You Know You're in a Dachshund Home....

When....

1 Every purse and coat pocket is rifled when you walk through the door.



2 The bed has sausage shaped lumps under the covers.


4 Your face gets licked by a dog standing on the back of the couch.


5 When you come into the house after being away only minutes and you are greeted like you've been gone for 10 years.


7 When the owner's introduce their Dachshund as their other son/daughter.


8 Footstools are placed strategically around the furniture and bed.


9 The house is decorated with Dachshund items.


10 The owner is decorated with Dachshund items.


11 Gates are placed in each doorway.


12 After the doorbell rings, you can't hear a thing for 10 minutes.


13 The alarm clock is set for HIS wake up time.


14 Dachshund "nose art" is proudly displayed on each window.


15 There are at least 45 balls laying around the house.


16 All socks, underwear, and shoes have holes in them.


18 You have to look before you take a step.


19 All squeak toys no long have squeaking ability.


20 The doors to many rooms must remain closed.


21 The owner's bed never remains made.


22 Rugs and furniture are all dark colors.


24 You will find dogs instead of clothes in the laundry basket.


25 When you arrive, you find the living room covered with chewed up toilet paper rolls, Kleenex, etc�


26 All snow is shoveled from the yard to protect the "Ta-Ta's" of male Dachshunds.


27 You notice small fox holes in the yard.


30 All waste baskets and trash cans are elevated at least 3 ft. from the ground.


32 A cupboard is full of tiny clothes that were purchased before the owner realized that Dachshunds would rather remain nudists.


33 Company doesn't come around much anymore.


34 The owner talks a lot about getting a super king-sized bed.


35 The living room looks like it's covered with snow due to the batting which came out of de-stuffed toys.


36 Blankets cover each piece of furniture for better burrowing purposes.


37 The owner had no food yet his Dachshund has plenty of premium dog food.


38 The mailman is warned, "Watch out our he'll bite a hole in your sock."


39 The mailman passes a brightly colored card to other mailmen saying, "A dangerous animal lives inside. Do not use mail slot."


40 Bricks are placed inside trash cans so they don't get tipped over.


41 The Dachshund gets kisses before the owner's significant other.


42 The owner runs around looking for a "sitter" if they're going to be gone for more than a few hours.


43 It is too dangerous to walk around the house without shoes because of partly chewed up Nyla-Bones.


44 Little blue pee-pads are placed by the back door.


45 You notice that The Dachshunds receive more Christmas presents than human kids. .


47 The grass is mowed very very very short.


48 There is always plenty of toilet paper to pick up poops.


49 The owner's bed is covered with no less than 4 gutted toys, 3 balls, and 2 nyla-bones.


50 You are immediately told not to sit in the dog's chair.
 
It's amzing how many of these items are true for my home ;-)
 
Thanks to Dachshund Rescue of Houston for this post on Facebook..

Knit Your Vegies!

Why eat them when you can knit them and avoid making any decisions.

I have finished up a couple more of the Knit Picks Fruit and Vegetable patterns. 

Here's how they turned out... an orange slice, a pea pod and a cabbage.

The orange slice was felted then the handle, lining and  zipper were added.  I'm not sure waht to do with this one but maybe some high schooler will think its a blast to use as a prom purse.

The pea pod also was lined and a zipper added.  I am now using it for the money I collect for the Kingwood Quilt Show fish pond next year.  I sell things early for half the final price so I will have less to store before the show.

The cabbage is lined with a zipper and I am now using it as a case for my camera.

I know what you're thinking....what if Alex decides that a cabbage would be a good thing for him to hide?

So far he has not been interested.

Maybe he doesn't like cabbage?

Two left to finish up - a slice of kiwi fruit and a bunch of grapes.  Both need significant felting so they can't be finished until I have a dark load together.

Wish me luck!

Too Fast for the Camera

Alex was chewing on an old bone today when I took this shot.

Even though there is a feature on my camera to do stop action his tail was wagging so fast that it is a blur.

Good Boy!

Very Clever

Sandy the Wonder Girl gave me a very clever tote bag from Forever Twenty One.

Closed as a  little handbag

Open as a larger handbag

It even has a magnetic snap closure at the top and is made out of heavy duty duck cloth.

Now all I need to do is decide if or when I will decorate it!

Thanks Sandy!

More Done

Well, I'm not more done (still medium rare if you must know) but my quilt from the Charlotte Angotti class last autumn that was called 'Let me Suprise you...More' is done.

It only took me a couple of months to move from complaining about not having the right pieces left to complete the quilt as advertised, to having it quilted, bound, backed, washed and onto a bed.

The colors look a little washed out in the strong Texas sun that we had yesterday but, I think the photo does do justice to the glorious pink of this quilt.  I ended up bordering it only in the green trellis fabric and bound it in the stripe cut on the diagonal.

Alex and the Girls have already decided that it is a perfect nap quilt and spent several hours today giving it a test drive.

One thing that really went my way in finishing up this quilt is that I was able to use some Kona Cotton in Grass Green for the backing and it only cost me about a dollar a yard when I picked it up last summer.  I was a little surprised, that even though the fabric was from my stash and not bought to match anything, that the green actually matched one of the stripes in the binding. 

