Lance

 Hi all -

It's with a heavy heart that I let you know that I had to put Lance down last week. He was an amazing dog and definitely a fighter, but it was time. Amazingly, he made it over 16 years! If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've seen pictures of him modeling my knitting creations. I stopped doing that a couple of years ago when he started having mobility issues. I thought I would share a couple of pictures of him. It's hard to believe that he was ever this young!! This is my favorite picture of him, taken the day after I adopted him:

This was taken the same day, when he was exploring his new yard:

He was really good about putting up with the kitties:

And could find the most comfortable places to sleep:

And his favorite holiday was Christmas:

I was lucky enough to spend over 15 years with him and will miss him greatly!!

I did also get some crafting done these past two weeks. First, I got the July installment of my crochet blanket, Juni Throw designed by Katy Petersen:

Juni Throw

Juni Throw - July close-up

I can't believe we are over halfway finished with this project! It's definitely going to be thick and warm when finished!

I also crocheted a 4 Ball Market Bag designed by Lion Brand Yarns:

4 Ball Market Bag

I made this for my neighbor using a free pattern I found online. I really like the design of the bag, but it is a bit small. I looked around on the Lion Brand web site and it turns out that they have four or five versions of this pattern. So I downloaded the largest version and made this Market Bag #70221A for myself:

Market Bag #70221A

Market Bag #70221A

It was nice to not have to do the math for the size change myself! And I was able to use some yarn leftover from a T-shirt that I made a couple of years ago. I like this size a lot better and will definitely be making more of these! I also like the feel of this yarn for market bags. This yarn is discontinued, but I do have a good selection in my stash that I picked up on clearance.

Another gift idea I've been thinking about is face scrubbies. I've never used make-up myself and only wash my face when I take a shower, but one of my sisters and my nieces use make-up so these seem like they would be nice gifts for them. My first sample is a Spring Blossom Face Scrubbie designed by Jenna Yamamoto:

Spring Blossom Face Scrubbie

This uses a very small amount of yarn, so is a good way to use up the leftovers of the cotton yarn used to make market bags. I think it turned out really cute. I'm just not sure how to decide useful these are. But I'll play around with some of the different patterns to see what I think.

I also did some more clean-up and organizing of my stash and came across a couple of kits that I thought I would work up. The first is the Quintessential Slouch designed by Jane Veltenheimer:

Quintessential Slouch

This is a fun project because of the different yarns. The taupe yarn is a cotton and there are four different white yarns: an alpaca silk, a brushed suri, a suri merino and an alpaca merino. The project looks cute in the pattern picture, but I keep going back and forth as to whether I like it in person. I was really iffy about making a garter stitch hat and thought about using stockinette instead, but I thought I should just go with it. I'll finish it up and see what I think in the end. No matter what, it'll be a good donation to the homeless shelter! The other kit I pulled out is for the Arabica Cowl designed by Ann Wicker:

Arabica Cowl

This yarn was wonderful to crochet with! I've been doing most of my crochet with cotton and acrylic since I'm mostly making market bags, so it was nice to use some nice squishy wool for a while! The main cowl is finished, but I still have to add the vertical lines and then seam it into a circle. There were already a lot of ends to weave in, so I lost steam on the embellishment which also has a lot of ends. But I'll pick this up again soon and finish it.

Finally, I'm really enjoying crocheting this Brioche Bun Scarf designed by High Desert Yarn:

Brioche Bun Scarf

I knitted a snood for my sister using this yarn several years ago. This spring my niece sent me a picture of herself wearing it and told me that my sister had given it to her and she loves it and wears it a lot. I knew that I had a lot more of this yarn in my stash so I thought it would be nice if I made an accessory to got along with the snood. I'm continuing to practice my crochet so I searched for a crochet scarf pattern that I might like to make. I found this one and I'm really loving it! I don't like stuff that looks too "crochety," if that makes sense. But I love how this stitch pattern looks:

Brioche Bun Scarf - close-up

I think the colors are beautiful and really shine with this stitch pattern. And the end result is really soft and squishy and should be really warm since the stitches are thick. The yarn is wonderful to crochet with, but the first ball of yarn was a pain to work with. I generally like to pull my yarn from the inside of the ball rather than from the outside. I forgot that I learned when making the snood that it's better to pull this yarn from the outside of the ball. I don't know if I'll be able to describe this well, but this yarn has a halo that feels soft, but when two strands are rubbed together tightly they get tangled. This yarn winds into a very tight ball so pulling the yarn from the center causes the strands to stick together and then I would have to stop crocheting to rip the strands apart and untangle things. But pulling from the outside is working fine and there is no problem with making the crochet stitches, even though I'm having to pull the working yarn through 7 loops at a time. So now that I'm on to the second ball of yarn I'm really loving making this scarf!

That's all I have for this week.

Nancy