I'm A Statistic

I was one of those people who thought it would never happen to me. I was wrong. My identity has been thefted.

I only have one credit card (hate debt) and I pay it online (too lazy to mail a check on time). I signed into the site this morning to check my balance and make my payment, when to my shock I discovered about 8 charges I had not made.

You can hear about it all you want, but till it happens to you, you just don't get it. It's kind of scary, and more than a bit insulting. The charges weren't huge, and they were all to video or music sites online (Blockbuster online, Napster, and the like).

I called and reported it, and my credit card company (Chase) was super cool. They took the charges off my bill and told me I would not be responsible for any of them. (Some places hold you responsible for the first $50 of unauthorized charges, but Chase waives that). They told me they'd send me an affidavit to sign saying those weren't my charges, and they'd investigate it from there. They also canceled my account, and will issue me a new card (with a new number) immediately. Oh, and they told me the three major credit reporting agencies would be notified so they can monitor and correct their records - because of course when the places where the false charges were made don't get paid, they could report them on me.

All in all it was fairly painless, but still ... yipes! That sucked.

I don't know what happened. I make a lot of online purchases, but I've been doing it for years, and this is the first time anything like this has happened. I don't know whether it was some individual at some company I ordered from who took the number from my order, or whether it was just some random computer hacker. Or maybe even from an in-person charge I made somewhere at some point. No way to tell, at least not from my end. I'd like to hope the investigation would turn up something, but I imagine it's relatively doubtful.

In more pleasant news ... the second sweater front is progressing well. That's about all I have to say about that.

It's supposed to rain and thunderstorm here tonight and tomorrow, so I don't know how much gardening I'm going to get done, but if I can, I will. Now that I've started, and actually have a hope of doing something right this time, I'm so psyched ... I can't wait for the times when I can just get out and work in my little garden. I check my new plants several times a day (no new growth to speak of yet - bummer) and I'm already busy planning other things I want to do.

Meanwhile, there's a Midnight Drunken (R) Horseshoe Tournament going on (okay, it's not midnight yet ... we started early) so I'm off to point and laugh.

Sweaters and Waterfalls

The weather took a cold turn, so I got some knitting done last night. I finished the left front of the cardigan! Woo-hoo. It looks excessively long for some reason, but it measures exactly what I wanted it to - 2" longer than my current sweater, because the current sweater is a little too short for me. I think a combination of pinning it out wonky, the angle of the picture, and the fact that it's laying flat on a bed instead of being worn makes it look worse than it is.



The good news is, my scheme worked. When I started the front, I had 13 too many stitches for my pattern repeat, but I needed them all to have the right width. So I decided to do a strip of plain stockinette up each side - 7 stitches on the arm side, and 6 on the buttonband side. I really liked the way it was turning out, framing the pattern. Then when I got to the v-neck, I realized I was going to lose those if I just did the decreases as directed, and I didn't think I'd like that nice framing strip of stockinette just disappearing up the neck.

So I did my decreases on the edge, but then moved one stockinette stitch in on each decrease row, replacing a pattern stitch with the plain stitch. That maintained the six-stitch stockinette border. I didn't know how well that was going to work, if it would look the way I hoped, until I tried it. But I'm really happy with it.



The one thing that didn't turn out as planned is the shoulder.



It's actually straight in real life, I just pinned it out poorly. But I wanted to add another 1" wide strip of stockinette at the top, before binding off the shoulder. I thought that would make a nice frame all the way around, and would make a nice shoulder seam - with stockinette on both sides, there would be no weird pattern juxtaposition at the shoulder seam. However, when I finished the neck decreases, the directions said to work even until the piece measured so many inches from the armhole marker, and it turned out it already measured that, right then. Not having anticipated that, I didn't work the last inch in stockinette; didn't want to rip it out and do it over; and didn't want to add an inch more to the length. So ... the front ends at the shoulder seam like you see.

I actually don't think this is much of a disaster, though ... it actually ended right at the end of a pattern repeat, so it looks okay (and had I done the 1" strip of stockinette, it would have ended somewhere in the middle of the pattern repeat, which I don't think would have looked as nice). My decision now is whether to do the back the same way, and just have the two pattern edges come together there, which probably wouldn't look so bad, with one set of leaves merging right at their mid-point, and the other set being point to point.

Or go ahead and add my stockinette strip on the back (since now I will know when I'm getting to it), and then have pattern on the front of the shoulder and just stockinette on the back. If I did that, I'd probably make the stockinette strip on the back wider, like kind of a mini-yoke, instead of just a one inch strip.

I'll have to put some more thought to that. And take into consideration how I want the top of the sleeves to look too. Wow - this designing thing is fun!

In gardening news: this was the other project I mentioned last weekend, that I didn't post pictures of because it wasn't done yet. It's still not technically 'done,' but ... here it is.




This was Greg's brainchild, built from scrap parts from his job that otherwise would have been thrown out. The bottom is a beacon light casing, now with a regular colored light bulb wired into a photocell that automatically turns it on near dusk, and off in the morning. The top is some type of plastic dish thing, I forget what it was originally for. It was white, Greg spray-painted the inside silver, and the outside green with a leaf pattern, made by placing leaves from a tree on the bowl, then spray-painting over them. I forgot to take pictures of that, though. The pagoda was mine - it is actually a cast iron tealight candle holder.

I'm still pondering how I feel about this. On the one hand, I like it in theory, and I'm generally perfectly okay with having unique things in the garden that one wouldn't otherwise necessarily consider 'garden stuff.' I like having a waterfall, and I have abandoned trying to build one from rocks - tried that, not going to work with this pond. For one reason, the space behind the pond is too cramped to work in, to build it right; and for two things, it's just too much of an enormous pain in the butt for me.

This looks quite intriguing at night, with the subtle light of the purple party bulb lighting up the rippling surface of the pond and the near surroundings.

But to be perfectly honest, the large amount of plastic is just bugging me. It just seems so incongruous. The bottom part seems overly large to me, too - out of scale with the rest of the stuff in that area. I've tried to figure out a way to camouflage it while still allowing the glow from the light to show, but I haven't thought of anything yet - there's no room anywhere near it to plant something to grow in front of it, it's hanging right out over the edge of the pond.

I am going to ponder it over the next week or two, giving it a fair chance to settle in, and see how I feel then. It may just be that I'm not used to it yet.

If I do decide I can't adjust to it in the pond garden, it won't be scrapped entirely ... I would like to use the components somewhere else in the yard. Whether as a waterfall, I don't know ... it depends on whether we put in another water feature. We could move the light somewhere else, and keep the silver dish, just mounting it on something else. We can find other lighting options, I'm sure.

Well. It will bear some thinking on.

Nice Weather + Long Weekend = Gardening Frenzy

I spent most of another whole day working on the pond bed. First I planted the perennials ... looks great, huh?


Yeah, well. If I don't kill them, hopefully they'll look like something in a month or two, and something even better by next year. Perennials do take time, but hopefully they'll be worth it in just having plants show up in the spring with minimal effort on my part. That's my grand scheme, anyway.

Meanwhile, I filled in the front of the bed with annuals.


They look better in person. I don't like plantings where there's a lot of space between the flowers, where they look like little soldiers all lined up in formation. But I know that to do well, they need some room to grow. If I treat them well, hopefully they'll fill out and spread together into one mass planting. (And if not, next year I'll plant them right next to each other and be done with it).

I think it's coming along really, really nicely.

Meanwhile, Greg did this.

He extended the patio, and then connected them together.

And, left me a little planting place in front of the porch post, where he attached the trellis I bought Saturday. I want to plant morning glories there. I bought the seeds for them weeks ago but (again) haven't done anything with them, didn't start them indoors or anything, so I don't know how well they'll do this year. I've had bad luck trying to plant morning glories (a) from seed, and (b) in late May or early June, as they can't seem to get established. Of course, that was probably back in the old days where I just dropped them on the clay soil and expected them to grow. With some nice compost mix and fertilizer, maybe this time I'll have more success.

