It’s been an interesting week. Busy too. Good and bad, mostly good with just a hint of annoying. The annoying isn’t even worth mentioning, really. But there have been some really fun highlights!

Last Thursday I went with Ashley and her kids to a local paint your own pottery place called Art Attack. Those who already know that not only do I have a degree in sculpture but I used to teach pottery classes at a small local studio when I was in high school not to mention poured and glazed tiles for a tile artist in Santa Fe will no doubt find the idea of me actually buying an item already in bisque form then painting it to be freakin hi-larious.

Believe me, I did too! To be honest I consider it cheating but it’s not like we were there to create high art or try to sell it or something. Ashley just wanted her kids to paint some mugs for their grandparents’ xmaskkah gifts. I couldn’t resist joining in the fun though. It had been a long time since I’d glazed pottery. So I made a little present for Cody. It’s nothing big but I think he’ll like it. (Side One) (Side Two)

We enjoyed the whole experience, and the cheap prices, so much that we’re going to go again this week! And there’s a monthly “Ladies’ Night Out on every first friday of the month. Totally think all the snb people should go.

Then on Saturday we took Winter for her annual photo with Santa at Petsmart. She’s had one every year since she was a puppy so we had to go. Even though it made me a little sad that Zola wouldn’t be in the pictures this year. The Santa photo people remembered us and asked about the hedgehog. It’s always hard to tell people about her cancer but it’s also always nice to hear when they remember her.

The Second Mrs. deWinter wore her red sweater, a matching leash, and a pink faux silk collar from San Francisco to the occasion. I was dressed like someone who would be wrestling a giant dog so she’d sit still next to a stranger. You can imagine what that looks like.

I’ve been moving my workroom stuff from the living room into the fourth bedroom (aka The Scary Room). (God I need to really work on getting that scary room organized). We finally got to break out the prelit tree we bought three years ago in a post Xmas sale. I was in Birmingham the last two xmases so it just wasn’t worth it to break the big one out. So yay it works! And it’s not too tall! This prelit tree thing is great! I know, I can hear the purists out there: blah blah tacky fake tree blah blah lighting is the fun part blah fffft. We can’t have a real tree. It would kill Mr. Man. And I think having to untangle and restring lights one more time might kill him too. So for the safety, peace, and general good of our household we got the big fake prestrung tree. So there.

Now to clean the house for my parents’ arrival in one week from today (it’s not panic attack-inducing bad though which is kind of nice), wrap some presents, knit Jocelyn’s grandmother’s shawl (Sorry about that Joce!), and hang all the ornaments. The big aunts’ annual ornament party is on Friday! Busy week indeed.

I’m not very good with kids. I think they’re cute and stuff they just make me very self-conscious. Especially babies. I am totally not one of those women who wants to pick up babies and hold them and fawn all over them. I’m afraid I’ll drop them or make them cry, which they usually do because I’m holding them so tight out of fear of dropping them. Most people in my extended family have accepted this about me and have stopped trying to put babies in my arms to try to kick start my biological clock. I think this all probably comes from being the baby in the family. I never had to deal with a younger sibling and my older sibling is several years older than me so she was well out her diapers by the time I was around, or so I hear

I do have that crazy “oh my god isn’t she CUUUTE” kind of behavior with animals. Cats, kittens, dogs, puppies, little pocket pets, even a reptile or two. I don’t feel the urge to reproduce humans, instead I get the urge to adopt another animal.

It seems like I have been doing a lot of baby knitting lately because I swear one in every fourth or fifth woman I know is pregnant. And what kind of knitter would I be to not knit baby stuff for them? So here’s my latest baby knitting. From Ann Budd’s Better Than Booties Pattern from Interweave Summer 2005 This one is for a co-worker of Cody’s who just had a baby girl. I also wanted to get extra practice in with the reverse yarn over short rows on the heels and toes, which I’m STILL having to be careful with for some very frustrating reason. And I wanted some playtime with braided cables. Which are totally fun to do.

They’re cute. And easy to do These are in some kind of Bernat pink acrylic I had lying around. Yeah I know. Gasp! Acrylic! But this stuff is pretty soft and I really think it’s just mean to knit baby stuff as a gift with yarn that isn’t washable, at least for non-knitter parents.

