A Moment To Myself

Finally, a moment to myself. My job has been insanely busy lately and my "free" time taken up with other affairs keeping me from just sitting back and relaxing for a few hours. I'm definitely enjoying this Saturday morning with a pot of coffee and that "almost caught up" feeling.




Look! I've completed the body of the traveling shells cardigan. I sewed the shoulder seams and took the time to weave in all the loose ends. It looks nice, though now it is packed away in the knitting bag while I work on the rest of sweater.


I've started on the collar and am finding the pattern easy to follow so I'm thinking about doing both left and right side of the collar at the same time. Hopefully the collar will go quickly, then all I have left is the dreaded sleeves. I hate sleeves. It's very tempting to put some fancy crochet edging around the arm hole openings and call it a vest. I was worried for a time about running out of yarn so the vest idea might have been a necessity. However, it looks as if I have plenty of yarn left for the sleeves so sleeves it is.




I'm getting a new, maintenance free deck - hurray! I've needed this for quite a while. Sometimes I'm just too cheap frugal. Now that I can see how nice the new deck looks, I don't know how I lived with the old one for so long. The same folks who remodeled my kitchen a few years ago are installing the deck. They started yesterday and will finish today. That's right, they even work Saturdays. The dogs aren't as happy about the new deck as I am. I'm not having any railing or benches installed as I'm sick and tired of the boys going outside and lifting their leg on my deck. Yuk. They have a huge fenced yard to relieve themselves in, they do not need to be using the deck.


I finished Peony In Love but never bothered with a book review. I found the book pretty boring and just didn't care enough to even give it a decent review. The book became very repetitive and even though I tried, I found I had no empathy for the Love Sick Maidens. I started to lose interest early in the book when I couldn't buy into the tragedy of Peony's death. The whole premise of her not looking when her father points out her future husband was too far fetched for me. And why didn't Wu disclose himself to her during one of their three meetings? This seemed like deceit to me and made Wu a difficult character for me to appreciate. Luckily I had downloaded an audible form of the book and forced myself to listen through to the end by plugging in the ear phones and cleaning my house. This is the first book by Lisa See I've read. I'm not eager to read any others. Let me know if you have a different opinion.

Yippee!

Congratulations to JJ for picking up the second major toward his AKC Championship this weekend! We are all pretty excited around here. Next weekend JJ is entered in a herding trial so will be out herding sheep instead of looking pretty. What's not to love about dog as versatile as this.

Catching Up

Thanks to everyone for your stories about your first book. I so enjoyed reading about your experiences. I'm a bit embarassed though, both Uberstrickenfrau and Guinifer mentioned the book "A Wrinkle In Time". I can't remember ever reading this book. I am planning a trip to the library to check it out.

Lauren mentioned reading a book about a witch and wanting to be witch. This reminded me of reading Silver Chief Dog Of The North and all the other Silver Chief books and wanting to be a Canadian Mounted Policeman when I grew up. Then someone pointed out to me girls were not allowed to be Mounties. This was the first time I remember being told I could not do something because I was a girl. I was so crushed! Never mind that I hate the cold and winter. I just wanted to be a Canadian Mounty and have a loyal, strong, wolf/dog hybrid exactly like Silver Chief.

My latest read is Peony In Love. I've just started it. I heard it reviewed on NPR and decided it would be my next big read. I'm enjoying it so far.

Knitting


This is suppose to be a knitting blog after all so I decided to show you a picture of the traveling shells cardigan. Sometimes I think I am making very little progress but then I spread the project out on the table and realize there's a lot of knitting here. I have added about an inch to the back of the cardigan since this picture was taken so I'm getting closer to finishing the body of the cardigan. Next I will do the collar and then see how much yarn I have left for the sleeves. I might have to re-design the sleeves somewhat as I'm concerned about running out of yarn. For now though I'm acting like Scarlett O'Hara and not thinking about this problem today. I'll think about it tomorrow.

Two Cents Worth Of Advice

I neglected my dog training for a few weeks but I'm back on track now. I had a private lesson last weekend with Dak and we picked up one gem of a piece of advice for Dak's problem with the long sit/stay exercise. Dak has always had a problem shuffling his feet on the long sit. This shuffling of his feet leads to shifting his position and finally, laying down instead of sitting and a big non-qualifying score even though he can get such nice scores on the other obedience exercises.

The instructor suggested placing a penny on each of Dak's feet while he is doing the long sit exercise. It is suppose to help Dak "think" about his feet and to be aware of his feet. When he shuffles his feet and the pennies fall off, he gets a small correction. "Oh oh Dak, look what happen" type of correction and the pennies get put back on his feet. This seems to be working for Dak. He is sitting very still the last few days and not shuffling his feet at all.





Now before any PETA folks send me nasty comments, here's a full picture of Dak with the pennies on his feet. He's quite relaxed during all this. Yes, his tongue is out but that's because it's hot out. This is not torture, it's training.




And here's a sampling of the treats I use during training. Dot would like to point out despite the variety shown, I'm out of her favorite peanut butter flavored treats. They're on my shopping list for tomorrow morning.