I think I'm learning one of the most valuable lessons about gardening this year. I bought this house 14 years ago, and one of the reasons I finally gave up on apartment living and bought a house is because I so very much wanted to have my own yard, and do it up with nice landscaping and garden beds. In the first few years I tried to do some things, but I had so many wrong ideas about it. For one thing, I either didn't know, didn't understand, or didn't care about the type of soil, and kept trying to insistently plant things in this almost solid clay soil, just as it was. I also never bothered with fertilizers and such, or if I did remember, it would be sporadically until I forgot to bother again. But probably my worst mistake was thinking I should be able to spend a weekend planting a bunch of stuff, and then just be done with it, and it would look like the pictures in the magazines.

Then for many years I just gave up and neglected this place badly. But this winter the gardening bug bit again, and I knew that this year I would have the time to devote to it. I got a good book, and began buying a few magazines. And this time, paying attention. And I think one of the best things I've figured out is that a garden is never a static thing, you plant it once, and you're done with it. It's an ongoing relationship.

I haven't been sure what type of plants I wanted or where. I tried to draw a garden plan like everyone suggests, and I did that to a point, but I know that I won't know for sure that the plants are where they should be until they've grown up a bit and I can see what they look like - whether I like them where they are, and whether they're happy where they are. I planted blue hardy geraniums and daisies in that bed, in an arrangement I thought I'd like ... but colored pencils on paper cannot replicate real live plants in your garden, and the little clumps that I've planted certainly aren't enough to judge by yet.

But I'm not worried about it, and I'm not even bugged by the fact that I spent $40 on perennials that are currently dead-looking sticks. Because I know that it takes time, it's not instant. And if I don't like the arrangement when the plants are finally filling out, I can always rearrange it until I do. And if I don't like the selection of annuals I picked out this year, next year I can plant a whole different batch.

I also finally understand the importance of giving the plants what they need to thrive - good soil, enough water and fertilizer, trimming, weeding. And that no longer just seems like a lot of work - it seems more like ... gee, I hate to sound sappy, but I'll say it - a labor of love. If I care for them, I'll have a far better chance of enjoying the beautiful gardens I'd like to have.

So there's my gardening philosophy blather for the weekend.

Lisa asked if my hands were still functional enough to knit. I'm gonna find out. I've missed working on my sweater, and I'm pretty well done with yard work for this weekend. Once I get myself cleaned up, I'm hoping to enjoy a little knitting on the porch before I pass out from total exhaustion.

Hey! I wonder if I lost any weight with all this physical exertion? That'd be a bonus.

Ouch. Just ... Ouch.

I hurt. A lot. It's been an incredibly busy (but productive) weekend. And I still have a day left!

Saturday I ran a lot of errands. Tyler got his stitches out, too! I also went to the garden center and got quite a few of the things I wanted for this year, not least of which was a bunch of plants.

I had ordered some perennials from Spring Hill Nursery awhile back, and unfortunately they arrived just around the time Tyler had the corn cob incident. But even if that hadn't happened, the weather had turned cold and rainy during much of that time, and I couldn't have planted them anyway.

So they sat in the box on the porch for two weeks and I did nothing with them. I was afraid I'd killed them, but it turns out what I did wasn't such a bad thing. When I finally unpacked them this weekend, according to the packing directions I found in the box, if you can't plant them right away, the best thing to do is leave them in their original packing in about 40 degree temperatures (a refrigerator crisper drawer is recommended). Well, they sat in their original packing material on the back porch, where it was around 40 degrees much of that two weeks, only getting into the 50s sometimes during the day. They seem to have survived just fine.

But knowing they were dormant, bare root plants - which look like nothing more than dead sticks at the moment - I knew I'd need to fill in with a lot of annuals until those perennials get established and do some growing. In fact, even after they do I'll probably still fill out some areas with annuals - they're pretty, cheap, and I like them.

So I bought impatiens and violets and some other things I can't remember right now, but here's a picture of them all anyway.


Before I could do anything with them, though, I knew I had a ton of work to do in that bed. First, removing two large shrubs.


I wanted those two round evergreen shrubs to come out, so I had the whole area from the tall pointy evergreen to the pond to plant up. That was the first chore of the day. It took me and Greg both digging around them to finally cut them loose, then I hauled them out forcibly, put each in the wheelbarrow, and wheeled them to their new home by the back fence - which also involved digging two large holes, then heaving the shrubs out of the wheelbarrow and into the new hole.

And that just about did me in. That was only the beginning, but the whole rest of the day was just sheer determination and willpower, because I hurt all over by the time I was done with those shrubs. Comparing them to the 40 lb. bags of compost I hauled around later, I think those shrubs weighed between 50 and 60 lbs. Ouch.

After that I dumped three of the bags of combined compost and manure which I found at a local hardware store into the new de-shrubbed bed, then dug that in ... over and over and over. I just kept going through, digging it all up and turning the shovelfuls over, then taking a 10 minute break, then going back and doing it again. Four or five times. But I can't believe the difference it's made! That whole bed consisted of very hard clay soil - like most of northeast Ohio. I'd made the mistake in the past of trying to plant things there without doing anything with it, and it was always mostly a disaster. Shrubs and hostas seemed to do okay, but any type of flowers usually just withered and died. I finally did some studying up, and knew I had to seriously condition that soil if I had any hope of having a nice garden bed there.

So when I found those bags of compost and manure, I knew that was the ticket. And I was amazed at the difference after all that digging. The soil looked wonderful, crumbly, soft, all the big lumps of clay just sort of disappeared. I didn't know it would happen that fast. I thought it might take weeks or months before the compost began helping the soil, but it was pretty much instant.


I still want it turned a few more times, there are still a few too many clumps for my liking (small ones, though) and my energy was flagging rapidly. So I didn't get anything actually planted today, but I should be able to do that tomorrow (if I can move).

I did accomplish one whole project, though. The strip of dirt behind the pond is too narrow to plant anything in, especially with the soil so compacted back there as it is. I tried to plant a few things back there last year, but it was just pointless. The only thing that will grow back there is weeds, and that's what happens. I decided since I can't (or am not going to) move the pond forward, the easiest thing to do would be to cover that strip of dirt with the flat rocks, then to have anything growing back there, put a planter basket on the fence wall with some trailing plants that can hang down over the basket and maybe even as far as the edge of the pond.

So I did get this planted and put up.


It's got three petunias (because I just like them, my dad always planted petunias), and in between those, two Calibrachoa plants called "Million Bells Trailing Blue." They are supposed to hang down over the planter, so when this fills out, I think it will be really cool. I still have to get in there and clean out the weeds and mess behind the pond, and fill it with rocks - I didn't get to that today.

So ... a huge amount of progress. And there's still quite a bit to be done. Right there in the front of the pond, I have to get some more dirt in there - the soil level is too low since I built up the wall with those big flat rocks. I'm not sure where I'm going to get the soil from, I think I have some bags of topsoil in the garage, maybe that'll work. I have to dig that bed through a few more times, then plant all my plants. It's not going to fill it out yet, I didn't get enough in that one trip. I wasn't sure how many I'd need, and ... well ... I can only do so much at one time. Just getting the middle section cleaned up was a major ordeal. The ends can be worked on over time. There is so much to do here now that I've started wanting to fix up the landscaping, it's all going to have to be done over quite a bit of time.

There was one more project worked on today, but it's not done and I don't want to post pictures till it is. But I'll give you a teaser ... we're putting in a lighted waterfall at one side of the pond. And it's not made out of rocks. In fact, it's not made out of anything 'natural' at all. This probably falls into the category of 'junkyard landscaping.' But it's going to be cool when it's done.

