Boring Blogger

That's me. I know I haven't posted anything exciting in weeks! First there was the creative slump, followed by carpal tunnel pain, resulting in nothing interesting on the blog.

I had planned on filling the time with playing with my embroidery machine, but that only led to frustration. I was able to get it working and it works ok with the stock patterns on the machine, although it does tend to leave gaps. When I tried to use a self-made pattern, the machine couldn't sew it properly and after breaking 3 needles I gave up in frustration. I'm not sure if it's my inexperience or of it's the machine. Either way it killed my desire to sew.

Thankfully, my hands & wrists are feeling much better from the rest and I'm thinking of busting out the needles today and knitting up some of this:
Gorgeous Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn that I received as a thank you gift from a fabulous MTS participant. Not yet sure what pattern I'll use, may wing it, but I've been itching to knit this ever since it arrived... soooo purty!

I'm also going to get in gear and get the Bittersweet Heart pattern written up for test knitting. So, hopefully the blog will be back on track with knitted goodness soon. :)

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a bit of puppy cuteness.

Grumble, Grumble

Cough, Cough... stupid michigan weather! At least this made me feel a bit better:



Corrina also made me smile. In the midst of a full on hack attack, I looked out the window to see her doing her "freight train". This is what we call it when she runs full tilt around the back yard in ever decreasing circles. She ended this bout by dropping to the ground, rolling over & rubbing her back in the snow. Crazy puppy! :)

Worky Work, Busy, Busy

Most of my free time lately has been spent getting the Mystery Theme Swap up & running. It's been a lot of work, but I'm enjoying it. I hope it comes off well.

Anywho. I'm just popping in here for a quick update until things settle down a bit. My package for the Hogwarts Sock Swap was sent off a month early, in typical Ravenclaw over-achiever fashion, and my Gryffindor pal, Avada, should be receiving it either today or Monday. I'm so excited. I hope she likes it!

Also, I have started on my Christmas knitting. A pair of socks is on the needles for one lucky recipient. And one very lucky person will be getting something made with this...
No details will be given at this time in case said person decides to read my blog. :)

So, now I'm off to do some knitting & a bit more organizing. It will probably be several days before I can post again, so I will leave you with a bit of Corrina cuteness.

"Stay away from my chicken if youse
knows whats good for youse"

Corrina's New Toy

Best $2.99 spent ever!

Happy Day!

Kris came home yesterday after being away for a week due to work & Gandalf-related activities. Corrina was very happy about this...

Whilst he was away, I placed an order at KnitPicks. I needed to get a sweater stone and then I decided to try for the free shipping...

I got 6 skeins of fingering weight and 4 skeins of dk weight yarn in their Bare line, which is 100% merino yarn that has been washed & spun but not bleached. I got it for dyeing. I've had the urge lately and didn't want to muck about with spinning. Now I just need to find the time to dye it! Not sure what type of dye I'm going to use yet. I don't think I have any laying about.

Btw- I've already tried out the sweater stone, it works great! Although it does leave a bit of pumice dust laying about...

Natural Born Killer

What the heck am I going to do now?!

My sweet, gentle little puppy has taken another life! She was acting funny this morning. Wanting to stay out longer than usual and then wanting to go right back out after coming in, when she usually wants to snuggle in the morning. I peeked outside and saw a fuzzy mass in the middle of the yard. Oh crap, I thought, she's gotten another squirrel.

Well, it wasn't a squirrel. It was a bird. A large bird. About a foot long from beak to tail. I'm really bad at identifying birds, but both honey & I are pretty sure it was a pheasant. Kris said it weighed about 6 pounds! And I think it was a female, because it didn't have the bright colors.

What the heck are we going to do?? Life in prison?

At least pheasants are legal to hunt in Michigan.

