Free Pattern - Summer Stripes Water Bottle Holder

I love Knit Picks Chroma for felting projects! It's soft and lovely to work, the colors are great and it felts like a dream. I used the Roller Skate colorway for my Sweet Silhouettes purse and enjoyed the bright, fun colors. When I had quite a bit of yarn left from my Sweet Silhouettes purse I decided to use it to make something for me (the purse had been promised to my model, aka sister!) . The result was this fun water bottle holder. It's a quick easy knit and it's perfect for using up odds and ends of worsted weight wool yarn (just make sure it's not superwash!). I'm offering it as a free pattern - enjoy!

Link -
Summer Stripes Water Bottle Holder

It's hot out there!!

It's HOT here. Really hot. I'm not a summer person. I would prefer that the temps didn't go above 75-80 all summer. But I usually deal with the occasional hot days without complaint. But already this summer we've now had 2 weeks of days where the temps bordered on 100 degrees. And it's not cooling off much at night. Last night it was still 92 degrees at 8 pm. And July just got started - eek! It's super dry too as we haven't had a good rain in 3-4 weeks and everything is very dry.

The dogs are getting frisbee games in the river to keep them exercised and sane during the day without overheating. The river is quite low right now due to the lack of rain and everyone irrigating crops from it, but at least there's enough water for the dogs to play in.

I've done very little knitting the past couple of weeks. Between the heat and the homework I've slacked off just a bit. But I've got some more ideas and I'm itching to get something back on the needles.

Here is one of my latest projects, the "Color, Squared" tote. The pattern should be up within the next couple weeks at Knit Picks. I used Chroma Worsted and it was a really fun but simple knit. I'm thinking about making some up for Christmas gifts.

I think I love this kid

Well, in all seriousness she's my niece so of course I love her. But she looks to be a budding dog trainer as well. She was visiting and kind of bored yesterday. So I suggested that we go outside and play with Kenzi. Once out there, Kenzi picked up a tug toy and hilarity ensued. They chased back and forth and tugged on that toy for 15 minutes - not bad for an almost 3 y/o and a dog with ADD. I was laughing so hard that I was tearing up.

And amazingly enough, Kenzi stayed fairly gentle and kiddo remained in the upright position the whole time!

Later I took kiddo out with Kipp and the frisbee. Once again hilarity ensued but alas, I forgot the camera .

Oh, and I can now say with certainty that my dogs are not at all phased by ear piercing shrieks of delight.

Back to the drawing board...

 My SAR team had evals about a month ago now (wow, am I behind...) and I went through it with Kenzi. Good news - she has made progress since last time!  Bad news - we didn't pass...

 I've thought about washing her from training, but she does continue to progress and she's doing really well in training scenarios. So I'm reevaluating how I'm training and tweaking it a bit.

 A couple things she had issues with were obedience related.  Like heeling off leash through a crowd. Kenzi loves people and is highly distracted by them. We did an okay on leash heel pattern. But I need to work harder on this. My plan is to go back a few steps and up the rate of reinforcement.

 She kind of flunked direct too.  For directional work, picture a baseball diamond with raised bases at 1st, 2nd, 3rd and pitchers.  These bases are 25 yards apart. The handler stands a home plate with their dog and sends it to different bases in a pattern given by the evaluator. For instance you could be instructed to send your dog to 3rd base, pitchers, 2nd base, pitchers, 3rd base then recall. The dog needs to stay on each base for at least 5 seconds and complete the given pattern in 3 minutes. Kenzi does great with the initial send out as well as going back and forth between pitchers 1st and 3rd. But she got highly confused when I asked her to go back to 2nd base from pitchers like she didn't understand the concept of looking back. So right now I'm just using pitchers and 2nd base, only placing them 20-30 feet apart and we're practicing short, highly rewarding sessions with a "go back".  This is working well and she seems to be getting the "go back" concept. I'll gradually increase the distance between bases and when she's consistently going back with the bases 25-30 yards apart then I'll add the 1st and 3rd bases back in.

I'm tweaking her reward system for searches too. I was having the victim reward all the time - her usual reward was playing/interacting with the victim and I rewarded only occassionally. But the handler has to reward during evaluations and I think this threw her off a bit too when all the rewards started coming from me rather than the victim. She was fine with the first few but then she start acting like "this is different - maybe I'm not doing something quite right"  Crazy, over-analyzing Border Collie.... So now when she goes in and alerts, the victim throws her a frisbee, then I follow up with playing a short frisbee game with her. I'll try this for a few weeks and see how it works.

'tis the season

I haven't been neglecting this blog on purpose.  It's just that we entered the work season in southwest Michigan.  Many people call this season "summer" and take vacations. Not so here.  I'm doing both farm work and helping to manage a rental cottage this summer.

Then on top of that I decided to take a summer class because I'm trying to get done with my math requirements.  It's kinda crazy, but in 6 weeks the class will be over.

I've been doing some knitting and pattern work on the side.  I need the creative outlet! Plus sample knitting is a great excuse to take a break. Because even though I'm sitting there watching a movie, I'm still working!

A couple of my latest patterns are the With Love Baby Blanket

This blanket was knit with Knit Picks Swish Tonal (100% superwash Merino, 220 yards/100 gram skein) It took 4 skeins and the Summer Blooms color was perfect for this project!


And Daisy Chain Blanket and Pretty Posies Hat

The Pretty Posies hat uses yarn left over from the Daisy Chain Blanket (I knit both hats with the leftover yarn!) so it's a project that makes good use of the all the yarn and doesn't leave you with half a skein left over (except for the yellow used for the flower centers...) I knit in with Knit Picks Brava Worsted - 100% acrylic, 220 yards/100 gram skein.  I'm kind of a natural fiber snob, but thought that Brava was very nice for an acrylic.  Soft, easy on your hands and the colors are great.  Often acrylics have a definite plastic feel, but I didn't notice that with Brava. I could tell I was knitting with acrylic, but it wasn't at all objectionable to me.

The dog by my bed

 Missy always slept by the side of my bed underneath a table.  It was her spot.  After I lost her I missed seeing a dog by the side of my bed.  Oh I still had them in my room but they were either on the bed (Kenzi) or curled up on a dog bed on the other side (Kipp). It was one of the little things that I missed.

 Until recently.

A couple months ago Kipp started giving up his bed for a time and curling up on the floor along side of mine. He now goes to sleep there, moves to his bed in the middle of the night, then back along side of mine by the time I get up in the morning. 

It makes me smile. 

Random thoughts

Because I haven't posted very frequently lately...

My schedule has greatly relaxed since school ended last week.

It might actually seem relaxed if it wasn't filling up with everything I didn't get done while school was in session.

But it's really nice that I don't have to use my brain power for homework and class because now I can focus it on pattern designing :-)

Speaking of patterns I finished up 2 samples over the weekend! Now I just need to get the final versions of the patterns completed.

And I need to hurry because Knit Picks is sending me yarn for two more projects :D

There were two lambs born over the weekend.

I have two weeks to get Kenzi all set for SAR evals :o