Family Visit, Dogs and Yarn Stashes

It's been quite the month, my Dad has been here since the middle of last month, he left just this morning, driving the 500 mile trip back to the DFW area ( I spoke to him a little while ago and he made it home just fine). I am so proud of him, he's 82 years, he just had knee replacement surgery and he is doing so well! During his rehab, his therapist was amazed at how quickly he was healing and bouncing back, he had lots of motivation though, he wanted to be able to walk up our mountain to get to the sky castle, and he did it with flying colors! We placed a few chairs on the trail going up to the house, at first he did have to sit in each one to rest, but as I expected, by the end of his visit, he used the chairs less and less.

Our little dog Pekoe, a 11 year old long hair chihuahua, usually doesn't like other animals, but she tolerates my Dad's dog who is half chihuahua and half pomeranian, her name is Baby Girl. It's funny, because I call my dog baby girl too, when I tried walking them both down the hill, my dog would go rather slow, my Dad's dog would race around, she's quite a bit younger and way more rambunctious... so I would call out "Baby Girl wait!" and like a good dog, she would stop, but so would my dog, so I would say "Pekoe, let's go", slowly she would start walking and Dad's dog would start running, I would say "Baby Girl, wait!" and they both would stop... it was like herding cats, eventually I would get them both down the hill, more or less at the same time...

I've noticed the weather changing, getting cooler at night, I have been itching to get into my yarn stash and start working again. Last year I learned how to loom knit, this season I decided that I wanted to do more crochet, learn more stitches so I have been pouring over YouTube and have found a wealth of how-to videos on crochet stitches. I wanted to learn some new stitches and make hand or wrist warmers, also known as fingerless gloves, though they are more like fingerless mitts.

I stitch I wanted to learn is called the larksfoot stitch, it looked easy and pretty enough, my mistake was not watching the video AS I crocheted, I watched it a couple of times then tried working it by memory. Oh, did I mention I hate trying to follow a written pattern? I learn much better from visual sources, watching it on video, then if I have a written pattern, I "get it". Well, my pattern doesn't exactly match the original pattern, but I'm happy enough with it, now I have a pair of wrist warmers to help keep my hands warm this winter when I'm sitting at the computer in the middle of the night in the frigid cold.

I also added a little ruffled edge on the bottom of the wrist warmers, it adds a bit of fun and interest and it lets me know which side goes where. The whole thing is very easy to make, I just crocheted a chain stitch using 4 chains per section until I had it long enough to comfortably go around my hand and wrist. I used 2 different yarn colors to make the pattern, I crocheted the (modified) larksfoot stitch until I had a rectangle long enough to go from my knuckles to just below my wrist, I could have made it longer if I had wished. Then I sewed up the sides leaving a space for my thumb. After I had it stitched together, I added the ruffled edge on the wrist side of the wrist warmers.

I might make some more wrist warmers, this time following the pattern a little more closely. I'll post more pictures of whatever I make.




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Wretha,

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