Dogs on Thursday

"We know it's raining...we want to come outside and play anyway. Then we can jump on your bed and wipe our muddy paws and dry ourselves off. Pleeeeeease let us out."

Welcome to the World

For everyone who sent "happy healthy baby" vibes this way, I have the pleasure of introducing......Alexis Sophia!

Mom and baby are doing fine, as you can see in this photo This is about 18 hours after the birth, and mommy and baby and are both as happy and healthy as can be.

Here is new mom, new baby, and new Gram.

Even though I'm her Aunt, I think Alexis is the most beautiful baby in the world. Little Lexi says "Wow, being born is hard work. I need a nap now."

What a Welcome! Pass the tissues...

For this week's installment of Dogs on Thursday, I decided to photograph the welcome I get each time I walk in the door. It goes something like this:

Emma: "Mommy's Home! Aaaaa-Chooo! Aaaaa-Chooo!"

Emma: "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! You're Home! Aaaaa-Choooo!"

Emma: "Hey, Tara, Mommy's Home! Aaaa-Chooo! "

Emma: "Hooray! Mommy's Home!"

Tara: "Yes, I see mommy's home. Welcome home mommy. Please let me out into the backyard so I can get away from Emma. She is sneezing on me."

Emma should be in the running for The Weirdest Dog award. Whenever she is really, really, happy, she curls her lips back and sneezes. Usually it's just when we get home from work, or her Grammy and Grampa come over for a visit. It is the funniest thing to see. What is it like getting sneezed on every day? I love it. Oh, and as much as my dad complains about it, he loves it, too!

Everywhere You Look.....Cats!

This past weekend, I helped move some stuff to my niece's new apartment. It's a unique situation, in that there are cats everywhere. Truly....everywhere. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, because she will be working for a cat sanctuary. It's really cool, but a little weird to see so many cats in one place. It's called Tabby's Place, and it's a non-profit organization that takes in cats who have nowhere else to go. If they can find a loving homes, great. Here is the list of cats, by the way. If not, the cats are welcome to stay at Tabby's Place (receiving the best of care) for as long as they live. How great is that?

Here's Jen outside the building.

This is the self-appointed guard cat, I suppose. I didn't get her name, but she was in this comfy bed by the door and stayed there the whole time we were walking around. You'll notice her lack of ears - she has cancer, and has had a couple of surgeries recently. This is the view into the lobby from the front door. There are several rooms that hold bunches of cats. One for weight control feedings, one for sick cats, etc. The only cage I saw was the one in the center of the lobby. It is for a paralyzed cat that uses one of those wheely-cart thingies to get around. When not in the cart, he can go back to his cage and be safe from other cats pestering him.This is a close-up of one of the cat rooms.
In addition to the cats in the rooms, there are also cats wandering around freely. Here is one enjoying a nap on a chair in the lobby. Note the hand-made blankets he is snuggled up with!

Here is another cat, who has appointed himself as guard of the fax machine. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it!

As an extra bonus, look what we found about 10 minutes from Jen's new apartment:
Yes, a yarn store! How lucky is that? We just had to stop in. Did you see the "sale" sign in the window? Who could resist? Just a little bit of stash enhancement. None of it was on sale, but that's OK.

Do you remember this post from just last week? You would think I could exercise the tiniest bit of self control, but noooo. I have already cast on for a pair of fingerless gloves.....

and a pair of socks.
I'm hopeless.

(Reluctant) Dogs on Thursday

Happy Dogs on Thursday! This week I decided to have one of my girls model the SWS hat that I have been knitting. Who gets the honor of modeling the hat? Well, Emma can run faster than Tara, so Tara it is. I give you Tara (a.k.a. TaTa Dog, Tatters, Tattoo, Toodle-Oooo) sporting the latest in unfinished headwear.

The yarn is Paton's Soy Wool Stripes from my Secret Pal (thanks SP!) and the pattern was found on Ravelry. The model was patient, to a point, then just wanted to get the "photo shoot" over with and get paid. In treats, of course!

Happy Halloween!

This year was the best Halloween that I can remember. I took the day off work, and Mom and I went to the Halloween parade at my sister's school. This is her first year as Principal at the elementary school, and, after 20+ years of teaching 8th graders, and 7 years in administration at the high school level, this was quite a switch. She had to dress up in a costume! Hilarious! After weeks of agonizing over what she could be, (while still maintaining a shred of dignity and credibility) she decided that a scarecrow would be the least embarrassing costume. OK, I set to work. Fabric for patches, raffia for "straw", hat, birds and bandannas all transformed an ordinary pair of jeans and denim shirt into this:
Here is a full length shot of her with some of the kids:

And here she is with nephews Zach and Danny, who are going to have a little sister very soon:


And here she is in her office saying "This had better not end up on your blog!" I assured her that the only reason I took off work was to get some pictures for the blog. Happy Halloween!

Somebody Help Me!

I used to have a couple of socks on the needles at any given time. One at home, and one in the car. Then I discovered knitting blogs and Internet pattern resources, and got a severe case of "I need to cast on [insert whatever sock pattern I happen to be reading about at any given time]right away." And don't even get me started on Ravelry. Ravelers are just a bunch of enablers! Anyway, instead of having one sock-in-progress sitting patiently on the little table next to my knitting chair, I have graduated to a footstool to hold all of my current projects.

Granted, the bottom two trays are full of sock yarn scraps that need to be worked into this mitred square blanket.

