It seems that you have been having a lot of fun this summer - hooking retreats, big successes at the county fair (congratulations! pretty soon people are going to start blacklisting you from entering and scooping all the prizes...), sharkfest and rafting too. Nothing like being retired and taking it easy, eh!
Here we have been not quite so adventurous, but even so the time has just flown. We've been down to Oceanside to visit with all the Smiths,then had the Smiths come here to visit with us. We've helped Matt get settled at Berkeley, where he's eager for his graduate studies to begin, and toured Rachael around San Francisco in the hopes she may be lured to the bay area too from Hong Kong at the end of her upcoming school year. We've even had lots of sun the past week (after a long string of foggy days) so things are really looking up!
Rushka had a great time on the drive down to southern California and meeting the extended Smith crew, even if it did wear her out. She spent so much time at first trying to keep track of all the cars on the highway and then everyone at the beach house that she hardly slept at all the first 36 hours - pretty grueling for a dog that normally sleeps 18 hours + a day! So I think she was happy in the end to come home and relax in the peace and quiet of San Francisco. Since dog's aren't allowed on the beach at all in San Diego county, we had to make up for her missed ocean time once we got home, so we took her to Ocean Beach to play in the waves here. Let's just say she ended up a big wet salty sandy mess after almost an hour of chasing the surf - I think she had fun even if she had to pay for it with a bath when she got home!
So our poor Rushka dog seems to be doing well, even if her health stats aren't all that great right now. I feel like part of the problem is that we are spending way too much time at the vet, which means way too many opportunities to find new things that are wrong with her. Case in point:
Yep, that's a big fat mole, found by accident right between her toes on her left front paw and which we now get to pay big $$ to have removed, you know, just in case it's cancer. Because we didn't have enough vet bills - or worries - with just the diabetes. I am almost beyond being worried about all of this since this is not a dog that acts sick, but still, I'm not so amused by all of this veterinary action.
And speaking of fun at the vet, do you notice anything wrong in these two pictures?
If you guessed that Rushka looks a bit different, you'd be right - because that isn't Rushka. That's right, when I went to pick her up just before leaving for Oceanside, THE VET GAVE ME THE WRONG DOG!!!
Say hello to Bailey! The rottweiller in boarding who got to take an hour + adventure with Nathan and I, driving all around the city of San Francisco and even getting to visit our home, before we pieced it all together, got ahold of the vet (through the after hours emergency vet service - by then the clinic was closed and the last staff member was on her way out to enjoy her Friday evening) to make the switch. Bailey was just so friendly and happy to be with me and ride in our car, while I was so distracted making sure we were ready to hit the road the next morning, that she was with me in the car for about 20 minutes before I started to clue in that something wasn't right. By the time I picked up Nathan I was going back and forth with myself as to whether I was crazy or whether the vet could have actually given me a dog that wasn't mine. Yet it still took us all the way until we got home and into our apartment before we could face the bizarre but true fact that this dog had NEVER been in our apartment before. Once we managed to get ahold of the vet's office and make sure we could actually get our dog back and quelch the panic of having Rushka be left alone while we had to take care of a strange dog for the evening, the absurdity of the situation hit and I was laughing so hard I was crying all the way back to the clinic to make the switch. Let's just say we're all glad to have Rushka back where she belongs, safe and sound:
what? there was another dog in the house? says who?
On the knitting front, I have been plugging away on MS3 and am now on the Final Clue!! Although really I should now be calling it by it's proper name, revealed at Clue 5: Swan Lake (which explains the white or black & romantic but ending tragically - with my blue shawl, I'm just going to pretend I'm knitting the lake part of it all). The biggest news though was the fact that, in honor of the theme, this assymetrical stole is to end not with another point but with a wing.
Really. A short-row lace wing, knit on the bias onto the body of the stole. I was skeptical at first - there are options for a non-wing stole, and a two-wing stole is in the works, but a one-wing stole? what would that look like? - but I decided after all that since I was in for a penny anyways I might as well be in for a pound. Here is where I was a few weeks ago with the first 'wing' clue in progress (again with the mystery-ness of the chart preserved):
And where I am today, only 18 rows short of binding off the final row:
Looks pretty good - I'm so curious now to see what it's like once it's finally off the needles!In honor of the whole project, I finally gave in and let myself order a set of blocking wires which are presently on their way from Knitpicks (with a copy of Victorian Lace Today, just to keep the whole them intact). Hopefully they will get here by Friday so that I can keep my pace of one week per clue and have it all done by the weekend. Then I'll get a short week off and it's on to Hanami - did you decide if you want to try that one as well? - not to mention all my other projects that need some attention....
Your Lady E, by the way, is beautiful - no wonder she won best in show. Now we just have to find the opportunity to get together again and show our two off in tandem! They'd be a hit for sure.
Megan
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