DOGS

It was so lovely to post on my blog - and get replies - thanks for popping by Heather, Ambermoggie, Rachel and M! (thus I am not alone and woman is not an island?!).

I've been sorting out the admin. for the coach trip to Wonderwool I'm organising on Sunday April 25th - I've hired a 57 seater coach and I've only 4 seats left to fill! Yay! Only problem is that I've got £8 more than I should have - so somebody has paid a deposit but hasn't been ticked off the list - so I'm going to be demanding money off someone who has already paid. Still - would be worse to have LESS money than I should have I suppose. Looking forward to seeing Ambermoggie and Wyesue in the Interactive corner at Wonderwool - there's going to be a meetup of Ravellers there I think. And I can get to have (another) go at longdraw spinning...

Anyway, while I'm sitting here doing this (and reading blogs, checking Rav, and drinking my new favourite comibination of Rooibos and a herby cinammon blend teabag, etc etc), my friend sent me this pic of Syd which made me chuckle.

It almost looks like he could lick the screen, doesn't it? Sara looked after him while I was gallivanting oop SkipNorth since DH won't dogsit. Poor motherless, smelly boy that he is. His mum Tilly died last September and I still miss her so much. Dogs live such short lives.

Gratuitous picture of my Tilly:

Since this post has a doggy theme I'll add this pic too:

This is a pic of WyeSue and Neil's Trigger: - He is an elderly staffy/yorkshire terrior cross and he took a shine to the chocolate muffin totoprype I'd just knitted. I've got to knit a dozen and I'm on my third. Don't ask.

More handspun baby socks:
I purchased Cat Bordhi's 'New Pathways for Sock Knitters' Book One, t'other day - and thought a pair of Charlie's Wiggle Socks would be a good project for using up more of my handspun rainbow merino from Wingham Wool Works. This is the last of the rainbow merino (I bought just over 100gm of fluff in three different colourways and I'm very tempted to purchase some more) - and it's a wonderful ginger/rust/gold/green colour - reminds me of the hedera leaf. I've already spun and knit up the first wiggle sock - it looks great and feels so soft. This is a very bad picture of the first little sock before I used EZ's sewn cast off - taken in the sun this morning. Then I took the dogs for a walk and spun the rest of the fluff you can see on the table above. This is the finished single spun yarn nestled amongst the violets. That's a better representation of the colour than in the first picture.
And here I am about to andean ply it.

Isn't that granite waymarker great?

Meanwhile, Tilly the arthritic one had wondered off and got herself lost. MUCH drama - she is deafer than me so can't hear me shout her name! Fortunately she's got a tag on her collar with her name and my phone number (as well as the vet's). A certain kind Donna picked her up about a half hour later (Tilly had been busy retracing our footsteps) and Donna phoned the vet - who advised her to take Tilly to my neighbour's (as my neighbour's daughter works at said Vet's). Meanwhile, Syd had decided to take advantage of my distracted state and roll in a dead sheep. One bath later and alls well that ends well.

Sunday Afternoon stroll on Dartmoor

Couldn't go for as long a walk as I wanted as got an unexpected visit from Uncle Bob and Aunty Kay - which was a lovely surprise! So we went for just a couple of hours up to Bonehill Rocks on Dartmoor:

Those two little pimples right of centre on the horizon in this first picture are Haytor, in a South Easterly direction - not too far to walk but not today. WE parked at Bonehill rocks then strolled up to Bell Tor and across to Chinkwell and Honeybag Tors - great names to depict the piles of weathered granite littering the Moors. The processes resulting in the formation of Dartmoor Tors started about 280 million years ago (is that all?) as the granite forming Dartmoor cooled and solidified from molten rock to form these amazing shapes.

It was warm in the sun but incredibly windy and the dog's ears were flapping right out behind them and we flapped our arms and tried to fly. I spotted a soggy green handknit fingerless glove on a rock - if you've lost just one - it's still there, looking very forlorn.

Looking down on Bonehill Rocks from Bell Tor

To the right of this picture, which is South Westerly, we could see Widecombe in the Moor and St Pancras Church down in the valley, but I didn't take a pic as it was too hazy.

Tilly likes to find her own sticks for us to throw -here she's trying to disguise herself as a Deer.

DH relaxing on top of Chinkwell Tor! And this is me and the dogs at HoneyBag Tor

You can see Hound Tor through this gate, lying central on the horizon.

Beautiful Moss covering a tree...

Dartmoor is transformed in the sunshine.
Walking back down to Bonehill Rocks where the car was parked - see lots of Dartmoor Ponies grazing, still woolly in their winter coats.

Much later, at home, dogs are happy, full bellies after supper and hogging the fire...

