knitting, spindles-stitchmarkers, yarn, swaps & dogs-

Knitting - I've finished my Yarn Harlot inspired socks - Lacy Mock Cables, started anklets based off of the pattern "Express Lane" and also started my Shaun the Sheep. I just have to put his legs on and do his 'knitting' project and he'll be done. I also made a kitty for Jenna's first birthday. She had fun playing with it. You can check out photos here and here. I'm going to do one for Bailey, so have it started also. Need to finish that second anklet soon though!

Spindles & Stitchmarkers - let's see....I acquired the dowels of various sizes. Then stained them. Marked them to the size I thought they should be so Brandon could cut them. Sanded the ends. Brandon then used an epoxy to attach the stone donuts to the dowels. The next step is to apply a finish to the dowels and again with Brandon's help attach a wire hook. A little longer process than first thought but hopefully others will also think they look nice. I have some photos of some of the stone donuts, and the current state of the spindles here. At the same location are some pictures of stitchmarkers that I made recently. Some are being gifted and some are a reuse of former bead earrings I had made.

Yarn - I finally have photos and space on Flickr for my Knit Pick Summer Sampler packs I bought, so they are in my stash. I added in the Shibui sock yarn (wyvern socks), the Habu bamboo (cleopatra wrap), and Malabrigo Lace (falling water scarf) from my inventory $$ at Knit/Purl. Okay, a good portion of the Shibui I paid for but the other two were totally inventory money. Knit/Purl has been using volunteers to help them with their inventory of the store. I had fun doing it three different times and have the yarn/roving to show for it too.

Swaps - I have participated in my first swap. I sent a package of items to a lady in Denmark. Hopefully she'll like them. We had a $15 cap, that I went a little over. Which kind of made up for the postage that it took to send it - $24. Oh my! That after spending just a few dollars to send the Blanket Buddy to Belgium. It might have been the little jewelry box I used to put the stitch markers in. Live and Learn.

Dogs - Nessa is doing much better. I still need to have her blood re-checked but our vet $$ have gone to Norbert this month. He had been having an allergy reaction to a food I tried and that caused an 'aural hematoma' on his other ear. We tried treating it ourselves but it quickly became apparent it wasn't going away on its own. So a trip into the vet who said that she needed to do surgery and use buttons to get it to heal was the only way to go. Yes, buttons like on your clothes, go figure. Plus his teeth in the last year have gotten bad due to the kibble, or he could have been hiding those back teeth from me. So that meant a teeth cleaning, and a check of a tooth that had enamel missing from it being broken. Thankfully not broken to the point of needing to remove the tooth. He also has molars that didn't grow completely and are smaller than normal and soft so those had to be checked. End result, no teeth removed, but now clean. He's hiding out in the soft crate with his 'cone of doom' with 2pts for annoyance. Norbert I'm sure is thinking of it as the 'cone of shame'.

I need to finish eating my dinner that mom called in the middle of and then feed the dogs and go from there. Just happy to finally have all the photos taken care of and some updates at Ravelry with the projects and yarns.