So that’s the second pattern I’ve knit from that baby gift article from Interweave Summer 2005 and they’ve both worked out really well. I plan to do the koigu sachet sometime. Now onto the other baby knitting. I finally have the yarn to finish the old baby hunter’s cap to go with the ugg baby booties, some pieces to knit for a group blanket, and just started a pinwheel blanket, both of those blankets will be in unbelievably soft cotton. Babies babies everywhere.

As for my baby, I finally uploaded pics from Winter eating her birthday cake. The cake is from three dog bakery which I’d never been to. I’d tried to go once before but they were closed. The cakes are frozen so we don’t have to order in advance, we chose the cake, they put the decoration on top for us and we waited for it to thaw.

We cut a piece for her and she waited patiently for me to get a photo and tell her it was ok to eat it.

Isn’t our retro carpet great? Ok not so much but we certainly don’t get upset when she gets crumbs on it! I got that collar for her in San Francisco isn’t it cute?

I’m still working on the yarn sets! That’s taking a lot more time than I thought it would!

Winter is five years old today.

9-15-2001

9-15-2001

11-01-2001

11-01-2001

11-01-2001

So far she has celebrated her special day by having breakfast, playing with her kong toy, and taking a nap. She won’t get her cake until tomorrow because Cody had to work last night.

Don’t look at me like I’m crazy a lot of people celebrate their dogs’ birthdays!

No mom donwanna go to bed

Winter was cozy last night

Today I was thinking about what I was up to this time last year. In June 2005 one of our cats, Melon, was sick. Very sick. In fact at one point I thought she was going to die in my arms right then and there. It was terrifying and in the end very expensive.

We saved some money by getting the medicine, shots, and subQ fluid accoutrements and doing the treatments myself. Force-feeding her thin wet food every four hours, putting needles under her skin to get some fluids into her, giving her vitamin and antibiotic shots, getting pills down her throat. The house was vibrating all day from some earth tamping machine for the construction behind us. It was bad.

All it took was stamina and having a stronger will than hers was to just go lie in the corner and die. With that particular illness that’s really what the best cure was: having a tenacious will and the time to feed and force pills and fluids. Those are two things I have in spades.

I found out just how tough I was. And how buoyant Melon was too. After a few weeks she started eating on her own. We experimented with all kinds of foods: baby foods, tuna with supplements, raw fish from the deli. We started buying weird crap from the exotic foods aisle and hit on a winner she would consistently eat: tinned kipper snack. Blegh that stuff is gross. But I don’t like fish unless its sushi anyway.

This morning, a year later, I woke up and she was making her little “meh” sounds at me, saying “It’s time for the wet food, Mom!” At first I was annoyed and wanted to do other stuff first - like get some damned coffee. Then I thought how great it was that she was here, bugging me for food like nothing had happened last year.

Now all three eat the canned Iams food and have access to two different dry foods that they snack on as well. They’re probably overweight. In Melon and Kurry’s cases, having both been through scary illnesses where I could feel their spines they were so skinny, they can eat all they damned well please.

In knitting news, I knit two skinny pink scarves for think pink yesterday. I have an interesting variety of pink yarn for several more. Yes there is glittery fun fur. But she said any size any material.

I’m out of materials to finish the baby hunter’s cap so that’s on a break until I have the time to get more plush yarn to make a lining for it. Lining the ugg booties went really well! I even learned the magic loop for the second one. Easy peasy. I can see the benefit of it but I think I’m going to stick to two circulars for right now.

*Holy crap I just quoted a song from Cats

It rained all night. We really need that rain here. I woke up a few times in the night. Since Cody’s gone back to work Winter has been trying so hard to meld molecules with me when we’re sleeping such that she almost pushes me off the bed. You parents to big dogs and human babies alike probably know the drill: every time you turn over the kid inches just slightly closer to you so you inch just slightly back. As the night goes on you find you’ve moved a foot or more. Sometime Wednesday night I tried sleeping sideways on the bed with my back to the pillows. I got smooshed up against the wall. The really disturbing part is her spine is about as long as mine when we’re back to back. Big dog, short lady, using 1/4 of the big king-sized bed while the cats could get the rest but usually they choose to lie on the other side or right on top of me.

Frequently I’m a Phunq/Winter sandwich with a Melon on top and a side of Kurry on a big bed of linen garnished with a whole bunch of pillows.

