Christmas Knitting Continues

First I want to say thank you for all the comments on my loss of Winger. It still hurts, as I'm sure all you pet owners know. Winger went so much further in her obedience training than I would have thought possible. Winger always tried so hard and gave each new challenge her very best effort.

I learned much about life from Winger.

Christmas Knitting

I am busy hurrying to finish up my Christmas knitting. Most of the projects are easy, fun knits which I will show pictures of once they are completed and given away. However, I have to show you the cutest little toy.



I warned you in a previous post how enamored I have become with knitted toys. As soon as I finished the Felted Sheep I set out on a Felted Fido project. My sister's first grandchild is crazy about puppies. I hope he likes this little guy.



This Felted Fido is made of Cascade 220 Wool in an off white color and Bernat Boa novelty yarn. I am the world's worse photographer and do not think these pictures do justice to this cute little guy. He has black, needle felted eyes and nose and a red, needle felted tongue. I also made a red I-cord collar and attached "dog tags" snipped from a recently purchased dog collar.



Fame

And here is Fame attacking Santa in typical Fame style.



Gosh, I hope Santa still comes to our house!

Ch. Winger UD RAE 1995-2007

I lost my Winger today. It has been more difficult than I thought. She had been failing rapidly lately but this past weekend Winger went downhill quickly. She was very uncomfortable and not eating. I know I did the right thing and I had a long time to say good-bye but it still hurts. I loved her so much, I hope she knows that.



Above is my favorite picture of Winger, 18 months old and going Best Of Breed at her very first dog show. Winger meant so much to me. She was a very unlikely obedience prospect, very shy and nervous and extremely sound sensitive. Still, she worked hard and prevailed and her life was much richer for it.



This is Winger a few nights ago. Like so many of my dogs, she loved sleeping between the toilet and the wall.



Here is a picture of Winger I took this past weekend. Winger had bad cataracts and the flash often shown like this in her eyes. I've tried using a few tools to fix her eyes in the picture but without success. Is there anyone who reads my blog who might know how to fix her eyes? I'd love to have this picture of Winger without the shining eyes.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Tomorrow I have to drive into the office for our Christmas party. I'm hardly in the Ho-Ho-Ho mood. Still, we are very busy and it will be good to meet with a few folks in person and talk over current and future work.

Knitting

I have been doing some knitting.



This is Fiber Trends Felted Fido. It's starting to look a bit like a puppy. It will be interesting to see how it turns out after felting. This is knit with Cascade 220 Wool and a novelty yarn I bought at the local big box store.



I'm still working on the golf club covers. Easy (and often boring) knitting. This cover has been completed, except for the seaming, for at least a week. I don't know what's wrong with me but I just can't seem to finish it. Hopefully this weekend.

Life Goes On



Fame continues to delight. Here she is this evening attacking one of my Smart Wool socks instead of any of her multiple toys.

Fame does agility

Hey, don't faint, it really is me posting more than once in a month!

Work has been insane lately. So many projects, so many problems, so short staffed. The last few days I feel as if I have done nothing but shuffle from one project/problem to another, making little to no progress on any. I'll never understand corporate America's belief in short staffing and expecting the remaining few folks to get everything done.

Anyway, back to my blog subjects of knitting and dogs. As promised, I have a few pictures, albeit not very good, of Fame at her first agility lesson.



Big, brave, oh so independent puppy Fame met her match on the A-frame and the dog walk. Of course we had the A-frame laid out close to the ground like a bridge and very good control of her on the dog walk. Still, it was a bit surprising to see Fame so subdued. It is definitely not her normal character.



Be assured, by the end of Fame's short lesson she was already tackling the contact equipment with confidence and the tunnels with total abandon. She does love her tunnels.

Speaking of, Lauren mentioned in my comments that Percy might love the tunnels. He sure does! I sent JJ through the chute, a cloth, closed tunnel, the other day and to my and JJ's surprise, Percy was napping inside the chute. Now JJ could have cared less. He's a fast, reckless agility dog, but luckily it was JJ surprised by the cat and not Whisper or Bunny who are much less confident about agility. Good old Percy maintained his napping position in the chute even after JJ had buzzed on by.

I started knitting the second golf club cover pairs. I wanted to start something more interesting but figured I'd best complete these first. I don't like having too many unfinished projects laying around.



I couldn't sleep last night so got up too early this morning and made a cranberry nut bread. I used the recipe found here. I substituted clementine juice rather than orange juice as I still had a bunch of clementines left over from last weekend's pork recipe. I did use orange rind as called for in the recipe because have you ever tried getting a tablespoon of rind off of clementines? Almost as boring as knitting golf club covers. The bread was delicious, worth all the early morning effort and I ate too much of it. I love cranberries, so sweet and so tart all at once. I've bought and frozen a bunch.

Christmas Knitting

I've been doing a bit of Christmas knitting in November. I finished a few projects and have started several others.



