Rambling Warps

URLs

I got the beanie patterns from here

and the dog's felted tug toy pattern from here I started mine a little differently: I cast on 19 stitches, which is 1 more than the pattern says to cast on, but instead of starting in the round, I used the double knitting technique of knit 1 slip one with yarn in back and then on the other side I would knit the slipped stitches & slip the knit stitches & work this way for a couple of rows and THEN switch to DPNs. I may not have described this right, but it is important to put the yarn in position in such a way that you don't join the fabric...

Here are a couple of other cool links I found:

Homemade dog biscuits:
http://www.seefido.com/html/homemade_dog_biscuit_recipe.htm

E-books about dogs by Michele Welton: http://www.yourpurebredpuppy.com/ebooks/ This site also has info about dog breeds right on the site. I'll probably buy the e-books "Longer Life For Your Dog" and "100 Words To Teach Your Dog"... I'm working with the Monks of New Skete book called "How To Be Your Dog's Best Friend" for training, but one of the things the book says is to read 2 or 3 other books... (or maybe that was the book by Mordecai Segal, I don't remember)...

And here's one more site http://www.pet-grub.com/ with lots of information about cat and dog health and how to make your own dog & cat food... one good bit of advice that I found on this site is:

"Use what you have. Use what is available to you. Use what you can afford. There is no shame in this and just think about, feeding raw, homemade food, even if the vegetables are frozen vegetables as compared to organic vegetables is still leaps and bounds better than commercial pet food."

That said, we still may buy commercial pet food...

New family member

We brought home a 7 month old puppy on Sunday:

This is the photo on the website and I think he is about 4 or 5 months old in this photo... We got him from a pet rescue organization...he's part catahoula and part lab, is good with the kids and cats (most of the cats still aren't so sure about him, but they've had to put up with being chased madly up trees by our neighbor's dogs)... Nikki (our oldest cat) seems to love him already: she will rub up against him and such... she was raised with dogs even before we got her and we had a puppy when we got her. Dumbledore & Liberty are having a little more trouble getting used to him: Dumbledore doubled in size when we first brought him in: I missed that because I was busy getting stuff out of the car. The girls were brought up around dogs, so they just needed to make sure that this dog wasn't going to chase them & do horrible things to them. Yesterday, Yoda was drinking out of HIS water bowl. He just sat quietly a foot away watching...

We still don't know his name... I feel like it is on the tip of my tongue, but I don't know what it is yet. Gary & I have tossed a few ideas back & forth and nothing has sounded right yet... he sleeps a lot, but has his playful moments. The hound part in him makes him a calm lab & the lab gives the catahoula part of him a spike...

Why I'm up at 6am

I set my alarm for 5am so that I could get Micah up to finish his homework. He spent about 4 hours yesterday trying NOT to do his homework. It's not that he has trouble understanding the stuff, but he says it's so boring... I need to talk to someone at school and see what they can do... either give him some more challenging work to do or find a different approach to teaching him. Part of the problem is that he's not SHOWING that he can do the work because he's resisting it so much...

He's finally finished with his homework and it's time to make lunches and get everyone ready for school! I'll try to write a little more often...maybe later this afternoon: there IS knitting and crocheting content in my life: I have about a foot knitted of a dog tug toy based on Esther Bozak's pattern... also am working on a beanie from a pattern from Croshay Design... I'll post URLs later because it's time to start goosing kids!

New Knitting Needles

I forgot to tell y'all that Weaving Rainbow is going to be carrying bamboo knitting needles: they're made by Tulip from the SRK Collection. I got a batch of US 8 circular needles and they're very nice... the wood finish is nice & the join is smooth. I'll be getting some Tulip double pointed needles as well... email me or post a comment to give me an idea of what sizes are popular. I know *I* like having US 7 for worsted weight yarn, 2 for socks, 10-1/2 for bulky, etc., etc....

No puppy yet

We went to the place where they foster dogs & didn't get a puppy yet... we'll keep looking. The puppy that we went to look at it cute & all, but somehow didn't seem like he might be right for the family, but he's still in the baby puppy stage, so who knows... if he's still there in a couple weeks or so, and we still haven't found a pooch, we'll go see him again.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder how we lived without a dog in the family... I miss having a dog around, but having the neighbor's dog come visit is always nice... he hasn't been here as often, possibly because the kids are in school now...

Potty Training

Reuven's all potty trained except at night... it's been that way for a while, which is wonderful... seems like it happened overnight, so if someone asks how to potty train a child, the best answer I can give is model model model and encourage them when they try but I don't think this is a river you can push. When they're ready, it just happens, most of the time. one of the older boys wet the bed until he was finished with kindergarten.. another one would not poop in the toilet until he was almost 5...

Texas weather

This summer has been quite cool for Texas: the other day on the news they said:

We only reached 100 degrees at DFW airport once this summer.
It went over 90 degrees about 50 or 60 days this summer.
We were UNDER 90 degrees about 30 days this summer.
It's the 2nd rainiest summer on record.

