Monday, February 01, 2010

Sins Of Omission

 I spent most of this past weekend picking up my sins of omission. This is what I call the frozen dog poop  in my snow and ice filled yard. I'm religious about this duty from mid-March through mid-December, but once it gets extremely cold and snowy, I become an atheist. Add to this excuse the fact that I spent the first three weekends of January at dog activities and you can bet my fenced yard was in need of attention.

It seems no matter how warmly I dress, down jacket, snow pants, heavy boots, my fingers and hands get cold long before the job is done. It's not only holding on to two metal poles that makes my fingers so cold but like most knitters, I've no warm, hand knit mittens of my own. I seem to only give them as gifts and never gift myself. On Saturday my fingers were getting stiff and cold, yet I knew if I went in the house to warm them I'd never finish the job. Necessity is the mother of invention however, and I came up with the idea of putting a pair of wool socks on my pooper scooper poles. Problem solved!


 
Note, my recycled dog food leaves here in the same bag it came in. Always makes me laugh.

Knitting

I do still knit. I just don't seem to finish anything lately.


I started a capped sleeve sweater but couldn't make myself happy with how the cable was turning out.


 
I finally did the right thing. I'll start it over someday - and choose a different cable pattern.


 
Made some good progress on my first quilt over the weekend. Just need to top stitch the binding in place and I'm done. You can see how uneven my machine quilting is. I love the straight line quilting this lady does. Her tutorial makes straight line quilting look simple, it's not! Her quilts always look so clean and simple but elegant. Mine didn't exactly turn out quite so elegant and error free, but it's my first and I'm happy with it. And most importantly, I am already thinking about my next one.

Dogs

Remember all my moaning and groaning because JJ took months and months to qualify for his Open Jumpers title? Well, guess who finished his Excellent Jumpers title? JJ did! I think I'm still in shock. The other dogs did great also. I love agility, still, 6 out of 10 days as it was in January, is exhausting even for me. I was seriously contemplating staying at home on the last Sunday when I remembered I'd left 3 dog crates and my nice chair at the arena, so off we went for the final day of agility.



Percy is the real star of January though as he killed a mouse that had been living in my basement. Good boy Percy! I only wish he hadn't chewed the head off so I not only had to pick up a dead mouse body but also a head and blood. Ick.