a coughing cacophony

There is a cacophony of coughing at my house. All five dogs have kennel cough (bordetella). I vaccinate against it but it's like the flu shot for people. It doesn't completely prevent it but can lessen its severity and help prevent complications. None of the dogs is sick at this point but they all have dry, hacking coughs. I gave them Benylin last night (with my vet's permission and dosage recommendations, of course) and it helped us all get some sleep. Fun.

I have been playing with the new knitting machine to try to knit doubled fingering weight yarn to make sock blanks and it's not working. I don't know if it's me or the machine. I did, however, dye some more yarn. Here it is drying in the laundry room.

The base yarn for the two skeins on the left is Trekking ProNatura, a wool/bamboo blend. I was surprised at how well it took the acid dyes as bamboo is a plant fiber! I'm really pleased with it and have more skeins still to dye. Bamboo is such a nice, breathable fiber, good for summer socks. The yarn in the middle is a blend of Canadian Rideau Arcott wool, Lincoln wool, and alpaca. It bloomed nicely during the dyeing process. It will make beautiful winter socks or other warm knits. The two skeins on the right are merino/alpaca blend worsted weight yarn. I've dyed this blend before and it always turns out so soft and lush! It took me a while to get just the right pink for it. I didn't want it to be too Barbie-ish. Once I get these reskeined I'll put them in my Etsy shop.

We're in the midst of another blizzard, an Alberta Clipper. I'm not exactly sure what an Alberta Clipper is except that it means storms for us here in Saskatchewan. It's snowing and blowing out there and the temperature is supposed to drop considerably again. It was actually quite nice the last couple of days. We had ice fog this morning which left beautiful frost over everything.

Here's what it looks like now that the blowing snow has started.

Sigh.