Achoo!

So I have to tell you this story.

(As an aside, I keep composing blog posts in my head which never make it to pixel form because of the craziness of life... I have so many pictures and stories to share!!! Even some about knitting!!!)

Piper and I headed up to Eric's this weekend to visit and attend a wedding reception for a couple that got married in Ohio, but live in Cali. The party was at a good friend's house that is in Three Rivers. In Three Rivers, there are burn regulations that require the tall grass to be cut around the house, but on the outskirts of the property there is lots of dry tall grass.

Back to the party, there were a couple of dogs there that Piper was desperately trying to make friends with... she was so cute. Emma, an Australia Shepard, was telling her to back off... but Piper just like LET'S PLAY!!! WEEEE! Actually, she was minding Emma pretty well. Anyway, I was enjoying the food and drink and chatting with the grown ups and always keeping an eye on Piper. She went down to play with some girls on the swing in the tall grass. Suddenly, she was sneezing herself silly! Propelling herself backwards in circles she was sneezing so violently... So I ran down and picked up her little sneezing butt and took her to the bathroom. I had a sinking feeling I knew what it was... a freaking FOXTAIL. One of those pokey annoying things that gets stuck in your sock when you take a hike... Like this:

Google "foxtail dog" and you will find horror stories about how foxtails are really invasive sneaky things that have barbs like a fishhook and thusly move in one direction... IN. So if a dog gets one in it's eye, or ear, or NOSE... it could definitely go to it's brain or lung within 10mins and terrible things will happen. Ok... not really 10min but that's what I assumed.

So back to sneezing Piper... I set her on the bathroom counter and looked her over. The whole right side of her face was squinched up and her eye was watering sad little tears. I looked up her nose, but have you ever looked up a puppy nose?? You can't really see much, especially if they keep sneezing in your face. Then I noticed she was sneezing BLOOD. UGGGGH. This is not good. Not good at all. By this time she was starting to calm down and I checked out her watery eye... it looked fine. So I carried her out to consult the other dog owners at the party. Should I rush her to the emergency vet an hour away? Or can I wait until Monday to take her to her regular vet. Everyone said it was probably ok to wait... the foxtails don't really move at the speed of light to the brain and lungs. I tried to settle her down as much as possible and she seemed to be ok except for occassional bursts of sneezies. She was actually acting very normal on Saturday and even Monday morning, but still the sneezing... so I took her to the vet. They kept her for an hour and sedated her for a good look up her nose. This is what they found.

Holy cow that thing is HUGE. It's 3.5 cm long. Just imagine having that up YOUR nose. Poor thing. She was really disoriented last night... searching and searching for something she couldn't find. Maybe she missed the smell of foxtail in her nose? Or maybe she was just excited to not have a horrible pokey tickely thing up her nose as she sniffed around? Who knows... OY! What will it be next???

Yikes!

I ran out of space on my computer!!! I have a 150GB hard drive and it's completely full... mostly of photos. I can't even upload the latest Piper photos!

This calls for a run to BestBuy. I already have a 500GB backup drive, but I need double backup in order to feel safe enough to actually delete things from my hard drive. Scary. Hopefully I have more cute pup photos by the end of the weekend! She's getting so big!

Puppy Love.

Piper is continuing to adjust to her new life and routines... She can be a whiney little baby, but she sure is cute. Here are some more photos. Click on any of them to go to my flickr where there are even MORE puppy pics. Enjoy. :)

P.S. She has to wear a cone now because her spay incision is swollen and not healing as quickly as we'd like. Poor girl. Hopefully it can come off soon.

Meet Piper.

Well! I've decided on a name. Meet Piper! Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

She is so freakin' cute. There is definitely lab in her... she already fetches purple squeeky whales and brings them back! It's amazing what those instincts do. Let's watch her in action:

She is so clumsy right now! But extremely enthusiastic, leaping and bounding across the yard. Here are some more snaps from yesterday. Have a great day!

Uh-oh.

I might have more inspiration to blog because I have a super cute puppy to photograph. Uhoh... I smell trouble.

She's a lab mix. The best guess is that the mix is weimaraner. A labmaraner! She still needs a name. Front-runners are JoJo, Josie, Lily, Misty. I'm open to suggestions... suggest away!

Eep.

Work is sucking my will to live. I'm still knitting. And weaving! But blogging and photography are suffering. I'm sorry. Truly, I am. But something has to give. Hopefully, I can motivate myself to post here more often, but I can't promise anything. Keep on, keeping on! Sometimes it is only the knitting that keeps me sane...

Alhambra

I have a new favorite yarn: Malabrigo Sock. It's soft, versatile, squooshy, washable, and comes in an amazingly gorgeous array of colors. I recently finished knitting Alhambra out of Malabrigo Sock in Archangel. It was a great pairing of pattern and yarn. The pattern was dynamic, yet easy to memorize and really played-up the colors in the yarn. I may have taken too many a lot of pictures of this lovely scarf using my new lens (35mm Nikon DX F1.8). :D

Also, I've been busy casting-on for a couple new projects. I fell in love with the Whisper Cardigan in the most recent Interweave Knits so I acquired some lovely green Malabrigo Lace in Verde Esparanza (Green Hope). It's striping on the sleeve which is an unexpected development. I'm pretty sure I like it though.

