Cedar and Spice and Everything Nice for Emma

I finished my Cedar and Spice and Everything Nice Shawl finally. As you can guess from the title of this entry and the pictures that follow, this turned into a dog blanket for my girl Emma.

Emma sleeps on a little sleigh bed that my hubby made, and it's right next to my side of the bed in the corner of the room. Every night she curls up under various little blankets and looks super cute. So I am actually happy to give her a hand knit blanket. Bonus that it matches the curtains and rugs. Double bonus that it's machine washable and dryable.

When I finished knitting it I tried it on and it just looked weird. And it's because the ends are not symmetrical. As you can see on the picture below, the edge on the left is really skinny and pointed - where as the edge on the other side is more of a gentle slope over a larger surface. I wanted to wear this with a shawl pin and thought I could hide this better with a pin and overlapping the fabric rather than the button method the author intended. (The button method would be too much for me. It would have been too tight on my neck and just felt icky.) So after trying several things and talking to the hubby about it we decided it would be better suited for the dog bed.

I really like the look of this as a blanket - and I think it you tripled the amount of stitches and knit it about twice as long you would have a really warm blanket that you could snuggle into on the couch. I am quite happy with this as an Emma Blanket. I think it classes up her little bed and I like the thought of her having a hand knit blanket to curl up in. The one I made I ended up using 4 skeins of Hometown USA in Tampa Spice.

If anyone wants to look at the pattern on Ravelry it is a free pattern by the wonderful Susan B. Anderson. She looks really cute in the one she made! The pattern is called Cedar Wrap and it can also be found on the Spud and Chloe Blog if you aren't on Ravelry.

A return to normal

This is our last morning with our mother-in-law's Dog Minnie. She will be gone when I get home from work today. It's amazing how fast you get used to having another critter in the house. We developed a routine and I have to say I think I will miss the little beast. :)

Conversely I cannot wait to come home today and hit my Zumba! I have only been able to do it once in the last week with Minnie staying with us. Tom took Minnie out of the house for an hour so I could get a workout in. Minnie is a great dog but she is so excitable - we just new me flaying around like a crazy Zumba Warrior would cause her to go into fits - so I did more on the treadmill this week. I miss my Zumba!

I have had a lot of insomnia this past week. I woke up at 11:30 pm one night and could not go back to sleep. Last night I woke at 2:30 and could not go back to sleep. Hopefully that stop pretty soon. It's hard to not be crabby when you are sleep deprived. I suspect it's also hard on the diet and health in general. I am more prone toward a binge when I am in a Zombie state. Zombie eating is nobodies friend!

Dog Sitting

We are pet sitting my Mother-in-law's dog Minnie currently. She is a Jindo that my Mother-in-law adopted from a shelter last year and she is still a young dog. (I think under two years old? I get Teenager energy from her.) It's very interesting having another dog in the mix here. Emma is very calm and submissive where Minnie is very aggressive and strong. We have been having to spend a lot of time keeping our energy calm and doing simple things like walking slower and not gesturing as much and just really keeping the state of energy in the house very low and mellow.

The first couple days of her visit I had a hard time doing anything other than being with the dogs. Emma is my girl and she is territorial over me, so of course Minnie wanted to take that and would nudge Emma out of the way when I was petting Emma and would just sort of be on me. This caused Emma to Hump Minnie in a show of territory. So there was a day or two of figuring out the pecking order around here.

Now that the circus has settled down things are much more mellow. The cat is out of hiding under the table and is hanging out in her Kitty Tree in the front window. We have figured out how to handle the feeding time and the outside time to keep the energy good. Yesterday Tom took Minnie out of the house for an hour so I could do my Zumba in peace. That is very high energy and frantic and I think something to avoid doing with this dog around.

I am really pleased with how smart Minnie is. I was making a sandwich yesterday and Minnie was under my feet in the kitchen. (Movement of the Human female AND food smell - hard to resist!) So I kept telling her to leave the kitchen. Every time she came in I would stop and back her out and tell her no. This morning when I went to make breakfast she came to the threshold of the kitchen and looked at me. I shook my head no and then went back to cooking. When I turned around again she was laying on the floor next to the entry of the kitchen. So smart!

It's very interesting having a different animal here. I am enjoying this but I also look forward to having the natural order of our household restored!

Where you at?!?

Time management is a bugger sometimes. I want to blog on a close to daily basis. Like 5-7 times a week. Lately I can barely squeak a weekly post in. I thought once the holidays were over I would settle down, but I don't feel like I can find a rhythm lately. It's tough.

I have been continuing to work on my health goals. I am proud to say I lost weight every single week of the holiday season and am now over the 40 lb loss for my overall weight loss and over the 25 lb mark on weight watchers. I often think about how much that weight is and try to savor it NOT being on my body anymore. So when I pick something up (like the 25 pound box of cat litter this weekend) and I am grunting away trying to get it into the grocery cart, I try and stop and say "this is how much you were walking around with on your body last August - and you dropped 15 pounds more to boot!" It's so easy to just see yourself as the same weight when you are slowly melting it off a pound or two a week. So I think it's good to step back and appreciate the enormity of the accomplishments.

Over the last couple of weeks I changed my work out routine and I now set a goal of 6 days a week. I do three days of tread milling for an hour session and three days of Zumba on the Wii (45 minute session.) I still love Zumba. Still smile while I am sweating my butt off. Love it.

And just so this post isn't all about me sweating my bum off, here are a few gratuitous pet photos.

 Emma is our dog and she is looking at me like I am a nutball for snapping her picture. You can see the curtain is parted - she loves to scope the front yard for raccoons and paper carriers in the mornings. (Not much else going on at this hour of the morning - you can see it's still dark out....) Izzi, our cat, is curled up in the heated cat bed and just happy to doze.

This is a day or two later. I think it was pretty cold out this morning. They were both curled up together in here when I came out for my coffee refill. (Please excuse the ghost eyes - it was dark in here and I had to use a flash.) My girls are just too cute.

Sunday Snippets: October 30, 2011

Sunday Snippets: A Snapshot of this Sunday in photo's with no other explanation's.....

Izzi

Izzi has been doing pretty good. I took her in for her annual shots this spring and she has lost a little weight - which is good. She needs to be thin for her joints. Her first knee surgery a year ago was successful and she does not seem to be in pain. She runs around like a crazy girl at times - it's good to see her being a cat. :) We expect she will need the second knee surgery someday, but hopefully if she drops weight it will be further away. She is on Cosequin for joints. I actually started taking joint medicine at the same time. I figure if the vet thinks it will help the cat then I should take it too. I have had knee problems since I was a teenager. (and yes - I need to drop weight too - Am working on it!)

We found these little cat balls at Petco and the cat just LOVES them! Bonus is that Emma (our pup) will chew on them but doesn't actually destroy them. So it works out really well. We will throw the balls and the cat will run at them and try and catch them and tackle them. It's awesome and it's good exercise for her. We loved them so much we got a pack for Tom's mom's cat too. I recommend them balls: http://www.petco.com/product/5826/PETCO-Rainbow-Ball-Cat-Toys.aspx?CoreCat=certona-_-ProductListTopRated_Cat_1-_-PETCO%20Rainbow%20Ball%20Cat%20Toys-5826 and I have only found this style at Petco. (I checked Petsmart AND Chuck & Don's and Wal Mart and Target..... and this is the only place I have found them.