I slept until 11 on the shortest day of the year, apparently. Is that today? I have no idea. Anyway, I blame the dog. I didn’t set an alarm because she usually wakes up somewhere between 8 and 8:15 like clockwork. Not today, apparently. Even though I last took her out at about midnight, she just didn’t wake me up. And strangely enough, when I woke up, she didn’t seem particularly eager to get out of bed. I’ve been sleeping in the office since Peto’s gone, both so I can sleep with the dog (I don’t want to encourage dog-in-the-bed-ism) and so I could escape a horrible clanking radiator. Well, the radiator is now fixed and poor Yoshi has to go to the kennel today, so I can fly to Oregon tomorrow. It just breaks my heart to have to board her. I miss her every time I leave the house (emotional dependency …. shut up. I don’t care.) but leaving her at the kennel is about all I can take. And I have to drop her off on my own this time, which means I’ll head out to an empty car, and home to an empty apartment, where I will sit around wondering what to do with myself, and probably talking to myself. At any rate, she’ll only be there for a few days before Peto comes back, and we take her to the most ridiculous yuppie-pampered-dog kennel there is in the city of Chicago, that we can afford. It’s a nice place, so I have no reason to be worried, but the last time we took her there I was panicking thinking that she thought we’d given her up and she had gone back to a shelter. But you know what, she’s a dog. So she probably just deals with whatever is going on in the here and now, and is not worrying about us.

She’s been very helpful with the Christmas knitting the last few days! She watched me finish up Becko’s scarf, and then didn’t jump all over it when it was pinned out all across the bed, and last night she watched me stitch up my dad’s clogs!



I think I mentioned before, my dad specifically requested these very clogs for Christmas. He had seen them in a yarn store when he went in one with my mom recently – he’s a nice guy who is always so patient in yarn stores, or at least willing to wander the neighborhood while you’re in there and never complains. Since he’s also the hardest man to shop for EVER I just had to abide. I want to encourage this requesting specific items for Christmas. I’m waiting to get to my parents’ house to felt these, which will be tricky because my dad will obviously be there. I’m just going to claim that I have lots and lots of laundry, and that’s why I keep messing around in the laundry room. Of course, that makes no sense because Peto and I have laundry here in Chicago – it’s not like I’m coming home from the dorm or something. Anyway, our washer is a front-loader, which means no opening during the cycle. My mom has a great oversized top-loader, and plus if I do it there she will help me.

Here are the clog specs:
yarn: knitpicks wool of the andes in forest heather (green) and mist (gray/blue). As you can see in the picture, the soles and the cuffs are green, and the main color is the blue/gray. I used approximately 4 balls of the green (that’s very approximate, since I ended up with three totally used balls, and two half-balls) and nearly 3 of the gray/blue. Frankly, I thought since gray/blue was the main color, I’d use more of it. Oh well. I have enough of these colors left over to make a contrasting pair for my mom, hopefully for her birthday (which isn’t until May) – I have 2 skeins of green left, plus the two halves… It’ll be close.
needles: Denise US13s of various lengths
pattern: Fiber Trends felted clogs by Bev Galeskas



That’s the wine-pig cuddling one of the ginormo clogs… You know, for scale or whatever.

Perhaps this is why everything I knit has dog hair wound around every single stitch:



This is what happens when knitting is left unattended on the couch. It becomes a dogpillow. Incidentally, I’ve never known a dog that insists on having a pillow before. Very strange.

Here’s what’s currently on my knitting docket:

finish that pink thing (almost there – probably this can get done within 48 hours, depending on how much time I spend procrastinating on this last paper)
knit the other felted clog for my dad (I’m giving this one a period of three days)
finish up that dish cloth you see the yarn for above. (yes, I do eat off dishes that have been washed in dog hair.)

Besides these items of immediate necessity, I need to get back to the following things:
raspy:


tree jacket


And Peto would apparently like some mittens.
I would like some more hand-knit socks. I’d say the sidewinders are next up, followed by the over-the-knee socks from Handknit Holidays.