I wish it would rain


It can't seem to rain in the 7-10 mile radius around my house. The corn and beans are suffering, some fields are already lost. This is Percy rolling in my grass, at least it was grass earlier this summer. I'm not so sure it will recover and become green grass again even if it does rain. Sadly, the next forecast for rain is a 20% chance of rain on Tuesday. Not very good.

Your first boook

Bridget blogged about what we each consider the Great American Novel. I thought this was interesting and it had me thinking about a question I like to ask of folks who are readers and lovers of books.

What was the one book from your childhood that opened up the world of reading for you? You know, the one that caused you to to walk or beg a ride to the library? The book that made you want to sit in a chair on a weekend afternoon and read instead of playing outside?

I had a friend years ago who struggled to read and found no enjoyment in it. Then he read Alive, the book about the rugby team who survived a plane crash in the Andes. Ok, it's never going to make Bridget's list of candidates for the Great American Novel, but it opened up a whole new world for my friend and the more he read, the easier it became to read and the bigger his world became.

My most influential childhood book was - surprise - Old Yeller. Once I read this book I haunted the library stacks every chance I could. I read every dog and horse book there was. I've re-read a few in adulthood and honestly, some of them are pretty bad. Not that it matters though, it opened up a fantastic world for me and wonderful hobby and I soon graduated to wider subjects and better books. I hope every kid can find his/her 'special book'. I think Harry Potter's accomplished this for many kids today.

Happy Birthday USA!

I've had lots to blog about lately, just not lots of time to blog.


I'll start with Sunday, June 24th when I had such a nice visit with my friend Linda who was traveling from her home in Wyoming to Chicago for a family visit. Linda stopped by my house with her great dog Junior. Junior is a Dusty by Dot son and he sure is smart and well trained. He has a bunch of agility titles and is starting to show in the Open class for his CDX. Judging by the beautiful job he did on the signal exercise, he's also well on his way to competing in Utility. It was great to see Linda and Junior and I'm glad they had a good trip and are safely back in Wyoming now.

Bluebirds and Wrens

On Monday, June 25th, the five baby blue birds left their nest while I was at a three hour doctor appointment. Gosh, I was sorry to miss their fledging but I'm happy they are safely out of the nest. My sister gave me the name of the local "bluebird guy" who will actually come out to my property and check out my bluebird houses and put up new houses in better locations if needed. I can't wait! I hope to have a few more bluebird nests next spring.

The forever chirping baby wrens left their nest on Tuesday morning between 6:00-6:30 a.m.. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat on the patio to watch. Being wrens, it was a noisy affair but so interesting. The parents sat in a nearby tree and called and called to the two youngsters who finally fell out of the nesting box and on to tree limbs below. From there one of the baby wrens immediately took off flying to his parents. The other wren, however, had some trouble and lack of confidence. This bird fell from the tree limb to the evergreen shrub below where it hopped around for some minutes before finally trusting itself to fly.

The wrens were the last birds to leave the nest here which meant my cat Percy was finally able to resume his indoor/outdoor cat life. I do love my cat but the months he is forced to stay inside are difficult months for both Percy and me. I tried to snap a picture of Percy as he ran out the door for the first time since April but he zipped by me so fast I'm not sure you can even find him in this photo. All in all, it was a successful "hatch" this year with 5 bluebirds, 2 separate wren nests of two babies each, about 12 tree swallows and uncounted number of robins, blue jays, orioles, hummingbirds and about every kind of woodpecker found in southern MN.

Family Reunion


The really big event around here for the past 5 days has been the family reunion. My parents planned it last winter. I come from a large family and my immediate family, plus all my first cousins, were given marching orders to be here for the big event. It was an absolutely fabulous reunion. Great planning, perfect weather, terrific food and though we are probably as dysfunctional as the next family, no big family blow ups. It was just a wonderful time.


Here's a lake shot, a typical long Fourth of July weekend. The kids enjoyed the water and the jet skis and then played a very hard fought game of soccer. Gosh, my cousins kids are very good soccer players. I'm glad no one impaled themselves on my dad's anchor while playing soccer.




I'm going to be happy to get back to work tomorrow and back to my everyday life. I've eaten and drink-en and visited and celebrated enough for the whole summer! I suppose I'm offending some vegetarian with this photo but one of several tasty reunion meals was this whole spit roasted pig. Delicious!


One of my brothers has provided a Fourth of July fireworks show for quite a few years now. This year he went all out with a spectacular show on Sunday evening for the reunion and yet another show this evening for Independence Day. I tried to take a picture but failed. This doesn't do justice at all to the great show my brother provided.

My cousin Molly took many professional quality photos during the reunion events and she had a slide show going during all days. There were so many exceptional photos. Perhaps I'll share a few as I receive them. It has a been a wonderful past five days, seeing so many of my extended family members and sharing great meals and great times with them. It's a time which will not be forgotten.

All right then, I'll try to get back to the subjects of knitting and dog training - things I've accomplished little of lately - next blog.