October already!?!!?

Where the heck is the time going? It's already October 3rd and I'm so not ready for winterizing myself. Oh well. At least I've been winterizing my puppy-girl. :)

Ravelry has been a great place to "shop" for ideas to clothe Niki. Thanks Dana!!! Alia suggested a Halloween costume for the little bumpkin, so I went "shopping" for ideas and patterns. I found a sweet King of the Beasts costume (that'd be a LION) that came complete with an adorable mane. The yarn is a super-chunky that's knit on size 13's, so it works up really fast! All was going well until I finished the body and stitched it together. Oops... wrong size. Big-time wrong size! What to do now? It's all done!!! Argh! I did what I do best and improvised using my sewing machine. I stitched that sucker up and down the sides and then *gulp* CUT it.

Again, all was going well until I was finished with the sleeves. Wrong location. Well golly-gee... what to do now? It's all flippin- done! If it were a computer document, I'd have hit the "delete" button by this point. Frogging wouldn't work. I'd cut it. Well, since it only took me a day to stitch the first version, surely it'd be as fast to do the 2nd. So, off I went with another ball of yarn.

Second version, ahoy!! It was beautiful! I decided to modify it hugely. Extra stitching details and additional decreases to re-shape the body here and there. The piece de resistance was the crocheted ruffle on the butt-end. Absolutely darling!! I finished the rib knit (wow!!) collar and added a bit of ruffle around it to hide the (oops) missed-stitches, and it now looks like a turned-down ruffled collar. Very very adorable!

While all this was going on, we had an absolutely wonderful French girl staying with us. French, with a lovely posh British accent. Emma arrived from Iceland via cargo ship in Argentia and got to our place on Sunday, Sept 27 and left us just this afternoon (Oct 3rd). She was my knitting buddy through the week. She'd just learned to knit in June and the pair of us had a great time playing with our projects. She practiced cables, I made doggie sweaters.

Pat A. showed up on Friday am! Hooray!!! She'll be here until the 11th. I'm going to knit a pair of sweaters for her to give to a pair of doggie-pals of Shelby (Xmas presents) and another for Shelby :) as well. Fun fun!