Year: 2003

OhmygodIwantone!

Sarah Photography

I so want the new Canon Digital Rebel. Imagine: a digital SLR which would work with all of my current lenses and filters, and my external flash. Drool…oh, sorry. I actually got to play with one at the camera store in the mall, and had to physically restrain myself from pulling out the credit card right then and there.

Now, I just need to win the lottery. Actually, as digital SLRs go, this one is priced quite reasonably. Maybe Santa will read this and wrap it up as a combo Birthday/Christmas present? And deliver it early – like tomorrow? OK, I won’t hold my breath!

But just imagine what fantastic pictures I could capture…of my knitting, and my puppies, and…well, other stuff I can’t think of right now, too!

Eureka! (A Doggy Tail)

Sarah Dogs

Murphy had an “ah-hah” moment today. I know because I witnessed it. First, a little background… The only issue we’ve had with him since day one (besides his tendency to eat TiVo remotes and alpaca yarn) has been that his previous owners never taught him a way to signal when he needed to go out.

When Molly was tiny, maybe 2 months old, we put up a bell on the doorknob. She learned very quickly that when she wanted to go out, she just had to ring the bell. Actually, she learned too well, and would just randomly ring the bell when she was bored and wanted to go eat grass. If we ignored her long enough, she’d knock the bell off of the doorknob and carry it into whatever room we were in. Eventually, we abandoned the bell in favor of just taking her out on a regular schedule.

When Murphy came along, he was still a relatively young pup. We took him out on a regular schedule, too, although much more often. He’d still have accidents…not too unexpected, since we really don’t know how long he lived in a house before he was abandoned. We decided to put the bell up again. The very first day, he rang it – I really thought we had a genius puppy – but from that point on he totally ignored it, despite our best efforts to use his paw or nose to ring the bell when we took him out.

This morning I took them out for their last potty trip before leaving for work. Murphy was much more interested in sniffing the leaves on the ground than anything else…you can lead a dog to grass, but you can’t make him…um… Anyway, I took them in, poured my coffee, and heard a little, tentative ring from the bell. Murphy was standing by the door, his nose to the bell! Long story short (well, not really), I took him out again, he did his business, and as we walked back into the house I’m pretty sure I saw the light bulb go on over his little doggy head!

Pumpkin, Anyone?

Sarah Crafts

My current yarn obsession is anything orange. Specifically, pumpkin orange. For example, this sock:

(You’ll have to take my word on the color. The pictures came out a bit too red.) This is the aran sandal sock pattern in Socks, Socks, Socks. I only started it Wednesday night! Now I just have to start (and finish) it’s mate. I’m not looking forward to doing the second heel flap, which involved doing cables from the back of the work. That was…weird. I wonder if there’s an easier way than the one I figured out – which was to turn the work around, re-arrange the cable stitches on the needle, then turn it back around and purl them. Very time-consuming. But worth it!

Besides that, though, I’ve swatched for the fair isle vest, and done a bit of secret knitting. Only 80 more knitting days until Christmas!

Barktober Fest

Sarah Dogs

Murphy says “ah-woof” (translation: thank you very much!) for helping to raise $100 for the humane society! (Molly also raised $100!) Despite cold, rainy weather, much fun was had by all. Molly and Murphy had a blast socializing with all of the other dogs, and got plenty of free treats from all of the vendors sponsoring the event. We met up with Jenny, Aaron and Oscar there, too!

The smallest dog we saw was a 3-month-old Jack Russel terrier, who was about the size of Molly’s head, and the biggest dog we saw was a Great Dane whose head was about up to my shoulders. There were a fair number of doggy sweaters and rain coats…I felt a little guilty about my poor cold puppies until I remembered that they’re both water dogs. They certainly didn’t seem any worse for the wear!

You can see more pictures of the day here, although the camera pretty much stayed in my hip pack – between the rain and keeping Murphy under control, I didn’t often have a free hand to take pictures. :)

I Wish I’d Known!

Sarah Crafts

A few knitting bloggers have put out their “top ten things I wish I’d known before I started knitting” lists…so, here’s mine:

  1. Swatch early, swatch often. Make a big swatch. Wash your swatch just like you’d wash the finished item. And trust your swatch…don’t panic if the first couple of rows of k2/p2 rib seem huge – if your swatch says they’ll pull in, they will.
  2. Blocking is good. Edges are so much nicer to sew together when things are blocked. And with some yarns, blocking can correct small gauge issues.
  3. Let go of the pattern. If a sweater is perfect minus one detail or another, change it. Don’t be afraid to make a different size, or re-do the math entirely, to make the sweater you love in the yarn you love. And take measurements…a perfectly finished sweater won’t be worn if it doesn’t fit well.
  4. Plan on spending a lot of time and attention on finishing. It may not seem like “knitting”, but it’s the most noticable part of your knitting and can make the difference between something looking “handmade” – “wow, you made that?!?” and “homemade”…”oh, you made that.” Keep in mind that decisions about how to finish something sometimes need to be made even before casting on.
  5. You can never have enough needles, stitch holders, stitch markers, or other exciting little gadgets…because generally when you need one item or another, it’s stuck in another project. It’s also important to have several tote bags on hand!
  6. It’s really ok to have more than one project going at a time. This way, if you get bored with one project, you have something else to work on while you rediscover your love for the first project. It’s also a good idea to have some mindless knitting on hand for long car rides or tv watching.
  7. Keep a knitting journal. Write down all of the particulars for a project – yarn type and color, needle size, pattern, etc. – so if you do put it down for a while, you can remember where you left off and track down the needles you “borrowed” for another project.
  8. Invest. If you’re going to spend the time making something by hand, do it right. Buy the best yarn you can afford – keeping in mind that 100% acrylic is a much better choice for a baby sweater than 100% silk. You’ll enjoy the process and the finished product that much more if you start with the right materials.
  9. Share the love. Knitting is much more fun when you’re with a group of knitting friends in a coffee shop! Get as many people addicted to knitting as you can!
  10. There is absolutely nothing in knitting that cannot be undone. Holes can be repaired. Dropped stitches can be picked up. Mistakes made several rows back can be fixed without ripping out all those rows. Pulling out the needles isn’t that scary – contrary to popular belief, unless you’re using a really slippery yarn, the loose stitches are not going to run all the way down to the bottom. And when all else fails, pull out the needles and rip…it’s very therapeutic!

Last Call!

Sarah Dogs

This Saturday is the Barktober Fest Walk for the Animals! It’s not too late to sponsor Murphy (and me) for the two-mile walk! Just click on the convenient little button to the left (above the calendar), and you can help other cute puppies like Murphy find homes.

Oh, and if you could keep your fingers crossed for no rain during the walk, that would be great, too! Right now they’re forcasting 58°, with showers and thunderstorms likely. It should be fun, walking through the woods with a bunch of wet dogs!

Hypothetically…

Sarah Crafts

A have a question for all you knitters out there. Is it better/easier to do intarsia or duplicate stitch?

Here’s the hypothetical situation: I have a pattern – let’s call the pattern “Pat”1 – that is for an article of clothing. This article of clothing has some motifs on it. The pattern, Pat, wants the knitter to knit the article of clothing and then stitch the motifs on afterwards using duplicate stitch. Now Pat isn’t perfect. In fact, Pat is going to have to be completely re-calculated to my gauge and the size I’m going to make, since Pat really doesn’t come in the range of sizes I need. You could really call Pat more of a guideline than an actual pattern. So, would it make more sense, since I have to essentially re-write Pat anyway, to knit the motifs right in?

I’ve never done intarsia, per se, although I imagine it can’t be much harder than the color changes that happen in the middle of the rows for the patchwork sweaters. I’ve also never done duplicate stitching, although it seems like that’s awfully close to cross-stitching.

What are the advantages or disadvantages of these? Oh, and one other little thing is that Pat is going to be a gift for someone small, so should that be taken into account?

1The names have been changed to preserve the surprise.

Is it Friday Yet?

Sarah General

It definitely feels like Monday today. That’s the only problem with traveling over the weekend – I feel like I need a weekend to get ready to go back to work. Let’s see…I woke up with a scratchy throat (allergies, I hope), couldn’t find warm enough clothes (it’s cold out there!), couldn’t find my keys, walked half-way to work and realized I forgot my coffee (yes, it’s only next door – the bigger problem was re-navigating the bees crawling all over my driveway…after tree sap maybe?) and then managed to spill half of it because the lid was on crooked.

The trip was good, though. We went for our newest niece’s baptism. I came home with more yarn (surprised?), and several almost-finished little projects. If you ever have 5 feet of i-cord to make, the thruway and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the iPod makes it go quickly!

Molly and Murphy managed to survive without us. Molly stayed with my parents, and we boarded Murphy…he scraped his nose up a little, and seems to have barked himself hoarse. Poor little guy. I wish we had a better solution for leaving the dogs for the weekend – it would be impossible for my parents to take both of them, and he’s just a little too destructive to leave with friends. Thanksgiving ought to be interesting…

OK, I’m done rambling now! Back to work. :)

Crazy College Kids

Sarah General

So, if you were going to steal a tire off of someone’s car, would you be nice enough to replace it with your spare, and leave their hubcap? My brother went to head home for his first long weekend from school, and found that someone had done just that. I guess college parking lots are a bad place to park your car. Fortunately, a local friend of his that was going to ride home with him has a car on campus too, so they drove his friends’ car home.

I’ve never heard of something like that happening – I always thought that we had the special lug nuts on our tires to prevent the hubcaps from being stolen, not the tires themselves!

Of course, it’s kind of funny, in an odd sort of way. At least they tried to be nice by leaving the spare and the hubcap. If he weren’t going to such a small, expensive school, I could see how maybe a poor starving college student, desperate to get home for the long weekend, might consider that the best course of action. But if you can pay the tuition to this place, you can afford a new tire.

The moral of the story is: the world is getting a little crazier every day…

When All Else Fails, Start Another Project!

Sarah Crafts

I’m starting to feel adrift in an ever-growing pile of started projects and stash. This is not necessarily a bad thing! It just means I’ll have to keep track of things so I don’t forget which projects have deadlines.

Deb is the greatest knitting buddy ever – she stopped by Sit & Knit last night just to drop off her swift and ball-winder for me to borrow so I can wind this pile (which is only half of it) of yarn! I really need to get my own set of these lovely tools…but both my birthday and Christmas are approaching, so hopefully someone will take pity on me and I’ll find them wrapped up in pretty paper!

So, what’s this going to be? This is actually a project I can share! Too bad the picture I took of the pattern didn’t come out. Here’s a link to the pattern on KnitPicks, where I ordered it. I imagine a good chunk of this weekend will be spent winding the yarn and swatching for this project. There are at least, what, 90 knitting days left until Christmas? Those projects can all wait a few days, right?