And now ... I'm going to go have the hottest bath I can get my hot water heater to give me, and hopefully come out of that able to move and absent my current layer of garden grunge.

But wow ... it was a good day.

I have readers?

Wow. People actually read the blog. Thanks for all your great comments, Lisa.

I don't remember where I first learned about the lifeline, but it is just that. It's kind of tedious to put in (I haven't put one in yet on Snowdrop) but when you hit the disaster you can't fix, it will save the project. I've read that some people use dental floss - anything small enough and slippery enough to easily thread through your stitches on the needle (or on the cable, if you're using a circular - the easiest way to do it). I used some 8/4 cotton warp yarn because I happened to have a whole spool of it from my weaving attempts. It worked pretty well too.

The shawl yarn is wonderful, and I don't know if I ever said what it is. It's Silky Alpaca Lace by Classic Elite. I got this from Patternworks. I've never knit with laceweight yarn before, so I don't have anything to compare it to, but I can tell you this yarn is luscious. It's silky soft, and very easy to knit with.

Thanks for the encouragement on 'doing things my way.' I think, really, I'm kind of lucky that I have such problems with published patterns, because that's what spurred me on to start trying my own things, and trusting my own creative impulses. And I think this is the most fun I've ever had with a project, planning it out myself, being able to choose so many of the creative aspects of how it will turn out - the pattern, the edgings, the type of neckline, the length of the sleeves, everything. And hopefully what I learn from this will allow me to, if I ever find a published pattern I'm just dying to make, adapt it to work for me.

Doing my own designs has always been both my dream and my downfall, because with past hobbies I've tried to dive into my own designs too quickly, before I'd learned the necessary skills. That would end up frustrating me to the point where in some cases I gave up the hobby in question.

Knitting's different ... I took it more slowly, learned some of the skills I need, got frustrated for an entirely different reason (problems with published patterns), and now know I can learn any other skills I need to finally branch out into at least semi-designing my own stuff. (Even if I am "cheating" by using The Handy Book of Sweater Patterns ... although I decline to consider that cheating, and instead look at it as merely letting someone else do the math). ;o)

Of course, whether or not this current sweater works out remains to be seen ... but so far, it's going great, and if for some reason there is a problem with it, at least it will count as a learning experience that I can hopefully recover from. My attempted trick on the neckline is working out pretty good so far ... pictures tomorrow.

And I didn't know dogs can't have raisins! Good to know ... this dog will eat anything that falls into his path (as we've seen).

The Yarn Fairy Cometh

Okay, the FedEx Ground guy probably wouldn't appreciate that. But the important thing is, my yarn for the summer cardigan showed up yesterday ...

... so I can go back to work on that project, too. Woo hoo. Last night I got to where the sleeve goes in, and marked that. Then I have to knit 5 1/4" past that point (1/4"? Really? How much difference can that possibly make?) and then start the v-neck shaping, which is where I experiment with my scheme to maintain the stockinette stitch border.

Waiting for the yarn to show up, I did some more on Snowdrop.



It seems to be going amazingly fast for such delicate yarn. I mean, it's no where near done, but my progress surprises even me. I ran into another snag the other night, where I got things quite screwed up and even dropped a stitch, which I didn't even know until I saw it's tiny little loop sticking out of the knitting several rows below. Had that been in an intricate pattern section, I probably would have been in big trouble ... because I don't know how to fix a dropped stitch that involves yarn-overs and what not. Although I probably would have had a crash course in it, because there was no way I was going to rip this out and start over. (Note to self - quit being so cocky and get the freaking lifeline in soon).

Fortunately - very, very fortunately - it happened in an area of plain knit stitches, and I was able to chain it back up with my tiny crochet hook, and fixed it. Incredible luck.

But mostly I'll probably be working on the sweater. Every time I've tried to knit a sweater, it's taken forever. For once (well, more than once I hope, but for now) I'd like to make this in something reasonable - 6 weeks would suit me. That's going to be a lot of knitting.

I'm not sure it's going to turn out as summery as I originally planned. I intended to make the summer cardigan out of a cotton yarn, but after I started on this I remembered that I'd gotten this one test skein that wasn't cotton, but it was inexpensive and the blurb in the catalog said it was incredibly soft, so I decided to try it. It is incredibly soft, almost merino-ish, and it's very nice to work with - but it's acrylic and nylon. The more I get done on it, the heavier it feels. Not weight-wise, it's very light that way. But 'heft-wise' or whatever you want to call it. It just feels thick and fluffy. It may be a bit much for warm weather, may end up being more of an autumn kind of thing. Well, that's okay. My 6-week goal is overly ambitious, and I probably won't get it done till fall anyway.

This is (hopefully) only the beginning of many successful sweater projects, so I can always make my cotton summer cardigan next winter if this doesn't work out - and I'll still have this one, so I'll be happy.

I Gotta Tinkle!

Greg brought me a present from the event.

He said they call it a "tinkle," a mini-mini inkle loom made just for the purpose of testing designs, so you don't have to spend all the time (and use up a lot of fiber) on the regular inkle loom just to try things out. How cool is this? It came with extra pegs, which you can add to any of the extra holes in the board, to - I assume - make things different sizes. Or regulate tension. Probably adding pegs at the beginning and then taking them out as you weave would help with tension, since bands get tighter as you weave them.

I'm looking forward to playing with this ... and dying to try out the loom I haven't gotten to yet ... so much fiber, so little time *sigh*

Sometimes I go through phases, months long even, where I'm not the least bit interested in knitting. Then other times I become completely obsessed with it. Guess which one I'm in now? I had four days off and could barely get myself to put it down. The only things I got done yesterday were washing and drying some laundry (not put away yet), washing most (not all) of the dishes, and sorting through a stack of mail on the kitchen table. Other than that, kept knitting.

Eventually this phase will wane, too, and I'll get back to being obsessed with weaving.

I'm making good progress on the shawl. I got a lot done last night, and (knocking on wood with crossed fingers) made no mistakes. Even while watching TV. I think I sorted out what the biggest problems were. Of course, dropped yarn-overs is always a concern. Two other things were contributing to my problems Saturday night. I've noticed that in this fine a yarn, my yarn-overs tend to roll over on top of the stitch next to them, and when I come to them across the wrong side row, they look like one stitch. If I'm not paying attention and purl them together as one stitch (very easy to do), then when I get back to the right side, I'm short a stitch in that section.

The other thing that was causing me grief is that the stitches right next to my ring markers are constantly rolling over the marker, and ending up on the wrong side of it. When I would get to the end of a section and be a stitch short, I'd assume I made a mistake, rather than checking to see if the missing stitch had actually migrated to the next section.

I've more or less solved these problems by knowing they exist and watching out for them, and by counting stitches as I knit, on both wrong and right side rows. Since the pattern repeats are only a convenient 8 stitches wide (except the center panel, which is 11), it's very easy to check each little section as I go, and know at the end of the row it's all correct. Checking the whole row at the end is a bad option, for the same reason it quit working on Triangles - when the shawl begins to get bigger, spending the time to go back over a whole row and count all those stitches is (a) something I'm not patient enough to do, and takes more and more time as the project progresses - time I could be knitting; and (b) leaves more room for error because of counting so many at once. Not checking at all is just kind of dumb (and I don't know why I wasn't doing this before).

But checking 8 stitches at a time, I can keep up with. And this kept me on track all last night. So I'm optimistic about Snowdrop, and it's progressing quite nicely.

I also think I figured out how to fix my 'frame' dilemma on the sweater. More on that when I try it.

But now *sigh* it's time to go get ready for work. Culture shock, to be sure.

A Weekend of Knitting

I worked on the front of the new sweater yesterday until I ran out of yarn. I got almost to the armhole section.


I ordered the rest of the yarn yesterday, and paid extra for 3-5 day shipping, so I should have it next week to get back to work on this. I'm really enjoying this project!

Yesterday I mentioned that I had to decide on the length before I began the armhole shaping. I had forgotten - there won't be any (shaping, not length). This is a drop shoulder sweater, which means the fronts and back are just knit as a big rectangle.

There is one interesting quirk. I decided I'd like to make this a v-neck cardigan. I can't stand regular v-neck sweaters, but in cardigans since I never button them, I've noticed v-neck versions seem to hang better - no bunching up around the neck. But to do that I am going to need to do shaping at the neck line, and with that strip of plain stockinette up the side I'm wondering if it's going to look funny when I begin shaping the neck and that disappears. When you have to shape away part of a pattern, it's not such a big deal - it just all kind of flows. But to have that very definite 'frame' around the pattern, then have it disappear right in the center front - I'm afraid that's not going to look so hot.

I considered trying to continue it ... as I do the decreases along the neck edge, add a stitch of stockinette on the other side of that strip (not make a stitch, but replace a pattern stitch with a stockinette stitch on each decrease row) - it's the stockinette that will encroach on the pattern, but the 6-stitch stockinette strip will remain intact up to the shoulder. But if I do that, there will be no corresponding stockinette strip in the back to match up at the shoulder. So that's kind of a dilemma. Ah-ha, I'm learning all the things designers have to take into consideration.

When I ran out of this yarn, I went back to work on the shawl for awhile.


I was having some trouble this time - the usual, running out of stitches in a repeat before I was done. I think I fixed them all. I didn't rip anything out, just un-knit back till I got it right. In one place I did have to make a stitch to match up the stitch count, because I simply could not find the lost stitch. Probably a missed yarn-over. The last row I did last night worked out, though, so I'm hoping it will be okay today. There's no guarantee. Lots of times with Triangles I'd knit a row which would be fine, and I'd think I had it fixed - and the next time across suddenly stuff would be messed up. That's what always frustrated me - simply not being able to figure out where stitches disappeared to.

Tyler's doing grand.


And I'm doing much better because I finally set up the air mattress! When he first came home, we decided it might not be a good idea for him to have to get on and off the air mattress, so we've been right on the living room floor all week. But that was about to do me in, and by last night Tyler was well enough that I was pretty sure getting on and off an 8" high air mattress was no longer going to be dangerous for him. So I set that up, and ah ... bliss. After sleeping right on the floor for a week, this is like heaven.

I called the vet yesterday and got permission to increase his food a little bit - that was the worst problem he was having, thinking he was starving to death. No wonder. He's used to getting 2 cups of food a day, and he was only getting 1/8 cup (that's only a spoonful) four times a day. It took me a whole week to use up one can of the special prescription food they provided! One can of food in a whole week, when his normal consumption would be the equivalent of almost a can a day. Not only did I feel bad because he was so hungry, but I was afraid he was going to start losing weight on so little food - and he's a little dog who didn't weight that much to begin with - and that the limited food would compromise his energy and health, right when he needed all he could to heal well. But at first I wouldn't risk feeding him more, because of the stitches in his stomach and intestines - I figured the amount they'd told me was the safest, then.

But after a week of that, I had to ask. And they told me as long as he was doing well (he is), to go ahead and put him back on his regular diet. But that seemed to go to the other extreme, to me. To go from 1/8 cup four times a day to suddenly a whole cup of food at one sitting, after abdominal surgery, didn't seem wise to me, despite what they said. So I'm going to increase it incrementally over the next week till he's back up to normal. But after getting so little for a week, even what he's getting now (1/4 cup 5 or 6 times a day) is keeping him quite happy.

Ask the vet if I can do something, then disregard what they say? Well, after this corn cob incident I'm never again going to second-guess myself when my intution is different than how things appear outwardly or what I'm told. Logically Tyler shouldn't have gotten the corncob where it was; my gut instinct was to move it anyway, but I didn't - and he got it. After he ate it, Tyler seemed fine, and my 'logic' was telling me not to panic, to just wait and see what happened. But my gut instinct kicked me out of bed at 2:00 a.m. and sent me online to check, which confirmed my intuitive fears. So from now on, when I have 'gut instincts' about Tyler (or anything else, for that matter), I'm going to learn to listen to them, despite logic or advice to the contrary.

So he's getting a slowly increased diet, he seems happy, I'm comfortable with it, and that's what we'll be doing over the next week.

I had Thursday and Friday off as vacation days, but didn't get to go on the scheduled camping trip because I needed to watch Tyler. At first I was disappointed I couldn't go, but I gotta tell you ... it was nice. Three days to do absolutley nothing but sit on the living room floor with Tyler and knit. Enforced inactivity, to keep Tyler quiet. Usually when I have time off, I keep myself so busy during it that I don't even feel like I had a 'vacation' when it's over. Not this time. It turned out surprisingly well. (As a bonus, the weather was pretty cold and crappy at the event - par for that course - and I would have probably been miserable and grumpy anyway).

I say "three days" because today I do have to get off my butt and do some things. But that's okay. And now's probably a good time to start.

By Jove, I Think She's Got It!

Check this out!!


This is what I got done yesterday. This is the front left side of the cardigan. The color's a little wonky in this picture - indoors, at night, with a regular lamp as the only light. I didn't use the flash because when I tried that it just washed everything out till you couldn't see the pattern.

Okay, I'm really liking this. And I'm getting really psyched because, to my complete amazement, the gauge appears to be dead on. I've measured this piece several times and it matches the schematic exactly.

The world's going to end.

I like the pattern, too, and the way I've set it up. Because of the number of stitches I needed to cast on, and the number of stitces in the pattern repeat, I had 13 stitches left over that I couldn't use in the pattern - but I needed them to make it the right size, I couldn't just get rid of them. So I decided to do 6 stockinette stitches on the button-band side, and 7 on the arm side. Turns out that looks really cool - almost like a frame for the pattern.

I decided to do a picot hemmed bottom edge, and I think that's going to look really awesome as well. (It's not sewn yet, just turned up for the picture).

Since this beginning of the front worked out so well, it looks like this is the color it's going to be. Today I'm going to order the rest of the yarn I need to make the whole sweater.

I was only able to get so much done yesterday because, being confined to the living room floor with Tyler, that's almost all I did all day. Under normal circumstances I don't have that much time, so I suppose progress on the sweater will drop off in the next week or so. But I'd like to keep up a steady pace on it, because I'd like it to be done in time to wear this summer - what it was intended for. It's a light yarn with an open lacy pattern, and I intend to put 3/4 length sleeves on it. Besides, I'm tired of it taking me two years to make something. This does go fairly quickly, though - the pattern's not terribly complicated to work.

I haven't decided yet whether or how the back's going to be worked - with the stockinette stitch 'frame' or not. Some of that will depend on the stitch count and whether or not I have to do that. I also haven't figured out what's going to happen where these patterns meet at the shoulder, as I was too impatient to chart the whole thing out and try to arrange it so the patterns ended or met at a pleasing point. But once I get to the armhole shaping, I'll have to decide exactly what length I want the sweater, because once I begin the shaping it'll be too late to change it. Maybe at that point I'll do some figuring, and work it out so the pattern ends at a nice point just below the shoulder.

And I haven't decided what kind of edging I'm going to put around the front and neck edge. I don't want to do the same picot hem thing. Maybe just a standard rib of some sort. I also still need to pick out buttons, or decide whether I'm even going to have buttons, or do something else instead.

Wow - this 'design your own sweater' thing rocks. I am liking this so much better than trying to follow published patterns (and being continually frustrated). I am far more psyched about this project than I have been about any other sweater project for a long time.

