Missy the dog has a favorite ring chew toy. She likes it so much we’ve had to replace it. Thor the kitten has been trying to figure out what the hubbub is. He’s laid in it, rolled in it, and now went and found his own ring (he stole a bracelet from the youngest’s room), and brought it down to chew on next to Missy’s rings. I didn’t get a picture of him chewing, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
Rather than take separated supplies to my crochet class, I made up individual kits. Each kit has enough yarn to make two amigurumi animals, yarn for the face, a wooden crochet hook, a wire stitch marker, a yarn needle, chenille sticks, and stuffing.
To divide up the yarn, I placed the big ball of yarn on the scale, tared it, then wound off onto the ball winder. When the scale read the value I needed (negatively), I snipped the yarn and started a new ball.
Each kit will also have a pattern and a label.
Thor the kitten has grown enough that he can now jump to counter height. The house is his oyster. Below is a picture of him on the top of our headboard, about six feet tall. He is licking his lips because he just used his jumping skills to get up on Izzy the cat’s feeding shelf to eat senior cat food. He then discovered there was yet another level. He is quite proud of himself.
I recently used points to get a Clover mini loom. I have been using scraps of cardboard to weave samples of my spun fibers to go in my fiber journal, so this was an upgrade!
I started by following directions, amazingly, but the spacing of the tines were very wide and gave me a weft-faced weave, where the warp threads are completely covered by the weft yarn. This is the technique used for tapestry weaving, but not what I was looking for.
The next attempt I doubled the yarn in each slot by wrapping the warp yarn completely around the loom. This gave me fringe on top and bottom when it was finished, but the weave came out with both the warp and weft showing.
I moved on to my hemp yarn, and of course I forgot to take progress photos, but I doubled up the warp thread by making loops around the tines, resulting in a fringeless swatch. I found I didn’t need the twined first row to space the threads. It came out a bit wonky, but I am seeing process improvement.
We’ve been working with Missy the dog for a long time on letting people touch her tail without her growling. Apparently we did our work well. Here is a video of Thor the kitten playing with Missy‘s tail, and she doesn’t even care.
I have also decided to promote barbershop as the background music to my shorts, because everyone needs to hear a chord ring.
Critters and Craft 