Frankie playing with her water bowl

It's a dog's life..

Lucy takes an interest in wood chewing now Frankie does it all the time...

Asleep

First walk in snow at 4.5 months, she ate it at first.

Loves watching the birds in the garden

or watching from the front bay window....

Contemplating a jump but it's a bit high and she doesn't dare land on Lucy!

Made it!

Funny link of her blowing bubbles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dROvao4NNOo&feature=youtu.be

Henley walk on morning of 20th January: very cold frosty but sunny morning!

Frankie's first view of the Thames. First time she saw swans, geese, moorhens, ducks and skiffs!

Very busy too, so many people and dogs to greet and meet. 

She got used to not everyone saying hello to her, though how could they resist her cuteness?

Many did say hello, she was sweet.

Hello what's this. Hello goose.

What a wonderful beautiful walk and lovely start to the day.

We drove home to have lunch and had a sublime sleep until 5 pm!

Still battling that chest cold I guess, it was a lovely snuggly day.

Just before the sleep I had the best cuddle with F on my lap and of course she travelled on my lap to Henley and back in JJ's car as well.

Starting a fair-isle yoke chunky jumper in crochet! part 1

The pattern leaflet I bought on 30th December is a fairisle chunky crochet one from Hobby-craft
The wool is WI Soft and Chunky at £4 per 100g but H craft had a 3 for 2 offer on it. 70% acrylic and 30% merino wool, chunky but made up of very many thin strands which means it's quite tricky to crochet with as it is rather splitty.
Also the chart for the pattern is merely an indication and DOES NOT apply all the way around the yoke so it's actually rather misleading. I followed the chart at first and had to unpick because of it.
Then I unpicked again because I misunderstood the increases and where and how they happened in the written instructions. So I drew each stitch , worked out where, how many and how  the increases were working and used stitch markers before starting each new row to mark the stitches where increases were to be made. Then counted back from the first increase to know where to start each row.
This is the pattern picture that got me to buy the leaflet and then also the yarn.

These first two are the rounds I had to undo as there were no increases! I chose navy and cream because I already have a red and white nordic fair-isle jumper.

I am hoping it will be a good SUPping or dogwalking jumoer and easy to wash though the label on the yarn did say hand-wash.

This was done on 1st January 2019 and only the white/navy row was unpicked, the trble foundation row and ribbing were maintained.

This was another change from the pattern, instead of working a chain and then a row of trebles, I googles on You Tube how to work the USA termed Foundation double crochet and learned to do it from a video. then I replaced the chain row and trebles row with this much nicer and stretchier foundation trebles row.( UK trebles)

The first rows/rounds of stitching  are all the same : size 8 to 14! I'm making the 14.

It grows very quickly as it's with a 9 mm hook.

I made a gauge swatch on 1.1.2019 too and my gauge came out exactly as per the pattern.

Having finished the Yoke on 2.1.2019, It took 1 ball cream and almost the entire ball of navy.

There's 110m per ball.

This is row 2,3,4,5 and 6 written out stitch by stitch : A=cream, B is blue or navy in my case.

After a bit I stopped drawing the stitches as HTR and just labelled the colours, only the increases are depicted in stitch.

The beginning of the rounds 2,3,4,5,6 a little larger.

The halfway point of rows 2,34,5,6 a little larger.

This is the progress being made. I wrote out the stitches for half the way around as the front anf back were the same and the sleeve / shoulder sections were so the stitches written out were across the back and over one shoulder then repeat that half to complete the circle/square.
The increases occur on 4 diagonals and it really is a lot easier and more relaxing to place a stitch marker before working the next row to realise when increases need to be made, how and in which colours. All the Yoke stitches below the ribbing, made with back and front post trebles , is worked in half treble stitches. ( UK crochet terms)
In this colour work the key to the stitching is you work the yarnover in the stitch colour, then pull through another loop, 3 loops of the same colour on the hook by now. then yarn over and you pull through all  3 loops with THE NEXT STITCHES COLOUR so in navy navy it would be navy but for a navystich,- whitestitch , you;d have the 3 loops of the navy on the crochet hook and the last loop you pull through all 3 loops is in WHITE yarn. When the row is 1 navy, 1 white you are switching the yarn around constantly.
It's worth carrying the yarn at the back so whichever you need is always handy.
The yarns will start to twist together so you also need to take time out to UNTWIST the yarn ends by swapping the balls across each other inn the opposite way of the twist.
If you keep doing this regularly you won't get the yarns twisting so tight they knot together and affect your tension.

a navy half treble HTR.

YOU CAN SEE ME CARRYING THE NAVY YARN OVER A FINGER AND REACHING FOR THE WHITE YARN

here the white yarn is about to be pulled through the 3 navy loops, it will make the top of a navy stitch and the start of a white stitch.

When that's done it looks like this. The top of the navy stitch can be seen lying horizontally.

The white will be the next stitch.( HTR)

The making of a white HTR as above.

And the yoke grew beautifully thus:

And on I went it was quite mesmerising I wanted to see what each next row brought and how it was affecting the geometric patterning.

I also drew out rows 7,8,9,and 10 stitch by stitch for half of the yoke.

This will follow.

The yoke fair-isle 10 rounds were finished just after midnight on 3.1.2019.

It weighed 190 grammes at that point.

Gauge sample listed stitches and more photos in the next instalment. 

Such FUN!