DOT -- Art Car Parade (again)

Every year since we've had her, we've taken Lucy to the art car parade. She gets a lot of attention and many people (especially kids) want to pet her. This year I caught some blue beads and gave them to Lucy. Can you see them around her neck? Made her look quite festive, I think.

I am pretty sure this tennis-ball covered truck was her favorite entry.

I was intrigued by this Bug. It had a custom-fitted cozy made of crocheted afghan squares.

I highly recommend this parade!

What Came First?

There is that age old question: What came first? The chicken or the egg? I have no idea. However, ask me: What came first? The bluebird or the egg? The egg. Definitely the egg.

From these eggs came a flock of bluebirds. I think it's two boys and two girls.

I was lucky enough to have them visit my yard in Houston for a while before they migrated north. Cute little things, no?

Specific knitterly information about them can be found here on Ravelry if you are interested.

Bouquet of Flowers

I spent some time recently knitting a bouquet of flowers. These are actually Squash Blossom Bookmarks (Ravelry link) from the 2010 Knitting Calendar. They are fairly quick to make. I got lots of practice using DPNs and I am now really good at making i-cords.

These flowers are also a good way to use up small bits of yarn that are looking for a purpose in life.

The book they are resting on is Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. (Amazon link) I am really enjoying it.

May Day

Happy May Day! That's a holiday I don't think we celebrate nearly enough in the United States. Wouldn't it be fun to make cones, fill them with flowers, and leave them on the doorknobs of your friends and neighbors?

I recently participated in a spring swap in the Ravelry group Knitting and Tea and Cookies. Look what I received: a May Day cone filled with flowers complete with a butterfly on the handle.

I also got chai, tea, chocolate, and stitch markers.
Thank you, Costumatty in Pittsburgh!

DOT -- Topless

Saturday was such a pretty day that I thought Lucy would enjoy a topless drive in the car. I was right. She did.

Yes, she is safe. For topless driving she wears a harness. She has a doggy seat belt called a Batzi Belt. One end is attached to the loops on the harness, the other is attached to the human seat belt.

We both wish we had more days that we could drive topless!

I finished!

The official name of the pattern is Emily Shawl. I think of it as my lime green spring shawl.

I finished!

This shawl was interesting to knit. It used a different sort of construction (for me). I’ve done rectangular shawls. I’ve done triangular shawls where you begin in the top center and each row gets longer and the shawl is symmetrical like an isosceles triangle. This shawl is a right triangle. You start at one point with just a few stitches and work towards the long edge.

The knitting was simple and the pattern was easy to follow. This part went quickly.

The bind off used here is the sewn bind off. I looked up how to do this and it is quite easy too. Once you’ve finished knitting, you need to cut your yarn so you’ve got a tail three times as long as the edge you are binding off. Remember, you end this shawl on the long edge. So if that’s 50”, your tail needs to be 150” or over 12’. You’ve got to use a tapestry needle and sew through two stitches in one direction then one stitch in the other direction for each stitch you bind off. The difficulty is pulling that 12’ of yarn through the stitches. There is ample opportunity for the yarn to get tangled up. It took forever for me to finish the bind off! It’s a very nice and stretchy bind off, but it was quite a bit of work to do over this long edge.

It doesn't look like an egg carton anymore!

Used about 330 yards of fingering weight yarn.

DOT -- Easter

Can you guess which of these eggs are for Lucy?

Ready to play!

An action shot!

Happy dog.