And a guess green is TEH color right now because I'm also making another slouchy hat for Paul in Juniper Heather in Knitpicks Shadow (double stranded). Huh. Go green!

Happy knitting everyone!

Yarn Dyeing!

Today I went to a (highly anticipated) yarn dyeing class at the Stitch Cafe! It was some serious fun. I used Sterling yarn as my base which has 2% silver in it so it has these awesome sparkly bits that glitter in the light. I wussed out and chose a safe color to dye: purple & pink. BUT! I'd like to think it's a very complex semi-solid dye job. Anyway, I story of dye is best told in photos.

The colors I mixed: Greypurple, Pinkpurple, Rosepink, Fushia.

Halfway through dyeing the second side.

After the first cook.

Gloria's hands... no gloves for her!

I heart utility sinks. I want one. No... I need one.

The doodle pad.

Rinsing. Not much bleeding! Sweet.

Drying in the sun.

**View the whole slide show from the day HERE!**

Malibrigo Madness.

Recently it's been all Malbrigo yarn around here. I've been stashing Malbrigo for awhile now. I just love love love how soft and squooshy the yarn is... plus the colors are fabulous. And I just got my grubby mitts on some Malbrigo sock in Archangel. Goooooorgeouuuuus.

I couldn't resist! I cast-on for an Alhambra scarf with haste! Then, after I finished my spiral boot socks*, I cast-on for a Merino Malbrigo hat. I started with the Koolhaas pattern, but the skein of Cuarzo I have is too varigated and it obscured all those lovely cables. So I switched to Felicity.

I love it! The colors pooled so perfectly for the first part of the hat. It almost looks like stripes, but it's actually a lazy spiral. Awesome!

It was a super quick knit too... only a couple evenings of knitting. Highly recommended. Happy knitting!
*Spiral Boot Socks are having a few slouching problems currently. Tsk tsk. Bad posture never flattered anyone. Unfortunately, when I blocked them, they grew a bit. So I have to buy some Rainbow Elastic to remedy the problem. I'll take some pics when they are completely finished.

Trying something new.

I'm going to try something different. I started a new blog on Wordpress. I've been thinking about switching Knit Along the Way from Blogger to Wordpress for awhile. The main thing that's holding me back is template flexibility. Blogger is way more customizable (for free anyway). I like to post large photos and I've, so far, been unable to change the column or photo sizes in the Wordpress templates. I have to do a little more research. For the time being, I'm going to try out Wordpress with a photoblog. Without further ado, go check out my new blog... Let Me Show You a Story: a year in photos.

Also, I added a Flickr badge down at the bottom of the page. My sister mentioned that she missed that from my old blog layout. Stay tuned for some knitting. :)

Finished Lady.

I finished something big and fabulous: my Lady Eleanor stole. I love her and I've worn her pretty much every day since I finished her. She was blocked during the inauguration of President Obama.

I loved knitting this stole. The silk garden was lovely as ever. Despite all the knots and veggie matter that I had to pluck from the strands, this yarn is pretty awesome. The colors in the colorway are so pretty. I love all of them. And entrelac is so addicting! The squares just speed by, especially when you get the hang of knitting backwards. The fringe took two nights to finish... don't underestimate the fringe! It really makes the shawl. Ok... I had Eric take some shots while we were visiting Ruby, Alice, and Tom last weekend. Enjoy.

Here's a Story...

Well! The holidays are over. I'm a little slow getting back into the routine, but it's hard to come back to reality after such a long vacation. Christmas Gift Knitting this year was a big hit! I managed to take a series of photos of the WIP/FOs before I left for the East Coast.

Quite Brady-esque, dontcha think?

As you can see from the mosaic, I got quite a lot done before leaving on a jet plane, but I still had plenty to finish. There was still 80% of a hat (on US3 needles *eep*), 1 Fetching mitt, and a full pair of man mittens to knit. Not to mention the earrings I wanted to add to the cowl gifts. So did I get everything finished in time??? Oh! the suspense...

Yay! Happy, warm people all around!

I did it!!! I managed to finish everything. PHEW! I've gotta cut back on my gift recipients next year, or start even earlier. It was so fun to see everyone enjoy their gifts! It was really hard this year because I really wanted to keep the majority of the things I knit. The navy/yellow/purple hat for my sister, the squooshy oatmeal hat for brother-in-law, the Fetching mitts, the earrings! It's very satisfying to share my work though. I might even be able to whip up a pattern for the nautical hat I made my sister. It'll be more like a recipe than a pattern though... We'll see.

I have lots more photos to share from my vacation. I'll post more later after I have the energy to process them.

Ok, now back to selfish knitting... Lady Eleanor, here I come!