Busy Saturday

I haven't posted for a little more than a week. There's financial stuff hanging over my head, but it's not something I'm going to discuss on a public blog. It was/is so annoying, though, that it's playing a major role in my thoughts, and it's hard to conjure up a blog post while I tiptoe around money issues. But let's see what I can do here...


The dogs touched each other while sleeping.
This is an accident, not a detente.

The dogs have had turkey necks twice since my last post. The first time, the dogs finally ate the necks without a problem; then Silver came in and upchucked hers on the carpet. She cleaned it up herself, and I discouraged Sam from trying to help. The second time they got necks, everybody ate, no one threw up. We may be making progress. More necks tomorrow.

At his age (he's 13), Sam has trouble staying cool, even with limited trips outside and with the AC running in the condo. But he understands what to do with a box fan: lie in front of it. Once he cools off, he moves to a comfy bed.



The baby sweater is finished, but I'm holding off on the photos. This blog posts to Facebook, and the mom is on Facebook. The shower is on Sunday evening (the 23rd), and I'll come edit this post to add photos after that. (So there, Cherelle!)


(It's Sunday night, and the baby shower is over.
I can post this now.)

I started knitting a Curiosity shop sample for Pat at Lovin' Knit. Pat chose Cascade Heritage 150 Paint yarn in "fall foliage" as the yarn. I got off to a good start, but I've had to put it aside for a bit.





I put it aside because on Facebook last Friday, a request was made for 25 volunteers willing to knit a hat for Halos Of Hope (chemo hats for cancer patients). The yarn is being supplied by Buffalo Wool Company, and we're supposed to mail the hats back to them within 30 days. (Buffalo yarn is pricey, and this is very generous of them.) I sent off an email. I didn't hear from them and didn't know if I'd made the cut of volunteers until I went to the mailbox Friday and discovered this:



The yarn is half a skein of Tracks in the colorway Mojito. Tracks is a sockweight superwash fingering that's 90% merino wool, 10% buffalo. There was a suggested pattern we could use, but I'm not really fond of it: it may be fine, but if I had cancer and was losing my hair, the last thing I'd want to wear is a hat that screams "I have cancer and I'm losing my hair!" Instead, I've chosen a nice, stylish slouchy hat pattern that I hope might be acceptable to any cancer patient, including a man or a teenager.



As it happens, Interweave is having their summer book sale, and I had already shopped and put a couple of eBooks of hat patterns in my shopping cart. When the Tracks yarn arrived, I just paid for the books, downloaded the PDFs, and got to work. There's a little uncertainty regarding exactly how much yarn I received (it's a "half-skein"--a full ball is 400 yards/100g, by weight (63.3g) this may be 250 yards) and precisely how much yarn the hat requires (the pattern calls for a yarn that comes 459 yards to a ball--but does it use 459 yards?). There'll be measuring, weighing, and lifelines involved--just to keep this interesting. (One thing I learned when I accidentally dropped my needles out of row 3 of the ribbing and had to rip back and start over: this yarn doesn't frog happily.)

And Craftsy had a special yarn sale on June 21. I bought 20 balls of Cascade 220 Superwash Tweed at an excellent price. The yarn is 10 balls of Chocolate Tweed and 10 balls of Ocean Tweed; the colors are nice, and even will work well together. Since there are 10 balls in each color, I'll be able to get more completed hats (for Hats for Sailors) from this yarn than if had I bought all different colors since leftovers from a couple of hats can combine to make another hat.

Today was a meet and greet in the Marietta Square. Seventeen greyhounds! Great crowd, lovely weather, and good donations. Since we got home a little after noon, Silver has gotten up to eat, drink, and pee; she's been unconscious the rest of the time.

Turkey, Round 2

After Friday's experience with my dogs and turkey necks, I decided to try a different approach today.

First, I pulled all the bedding out of Silver's crate, put her inside, and dropped her turkey neck in her bowl. I latched the kennel and left her staring at the turkey neck. This time, she was drooling, but she still didn't launch into it.


