Well this has taken far too long

I've been away much longer than I expected.  Not in body so much as in mind.  I'd just been detoured onto omgpop via yahoo and playing way too much Draw My Thing.  It was such great fun for quite a while.  And then I found myself tangled up in a rift between two other players, which has tarnished the experience quite a bit for me.  I think it will be fun again, but in the mean time I'm limiting my time there and focusing my attention and energy on other fun things that I had been neglecting.

Had I not been distracted I probably would have the second llama finished already.  I am knitting a crochet pattern.  I checked the gauge and am hoping now that I made a note of that in Ravelry so I can be sure what my numbers are.  I do have the recollection that I need 2 more knit rows to equal the same height of crochet rows.

My progress so far is a barely started body, three feet and a leg that could be in the half done range.  Had a terrible time getting a decent photo of the three feet.  I was working each on double points until I got to 42 sts in the round and started knitting the first 2 together on a set of two circulars.  Realizing I was running low on the dark brown for feet I clipped on strand and started the third foot, knit until I ran out of color and then switched to white.  Ultimately all where switched to white and when the progress on the third foot had caught up to the first two I put it on the circulars as well.

I reviewed as many llama photos as I could, paying particular attention to the feet, and concluded that often their feet do not all match.  So my second llama will look like it's wearing spats that are uneven.  I don't even know what I will do for the third llama yet, but I have llama yarn for it, possibly even a fourth.

It's prettier in person ;o)

After photographing the feet and leg I noticed a mini-skein of what I think is Malabrigo sock that was sent to me as a sample when I ordered other yarn.  I hope at some time I'll verify where it came from, but I suppose it isn't absolutely necessary.  I am pretty sure of what it is just from memory, but not the colorway. I kind of hope there is enough there to make a sock for my sister's sock monster.  Otherwise, I am not sure just what I'd do with a very small amount of sock yarn.

Doesn't everything taste better with dog hair?

I can't vouch for that.  But I remember seeing something, perhaps a mug, suggesting everything tastes better with cat hair.  I don't know because I don't have a cat.  I have a dog.  If I've been tasting her hair I haven't really noticed.  I suppose that means dog hair can be tasteless.  Mostly I've been unintentionally wearing her hair.  The light strands really accentuate my mostly dark and jewel-tone wardrobe.  At times I'll feel a sharp prick on my foot and find one of her hairs actually poking into my skin.  Not stuck against my skin, but a piece I have to grab, sometimes only catching it with tweezers, and yank out.  Who knew that hair could beat skin?

I just finished winding up a center-pull ball from one of the four skeins of String Theory Merino DK that arrived today.  Took a few snapshots, uploaded them to the computer and updated my Rav stash.  When I saw the photos on screen I noticed there was a strand of dog hair prominently on the top of the ball.  It appears in each of the photos just to the right of the plastic center piece.  I'm not sure how it found the opportunity to get there.  I had the winder in my hand and didn't set it anywhere except to prop it against the box part of my swift while I grabbed my camera.  That's not a lot of room for mischief, but I suppose dog hair finds the easiest and fastest path to stick to something everything.

I can be sure most things don't look better with dog hair.  Equally certain that nearly everything I own has dog hair on it somewhere.  There's just no stopping it.

Easy & Cheap Upcycled DIY Yarn Swift

Instructions for Tilta Swift at webeccasays.blogspot.com

This baby is every bit as great as my bead spinner, and the only thing I had to buy was the box, which cost me a few dollars at Staples.  The box is a 5 or 6 inch cube and was the smallest they had at the time.  Saw at Webeccasays that someone even used a huge mug instead.  I inherited the lazy susan, used recovered elastic from an old garment, and everything else I just had on hand.  I put small cast garden stones in the middle of the box to keep it from sliding off center when it's moving fast.  I know there's some rubbery shelf liner around here somewhere, but the weight seems to work just fine.  I position the clothespins above the yarn because for winding I sit in my recliner and put the swift where my feet should be.  The yarn has a tendency to occasionally pop over the top, but never wants to slide off the bottom.  A bit of the outcome depends on the sticky/grippiness of the yarn itself and how neatly or less neatly the hank was wound.

Was just a small challenge and a bit of practice to figure out how to adjust the yarn for easiest use.  Like being sure one end of the yarn came neatly off the outside of the hank (as arranged around the swift) and the other end tended to fall to the inside.  I have the best luck when turning the swift clockwise with the yarn approaching the ball winder around the 5:30 position.  Also results are better when I keep the wire guide for the ball winder aimed toward where the yarn is coming from.  Sounds like common sense, but I made some odd mistakes at first and had inconsistent results until I relaxed about it and was paying better attention.