Pet Food Recall Aftermath

First off, let me just say that Corrina is fine. Now I can relate my story without worrying anyone! :)

This morning I awoke to not one, but two piles of vomit on the floor (one of which I stepped in, bleck!). They were obviously from the dog. Not good. She didn't seem lethargic, which was a good sign, and she ate her breakfast fine. Still, I was concerned. I called the vet and, even though she was fully booked, she wanted me to bring Corrina in. The dog's demeanor was that of a healthy pup, but sometimes they don't want you to know they are in pain, so better to be safe than sorry. Dr. Rhode (who is the most awesome vet ever!) had me bring in a couple pouches of Corrina's old food and ran blood & urine tests on the pup. She said it was probably that the puppy ate something that didn't agree with her, but she was glad I brought her in just be safe. And she is fine, as I stated earlier. Dr. Rhode said that she is extremely healthy. Thank goodness! Now I can obsess about something else! ;)

Now, onto the Recall news. As you may have heard they have identified the substance that caused the deaths as aminopterin, which is a chemotherapy drug that is also used as a rat poison in other countries, but not the US. Apparently it was used as an abortion drug at one time as well. This drug is not even in current use as a cancer treatment, only in research! According to the news reports, they have no idea how it found it's way into the food, however they are NOT launching a criminal investigation! WHAT?! Why the hell not?! How did this substance, that is basically outlawed in the US except for research, find it's way into 2 separate food processing plants?!

Your government at work, folks!

Much Ado About Puppy

After hearing about the problems my dear Joanne (nobody messes with my Joanne!) has been having with Blogger I decided I would give wordpress a try. After all, you can have your own domain name & separate pages attached to your blog. Cool... Well, after 2 days of fussing with it and still being unhappy/frustrated with wordpress I decided not to switch after all... they won't even let you change the colors on the template or modify the html! And all the cool stuff comes at a cost. So, for now, I'm sticking with blogger. (Sorry Joanne, I hope you figure the commenting thing out!) I did end up purchasing a domain, which now means I have to figure out what do with it... (sigh)

In puppy news, I decided to give the whole "cooking" thing a try. She had her first home cooked meal this morning...

steak, peas & redskin potato

Ms. Corrina is now eating better than we are! This definitely gives me peace of mind and the cost ends up being about the same... probably less in the long run.

I will leave you with a bit of a puppy romp. This is her at the dog park this past weekend. :)

Pet Food Recall

So by now I'm sure you've all heard about the massive pet food recall by Menu Foods, which includes wet food under Eukanuba, Iams and Nutro brands. We have been feeding Corrina the Nutro Natural Choice pouches for at least 6 months, with the odd Eukanuba & Iams pouch thrown in for variety. Needless to say I am fairly wigged! We went through the cupboards and don't have any of the recalled products, but who knows how many of the suspect packages we may have fed her unknowingly? These things have been on the shelves since December at the places where we shop. I threw out any that were manufactured around the same date (we had a few that were made the next day or the day before), but now I don't feel comfortable feeding ANY of them to her.

Am I over-reacting? I just don't have any confidence in the manufacturers anymore. Are they not taking the precautions they should because it's "just dog & cat " food? Here I thought I was being a good puppy momma by spending the extra 10-20 cents a pouch to get brands that are supposedly more nutritious... would I have been better off with Alpo?

I am really upset about this. We don't have children, may never be able to have children, and these animals are our babies!

I'm seriously considering making her food myself from now on. I found a couple of good articles online about it. I will have to discuss it with my vet. (sigh)

As if life isn't stressful enough!

Sunny & 70!

That was yesterday. 73 actually. Gorgeous! To take full advantage of the weather, I took Corrina to the dog park after work. It was packed! There must have been 20-25 dogs there! Needless to day, she had a wonderful time and came home absolutely filthy! Kris will be bathing her tonight!

As a consequence of this beautiful weather, my poor plants are prematurely budding:

This premature warming is wreaking havoc on the poor things. Alas, they will be dead by morning, as we are supposed to get snow overnight. I have to say, I can't remember when we've had such a mild winter & I've lived here my whole life!

In music news, I've been listening to The Essex Green lately. Honey loaded them on my ipod, cause he thought I'd like them. He was right. The female vocalist reminds me of early 10,000 Maniacs era Natalie Merchant, especially on the first track "This Isn't Farm Life". I'm really digging them. Check out Don't Know Why (You Stay) from their latest album Cannibal Sea. Catchy, ain't it!

Thanks for the suggestions on the use of my beautiful Manos yarn. I think I may go with the "My So Called Scarf" pattern that Ingrid suggested. Very purty!

