet for a minute, that's fine too.



After they played until Denny got hysterical, I separated them and they fell asleep. Rare moments.



They look so innocent sleeping like that.


Happy is still a puppy with his 10 1/2 month, sometimes we forget that, since he's so big.



This was on April 10, two days after we brought Denny home.



Don't let that photo fool you. This is really not how they are most of the time. Both like to cuddle. Happy always wanted that, and I guess that's why he lets Denny crawl on the dog bed.

Yesterday we went to the Vet's for Denny's first appointment. The drive went well. He didn't sleep, but looked out the window. He was a hit with the receptionists. If you have a treat and want to give it to him, he'll love you, and wiggle his bum off. They thought he was the cutest thing ever. He's such a charmer.
Happy was there too, just for socializing. He's timid, and hides either behind me, or in the corner, when somebody talks to him. He's never taken a treat from strangers. But, I guess competition works wonders. After he watched Denny for a while, he came forward and eventually took one treat from the Lady.
Later we went all upstairs to the examination room for puppies. There are two leather chairs there, and a rug on a wooden floor. Denny found the container with the treats in a minute.
The Vet took his time, and gave extra attention to Happy, who first shied away, but during the time we were there, he took several treats, and sat in both leather chairs. It all went well and was a pleasant experience for both dogs.

Denny really is sweet, and cuddly, until he turns into a Gremlin. Must be the water Happy dripped on him, when he was at the water bowl. This dog can screech, growl, and snarl like a big dog. And he's got to learn to have some alone time. Seems like he's a case of separation anxiety. Anyway, this is a new experience for us too. Our White Shepherds were all so calm and quiet, nothing like this little fireball.

Oh, and please forgive me, if I don't respond to your lovely comments for a while. I'd rather write a new blog post during the time I have right now.

I wish you could hear Denny right now. He's in the kitchen, and I'm in the next room. Since he started yapping, Happy joined him on the other side of the baby gate, but he's not calming down. Let's see how long it will take him to calm down.

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Hamamelis

MAKE IT STOP!!! This little one is so gassy, that even Happy sniffed the air and moved away. I'm gagging here!
I'm sorry for those who come here for actual knitting content. I've already got so many photos of the two of them, but I'll show you my Hamamelis shawl instead. :o)



This shawl took me longer than it should have. Somehow I did not get into the rhythm (oy, gag) of it. It has no restful all purl wrong side rows, but I had to stick to the chart for every row. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this shawl, loved the look of it, the moment I saw it first. And I had the most wonderful yarn to knit it with.
I made the large version, AND added a third repeat for the edge. It's still a small shawl.



Here are the specifics:

pattern: by Kirsten Kapur
yarn: Wandering Cat Yarns Fluffy Cat, color: Pink Pearl, 70/20/10/ Alpaca/Silk/Cashmere, 4-ply fingering, 400yds, used 147g = 588yds.
needles: 3.75mm
size after blocking: 29" x 63"
start-finish: Feb. 22 - March 21, 2010


I love the stitch pattern of the main body, and of course the lovely garter stitch border is what drew me in the first place.



O.K. here's one picture of the two of them:



I have to say though, after spending 3 days cooped up in the kitchen with Denny (his choice, he WANTED to be with him), Happy just wanted to get out today. He was very content chewing a bone, just outside the baby gate, looking IN.
And just now, I asked him, if he'd like to go for a car ride, and a second later you could only see the tail end of him. That's the dog who a few days ago, didn't like car rides. :o)
I wonder why they were so eager to leave. Funny, the computer screen is blurry, oh, my eyes are watering, must crack a window ...

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Here's Denny!

Sometimes things just happen. We didn't even think we'd want a puppy so soon! On the other hand, I had TWO boys, who were sad, and depressed, and when I saw a picture of this little guy, I had to show it to my son.

This is Denny (Denny Crane, Boston Legal, William Shatner):



He and his five siblings were born on February 22, 2010.


photo by Elaine

Here he is in the middle, with his two brothers. We met the one on the left, when we went to pick him up. And here are his three sisters. There was one little sister left.


photo by Elaine

When we got there, there were three puppies left. We had picked Denny, so he was on hold for us, good thing too, because he was the one others wanted to pick too.
They are Shepherd x (mom) and Blue Heeler x (dad) pups. I've learned since then the a Blue Heeler is an Australian Cattle Dog. I've read what Wikipedia had to say about them, and you just got to read about their temperament. On the second day, we already knew that he's a smart cookie, and now we have it in print too! And he's just part ACD, Shepherds are no dummies either! :o)
On our ride home, I was sitting in the back with him and Happy. The first five minutes he played with me, very sociable, not scared AT ALL. Then he slept all the way home (2 1/2 hour car ride), just to wake once, vomit, and go back to sleep. Nice. :o)



We got him last Thursday, and he was 6 1/2 weeks old. The same age as Happy was when we picked him up, but Denny's already much bigger. Oy! We've already made hundreds of photos, but only a few are NOT blurry. Besides he charges the camera, when I'm alone with him, with nobody to distract him, and he's always moving!
He's very much my sons pup, and I'm so VERY glad that they bonded so quickly!

