Shhh

This is all I can show you of what I just finished for now. Pre-blocked and stretched. It is currently sprawled out on my couch with 96 pins holding it in place until it drys. That left me with 4 extra pins...whew.

The reason it's on my couch and not on the floor where it usually would be is because of:
Canela is a teeny chi-weenie hanging out for the weekend. She is literally my shadow. I get up - she gets up. I sit down - she's in my lap. When I was pinning my project on the couch she crawled -under- it and hung out until I got up. As long as she doesn't freak out about the ferrets we'll be ok. So far she barked and ran out of the room when she saw the cage. But the cage is in the bedroom, so this could be interesting...

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Merry Christmas!

Little Ninja minus one eye (turns out it -was- a boy.. promise I'm not usually wrong on that one)

We tried to get one with a bow on his head, but that proved too distracting to get a focused picture. He absolutely -loved- all the wrapping and boxes!

Have an awesome and fun day!

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One more thing

Earlier this year we lost Buddy Rich. Above is one of the last photos I have of him with his favorite ball. He'd lost a lot of weight at this point. We only found out afterward, but he had a tumor on his intestines. One night he seemed to be doing very poorly and I took him to work with me the next day so I could keep an eye on him. By that afternoon he had passed. I'm thankful I had the foresight to bring him with me and also thankful he held on until Mike could come and say Good Bye.



Baby missed him a ton and seemed to fall into a pretty bad depression without him. I don't blame him, he was never away from Buddy since he was 8 weeks old. A couple of months after, a stray ferret came into the shelter who stole the hearts of everyone because she was so neat in her cage. After an exam by the vet we found out she was around 7 years old (that's really old in ferret years), had an enlarged spleen, and likely had some adrenal disease (which Baby also has).

I spent some time with her at work and she sat either in my sweater or on my shoulder, perfectly content for close to half an hour. I was won over and so was Mike. I brought her home that night and within a couple of days Baby and she were snuggled together and Baby was back to his old self! They are a super cute couple and Mike has named her Victoria. She is very loving and playful and fits right in!

With each loss comes the opportunity for a gain. I'm so happy for all of us, but especially Baby, that Victoria has come into our lives. I think she's just as happy to have us since she gives us kisses every time we hold her.

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Early Resolution?

I was shying away from blogging for a while, but I want to catch up!

To sum things up: I finished my cardigan and wore it a ton before it got too chilly, it's perfect. I'm working on Mike's Wash Sweater and the blur of lace which has turned out to be much easier now that I have the hang of it. Both I hope to finish before the end of the year.

Fosters:
I've had tons of kittens - here are a few:
Mercutio and Taffy. We almost kept Mercutio because he was so awesome. We had them for nearly a month while they recovered from URI and Conjunctivitis. These were the first (and only so far) that I had to bring back and put on the adoption floor myself. I'll admit it - I cried! I miss them tons.

Bumble Bee and Beatle Juice. They were my first kittens who didn't need to be bottle fed. They were super sweet and loved each other soo much. They were super shy at first but soon were sleeping in our bed with us. Ended up going home together which warmed my heart to no end!

My latest kitten was Ninjaa who was a girl. She was super sweet but had a really messed up eye so I don't have any good photos of her. She's out with another foster mom for a couple weeks then her eye will likely need to come out.

Lastly, I had a puppy foster for about a week! Her name is Snookie (but we called her Molly). Her front legs were deformed from being confined in too small of a crate for too many hours a day and we gave her physical therapy as often as she would let us. She's now completely back to normal and is waiting for her home at the shelter!

She's a little hellion, but she's awesome. I can't wait until she finds a permanent home. No puppy should have to grow up in a shelter. And she's so cute! I don't get it. She's like a little cow/pig cross.

Anyways, there are a few knitting projects I've made that I won't post about because this would end up too long. And I don't have decent pictures of them anyhow. I'll start posting them on here again from now on!

Promise.

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Second Chances

I was getting really far on both of my projects when disaster hit.

My Safire cropped cardigan was zooming along, I was almost done with the shaping and about ready to start the bottom ribbing when I realized... it seemed rather large. I had been trying it on to make sure it wasn't too small, but I didn't stop to think about if it was big. And it was. By many inches. I decided I needed to start all over. :(

But, I learned my lesson and -actually did a gauge swatch-! I went down 2 needle sizes and thought it'd be perfect. But oddly, it wasn't..I was still too big. Either I'm the loosest knitter ever or my yarn is thicker then the recommended yarn. So I'm now down 2 needle sizes and making the smaller size. It should end up just about perfect if my math was correct.

I finally restarted it today on the bus and it's already coming along nicely. After a very crazy day at work it was nice being able to turn on my podcast and just mindlessly knit on my way home.

My second disaster ended up being a very good thing. I was working on my shawl when....the last stitch slipped off the needle when I was moving the project to a different location. It was completely and totally unfixable. There had been bind offs and adding stitches, not to mention the sheer size of yarn and complicated stitches!

After making sure everyone in the house knew what a terrible thing had just happened to me, I ripped it out and started it all over again (it was only 18 rows. But each row is taxing!) But this time around I knew what I was doing! So I cast on much looser and did the first row correctly and man, you can tell. It looks a lot better and I am really glad I ended up restarting.

Oh, and I already want to start another project. I found a pattern for the sweater Wash wears in Firefly and Mike wants one!

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