Family and Summer Fun

Two posts in the same month, that's a pretty good record for me. It's summer time in the North, a very busy time for Minnesotans.

Knitting

I haven't spent the time knitting that I would like to. I've made a bit of progress on my Cameo sweater. I only need to knit 12 rows of the ribbing, the small, capped sleeves and the button and neck band. "Just" those few things and I'm done! This is a very nice knit, perhaps a little boring. I'm going to finish it though, I swear I am, before I start several other interesting projects calling me.



Family

My sister, who lives in Kentucky, came home for a visit in July. We had such a nice time together. Not only did we walk the entire Mall Of America one day, we then crossed the street to walk all of IKEA. That's a lot of walking. I think I'm still recovering. The weekend my sister returned home, she won the Ladies Race at Kentucky Lake. Here is a picture of my sister and her beautiful boat. She's the one in the back, steering. Well, I think it is called steering, I'm not much of sailor. I do know she's the only race participant who recruits an all lady crew for the Ladies Race so it's great they won this year!



We had several nice family gathering while my sister was home. My mom made popovers one night. Aren't they the prettiest? I love popovers.




Dogs

The dogs and I have been having a blast this summer. We've suffered the ups and downs of agility. Here is Dot who has definitely been on the up.



Dot finished her OA, OAJ, AX and AXJ titles this year despite a forced 6 weeks off any training or participating in March and April for foot surgery. At 8.5 years old, it goes without saying I'm pretty proud of her. I'm not sure what's up next for Dot. You can be certain she's not ready to settle on being a couch potato. Dot's still looking for fun and I hope to provide it for her.

Meanwhile, JJ, the love of my life, the happiest dog in the whole wide world, is showing me the down side of agility.



JJ has more fun and is faster in agility than any of my other dogs. Still, JJ can't keep the jump bars up. Both Dot and Whisper have come and gone through Novice, Open, Excellent A and in to Excellent B and yet there is my JJ, still hanging out in the Open Jumpers Class. It isn't that he doesn't love agility, it isn't that he doesn't have tons of potential, it's just that JJ says, "Bars? I don't care about no stinking bars, I just want to run fast and have fun and those bars are in my way". Very.Big.Sigh.

I swear, if JJ could speak English his first two words would be "Dudes, hey"! Still, what a handsome, happy dog. His registered name includes "Jump For Joy" and I sure got the Joy part of it right...even if I did miss the Jump part!

By the way, these agility photos were taken by and purchased from Great Dane Photos. I have no affiliation, other than think they take the greatest action shots and I have spent far too much money there.

Hope you are having a great summer!

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.