Dexter Update

Thank you all so much for your well-wishes!

Dexter is fine now… he’s hanging out under the coffee table chewing on the ginormous bone I gave him as a get well peasant. They removed the offending claw and while he was under gave him a full mani/pedi. He doesn’t have to wear a cone thing (although those things are hilarious!) which I’m thinking is a pretty good sign. So yeah – the poor guy’s pretty out of it and his little legs are all shaky (doggie drugs must be really good stuff) but he’ll be fine.

Seriously why do they even have a dew claw?


mmmmm booooooneee...mmmmmm

Little Dog!

Well I was going to post about knitting today – I even took a whole bunch of pictures…. But we have a little dog emergency going on.

Dexter stepped onto the snow drift in our backyard and I think he thought it would hold his weight… His foot went though and his dew claw did not - it caught on the snow and ripped back pretty far. We took him to the vet this morning and it is so torn that they have to put him under to fix the tear. Our poor little dog! Luckily he doesn’t have to stay overnight but I’m still worried about him. He looked so sad when we left him there…. They were going to do the surgery sometime around 1ish so I should hear back about how he did pretty soon.

Poor Dexter!

Dude, I told you, I'm NOT a snow dog!

Camping, with a hot tub

So this past weekend was Awesome. We went "camping" with a group of our friends here:

That would be a really nice, 2 bedroom cabin with a full kitchen and a hot tub. We were "roughing it" though - we didn’t have HBO. The cabin is somewhere in West Virginia which is magically 5 hours from everywhere. It was great. Good friends, good wine, good food. And, really, a hot tub in the snow is just so much fun.

I managed to stay off of my foot for most of the weekend – but I did take a short little walk in the woods. And since everything was so picturesque with the snow and all we thought it would be fun to take some "senior picture" shots. Check it out:

Jason in the "I’m cool because I’m holding a football" pose


Matt doing the “check out my dog” pose (for knitting content - my grandma knit the hat he's wearing)


Lori Beth represented with both classic shots – the “leaning against a rock”

And the “hand next to the face”


I think I pretty much rocked out the “sitting on a mossy rock” shot:


Then we found this really neat frozen stream bed….

Which was the perfect surface for snow angels:




A good portion of the weekend was spent playing old school Nintendo. Seriously. We are such geeks – but Mario 3 is every bit as fun as I remembered it being. Taboo, however, was the weekend favorite. Best quote ever:

Osam: "It’s like a chicken only bigger"
Jason: "Alligator!"

Heh. Funtimes.

Then last night Matt and I went to a wine tasting at the Atmosphere Gallery in Tremont. We found out about it through the Cleveland Wineaux Meet-up group which I joined on a whim while playing around online. I’m so glad we went! We got to meet the artists who are currently displaying pieces at the gallery – including Paul Duda who’s photography of Cleveland is simply amazing. We will definitely be going to more of the Wineaux events.

Tonight Matt has a late meeting so my plan is to stay off of my foot, watch exceedingly bad TV, and get back to the neglected knitting….

SNOW DAY!!!!

So I had a snow day! Well, the closest thing to it I can get…. Basically we’re slammed here in Cleveland and everyone (including the mayor) is saying if you don’t have to go to work, Don’t. Or at the very least go in late. And while I feel that Architecture is a very important profession, it is not one that is life or death. There is nothing that I need to do that is worth driving in this.

So we both called off.

Although even if we wanted to…. Well… our car is pretty much stuck where we left it because we couldn’t get in the drive last night:


We also thought that if we left it closer to the street it would be easier to get out in the morning… Right. Also, notice my street hasn’t been plowed yet (this pic was taken at about 9AM)? Yeah. I live on a main road. A very main road. So if my road looks like that…

My raised garden bed and stone wall look good in all the snow:


Heh.

Poor little dog hit this wall of snow when we tried to let him out:



We ended up putting him out the front door...

Matt dug us out at around 2ish and went into work for a few hours... with canine help, of course!


