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

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.

It took me a few days to feel like knitting again. I would pick a project up sometimes and absentmindedly do a few rows but my heart wasn’t in it. I was mostly eating spicy mashed potatoes from Popeyes and watching Tivo. We all have our ways of coping right? The good part is I did get a little housecleaning done. And lots of cuddles from the kitties and Winter. It’s funny to say this but they knew something was up with Mom and were all trying to comfort me in their own ways.

Yesterday I officially got back into the knitting groove. While I haven’t finished my second Jaywalker sock (almost to the heel) I decided to just pick up my UFOlympic Clappy and see how the rhythm went on working with it again. I hadn’t knit a stitch on that thing since September? October? A long time in my knitting world.

I had Tivoed the opening ceremonies so I was a good little UFOlympic knitalonger and started working on le clap while watching almost four hours of pyrotechnics and people in silly outfits. That’s probably disrespectful but I had a very hard time not giggling at such odd and melodramatic spectacles as people on ice skates with big flamethowers on their backs shooting fire off the tops of their heads. It was like a weird version of Starlight Express, which is plenty wierd by itself.

The people who formed images like the skiier and the dove were neat though. And, of course, Pavarotti singing Puccini., well I could’ve watched that all night. I’m enjoying all the footage of Italy as well. I never got that far north when I was there but I did see some snow in Venice. Strangely I have not caught much of the actual sports. Like a complete girl I like the figure skating and that’s about it.

But tonight and tomorrow night, I’m sorry but olympics be damned. Westminster’s on and that’s what I’m watching! I’ve enjoyed watching it since 1991 when I had a week to decide whether I wanted to stay in Birmingham and go to school or move to Australia with my parents. Even when I didn’t have a purebreed dog, nor any real interest to own one, I’ve watched it. Now that I have a ridgeback that’s had a few cousins win best of breed (one even won best of hounds!) you bet your bippy I’m watching. So me and my clap will be doing that this evening. Winter will probably watch a bit too before taking a nap. She watches the screen when I’m watching shows with dogs on them.

As far as progress on clappypants I’m doing pretty well. I’m on my third skein of six and I just finished repeat number five of twelve in the straight section. So I’m about halfway. At this rate I’ll be finishing it this week and have time to finish my Jays before the closing ceremony (which will probably be just as elaborate and fiery but I will try to refrain from giggling).

I haven’t taken any photos in a few weeks so I don’t have images of the superlong airy scarf I knit for my mil or the oddball fuzzyfeet I’m working on for Cody. Or progress on clapster. I’ll get some today before I get any work done.

I did officially sign up for Project Spectrum yesterday and just for fun made a few buttons for it, mostly because I hadn’t seen any designs with a color wheel and I thought that would be neat. Feel free to take them.

I don’t mind hotlinking from my site (I have a very generous host and lots of space I even survived being boingboinged with an audio file and didn’t even make a dent in my bandwidth) so if you don’t have a lot of space or have trouble working with graphics you offically have my permission to hotlink these buttons. Just these buttons. And just hotlinking from my site my site mmkay? I made different sizes for each too.

Broadway Marquee Style

Painterly Colorwheels


Partdridge Family Bus

Some medication trademark image-looking design with a colorwheel

Enjoy!

So I feel a bit better but sound a lot worse. This seems to be part of the healing process so fine, I guess I’ll deal with it. I took a hyper cleansing shower and steambath yesterday and went out last night anyway.

While I was starting this

with these ladies at Flying Star

(more photos here and here)

the dog did this

and now has a belly full of 16 large greenies.

That’s 32 ounces. A month’s supply.

Eek!

So today between letting the dog outside and back in every few minutes I have been doing more work on this

and wearing these