Tail A Wagging!

Here, as promised, is my birthday present to you!  Every year now for the past four years, I've posted a new pattern on my birthday.  I love getting presents, but I love giving them even more!

This fellow might look a little familiar to some of you.  He's a version of the pattern that I did for one of the past dishcloth calendars.  I tweaked him and he's facing the opposite way.  He also doesn't have the heart border.

I get requests all the time for the old version of this pattern and the two other dog and cat patterns that I did.  All three of the designs were exclusive to the calendar.  The rights to them have been returned to me and I can choose to do whatever I want with them.  It would be easy just to post them, but I really don't think that's fair to those of you who purchased the calendar just for my patterns.  (And I know a lot of you did, because you told me so!)  On the other hand, you might have noticed that I'm not in the habit of selling any of my patterns!  What to do? I think I've come up with a fair solution.  I've decided to post the old designs in a "new" format.  They won't have the heart borders and I may change them slightly.  If you want them with the hearts, then you'll have to buy a back issue of the calendar.  Otherwise, you'll just have to settle for the basic design, which I hope you'll still think is cute!

This pup is 37 stitches wide so it will fit in with most of the other patterns for those who'd like to mix and match.  The pattern also includes a chart as well as the written directions.  The pdf files are in the sidebar, or you can get the bib by clicking here  and the cloth by clicking here.

Now, I get to go and open up my birthday presents!  Of course, with my husband laid up and unable to do much of anything on his own, I "had" to do my own birthday shopping!  There's no wrapping paper involved, but I do get to open the shipping boxes!  There are a couple of new knitting books and some of my favorite stitch markers  (I can never have enough of them!).  There's a possibility that there might even be a new skein of yarn. . .or two.

Blankets

Maureen sent me this picture of the beautiful blanket that she knit for her niece's new little baby, Henry.

It's it just gorgeous and didn't she do a wonderful job knitting it?  That is one very lucky (and warm) baby.  Maureen tells me that she used Berroco Soft Vintage in yellow.  She knit the hen by looking at the picture of the one I did for my Ruthie.  It reminds me that I still haven't posted those patterns yet!  They need to be tested and I have a slight recollection that someone offered to help me, but I haven't had time to go back through my messages to see who it was!  Maybe it was Maureen!!

I also want to direct your attention to this blanket pattern that was posted here on Ravelry.  It's a free pattern download.  She has used 27 stitches for each design block.  This would work nicely with many of my patterns as I use 37 stitches.  If you eliminate the borders, you have 27 stitches.

Finally, here is one more link of yet another blanket here.  Mandy put her blanket together by crocheting the squares.  (I think you may have to be signed onto Ravelry to see it.  If you aren't a member, you should be!!)

This has been so much fun for me to see all these wonderful blankets.  I love the distraction.  To update you, my husband came through his surgery just fine and is already off the pain meds.  Of course, he has to keep his leg in the cast for six weeks, so we'll see how he does once he starts physical therapy.  We may have to break out the pain pills once again!  For now, we're taking it one day at a time.  He can't really move without my help which means no work for either of us!  ("Work" as in gainful employment!)  Fortunately, we both have nice bosses so it isn't an issue. . .yet!  Thank you for all your nice notes and wishes of encouragement.  They mean a lot to both of us!

A Slight Interruption

I wanted to let you all know that there is going to be a slight interruption in posts on my blog for awhile.  My husband had an accident while hiking in the woods in back of our house the other day and is having surgery this week.  At first, they thought he had broken his leg, but instead he's torn his quad tendons which are above the knee.  These are the tendons that let you lift your leg.  It's going to be a long recovery.  They tell us that the surgery isn't too bad, but the rehab isn't fun.  He's looking at three to four months before it's over.  He's an active guy and an experienced hiker, so why he chose to wear his sneakers this time instead of his hiking shoes, I'll never know!  Fortunately, he did have his cell phone so after he realized that he couldn't move, he called the police and told them to dispatch the fire department.  They had to hike up to him on the trail and carry him back down. The one humorous note about all of this is that he used to be the fire chief here in town and he had to endure lots of good natured ribbing!  After he called the police, he called me and asked if I happened to see the fire truck go by the house.  When I told him that not only did I see the fire department, but also the police!  I was expecting him to tell me what was happening in the neighborhood, as he often has a portable scanner with him.  I wasn't expecting him to tell me that they were coming for HIM!  We're fortunate to have such a dedicated volunteer fire department and ambulance squad in our town.  Even a crew from the neighboring town showed up to help!

