The Country Dog in the City

It turns out that Alf is a Country Dog. Completely. Totally. Whole-heartedly.

We got to the hotel and got moved into our room. Alf met Casey's friend, Mirror Dog. Alf isn't impressed with Mirror Dog because he won't run and play. Of course, Alf has had a real dog friend ever since he was born unlike Casey. Alf doesn't miss Fritz and isn't interested in being friends with Mirror Dog.

We thought that Alf had calmed down because there was no sign of hyper Alf. He was calm and quiet. Our room was by the stairs and Alf alerted anytime anyone went past the room. He actually is very sensitive because he sensed people with the door closed and the curtains closed. He doesn't react at all to males. He becomes animated if it is a female.

We moved on Saturday from the second floor to the third floor because the room we had only had one chair. We now have a couch so we can both sit down and I can knit or read or watch tv with Fred.

Some children, a little girl and a littler boy moved in next door and the calm, non-hyper Alf is gone. Way hyper and staying glued to the crack under the door or jumping up to see out the window. The kids love to stop at the window and wave and talk to Alf. And then everyone on the floor comes by to laugh at the little dog going crazy trying to get to the children.

We were driving around, not going anywhere, just driving to see what was near and the gentleman in the next lane started making faces at Alf who was leaping at the window trying to get to him to get petted. The two ladies in the car behind us were laughing hysterically watching this. Traffic here moves slower than Atlanta so everyone had time for fun.

We have been going out exploring. Jonathon had told us about geocaching and it turns out that it is a great way to discover the area. Alf is way more interested in people than scenery and part of the geocaching is to not attract the attention of the bystanders and passers-by. Conflict of interest going on there.

The hotel is right next door to the Helen Nelsen Historical Land Trust which consists of the house and several acres of the farm with two geese, two sheep, one hair sheep, one horse and one pony. Alf loves to walk past the farm and try to get into the pasture to run and play with the animals. The pasture is full of manure - looks like cow but didn't see any cattle. Alf really wants to get off his leash and be a country dog again. To run through the pasture and roll in the manure. To chase animals that run and chase back.

Instead Alf the Country Dog is stuck inside, only getting out on a leash, walking on sidewalks, going to tiny parks, listening to traffic. No bellowing of cattle, neighing of horses, birds singing, no pastures, no school buses.

Alf is with his people and that is worth any sacrifice. But he sure wishes his people would go back where they belong.

Spider Infestation!

Just pictures, lots of pictures. The original Arania and the new Arania, Nellie and Joy. All done. All delivered to the Theater Department. Now I get to work on something else . . .

Spider Making 101

As promised, here is a tutorial on how I made the spiders. First off I should mention that I used the Spider pattern from Amigurumi Knits: Patterns for 20 cute mini knits by Hansi Singh. She is amazing and her patterns are incredible. The instructions in the book are terrific, detailed and easy to follow.

First, you start with the legs - you knit those over and over and, if you are making 3 spiders, keep knitting until you think if you ever knit one more of those stupid things, you will die.

The next step is even worse, because now you have to sew them up. On the first spider, I made them knit in a tube longways. It worked, but the tube is so thin that you can't push the pipe cleaner down it, so you have to knit it around the pipe cleaner. I couldn't decide if that was worse than sewing or not but I decided to knit them properly on the other three spiders. The pattern calls for them to be knit sideways, so the rows of knitting go the length of the leg. They use a lot of short rows for shaping, but go fairly quickly. They do look better when knit accoring to Hansi's pattern, but man the sewing . . .

Next, you knit the abdomen - finally, something that has more than a few rows per piece, no sewing at all and no short rows. It's just knit like a ball and when you're done, you're done.

One more set of pieces to knit: the chelicerae or fangs. They start out flat with short rows and then you join them into the round and decrease to points. After you've made the two of them, you start to put things together.

First, you pick up stitches at the tops of two legs, then the two chelicerae and then two more legs. This is the beginning of the head or cephalathorax and you knit the top first with lots of short rows for shaping - it ends up making a very nice spider head (or cephalathorax).

After you've knit most of the top of the head and it's shaped and looking like a head, you add two more legs, the abdomen and then the last two legs - all by picking up stitches. Then you knit them into a round and graft the two sides together to complete the top of the head.