The BSJ, through row 37

I took Sam outside. It was raining, so I couldn't hook him to his usual post in the carport. I held his leash and put down the bowl with his turkey neck in it. He picked it up firmly--and stood there. He wouldn't lie down. He wouldn't relax his grip on the neck long enough to actually eat it. He just stood there. I wanted to check on Silver--make sure she wasn't choking herself--so I fastened Sam's leash to the post I put Silver at the other day--out of the rain and close to the door. I stuck my head back inside to check on Silver and found her furiously crunching away on her turkey neck. Back outside--Sam still standing there.

Minutes went by. Silver finished her turkey neck (I kept ducking back to check on her), and Sam still stood there with the neck gripped between his jaws. I let Silver out of her crate. She'd come to the storm door and look at Sam, and he still just stood there. Finally, I took his leash and led him back inside, still holding his prize. I shooed Silver away from the front room, and I aimed Sam at her empty crate. He didn't want to go inside--I've never crated him in all the years he's been here--but I pushed him in and closed the door behind him.

He still stood there, holding his turkey neck. Silver started to come in the room and I shooed her back out. I draped one of the blankets Silver uses in the crate over the front of the kennel, so he couldn't see out in that direction. I stood where Sam could see my feet if he looked out the side of the crate, but he no longer knew if I was watching him, and he couldn't see Silver at all.

Finally. He finally started eating his turkey neck. I kept praising him, and I watched until I was sure he'd eaten it all. Then I let him out of the crate. He went through the kitchen to get to the living room. Silver came from the other direction to inspect the crate, but she wouldn't go back in there while Sam was out of her sight.

Honestly, food shouldn't be this difficult. I'm guessing that each dog is motivated to protect his/her high-value turkey neck, and that while in possession of the Precious, neither dog is willing to relax guard against the other. I'm not stupid enough to disregard their feelings. If they don't trust each other, I'm certainly not going to leave the two of them alone with a high-value prize. (The whole situation is complicated by the fact that while Sam's been off his feed, Silver's been eating whatever he's left in his dish. Often, I pick up his not-empty dish and put it away to keep little Porky from eating Sam's food. But I haven't always done that--and now I need to start.)

I need to figure out a way to feed them both safely. I don't like feeding her inside and him outside: the dog I'm not with is at risk of choking, and a dog tethered outside alone is at risk of a loose dog in the neighborhood. I could feed both dogs in Silver's crate (if Sam will cooperate with going in there), but they can't both eat there at the same time, and I'm hesitant to blatantly feed one dog in the crate while the other waits. I think that next time--weather permitting--I'll hook them both to carport posts again and try feeding them outside at the same time. That worked (eventually) for Sam on Friday, and now that Silver understands what a turkey neck is, she might be willing to eat it outside.

Today--when I wasn't directing the lunchtime epic--I got a lot of knitting done. I finished the hat for the shop sample (still needs blocking and a good photo). I also knitted 14 rows of the BSJ (it's about 30% done). Tomorrow, I'm going shopping for a wig head I can use for blocking and for photographing knitted hats: stuffing a hat with wadded up shopping bags hasn't worked well, and I don't always have a nephew handy to model for me.



Trivia:
1--No upset stomachs from the turkey necks. Knock wood.
2--Lunch with Mother this Wednesday (probably)

Really?

If you look very closely, you can see that Sam is holding something in the side of his mouth.



It's a turkey neck. And he's holding it--not eating it. You'll have to ask him why he held the thing for ten minutes before he decided to eat it. He's had turkey necks before. He knows what he's supposed to do with them.

Silver, on the other hand, may not know. Certainly, she didn't appear to have a clue. She took the neck out of her bowl and put it on the doormat. Then she licked her empty bowl and laid down next to it.



After Sam finished his neck, I put him in the house, in case she was feeling intimidated by him (although he was tethered 10 feet away from her and she's never--ever--been intimidated by him for even a second).



That didn't work, so I moved her forward to the comfortable mat where Sam had laid (and which I now needed to wash).



Finally, I brought her back in the house and put her in her crate. She was appalled when the turkey neck joined her.



But I left her there, and within 5 minutes I heard crunching. Less than a minute after she started, she was finished.