I, however spend the day making a tasty potroast in the crockpot and baking, as I've been told you are supposed to do on snow days. Don't worry, I did all of the baking, chopping, mixing, etc. sitting at the kitchen table with my foot propped up. We're going out of town to visit some friends this weekend and I will have at least cupcakes and brownies in tow!

Oh and as a side note - Yarn Harlot has a spectacualr post on love today. I am so very glad that I am fortunate enough to have "love with teeth."

Have a Happy Valentines Day!!

While I’m stuck here….

So people have been talking about their dream projects – about the things that someday they want to be able to knit. Well my dream project for awhile now has been the endpaper mitts. (or click here for a gallery of finished ones) I love them. They are so beautiful and useful and I know I would wear them all the time…and I can totally picture them with black as the contrast against pastely pink/blue/purple variegated yarn that I could dye just for them. Problem is I suck at fair-isle. The one time I tried it was on a felted hat that I made pre-blog. It did not end well… the fair-isle part felted tighter than the rest of it and it came out all misshapen and… BAD.

So anyways while I’m stuck here on the couch I may as well learn something, right? Check out what I made:

That would be the Center Square hat from Knitty knit out of the leftover Swish from my field-work socks. It took about a skein of the red and ¾ of a skein of the black.

Here's a shot of the insides (taken before I tucked in all of the ends, of course. My grandma reads this blog now so I will no longer admit to doing things like wearing this hat with all of the ends shoved up inside of it instead of tucked neatly in and perfectly finished. Because, really, I would never, ever do something like that. Hi grandma!):

And the really fun thing is I knit the whole thing two handed – meaning I knit the main color continental and the contrast color normal (well normal for me). Two hands at once! Two colors at once!

I thought for some reason that my gauge would be looser with this new technique so I knit it on 10.5 needles instead of the 11’s the pattern calls for. Well… my gauge actually turned out tighter than normal… so the hat is pretty small. I managed to block it out so that it fits on my head but it is too short to cover my ears. It’s ok, though, this was a learning experience. And I’ve been wearing the hat inside pretty much constantly since I made it. We keep our house pretty cold in the winter.

And a horrible/blurry shot of the hat actually on me:

Ok… I’m going to go take a nap now. The super-fun side effect of these anti-inflammatory drugs is that they knock me out. Bigtime. Although, according to my mom, this is a good thing because the only way to keep me completely off of my feet is to knock me out. She may have a point…

Updates

So I just wanted to update all of you friends, family, and knitbloggers out there who have been so supportive and concerned about me - you guys are amazing:

Yesterday, at the suggestion of the Urgent Care Doctor, I went to see an Orthopedic Doctor. And the good news is my bones are fine. I have no stress fractures or breaks or anything like that at all. Also, I probably do not have a sprained ankle – because sprained ankles involve your ligaments (something I totally didn’t know. Learn something new every day) and my pain isn’t in places that seem to be involving my ligaments. Anyways the bad news is that I have torn the tendon that goes from my ankle along the outside of my foot under the bone that bumps out on my ankle and connects to the bottom of my foot. Which sounds a lot worse than it is – basically he said that it’s probably lots of little mini tears. Yeah I’m real up on the medical jargon…. So because it was torn while my foot was twisting, I have to try to prevent my foot from twisting side to side. He said he could give me a boot thing to keep me from twisting it but because my pain isn’t that bad (I rated it as a 4 out of 10) he doesn’t think it’s necessary at this time. Instead I just have to continue to stay off of it and take these ginormous prescription anti-inflammatory drugs, and wait it out. If it’s not completely better in 2 weeks than he said I “definitely need to come back”. So let’s hope it’s better in 2 weeks!

Thanks again, everyone, for all of you kind words. It’s so nice to know that there are so many people out there who care about me!

Field Work Socks

So check out my newest socks:

These would be the first in a long line of quick projects that are hopefully going to hold my attention while I’m couchbound. These are pair of thick, boot socks for myself to keep my feet warm while I’m out on construction sites in the winter. And of course I had to knit them in my school colors – UC is the one of the top schools in the country for Architecture – so I need to flaunt my alma mater!