Tyler Update; Knitting Update

First thing's first: Tyler's doing well. So well that he's driving me nuts. The better he feels, the harder it is to keep him quiet so he doesn't hurt himself. He wants to run (tried that twice yesterday, till I had to resort to putting the leash on him even in the house). He wants to chew on his belly - caught him pulling out a stitch with his teeth yesterday. Yes, I was watching him, I was sitting right next to him, but it was like a stealth attack - he must have been calculating that move for days to get such an instant and perfectly targeted strike, that in the time it took me to see his head move, lay down my knitting and reach for him (about 1.3 seconds), I already heard the loud "snap" of him biting on that stitch. I had to make him wear the Collar Of Doom after that.

I had been keeping the Collar of Doom off of him when I was sitting right next to him and (allegedly) able to watch him. He really hates it, and has not adjusted well to it. He walks into things constantly and doesn't like to lie down with it on, so he can't get comfortable or relax. Of course, we probably didn't help - the thing's just an embarrassment. I don't think he was too happy with the fact that after we put it on him, we decided it would be a good idea to autograph it, like people sign people's casts.




This weekend everyone went to the year's first SCA event. I had the days off to go, but took them instead to stay home with Tyler (since anyone I knew who could watch him is now partying in the middle ages; my brother usually watches him, but such a long trip to a house full of stairs was too risky for Tyler). We're living on the living room floor. How appropriate.


If it looks like a mess, well it is - this is where we've been since last Sunday night, so we can be constantly near enough to Tyler to keep a close eye on him, and pet and pamper him. Blankets spread out on the floor and cushions pulled off the furniture so Tyler doesn't try to make a stealth leap onto the couch (tried that too yesterday, but I intercepted him in time). When you spend entire days and nights in a 10' x 10' section of the floor, it tends to get this kind of 'lived in' look. And this is where I'll be living the rest of the weekend, trying to keep myself entertained while constantly watching Tyler for attempts to sabotage himself.

Ah well. He's doing great, and despite my apparent grousing, the fact is I'm thrilled that he's doing well enough that he requires this much watching. Things could have went much, much worse. I think this is the most dangerous thing that Tyler's ever been through. And when he does finally lay down calmly for 5 minutes, I'm constantly checking him to see if he's 'okay.'

The worst of the 'danger zone' has passed, though. The vet told me the first 3 to 5 days were the most critical for not letting him do anything too strenuous that could rupture his internal sutures. Today is day 6, and I believe we've succeeded. I still don't want to take any chances, and will be struggling to keep him calm and quiet for another week yet.

As much as I can while keeping the Poo from running, leaping, or chewing out his stitches, I've been knitting. I am really excited about the new project. Sweater design in progress:


I took one of the three balls of yarn I'd ordered as test yarn, and knit myself a large gauge swatch. I got three types of yarn because the texture is very important to me, and I couldn't tell that without actually feeling it and knitting it. Turns out I liked the first one I tried well enough to just go with that for now. I can always use the other two for other projects later.

Second, I got a very definite 6 stitches per inch over its entirety, so I was pretty comfortable with that.

But I decided I wanted to put a pattern into the sweater. I looked through my book, "Beautiful Knitting Patterns" by Gisela Klopper, and picked one I liked. I switched my swatch to that pattern for awhile, to see if I could figure out my gauge in that.

I couldn't. I don't know how to figure out spi in a pattern stitch with yarn-overs, cabling, etc. I tried just laying the ruler over the swatch and counting them out as best I could, but I came up with 6 spi. I didn't think it likely that my pattern stitch count would be the same as stockinette stitch. So I tried something else. I measured the three pattern repeats in my swatch (11"), then counted how many stitches were in that width (66). Hmmm. 6 spi again.

I decided to go with it, and do a "test start" on the sweater itself. Using the Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, I cast on the appropriate number of stitches for the left front of the cardigan at 6 spi, and I'm knitting away on that. When it gets large enough to trust I'm getting a true measurement, I'm just going to measure it across and see if my knitted piece matches the schematic provided in the book.

Sounds like a rather tedious and unscientific, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants way to do it? Well, probably. But ... I'm going to make damned sure that this sweater fits when it's done, no matter what it takes. If I have to knit half the sweater front, find out it's not measuring out right, rip it all out and start over, well then ... that's what I'll do. It's certainly no more tedious and time-consuming than knitting an entire sweater to find out it doesn't fit. I'm trying to learn some patience and tell myself, this is all part of the design process.

I'm undecided how I feel about that color of yarn. When I ordered my three 'test skeins,' I tried to pick colors I thought I'd like to have the finished sweater be. I wanted something neutral and light toned, but not just bland taupe or beige. This color looked interesting on the computer screen (it's called "Sprig"). But in person, I'm waffling. In some lights it looks yellowish-green or even golden-green (not bad). In some lights it almost looks mustard-yellowish (also acceptable). But then sometimes it just looks like baby puke. But for an overall impression, I do kind of like it. It's different, but then ... so am I.

I've decided to let Fate decide. If this sweater front piece I'm working on turns out to be the exact right size, matching up with the schematic, then I'm keeping this and going ahead with the sweater in this color. If it doesn't and I have to start over, I'm going to go ahead and order the yarn for the entire sweater in a different color, and start my next attempt in the new color.

I'm still going to be working on the Snowdrop shawl, but with Tyler demanding my attention every 20 or 30 seconds, I didn't think that was a good time to be trying to knit lace.

So - I've started my own mostly self-designed summer cardigan! Woo-hoo! (well, if it works).

Tyler's Recovery

Tyler's doing really great. He's moving around very well - in fact, I'm struggling to keep him from trotting all over the place. This dog's always been a trotter. When he moves around the house, he trots. When he goes outside he trots around the yard. When we go for a walk, he trots the whole way. The dog rarely just walks. Now that he's feeling better, he keeps wanting to trot, and I keep panicking - the vet said no running. I don't know if trotting counts as running, but I don't want him doing anything that might jostle his insides around and risk his internal stitches. It's great that he feels so good, but the better he feels, the harder it is to keep him calm and quiet enough not to hurt himself.

I won't be so freaked out about it in a week, when things have had time to heal better.

He's also drinking plenty of water, and eating well (what little he's allowed to have).

He's started wanting to lick his belly all the time, though, so I had to go get him one of those Elizabethan collars. So we all decided that the proper thing to do would be to sign it, like people do with casts.

He was not amused. (He actually looks perkier than in this last picture; I didn't want the flash going off in his eyes, so it's dark and grainy). I haven't left this on him all the time, just when he's licking incessantly and I can't be right there to constantly stop him.

I've been very lucky to have a couple of great friends watch him today and tomorrow while I'm at work, but they won't be available Thursday and Friday, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do then. Unfortunately, I think my only recourse is to crate him, which he'll hate - and I can't find my crate. Looks like I may have to buy a new one.

But hopefully recovery will proceed as smoothly as it has so far.

Tyler's Emergency

Okay, this was the weekend from hell. Any other time I said that, I was mistaken. Those were only outer rings of hell. This was the inner pit.

Friday night Tyler got hold of a corn cob and ate a bunch of it. I didn't see him with it, so wouldn't even have known, but the Dread Reverend caught it, took it away from him, and got rid of it.

At first I thought he hadn't eaten any of it, had only been gnawing on it. By the time I realized what had actually happened, it was too late to take him to the vet's, so I thought I'd wait till the next day and see how he was. At that point I didn't know corn cobs were lethal to dogs, only concerned that it might cause a problem, mostly because of Tyler's propensity to bite off chunks of things and swallow them whole, not bothering to take the time to chew. And if he had eaten any of it, I thought it might only have been one or two small pieces. At that time he still seemed fine - he'd been running around playing with a toy that evening, ate his dinner after the incident, and was acting perfectly okay.

By the next morning, though, my intuition was kicking me hard, telling me there was more to this than I knew, and I really needed to do something. Tyler still seemed to feel fine, but he had thrown up that morning (a bad sign), so I was at the vet's 20 minutes before they opened, and accosted the staff at the door as they were unlocking it.