Don’t tell me to make the dog sleep on the floor that’s just not happening with that sad face and our owner-dog-as-child-replacement codependency. Who watched last Sunday’s episode of Huff? Did you hear Huff’s mom talk about her ridgeback sleeping in bed with her? That was cool. I love ridgeback spotting. There’s one jumping up to kiss a man in a Sheraton commercial that’s been playing too. But you have to pause to see the ridge. That caught my attention as I was fast forwarding through the commercials.

Ridgebacks seem to be getting really popular now. I know the (good) breeders view this as a mixed blessing, as that means more people will be adopting them when they don’t know what they’re getting into or they’re more likely to be bred by people who are greedy or don’t care about the health and well-being of the breed in general or the individual dog. They’re good dogs but ridgebacks certainly have their own minds about things. And that usually involves food or their “person” but usually food. I love my dog but she’s terribly spoiled, like me, and, like everyone else in the house, needs to go on a diet. I could see people thinking they’re cute but returning them if they were too “difficult” to train. And that is always such a shame.

Other than waking up three times a night to make the dog move I’m doing fine so stop worrying you people who get worried when I don’t post often enough (you know who you are). I’m just in the mood to sit on the sofa and knit. I’m in the final stretch of my toe up 2 socks on 2 circs with koigu I got for my birthday last year. Just finished the heel and I’m on the cuffs! They’re very bright festive socks, making me want to call them The Birthday Socks.

And I’ve been making a big fun fringy gypsy stole out of the various yarn I picked up at Artfibers in San Francisco. I really enjoyed that place it was cool for several reasons. I think my favorite part (aside from the incredibly cool yarn at extremely reasonable prices considering the length and content) was sitting in the seating area with the windows open onto the busy street below. It felt very urban loft chic but the sounds of the traffic below was strangely comforting too. Like a different kind of white noise than the ocean. My white noise is usually a fan, various snoring beasts, and a familiar movie. Yep, my house is a mess, I let the pets sleep on the bed, and I sleep with the tv, you wanna make something of it?

I haven’t posted in a while and usually that’s a bad sign but I’m actually feeling better physically and mentally this week than I have in a long time. I think we may have found the perfect medicinal cocktail now. I’m very excited about this. The shorter hair seems to help as well. Easier to care for, less tangles, less heat on my neck.

And I actually have several surprise projects in the works. And, get this, none of these particular projects are knit or spun (by me anyway). A few involve crafts in general, one involves yarn specifically, one involves photography and crafting of a sort, and another one involves..well, no real way to describe that one so I’ll let you wonder about it for a while. They’ll all be revealed in time.

In other non-surprise project news we went and did serious grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s now that Cody wasn’t afraid of the potential hippiecrit prices (to be honest I don’t blame him our bills in a normal grocery store can be pretty outrageous) but we did well! Several new things to try, several re-purchases of things we liked from last time. And while we still have to go to the regular grocery store for a *few* things the bill at TJ’s was WELL under our usual grocery bill. So we’re both pretty happy about that.

And the cats seemed to like the non fish flavored cat food tins. I don’t recommend the tuna for cats it doesn’t have a pop lid and that annoyed me I don’t open the cat food in the kitchen I open it in the kitty bathroom dammit I don’t have any can openers in there. So we’re going to try a small bag of the dry cat food and see how they like it. They’re very picky about their dry food. In this case picky means they only eat crap Science Diet that I put out as a last resort. But the dog, who will eat any dry food I put out, and loves eating the cats’ poop when she sneaks into the laundry room, likes the dry dog food. Which wasn’t really a surprise. The question was whether or not I’d approve of the food for her. And I do! No corn, first ingredient is not a meat meal or bi-product so I approve.

Ok, it’s been a fairly long day. Before Trader Joe’s I did some work on a really cool project (my Albuquerque knitter friends will LOVE this) and we had a visit to Scout’s house since she lives near TJ’s. So I got to meet Supergirl, Superboy, Superhusband, AND Superdog! Her house was unbelievably clean and organized (would you expect any less) and the kids were so sweet. Let me say, those Superkids are WAY cuter in person. My friend has a great little family there and I can’t wait to visit again sometime. I’d invite them here but..I’m afraid the house would scare the children.

t’s been warm which is nice but the angle of the sun is brutal on the house this time of year until we get the energy to go on the roof to get the swamp cooler working. So even with the windows open and the fans on the house doesn’t cool down until late at night.

Not a lot of knitting going on. Still working on the same old projects. Still need to ply that pretty green yarn.

