Made a mousie for Diana ("goddess of the hunt")

My DC (dear cat) has a nasty old muslin mouse I made her last year that she's slobbered on so much it's really gross. My DH and I decided to make her a new one for this year. I hunted up Wendy's pattern and used the "Lydia R. Haile's Nose-Down" version. We dumped some catnip directly in, and then wrapped more in some cotton jersey and tucked it inside. The yarn is 100% wool worsted weight. It's really scratchy and I wish I had washed it before stuffing but we were in a hurry to give it to my DC. I used size 5 metal DPN. It took me about 1.5 hours.

Here she is playing with it:

In case you're wondering, I didn't do anything special to get the tail to curl up, it seems to be doing that on it's own!

Progress on the beaded socks

These are the correct size around and I'm now on the foot. This picture was as of 12/18, too, but I haven't really worked on this recently because I've been trying to get the poncho done. I did the heel in dark blue so that I can get most of the foot done in the light blue before I run out. There's a couple of mistakes on the beads, I don't really mind, but they are more obvious than my usual mistakes.

Still working on the poncho

I'm working on the second rectangle and it's really taking a while with breaks to make cookies, go to work, go shopping, do Christmasy things.

Here's where it was as of 12/18:

I'm now at 29", going to 34".

Update on beaded socks

I lied, the beads do have the size on them. Here's what the package looks like. They're 6/0.

The socks were huge.

So I put one on and threaded the needle through.

Wow.

Then I frogged, and cast on 64 instead of the original 84. I'm now done 1.5 rows of beads. BTW - I'm knitting a row between each row of beads. With the size of the beads and the size of the yarn it just looks better.

v. v. excited about the beaded socks

They're probably going to be a little big, but so cool. I made quite a bit of progress today. On the knitalong list, they mention a few ways to place the beads:

1. knit the stitch like normal with the bead there and adjust the bead so that it's vertical on a leg of the stitch
2. purl the stitch and have the bead go across horizontally
3. slip the stitch with bead over both legs (not threaded on in advance)
4. knit the stitch with the bead over both legs (not threaded on in advance)
5. sew the beads on later (not threaded on in advance)

I did #2 after #1 didn't really show up. I think I'm really getting the hang of it. Maybe I'll make a little beaded purse? Oh, oh, how about the hem of a poncho for dressy instead of using fringe. Hmm, maybe I saw this on knitty already?

So here's my progress:

Ribbing prior to adding the beads

The beads about halfway done, then minutes later:

Cool new pattern from SixSoxKnitalong

It's beaded! I just returned a book to the library on that and so wanted to try it. Luckily, last night was the SnB and my favorite LYS owner had a cool little package of cobalt blue glass beads that go perfectly with the leftover flame yarn. She let me take them to try them out and I've already threaded about 300. For my legs and gauge I need to do the pattern 17 times around... ah well. It's been fun so far. Take a look at these perfect beads and be jealous, very jealous.

BTW- my sweater class will now start in early January - so if you are in Maryland and do want to learn to knit a basic sweater... let me know.