Elayne wanted to know how I did the sock toe.

I cast on 6 stitches, st-st for 7 rows (starting and ending with a purl row) and the picked up 6 stitches from each of the remaining sides. I then increased at the beginning of each needle, every row, mostly because I get distracted way too easily and remembering which row I'm on (to increase or not to increase, that is the question) is downright impossible. If one were able to remember to stop increasing at the start of every other row, one would have a more gradual slope. It's not entirely my fault, I was at work at the time, although Annie and I have a theory that red is the new blonde. I also intended to alternate increases - right or left slant - so that the toe would sort of lean towards the more ovular foot shape (ovular - that's a word right? a three year old once told me my cat Misha was ovular, so it must be!) rather than completely round, but I don't think I ended up doing that - it looks a little pinwheely. But I actually think I like that, because it let me choose completely which half was up and which was down.

I got a few more rows done on the Time-Space-Continuem shawl for my MIL.

I've timed myself knitting before, and I can generally knit between 50 - 70 stitches a minute, depending on how leisurely I'm feeling. For some reason, I pick up this shawl, which is NOT difficult, and it's like I'm barely knitting a stitch a minute. 437 stitches in the cast on and the first row took me over an hour. At this rate, I will have to pass the shawl onto grandchildren for them to finish, and since I don't plan on having kids of my own, that's saying something. I have deduced that the shawl is causing me to enter a time-space continuem, and being as I am no relation of Einstien (clever, yes, witty, sure, intelligent, highly, rocket scientist, eh not so much) I just don't know if I can beat it. What you see there is five hours of work. Seriously. It's more than a little scary.


And if you remember this adventure

you might be interested in a fashion follow-up. Here you can see that I've had to use a harness to actually strap the coat to him. He broke that harness later that day. He's now gazing out the window at Trouble, the German Shepherd next door that's about twice his size. They (luckily) get along well, and I must say I'm sorry for any bad guy that might try to sneak through a back fence with those two on guard. They're both loving dogs who are quite protective of their families, and both consider the back yard shared territory of which they are both allowed to be protective.

This is Oscar doing his "Down" command. What you can't see is that it lasted exactly as long as it took the camera to take the shot. If you look closely, you'll see his elbows aren't even on the ground. He will occasionally stay down, and it's something we're working on, but he's so impressed with himself that he knows the command that he tends to do a wrestler-like body slam onto the ground and bounce right back up. If you roll your eyes, he slams down again as if to say "look, I did it once, I'll do it again, now can I have the treat?" We don't even use treats when he's training, but he has to do tricks to get the treats, and despite the fact that GB is trying to teach him to dance, he knows down, so that's the one he'll do when he sees a treat anywhere around.

and dispite his expression here, he was not being mocked or reprimanded. I'm not sure why he thought he was in trouble, but at least you get to see his "I didn't mean for you to catch me" face.


I spent about 5 hours at the Knitathon Saturday. Knit a baby hat and baby blanket from start to finish, in an uncomfortable chair, in florescent retail lighting, and came home and wiped out. AC is out sick today, so that means twelve hours straight for me. I'm hoping that Cold Eaze keeps its word. Seems to be doing the trick so far. A mild period of feeling pooped, and a nightmare about not being able to blow my nose enough (seriously) but otherwise I'm hanging tough. I'm also spinning up some natural white alpaca, roughly laceweight, maybe sport when plied, to donate to Stephanie and the Knitters Without Borders. It's going pretty slowly too, although I am enjoying the process, so maybe it's the house that has the time space continuem, and not just the shawl itself...