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.

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.

It Was A Good Weekend

A Thousand Splendid Suns

What an exquisite, sad, powerful, poignant novel. I do not know the correct words to describe this beautiful book. I can't stop thinking about it. I kept the iPod playing in the car or in my ears as much as I could this weekend. How magnificent is the human spirit to endure such sorrow and hardship. When I thought Mariam and Laila could not possibly survive another tragedy, I learned they not only can endure, but are brave enough to dare to hope and love again.

I wonder if the author has ever read one of my favorite pieces of literature, William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech? I think they both speak magnificently of the courage and power of the human spirit.


A New Champion



Addie finished her championship this weekend by winning the final of 15 required points. Addie is co-owned by my friend Sarah in IL and has been tag teamed to her championship by both Sarah and I. Addie makes up my 21st champion. Above is a casual picture of Addie taken while playing around the house. Addie lives here part time while attending some shows and, unlike my own dogs, does not tear a toy to shreds as soon as she gets. Rather, Addie will actually play with a toy. She's playing here with an expensive toy I wouldn't think of giving to my own dogs as they'd wreck it as soon as they got a hold of it. When Addie leaves I put the expensive toy away and only bring it out again when Addie returns.



Yep, that's Addie again just after we arrived home from the show. Why yes, that is a piece of grass between her teeth! Shows dogs are just 'plain old dogs' at home. Addie doesn't seem to know she's anything special in this photo does she?

Five baby bluebirds!

The bluebird eggs hatched on Saturday. All five little birds are alive and parents busy feeding them. I check on them daily and will continue to do so for about another 10 days. After that it's time to leave the babies alone so they do not fledge too early. I wanted to take a picture for you but didn't dare disturb them so you will have to take my word for it. I will try to get pictures when the birds leave the nest. Can't wait - I will finally be able to let my cat outside - Hurray!

Do Not Knit When You Are Tired

I learned this lesson over the past weekend. I took my parents out to eat at Fermentations this past Saturday night. We had a very nice time. The ostrich and halibut were quite good, the chicken was just ok. Still, we had a wonderful time. I arrived home late and had to let the dogs outside to exercise before going to bed so I decided to knit a row of the traveling shells cardigan while I waited for the dogs. Oh, was that a mistake. I knew I was tired and had enjoyed a few glasses of wine but at the time I thought I was just whipping through a row of knitting. Was I wrong! It took me a little less than 1 and 1/2 hours on Sunday morning to repair all the damage I'd done. So take my advice, don't knit when you are tired or have had a glass of wine or two.

I'm happy with the progress I am making on the traveling shells cardigan but I won't bore you with pictures. We are having a big family reunion at the end of June and I had hoped to have the cardigan completed by then but it doesn't look like that is going to happen. I'd love to start another project, like socks, but I am determined to finish this first.

I'm in love with my iPod Nano and have been for some time. I have managed to move almost all of my CD collection to my iPod. I have about a dozen CDs left to copy. Recently I went looking for audio books for the iPod. I've listened to all of the audio books available at my local library I care to listen to, and a few I didn't. I love to read "real" books but have found audio books the perfect substitute for times I also want to knit or am driving to dog events, driving to dog lessons, to work, etc.. I spend a lot of time in my car.

I wasn't happy with the iTunes book selection. Almost all of the books I wanted to read were abridged and I think reading an abridged version of anything is just wrong! Over the weekend I discovered audible.com and quickly signed myself up. I downloaded and have already listened to the two most recent Micheal Connelly books. I'm a huge Harry Bosch fan. He's such an imperfect hero, he's hard not to love. Aren't we all imperfect heroes?


Now that I'm all caught up with Harry Bosch, I have down loaded the latest Einstein biography. I've been wanting to read this but the only version available on iTunes was an abridged version. I'm excited to have the unabridged version to read.


And I also downloaded Khaled Hosseini's latest, A Thousand Splendid Suns. I've read his first novel, The Kite Runner, and enjoyed it very much so I'm looking forward to 'reading' his latest via my iPod.