Whew! What a week. I did manage to get some knitting in, while watching the pups play in the backyard and checking on Sandy when he's out of the playpen. The Talvinen cardigan now has two finished sleeves and hem ribbing.
Wednesday, while I was working on the hem ribbing, I needed to rewind one ball of yarn because Sandy misunderstood the point of a "center-pull" ball by pulling the center out of it.
It broke in one piece, and I ended up having to reattach the yarn before I was finished with the ribbing.
When I was ready to move on to the steek, Sandy decided to "help" again. I had placed my knitting in the middle of the dining room table, but somehow he got it and took my ball of yarn up the stairs.
I had used my doubtful higher math skills to calculate that I had 28g of main-color yarn left. I had weighed my yarn before knitting the hem ribbing and discovered I had used 11g for the ribbing. The ribbing was 17 rows of 217 stitches each. This worked out to (according to my calculations) approximately 336 stitches/gram. I should have enough of the yarn left to make 9,408 stitches. Then I was thinking of using a crocheted steek reinforcement instead of machine-sewing, because the yarn is very clingy (as evidenced by how long it took me to untangle the messes my little "helper" made). Would I have enough to make the button, buttonhole bands AND the crocheted reinforcement all from the main color?
I decided 9 rows of garter stitch plus the bind-off would be about right, with the buttonholes or buttons at row 5-6, so that would be 10 rows total. I figured I needed to pick up about 160 stitches along each side of the front steek, or 1,600 for each band. That meant I would need to have enough yarn for 3,200 stitches, so plenty of yarn, right? But what if I had made a mistake in my calculations. (It has happened before.) I decided to go ahead and try to make the buttonhole band first and see how much it took.
I decided to figure out where I wanted the buttonholes. I thought about having 10 buttons, but that didn't divide up the stitches very well, so I switched to 11. That would give me four stitches at the top, six at the bottom and 15 stitches between each of the buttons. TO MAKE SURE it would work, I put 11 stitch markers on my needle showing me where to make the buttonholes. I bound off the stitch before and the stitch after each marker, which gave me two-stitch buttonholes. I'll have to see what size buttons work.
When I finished the buttonhole band, I discovered that it took just under five grams of yarn, so I would have enough left for the crocheted reinforcement of the steek. (I still hadn't cut the steek.)
I don't know if you can tell, but Sandy has grown...a lot! When I weighed him on Friday, he was 11 lbs., having gained a whole pound in a week. He still isn't as big as Snowball, though.
For the buttonhole band I picked up both legs of the stitches in the first vertical row of the steek, which was the main color. I decided to make the steek reinforcement on the second main-color vertical row in the steek stitch section of the front, so skipping over the contrast-color vertical row. Because there was a plain section of knitting, I decided I needed to mark it somehow so I didn't accidentally skip over to the next row. Some people put a row of basting stitches along the middle of that vertical row, but I decided to just use stitch markers to catch stitches in the row and use them the way a sailor aims for buoys. That was faster than basting and worked out well. I used a crochet hook to make slip stitches up the front. (It had been a while since I had tried this, so I looked for some information on how other people had done it. This blog post, "Hello Yarn," attracted my attention, because the knitter was making the bands before cutting the steek, which was what I wanted to do. The link to Eunny Jang's video mentioned in her blog is here.)
Once I was done with that side, it was obvious I had plenty of yarn to knit the button band and do the other row of crocheted reinforcement stitches. I'm working on that now.
The dogs had a busy week, even aside from Sandy's fiber fun with my yarn. Dusty's birthday was Monday. We had some doggie birthday cake. Sandy only had the tiniest piece.
We've had a few (very few) "accidents" in the house, but that's the fault of the two-legged family members. He was consistently getting through our barriers at the stairs. I finally caught him doing it and found out his method. It wasn't something we could block off, so we just closed the doors upstairs.
If the dogs are in the bathroom when I brush my teeth, Sandy bites my feet, so I've found a solution to that. He goes into the shower stall on his own. All I need to do is close the door.
I used to keep my jacket, shoes and Sandy's leash on a tray table by the back door. He got where he could reach them and would drag them around.
Charlie cleared a shelf and put up a hook, and that's working out well, except I had to start using the top hook, because he was able to reach my jacket.
Then there was the issue of the sandbox....the doggies liked it, but so did the neighborhood kitties. Or maybe Sandy thought it was a "Sandy box." The sandbox is a part of the backyard play equipment we got with the house.
It's handy when the grandkids visit, but otherwise we don't use it. Anyway, we didn't want the pups eating what they dug up there, so we made a cover. With luck, Sandy won't figure out how to get into it.
In spite of occasional sprinkles, we have managed to walk every day except Dusty's birthday, when it rained.
Coming up this week, Sandy's last round of vaccines. Toward the end of next week, we should be able to hit the trails. A week from today they go to the groomer. Stay tuned.
I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry or Spoutible if you need information.
If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart" in Children's. Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil and Mariah, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.
Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.
What's on my needles: Still the Talvinen cardigan, but getting close to finishing, and the EmPower People Kerchief (hibernating).
What's on my loom: Dust, but I still plan to make some placemats.
What's on my sewing machine: Waiting for some quilting.
What's in The Doll's Storybook: Skiing in Summer? The next rerun in the series. Find out how Jolena got her start doing aerials and slopestyle at Utah Olympic Park.
What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished The Weaver's Daughter by Sarah E. Ladd. Now re-listening to White Silence by Jodi Taylor, to remind myself what the series is about. I listened to it two years ago and liked it, but I want to listen to the next one in the series. I may stop when I get into the story a bit, if it turns out I remember it well enough.
What's in my wine glass: Gazali Estate Merlot Voor-Paardeberg, 2020.
What's my tip of the week: Sandy and Dusty should not eat each other's food, because Sandy is on puppy food for the time being. They both seem to think that the other dog gets a dish of treats, while they have to eat stuff like cardboard. Sandy has a dish in his puppy crate all the time, and Dusty won't go in there, but Sandy doesn't remember that it's there unless he's really hungry. If we leave Dusty's kibble out, Sandy will eat it. I've taken to feeding them four times a day now (brekkie, luncheon, tea time and supper) and putting their kibble in their Kong toys for the later three meals. (Brekkie is yoghurt, kibble and a NuVet Plus tablet each.) That way they think it's fun to eat, and they will finish it while I supervise to make sure they don't swap. This is actually working. Yesterday I had my lunch and was going to lie down, when I noticed Sandy sitting by the feeding station, which is where I feed them these extra meals. He was looking at me intently.
Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes.
Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is available from BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. The stories are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.
Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.
If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.
Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.
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