In any event, I now have to do everything for him.  He literally can't move his leg, although he can hobble around on crutches once I get him up.  My husband is always puttering around the house doing laundry, emptying and loading the dishwasher, vacuuming, mopping, etc.  Now, I get to do everything, not only around the house, but also for him.  It's a lot of running and fetching!  With all of this, I've discovered that I just don't have time to knit.  I've only managed to knit a little bit when he was having a MRI.  This isn't good (for me!) but it's also going to put a damper on blogging temporarily.

I do have this yarn that I bought a month ago.  It's from Lorna's Laces and is called "London 2012".

I've always loved watching the Olympics, so when Jimmy Beans Wool came out with this limited edition, I had to have it.  They ran a fun promotion to go along with it.  For every gold medal that the United States won, the price dropped a dime, a nickel for a silver and a penny for a bronze.  The more medals, the cheaper the yarn!  Two reasons to root for the home country!!  The yarn was shipped the day after the Olympics ended.

It has all the colors of the Olympic rings, but I will admit that I was a little disappointed when it arrived.  The colors kind of blend together in spots and it looks muddy here and there.  I was hoping that the colors would be brighter.  Still, I think I'll make socks for my eight year old grandson, Jack.  He would call me up when he saw the Olympics were on and we would watch them together.  It was fun listening to his running commentary.  I think he'd get a kick out of having Olympic socks.

Now, I just have to come up with a pattern.  Any ideas?  I'm kind of leaning toward Aero. I know it's a pattern for ankle socks, but I think it would be easy to convert to regular ones.  I want something fairly simple that I can pick up and put down easily, as I'll be doing a lot of jumping up and down over the next few weeks!

In any event, I promise to be back as soon as time permits!  I always try to post a pattern on my birthday (next month) and I'll definitely be doing that!  I have it on my needles now!

Purrfect

I wonder if anyone had trouble accessing the patterns for a couple of days?  You might have heard that someone hacked the BigDaddy website and caused major headaches for websites everywhere.  I also use them to host my patterns through my website. Things seem to be okay for now and hopefully, they've taken steps to make sure that it doesn't happen again.  I apologize if you had problems, but for once, it wasn't my fault!

In any event, here is one of my new patterns.

 I seem to have a lot of trouble with cat patterns.  I don't know why, but they're just difficult for me to do.  I only have a few number of stitches to work with, so it's sometimes hard to get the detail that I'd like and still make the creature recognizable!! 

Since so many knitters are using the patterns in blankets, I'm trying very hard to keep the stitch and row counts the same so they can be easily mixed and matched.  Deb just posted a picture on her website of a lovely blanket she made using my patterns.  You can check it out by clicking here .  I love seeing all of your pictures, so keep sending them!!

Both patterns are in the sidebar, or you can grab the bib by clicking here.  The cloth is here.

Free At Last!

I finally have finished all the obligated knitting I had and now I'm free to work on whatever I want!  Such a wonderful feeling!  I managed to knit yet another duck sweater, this time for a little girl in mint green.  I love the way this sweater comes out, but I just hate fighting with this yarn and I'm not crazy about having to sew up all those seams either.

