5 And A Beagle

Well - embroidery it was. Here is the first sock, just before the eucalan bath and block.



The i-cord of the second sock has been started and I'd be dreaming if I thought I could get it finished in time for the birthday on Saturday. B will have to settle for one sock with the promise of the second.

Labels: Golden West

Last night I found myself at home, alone for THE WHOLE EVENING! I think that may have been the first time in, like, 22 years! What to do, what to do?

It should come as no surprise that I sat and worked on Golden West the whole night.

One entire evening, uninterupted, with a the knitting project and all I managed to accomplish was the embroidery on one side of one sock. (The dark swirly bunch up the boot) That stuff is just a wee bit time consuming and I'm beginning to wonder if the sock really needs it.

Your opinion....to embroider or not to embroider?

Labels: Golden West

Vancouver in the spring. Guess which picture best describes what the first full day of spring might have in store for us this year?

Labels: Snapshot Saturday

The knitting portion of Golden West sock #1 is almost complete. I just need to produce a second 'boot strap' and then it's on to the embroidery.

The boot strap was to be done using the technique of Double Knitting. Do you think I could figure that out? I searched for tutorials online, watched, read, tried.....failed. I ended up picking up 12 stitiches and knitting a circular strap on double points. It's a little thicker than I would like and I don't know if double knitting would provide a somewhat flatter strap.

Any suggestions? Any Double Knitting for Dummies? Maybe I should just try an i-cord.

B's birthday is on the 28th so it's going to be a weekend of knitting to get everything done in time.

Labels: Golden West

Labels: Snapshot Saturday

I've been making fairly good progress in working my way through some of the yarn that has accumulated around here.



#5 went through the stash and pulled out a collection of 'fun fur' yarn and asked me to make a pillow for her. A quick evening project and about 2-1/2, 3 skeins of yarn put to good use.










During a trip to Michael's over the Christmas season, I came across some sock yarn I'd not seen before and had to give it a try.

On sale for $4 per, I picked up a couple of skeins. A simple, basic stockinette stitch sock with Patons Stretch Sock yarn.


I received a lovely skein of Socks that Rock yarn as a Christmas gift and have been slowly working my way through the Cable Sock pattern from the Interweave Knits Favorites Socks book.


And last but not least, I found a kit that I'd completely forgotten about from the 2008 Tsarina Tsock Club. It's the Golden West sock and it's absolutely perfect for the upcoming birthday of #3's girlfriend.


She works as a riding instructor at the local equestrian centre and these are just in the beginning stages, but will hopefully knit up into this.

This is an interesting pattern that starts with an i-cord band around the ankle from which stitches are picked up to knit down the foot and then up the leg, with embroidered embellishments added later.

Labels: stash busting

Don't forget to "Spring Ahead" tonight!

Labels: Snapshot Saturday

According to 'The Big Read' (http://www.neabigread.org/) , adults on average, have only read six books on this list. So ... copy this list, remove my yeses and nos, and add your comments (favourable or otherwise) about the ones you have read. Don't forget to include a total.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Yes
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – Yes
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - No
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – Does watching the movies count? Only read the first two.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Yes
6 The Bible –some
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Yes
8 1984 - George Orwell - Yes
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - No
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - No
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Yes
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy – Yes
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller – No
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare –No
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - No
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks - No
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - No
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - Just started
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot- Yes
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Yes
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Yes
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens-No
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - No
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - No
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - No
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - No
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Yes
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Yes
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - Yes
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - No
33 The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - Yes
34 Emma - Jane Austen - Yes
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - No
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Yes
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Yes
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres-Yes
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Yes
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – Yes
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - Yes
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Yes
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - Yes
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - No
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - Yes
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - No
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - Yes
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -No
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - Yes
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -No
52 Dune - Frank Herbert- No
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -No
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - No
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -No
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -No
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Yes
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -No
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon -Yes
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -No
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck –Yes
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -No
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -No
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold –Yes
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -No
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -No
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -No
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding -No
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie -No
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - No
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - No
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -No
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - Yes
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -Yes
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - no
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath -no
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -No
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -No
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -No
80 Possession - AS Byatt- No
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - Yes
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -No
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -No
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -No
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -No
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -Yes
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White - Yes
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -Yes
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - No
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton –No
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -No
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupe –Yes
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -No
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -Yes
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -No
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -No
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - No
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare – No
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -Yes
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -No