Sister's Choice Quilts

Reunion

Hey, it's you.  You're back.  Where have you been Ozzie?  By the way, that is my spot on the chaise lounge.  Do I need to kill you?

Aw, it's ok.  You can stay there.  I' ll let you live.  I guess I kinda missed you last week.

By the way, did you notice I have been to the doggie beauty salon?  I look pretty cute, don't I?  Nicole and I did salon treatments while you guys were out of town.  I think mine were more of a success then hers.  At least mine didn't hurt.  You should have heard her yip. 

You might think of going to the barber yourself Mister.  You look a bit rough.

Oil Spill At Our House

istockphoto

Ok.  I don't know what is going on cosmically, but things around here are totally out of whack.

My son likes to change his own motor oil.  Great.  It is an economy.  He saves a bundle not going to Jiffy Lube.  So what does he do with the dirty motor oil he drains from his truck?  Oh, he leaves it on our side yard of course.  We have been asking him for a l.o.n.g. time to get rid of it.  He meant to do it any time now.  But he didn't.

This afternoon Sophie discovered some prairie dogs nesting in our wood pile.  She dismantled the wood pile and managed to kill yet another prairie dog.  Ah, but there was one more in there.  She completely knocked down the wood pile, and tipped over some of the dirty oil containers while she was at it, trying to catch that one last critter.

When my husband got home, there was Sophie, all proud about the dead prairie dog, but also covered with dirty motor oil.

This is no joke people.  Animals can die from licking the oil off of their fur or feathers.  Plus, with all that black oil on her, there is no way she could ever come into our house again.  So, my husband started bathing her at 5:00.  When I got home at 7:00, he had just taken her out of her third bath in dishwashing liquid.  She was still oily.

We filled the bathtub AGAIN and DH got in with Sophie, who I must say, was being a great sport about three hours of baths.  We scrubbed her and scrubbed her, and then at 8:00 when I started to use my dryer to blow dry her fur, she was still oily.

She is dry now (but still black and oily), and in her crate, and tomorrow she is going to the dog groomer, where I have no clue what they will do with her.  Shave her bare?  How else to get rid of the oil? 

It is a mess I tell you.  The perfect capper to a pretty sub-standard week.  I have really been trying to be positive, but I may have reached my limit.

Next day update:

Sophie is pretty tired today from all the fussing over her yesterday afternoon.  One of her eyes is all bloodshot--she must have gotten oil in it.  Lucky for us she loves water, so all the baths we had to give her were tolerated very well.  We seem to have gotten most of the oil off of her, but her fur is darker on her paws, back legs, and on her face.  You can see from the picture that she is not her usual color.  Her back  end is supposed to be the same red color as her head.   She is curled up in her favorite spot for her morning nap--on my unmade bed.

Sleeping Beauty

 

I know, another dog post.   There hasn't been any sewing going on at my house, so this is the best I can do subject wise.  In fact, there isn't anything going on at my house, since I am at work one place or another every single minute.  Tomorrow I may have to post on the pizza my husband plans to pick up for our dinner. 

Anyway, on with the dog post.

In the morning, after her walk with Ozzie and my DH,  Sophie likes to come back to my bedroom, where I am sleeping (where else would I be at 6:00 AM?).  She jumps into bed with me, snuggling close, for a bit of shut eye after all that exercise.  I don't mind.  She lies still and is warm to cozy up to.

It is rare that she holds still, so I put a lot of value on these quiet moments.  Her normal mode is to dash around trying to collect odd bits of discarded clothing on the floor of the closet, or to bring me nasty things from the waste basket, or to snatch my reading glasses off the bedside table and make me chase her around for them.  She is a tease, that is for sure.

When I get up around 7:15, she tends to want to occupy the warmest spot that I have left behind, which typically is my pillow.  Isn't she adorable?  She snoozes while I get dressed for work and sip my coffee and check my email.  When it's time for me to head out the door, I have to wake her up and break the bad news that it is time for her to go outside for the day.

I know how you feel baby.

These Darn Dogs

During interrogation, Ozzie confessed to the orange shoe incident.  We have decided to put him on probation, and keep our shoes out of his reach.  His episode with the shoe pales in comparison however, to the things his sister Sophie has been up to lately.

Warning:  If you are squeamish, stop reading right now.

I have said many times that Sophie is a girl who needs a job.  She is always vigilantly looking about for some kind of activity with which to occupy herself.  She doesn't destroy property typically, but we often  find that she has moved things about the yard when we come home from work.  The broom dragged out, the leather garden gloves taken down from their shelf, the plastic jug of lawn fertilizer left out on the grass, clothes taken down from the wooden clothes dryer.  Up until a month or so ago, she contented herself with rearranging articles during the day while she was left alone in the yard.  

But now, it seems Sophie has discovered her true calling.  She is a Huntress of Small Animals.  And damn, she is good at it.  My dogs are Welsh Terriers, known for their strong instinct to chase small fleeing creatures and skill at catching "vermin".   Some Welshies are good natured goof balls (Ozzie) and others are extremely serious (Sophie).  The breed originated in the British Isles for the purpose of keeping farms free of rats and other pesky creatures.  When on a hunt, it was these small tough terriers that would go down the fox hole at the end of the chase.

To our dismay, Sophie has shown herself to be quite good at catching birds, lizards and once, a roof rat.  Well, it was good that she caught the rat.  But those poor birds...  Anyway, yesterday when I got home from work I was going around tidying things up a bit in the kitchen and family room before my husband got home.  I noticed Sophie sitting by the open back door with a rather satisfied expression on her face.  Then I saw why.

By my gasp and the horrified expression on my face, she gathered I was not exactly thrilled with her accomplishment.  I don't know exactly what this creature was in life--a gopher?  a prairie dog?  a gigantic ground squirrel?  It is hard to tell from the picture, but this thing was BIG.  It must have weighed two or more pounds.

I felt bad that I may have disappointed my proud little huntress by my dismayed reaction to her kill, but what am I to do?  I don't want dead things on my family room carpet.  My mantra these days is "Thank goodness we didn't replace that carpet".  At some point, we may have to take it up and put in linoleum tile and a drain in the middle of the floor so we can hose things down.

So that is it folks.  The story of how my summer is going.

I Know What I'll Be Doing This Weekend...

I have my fabric all cut out for my top secret sewing mission, and placed into carefully labeled baggies.  Hmmm, there are a lot of pieces here to sort out.  For each block, I need to choose one back ground fabric and three different colored fabrics to form the pattern.  My biggest decision is whether to work on individual block units (stars, flying geese, etc) and get those all done, or just tackle one entire block at a time.  What would you do?

On the Ozzie and Sophie front, things are going well.  They have been playing nicely, even when they "play fight".  They tussle around on the ground, taking turns being on the bottom, play growling, and displaying lots of teeth in a fakey sort of way.  If the game shows any sign of not being fun anymore for either of them, we stop it and separate them.  Sometimes they just lie quietly next to each other and play kissy-face.  I never seem to be able to get a picture of it though!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Sneak Peek and Tentative Truce

Interesting comments to yesterday's post on the low tech way to do laundry.  So many of you have the same memories as I do.  One woman said that we must have had the same grandma, her recollections were so identical to mine.  We always wondered what happened to Uncle Roger, maybe this is a clue?  He disappeared back in the 50's and some folks speculated he ran off and started a new family.  Maybe he secretly turned up and had Grandma watch his new kids?  Actually I believe he ended up in the Detroit River, as a victim of foul play, but that is a story for another day.

Here is a sneak peek at something fun-

I mentioned that I was going to be doing some sewing for a well known Quilt Diva.  Well that moniker was a terrible choice of words, and I do apologize.  This lovely person is FAR from being a temperamental drama queen.  She is more of a Quilting Rock Star, as Lisa calls her.  She is cool, funny, wildly talented, and super nice.  The fabrics above are called Objects of Desire by Sandy Gervais for Moda.  It is so much fun to work with these bright, sunny, cheerful fabrics, and the fact that there is a shoe motif running through the collection is just my thing.  I am on a bit of a deadline for her though, so I have been working on this project and can't show you too much of it just yet.

Here is something I can talk about and that would be my dogs Ozzie and Sophie.

We did speak to the professional trainer, who turned us down.  She said some dogs are hard wired to be a certain way, and were untrainable.  My husband refuses to accept that and has been working with the two dogs constantly since he returned from his trip.  He is determined that this behavior can be modified.  We have not had any repeats of the fight that I experienced while he was gone, but I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We never leave the dogs alone together unsupervised and have upped the exercise and play time to tire them out.  For now, we have a sort of truce going on.

I believe that body language tells so much about people, and my theory holds for dogs as well.  That is Sophie on the left with a yellow tee shirt in her mouth.  She had pulled it out of the laundry basket and was capering all around the bedroom with it in her mouth.  Ozzie was running about with her, joining in the game.  But, look at the way he pulls slightly away from her.  He is a bit uneasy.  Wary, if you will.  He also doesn't have his happy face on.  Sophie looks playful, but there is a challenging expression on her face, don't you think?

Well, I have a busy weekend ahead.  Sewing for the QRS and a casual dinner party to plan. If I get a chance, I will even replant some of my big pots with summer annuals.   Hope all the rest of you have a super good one! 

