New Things All Around

Jeepers, I finally got the timing right!!! I can publish AND upload pix!!!

We finally got around to buying a "new" car. Yep, "new" as in new to us. I've been without a car of my own since June!! Egads, that's a long time, but on the other hand, with my penchance for hermitdom...oh well. Neither Joe nor I look at cars as anything other than a mode of transportation, thus, no burning desires to have the newest model on the market. Nope, we are "throw-away-car" type people. I suppose a nicer way of putting that would be "recycled-cars". :-) The downside to buying recycled cars...well....um....aside from the lack of flash, I don't see any, and we don't care about flash. So I have a new car with 50,000 miles, it's not of this decade, no payments to go with it, dirt cheap insurance, it's spic and span clean, gets me where I'm going, and it runs like a top....what more is there to a car???

Another new addition to the hermitage, and this REALLY is new...10 weeks new......

Meet Benjamin.




And this is the reason there hasn't been much fiber stuff going on.......



Here's another pic just for scale.



Um, yeah, Benjamin is ALMOST the size as Ida's head!! Actually I'm impressed with how well IdaMae and Benny are getting along. Ida just turned a year old, and Benny came from a farm with a dog or two, so the transition hasn't been too difficult for either of them. They play all day, testing each others limits, and they test my limits when they play all night!!

So this is all the knitting I've gotten done in the last week.



It's a start. Two more pairs to go to make up for IdaMae's snacking this past month! :-)

The oatmeal colored socks are plain old St st with short row toe and heel made with Wool Ease. A quick and to the point pair of socks.

The brownish, rusty, autumn, color striped pair is made out of one of the Knit Picks sock yarns in a colorway that I didn't really like when I got it so I overdyed it. Originally it had way too much white and a light liver, almost mauve color (yuck) in some of the dots and stripes, now it's my kind of colorway. It's a simple toe-up sock with St st on the bottom of the foot and a two stitch mock cable on the top of the foot and up the leg. I like this stitch pattern, it's soooo simple and quick. Certainly works up as fast a plain old St st w/ ribbing sock but looks like it has so much more to it. A tad bit more interesting to work too.

Next on the needles are a couple more in this pattern, and an experimental pair made with the same squares used on the cropped sweater but on a much smaller scale. Haven't decided which I'll start as soon as I'm done posting this. The NEED for socks is screaming at me, but the desire to give this new idea a go is somewhat overwhelming. Maybe I'll start both, the easy ones for when IdaMae and Benjamin are around and the other for when they are both exhausted from play.