Beardie-Spotting and Some Other Stuff

Dinah (on the right) romps with her friend Angus

A belated shout out to the Chief Bookdog over at Sheep Systems. He's a brown Bearded Collie who came from the Santa Clara Humane Society. Like the true herding dog he is, he keeps the place running.

I finally finished my part of the work on After Dark Beardies Web site. The design on this one now looks so good that it puts my current site to shame. I do have a couple of paying Web design gigs coming up and another one for barter, so the education I gained while stumbling around in CSS for this site will come in mighty handy.

The Lovely One has been making great progress in her beginner agility class up at Happy Tails. We love training with Cindy Ratner -- her teaching style suits our rather leisurely learning pace, and she's very laid-back. Dinah shows no fear of the big scary obstacles, and she likes climbing the A-frame and the dog walk. If we can get her used to the teeter and work on our tunnels and chutes, she should make a wonderful little agility dog indeed.

And On the Needles (or Off Them)

I finished the first of the gray Jawoll socks for Greg -- the ones that use the Yankee Knitter pattern. He tried it on and proclaimed it to be perfect, so I am thus inspired to finish the other one as soon as I can. The pattern itself is nothing fancy, and neither are the variations included in the pattern, but it adapts itself well to practically any yarn and any size.

If I'm making multiples of something (whether it be a knitted item or a cookie recipe), I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt the first time around. I'll follow the instructions exactly, and then I'll know where to branch out that possibly improve things on the second trip.

Thus it is with the Yankee Knitter pattern. Instead of using ssk for its decreases, this pattern calls for a knit two through the back loop (k2tbl). I've decided that I like the ssk much better; it tends to lie flatter and look much more like the mirror image of the k2tog on the other side. I'll still do the k2tbls for Sock #2 of this pair, but after that, it's ssk all the way. I'm also going back to the little circulars, even though I tried the 4-dp approach this time around. The socks just go so much more quickly on the circulars.

Joyce's Tofutsies socks are also progressing apace. This yarn is beautiful and I'm glad I've had a chance to try it, but it tends to split even more than Trekking does if you're not paying strict attention.