So, what is Happy saying about all this?



He thinks it's the best toy EVER, we brought home for him. They are already best buddies, but I feel sorry for him, because it's clear, that he's the soft one, and Denny will be boss. Right now only Happy's size and strength let him be the winner. Poor, Baby, if you knew...

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The Reason!

The reason why I was in a rush with yesterday's post has to do with this tail:


See the arrow like black spot? Too cute! More later...

Handspun Friday - handspun socks

Today just a quick post, and it's not handspun yarn, but socks made with my handspun, cabled yarn Chimera.



I didn't like the finished yarn because how muddled the colors have become. Since then I've learned to understand the process of spinning/colors a little bit more.

Since the yarn itself is busy enough, I wanted to use a simple stitch pattern, but at the same time, I wanted to see how cables look with cabled yarn. I tried 4 different cable patterns, and in the end choose the simplest one a two stitch cable.



I still don't like the color, but I LOVE the feel of these socks in my hands. They feel heavy, but soft, and smooth. Very nice for socks.
Alright, got to go. Not much time, will explain soon.....

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I felt sorry for him ,,,

... so I let him loose in our back yard, so he could run around. He did not do a lot of running, but was trying to dig to China or something ...



With him was his red Frisbee, an orange rubber stick with a rope loop (we call it Dynamite), and a foot ball.


Of course I regret my decision:


because he did not want to be cleaned up. I had to give him a sponge bath, because the hose was too cold, so was the wading pool. He only stepped in with his front paws, and squealed like a pig. Sigh. The dirt will come off eventually, and I have a strong vacuum cleaner.

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A lot of this and that

Yesterday I received my first installment of the Year of Lace 2010 club. I've signed up for this in summer 2009, and almost forgot about it.
Recently I've followed the talk in the forum of YOL on ravelry, which is always quite interesting. With this kind of thing there's bound to be some who don't like the color of the yarn, or have trouble with the pattern itself. The pattern is called Miss Chatelaine by Kate Atherley.

The yarn is Schaefer Yarn "Audrey", 50% merino wool, 50% cultivated silk. At first glance I liked both, pattern and yarn. Although green is my favorite color, it's the warm greens I like especially. This skein has yellow in it, which does NOT make the green any warmer, since it has a blue-ish tint. I'm still not sure if I'd like to use this yarn with this pattern, since I'm not so fond of variegated yarn for shawls and stoles, and I think this yarn is not subtle enough for my taste.
Or - should I just suck it up, don't think too much, and knit it as it is anyway?



This is almost a daily occurrence now. Happy is terrible bored, and gets into trouble all the time. No toilet paper roll is safe from him.



Here he "drowned" one of his chew toys. He likes everything with a long tail, so he can throw it through the air. Look at that disgusting grey, wet, slimy tail!!! I think every chew toy in the house has had to endure this procedure at least once so far.
The back yard is still wet and muddy, since it's rained the last two days. The hole he dug is filled with water, and I don't feel up to cleaning him up like the last time, so he only gets to go for walks right now, and he does puppy runs in the house to get rid of his energy.


I know, I still owe you pictures of the other two pairs of Burning stripes socks, but I'll just finish this up quickly and then show you the lot.



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Is it Summer already? Did we skip Spring?

We had some scary wind blowing last night. The doors and windows rattled like crazy. I've found twigs and branches in our garden, but no real damage.

The last two days we had 25C, plus a warm wind was blowing. We went for a walk on Friday, again to Mary Lake. This time we met two standard poodles, a Labrador, and some white fluffball little doggy with their families. This was very exciting for Happy. He got spooked by an old tree trunk. I wonder what Happy saw in that. After I coaxed him to sniff it, he was fine of course, and on our way back he didn't even glance at it. It was nice, but hot.

