Poncho #2: Alternate Sleeves

I am making this poncho for a person who is 5'5" tall, or five inches shorter than the first poncho recipient. This means I have changed the count on the stitches of the base mitered diamonds, and subsequent diamonds and triangles. The original poncho's diamond had 70+1 stitches and now this one has 60+1. All the rest are based on halving and quartering that original number + 1. That's the end of the math. Phew!



But I have also altered the sleeve and that is what I am showing here. The sleeve insert here differs from the first version in that it has straight across top and bottom and is sewn in to the shoulder FIRST, before the sleeve sides are picked up and knit. In this case the sleeve side stitches picked up were 57, a strange number and not all that computable from the above mentioned formula. Nonetheless, that is how it worked out for all four sleeve sides. To be precise here, the diamonds # 1,4,and 7 are based on 31 stitches, while the triangles #2,3,5 and 6 are 16 stitches. The tiny triangles #8,9,10 and 11 are also 16 stitches but have been decreased at the beginning and ending of every front row.
The order of knitting is sort of different too. The tiny triangles that form the straight top and bottom are the last parts to knit.
The sleeve sides are then sewn to the center sleeve panel.
I feel this will make the sleeve a better fit in the final product.
I will be offering an alternate neck finish also, so stayed tuned.

I love Gmail

I have been using Gmail for several years and they continue to improve it for email, video chats, regular chats and now for making phone calls directly from my laptop.
I can call anyone in the US for free even if they don't have an account or even a computer. The other day I looked up the local veternarian and copied their phone number into this little box, and ringy dingy, the receptionist answered and I made my appointment for Chumley.



I can send text messages to my sister (at work) instead of calling her, and it goes to her phone, where she can text me back or call me when she has time. Mostly I just leave her a message to get the thing I wanna say out of my brain.
Honestly I don't yet know how to send a text message with my cell phone. Eeek.

 Of course the most fun thing is video chatting which is already so old hat, as that is how Brooke and I kept in touch when she still lived in Singapore. All you need is a built in camera on your computer, and of course so does your friend. I don't know how this works if  your friend doesn't have Gmail. Skype is the other alternative, but I have found that it isn't as clear a signal as Gmail.

Gmail is free and it doesn't mean you can't keep your other regular email address, and just have Gmail for the cool stuff it offers. For some crazy reason Gmail is available only by invitation and I have invited several people already. I have 88 invitations left. Want one?

UPDATE:
http://www.google.com/talk/ is where you can get the download for chatting and video chat.
http://www.google.com/chat/voice/ for the phone feature

Crazy Monkey Luv

My friend Judy, fellow dog person, gifted our pooch with this squeeze toy in the shape of a chimpanzee/sausage. Chumley loves it. It is his #1 favorite chewing item. #2 is junk mail.
This toy has a really funny chimp laugh if squeezed in the right way and it didn't take Chum long to discover this. It was a shock at first and he stood at attention and gave it a good scoulding.
He has been alternately loving and killing it and making it squeek.

And then exhausted, he falls asleep. Plunk.

I took him in to the vet for his shots and deworming (just in case) and schedule him for neutering in two weeks. The vet liked him a lot and said we got a good one. We agree.

Kudos Kerchief

The name is a double entendre. Kudos by Plymouth is the yarn and one receives kudos when wearing it. One skein is all it takes ( around 200 yards), and in this case the yarn does all the work. Of course any worsted weight would work, or even bulky yarn and bigger needles would produce a  wonderful result. If you are a beginning knitter and need a quick and easy project or an experienced knitter with a need for instant gratification, this is the project. Zoom zoom, done!

Needles: size 8 or whatever...gauge is not important. Kfb means to increase by knitting front and back in the same stitch.

Pattern: Cast on two stitches.
Row 1 K
Row 2 Kfb, K to end
Repeat row 2 until triangle measures about 15 inches.
Cast on 20 stitches on the next two rows for ties. Knit about 1.5"-2" for the ties. Bind off loosely. Is that easy enough?
OR: Slip the first stitch of every row and then Kfb in the next stitch. Whichever you prefer. I did the slip in this case. It's a habit.
 

The scarf measures 48" from tie end to tie end, and about 15" deep. Just right for a nice neckerchief.

Choosing the Front

Thanks for your votes!  The winning choice by readers is #1 for the front. The winning choice by the recipient is #2. So there you have it. In the final construction there will be more triangles added at the neckline, as well as a collar of some sort, so the body of the poncho will be a bit distant from the face, with more colors added closer to the face, as seen in this second picture of the first poncho. So even tho the panel #2 has very dark triangles in the picture, they will be offset by colorful triangles in the final assembly.

Off to my knitting group today, in the pouring rain. Weather here in Tennessee has been pretty darn exciting with high winds and lots of thunder and lightning. We had nothing come down in the yard, unless you count gigantic acorns which sound like gunshots on the roof. Getting the puppy out for his runs has been challenging.

Chocolate Raspberry and Mint

I am making another poncho on request, and ordered this yarn with this yummy dessert flavored description. Noro Kureyon, like the previous poncho. It looks all the same in the skein but comes out quite differently in the knitting. Soon I will have to decide which will serve as the front panel and which should be the back.
The easy fix would be to make it reversible, but having worn a poncho before, I know it is more comfortable not to be tugging at the neckline over and over again, so building in shaping at the shoulder can make wearing less of a stuggle.

Currently I am working on the side panels and cannot predict how they will turnout colorwise. This makes knitting an adventure!


Which would you prefer as the front? I'll let you know which choice is made by the recipient.