A few months ago I purchased the Fiber Trends Felt Flock pattern. I finally got around to knitting a sheep and did I ever enjoy it! I would not have thought I'd enjoy such a knitting project but I did. This little lamb is made of Cascade 220 wool for his body and some very old Dale of Norway Heilo I found in my stash for the contrasting color. I ended up with just a bit of the Heilo left so I made an I-cord collar for my little lamb. I think I will give this to my agility and herding instructor who is anticipating the birth of her first grandchild this coming week.

...yes, I know I forgot to knit a tail for my lamb. No excuses, I just plain forgot. I'll do better on my next one as I do intend to knit more lambs.



I so seriously enjoyed knitting the felted lamb I actually purchased this book and hope to knit a few more toys in the future. I think I will even join the Ravelry knitted toy group.



I finished my third Ribs and Ruffles Scarf out of Misti Alpaca Chunky.



My first two scarfs were knit in a natural and a baby blue color. These are a very quick knit and make a luxurious gift. I plan to give this third scarf as a gift also. Now I need to make one for myself.


Unfinished Christmas Knitting

My sister asked me to make golf club covers and gave me a pattern using Red Heart yarn and Lion Brand Fun Fur yarn. Hum... so I experimented a bit.



The tan yarn is Mission Falls 1824 Wool and the green eyelash yarn is called "Funny". I made the bright pink one after searching on the web for knitted golf club covers and reading several patterns and posts which said the gaudier the better. The pink yarn is Red Heart and the eyelash is some Crystal Palace Splash I found in my stash. I'm not a golfer but I find the pink quite gaudy for sure! I do not have enough of the Splash to make another cover but I do have some Fun Fur in pink. I'm not a golfer but I hope a second cover with a different novelty yarn will still make for a "matching pair". The golf covers where fun to knit, but honestly, a little boring. I still need to make another in each color by Christmas but I'm going to put it off a bit as I just can't bear to make two more at this time. Each takes about 4-5 hours to complete.




I've finished one of the fingerless mittens I'm making for myself. I like them. I think I should have made the hand portion of the mittens in a stockinette stitch instead of the ribbing because it would have shown off the colors better but here it is. I still like it. I'll finish the second once all my Christmas knitting is complete.



My Clapotis has also taken a back seat to the completion of Christmas knitting. I'm half way through the straight section. Though I'm normally a pastel color person, I am loving the colors of my Clapotis.

And despite all the Christmas projects I also started a simple cap for myself tonight out of some left over stash Dream In Color yarn. I hope I have enough to finish the cap. I remind myself of the shoemaker's children. All the knit projects I make and I don't even have a hat for myself this winter!

Food Project

I've had this plan in my head for a while now. Shelves of my book cases are taken up with cooking magazines. I never take these old magazines out and use them. So, I've let all my cooking magazine subscriptions expire and I am determined to take one or two magazines a month out of my "collection" and go through them a final time, making any recipes I am interested in, saving them if I really like them, and then tossing the old magazine. In December I will go through all my old December magazines, in January, all my old January magazines, etc., until I've cleared out all my old cooking magazines. Then next year at this time, I'll order all new subscriptions!




This weekend I started with a Real Foods Winter 2005 Byerlys and Lunds magazine. (Minnesota readers will recognize this as a quarterly magazine published by upscale grocer Lunds.) I immediately remembered the Dried Cherry and White Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie recipe from this issue. I made this several times last winter. I'm keeping this recipe. I made the Citrus Pork recipe tonight for supper. It was very good. The marinade was clementines, cloves and scallions. I made a clementine and spinach salad to go with it. Very good. Definitely a keeper. There's a Lime and Tortilla soup I'll also try out of this magazine and then poof, in the garbage the magazine will go.

Dog News

The dogs and I have been taking private agility lessons for the last 4-5 weeks. It's so much fun! All the dogs are doing well but Dusty is especially excelling. He's so fast and I have to run full speed to keep up with him. He is already doing full size A-frames after just 5 lessons. I've entered him in a NADAC trial at the end of December. He does not have the weave poles mastered yet so I've entered him in a Tunnelers (boy, does Dusty love the tunnels!) and Touch N Go class only. It will be great practice for the upcoming AKC agility trials this spring.


Fame Was Here



And what a mess she made! I was working on the computer this afternoon and Fame was quietly destroying my kitchen rugs. Good grief. Fame starts her first agility lesson tomorrow. I'll try to remember to bring my camera and see if we can capture a few pictures of her. She already loves her tunnels.

And finally, a picture of Percy. Why? Because the dogs and I love him and because he killed a mouse in the basement this week and that is his original purpose here. Somehow, the dogs and I fell in love with him forgetting his original purpose. But when he manages to protect us (okay, me) from the great villain which is mouse, he is exulted. Hail Percy!




Now don't give me a bad time about letting the cat eat on the kitchen counter. Keeping dogs from eating cat food is simply impossible. All you can do is keep the cat food away from the dogs.