Catch Up Time

After a busy summer where I've been absent from my own and my friends' blogs, I decided it was time to do a short update.

Knitting and Sewing

I finished my Watershed shrug. It was a fun knit, a very different construction than I've done before which made this an interesting project. Watershed should be a quick knit, unfortunately my RA really flared up this summer and affected my wrists and fingers the most. I could only manage a few minutes of knitting a day before the pain was too much. What a bummer. I wanted to knit, it just hurt too much. Still, the sweater is finished, I enjoyed knitting it and it's something I will actually wear.

I used only two balls of Rowan Calmer in a purple-ish pink color. Knit on size 8 Addi Turbo needles.

I'm currently taking advantage of my good working fingers and wrists and working on small projects, a few hats and scarves for Christmas gifts.

Back in May I made a big purchase, an Elna 7300 sewing machine. Isn't it pretty? This machine is meant for someone with far better sewing skills than I have, but my reasoning is this, once I'm retired and have more time to sew and improve my skills, I won't be able to afford such a nice machine. So I bought it now while I'm still working. It was my contribution to the stimulus program too! I'm still learning all the features and there are many I haven't even read about yet, all in good time I figure.

I finished my Pink and Green quilt and am happy with it. It's a simple pattern which gave me lots of practice sewing straight seams and making my pieces fit properly. I wanted to quilt it myself so I split the quilt into three sections and created a "quilt as you go" project. I'm so happy I did this. It was much easier to quilt smaller sections rather than wrestling with a large quilt. Blind hem stitching the sections together by hand wasn't quite as much fun...

I love the back of this quilt. I have a bit of the fabric left over and think I'll make a few place mats out of it.

 

Here's a quilt top I worked on but is in hiatus for a while. I will quilt this in sections also and haven't decided yet on a quit pattern. Meanwhile, I am going to start on a few Christmas themed table runners. Time to work on a few smaller projects and concentrate on improving my skills.

Dogs

The dogs and I did many agility trials this summer and even a few (very few) obedience trials.

Happy boy JJ came through for me in the end and finished his AX (agility excellent) title which gave him his Versatile Corgi (VC) award. While I plan to continue to trial JJ in agility and chip away at his MX and MXJ (master agility titles) I am concentrating on his obedience training. JJ in obedience? I'm probably crazy but I do so enjoy working with this silly, happy dog, so obedience it is.

Fancy finished her Championship in 4 weekends in May. That went fast! She's so pretty though, I wasn't surprised.

Tinkerbelle started her agility career. I thought she'd breeze right through to the excellent level but we've hit a few snags. We're getting back on track now, still have a few teamwork issues to work out and some fears of strange contact equipment like the teeter and especially strange dog walks. That's what it's all about though, working together, spending time together training and having fun. The picture is proof at least Belle is having fun! This great picture was taken by Great Dane Photos.

Here's a picture of Tinkerbelle and Rumor aroo-roo-rooing together. Wish I had the sound to go with this picture. They start and stop together and stay in tune the whole time. It's so cute!