 

 

This time around, I thought I'd get creative with the hat.  Since it was for a baby girl, I decided to knit a little ruffle for the brim.  How hard could it be to figure out?  Double the stitches, knit for an inch and then decrease.  Easy.  HAH!!  My first attempt was going along fairly well, until I realized that I had way too many stitches.  The hat would be huge, so I ripped it out and started over with fewer stitches.  When I was almost ready to begin decreasing, I noticed a large hole right in the beginning.  Since there was no way to fix it, I had no choice except to rip yet again.  Third time should be a charm.  I cast on even fewer stitches and this time I made it all the way to where I should begin knitting ducks.  I managed to get three rows done before the yarns all tangled up with each other to the point that I couldn't even pull them apart.  I looked at the mess in my lap, then I calmly picked up the hat, the yarn and my needles and threw them across the room!  My poor husband who happened to be sitting with me, just turned his head and said "feel better now?"  Actually, I did!  LOL!  I never have thrown knitting in my life, but it was actually a relief to just give up.  A word to the wise, don't try to invent a pattern when you have a deadline to meet.  I had wasted three whole days on this disaster!

 

At this point, I decided to just move on and start on some bibs.

I had to knit another duck bib and I thought it would be fun to knit my "Puddles" pattern.  You know, the one with the butterfly?  Anyway, I knit the whole thing and when I went to block it, I discovered that I had knit two eyes.  This would be fine, except that the duck was supposed to have one eye.  This creature looked like something Picasso would have drawn!  It was already done, the ends were all woven in and I was ready to begin bib #2. Grrrr!  I just decided to go back to the Quacking Up pattern and knit that instead.  You might notice that this duck is facing the opposite way.  Not only did I knit it in reverse, but I actually reduced the size of the bib so it conforms with the stitch and row count of all my recent patterns.  I'm wondering if I should write it up or if that would just confuse everyone.  You will notice that this duck does have one eye!!

Bib #2 was my Heartbeat pattern.  I love this design.  It always comes out cute no matter what color it's knitted in.

For Bib #3, I went back to one of my early designs, Rhonda's Delight.  This is such a neat pattern for using up those pretty variegated yarns.

It's fun to knit (in my opinion) and seems to go pretty quickly.  This design is named after Rhonda White who first published the DW Washcloth .  The bib was published in the 2009 Dishcloth Calendar.  It also is in need of a serious update!  I think it's good for me to go back and actually knit some on my old patterns so I can see what needs changing.  Those old pattern writing skills were a little shaky!

Back to the hat.  As I was knitting on the bibs, I decided to give it one more try.  Since I only had one day left before my deadline, I went for a simple rolled brim hat and only knit one duck in the center.

I cast on 72 stitches and knit in the round for about 2 inches, then I knit a couple of rows.  To begin the design, I cast on one extra stitch and knit back and forth so I could knit the duck with intarsia. When the design was completed, I started knitting in the round again and decreased the extra stitch.  When the hat was about 5 inches in length, I decreased the crown as follows: " k6, k2tog" to end; knit one row;  *k5, k2tog* to end; knit one row; *k4, k2tog* to end; knit one row, etc. until I ended up with four stitches.  Then I just knit an I-cord for about two inches and tied it into a knot. 

I just had to sew up the couple of inches in the back.  It's only slightly noticeable.  By adding the extra stitch, it made up for the seam.  (I'm aware that there is a method for doing intarsia in the round, but I didn't have time to try and learn a new skill!)

So there you have it.  All the baby presents for a shower I'm not even invited to.  I told my mom she could take credit for the knitting if she wanted!  She's almost 87 so let her have a little fun!

PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME FOR THE DUCK SWEATER PATTERN!!!  As far as I know, this pattern is still protected by its copyright.  I don't have any proof that the pattern is no longer available, but if you really want it, perhaps you could try contacting Sirdar.  Ebay has a lot of vintage patterns and there are a lot of other companies that specialize in old patterns.  If it was my own design, you know that I would share it in a heartbeat.

 

Forced Knitting

Last month, I was chatting with my mom, who'll be 87 next month.  She was lamenting that she had been invited to a baby shower for her neighbor's daughter and she just didn't know what she was going to get.  This actually translates to "would you knit something for me to give to the baby?".  I would do almost anything for my mom, so I decided just to go ahead and knit a sweater for her to give.  Mind you, at the time, I wasn't working on anything in particular so I was happy to help out.  I have a favorite sweater that I've knitted at least eight times over the years.  It's an old Sirdar pattern.

