A Productive Saturday

First I prepared for Easter by making a bunny. This is significant as my usual nod to Easter is to watch Jesus Christ Superstar. He looks a little sad but that's probably because I'm not particularly good at embroidery. He's on my desk at work next to the gallbladder jar. The paws and ears were fiddly due to using much smaller yarn than called for but I think it worked out OK in the end.

Pattern: Henry's Bunny by Sara Elizabeth Kellner
Yarn: Georga Baby Luv peach
Needle: 2.75mm
Gauge: much smaller than called for as this pattern calls for worsted weight yarn. I didn't figure it would matter much for a toy as long as the fabric was fairly firm.

Sad Easter Bunny

Speaking of gallbladders, I made another one. By request.

Pattern: Pear-fecto! by Susan B. Anderson
Yarn: Georga Baby Luv peach in red
Needle: 2.5mm

Also cast on socks for my sister in Red Deer. She says I haven't made her any, I remember making her a pair but they may have been lost. Perhaps they were not a preferred colour. This time she picked the colour.

Current Weather
Snowing. Quite hard. Glad it held off until I got home from work, snow really messed up your commute.
1C

2fer

I delayed writing this until I had finished up a couple of things. In my defense to my loyal readers (none that I know of) I was only one arm and the hat away from finishing the Knubelchen when I made this decision.

First up, socks for my Niece. Finished these with a little more time to spare than my Nephew's socks last month. I don't need these until Sunday, that's most of two days away. For some weird reason the two balls of yarn were wound in opposite directions so one sock goes green, orange, pink, grey and the other goes green, grey, pink, orange. By the time I noticed it was too late to go back and work the second ball from the other end. Calling it a design feature.

Pattern: Improvised
Yarn: Hjertegarn Sock 4
Needle: 2.0mm

Socks!

Followed by another Knubbelchen. Made this one out of some leftover Noro, I see people raving about this yarn all the time but I don't much care for it. It twists up on me for some reason, maybe because it's a single ply, and I find it a bit rough and it doesn't have the stretchyness of wool sock yarn, even yarn that's 25% nylon. Then there are the knots, the weird colour combinations, and that it changes thickness all the time. I'll just leave it for those who like it.

Pattern: Knubbelchen by pezi888
Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll Solids, Heathers & Twists in white for the head and Noro Taiyo Sock for the body.
Needle: 2.5mm

Knubbelchen

I was asked to knit a gallbladder for someone. Words I did not expect to type. Ever. He even offered to pay me for it. So, what is fair market value for a knitted gallbladder?

Current Weather
Clear with periodic clouds. -2C

It actually snowed a bit this week for the first time in a long time. It was getting so dry my contact lenses were gluing themselves to my eyelids. A bit of precipitation seemed to help. Now it's drying out again and the contacts are back to sticking. Sigh. Maybe I should wear my glasses more often.

Scent Hurdle

It took a while before anything interesting happened again.

Ahab did fantastically well at another Scent Hurdle tournament on Saturday. Terrible picture but here he is waiting for his next turn to run.

I also have video; no video of Ahab because I was busy when he was running but this is my team on a race when he was the backup dog. As you can see we didn't win but a good time was had by all. Ahab and I were both beat when we got home. Still waiting for points but he will not have earned a new title yet, he's going to need a few more tournaments for that.

Much lack of knitting lately as I've been so tied up with Scent Hurdle stuff. This is what I get for volunteering for the Board of Directors I'm afraid.

Current Weather
Partly cloudy, 7C. There was a bit of a wind when I was out earlier.

Monster Pants

Finished up the Monster Pants. Too cool for school these are. My Wee Niece is coming to visit this summer so I'll give them to her then. I really hope I made the right size. Also left out the elastic waistband for now; once she's here I can measure and insert it. Gave him one tooth because I got tired of duplicate stitch, if I get overwhelmed with ambition I'll add more. Don't expect that to happen.