Last year we were facing serious drought conditions.

They also said that there is no relation between the type of summer we had and the type of winter we'll have.

Interesting.

Time to go do a few things, maybe draw a bit, and do a bit of housework. I already got my 1 or 2 miles in after the kids got on the bus. This is the 2nd time since I made a conscious effort to start running/walking again. I'm thinking about aiming toward being able to do the 10 K at Germanfest next spring. We'll see: winters can be hard one me: I often get a bad BAD cough and that could nip training in the bud... hopefully training will make my respiratory system stronger...

New pooch, perhaps?

We may be getting a dog soon, maybe a puppy, we'll see how things go when we visit the place that fosters animals.

It's been long overdue: we lost our last pooch about a month or two before Reuven was born, not sure if it was because he was overrun by ticks or if it was because the chemicals in the dip from the vet hurt him, probably both... he was primarily an outdoor dog & rarely came into the house... this dog will be an indoor and outdoor dog... and we'll work hard to get him trained properly...

The thing that helped me get over the "we're not ready yet" phase was that a couple of our neighbors warned us of a possible problem in our neighborhood, and Gary said "I wish we still had Po-Bear"... after he said that, I went onto Petfinder & our local humane society/spca websites and looked at the listings...

I also emailed the gal who runs the HS/spca asking for information about what's involved in fostering dogs... we'd have to do a bit of fixing up on our property and also learn how to accept that most of the animals won't be staying with us long term (unless we adopt them ourselves), that's another possibility in addition to our own family pooch.

One thing that concerns me is we're still financially shaky right now, but hopefully we'll be able to work this out...but in some ways we can't afford not to have a dog, for safety reasons...

One of the dogs listed just kept growing on me... after we meet him and decide whether or not we'll have him join our family & get our application approved, etc., I'll post pix and more info... the dog(s) we're looking at were abandoned at/near birth with their mother around the 4th of July...should be a large size dog & hopefully will be good with the kids and cats and guinea... granted a puppy won't be able to protect us now, but can grow into that role. The puppy's mom is also available for adoption and I don't know what other dogs they have there.

Drawing

Did a bit of cartoon practice yesterday... I was up to the point in my book where I need to draw 25 shapes and put in 25 faces all different... at first I did a bunch and came up with too many similar ones, so tried again, this time with JUST the face shape & JUST the eyes nose mouth...no ears, no nose, no hair... I think I learned something from doing it this way this time!

The next exercise is to make funny faces in the mirror and draw them. That should be fun!

I have 2 squares finished on the Hippy Dippy hat... I just haven't done anything since I finished those 2 and I'm thinking of re-doing the colors a little bit..sure wish I could find my ball of olive green lamb's pride yarn... anyone have a little bit of it (doesn't have to be a full skein) that they'd like to trade for something else??

School stuff

Our problems with homework are back... not with Evan, but the other two... I talked to Micah about it over the weekend, and he feels that he has not learned anything in school since 2nd grade (he's in 4th now)... part of his problem is that he resists doing the work & when he does do it, he does it slowwwwwwwwwwwly as a turtle. I told him the other day that if he wants to be able to either be in the accelerated program or take more advanced classes, he needs to show them that he can do his work well and quickly. What he's doing is giving people the wrong impression about what's between his ears (sigh). I plan to talk to his teacher and see what we can do, but I think Micah first may need to prove that he can do his work and stuff... and no matter what, he still needs to memorize his arithmetic facts...

That said, he spent a lot of time over the weekend on the mathisfun.com website... and found a couple of other math sites...

Have a great week, everyone!

They grow up, don't they?

Carolyn wrote a post about her son passing his road test... as our kids grow older, they do more things that make them more and more independent from us in different ways...and hopefully we would have given them a good foundation to go on.

Something New

I learned something new a couple of days ago: I made up my mind that I was going to learn how to crochet. I dug up my book (the one that's available from Wal-Mart) and went through the steps of learning the different stitches. Then found a pattern for a hat that I want to make: a Hippy Dippy hat from Granny squares... I found it here and there is a better picture of it here. I'm also planning to make some hats/beanies for the boys for this winter...some will be knitted and some will be crocheted... the twins may even make their own... I won't say that I like knitting better than crocheting or vice versa: I think this is a situation of apples and oranges...can't compare them. I will say this: I started with acrylic yarn and felt MUCH better when I switched to wool. The Hippy Dippy hat is made with Lambs Pride and Mountain Mohair yarns... I will take pictures of the squares before I put them together...which leads me to:

Photos Soon, Maybe
YAY! I found the CD for my camera cable... will try to install it and hopefully will be able to take photos again.

Painting!

I've been painting a bit during Reuven's naps and did a painting last week and another on Tuesday... at the moment, I seem to be doing cat themes... will post them in a few days...

Okay... I'm going to try to sleep... although, Gary said that "Girl Friday" (an old black & white movie) is on: maybe I'll be able to finish the drawing of the dinner scene if I haven't missed it!

