October Knit Something of the Month

It's October so there's a new Knit Something of the Month project!  This month I am knitting Vlad (fitting for October, no?) in a yarn I overdyed.  The yarn is The Woolen Rabbit Kashmir and I think the original color was Oh Ruby.  It turned out to be a red with orange/brown undertones though and I just can't wear reds that lean that direction (I have cool undertones in my skin).  I overdyed it with a magenta red (cool red) and that swung it just enough to my side of the spectrum that I can wear it!  The yarn base is lovely and the original dyeing was beautiful, just not something I could wear.  I've got more yardage than the pattern calls for so I'll be working a few extra repeats before I start the edging.

In other news, I believe I've mentioned Logan's feelings about riding in cars before, but just to recap, Logan hates riding in cars.  He doesn't get truly motion sick, but he gets so anxious that he drools non stop and if the car ride is long enough, he'll throw up.  I've tried working with him in the car, but life gets in the way of the time I need to spend with him there and we've never really gotten very far with it.  Last Friday I decided to start bringing him on Caleb's morning drop off.  It's only 10-15 minutes long, and it happens five days a week.  I'm hoping the sheer repetition of it will cut the anxiety.  I've been rolling down the back windows in hopes that the smells will distract him a bit from whatever is going through his head.  We've only just started this but I'm hoping that eventually he'll realize that he's not going to die, get separated from us, or end up in another country.*  He isn't completely shutting down (we have captain's seats in the back and he just goes between them, facing the rear of the car, and lies down) and he is keeping his head up and you can see he's somewhat paying attention to what's going on around him, so that's good, but we've still got a long way to go.  This morning, when it was getting close to time to take Caleb, Logan put himself in his crate.

*I think Logan's travel issues might come from when he came to be part of our family.  He's from Canada and he was 5 months old when we got him (so old enough to remember stuff for more than 5 minutes).  I don't know if I've ever told this story, so if I have, ignore it and go about your day.  Logan was supposed to fly to us on a direct flight from Toronto to Dallas on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  This was Thanksgiving 2010.  On Monday, the day before, Logan had his first ever car ride to the breeder's vet to get his International Health Certificate.  (For those of you unfamiliar with dogs/breeders, it's very common for breeders to vaccinate puppies themselves and not take pups to the vet's office - safer for the puppies and cheaper for the breeder as well - I don't know how many times I've taken Caleb to the pediatrician for a Well Baby checkup and a week or so later we're back with him being sick.)  On Tuesday, the breeder drove him to the Toronto airport to send him to us.  Unfortunately, that was the Thanksgiving that TSA had a bunch of new regulations (remember the "Don't touch my junk" - these shipping regulations were connected with increased "security" at the airports) and when she had booked his flight with the airline, they hadn't told her she'd need to jump through some additional hoops to do this.  This breeder has been shipping dogs all over the world for 40+ years - this wasn't her first rodeo!  So she took Logan back home with her.  The next day (Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day in the US) she loaded him up in the car, drove him across the border to Buffalo, NY and he got on a plane there.  Fortunately, they made it though the border crossing an hour or so before that tightened up security-wise or they would have gotten held up and he could have missed his flight.  Unfortunately, he didn't have a direct flight from Buffalo to Dallas - he had to fly through Newark, NJ.  Finally, that night we picked him up at DFW where he was exhausted and wobbly but glad to be out of the crate.  He didn't even care that a complete stranger opened his crate and reached in to put a collar and leash on him.  Of course, that stranger was me and he's totally become a Momma's boy over the last two years, but after all that, I think he has a pretty good excuse for not liking to travel much.