New family member

Yesterday we welcomed a new baby into our home - she's an 8 month old golden retriever named Misty who needed a new home. After losing our old golden Bailey we didn't feel like it was time yet but here was a golden needing a home so it felt right. Her owners are older and ill and just can't care for her any longer - heart wrenching for them. We found out about her through our neighbor Jill, mom to golden retriever Rio. Misty is beautiful, she's so sweet, she's also into everything. She's so busy I can't catch a good picture of her so here she is napping and getting all rested up so she can go 'shopping' around the house for something to get in to again. I'm sure she'll be full of energy again soon. She's a handful but then isn't every puppy. We're hoping she doesn't eat too much 'stuff' and get in trouble because she sure wants to grab everything and chew it up. This morning it was a wooden clothespin unrolling a roll of toilet paper and trying to eat that. At least she's housetrained so we don't have to worry about that. Wish us luck...…

Going to the dogs......

This morning, now afternoon, I'm embroidering 2 very plush thick towels for a friend who wants to gift them next week at a puppy shower - for an Airedale puppy. These will be dog body/foot wiping towels - nice big towels. This is the first towel, second towel is stitching as I type.  Many lessons learned on these towels. I've stitched on plush towels before but never this thick - too thick for my machine, almost too thick to get it in the hoop, brought some tears and hurt thumbs but I did it. Lesson learned - don't let friends pick out on their own item to stitch without approval. This is also an embroidery pattern with tons, I mean tons, of stitching so that brings many other issues up being on the plush towel so that's lesson two. This would be much more fun to stitch on a nice cotton handtowel. The stitching makes for a very thick embroidery, as in very stiff so that's the only bad thing. Another lesson - look at how many colors changes first - this embroidery had 36 color changes, meaning I had to sit here the entire time changing the thread on the machine 36 times - I would have still stitched it because it's for a friend but it's something to think about in pricing embroidered items in the future - all those thread changes take time plus I can't be working on something else while the machine is working, I've got to babysit it. I do base pricing on time and number of stitches but never on color changes as I haven't done a pattern for sale before with this many color changes. Many lessons learned today.  Whoo Hoo - stitching just finished - second towel done - cute as the first.

Canine Angels Dog Walk

We are just back home from the Canine Angels Dog Walk in Grants Pass. Such a worthy cause to make a donation to. We got there around 8:30 to register to walk around Reinhart Volunteer Park (formerly All Sports Park). It's a beautiful park with a foot bridge crossing the Rogue River. We then saw a duck herding demonstration followed by JD Platt and his world famous K9 Kings doing tricks and frisbee retrieving (he was on that reality tv show Greatest American Dog, we don't watch reality tv but did catch one of these episodes because it was dogs). With our donation we got a few goodies and a couple raffle tickets. And wouldn't you know it - we put both our tickets in for the grand prize, a dog bed filled with goodies, and we won! Bailey is beside himself sitting in his new bed surrounded by his loot.........and napping now after such an exciting morning. He met Pumpkin, one of the canine angels in training, and new friends Gracie & Jilly Jean.

New Roving..............Value of Money, not related

This is the merino roving I dyed on Monday - the light dusty peach and yellow are the only braids of those colors, they were from playing with leftover dyes. The others are repeatable colorways - 4 pounds dyed Monday of each color. These will be going up in the etsy shop for sale shortly.

On another note - how do you teach a dog the value of money??? Today we bought a cute little stuffed pig dog toy, it lastest maybe an hour.......triage at the ER for dog toys loaded it right on the stretcher and pulled the sheet over it's head, no amount of stitching will revive it. So, why do some toys die a painful death a short time after being adopted and others last years??? The lambie has been around for as long as we've had Bailey now, he was pretty yucky and went through the washer & dryer recently and is back to looking somewhat decent. And then there's the tiny little lamb Bailey's foster mom gave him - no legs anymore but he's still around too. Bailey is a little depressed this evening after losing his new friend the pig..........maybe next time he'll be a little gentler so he can play with the new toy a bit longer before ripping it's guts out!