Pattern: Monsterbukse by duBedåre
Yarn: Georga Baby Luv in Baby Mint and Baby Yellow with White and Black for the eyes
Needle: 2.5mm & 3.0mm
Gauge: 30 st X 10cm & 35 rows X 10cm

Too cute!

Current Weather
Mostly cloudy, 11C.

Bizarrely warm for this time of year, I'm told there is still good skiing if you know where to go in the mountains though.

Throwback Thursday

Kittens

Update on Ahab's Scent Hurdle points; he did earn his first title on Saturday. So proud of him. I suppose I can now introduce him as "Captain Ahab, SHD". Wait, that means he's got more letters after his name than I do. Figures. ;-)

Current Weather
Mostly cloudy, 7C.

Honestly, I thought this segment would be more interesting but the weather's been strangely predictable lately. I'm sure it'll pick up once the summer storm season hits. Or, maybe we'll get some wild spring snow soon.

Scent Hurdle

HE DID IT!!!!

Ahab did extremely well yesterday at Scent Hurdle. He struggled in his first couple of races and I had to go with him to the box to remind him of what he needed to do. So we took a break for a couple of races. Then we tried again near the end of the morning tournament and this time he did it! So proud of my boy.

In the afternoon we ran with a different team because my team only wanted to enter for the morning but I wanted to get some more exposure for Ahab and run in the afternoon too. Another team was willing to take the risk on a green dog so this time he was racing with dogs he didn't know and he still did awesome. He even had another dog cross into his lane which threw him off a bit but other than keeping a close eye on the dog in the other lane on his next run he was fine. I don't have any video because I was so busy with Ahab and I never thought to ask someone else to take some for me. I never thought to take pictures either. Ah, well; next time.

I don't think he earned his Scent Hurdle Dog (SHD) title because we just weren't fast enough to get 10 points in each run. He needs 50 points to earn that first title and he had 10 from last year before he had to stop running until the rules were changed to allow him to run again. I think he earned another 20 yesterday, we had a lot of runs that I'm pretty sure took too long to earn any points. I could be wrong though so I'll wait until the Statistician has posted the official results to be sure. But he took some big steps towards earning that title and I couldn't be happier with how he did. In any event points, titles, and such are for the human; all he cares about is that I was really happy about what he did on the race course.

And the buffet that was the floor; he cared about that a lot. We were racing in a horse barn so there were traces of horse poo in the dirt. He thought it was a great smorgasbord. Urgh, poo-eating hound. Fortunately Garbage Guts didn't get sick.

After getting home from Scent Hurdling

In other dog news, Soccer behaved himself when Mom took him for a walk. It was clearly a good dog day.

Knitting
With all the Scent Hurdling yesterday all I manged to knit was another fish for the Fishie Blankie. I was pretty tired when I got home.

Current Weather
Sunny and 3C.

A little bit of progress

Another Knubbelchen is progressing nicely.

And my Niece's socks are coming along as well. Let's hope these don't come down to the wire as badly as my Nephew's did last week.

My Nephew liked his socks, or at least he was too polite to say otherwise. Actually, I think he liked them. Mind you, he's pretty accustomed to getting socks from me. His comment when he pulled them out of the bag; "gee, I wonder who these might be from?" Cheeky kid.

Scent Hurdle
Tomorrow Ahab is going to try for his Scent Hurdle Dog title. He has 10 points from last year before it was discovered that he was in violation of the rules for missing a paw. Have now got the rules changed so he can play again. I just hope he remembers what he's supposed to do; he's only been doing it at our practice facility for quite a while now. Oh well, if it's a disaster so be it. He needs 15 more points for his title. Fingers crossed.

I think I've got all the documents printed off for the tournaments tomorrow. It's my job to bring all the score sheets and stuff. There will be two tournaments, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Ahab is running in both, in the morning with our team and in the afternoon with another team since the rest of my team only wanted to come for the morning and I wanted to try for the whole day. Although, if Ahab can't make it all day I'll pull him.

Current Weather
Mostly cloudy, 3C.