More On The Neighbors

Thank you to those who commented on my previous post. I tried to reply to each of you but found out I'm missing some current email addresses.

Chris asked why I don't turn my neighbors in. I don't need to turn in my neighbors as they are constantly being watched and inspected. Although dumping their dog waste next to my driveway was probably illegal (they cleaned it up with one warning phone call from me) unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about the way they keep their dogs.

It's a bit of a dilemma for me. Dog breeders are constantly fighting against legislation to limit or halt the breeding of dogs. Naturally, I don't want to lose my freedom to breed dogs. Still, as a responsible dog breeder and lover of dogs, I'm saddened by the sorry life many dogs live. Responsible dog breeders are so afraid of losing their right to their hobby that we just scream No! to every piece of legislation. I'm not convinced this is the best tactic. Perhaps instead of standing in place, shaking our fists and hollering No! we should sit down and come up with some reasonable compromise. Otherwise, we're leaving dogs like my neighbor's quite literally out in the cold.

On to more pleasant topics.

Knitting

I actually finished something! This is a face cloth from Fiber Trends Bath Time Blossoms pattern. I plan to start on a pink one today and am hoping to finish up my Mother's Day gift on time. Actually, I've made a number of these as gifts over the past few months. They knit up quickly and are great portable projects. I like using the Cotton Fine for these because the bit of wool in this yarn feels better and gives the cloth a better shape than 100% cotton.

Dogs

I've been keeping up with my self-assigned dog training challenge. Bunny has the nicest retrieve now! It's exciting because there were days I wondered if she'd ever get to this point. A few years ago I trained my Winger, a shy, quiet, lacking in confidence dog, and swore I'd never train another dog with such a temperament. So here I am training Bunny. I think I know a little more this time around. I've always known and thought I understood that dog training is all about breaking the final desired behaviour into smaller pieces. Training Bunny has taught me there's always an even smaller piece I can train and perfect. Make the right behavior easy to do and the wrong behavior difficult to do. That's how to train Bunny. It's slow going at times, but it sure is fun when it all comes together.

Practicing their down stays, with their bright green flash bulb eyes, is Bunny, Shamrock, Dusty and Whisper. 

Food

I lost the ten pounds I've wanted to lose so I celebrated this weekend with lots of white food, white flour and white rice. Not good diet food that's for sure. It's okay though, I'll get back on the wagon. You can't deny yourself everything forever.

Shrimp risotto with asparagus and red peppers

Buttermilk and currants scone

Percy

It's the time of year Percy has to stay in the house. He hates it. I'm not too crazy about it either. He has moments of acceptance though and I managed to capture one here.

Clearing the pantry

In case you haven't heard, we had quite a snow storm here in Southern MN over the past 24 hours. I decided to celebrate the occasion, or perhaps 'mark the occasion' would be a better choice of words since I'm definitely a glass half empty person when it comes to appreciating the beauty and utter coldness of a Minnesota winter. In any case, I woke up this morning and knew I wanted one of my favorite comfort foods for dinner, split pea soup and homemade 7 Grain Bread.

As I reached into the pantry for a package of dried, split peas, I saw I had 3 packages of lentils and only 1 package of split peas. Definitely time for a pantry clearing soup, so lentil soup it would be. In addition to the excess lentils, I had at least half a dozen cans of tomatoes. There must have been quite a sale on canned tomatoes at some point because fresh tomatoes out of the garden, a big favorite with me, tomatoes in any other form, not so much.

I sauted onions, carrots, garlic and some quickly getting old celery from my refrigerator. I knew I had a ring of turkey kielbasa which had been far too long in the freezer so I invited it to the party also.

I added chicken stock, dried oregano and basil, and after several hours of simmering, my soup tasted pretty good. I thought another can of diced tomatoes would be an excellent addition but there wasn't room in the 6 quart pot. Fortunately, the kielbasa slices turned out to be big party poopers. Although they added a nice smokey flavor to the soup, individually, they tasted terrible. They'd spent far too long in the freezer. So I removed the kielbasa slices. After another hour of simmering, there was plenty of room for the additonal can of diced tomatoes.

It's difficult to photogragh Pantry Clearing Lentil soup without it looking like, well, let's not go there.

Don't worry about the kielbasa, it  won't go to waste. The dogs have already and will continue to enjoy it as an addition to their kibble and as training treats.

No worries for my 7 Grain Bread either. It never fails me. It's a meal in itself.

I rated my soup a 6 on a scale of 1-10. Percy thought it was a 10.

Knitting

I'm so far behind in my Christmas knitting, don't even ask.

Knitting, cooking and puppies of course

The blogs I enjoy the most are the blogs updated regularly. Unfortunately, that's not what I seem to be able to do. It is always my intention, just not my reality. I hope the regular bloggers I enjoy reading will keep it up. Meanwhile, I will work at not feeling guilty for my own irratic blogging.

Knitting



I am making good progress on my Mr Greenjeans. This picture is not very flattering. I can't seem to get a photo which shows off the lovely colors of this Dream In Color yarn. I've made more progess on the cable and rib pattern than shown here. It's a fun project.

I also blocked my Clapotis and re-hung it on the back of Dottie's chair.



Before Christmas I bought this yarn at my LYS to make the Fiber Arts Paws To Remember scarf. I decided to start this scarf in addition to Mr. Greenjeans. I am hoping it will turn out nice enough to send to a friend. The only problem is...this scarf requires size 7 needles and I am currently using my only size 7 needles on the Mr. Greenjeans. Oh oh, I sense a need to visit a yarn store!

Vegan Day



I am not vegan, heck, I am not even vegetarian. However, I do enjoy cooking and experimenting with new cuisines. A few weeks ago we held a Hot Dish Lunch at the office. One of my work mates brought a recipe based on this. I don't think this dish qualifies as a Minnesota Hot Dish, still, so delicous! I made it today and it was very good. I stayed with the basic recipe since it was the first time I've made this. Next time, I'll taste and add salt and a bit of sugar as needed. The worst mistake I made today was roasting the sweet potatos before the rice was ready. I love roasted sweet potatos and ended up snacking too much while waiting for the rice. I had to roast a few more potatoes to round out the dish.

Since I was into a vegan experience today, I made chocolate cupcakes filled with peanut butter cream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. OMG! These are so good. I will definitely be making more cupcakes from this fun little book. I think I make excellent 'regular' coconut cupcakes so I'm anxious to try coconut and lime cupcakes from the book.

Dogs And Puppies



This picture is already a week old. I'll have to work at getting some new shots. The puppies are doing great though I can't say the same for the beating my kitchen floor is taking. The girls are having visitors for the next few weekends. That will be a lot of fun for the puppies and I'm anxious to show them off.

Fame, always my Wild Child. Fame had agility lessons today. Agility is definitely her sport but she needs to learn to listen and "chill" a bit. Fame tagged along to obedience class on Friday also where she was a big hit. I thought my friend Heidi was going to steal her away from me.

Christmas Knitting

I've been doing a bit of Christmas knitting in November. I finished a few projects and have started several others.



A few months ago I purchased the Fiber Trends Felt Flock pattern. I finally got around to knitting a sheep and did I ever enjoy it! I would not have thought I'd enjoy such a knitting project but I did. This little lamb is made of Cascade 220 wool for his body and some very old Dale of Norway Heilo I found in my stash for the contrasting color. I ended up with just a bit of the Heilo left so I made an I-cord collar for my little lamb. I think I will give this to my agility and herding instructor who is anticipating the birth of her first grandchild this coming week.

...yes, I know I forgot to knit a tail for my lamb. No excuses, I just plain forgot. I'll do better on my next one as I do intend to knit more lambs.



I so seriously enjoyed knitting the felted lamb I actually purchased this book and hope to knit a few more toys in the future. I think I will even join the Ravelry knitted toy group.



I finished my third Ribs and Ruffles Scarf out of Misti Alpaca Chunky.



My first two scarfs were knit in a natural and a baby blue color. These are a very quick knit and make a luxurious gift. I plan to give this third scarf as a gift also. Now I need to make one for myself.


Unfinished Christmas Knitting

My sister asked me to make golf club covers and gave me a pattern using Red Heart yarn and Lion Brand Fun Fur yarn. Hum... so I experimented a bit.