Spring has sprung...

the grass has riz, I wonder where the birdies is.

Spring is in the air, or so it feels like when the sun finally emerges. Having returned from my stroll, here are gratuitous pictures of Sydney and Tilly. The Wray Brook is back in its box, you'll observe - Sydney had to jump in to show it who's boss. Well, he is a labrador after all, and he doesn't normally look so solemn.

Amazingly Tilly stayed dry! She's looking interested and smiling in anticipation because I'm waving a stick around. It was her birthday last week - she's ten years old (x7=70yrs old!) and a little bit arthritic, unless she's chasing sticks. The old gal is looking a bit gray around the muzzle.I just went around the block - across the field, up the old railway line and back down the road. Spotted this wonderful fungus - that colour really jumps out at you. And primroses and daffodils and even some violets tucked away in the hedgerows.
The penultimate pic is the bolting mispoona in my little veggie bed - that's miner's (or land) cress next to it - had loads of it growing all winter - tastes like watercress, hot and peppery and good in salads. And finally the last pic is of the lovely basket of pansies that I picked up from a place that sells cheap plants - usually half dead - but this lot enjoyed all that rain last week!

Tilly news.

This is a picture of Tilly and Sydney posing in my mother in law's kitchen. Tilly is an elderly labrador - she'll be ten at the end of February - and is getting increasingly grey around the muzzle and very arthritic. And here she is, in the foreground of a beach down in the South Hams (about 40mins drive away).

Before Christmas, she developed a small, unsightly growth on her head - it kept getting knocked so it would often bleed and look red and sore. It wasn't helped by dh mentioning Cronenberg movies and tendrils growing out (bleugh). So I took her to the vet's to make sure it wasn't anything sinister. "Nah, that's just a wart" he tells me, but he was bored (quiet surgery) so proceeds to talk me into getting her spayed: Don't you know that 30-40% of unspayed bitches get pyometria, which can be life threatening? And, if an unspayed bitch gets a mammary tumour, it's more likely to be carcinogenic? And I'd rather do an elective operation now than an emergency op. in the middle of the night in three years time. What could I say? I booked her in the following week.

I think the vet regretted talking me into it: she fought the anaesthetic, taking double the normal dose to put her under (that's my gal!) - and then her consciousness fluctuated hugely during the op. which was quite tricky to manage. Then she bled when a ligament tore (he blamed this on her being slightly overweight!) - the entire operation took an hour and a half, instead of the usual 40 minutes. At least he removed the offending wart.

When I went to pick her up that evening, a more stressed dog you cannot imagine. She was panting so much she was covered in drool. She had a pressure bandage on which was red elastoplast with white cotton wool sticking out around the edges, kind of like a Santa costume. She had shaved areas on both forelegs and her head where the wart had been. She looked very sad. Feed her a light diet tonight, was the instructions, and I was given three weeks worth of pain killers. The whole lot came to three hundred quid or thereabouts (swoon - just before christmas!).

By that evening, she wasn't drooling anymore, but she still seemed very uncomfortable and her respiratory rate remained high. I tried tempting her with breast of chicken. Syd looked very interested, but Tilly rolled her eyes and turned up her nose. So, I tried smelly cheese of the stilton variety: nope, not a chance. This was unheard of - a labrador refusing food! I was very concerned and gave her lots of cuddles and strokes.

By the next morning, she was fully recovered, and looking for the chicken breast. The pain killers really helped her arthritis too. I took her bandage off after three days - some thoughtless vet nurse had stuck the elastoplast over two of her nipples (ouch). Taking her stitches out was a bit more difficult because it tickled. I'm pleased to report she's now completely recovered and back to her normal self - with a just few more grey hairs, no doubt. At least the hair has grown back on her head. Because the pain killers helped her stiffness, the vet has given her a course of cartrophen - so she's moving around a little better too. Walks aren't quite so sloooow and sniffy.

Update

Thankyou all so much for your lovely messages! mwah! mwah!
Still can't upload pics from my camera or from my printer - as can't find the original cds to load software so the PC recognises the hardware. Am going to take the lot to PC world tomorrow morning and have a tantrum, and see if they can't get it sorted -

In the meantime - DS looks great in the fisherman's jumper.
I've started the Kaffe Fassett tumbling blocks bedcover from his 'classics' book - should be the ultimate stash buster and longterm project and great fun (if only for the time spent untangling all the little balls of wool used in the intarsia!).

It's in the background on the cover page - I got sent the hardback version of this book by Glitterlover via Yowllyy as a RABCK - thanks, Glitterlover and Yowllyy!