Serendipity...you've got to love it!

Now it's my turn to try it out.

Sock Club #1... Again

A little while ago I wrote about the first pair of socks I knitted for the Twisted Yarns Sock Club. If you didn't catch it before you can see it here.

At that time I could not show you what they looked like. Now I have a new camera so...TA DA here they are...

Definitely a stretch for my knitting skills and I learned a lot about how to keep track of where you are in a stitch pattern that is sixteen rows long.

One thing I don't like about them is that my pale skin showing through the dark red lace pattern is relatively unattractive.

To test this theory I made another pair, same pattern just different yarn.

This time I chose a sock weight yarn by Cascade in a creamy white.

Here's how this second pair turned out:

Very successful I think... even with a few messed up stitches.

The good part about doing the same complex pattern a second time is that I got a chance to use everything I had learned from the first pair in the second pair. I even felt confident enough to do the fancy heel that I had eliminated in the first go round.

Now I am well prepared for the reveal of the next entry in this year long journey of sock knitting madness.

I wonder what it will be this time?

At Sweet Sadie's

When I visit a restaurant I not only enjoy the food and drink but I also note the ambiance of the place. Things like comfortable seating, adequate table space and interesting things to view or read all add to my dining pleasure.

For some reason I have been designated as the official seasonal decorator for Sweet Sadie's and I am very much enjoying the work. About once a quarter I will be switching out seasonal deocrations for others more appropriate to the new season.

At Christmas I got to set up and decorate a tree even though I did not have one at home. I set out little poinsettias on most of the tables, hung wreathes in the windows and strung all of my Christmas lights around the walls and windows. I also had a christmas quilt laid along one of the half walls separating the eating area from the corridor to the rest rooms and ordering area.

For Valentines Day I added some red themed wreathes and a purple heart quilt I made many years ago.

At this time I have a double Irish Chain quilt displayed as well as little glass flower pots with Daffodils in them.

More permanent additions have been pillows added to the long benches, a magazine bin with current magazines from the Kingwood library's patron donations and several copies of old family photos.

The pictures above are of my great great grand aunt Amelia (I think) and a family gathering in Antigua of my grandfather's family. I hope to add more photos as time goes on of other family members and maybe those of some of our patrons' families.

My biggest surprise in dong this is how many male patrons love the quilts while the women seem to appreciate the magazines and flowers.

Maybe this is a new occupation... or pre-occupation?

Have a good week!

Adding Insult to Injury

Its spring in Texas and that means that the pollen counts are going through the roof. One report is that the pollen counts here are the highest ever recorded here.





Generally that means that EVERYTHING is covered with a layer of chartreuse powder. This powder is supposed to be pine pollen and, even though I have lived most of my life surrounded by pines, I have never seen this stuff until I moved to Texas.





This powder gives every car a layer of dirt that just makes you want to wash your car... daily! If it rains your car can be washed for free or it can then be spotted with the fine powder.





I had just decided to wait out the season when I came out of the house the other day and saw this all over my car:




In about four hours one morning every bird in this part of the world decided to crap all over my car. Not the usual white stuff but some sort of granular brown stuff.

It was thick and sticky and did not fall off at highway speeds. I finally broke down and used a power sprayer to get most of it off the car.

The really strange thing about all this is that only my car, in my immeadiate neighborhood, seems to have been blessed with this bounty. AND it was not repeated later that day or any other day since.

I guess I was lucky.

May your luck happen in a traditional manner this spring like wonderful flowers, chirping birds and other simple peasures.

Six Word Memoirs

There is a story out there that Hemmingway was challenged to write a story of only six words. This is what he came up with:

For Sale - Baby shoes. Never worn.

Those six words do tell a whole story and Smith Magazine was inspired by it to solicit six word memoirs from its readers.

The first compilation of those submissions is a book called 'Not Quite What I was Planning 'and I just returned it to the library as I now have my own copy.

It is one of those books that you dip into every once in a while and get inspired on every page.

One I like is:

Editor. Get it? (can't remember you wrote this one)

That made me laugh out loud.

Others are heartbreaking.

Born with Glaucoma... Fading to Black... (Susan Giutso)

I have, of course, been playing around with what I could use as a six word memoir. So far I have come up with:

Bella, Maria, Paul, Mary, Jane, Alex.

which is a list of some of the people and animals who have been adopted into my home over the years.

Another is:

I shouldn't have said that, again.

which relates to my habit of opening my mouth before thinking about what to say.

I'm sure I can come up with others but until I do I will continue to enjoy my new bathroom book.

Do you have a six word memoir in you?

For the Scrap Lover in You

Got scraps?

Of quilting fabric that is.

Little piles of fabric that are too big to throw/give away or a bunch of fat quarters you have no idea why you acquired them in the first place?

My fabirc sorting goes from yardage to fat quarters to scraps to dog bed filling.

The biggest piles seem associated with fat quarters and scraps.

(Dog bed filling just seems to fly out of here every couple of weeks to those generous souls who make beds for local animal shelters.)

I just came across a web mystery quilt project that will officially start in May. This seems like the a good way to use up some of my scraps in something other than another Chinese Coins quilt for the dogs.

Check out Erik Homemade's Coffee Break ezine for more details.