Peace Has Been Restored

istockphoto

My husband is home from his trip and order has been restored at our house.  The dogs are on their best behavior in his presence.  I definitely am not anywhere on the alpha chain.  We have a call in to a professional dog trainer to see if she can help us with our canine discord.

Ozzie is totally back to normal and full of fun.   Wounds all healed, no sign of infection, no pain.  Sophie is calm and sweet and for the moment all is well.  We are keeping them apart for most of the time just in case. 

I spent most of yesterday at the mall enjoying some retail therapy to shake the experience of last week out of my mind.  One excellent thing that came of the Week From Hell was that I lost 6 pounds!!!  No kidding.  Got to stick with it so it stays off!  Sure had fun trying on clothes.

My DH and son had a super time on their trip to Palm Desert.  But they are not going back anytime soon and leaving me with these dogs.  No way.

I want to sincerely thank all of you who made such thoughtful and supportive comments during my crisis with the dogs.  You gave such good advice and just hearing your own stories helped me put my situation into perspective.  My goodness, blogging has provided me with some wonderful friends.

Tomorrow is Shopping Tuesday on my blog, and I have quite a bit that I plan to list.  I am finding that I am just scraping the tip of the iceberg in my stash closet!  My post is set to post at 8:00 AM tomorrow, Pacific Daylight Time.

Slug A-bed

This little Princess and the Pea would be my Sophie, posing delicately while she catches a few zzzz's.

She has taken to climbing into bed with me after her morning walk with my husband and Ozzie.  After leaping onto me and licking my face thoroughly, she curls up against my tummy and we make like spoons for an hour or so before I have to get up and get ready for work.  I love these precious moments that give my every day a loving beginning.

Wondering about the quilt she is lolling on?  That would be Stella Blue, one of my all time favorite Miss Rosie's Quilt Company patterns.  This was a shameless copy of hers, right down to the same fabric she used.  She gave hers to her brother though, according to the pattern.  I kept mine for myself!

 

Trust me, you will be an expert at making Flying Geese if you tackle this pattern!

Dogs On Safari

Hey everybody, greetings from Newport Beach!  The family and I are on vacation, something we haven't been able to do together since Ozzie and Sophie came to live with us.  We used to have the aged grandparents take care of our dog while we went away, but they are getting a bit doddery and aren't up for that experience any longer.  Particularly with the two dogs we own currently.

But I found a place to board them!!!!  You won't believe this, but my dogs are on a Safari.  Down the road from us there is a place called Vision Quest in Salinas.  Check it out, it is pretty interesting.  Sometimes we can even hear the lions roaring from our back yard.  It turns out they have a pet boarding kennel!  Seriously, it is a mile from us.

We dropped the fuzzy kids off this morning just before hitting 101 South.  My husband had a very hard time saying good bye, but I think they will be ok.  You can get a room with hotel beds, tv and even a web cam so you can check on your pups while you are on vacation.  The picture below is from the kennel brochure.  They look pretty happy.

Ozzie and Sophie were super excited when we arrived.  Ozzie could not believe his eyes as we drove down the driveway and saw this:

I'll let you know how it goes.   We were greeted by a gigantic parrot that said "Heeellllll-oooooo" and "I'm the problem".   Hope he doesn't drive the dogs nuts.  He was pretty chatty.

Maybe I'll see Mickey while I am down in the South Land.  Much relaxing, window shopping, and Disney activities are planned.  Cheerio for now.

Double Decker Dogs

Here are my sleepy dogs, settling in for their morning naps.  They have had their walk and their breakfasts, and are going back to bed for a little lie in.  They can be good sometimes.  For short periods of time.

And yes, that is one of my favorite quilts that Ozzie is lying on.  Zuzu's Petals by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company.   Quilts are as much a part of my dogs' lives as they are mine.  I have them all over the house, draped on every surface, and we ALL use them.  After all, they do wash up well.  The quilts that is.

I believe in treating my quilts respectfully, but I am not obsessive about it. 

We have all heard horror stories of a quilter slaving painstakingly over a wedding quilt and visiting the home of the young couple and finding their quilt stuffed in the dog crate.  Or people who use a quilt under the car while they are changing the oil.  Those instances are criminal offenses.

The worst story I ever heard was from a woman who was searching online at lostquilt.com for her missing quilt.  It was the last quilt that her mother ever made before she died and it was precious beyond words to her.  While she was out one day, burglars broke into the house and stole her husbands gun collection.  As an afterthought as the crooks were leaving the house, they grabbed the heirloom quilt to wrap the guns in.  The woman spent many years trying to locate her mother's last quilt.  I wonder if she ever succeeded.

How do you feel about animals on your quilts?  What is the worst case of Quilt Abuse have you heard of?