last night i said goodbye to a good friend, my best dog pal rupert.
he was fifteen and a half years old and he had a long and happy life. i was twelve when he became a member of our family (which is basically as far back as i can remember). he was like a furry little brother. he will be dearly missed.
a few christmases ago my mother suprised my brother and i each with a special hat knit out of ruperts fur. she had noticed while brushing him that his hair had the perfect crimp for spinning and so she spun it into yarn on her spinning wheel.

my dog hat is very warm and soft.
now that rupert is no longer alive it's extra special.

happy valentine's day!!!

i've been really boring lately. it all started with not being able to post about christmas in the interest of keeping secrets (which i'm not usually very good at when it comes to giving presents). but then my blogging slump has continued well into the new year. i could give you a million reasons why i haven't been writing but instead you could see for yourself. for christmas i made each member of my family a christmas stocking (out of felted sweaters and thrifted buttons and trims) and filled it with little things i had made or bought. but after all the "not posting" i was doing on christmas projects it came down to the wire for me to finish them and i didn't even take any pictures to show you.
the highlight of my new year, so far, is my emerald sweater. it's made of lamb's pride bulky that was at sakonnet purls after christmas and i knit it on the new boye interchangable needles that i got from santa (and soon after broke, but more on that in a minute). the sweater knit up quickly, mostly due to the fact that i had a week of vacation that i had to use or lose before 2007. the button i used came out of the small chest of drawers where my nana stored her buttons. i chose a green and black one that's large and plastic. since completing the sweater i've also knit up a matching cable hat.
so far i've been a little disappointed with my new needles. one of them broke and they apparantly don't have the wondeful warranty that you get with the denise needles. both times i called the company to ask them what to do they were incredibly unhelpful. after having used them for only two weeks before i broke the screw off the end of the cable into the needle, i'm going to have to suck it up and buy new number tens and a new cord. poo.
i'm juggling a few projects at the moment. purchasing the reader's digest ultimate sourcebook for knitting and crochet stitches(which everyone who crochets or knits should own, by the way) inspired a scarf. i'm really excited about the wacky color scheme and it's remarkably easy to knit even though it looks sort of intimidating. here's a sneak peek of what it looked like at stitch and bitch a few weeks ago when i had just started it.
one of my new years resolutions was to finish some of the projects that have been hanging around. another one was to stop acquiring yarn. although i've already failed at not buying yarn (part of the reason why i can't stop collecting yarn is that i've been really excited about unraveling white sweaters and dyeing the yarn) i'm chugging along with some of my unfinished objects. i'm really trying to get myself to finish greg's socks. i started them to give him for christmas in 2005 and i've been so spacey about working on them. the first one is finally finished and it fits him perfectly. i'm bringing that and ian's graduation tie (another embarassingly late present!) to new york with me tomorrow in the hopes of finishing something. (you'd think by the amount of projects i'm bringing with me that i was going to be there for longer than four hours, but that is six hours of travel time for knitting!)
despite the run on sentences this blogging thing isn't so bad. i'm going to start doing it again. i promise!