Summer Bloggin'

I've been giving a lot of thought to why my huband's blog is so much more interesting to read than my blog. And I think it is because he has a theme. One of the librarians I worked with at YALSA, Amy, also has a very cool blog about her vintage cookbook collection. I follow her via an RSS feed and am always cheered by the way food can make you happy and how people go nuts with food. But, Amy, brownies, are not the new cupcakes! Pie is the new cupcake. Pie trumps all!

Anyway, back to my problem. 8-) Perhaps my blog is about too many things. Perhaps I need a theme. We have been accepted in the guide dog puppy raiser program and at some time in the future we will get a puppy. I was considering starting a new blog just about that. But do I really want another blog? Seriously? Can I handle updating facebook, twitter, this blog and another blog? Or will I just explode. When is it too much?


Until I can come up with something better, I will power on with things as they are. To the right is JC, the smooth coated collie that we puppy sat this weekend. He was really cute. Collies are very barky. Barky but charming. I liked him alot. We were not able to get one of the 12 goldadores that were available June 1st. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we might get one August 1st.

In crochet news I suffered from a bit of crochet performance anxiety. I always am deeply suspect that anything I make is not really well received because I don't have much confidence in my abilities as a crocheter. Consequently, I usually wait until someone says they like something and then I just give it to them. Or make them another one. So, my confidence took a several week beating when I showed a shawl to the friend for whom I was making it for a gift and I asked if she liked the colors. She said she would prefer blues. Stupid me for being crushed when my brave and honest friend gave me a truthful answer. I was in a funk for a week or more. I solved it by getting her something else for her birthday and finishing up the black and red that I had started. To the right is a close up of the medallion in the center. Here is a shot of the mostly fnished shawl. The cynic in my says if I made it in white it could be a table cloth. 8-) I did learn some things on this particular shawl. Some very important things. One was why they tell you to crochet in in the chain three (or whatever) space rather than crochet into each chain: because crocheting into each frigging chain is a MAJOR FRIGGING PAIN IN THE A**!

I found this out to my sadness when I started

triple stitching into each chain and there were HUNDREDS of chains. Literally hundreds of the mothers. Here is a close up of the triples that I delicate put into each chain. I did it. I sat there and did them all. At that point, I was pissed off and it was a point of honor to finish it that way. No one will ever know the amount of time it took to do that one row. But I will.

Here you can see that when you just go over the chain loop, it is much easier. Or maybe you can't see that. Maybe only I can see that. But trust me. It's easier. Much, much easier!