Big Day for a Little Dog

It was a glorious day for a ride into the city with the pup, to try him out on a leash for the first time. We began in an empty parking lot at Lowe's and he refused to move at all. It must have been the pavement. Then we picked him up, back into the van to try a grassy area near a Dairy Queen. He did walk about for a few minutes and then sat down for good, again. OK, that's enough for now, we thought, and then got back into the van and went to the Guitar Center where Dave could try out guitars, while I stayed in the van praying he wouldn't buy any. Chumley snoozed.

Now it was time to get into Chattanooga for the big Octoberfest walkabout. It was stop and start for a few yards, but soon we were meeting with people who wanted to pet the pup, and coo over how cute he is. He loved the attention and demonstrated what a big boy puppy he was, on a leash and all. Wiggly, wiggly, bite bite bite. It was getting warm in the sun, and a former pug owner warned us about getting overheated, overfed, and overstimulated. Was that for us or the dog?
 Eventually we got into the shade and after stopping for numerous people asking about the dog, we met a couple who told us about Pug Fest in Atlanta next weekend. Imagine a room with 500 pugs! O my.


As we walked along we spied a group of Pomeranians  Papillons, just as Chumley did. He stood erect and sniffed the air. We proceeded cautiously and allowed some closer inspection. Then the yipping and yapping began from the Poms, Paps followed by Chum's response. This was a good test of the leash. We all felt it was a successful encounter.

The Chattanooga Market was packed with visitors and oompah bands played loudly, vendors cooked bratwurst and potato pancakes and kids ran around us frantically. It was overwhelming for us adults, and yet the dog took it all calmly.

I left Dave and the pug for a minute in order to visit the ladies room where I met Irene from Knit Group and Lois our former real estate agent. Then minutes later I met Kathy also from Knit Group and her husband who recognized Chumley from the blog. What a small world. Actually that is what is so wonderful about our new home, that we could be in a place where we have already made friends and could bump into them in such a crowd. Earlier at Lowe's  Dave met up with the commissioner of his baseball league! We love it here.

Hey! No pinching the inch!!

Chumley waves the white flag in surrender

+++
There is a fenced in dog park behind the market pavilion and Dave took the pup there to have a great big drink of water and calm down and then we promenaded back to the van to head for home. They immediately fell asleep and I stopped midway in Soddy Daisy to buy Chinese food (What? no bratwurst?) and went down the road to my sister's house to eat. She and her family were in town looking for us and we connected via cell phone. They were on their way to the movies and we just wanted to eat and go home. The site of her house was a good midway point for the pup to be unleashed to run free.
WE were all exhausted after our day in town and Chum slept 13 hours. Me too.

The New Regime

I like a nice routine in my life. It is comforting to follow a familiar pattern and work at a pace that accomplishes things. That comforting routine has been tossed up in the air of late.
I seem to be attending to everyone's needs first. Taking the dog out, feeding the dog, cat and Dave, stoking the fire, driving everyone around...cleaning up after all of the above. I know you know what this is like.
I am not complaining. I am adjusting.
But I am about four hours late for all the stuff I need to do to start my day. It's 11am and we just returned from getting wood chips (as you know I am married to Mr. Woodchips). Two days of pizza making mess has been brought in from the workshop/Man Cave and I have that to wash. All my clothes smell like smoke, or dog, or both. Really I am not complaining. I am adjusting.
I want to do something in my studio, besides trip over toys, puppy pads and chewing-shoes. Sigh. Maybe today, after another walkies, lunch, and laundry.

Dave's E-Z Bake Oven

For some time Dave has been talking about making pizza in a wood burning oven. The idea was originally going to be a large brick contraption off the deck by the pond. We could sit on the deck or in the hot tub and have a fire and then bake a pizza, or some such plan. Or maybe the idea was that baking bread over hot wood coals was in his mind. Whatever the muddle, the idea never got completely worked out or completely shelved. I know he thought when I baked bread that I was using up way too much of our propane, as we have a gas stove. He thought it took four hours to bake a loaf. How the truth gets distorted!
Anyway...our man Mike knew of a guy who had a wood burning stove and that is all Dave needed to hear. Dave bought it, and he and Mike spent the day with Harold, our body shop man, cleaning, painting, braising, restoring and polishing the thing and then installing it in our potting shed, now referred to as the Workshop. Previously it was the Motorcycle salon, which accounts for the tiled floors.

They did a nice job making a hole, sealing it and installing the stove pipe safely.  Gratuitous pug pic.


I mentioned that we'd need an oven temperature gauge and that pizza or bread needs high temps to bake properly, so we went shopping and got all sorts of stuff for the project. I made dough and let it rise while we had a test of the oven. It was still early in the day and with the fire going and the pup enjoying a milkbone, we put the new kettle on the stove and made coffee. We sat in front of the tiny stove and watched the fire blaze and die, several times.
Then as I checked on the pizza dough Dave collected a lot more twigs and kept stoking the fire to increase the heat.

The gauge never got higher than 250 degrees, which is about 200 degrees short of the necessary temp for pizza baking. Just fyi, there is a baking space in the back of the oven, with a rack and that turned out to be pretty small, but just the right size for a cake pan. I made two mini pizzas and we waited for the heat...and waited. Eventually Dave couldn't stand it anymore and decided we should try it.
So we slid one pizza in the space and hoped for the best. How long should it take to make a small pizza in a slow oven? Good question. After about 20 minutes we looked in and saw a black topped disc and pulled it out. We cut it. We tasted. IT WAS DELICIOUS. We ate it all before I could even consider taking a picture. This is the second one. Just as good but not as blackened.

After we walk the dog this morning, we are building a fire and having our coffee out there...while the novelty lasts.