When we saw the doctor, the news turned worse. She said that dogs eating corn cob is in fact usually lethal; they can't digest them, and the pieces cause an intestinal blockage which would kill them, untreated. She even warned me that in many cases, the dog can't even be saved by surgery if it's not caught quickly, because often owners don't see their dog eating the corn cob, and don't know anything happened until the dog begins to show symptoms of the intestinal blockage - vomiting, loss of appetite, other general symptoms of sickness - which usually don't get noticeable for several days. By then, the corn cob can likely rip holes in the intestine as it moved to wherever it got before it got stuck, and those holes can't always be fixed by surgery.

My panic was escalating. I was only worried about Tyler having surgery because he's 13 1/2 years old, and often surgery is much harder on older dogs. But I really didn't have any choice. The doctor said the only alternative was to take him home and 'wait and see' - and I'd already ruled that out after she told me what usually happens when these things aren't taken care of immediately.

So I told them to go ahead. Turned out it was the right decision to make, because they found a huge amount of corn cob chunks in his intestines. He must have eaten far more than we feared, because there were an amazing approximately 25 chunks of corn cob they pulled out of him. All of them were just small enough for him to have swallowed whole, but all big enough that any one of them alone could have killed him - and that many of them all together certainly would have.

The good news, though, was that they got them all (she assured me she checked every inch of his intestines, five times through; that's going to hurt for awhile, but it was worth it, to be sure). And he did amazingly well through the surgery, having no problems at all, came out of the anesthesia easily, was perky and bright-eyed, and doing great. They kept him overnight just to be sure, and I was able to pick him up Sunday evening around 5:00.

He's just laying around sleeping a lot, but I'm sure that's normal and good for him, to heal. But he's been outside several times, and moves around pretty good. He has a very good appetite; he's on a special diet for 2 weeks, a special canned food from the vet, and he's only allowed to have 1/8 cup four times a day (and that's only a spoonful), but he's been gobbling that up and looking at me like, "Where's the rest?" He's had some water. So he seems to be recovering as well as can be expected.

I took today off work to stay home with him; I just couldn't leave him alone his first whole day home, I needed to watch him. The vet did say that he wouldn't be entirely out of the woods for three to five days, because there are sutures in his stomach and intestines, and if either of those would rupture, it could kill him. And there's no way in hell I'm taking the slightest chance of letting that happen. When I do have to go back to work, I have a crate around here somewhere I'm going to find, and he's going to have to stay in that during the day. I hate to crate him, but there's no choice. He has to be kept quiet and safe until his insides have healed enough for there to be no more danger.

The only difficult thing now is that he keeps wanting to lick the incision on his belly, and I can't let him do that. I'm afraid that in addition to crating him, he's going to have to be subjected to one of those big collars, because when I'm back to work, even in the crate there will be nothing to stop him from licking that incision all day long. I don't have one of those collars, and will have to see about getting one from the vet's later today.

So ... don't ever let your dog get ahold of corn cobs. And try to keep an eye on them always, so that if they do get ahold of something they shouldn't have, you will know it in time that it can still be fixed.

Encouraging News

Three things. First, I wasn't ready yet to give up on all lace (just the Triangles shawl) - it's become kind of an addiction already. So yesterday I went online and did some searching for 'beginner' lace shawl patterns. The Yarn Harlot's Snowdrop Shawl turned up in someone's list, and it's a free pattern, so I printed it out, and started it last night. (That link is just to her blog; if you want to check out this shawl, look on the right-hand side and find where it says "Free Patterns" and there's a link to it there; or scroll down farther and use the search box, and turn up the original post when the shawl was finished).

Well, I'm cautiously optimistic. This is going wildly better than Triangles. Probably the biggest difference to me is that this time I can actually read the knitting - I can actually see and understand what's going on. I'm not going to lie and say I haven't already made mistakes - I have. The major difference is, every time I have, I have been able to clearly see what I did, un-knit back and fix them, and go on with no problems. A couple times I've even caught mistakes before they went too far, by actually being able to notice that the stitch I'm about to make doesn't line up with the stitch in the row below that it should be lining up with. I've never been able to "see" that type of thing before. It's like night and day different from Triangles.

I'm not implying Snowdrop is a "simple" shawl that doesn't look like much. It's beautiful and intricate. It just seems to be well-designed enough that it can be beautiful without being overly complicated. Maybe to experieced lace-knitters it's simple, I don't know - but since I am by no means experienced at lace (unless you count experienced at screwing it up), this is perfect for me.

I suppose all lace uses the same basic stitches, but to say that it's all the same level of difficulty would obviously be crazy. So I suppose it all comes down to how complex the arrangement of those few stitches. Triangles didn't look that hard on the chart, but apparently it was, for me anyway.

I say cautiously optimistic, because I realize that there's a long ways to go yet. As with other such patterns, Snowdrop begins with one pattern panel in the center, then after a certain point you add another pattern panel to each side, then another, and so on, adding pattern panels to the side as the shawl gets wider. I'm only to the point where I've added one pattern panel to each side (and this part is still charted; later, of course, the width won't fit on the chart and you just have to work with a 'repeat this section' instruction, on your own). I recognize that I could start running into problems when I get into the multiple pattern panel additions that aren't charted, and I just have to keep track of them myself. But ... I'm still optimistic.

The second piece of good news is that I looked through "Handy Book of Sweater Patterns" last night, and there is a pattern for a raglan sweater. Celtic Icon was designed as a raglan, so it shouldn't be too difficult for me to replicate the sweater using my own gauge instead of having to follow the designer's pattern exactly. The published pattern was just a simple raglan with a zip front, the only thing making it stand out being the cable design up the back, up each front panel, and on each sleeve. I ought to be able to incorporate that into a 'generic' raglan pattern in my own gauge and size.

The only thing that will take some serious thought on my part is that Celtic Icon has a hood, and the generic raglan in the book does not. I think that with some effort and comparison between the two patterns, I can figure out how to add the hood anyway.

But that's down the road. For now, the third piece of good news - my cotton blend yarns should be arriving soon, and I'll start swatching for my hopefully simpler project - a cotton 3/4 sleeve summer cardigan.

I feel better. As anyone who is passionate about knitting knows, it kind of goes beyond "just a hobby." You get very attached to your projects, and when two of them at the same time are turning into disasters, it's frustrating. Coming up with some new things that I seem to have a reasonably tolerable chance of having actually work out is very encouraging. (In that cautiously optimistic kinda way).

Momentous Knitting Decisions

I'm very, very frustrated with my knitting right now. And this is not a good thing, because this is supposed to be a fun, relaxing hobby.

The lace is screwed up, again. I've ripped back to the second life-line twice already (never making it more than 1 1/2 rows past it). Last night I discovered a mistake, again - a stitch short on the first repeat. I truly don't get it. I mean, I'm being extremely careful, concentrating hard, double-checking my work as I go, and I still can't get it right. (And just in case I'm over-thinking it, I've also tried not concentrating so hard, and just casually knitting along with the attitude that it'll all work out; that didn't work either).

I'm wondering if it's time to throw in the towel on this one. I hate to give up, but this obviously isn't working. I'm spending an enormous amount of time just frustrated and annoyed that it keeps getting screwed up. Instead of being fun it's just a source of frustration. I'd say that's when it's time to give up, at least for awhile. Maybe I'll try it again some other time. Or maybe I'll try an easier project to hone my skills on.

Meanwhile, I made another momentous 'giving up' decision. It's Celtic Icon, of which I have the entire back and half a front panel done. I put off and put off working on this, and it's constantly kind of hovering around in the back of my mind, especially when I don't have another current project to work on (like right now, with the lace buggered up) and I think, "I could be working on Celtic Icon" ... and then I realize I don't want to.

Yesterday I put some thought into why I don't want to. I really like the pattern, so I wondered why I avoid it so much that it's going on two years and I have no more done than I do.

I've attempted two sweaters in the past for myself, and neither of them fit. On one of them I used the yarn called for, but as it was not long after I'd learned to knit, I don't even think I did a gauge swatch, just used the needle size stated - so it was miles too big. For the second one, I couldn't find the suggested yarn, so I substituted, and did swatch, but the finished sweater still didn't fit, at all.

For Celtic Icon I invested in the exact yarn the pattern called for, thinking I'd have better luck with gauge. But to get the stated gauge I had to drop 2 or 3 needles sizes. That would normally be fine, except this is a DK to sport weight wool, and a stiff yarn at that, and I'm knitting it on a size 4 needle. It's doable, and I have consistently kept the right stitch gauge. For the stockinette sections it's not so bad, but this sweater is heavily cabled, and making the cables with this stiff yarn on these small needles is a major pain. It's uncomfortable to work, it's very tight, and even though this is wool, it seems to have little to no stretch to help with making the cables with such tiny stitches on small needles.

If that were the only problem, I'd probably muscle on. But there's another major issue I've been avoiding thinking about. I did get stitch gauge, but I did not get row gauge by dropping so many needle sizes, and failed to realize it until I was starting the raglan shaping near the top of the back. The back of the sweater from the bottom to the raglan shaping is measured in inches, as in "knit until piece measures 15 inches." That's easy, no matter what your row gauge, you can do that. But then when the raglan shaping starts, all the decreases are done by rows (as in, "decrease one stitch each end of every other row for 25 rows"), and I realized that my measurement on the top half of the sweater was going to be all off if I did that - because my 25 rows and the designer's 25 rows were going to measure two entirely different lengths.

I tried doing the math to recalculate the decreases according to my row gauge, and adjusted the back of the pattern accordingly. But I know it didn't work, because when I measured that section of my finished back, it's about 4" longer than the schematic says it should be. Ergo, it's probably not going to fit.

Second, I didn't take very good notes, not realizing I'd be putting the thing down for a year and a half before I started the front, and now I'm not sure I can remember how to replicate my pattern changes so the front matches the back, even if I could still make it fit.

All this combined is making me less and less interested in finishing this project, too. And since I'm not even half-way done with it, it's hard to be enthusiastic about investing so much more time in something I think very well may not fit.

I've decided to scrap that project too, at least in it's present form.

I don't know if this makes me a fair-weather knitter who balks at trouble, or if it means I'm getting smarter. I mean, after all, and as I've said, knitting is supposed to be fun and relaxing. If I've got projects that are just annoying and frustrating me, and I already know probably aren't going to fit, it doesn't seem too smart to continue tormenting myself with them.

Second, I want to get better, and learn how to make things that actually fit. I've been knitting for about 6 years and have nothing to show for it but socks and scarves. There's nothing wrong with that, but I really want to be able to make other things. And to do that, I'm going to have to learn what works. (I think I've got what doesn't work down pat).

Obviously I have problems with published patterns, since whatever my quirky knitting syle is, I can't ever seem to get an exact stitch and row gauge match, even with the exact yarn called for. And I'm not good enough yet to modify existing patterns to fit.

But there are other things I could do, that I think would work. I mentioned this briefly in a recent post, but one of my ideas is to use Ann Budd's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. You establish your own stitch gauge and follow a recipe based on that. Any length measurements are set up by inches, not number of rows, so row gauge doesn't enter into it at all. I think with all of that, I could construct something that fits. (If I can't, then I'll just stick with socks and scarves, and be done with it).

Yesterday I ordered three balls of different cotton blend yarns, to experiment with. I'm going to do major large swatches in each (because it seems to take me a major large chunk o' knitting to establish my gauge), then choose one and try designing a sweater using the book. I want to make a cotton, 3/4 length sleeve cardigan for warm weather.

Because those patterns are purposely simplistic, I can even add my own stitch patterns or embellishments, as long as I make sure to do a large gauge swatch in the pattern stitch, too, as well as in stockinette. And I should have enough yarn to do all that. (But I plan to keep it simple - the whole point is to do something enjoyable that works, not frustrate myself further).

I'm thinking of a scheme to make a version of Celtic Icon this way, too. I was thinking that I could design a sweater using the Ann Budd book, but incorporate the cable pattern from Celtic Icon into it. It might not be exact, but there wasn't anything special about the particular design of the sweater itself, it was the cables that I liked. So I may still make a version of that sweater, using the cable pattern but nothing else from the written instructions.

So that's where I'm at. Scrapping everything I've currently got going, and starting over, hopefully learning new skills (such as how sweaters actually fit together) that will enable me to make the things I want to make, and then actually be able to wear them.

There are a lot of other books about how to design garments that fit, without a pattern, by using measurements. I think considering my past problems, I might benefit from those skills - if I learned that kind of thing, maybe I could even learn to modify existing patterns when I can't match their stitch and row gauge. But, one step at a time.

So ... a new adventure. I don't mind the challenge, but I hope I can avoid the endless frustration this time. I'll keep you posted.

&%#@(*@$# Lace.

That's all I have to say about that.

More Gardening News

I wanted to come home and knit tonight, but nature intervened. It rained much of last week, and is supposed to rain much of this week, but as it often goes in the spring, I had a two-day break. It was sunny and breezy yesterday and today, drying out the yard just enough to mow. I finally got the weed whacker re-strung, then trimmed the front and back. I wasn't going to mow tonight, but when I realized it was dry enough (and wasn't going to be again any time soon), I went ahead and did that too - front and back. It was worth it. The back yard is looking great.

Over the weekend the Dread Reverend added to our patios.

I think this looks awesome. I'm really impressed with it. He got some more rocks today, and is going to expand the patio closest to the garage, to run along the side of the garage for a ways too - in part to fill in another muddy spot, and in part to make a place for us to store firewood.

Meanwhile, one of the stealth squirrels was out yesterday ...


... sneakily making his way down for a snack.


I bought these antlers at a flea market years ago, on a whim, and when I fixed up the pond bed, I mounted them there. Originally it was a full set, both sides matching (and usually staying upright). I began to notice squirrels chewing on them, and eventually they chewed one side off entirely (and always have them sideways from standing on them). Apparently they have a serious calcium deficiency.

But now they just look kind of silly. I think I'll take them down this year, and since the squirrels like them so much, maybe I'll put them up somewhere else, where they can munch to their heart's content.

Doing the yard work got me enthused about the planting - the one gardening thing I haven't gotten around to yet. I want to condition the pond bed with a couple bags of compost and manure (because right now it's just about pure clay), and then plant some new stuff in there! It's looked like hell for years, and my feeble sporadic attempts at planting there have just failed.

But this year I hope to do better. I've always wanted to have gardens, and nice landscaping. My dad was great at it. I don't think I inherited his green thumb, but in addition, I've just been too distracted and busy for the past, oh, 8 years or so to deal with it.

Now, I find myself having the time and energy for it. Since January or February I've been perusing gardening magazines and books, planning what I'd like to do there.

I've come up with just about squat. I've decided to get a couple cranesbills to start (hardy geraniums - blooming perennials, not to be confused with the the pot geraniums you can buy as a houseplant). Beyond that, I'm just unsure exactly what I want to do there.

I guess as long as I consider the entire thing an experiment and an adventure, I can't really go too far wrong. And it's high time to get busy ordering this stuff ... I'm ordering from a catalog this year because they have a deal, $25 off any order over $50. That's a pretty darned good deal, and I'm taking advantage of it - $50 worth of stuff for $25. $25 I can afford; $50 I can't.

So after doing the lawn, I spent some time filling out my order. I'm both excited and nervous - everything I've ever tried to plant around here has died within a year or two. I know part of that was my lack of knowledge and neglect. I'm hoping I can do better from here on out.

Lace. Ouch.

This lace is really putting me through my paces. Here's how today went.