Sunday

Phew, what a week... Carolyn mentioned that Mercury is in retrograde...does that explain why on Tuesday (8/10) our computer's operating system and modem decided to blow raspberries? Well, everything's more or less back except we lost several of our drivers, but managed to find some that work for various peripherals. One that I am unable to find is the driver for my camera cable, so I'll have to get in touch with the company (Oregon Scientific) about that.

Good things can come out of stuff like this: we now have another (used) 10 gig hard drive, so have more disk space... we're looking at various free software that we can get that may actually be better than the commercial pay software...

Not much else is new since this week was mostly consumed with getting the kids ready for school & putting the computer back together. I did manage to do some painting the other day and have been playing with my Sakura Pigma pens from Dick Blick

These will do until I can afford a rapidograph (or find the ones I THOUGHT I had, which are missing)... the pigma pens are not refillable, so will eventually run out of ink, but they are pretty cool:

I got the 3 pen set with 3 point sizes...

Also played a little with my Crow Quill pen, also from Dick Blick:

I have a wooden holder from years ago, but the Hunt nibs won't fit in it... I don't much care for the little plastic holders that are available now..if anyone knows where I can get some more wood holders for Crow Quill nibs, leave a comment or send me email!

I just did a drawing of the cats... I think I will call it "Waiting for Nikki": she is the mom of Loveslug, Littleface & Yoda & isn't very friendly to her daughter cats... if Nikki is around when we feed the cats, they all sit around waiting for Nikki to eat...doesn't matter if we have 3 or 4 bowls full, they wait for her to get done...this one may be good enough to turn into another rug hooking design or painting... we'll see!

I don't know how long it will be before I can take photos of my drawings/paintings. We may have to pull the scanner out (I know where the CDs for these are) and use it for pictures until I can get the driver for the camera cable.

The kids started school on Wednesday the 11th! They are glad to be back and they all have good teachers. Harrison has Micah's 1st grade teacher for 1st grade, and he also had Micah's Kindergarten teacher last year... Evan has a teacher who taught 1st grade the last couple of years & Micah's teacher is the mom of one of Harrison's buddies...

I'm pissed because they dropped the music program: it wasn't MUCH of a music program to begin with (no instruments until 4th grade, and then they would teach recorder), but are now going to be incorporating fine arts into the curriculum. I offered to help, but probably won't be able to help much for another 2 years when Reuven will start kindergarten...

I hope everyone in the path of Charley is staying safe!!!!

Have a good week everyone... and don't forget to read the newsletter on tornadowood

Picture day!

Here are some practice drawings that I've done over the last few weeks:

I still have not done the very last exercise in my colored pencil workbook, but probably will re-do some of the others first...

Last night I did a drawing of Donald Duck and it came out pretty good, it's almost TOO good... I don't dare post it here! (Someone tell me if it would be a violation of the Disney copyright to do so? I'm not selling it...)

The photos of my cartoon drawings did not come out good, but here's a series of 3 drawings that I did last night..blurry!

The drawings are all exercises from various books that I have, the colored pencil studies are from a book by Bernard Poulin...and the cartoons from The Big Book of Cartooning by Bruce B...

The usual Copyright jabber applies here: I've done my best to acknowlege my sources (plus I'm not selling any of the images)...

I have a series of colored pencil cats in progress but I'm not ready to show them yet... email me if you're interested in seeing them.

Thoughts on techniques:

I've been browsing some of the online art sites and a lot of what I'm seeing in the colored pencil categories is that a lot of people seem to work from photos & not from life drawings or their imagination...granted, sometimes that's not possible (wild animals for instance) but there's something about it that bothers me and I'm not sure what...also, a lot of the colored pencil techniques seem to me to be a sophisticated form of coloring book art... perhaps it seems too much like a canned technique or something? HOWEVER, I will say that I've seen a lot of jaw dropping gorgeous work done in colored pencil... and now that I have my own set of Prismacolor pencils, I can see the difference between their quality and the quality of Crayola colored pencils...

I'm also going to experiment with pen and ink. All my knitting and weaving friends are buying yarn and such, while I'm buying papers, pencils, ink and such! I'm waiting for an order for some stuff from Dick Blick...should be here in a few days... and yesterday I made shorts out of a pair of pants that are too big..am using a string to tighten the waist and may use the legs for "canvas" for a painting...the fabric is a heavy twill cotton or lightweight denim...

I might have to share my art supplies: the boys have been working on some pretty cool cartoon drawings from their imaginations... will take pictures next time. School starts on Wednesday... Monday is orientation. Hopefully we'll get to do some painting (with acrylic on gesso'd masonite) before school starts.

Fiberwise, I've got a couple of things in progress... might do some tapestry weaving in a little while...

Here is a better photo of the square that I knit for Hunt Valley:

And I close with the Cat in the Box:

Have a great weekend everyone!