Now the spider actually looks like a spider - at least from the top. On these spiders, I used safety eyes rather than embroidering eyes on so the eyes had to be added at this point. The director and I decided that since this is a play for children, we would only use two eyes on each spider because 8 might be a little scarey. Then you turn the spider over, stuff it, bend the pipe cleaners together inside and get ready to make a bottom to the cephalathorax. You pick up a set number of stitches from each piece (chelicerae, legs, abdomen) starting at the front of the spider and knit a few rows and then start decreasing down to make a flat circle. At the end, when you have few enough stitches, you just run your yarn through and pull the last couple tight. No finishing at all but tuck that last end in.

Presents!

I went on a field trip with one of my students to the local yarn store (Needlenook) and found these incredibly cute coffee mugs! I fell in love with the colorful one but they also had white sheep with one black sheep on a mug. They had cute little tea towels, pot holders, coaster and even umbrellas too. Well, my student bought me this as a present - tried to tell her she didn't have to, but she did and I love it!

And Hollins University sent Miss S a little package too! She's about to start taking her exams (both school and Advanced Placement) and so they sent some goodies to get her thru the studying and tests. I thought that was so thoughtful of them!

Spider bits and pieces

So this is where the two existing spiders are - one is almost done and the other more than halfway. First the pics of where these are and then when I make the last one, pics as I go. The first pic is the bits - first you knit the legs and mouth parts then the bottom of the body (I'll add the real names to the next post). Then you sew the legs around pipe cleaners if you want to be able to pose your spider - and I do.

Then you knit the top of the head and while you do that, you attach legs and the front mouth pieces. After you finish the top of the head, the bottom of it is still open (see last pic). I need to knit the top of the second spider's head and attach the pieces and then start the third spider. I can't close the first one till I get the eyes. The black things on the bottom are the pipe cleaners sticking out of the legs.

Spring is Here!

Well, Spring is finally here. Seemed like winter this year was the worst in a long time and lasted much later than it usually does. But there are signs of life everywhere. The hyacinths have finished blooming and the ground orchids are poking buds up - they'll be blooming soon. The fig tree that I got by mistake is letting leaves come out of it's little buds.

The peony I bought when I was out there has finally started to show above the dirt. I really hope it will flower this year, but I doubt it. The daffodils and narcissus are about done but here's one pic of a late bloomer that hasn't completely faded yet.

The yellow-cover-everything pollen started a couple of days ago and now all the cars are the same color and everything outside is yellow green. When you touch anything a puff of yellow dust flies. The dogwoods are finally blooming, so are the redbuds and the cherries.

My double flowering cherry - pretty but hidden behind all those stupid bradford pears. And the pieris is blooming but not with the usual gusto . . .

The first wave of azaleas is going - the reds in the backyard are starting to come out, the pinks in the front are all the way out. The whites haven't started yet and some of the reds are behind.

And the candy cane camelia is finally blooming! There are flowers all over it and the bush is about 6' tall (we just planted it a couple of years ago.)

Funny, but if you walk to the backside of the bush, you'll find a few flowers that are half red and half candy cane . . . and if you look further, there are some that are all red. Still pretty tho.

Costume Knitting

Ok - finished all the costume knitting for the spring musical. There are actually two musicals, Charlotte's Web and A Chorus Line. Miss S is in both, but just in the opening act of Chorus Line because she's Charlotte and that takes a lot of time. And I only knit for Charlotte's Web because the Chorus Line costumes won't involve any knitting.


Here is another picture of the bat wings - hanging on a bush.

And this is the sheep costume, well actually only part of it, but the part I made. There is an identical, but slightly smaller one that I made for the Lamb but I didn't get a picture of it. I'll try to get pics of the kids actually in their costumes later.

Right now I'm busily knitting up spiders and lots of them. This is Arania, the first one I made for the director. If I don't finish the new three children, Arania, Nellie and Joy for the show, the old Arania will have to fill in for me. But I'm acutally trying to get three new ones done so that they can have stripes on their body and kinda sorta go together. I'm definitely going to get a group shot of all the big ones and the three little ones when they are all done . . . stay tuned.