Friday, October 22, 2010

More knitting after a short vacation

We finally got to take a quick trip to visit our oldest son since their return from a two year job in Belgium. Our granddaughter seems to have grown a foot and is showing signs of becoming a lovely young woman even though she has a few years before she'll hit the 'age' of being considered a woman.

While visiting, we bought yarn for a blanket as I've been promising this granddaughter a blanket for a very long time. In fact, yarn has been bought twice before, but it never seemed to work out. The first yarn was a boucle - my apologies to all the yarn companies who produce this type of yarn - I detest this yarn in all it's forms! Needless to say that blanket never got completed. Then I bought Caron Simply Soft in black and a rosy red, and I wasn't any happier with that as these old eyes tire quickly when working with black yarn . . . another.project.not.completed.

This time the yarn is an acrylic/cotton blend from Lion Brand called Baby's First . . . look how far it's come. I'm about 1/3 done. I'm 10 rows further than this picture shows. The colors she chose are Sea Sprite and Beanstalk, and aren't exactly true in this photo. I used a random strip generator to decide on the design, and she asked to have some garter stitch stripes thrown in so that is another design element. When complete it will be about 66" square.




In other fun news our youngest daughter got a three month old male St. Bernard puppy, subsequently named Havoc as he has wreaked havoc on previously peaceful existence. She had a St. Bernard for nearly 10 years until he died of old age recently leaving her devastated and lonely. Havoc has quickly adapted to her young cat and gleefully shares the cats toys. He is usually under foot and not more than three feet from his loving owner. In a very small house, that's not always a good thing as he seems to enjoy laying in front of the dishwasher or cookstove if she is in the kitchen. Life with Havoc isn't likely to be boring. His new playmate who is scheduled to arrive this coming weekend, an 11 week old female St. Bernard should liven things up a whole lot! She's accepting quite a challenge with the two of them. But they'll be good company for her and for one another. The cat will be out numbered but he can climb higher than the dogs so he'll be fine. Havoc is very popular with our granddaughters who live a few miles away, and he gets along fine with their black lab too.

Other knitting news, a few hats and scarves have been completed. One hat needs a pom-pom on the top and the matching scarf has yet to be finished.