Yesterday we decided to drive to a different part of the Oak Ridges Trail, one we've not been to before. I have to say, that Happy still doesn't want to get into the car, even with all those nice walks at the end of the car ride.
I made a mistake and left the map at home, so we had a hard time finding the entrance to this part of the trail at first. There was no other car there, when we started out to walk. The below photo was made right at the beginning of our walk. This part was VERY hilly! I can't imagine walking this when it had rained, and the ground is wet. Too many possibilities to slip and hurt yourself.


The path goes straight ahead, as I mentioned with up and downs, but not many curves. There's still not very much green to be seen, except for lovely moss, which I like. First we've met two Ladies with a Golden Retriever, and a 11 month old Newfoundland puppy. This meeting went smooth, and was nice for everybody.
Later as we entered the woodsy part of the trail, I looked behind us, and saw a lone rider coming, on a huge black beautiful horse. We stepped off the trail to give him enough space to pass us. He was going slow, so we could talk with him, until he passed. This was the first time Happy saw a horse, and he looked in wonderment, until they were way past, then he started to bark after them, and pulled and wanted to follow. Since we didn't know the trail ahead, we went back a little, and found another smaller trail to the left, which we followed, because there was this noise coming from this direction, which I wanted to check out. It was clear that it came from toads and frogs. The closer we got the louder it got. I've never heard anything like this! It was unbelievable, and beautiful too.
I didn't see a single toad, but there must have been hundreds if not thousands there, giving that concert. The place where this took place is on the first photo in second row. In a few weeks, this water must ripple with tadpoles, I'm sure. Maybe we'll be back there at some point.

I didn't think of taking a picture of the horse, too bad, I only got a hoof print.

We encountered a couple of Ladies with yet another little white furball of puppy. As soon as Happy saw them, he jumped into lets play position with his front paws down on the ground, and was yapping to get to them. It was clear that they all were scared of him, so we tried to move on quietly, but he was a brat and barked after them. Now they think he's a monster, I'm sure. Not everybody wants to say Hello. We've got to work on his behavior in such cases. It was embarrassing for us.



On the way into the trail, Happy was pulling, and sniffing, and on our way back, I was counting on him pulling me up those steep hills, because my steam was almost all gone, but NO, he was walking perfectly beside me.
We said we would go there maybe today again, but my knees hurt so bad during the night, that I could not sleep. I'm not used to walking that far every day. But the beautiful sunshine is sure tempting to get going again.

We are not celebrating Easter, but I could not pass those two tins, when I saw them at the store. The chocolate is gone, of course, and stitch markers moved into the oval tin. An improvement for them, since they were housed in a white plastic container before. The larger tin is still empty, but I'll find use for it too.



Happy Easter for those who celebrate it, and for all the others, have a wonderful Sunday!
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Handspun Friday - Delight

Today I show you some Delight:



fiber by FatCatKnits: colorway "Delight" Panda, 60% merino, 30% bamboo, 10% nylon.
This was so much fun to spin! I think it's the chunkiest yarn I've made so far, and it's NOT thick thin!



yarn: 151yds, 2-ply, 12 WPI



Every Spring I'm getting the urge to dye some fiber (but not to clean, weird). I'm spinning some of my last year dyed fiber, and will do some of these next. Except for the candy corn looking one, I like them all. I'm still going to spin it, and try to over dye the finished yarn. Should be fun!



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No joke!

Today is a lovely, warm day. Even if you want to, you just can't stay inside. So I took my current sock in progress,
my tea, and the phone, and went outside, preceded by Happy. The large sun umbrella was opened, and I made myself comfortable to knit for a while. I had one eye on him though, just in case. It was clear immediately that he had a great time out, splish splashing all over the back yard, when he found a spot where water made a puddle. First he was a little hesitant, and tipped a paw in it, let his Frisbee fall into it, and then his "gloves" were off, and he went at it. By that time I was on my way inside to get the camera.
My first reaction though was, "God no, don't play in the mud!", but what the heck, can't really do anything about it anyway now. This is my favorite photo of this bunch:


I also like this one:


This is the cleaning station, where he throws in his toys, and dives after them. Later he'll be the one in the wading pool being washed.



Here's some digging action:

After I was done taking pictures, he thanked me by shaking himself, and getting me sprinkled from head to toes.
Later, when we tried to clean him up (hose down) he bucked like a horse, and we ended up all being wet too.
They say tomorrow will be a nice, warm day as well. Somehow I don't think I'll let him run loose though.
See you tomorrow with Handspun Friday!
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April's Fools Day- Beware

It's not even 8AM, and I've been made April's Fool TWICE already! I'm just too trusting. Some people are evil! :o)

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