Ok, now I must have myself a little rant. Has anyone else been following the firing scandal in the justice department? I swear I don't know how much more of this people are going to stand before they impeach this administration! For pete's sake, they impeached Clinton for lying about having sex! These idiots have lead us into a war under false pretenses, are sanctioning torture, and have suspended habeas corpus! The rampant cronyism & incompetence are disgusting! (puts soap box away... for now)

Man Oh Manos

Last weekend Kris was in New York & Connecticut doing sound for Gandalf Murphy. Apparently, the little town he was staying in had a yarn shop. So my dear hubby, the sweet man that he is, decided to browse their selection to see if there was anything special he could bring me. He decided on this:



Anyone have a suggestion on what to make with 2 skeins of Manos?

So, while Kris was off buying me yarn, I spent Saturday afternoon with my sister and my niece. We had a lovely lunch, I let my sister fill her ipod from our music hd, and then Autumn stayed with me while Dawn went off to bowling. We rented a movie, and about 45 min in this happened:

Poor thing woke up just in time to go home. :)

Other than that, the weekend was pretty uneventful. We had warm weather on Saturday, which turned the back yard into a pond. Corrina loved it!

Of course, when she came in she needed a good cleaning. Thankfully Windle was more than happy to help out...

Thankfully she didn't notice this...

Poor thing has no idea how close it came to being squirrel tar tar!

We Have A Wiggy Factor of 10!

There are some events that bring home the jarring realization that your sweet, adorable, loving little fluffballs are in fact animals who still have their predatory instincts.

With the cats, it was the first time I found bits of a mouse (not even half a mouse) laying in the middle of the carpet and 4 very satisfied looking pussy cats.

Well, last night I had this moment with Corrina.

Yesterday I let her out to do her business and have a romp in the yard. About 5 min later I hear her barking. Not her usual "Look at the THING!" bark, but a more aggressive, territorial "Get out of my yard or this will happen to you" kinda bark. I looked outside and there was a squirrel in the tree, about halfway down the trunk. Too high for her to reach. I left her to it. She is after all a dog, and they love to bark & chase squirrels.

I let her in a little bit later and there were no signs of the squirrel. I assumed the squirrel had climbed higher in the tree, or jumped to our neighbors yard, and didn't think anything more of it.

The rest of the day pasted uneventfully. She was doing her little kid routine, wanting to go out & then come back in every 5-10 min.

Around 10:30pm I let her out for her bedtime potty. When I went to let her back in 10 min later, I received a serious case of the wiggies! My sweet, loving, gentle baby had in fact killed the squirrel... and then brought it to me! EEK! She dropped it on the porch and I let her inside. We went to bed. She promptly jumped up & lay down in my spot and was looking pitiful. She probably didn't understand why I was wigged... and I was too wigged to properly snuggle with the dog... I mean, she murdered a squirrel!

Ok. So, here we are this morning. I wake up resigned to the fact that I am living with 5 cold-blooded killers (at least of rodents) and let my baby outside for her morning pee. I brought a garbage bag with me to scoop up the corpse. When I bent over, I got my first good look at the squirrel. It looked normal.. except for the head, which Corrina had tore the skin & fur from... she ripped off the squirrel's FACE! DUDE! (shiver)

I think I need a lay-down.

Squirrel Enemy #1

Snow Day!

I'm so excited, like a kid! I haven't had a real snow day since high school! My office is closed because of the inclement weather, so NO WORK! WHEE!

Apparently, even though they had 2 days notice of the storm, Washtenaw County decided not to put salt trucks & plows on the road last night... even though it started snowing around 3pm and they knew we were projected to get upwards of 8", with major drifting! So, this morning the surface streets are terrible and the evidently the road to my office is virtually impassible.

This, of course , is second hand knowledge. Honey called me about 15 min ago to tell me they were closing the office & not to bother coming in! SQUEE!

Puppy is very happy. She is having such a blast in the snow... she thinks it mighty tasty!

OH! I have to relay the cutest thing. I watched a bit of the Westminster Dog Show on Monday & Tuesday. Personally, I was hoping the Akita or Bouvier would win. (see below)

But, anyhow... Corrina was laying on the couch next to me and then the tv caught her eye. She immediately perked-up and was very intently watching the dogs! When the bigger breeds would come on she would start a very low growl, like she was telling them to get out of her house! When the toy group came on, she ran over to the tv & was trying to sniff them! awwwww! She got very excited when the boxer came on... there's a boxer that she plays with regularly at the dog park! :)

Off to a bit of shoveling and then warm up with some tea!