I haven’t even been able to get to my quilting machine for most of the last week, but today I finally reached the bottom of the piles and started trying to catch back up on some quilting. This little cutie was a quickie. It was made by a young lady whose grandmother brought it to me to quilt. I think the quilter was in the 8-10 year old range, but I’m not positive. Freehand allover swirls (in lime green thread!) were easy to do and helped hide the little bit of waviness around the edges. It was actually pretty well pieced: I wish my first quilt had been that nice.
I’m not really sure how this happened:
There was Mark, taking off his work shirt, and there was the dog, wanting attention, and the next thing I knew, we were sticking her arms in the sleeves and I was running for the camera.
Katie had an ear infection, and we’ve been glooping her ears up with ear goop for the last week. Wednesday was her recheck, and there was a possiblity she might have to stay and have her ears flushed, so…no food or water after 10 PM Tuesday night.
Which meant that Cocoa didn’t get to eat, either, first thing in the morning, because…trust me, it’s easier this way. We figured she could survive until 9AM when Katie either returned and they ate together, or…I returned and fed her on her own.
It turns out that Katie’s ear infection is gone, however her ears are still completely clogged, and the vet didn’t want to risk hurting her trying to get the gunk out without softening it up first. So…now she’s on a week of ear wax remover drops, and another recheck next Wednesday. Whoopee. She just loooooves having her ears messed with.
The vet said something about how we must have noticed that she’s probably been ignoring us because she can’t hear very well.
Um, yeah, we hadn’t really noticed any difference from her normal I’m-a-princess-and-am-not-paying-attention-to-you behavior.
The picture is from right before I took her to the vet. Don’t they just look like they are wasting away from hunger?
If you come visit my house and sit down, you have to be prepared to have a big brown dog set her big brown head on your lap. And then she’ll stand there for absolutely as long as you can possibly bear to continue petting her head.
She sleeps in our room, and many nights she’ll try to join us in bed. Mark will go sit in HER chair, which usually gets her interest, so she hops down and joins him.
Last night she was sitting on the floor looking at us, and I said something to him about the big brown dog staring at him.
“If you don’t make eye contact with her, she eventually goes away.”
Sure enough, she wandered away after a few minutes.
Sometimes we do let her climb in bed with us, but never if we actually expect to sleep. If she isn’t being petted, she wants to know why not and does her darndest to get our attention, up to and including making use of a really big wet sloppy tongue. And then, when she is getting petted, the big tail starts thumping.
Most of the time, though, she is one of the calmest dogs I’ve ever known, and since she’s such a big girl, that is something I’m grateful for. She seems to have fit into our family quite nicely, and even Katie, who might pretend otherwise, seems to like having her around.
Only 19 more to go. It took longer than I had thought it would, but I was only doing the one, when I’m working on a bunch at a time and doign some assembly line work, it’ll all go faster. Plus, I was still trying to figure otu what the heck I was doing, there’s a LOT of pieces to keep track of!
I’m still working on a post about half-square triangle units, and how I cut out some of those funny shapes, but it’s like Grand Central Station around here, and my family thinks they need my attention and…you know how it goes.
Yesterday’s photo:
I took the boys to the pool, but had enough sun after about 2 hours. My sister-in-law and her kids were there, so I just left my boys in her capable hands and came home. She brought them home a few hours later and when they tried to leave, look who hopped in the car! (She did go in through the door, they closed the door for the picture. When Mark saw this, he was worried that she had jumped in over the top…)
The boys were playing baseball and I was trying to take some pictures of them in action. Unfortunately, not many of them turned out very well, but one of my furry helpers just about knocked me over trying to get close enough to me. What a face. You can’t really see it at this size, but the darkest spot in her eye is actually my reflection.
It was raining today. What a mess. And the concrete steps didn’t quite come out the way we’d hoped they would. The two bottom layers were poured as one solid chunk. The top layer was separate. They ended up completely demolishing the top layer, and leaving most of the bottom two, but that’s OK, because that gives us room to build a deck over top of it.
We headed to Lowe’s to pick out some new light fixtures to go on eithr side of the door, and we looked at decking material. It’s not going to be cheap, but I think it will all be worthwhile in the end.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a Radiant Star update, but first, here’s some of the results from the poll that a bunch of you kindly voted in a few days ago:
I’m glad to see a few of you voted for that last one. Some days, that’s my answer for just about everything.
I don’t know what happened, I just quit taking pictures every day. I don’t have really willing participants, except for maybe the dog(s), but I can only take so many pictures of the dogs. I’ve been missing this, though, and had decided to start it back up tomorrow, the 1st of June. But there I was, sitting out back, knitting in the wind, and the dogs were laying out in the grass and it was so pretty, I was compelled to take their picture.
Only, I had to go inside and get the camera first, and by the time I got back, Katie had moved on. But Cocoa was willing to lay back down, and the trees and grass and sky hadn’t changed, so I went with it.
I did end up getting a couple of shots of her before we went to play Frisbee and Chicken*.
She was the victim of a recent haircut. She hates haircuts. But after a haircut and a bath, she’s like velvet, which means she gets more cuddles, but I don’t think she has that much of a sense of the future.
I’m at a bit of a loss for a sewing project at the moment. Everything’s either waiting for binding, waiting for quilting, not a stage where I can easily sit down and just sew…sounds like time to start something new, right? Maybe I’ll just go knit. Or do one of the other many things I ought to do, like clean. I vacuumed for awhile, and wanted to mop the kitchen floor. OK, I didn’t WANT to mop, I just thought maybe it was probably time. Only, I can’t find the fancy-shmancy micro-fiber thingy I stick on the end of the mop to clean my wood floor. I can’t really fathom where it would have gone, so…the urge has now passed, and I probably won’t get back to wanting to mop again for ages…
TTFN-
Suzanne
*To Play Chicken, you must have a really obnoxious rubber-chicken toy that squeaks when you squeeze or shake it. You then throw the obnoxious rubber chicken as hard as you can, and Cocoa will chase after it. We are just thrilled that she actually wants to PLAY with something. Whilst she’s distracted, chasing the Chicken, Katie chases the Frisbee. If Cocoa notices, and can get to the Frisbee first, though, all bets are off. Poor Katie doesn’t stand a chance…
We’re all still getting to know one another, but Cocoa seems to be fitting in pretty well.
Speaking of fitting, Katie can actually walk underneath Cocoa without having to duck. 20 pounds of Katie looks pretty tiny compared to 73 pounds of Cocoa.
This one didn’t have anything to do with the dogs, though that is Cocoa’s head at the bottom. I just thought this was a nice one of Will, especially with the tree bokeh in the background. I did have to use Photoshop to whiten his teeth, though. Apparently it’s time for another “How to Brush Properly” lesson.
HOpe you are having a nice weekend. Apparently my new Sunday ritual is a long nap in the afternoon, followed by not accomplishing very much.
