On the Road Again

It looks as if we'll be making another road trip, albeit a short one this time.  As hard as we have tried, Angel is not merging into our family as smoothly as we had hoped.  When Maggie is not in the picture she is the sweetest dog you can imagine.  She is affectionate, playful and relatively calm.  But the minute Maggie walks in she becomes agitated, fearful and protective.  She does not want Maggie anywhere near us.  Maggie is really willing to live and let live.  She tries her best to ignore Angel, but Angel will have none of that.  She is constantly confronting Maggie, blocking her way to her bed under the table and even this morning trying to keep her from going outside.  Here you can see Angel giving Maggie the evil eye while Maggie tries to ignore her:

We've had a couple of scary knock-down-drag-out fights.  Our biggest worry, other than the complete lack of peace in our house right now, is that when the girls visit they would be at risk of getting in the middle of a dog fight, and we can't have that.

Happily, Ravelry came to the resuce.  I'm in a Corgi group and someone there knew of a Raveler in Spokane who has been looking for a Corgi!  I contacted her and it is a perfect situation!  They are a young couple with no other dogs.  He used to be a dog trainer before going into the Air Force.  They have a big fenced in back yard and are just waiting for a Corgi to love.  Friday we will head on over.  It's 6 hours over and 6 hours back (with gas at almost $4.00 a gallon!), but it is well worth it to us to have Angel in a good home.  She has so much to offer the right family; she's just too insecure to fit in with another dog at this time. 

In between my refereeing duties I've been busy stocking my Etsy store.  My first sales were of single cases, so I put up some more singles:

I'm also experimenting with some Kindle Cases:

They haven't been flying off the shelves quite yet, but I have gotten a few special orders.  I have a feeling Christmas will be busy, as these will make great gifts.  But do send all your knitting friends to the shop.  I love how you can see through these cases so you know exactly what you have in them.

My evenings have been spent working on In Dreams. Unfortunately some of that time has been spent tinking!  Oddly enough, I don't seem to have any problem with the middle part, which is very complicated.  I keep making mistakes on the outer border, which is the same 8 rows over and over.  But when you've forgotten a bind off or a double yarn over and don't notice it until the next row, or even a few rows later, it is impossible to fix.  Everything, including the middle rows, have to come out.  You'd think I would learn to pay more attention on those borders, but you might just be wrong.

I have frogged the Monkey socks I was working on.  For one thing, I've decided that KAL's with deadlines are just not for me.  I don't like knitting under pressure.  I do have as my goal knitting all of the socks in Knit, Sock Love, but will do it at my own pace.  And I've also decided that I really do not love the Monkeys in such a variegated yarn.  Most of the Monkeys seem to be done that way, but I think in the future I'm going to save my patterned yarns for Plain Jane socks and stick to solids and semi-solids for Cookie's socks.

And lookie what came in the mail today:

I've decided to give spindle spinning another try.  I ordered this on the recommendation of Allison (see her picture in my last post).   She is a wonderful spindle spinner.  I had mentioned to her my frustration with spindle spinning - the cheaper spindles are very difficult to handle, but I didn't want to splurge on a more expensive one just to find I thoroughly hate it.  She suggested the student spindle from  The Bellwether.  It is very inexpensive, but a good quality.  I've been practicing a little and I think I'm getting a little better.  Although my yarn is still crap, at least I'm not dropping it as much!  I like to think that's because I'm improving and not just because my reflexes at catching it are getting better.

Spring is trying to fight its way into the Pacific Northwest.  This can be a frustrating time of year - we're ready for spring, but it's not quite ready for us.  However, when looking at weather in other parts of the country, I have absolutely no complaints!  The Northeast still has a foot of snow on the ground, the south and midwest have temps in the 80's and tornadoes.  The lake in my backyard is not looking too bad at this point.

Comments

[Kristen]

It's great that Angel will be finding what sounds like the perfect family for her. Funny, I thought it would be Maggie who would be the aggressor, but she tried her best to be peaceful.
We've all been through your In Dreams nightmare!

[LoriAngela]

You may be a two dog home, but Angel can be a one dog dog. Sorry it wasn't so easy.

[Chae]

Hi there! I found your blog!
We are so excited to have Angel! Sgt. Husband got all the fencing we need to repair our back yard fence, including a new gate. It'll be going in pretty quickly. I'm looking forward to walking Angel around our beautiful neighborhood, there's a lovely park about 15 minutes away on foot. I'm sure my own blog will soon be bursting with corgi pictures. :)

[Judy]

Great you found a nice home for Angel...hopy you'll find time in Spokane to stop at Paradise Fibers! I agree with you that varigated yarn detracts from the patterns. For some reason though I find myself with very little "plain" yarn. That's a great idea to knit through the sock book....have a couple of books to use and lots of yarn to use up. Have a safe trip!