And I've picked up another UFO - a fairly mindless, knitanywhere, moss stitch baby's jumper from Debbie Bliss' 'Baby Knits'. I started this so long ago, I'd forgotten what it was - and had to search through several books before I found the pattern! And, of course, I still have toe up, Blue Regia socks on the go - nearly finished one, which means I'll probably get 'one sock syndrome' and never get around to starting, let alone finishing, the next...

I'm off to Thailand in a couple of weeks (on my own - dh doesn't like to travel outside of UK!) - hope I can take some knitting on the airplane. And hope I can get camera working properly. I'm flying to Bangkok, and hopefully getting myself a Thai massage before heading down to Phuket for three days sea kakaking around Phang Nga Bay (spelling??!) then back up North to Chiang Mai for Interhash and I'll stay there for the rest of the hols - maybe hire a motorcycle to visit the Bridge over the River Kwai.

Before I messed up camera/printer/PC, I took some before and after pics of my brand new raised beds! Now, you wouldn't think anything would grow this time of year, would you? I have Mizuna, Rocket, Butterhead lettuce and Mispoona growing - there's some spinach and a few spring onions coming up too. I've also had Trotsky the cat from next door digging it all up to use the bed as his own personal loo, and several large brown and black slugs tucking in.

I'm hoping to plant garlic (we LOVE GARLIC!) when the weather gets a little cooler.

Pic of Sydney and his mum, Tilly, taken when I could still upload pics from my camera. Aren't they huggable?

HOT off press:- Secret Pal 8 package arrives:

Never mind opening with infinite care and patience, tutmut rips open the envelope and scatters contents amongst daisies, whilst dogs look on in wonderment at the foibles of humans.

The cloth matches my kitchen and will hang around in there to grab pots with, methinks.The rest is colour coordinated - look! The book has a beautiful hand stitched cover over a hand made paper inside - Secret Pal has similar book tucked inside knitting hold-all to make notations on experiments. I'm not sure I could be so organised, but I'll give it a go. (She has not seen the chaos that is my knitting containers). The needles are from Peace Fleece - I've been hankering after some for ages, they're so cute.They are of a size to knit the Alpaca yarn from Devon Alpacas. Yes - local pushmepullyous giving up yarn to a local mill that I never knew existed - in Tiverton. It is incredibly soft and very cuddly. Altogether a fab presi.
Thank you muchly, Secret Pal!

IN the Wars...
I started April with a tooth abcess. I'm limping into May with a sprained ankle! Saturday 6th of May saw the annual May Day celebrations in Lustleigh: there's an annual procession around the village of little girls and young women all dressed in (virginal) white and little boys and young men carrying sticks(!). They are escorted by a brass band and Spring songs are sung at various points along the route. When the procession arrived back at the Orchard, the girls and boys danced around the maypole making pretty patterns with the multicoloured ribbons. Following these frolics, the May Queen was crowned - she sits on a throne under a flowery canopy which sits on top of a huge rock in the middle of the Orchard. This great hunk of granite is distinguished by being adorned with all the names of previous May Queens carved on to its surface.
Yes I know I ought to have taken pics of this, but it was awful weather - the rain held off for the dancing and crowning of the queen, but p****d down thereafter. It was too dark and miserable for any good piccies. I was doing my duty on the lucky dip stall and my cash box (a plastic margarine tub) filled with two inches of water inside 10minutes I'll swear. I beat a hasty retreat to the village hall for a cream tea (obligatory in Devon) and watched the rain pour outside the door on to my two soggy doggies. Having done my duty as far as fundraising goes, I was on my way to the pub (where the morris dancers had also beaten a hasty retreat) - when I realised I'd forgotten the dog lead - t'was lying on the floor under the chair I'd recently vacated. I turned around to leap down the concrete steps back into the hall - these steps were awash in water. I aquaplaned off the bottom step and landed on my ankle in a way it wasn't designed to go. I heard it go pop!
I sat down in the rain and felt all queasy - several onlookers helped me to hobble back into the hall. I had not one but TWO GPs come to my rescue and both diagnosed a sprained (not broken) ankle. One of them kindly offered me (and the two wet smelly labradors) a lift home. I was torn between doing the sensible thing (going home and carrying out the RICE treatment) - and meeting my mates in the pub. It was a hard decision, but I went home :-(

This horrible picture is what it looked like after three days! It's still really swollen and purple and yellow from my calf down to my toes. You really wanted to see that, I know, sorry. I'm just walking on it now, after a week and a half. There go my plans to get really fit before my sis and I walk 80 miles of the coastal path in June - we're walking from St Ives to the Lizard. She'll just have to give me a piggy back!

Here's a prettier picture of Tilly and Sydney:

This is how they sleep, in the hallway - they have a bed each, but Syd gets lonely, so he climbs on top of his mum!