I've had this pattern for almost 15 years and the yarn has long since been discontinued.  When I heard that they weren't going to make it anymore, I bought up as much of it as I could find.  I even ordered some from England.  It's a pain to knit with, but when it's done, it feels and looks just like a light weight fleece.  It's incredibly soft.

In this picture, the blue almost looks gray, but in person it's a very pretty shade of blue.  I even found duck buttons for the back.

After it was done, I thought I might as well knit a hat so it would be a complete set.  I didn't have a pattern, but I just charted some small ducks and "winged" it.  It looked pretty big to me, but I measured it and tried to remember that babies almost always have huge heads!

This made for a cute baby gift, but then my sister chimed in and said she wanted to go in on the gift with my mother (my parents live with her) so I thought maybe I should add a bib.

This is my Quacking Up pattern and I thought it was appropriate with this whole duck theme.  I suggested that they finish it up with a little rubber duck and maybe even a duck book!

My mom was just thrilled and was very grateful.  Personally, I was just happy that it was done so I could move on to other things.  My sister, however, was really happy, so much so that she informed me that she needed another sweater for a little girl that was going to be born at the end of this month.  Not only that, but she had already bought a duplicate book and duck!!  I can't begin to tell you how thrilled I am to have to knit another identical sweater.  I guess because she doesn't knit, she doesn't realize how boring it is to knit the same thing over and over.  I'm dragging my heels on this second one, first because I just don't want to do it, but also because I just finished charting up two brand new bibs and I want to work on them instead! 

On a personal note, I lost my wonderful aunt a couple of weeks ago.  It was so unexpected and sudden.  She lived alone and they found her on the floor in her apartment.  I was really close to her and I've had a hard time dealing with the loss.  I was her flower girl over fifty years ago!  We always had a special relationship and we shared a lot of the same interests.  I remember when I was young, someone gave me a little kit of embroidery pictures of nursery rhymes and she offered to show me "how to do it".  I sat right beside her while she stitched. . .and stitched. . .and stitched!  I kept begging her to let me "try it now", but she kept telling me that I should let her just do a "few more" stitches.  Well, as you might have guessed, she ended up stitching the whole thing.  I don't remember actually learning much, except that she did tell me that I had to keep the back nice and neat.  I've always remembered that and, to this day, I still keep the back of my work neat.  I really miss her but I have lots of wonderful memories.

On a more positive note, when I finish this sweater, I'll start on the new patterns.  One good thing is that I won't have any more of this yarn when the sweater is finished so I won't have to make another.  For a girl anyway.  I do still have lots of blue. .


Cheep Feet

You may remember that my grandson, Jack, has a parakeet (Fred) that he just loves.  I thought it would be fun to surprise him with some parakeet socks after I found this chart on Ravelry.

I changed the pattern slightly by eliminating the yellow and by adding an extra space between the birds.

I needed to go back and add the yellow beaks, but I just duplicate stitched them.

I think it's really tricky to strand socks, as there's no stretch, so you have to make them large enough to pull on or be super careful about leaving enough slack.  Unfortunately for me, the first sock was way too tight.  I had to just cut the yarn and start all over again.

Usually I cast on between 52 and 54 stitches for his socks, but the only way I could get the pattern to work in this case was to cast on 66 stitches.  I made up for all the extra width by ribbing the foot.  I also made them a little longer, so they'd last.  My thought was that if they were larger, I might not have to make another pair. . . ever!

The yarn is Holiday Yarns Flock Sock in Ice Bear.  It's almost the same color as Fred.  I had some leftover Bamboo Regia that was mottled just like his head. (Fred's, not Jack's!)  I like having the varying shades of gray. The white was Cascade Heritage.

Jack just loves the socks and his mom says that he wants to wear them ALL the time.  Sigh, looks like I may end up having to knit another pair after all.