I had gotten about two rows past the point where I kept screwing up, with no problems.

This morning I decided to do some relaxing Sunday knitting. Hah.

The first thing I noticed was that you're not supposed to run your life-line through your stitch markers.


Which I did ...


... but fortunately not all the way across, just on the two end markers, and the two smack-dab in the middle. This was going to cause a problem because as I knit past them, the markers would continue to pull the life-line along with them.

So I decided to do some surgery. Since I had plenty of life-line left on the ends, I pulled some out by the markers, cut it, pulled it out of the markers, and tied a knot.


This mostly worked - the knot wouldn't slide through the stitches, but since it was a small area with no increases, I didn't think it was going to be too big a deal. The two on the ends I just left - I figured I could pull the life-line up along with the markers, being right on the edge that way.


I intended to put another life-line in every section repeat, and the sections are only 20 rows high, so I wouldn't have to carry it far.

Ah, but it was not to be.

After awhile I decided to move out to the back porch, and took my knitting with me. I did a few things outside, and then when I sat down to knit, I discovered to my horror that my needle had pulled out of about 2" worth of stitches. There they were, just unraveling and dangling and no where near any needle.

I eyed it sadly for a few minutes, but I knew there was no way I was going to be able to put it back together. If it was just straight knitting, I could do it - even with dropped stitches, I can fix that. But not in lace.

I took a deep breath and made use of the life-line. I ripped back to that, which was back to the beginning of this section, about 3 or 4 rows. Not a terribly long way to go, so it wasn't too painful. Putting the stitches back on was kind of a pain - Addi Turbos are nice needles, but the ends, while tapered, are not pointy enough for this.




But I got it done. Meanwhile,I discovered the down side of making sure your life-line doesn't run through your markers. When you rip back, all of your markers fall off, and you have nothing to keep track with. I decided to go ahead and knit the first row, then put the markers back on on my way across the back on the purl row. (Why there? I have no freaking idea; and no, it didn't work).

I re-knit across the row, and having no markers to keep track of my progress, got clear to the end of the row before I realized that I was about 4 stitches short.

Back to the frong pond. Ripped back again (just one row, not that dire). The next time across I put the markers in as I went, and double checked each section again on my way across. And got it right.

So then I had just a purl row - piece of cake right? Huh. I managed to drop a stitch on my way across. It should have been easy, but in my flustered state after the downhill slide of the morning, it took me several minutes to find it. It was a dropped yarn-over. Fixed, and moved on.

Next row, knitting along, suddenly noticed I had lost my place on the chart and was knitting the wrong section. Okay, no problem - I can unknit 8 or 10 stitches and get back on track. Sure I can. Somewhere along there I - AGAIN - got screwed up, and ... I don't know exactly what happened there, all I can tell you is when I unknit the section I had 12 stitches instead of 14. But I couldn't see any homeless and unraveling stitches. I believe that I screwed up unknitting a couple of knit-two-togethers, only taking off one of them instead of both. But in my flustered state, again, I couldn't figure it out.

Eventually I did fix this, too. Not exactly right. I did get my 14 stitches back, without just faking it and making any. But when I looked at it at the end of the row, it was obvious something wasn't quite right ... there was a marked lack of solidity in that section, as if I'd unknit several rows down, then just used those loops for my current row. Like slipping several rows instead of actually knitting them. So it will be a glitch in the pattern, but hopefully it won't be too noticeable down the road. (Because I wasn't ripping back for that).

So it was a rough, rough lace-knitting day. But ... I did get it all fixed, and I'm back on track. I've completed that section, and I'm ready to put my next life-line in. The last time I put it in at the beginning of the most complicated row of the pattern. I learned my lesson from that - knitting that first row after the life-line is tricky, with the life-line kind of in your way. Doing it on a complicated row just makes it that much harder. The last row of the section is the simplest, having only a couple yarn-overs and center double decreases, and the rest all straight knitting. This time I'm putting the life-line in at the end of that row, before a purl row. That way the only thing I have to do along that first row with the life-line in my way is purl stitches.

Now things are going to get interesting. Because I'm up to where I have to start making multiple repeats of a center panel of this section. In this last bit I only had to make one repeat, and although it was mostly easy, that was - toward the end - where I kept screwing up and losing my place. Now I'll have more than one to keep track of, and I've got to figure out a better way to do it than by memory, if I want to try to avoid more mistakes.

And I'm still loving knitting this lace. It' s a freaking addiction. Well, I guess I've learned some things about lace. You definitely have to be a 'process knitter' to do lace - at least the way I do it (one step forward, two steps back). If I didn't love the process, I'd have given up 5 tries ago. I can live with the ripping out and re-knitting (if I must), but what really frustrates me is when I make a mistake (like knowing I dropped a stitch but not being sure where) or need to unknit a section, and I can't read the knitting to tell what I'm doing. I hope that with more experience and practice, I'll learn this skill as well.

GiftYarn!!!! And Needles!!! And Rocks!!!

You know, I've heard of this, but never been the happy recipient of one - a knitter's care package. My friend and fellow knit-fiend Wren came into a stash of knitting needles, and sent me a bunch. Check this out!


I've never knit on anything larger than a 9 or so, so of course I have to jump right on getting some super bulky yarn and knitting something up on those 15s. Just to say I did it.

She also sent me this ...


... a hank of Mountain Colors Bearfoot, handpainted superwash wool! Yummmm! It's awesome ... I'm just going to keep it here on the kitchen table to admire and pet until I figure out what it wants to be.

Thanks, Wren! You rock!

In other knitting news ... I'm almost hesitant to post this, because every time I do, something goes wrong, but ...


...I started the Triangles Shawl over again. I've been very, very careful ... to the point of obsession. I check every row against the chart before I move on. Last night I hit the spot where every other attempt has gotten screwed up beyond fixing. This time I did a few things differently. I put in a couple extra markers to give myself good places to stop and go back and compare the stitches to the chart. Now that the stitch count is getting higher, I want to be able to do this in increments as I work across, rather than trying to go do the whole row at once - that's going to get too tedious and leave too much chance of making a mistake as it gets bigger.

The second thing I did was I finally did the lifeline. Putting it in wasn't hard at all. Knitting around it on that first row was kind of a pain. Since I picked the beginning of a section to put it in, and since the first row of that section happens to be one of the hardest rows in whole pattern (well, I should say, most intricate - lots going on), that didn't help. Perhaps when I decide to put the next one in, I'll move it to an easier row.

I'm determined to make this shawl. One way or another. And so far, so good ... last night I made it past the row that usually screws me up. So, we'll see.

When I was taking pictures of the new landscaping done last weekend, there was one I didn't get because, I believe, it had gotten late and dark. I make amends now. The other project that got done with the pallet o' rocks was this:


The Dread Reverend built this - isn't this awesome? There was a spot right off the porch that was low and everytime it rained it turned into a big mud puddle. We couldn't keep grass growing there. So he built this in the spot, and it's working great. We're actually hoping to enlarge it a little bit later on, when we can get another pallet of rocks. But we had a few rocks left over, and today he's going to build a matching one of these on the other side of the porch.

The yard's coming along really nicely this year. I'm pretty pleased with it all.

But for now, I'm off ... I have a crazy busy day ahead. I have to go into work for a few hours (ugh - I hate working on Saturdays, but I'm too far behind, and with the days I missed this week I have no choice now); go to the bank; stop at Border's (book I want, still have gift cards from Christmas); go to the grocery store; and if I have time and don't run out of energy, I'd like to stop at one of the local garden centers for some things. And this evening, while the Dread Reverend is at band practice, I'd like to get in some practice time myself. I'd like to get back to the studio for another session, but don't have anything ready yet. I've been slacking on this project. The timing's bad - it's much easier for me to work on 'indoor' projects in the winter, as long as the weather's nice I pretty much live outside on the porch.

Anyway, I'm off to the busy day.