Knitting Archives - Debra Sennefelder

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Knitting Update & A New Read

Happy Wednesday!

I’m sharing today my current knitting project and my new read.

After the success of knitting my first ever baby blanket I decided to attempt to knit a hat and scarf set.

This hat will have a pom-pom when it’s complete. I love, love, love a hat with a pom-pom. I’ll be tackling the matching scarf next. I’ve been trying to knit this set for ages. Seriously. I’ve run into problems with the pattern. If I miss a stitch I can’t tell where and I can’t tell what row the mistake was made in. It’s been very frustrating for this new knitter but I’m determined to make these two items. So far, so good with the hat. 🙂

I just finished reading a book and now I’m diving into Death by Chocolate Lab by Bethany Blake. Death by Chocolate Lab is the first in the new series Lucky Paws Pet Sitting series and I’ve been looking forward to reading the book. I love the cover, especially the hound dog. He’s adorable. The series is published by my publisher, Kensington Books, and I’m looking forward to seeing the cover of my debut novel, which I believe will also have a dog on the cover.

What’s Death by Chocolate Lab about? It features a pPet sitter Daphne Templeton who has a soft spot for every stray and misfit who wanders into the quaint, lakeside village of Sylvan Creek. But even Daphne doesn’t like arrogant, womanizing Steve Beamus, the controversial owner of Blue Ribbon K-9 Academy. When Steve turns up dead during a dog agility trial, Daphne can think of a long list of people with motives for homicide, and so can the police. Unfortunately, at the top of the list is Daphne’s sister, Piper—Steve’s latest wronged girlfriend.

Certain that Piper is innocent, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary, Daphne sets out to clear her sister’s name—and find Axis, Steve’s prize-winning chocolate Labrador, who went missing the night of Steve’s death. Aided by Socrates, her taciturn basset hound, and a hyperactive one-eared Chihuahua named Artie, Daphne quickly runs afoul of Detective Jonathan Black, a handsome and enigmatic newcomer to town, who has no appreciation for Daphne’s unorthodox sleuthing.

Can a free-spirited pet sitter, armed only with a Ph.D. in Philosophy and her two incompatible dogs, find the real killer before she becomes the next victim?

I love the premise and now I’m going to grab my tea and do a little reading before I have to get back to writing.

What are you reading today or what craft are you currently working on?

Knitting, Reads, Yarn Along

Yarn Along

I’m so excited to be participating in my first Yarn Along. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other gals are knitting and reading. For my first Yarn Along post I’m sharing a new project and my current read.

For my project it’s take two. I began this baby blanket (it’s going to be a gift) last week and after a rocky start (it was labeled a beginner pattern, in truth it really should have been labeled intermediate/beginner knitter and luckily I have a friend who is a very experienced knitter to help me) it started to look like a blanket!!! I was loving every stitch…until…I realized there was a dropped stitch after finding a funky end stitch on a row, both of realizations came after the fact. Not being experienced enough to salvage the drop stitch and I had no idea how to deal with that funky, loopy stitch, I decided to pull out all of the stitches until got to the dropped stitch. My thought was I would pick up that drop stitch and go forth. Knit on!

Well…

The blanket just fell apart, the stitches were coming undone and …it was a real mess.

I made the decision to pull out all of the stitches and start from the beginning.

That’s when it became a disaster.

Two yarns being pulled out led to a heap of knotted, tangled yarn. Yeah, that was fun.

Eventually I untangle, unknotted both yarns and I started all over again.

It’s finally starting to look like a blanket.

Now onto my current read. This is the third book I’ve read in the series so far and I’m really enjoying the series. Jenn McKinlay has written a smart, cozy series with characters that engaging and the plots are well-crafted.

One more photo. While I was taking photos of the blanket and the book Susie joined me and saw the camera. So, she wasn’t going to be left out of the action. She posed and waited patiently for her close-up. Guess she wanted to show off her pigtails. She and Billy had just returned from the grooming appointment.

This has been fun sharing my project and current read. I’m looking forward to checking out the other Yarn Along posts. Have a great Wednesday!

Knitting, Pets, Writing

Happy June!

It’s June 1st. Wow! It’s hard to believe we’re half way through 2016. I had a feeling that 2016 was going to be a good year and so far, it is pretty good. At the end of March I signed with an agent to represent my cozy mystery series! Very, very excited about that. I’m currently working on the second book in the series. In fact, over the three day weekend I wrote 10,017 words. That was pretty awesome.

But it hasn’t been all work. I’ve gotten some play in. And I have pictures!

Today was a perfect late spring day to get the dogs outside so I took them to their pen. Susie ran around and rolled several times. Boy, she just body slams the grass. LOL. Meanwhile, Billy stood close to me. I had him on a lead and walked him around several times so he could sniff and get some fresh air. He’s pretty much completely blind so letting him loose in the pen wasn’t a good idea. I think he would have been too disoriented.

Just as I snapped the photo, she turned her head. So typically Susie. 🙂

When she was ready for her photo to be taken she posed.

Here’s Billy.

Billy was ready for his close-up. 🙂

While I was at a writer’s conference in April I visited a knitting shop with my roommate, fellow author Megan Ryder, and I fell in love with a sample baby blanket and knew it would perfect for a certain little guy. So I bought yarn and a circular knitting needle. And I’ve finally had the time to start the project. Here’s my work in progress.

In the above picture you can see a glimpse of my new knitting tote. Before we hit the knitting shop we stopped in Michael’s (we needed to get a few things for Megan’s basket for the raffle) and we came across the prettiest totes. I couldn’t resist. Then I found the yarn and then it all came together. My yarn needed a bag!

I hope you have a great start to June. This month I want to finish the blanket and I have to continue writing the first draft of the second book in my mystery series. What are you up to this month?