I let her out. I let the bedding from her kennel join the other mat in the laundry, and I ran their bowls through the dishwasher. (I only ever run the dishwasher to clean dog dishes. I can just hand-wash my own.) I'm hoping the next experience with turkey necks (probably Sunday) will go a bit smoother. Honestly, though: who'd have expected greyhounds to have such a hard time figuring out food?

In July, Craftsy is having a mystery KAL for a pattern by Stefanie Japel. No idea what the project is, except that the come-on called it just complicated enough to keep your interest, while still being portable, easy to pick up, and easy to put down without losing track of what you're doing. $14.99 for the class, pattern and some scrumptious yarn. This is not remotely an accurate color representation of the most lovely blue-green fingering weight Cascade Heritage Sock Yarn in the 5655 Como Blue colorway:



(Even the photo here is inaccurate. The yarn is closer in color to the Jade (5627) sample.) I'll get pattern info about the beginning of July. It's good to have a project for July: most of what I've got going now is due in June.

I got the restarted BSJ far enough along that it's mindless knitting for the next 20-something rows, so I can work on it tomorrow afternoon at our local WWKIP gathering (they're long rows). Silver and I will be at the Marietta Farmers Market meet-and-greet in the morning. I had about 4 hours of freelancing to do today, so I didn't get a lot more knitting done.

I'm about to do the fingernails. After that, I have freelancing--one project that's all here and ready to read, another that I'm waiting for feedback on. They're both due sometime this weekend.

Mixed-up Thursday

I woke fairly early, checked emails and Facebook, got up, walked dogs, fed dogs, and went back to bed. The official pollen counts aren't too awful, but the grass pollen is wiping me out, and I knew I'd be in trouble since the landscapers were here yesterday.



By the time I woke up again, it was after noon, and I hadn't even thought about all the stuff I needed to do. I got dressed, fed and walked the dogs, then headed out. I got my hair cut. (I've added a reminder note to myself for six weeks from now. Maybe I won't wait until my hair is long enough to annoy me to get back to get it cut.) I did my grocery shopping, having violated the cardinal rule: I was starving. Potato chips, plantain chips, lots of microwavable breakfast stuff. (If someone had been standing there selling hot bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuits, I'd have gone broke. I had a real craving for breakfast--at 2:30 in the afternoon.) Diet Coke (an essential). Oh, and turkey necks for the dogs. I'll be giving half a neck to each dog at lunchtime tomorrow. (It's messy and definitely an outdoor dining event.) Home, unpack groceries, eat one of my microwavable breakfast things for lunch (I hadn't eaten since breakfast).

When I got up this morning, I had a message on Facebook from a friend who'd received the baby sweater I'd shipped to London. The baby's a girl, and it seems that green looks good on her. (I'd gone for a color that would look good if she'd had her mother's red hair. The baby's more blond than red, but mum says the color is perfect.) The baby's name is Nellina Wren Mann; I didn't know it, but her mum sometimes calls her Ladybug. Ladybugs, as they're called in the States, are a symbol of good luck, which is why I added the button. (In British countries, it's called a Ladybird.)



Last night, I got the BSJ to a good point for me to knit on it at Saturday's WWKIP event--except for two things. 1--I didn't like the sweater in a single color (bor-rinnng!), and 2--I didn't like the fabric on US5 needles. (It's a baby sweater, not a suit of armor.) I frogged the first try and hunted out a lighter blue yarn from stash. I wouldn't like these two colors together if I used them in big patches of color, but I'm planning to knit skinny stripes, and I think this will work. I've cast on with US6 and knitted just a couple of rows, and I'll work on it more tonight. The Braves are in LA, so it'll be late games tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday nights. There are also replays of golf action (PGA and Champions tours) on TV tonight. (The LPGA tournament got rained out today--standing water on the greens, although not as bad as the tournament in the Bahamas a couple of weeks ago.)



I'll paint my fingernails and toenails tomorrow. (I'm thinking red to match Silver's new collar for Saturday's meet and greet.)

Trivia:
1--Fingers crossed that this isn't the last day of good poop from the dogs; turkey necks tomorrow.
2--The nearest Great Clips is pretty good, and if I take my receipt with me on my next visit, they'll knock $4 off the price.
3--Knitting can be hard on fingernail polish.