Yes, it's been a while since I touched it, but it's been way too hot here to work on such a big piece of knitting. The basket on top of the blanket holds my current socks-in-progress. (Not to be confused with the socks-in-progress that have stalled for some reason or another and are fermenting in a drawer elsewhere.)
I emptied out the contents of the basket onto the floor, and took some photos. I kind of feel like I'm airing my dirty laundry, but I'm hoping that I can shame myself into actually finishing something from this basket in the next week or two. Or three. Or four. Certainly by Christmas. St. Patrick's Day? OK, Easter, but that's it!

The top three photos are relatively recent cast-ons. The second two are socks that have been sitting in that basket for way too long and I'm getting sick of looking at them. I've either got to finish them or add them to stash of fermenting projects. The bottom two photos are a hat using yarn from my Secret Pal, and a snuggle that I read about on Nichole's blog. I got the pattern from the http://www.snugglesproject.org/ website. I couldn't help myself with the last two. I had never tried Soy Wool Stripes yarn before, and I just couldn't wait. (Love it, by the way). And the last item, the snuggle, is for homeless pets. Who can resist making a nice warm blankie for an animal in a shelter? Not me.

Seriously, I have to stop casting on new projects. I have run out of double-pointed needles...at least until the ones I ordered arrive. Hopefully they will be here any day now, because I really want to cast on these Rainbow Socks by Susanne Kitzmann that I read about on Shelly's website.

See what I mean? I'm hopeless.

Dogs on Thursday

Even though these poor, deprived dogs only have about seventy-ba-jillion toys, it never fails that they both want the toy the other one is playing with.

Hey, that's my ropey-toy!

No, that's my ropey-toy!

No, that's MY ropey-toy!

They're off to settle this question!

It Gives Me That Warm Feeling Inside

Literally, warmth for the winter. Thanks to the best Dad in the world and his trusty pickup truck, take a look at this:

You are looking at two tons of pellets for the pellet stove. Yes, 2 tons, as in 4000 lbs! We're gonna be warm this winter! Well, at least one room of the house will be warm, but it's a big room, and that's where I do my knitting--can't have frozen fingers. The rest of the house will still be like walking into an icebox, and I'll be wearing two pair of socks and slippers to bed under lots of blankets with my 52-pound-hot-water-bottle-with-a-heartbeat (a.k.a. Emma) under the covers. But my knitting chair is right next to the pellet stove, and I'll be toasty warm while I'm knitting. Nothing else really matters, does it?

Yarn Harlot Day - Where to Start?

Yarn Harlot Day was everything I had hoped for, and more.

We started out at 9:00am, drove to Joanns, had lunch & shopped at Wegmans, then headed off to Borders. Having called the day before, I knew they weren't handing out wrist bands (which determined the order for the book signing) until around 4:00, but we were there by 1:00 anyway. What can I say? We were excited! They politely told us go away you crazy knitters please come back at 4:00. What to do? Shopping! We went to LL Bean, Smith & Hawken, a few other stores, then drove to another shopping center and went to Trader Joes, at which time I realized I left my credit card at LL Bean. Panic! I left (blogless) Pat and Sue to conquer Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware without me while I frantically navigated the crazy traffic back to LL Bean. Luckily, they had my credit card in the safe, waiting for me to come back or give them a call. Back into traffic to pick up Pat & Sue, then back into traffic to Borders. We arrived at exactly 4:00pm!

Borders was great - everything and everyone was very well organized. I'll never understand how they got 250 chairs into that place, but they did it. There were about 7 knitters there before us, but we were still able to score excellent seats in row three, right in front of the podium. Then it was three hours of waiting, but the time flew by. We were talking with other knitters, oooh-ing and aaah-ing over yarns, patterns and FOs.

I met Donna Lee of What You Think On Grows. How cool is that? I have been reading her blog for a while now, knew that she was going to the Harlot event, and that one of her daughters is named Emily. So I overhear a woman saying something to her daughter, calling her Emily, and absolutely contrary to how I normally behave in crowds of people, I said "Excuse me, are you Donna"? I'm so glad I did, and I'm even happier that she said yes! She and her daughters are so very nice.

Here are some shots of the crowd:

These shots are courtesy of a very kind knitter named Jennifer. I didn't get her blog or Ravelry name, but she had blond hair and was sitting in the second row. I wanted shots of the crowd, but was reluctant to climb over everyone else in my row. Jennifer kindly took my camera and and got some great shots. Thanks Jennifer!

Then, it was time for the Yarn Harlot herself. My boss warned me that I was soooo excited about the Harlot that I was sure to be disappointed. Not true. Even though she was suffering from a terrible cold, and I'm sure she just wanted to crawl up somewhere and take a nap, she was fabulous. Warm and humble, and very funny. Hilarious, in fact. Disappointed? No Way!!!! She was everything I knew she would be, and so much more. She spoke for over an hour, and then took questions from the audience. After that, she signed books for who knows how long...and was gracious and posed for pictures with everyone, even though she was sick. Now that's class. Here are a couple of pictures of her signing a young spinner's spindle. (Look at that Kauni sweater - fabulous!)

I'm not including any of the pictures of me, because it was a humid, rainy, hot day in good old South Jersey, and I looked an absolute mess. I have no idea what I said to Stephanie when she was signing my books and getting pictures taken with me, but I must have been a blathering idiot. That, combined with my appearance, must be the reason that she said "Oh, thanks very much, that means a lot to me, thank you, thank you," in a very gentle tone of voice. Kind of like the tone you would use when talking someone down from the ledge of a 50 storey building.

If knitters ruled the world, I have no doubt that we would all declare an International Yarn Harlot Day. Until then, my own unofficial Yarn Harlot Day was perfection. Except for the weather. And the losing of my credit card. And the blathering idiot part. Other than that, everything was perfect!