Pattern: Basic Top Down Socks 40 stitches, size 5 needles, based on the Men's Gray Socks on the Lion Brand website. I knit in K2P2 rib for 11 rows, knit one row Black, then alternated stripes of 4 rows.
Yarn: Swish Superwash, just less than 1 skein of Red Pepper, 1 skein plus a little of a second of Black
Timeline: Yeah. I cast on for these on the way to Akron for work on Thursday. I finished them during the superbowl. I literally knit an entire sock on Sunday. Being couchbound, while boring and frustrating, does have some serious knitting advantages!

Thanks guys!

Thanks for all of your support guys! Knit bloggers are the best ever. Unfortunately, I haven’t missed any work due to this little issue. Actually it’s fortunately – I’m super insane busy with a deadline right now so missing is somewhat out of the question. I actually did consider trying to stay at home today … but then I realized that if I didn’t get out of the house I might go completely stir-crazy. So yeah, I’m at work… with slippers on.

As far as how I walked around on it – seriously it wasn’t that bad. I honestly thought that I was just sore from the skiing and working out and being on my feet more than usual and stuff...

Oh and I wanted to mention – I bought my blocking board at JoAnne’s… it was less than $20 and I used my 40% off coupon. Totally worth it. I actually couldn’t find it in the store – I had to ask two different people – they are with the sewing tools – like the scissors and zippers and stuff. Also, my "blocking wires" are just 1/8" x 36" metal rods from Home Depot. I think they were $1.25 each. They were pretty greasy when I got them so I spent some time cleaning them with steel wool and ajax. But now? Good as new. And waaaay cheaper than the actual blocking wires I’ve seen elsewhere! If only I could find them….

I am a moron, with cute socks.

So check out what my foot looks like right now:

See last weekend I went skiing… and somehow I hurt my foot. I didn’t fall so all I can think of is that my boots suck a lot. I knew my foot was hurting but I spent all week limping around thinking it would get better. I even spent 3 days on site for work – meaning crawling around construction sites on my feet all day – and went to the gym. Well Saturday I spent resting it (oh yeah and I made a big pot of soup, which kindof sortof involved some standing in the kitchen but homemade chicken noodle is totally worth it) and it still didn’t feel better. Surprise, surprise. So yesterday I finally sucked it up and went to the doctor.

Turns out I fractured my foot in 2 places. And I have a sprained ankle.

The doctor said he had no idea how I managed to hobble around for a week like that. I’m not on crutches b/c my doctor wisely decided that me on ice with crutches is more of a hazard than it would be worth. He also did not want to put me in a boot b/c the toes would be open… not a good plan in –2 degree weather. Instead I have something called a “gel cast” that luckily I can still wear wool socks and sortof walk around with. I have to “stay off of it, keep it elevated, and stay off of it.” for the next week… and if it doesn’t get a lot better then I’ll have to go on crutches. Boo to that.

I hate having to stay off of it. Seriously, after only spending Sunday couchbound I’m so so sick of it. I couldn’t do any of my normal Sunday things! No laundry! No grocery shopping! No gym!

This is going to be a very long week.

Luckily I do like to knit… and being completely couchbound means I’ll have lots of time for that….

Stay warm!

How to make a knitter crazy.

How to make a knitter crazy. In 3 steps.

Step 1: Give her something really lacy, pretty, and rectangular to block and the desire to block it right now.

Step 2. Hide her blocking wires.

Step 3: Don’t give her enough of the pins with the large heads to finish the job.

Oh the lengths I will go to for properly blocked lace.

Seriously I don’t know what the #$% happened to my blocking wires. Perhaps Dexter ate them.

But I totally think it was worth it in the end:


Pattern: Falling Water Lace Scarf
Needles: Size 7, Knitpicks Options
Yarn: Crystal Palace Kid Merino that my grandma gave me for Christmas.

And a few more shots of it finished and off the blocking board:




Lace knitting is so fun!