Oh! And you have about fifteen minutes to go wish Cari a Happy Birthday before she turns into a birthday pumpkin. I don’t remember how old she is today but this girl totally kicks ass. She knits and snowboards. Not at the same time of course. And likes Upstairs Downstairs! Paisana!

Lots of photos. Lots.

First we have my third installment of Yarn Stash Appreciation Sunday. This week? Amazing handspun yarn (usually) bought from the artists themselves.

There are closeup photos in the Flickr Set so I’ll just briefly tell you about each yarn. Clockwise starting from the top left: Two hanks Raspberry Tea by Maisy Day from Hello Yarn, Three different yarns (Pink thick and thin, blue thin, Santa Fe Rainbow thick and thin) from Sandstone Ranch.
Bottom Row from the right: Three big skeins of yarn (two green, one pink) from the Jitterbug shawl kit from Hello Yarn, in the bottom left corner are three skeins of lovely wool and silk from Greenwood Fiberworks, and above that is the unbelievable light sensitive yarn from Material Whirled.

Aren’t they beautiful? I highly recommend each and every one of those spinners. And yes, there seems to be an awful lot of pink there. This wasn’t exactly done on poipose but I certainly don’t think it hoits.

Next, I finished the little collar project for Winter. I ended up just sewing the fabric inside and not making it a collar cover - just a collar itself. We never use her collar for the leash anyway, we always use a halter for that.

It’s soft and it fits her nicely.

Oh, and here’s something else I finished last night..

Yep! Finished my Jaywalkers! I even sewed the ends in. Go me!

Even though I made them a good bit taller than the original pattern, I still only used one skein of that Cherry Tree Hill Birches. Less than a yard to spare but just one skein. Which means I can make another pair of socks in this fun color.

Now, there’s this backyard meme going around but to be honest. You really don’t want to see my backyard. It used to have trees (that had to be cut down due to a fungus or something), and it had a big yard of grass with built-in sprinklers. But we both believe that having a yard is both a pain in the ass and completely an irresponsible thing to do in the desert so now it’s mostly dirt with weeds and a lot of dog poop. So I’m going to show the parts of my backyard that I like.

This gargoyle that guards our back door.

Our only remaining full-sized tree

And this.

No, not the arroyo drainage construction that’s been going on behind our house since last May. Nor the gross red wooden fence. But my little desert savannah camoflage dog.

Of course she makes the den pretty fun too

If you’re curious about what the rest of the house looks like (with a few changes since this was made in early 2002) check out my eerily accurate Sims recreation of our house.

Technically it’s not Friday but I’m a rebel…Here are some photos of the finished shawl. Still not blocked but I know you won’t mind.

I can’t properly describe how much I enjoyed knitting this. Or really how much I enjoy knitting with anything I buy from Adrian’s shop. Her sense of color and great visual sense of using simple patterns to enhance the beauty of her (and Sarah’s) handspun yarn is unsurpassed. I don’t say that lightly either. I may be a new knitter but I’ve been studying color all my life. And I always find something truly desirable to knit with in her shop updates. You might notice that I had this knitting project interrupted for a few months. But you might also notice that I bought another kit in the meantime. The prices might seem a bit high if you’re unfamiliar with the usual cost of handspun yarn - but it’s important to consider how much wool is actually being used in the thicker yarns. Believe me, if you love unique and soft yarn it’s totally worth it.

Cody said that I haven’t taken enough photos of Winter with my knitting lately. So here’s a gratuitous dog being tortured by knitting photo.

Don’t let that hounddog face fool you. She loves the attention. And she was happily eating a greenie about three minutes after this photo was taken.

I started my besotted scarf but things got a little sloppy. So to get back into the practice of knitting cables I’ve been knitting a collar for Winter. Regular collars tend to rub on her short fur so I’ve been making one that can cover a new one. The idea is based on this necklace and I’m using some old mercerized cotton that I bought at a local store where 80s yarn went to die, or be bought for a dollar a skein by a newbie knitter.

It’s knit on US size 4s and will be sewn into a tube using some fabric on the back then slipped onto a collar.

Technically since it’s pink it fits into Project Spectrum right?

And isn’t it sad that we’ve recently lost both The Old Man from A Christmas Story (as well as Kolchak The Night Stalker) and The Artful Dodger from Oliver (also in that terrifying show HR Puffinstuff)? What great guys they were.