Thursday, September 25, 2008

As you can see, Houdini the kitten is growing up fast!

He has no problems holding his own against the Mighty Knight! :0)


Knight is growing fast as well. He is now just over 9mths. Being part Lab and part Border Collie, he is instilled with a playfulness and energy hard to keep up with!

On the weekend, we decided to take him to the Canal where there is a walking trail. Being in far enough and there being no where to really go, we let him have his freedom and let him off leash
. He had an absolute blast!! The water dog that used to be nervous of water now LOVES it! If there is a creek or shore to go in, he's in-like-flint! As you can see, he loved the outing! :0)




Being high energy, we have been trying to come up with ways to tire him out. It's not an easy task, let me tell you! When he gets bored and antsy, he gets hyper, barks and scratches the carpet! Not good. I decided to read a book by Cesar Millan, "The Power of The Pack". If you have a dog with "issues" :0) and have never read his book, you should. I highly recommend it! Here is a man that can walk 40-50 dogs AT A TIME, and have NO fights! He is absolutely brilliant! Anyway, to keep this crochet related, he recommends dog back pack for high energy dogs to help drain some energy. Put 10-20 % of their body weight in it, and it gives them something to do, as well as helps tire them out. I've searched high and lo in our area to no avail. Solution? Crochet one!! I am now embarking on a journey to crochet a doggy backpack.

I just happen to have a large 400g ball of Bernat Naturals in a beige color. I think I will start with a band to go around his chest and one to go around his waist, that will button up. I think mesh between the 2 would be good for ventilation (he pants a LOT).and another band around the neck should finish that part of it. If I make 2 mesh water bottle holders, and maybe a mesh bag and attach them, it will give him a job to do carrying it all for me :0) I will post pictures as I go along.

For an extra energy drain, he recommends a tread mill. I'll have to get one of those for our long, cold, snow filled Ontario winters! Hmmmm...I wonder if I could just crochet it! Lol!

Friday, September 12, 2008

free form bits and bobs

I've been interested in free form crochet for awhile now. My Tranquil Ocean afghan was the first major attempt at it, but I did a few scrumbles before that. Here are a few of my favorite ones:


The pink one in the top right hand corner was my attempt at a free form sea shell. The top left hand corner one in green kind of looks like a pea pod, doesn't it? The tiny round green one was the very first free form thing I did. It was a "dome" and I got the instructions from Bonnie Pierce's website http://members.aol.com/gandal195/elegantcrochet.html . She has tutorials on free form scrumbles. It was seeing some of her gorgeous free form pieces on her website that first got me interested in free form. Her stuff is amazing!

I was browsing on chapters.ca looking at crochet books the other day and decided to make out my "wish list" which is a feature on their website. There are some truly wonderful looking crochet books out there, either out or being released in the next few months. Unfortunately 2 or 3 of the books I wanted to mark were "unavailable to buy new" at this time! Arrrrgh!! One was Jean Leinhauser's new book, due out Jan 2009 "Crochet Master Class". I can't wait to get that one!

Another one was "Free Form Crochet and Beyond" by Renate Kirkpatrick. It's new out as well. Looking at the cover, it looks like a Must Have book for me! The cover shows what looks like rocks and hills with a river running through it all done in free form crochet! Absolutely breathtaking! I am especially intrigued with free form done to resemble scenes of Nature, so this looks like a book for me.

There are a few other books I have to add to my resource library as well. Bendy Carter's book "Single Crochet A-Z" is a must have from all the reviews I've read. (I just can't imagine being able to do single crochet 26 different ways!) I also must get my hot little hands on a copy of "Beyond-the-Square Crochet Motifs- 150 Circles, Triangles, Hexagons and Other Unexpected shapes" by Edie Eckman. I hear it's a treasure trove of ideas! My list is a lot longer, but I don't want this to end up being a novel for you to read :0) Lol!


Friday, September 5, 2008

I've been MIA the past week or so as we try to get into the school routine thing again :)
First day was "...interesting". My 9yr old woke up with what we thought was an ear infection. As I couldn't even call the Dr until after 9am, and she was insistent on NOT missing the first day of school in her new school, I gave her Advil and sent her on her way, with instructions to CALL ME if the pain returned! The only appt was at 2:30 pm. which meant picking up both girls before the end of the day. I picked up my 9yr old and promply got an "Oh thanks, Mom! Now I will miss a bunch of stuff!" (No matter that there was only 45 min or so left!). We stopped to pick up my 6yr old and was informed there was an "incident". Oh, great. What now? It seems, her friend was running quickly toward her and bumped her head on my dd's front tooth! It is a permanent tooth and it was bleeding...a lot. Great. We finally got to the Dr's to find out it wasn't an ear infection after all, just a swollen lymph node. Hmm. Nothing to worry about apparantly, just keep an eye on it and if it doesn't go away, come back. After all this excitement, my 9yr old still had her 1 1/2 hrs of figure skating lessons. Let's just say, I was ready to get home, get the kids fed and in bed and relax:)

PS: day 2 went much better!

With both girls in school 5 days a week, I am trying to get my submission ready to mail in. It's going well and I'm almost done. Yay! Once I finish that I'm going to work on my dd's Flower Girl shrug.

When we went back to school shopping the week before school, I found and bought Nicky Epstein's new book Crocheting on the edge. All I can say is "Wow!" She is one talented lady! The edgings in this book are phenomenal! I had to get some paper and rip it in pieces to mark the pages as I looked throught it. I had ideas coming out my EARS!! Well worth the price, especially with my 40% off coupon at Michaels! I can see this being one of my "well used" resource books.