Annie Knits

Game as a Pebble!

That's a phrase from one of my favorite authors, Georgette Heyer.  I don't know if it's authentic to Victorian  England's slang (the colloquialisms included in the conversations between her characters are a hoot) or if she just made it up.  I remember it in reference to the younger brother Felix in The Grand Sophie, a little guy who "accidentally" tags along on both a tug boat's trip down the Thames and a hot air balloon's trip across the country side.  In context, I take the term to mean intrepid but cute about it.  

So, Bacon?  Game as a pebble!  He tugs and pulls at Monte whenever both are in the same room:  Play with me! Play with me!  About half the time, Monte does play.  Usually a rousing round of Rip the Carcass.  We're going through more plush dog toys...  

Same goes with Dear Son, whom Bacon obviously classes as a sibling.  Play with me!  Play with Me!  DS pushes him around and generally rough houses with him.  Yesterday, he showed me all the scratches he's got on his hands from those little claws and teeth.  Neosporin to the rescue.

Hubster and I walk both dogs together each evening -- it's the one time Monte tolerates Bacon without growling and teeth gnashing -- and we've got the little guy up to a trip around the entire circle in our neighborhood.  Nearly a mile.  Trotting on those little legs.   

He eats a lot and is treat motivated... easier to get him to come in the house by shaking the treat box than to chase him down.  He's gotten quite sturdy.  The last two nights?  Up only once.  Good dog!

This picture is a few weeks old.

Here is a picture of Bacon today:

He's a couple of pounds heavier and quite a bit more feisty.  At 11 weeks, he's getting quite an attitude.  In addition, though, he's getting the hang of things around here.  He jumps at the door when he wants to go out now.  And then he does his business outside.  I need to find a bell to hang on the doorknob for him to ring since he seems to have the idea, but do you know how hard it is to find a bell when it's not Christmas?

Cute puppy isn't all I have in the yard:  

Here's a shot of the Buddleia in the morning sun.  

The construction is all but done.  A crew seeded the yard today where cement trucks and dumpsters tore it up.  All that's really left to do is set some stone on the patio.  Whew.  

 

Just Stopping by

As much as anything, I use this blog to record our life events.  When life gets crazy, I tend to get caught up in it rather than sit back, take a deep breath and ponder.  

I'm taking a minute or so this morning to ponder.

The addition is essentially finished.  Dear daughter is home from school and asleep in the dormer on the right.  On the left is the guest room, just about ready for occupancy if any of you are planning a trip to St. Louis any time soon.  Two queen beds and a semi private bathroom -- it's pretty posh.

The great room on the back of the house is just lovely.  Spacious and open and cool in this early summer heat.  As a result of all the trucks and construction traffic, we'll need a new driveway sometime soon, but we knew that going into the project.

From the back yard, you can see that there are still a few things to do.  This week they will pour the patio.

Hopefully they will pour the patio after they get this drain pipe to drain as gravity intended -- that'd be down hill.  Gravity is the law, after all.  Sheesh.

So, we still have one of these in the yard.  Nice.

I have a beautiful new bathroom.  I couldn't make myself document the old one, but suffice to say this is a vast improvement.  The wall paper makes me so happy that I put it in the kitchen as well.

Isn't it rockin'?  I found it on Pinterest and had to order it from England, but it's worth it, don't you think?  Husband kind of shakes his head when I wax lyrical about this paper and its hot greens and gun metal grays.  He's a walls and windows kind of guy.  

And just in case we didn't have enough going on this summer, meet our new fly in the ointment.  

His name is Bacon.  Which I kind of love yelling out the back door.

Oh, all right.  He's not a fly in the ointment.  Mostly, he's cute as can be and pretty darned smart.  He's ostensibly a boxer mix (there's been some debate on that point) that Knit Nite Mindy found on a local pet rescue site when I started talking about Dear Son wanting to adopt a puppy this summer.  She linked me up and I forwarded to DS.

 What you should never do unless you are absolutely ready to adopt a puppy is visit one at a rescue agency.  That is what I have to say about that.  

He's not exactly sleeping through the night...

And he can be a little bit recalcitrant when I want him to come back inside after an outing.  

Today I have to put the final touches on the Seminar I'm teaching at Knitorious this Saturday.  It's a class on reverse engineering a drapey cardigan from a regular cardigan that you already own and that fits you just right.  

Like I did here.  I purchased this oatmeal colored Eileen Fischer sweater and I love how it fits.  I got it into my head that I could make something like it and spent some time planning.  

And then I spent quite a bit of time knitting.

I'll blog this process after I've presented it to the class.

I'm loading the presentation onto these personal zip drives so that the participants can knit instead of take notes.  

Squee.  They are so darned cute!

The other think I'm going to do today is organize the new yarn storage cabinet we had built upstairs in what was essentially a hallway.  I can't wait to show it to you.  But then you'll have to kill me...