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Dear Ellen,

It was good talking to you today. I do think we need to plan our mini-break in celebration of the upcoming milestone. Something involving fiber would be fun, but any time we get to hang out will be fine with me. Let’s see what we can come up with.

Remember my asking about the curliness of your hair when you were in DC for Marie’s wedding? Well, I got mine trimmed the other day and the stylist asked if she could have some fun and “encourage my curls” during the blow-dry. I gave her the go ahead and here’s the result. I think it’s pretty cute…and can do it myself, but my usual habit is to pull it back or put it up when I get out of the shower — this will be fun for special events though.

What do you think this is?

Hint: it’s not a Baby Surprise.

See if you can work it out and I’ll tell you at the end of the post.

I finished the socks I worked on during part of our trip west. I’m quite pleased with them now, but they really drove me crazy during the process of completing them. I finished the first one and bound it off and then decided It was too short. Here’s the saga — Okay, the second sock is already on the needles, so I’ll knit it to a better length and then go back and add on to the other. The ends aren’t yet woven in, so at least it won’t be too hard to frog back to the last row of knitting. Okay, this length is much better. Now to try it on…What? Crap, what was I thinking…this is a standard-bind off instead of an elastic bind-off. I’m going to have to redo it…but not tonight. Okay, it’s a new day, let’s get that bind-off fixed. Gee, in my hand this bind-off is fairly elastic, strange that it was so unforgiving on my foot. Well, it’s redone now, let’s try it on. What the @#%$??!! Double crap! I just redid the bind-off on the sock that was too short! Good grief, that sock will end up with three bind-offs by the time I’m done with it. Okay, settle down and pick up the LONG SOCK. This is definitely it…redo the bind-off and now it fits great. Now, pick up the SHORT SOCK and frog back to the meandering rib pattern and add four more repeats and then bind-off using an elastic bind-off. Am I out of yarn already? Oh brother! I picked up the wrong leftover yarn to add on to the sock…now I have to add yet another length of yarn. Back to business…and FINALLY finished. And they do fit perfectly, so in the end it’s worth it. I like the pattern stitch. I made it up on the fly when I decided I didn’t want just plain ribbing to the top…I’m sure it’s in some stitch dictionary, but I’m calling it meandering rib and think it looks like a nuance of mock-cable.

Figure it out yet? Here’s another picture in process to help you guess. At this point it should be fairly easy. And here’s a shot of how the dogs have stolen it for a bit of a romp. (I confess, this shot is only included because I love the look of Ruby galloping.)

We had a really great morning yesterday. We got up pretty early for a Saturday and headed over to Barr Mountain. The dogs came along for what turned out to be a three hour tour hike. (Did you hear the theme song to Gilligan’s Island as you read that?) It was GORGEOUS. We started out with Max christening the trail head — his own form of adoption. (BTW, did you know that this area has the highest population of Wiccans in the country?) Every time you turned a switchback you saw another view of the foothills leading up to the Rocky Mountains. And the trail was bordered by some very impressive boulders. We didn’t see a lot of wildlife (after all there we’re many hikers), but I did spot this hummingbird. It kindly lit on this tree to let me take its picture. After we had been on the trail for a while (passing and being passed by many other hikers, some of whom had their dogs off leash), we decided to try Ruby off leash. We thought she’d be unlikely to charge off without us as she was sticking pretty close. She did great…seemed to love the extra bit of liberation and did stay with us very nicely. She even followed instruction when we would call her to the side to let a runner go by. (Comment on the runners — they’re insane. The trail was very rocky in places, lots of “ankle grabbers,” and in places quite steep. The one guy on the mountain bike…forget it!) Based on her fine performance we let Max off lead as well and he did nearly as well as Ruby. We stopped for water and to climb some rocks…the dogs thought they were king and queen of the world! When we got back to the car we were all pretty well bushed, but Dale and I didn’t have the option of just crashing like someone else.

Yes, you’re right! It is a doggy bone! It has the sound device from one of the dog’s favorite toys inside…they loved that toy so much that when it totally fell apart I decided I’d have to knit a replacement of some sort. I used nylon cording to try to make it as non-destructible as possible and I modified a commercial pattern for a felted dog bone. Ruby is quite appreciative, but she has a bit of trouble picking it up. Max carries around quite nicely, but wouldn’t let me get a picture of him doing so.

Enough for now back to working on my first Baby Surprise.

Love, Jan