The tan yarn is Mission Falls 1824 Wool and the green eyelash yarn is called "Funny". I made the bright pink one after searching on the web for knitted golf club covers and reading several patterns and posts which said the gaudier the better. The pink yarn is Red Heart and the eyelash is some Crystal Palace Splash I found in my stash. I'm not a golfer but I find the pink quite gaudy for sure! I do not have enough of the Splash to make another cover but I do have some Fun Fur in pink. I'm not a golfer but I hope a second cover with a different novelty yarn will still make for a "matching pair". The golf covers where fun to knit, but honestly, a little boring. I still need to make another in each color by Christmas but I'm going to put it off a bit as I just can't bear to make two more at this time. Each takes about 4-5 hours to complete.




I've finished one of the fingerless mittens I'm making for myself. I like them. I think I should have made the hand portion of the mittens in a stockinette stitch instead of the ribbing because it would have shown off the colors better but here it is. I still like it. I'll finish the second once all my Christmas knitting is complete.



My Clapotis has also taken a back seat to the completion of Christmas knitting. I'm half way through the straight section. Though I'm normally a pastel color person, I am loving the colors of my Clapotis.

And despite all the Christmas projects I also started a simple cap for myself tonight out of some left over stash Dream In Color yarn. I hope I have enough to finish the cap. I remind myself of the shoemaker's children. All the knit projects I make and I don't even have a hat for myself this winter!

Food Project

I've had this plan in my head for a while now. Shelves of my book cases are taken up with cooking magazines. I never take these old magazines out and use them. So, I've let all my cooking magazine subscriptions expire and I am determined to take one or two magazines a month out of my "collection" and go through them a final time, making any recipes I am interested in, saving them if I really like them, and then tossing the old magazine. In December I will go through all my old December magazines, in January, all my old January magazines, etc., until I've cleared out all my old cooking magazines. Then next year at this time, I'll order all new subscriptions!




This weekend I started with a Real Foods Winter 2005 Byerlys and Lunds magazine. (Minnesota readers will recognize this as a quarterly magazine published by upscale grocer Lunds.) I immediately remembered the Dried Cherry and White Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie recipe from this issue. I made this several times last winter. I'm keeping this recipe. I made the Citrus Pork recipe tonight for supper. It was very good. The marinade was clementines, cloves and scallions. I made a clementine and spinach salad to go with it. Very good. Definitely a keeper. There's a Lime and Tortilla soup I'll also try out of this magazine and then poof, in the garbage the magazine will go.

Dog News

The dogs and I have been taking private agility lessons for the last 4-5 weeks. It's so much fun! All the dogs are doing well but Dusty is especially excelling. He's so fast and I have to run full speed to keep up with him. He is already doing full size A-frames after just 5 lessons. I've entered him in a NADAC trial at the end of December. He does not have the weave poles mastered yet so I've entered him in a Tunnelers (boy, does Dusty love the tunnels!) and Touch N Go class only. It will be great practice for the upcoming AKC agility trials this spring.


Fame Was Here



And what a mess she made! I was working on the computer this afternoon and Fame was quietly destroying my kitchen rugs. Good grief. Fame starts her first agility lesson tomorrow. I'll try to remember to bring my camera and see if we can capture a few pictures of her. She already loves her tunnels.

And finally, a picture of Percy. Why? Because the dogs and I love him and because he killed a mouse in the basement this week and that is his original purpose here. Somehow, the dogs and I fell in love with him forgetting his original purpose. But when he manages to protect us (okay, me) from the great villain which is mouse, he is exulted. Hail Percy!




Now don't give me a bad time about letting the cat eat on the kitchen counter. Keeping dogs from eating cat food is simply impossible. All you can do is keep the cat food away from the dogs.

Twenty Four Hours

Actually, almost 36 hours old now and both puppies are strong and doing well. My little boy is still quite small but he is a fighter and gaining strength with time. Mother Dot is doing well though she wishes I'd turn down the heat in her new bedroom. Sorry Dot, not until the puppies are a few days older.

I'm exhausted. I did manage to make my roasted tomato sauce though. Here's the conglomeration before it went into the oven for an hour.



Fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, a little carrot, thyme and basil all coated with oil olive. It was delicious over a little pasta on a night I didn't feel like cooking much.

I'm exhausted but will set the alarm every 3 hours tonight to check on Dot and the puppies. It was a beautiful weekend outside, wish I could have enjoyed it more. I have so much yard work to do...heck, I have so much knitting to do!