Meet Our Newest Addition!

Wednesday I posted a teaser photo of our newest addition to the family. Everyone, meet Kodiak, our toy parti poodle! My sweet little girl, Gigi, went to The Rainbow Bridge on 4/1/11, just over a month shy of her 11th birthday. She was my BFF and I miss her terribly. She was a black toy poodle. I searched for months and months and months before I finally found her. I knew what I wanted but nobody had a black female toy poodle in our area. We got River, our standard poodle, a year ago but he immediately bonded with my husband. I adore him (the dog...well, I adore my hubby, too, but I'm talking about River here) and he likes me, too, but he is a Daddy's boy. And, I miss having a little dog sleeping with us in bed, snuggling and cuddling.

For months now I have been drooling over the parti poodles on Facebook bred by Bonnie at Dream Time Poodles in New Mexico. We finally made the decision to add one of her puppies to our family. It was between a sable male and this black and white male. I knew I wanted a male because our Australian Shepherd can be really "bitchy" (as in nasty female dog attitude) towards other female dogs. I kept coming back to photos of this puppy, named Larrikin or Larry at the time. Something about him kept drawing me back to him so we decided to get him.

We have named him Kodiak or Kodi for short. His sire's "call name" is Kobi so we thought this would be very appropriate. Kobi's registered name is Cowboy's Silver Ace and he is a UKC Champion and OMG what a stunning dog he is! He is a silver and white parti poodle and Kodiak should fade out from the black to silver as he ages. Their markings and color patterns are very similar so Kodi should look a lot like his sire when he's a little older.

Here are photos of Cowboy's Silver Ace aka Kobi (his sire)

And here is Kodiak

Is he a chip off the ol' block or what?!



Not only is he a real "looker", he is an absolute sweetheart, too.


Here Kodi is checking out the rabbit on our deck.

Thank you for visiting our blog. I am trying to do a better job of posting more often. Now that summer is over and I'm indoors more, I should have a better chance of sticking to my "promise"!

Wordless Wednesday

Back to Work!

I was going to share the details of the rest of my crappy summer but decided against sharing all the gory details. Long story short, we took a day off and went to a nearby hot springs and sat in the river for a couple of hours. Apparently I had an allergic reaction and a severe sunburn on my legs even after using SPF 40 lotion. This resulted in second degree burns on the lower portion of my left leg. I have heard that severe burns are extremely painful but have never experienced it until now. Wow. I have experienced sunburn before but never to this extent. It had to be a combination of the sun and a sensitivity to something. I was unable to walk for days because every time I got out of bed and the blood rushed into my lower legs, my legs would cramp up to the point where the pain was excruciating and I couldn't possibly put weight on my left leg. After several days of diuretics to reduce the incredible swelling, bed rest (thank goodness for my little DVD player so I could watch movies in bed!) and lots of homemade cream slathered generously on my legs, I was able to walk at least short distances without pain. The left leg peeled twice. The first peel was in huge wet sheets. The skin underneath was purple and developed a brown crust that was difficult to remove. I ended up using a shower puff and some cream soap to remove the dead skin a little each day in the shower. Never again will I repeat this experience!!

The ankle is still sore but healing. My legs have a few scars and discolored areas on them from the burns but  I am back to doing chores twice daily. Thank goodness for my fabulous husband who picked up my chores for weeks in addition to starting a new job the first part of September. This man even carried me to the bathroom in the morning because I was in so much pain I couldn't even use crutches to get from the bed to the bathroom. I don't know what I would do without him! He is my hero.

And, I'm back to work doing fiber art. I just recently started to spin again but will share those yarns in another post. I want to try to do a better job of making more frequent posts on the blog.

A couple of months ago, I found a pattern online for a circular shawl. The author said it was taken from an antique pattern of her grandmother's and translated. However, the translated pattern had a lot of errors or directions that made no sense. So, I figured out how to make something similar and then decided to do something completely different based on the same concept. I ended up making a circular shawl that folds back into a collar. I started out working the shawl in a complete circle. Then, when it got big enough to be folded in half through the center and pulled around the shoulders, I started working only half the stitches and worked back and forth rather than in the round. I'm still working on typing up the pattern so I can share it. It is so much easier to actually DO the work than to document it. Who knew?! LOL

Here is the first shawl that I made. The shawl started with a skein of Kauni 100% wool Effect yarn (Effektgarn) from Denmark in the "EX" colorway in shades of rust, purple, deep orange and golden green. As the shawl progressed, several other yarns were used in coordinating colors that lightened as the shawl grew in size. The additional yarns consist of some 100% bamboo yarn, some wool/bamboo yarn and some 50/50 merino/silk yarn.

 

This shawl is called "Fall Fantasy" and is available in my ArtFire store. 

I decided to make another shawl using yarns from my personal stash. I have been collecting and spinning handspun yarns for my  personal collection in shades of purples and teal greens. 

Here is the shawl I made for myself. Someone suggested that it reminded them of purple mountain majesty, which I think is the perfect name for this piece! It is so soft and warm and luxurious - I feel so special when I wear it!

Here is Purple Mountain Majesty

And another shawl that I made using the same design only I didn't make it quite as long so it is more of a capelette than a true shawl. This stunning shawl/capelette was hand crocheted using wool and cotton yarns in blues and greens and wool yarn space dyed in blues and white.

Here is Waterfall

 Waterfall is also available for sale in my ArtFire store.

Its so good to be back to work again! More later on other happenings in the studio.