In the Studio With Gracie

 Our newest family member has been with us for almost two months now. One surprise has been to discover that she actually watches the television!

And now you can see how I have filled my limited working space. 😉

She has also delighted us with her efforts to bury a new chew-bone. She carries it from room to room, looking for the best place to bury it. She has tried to bury it in the cushions of the couch, under a quilt on a bed, and in the depths of my scrap basket. I've tried to keep the scraps in that basket sort of organized, mostly by the project they came from. After Gracie pulled her bone from the basket half of the contents had been dumped on the floor. I didn't have time to sort them when I replaced them. Needless to say, the basket has been higgeldy-piggeldy since then. 

I have reorganized the scraps from the basket. They won't all fit in anymore (no surprise there; it was overflowing before Gracie rearranged things). I have put the larger pieces back in the basket and kept the strips separate. 

The basket measures 8" deep and 13" wide. It's still overflowing.

These are the piles of strips. My challenge now is to utilize them somehow. The obvious solution is a very liberated log cabin set of blocks. I'm not sure my OCD will let me do that however. Stay tuned. 

On another front, I was doing some embroidery the other day. My favorite threads to use are perle cottons. Apparently I left a ball of Valdani on my work table while I was busy in the kitchen. I happened to be alone in the house at the time (a rare occurrence) so there was no one else to monitor Gracie's actions. In the studio she hopped up onto my chair and snatched the ball of thread. This is what I found on the floor when I returned to the studio.

I was glad to see the label intact at least. I spent yesterday untangling and winding the thread onto an empty spool. ALL DAY yesterday, aside from short breaks for play time and meals. After two hours this is the progress I'd made.

I didn't find any damage to the thread itself in the course of untangling and winding. Another mercy to be grateful for. 

And now I have this lovely fat spool of thread to return to my stash of perle cottons. It was after eight o'clock in the evening when I wound the last length onto the spool. I hope I won't have to do this again!

To my readers in the United States I wish you a Thanksgiving Day full of family and friends, love and laughter. Not to mention gratitude! 😊

Introducing Gracie

 We didn't have pets when I was growing up. But as an adult I have discovered that I am definitely better off with animals in my life. This was brought home to me with some force in recent days. When our sweet Luna passed away a little over two years ago I was determined to try to live without a dog. 

 Living with a dog has been a real adjustment for Hubby as he wasn't raised with pets either. He would be content to live without any animals in his life. However, he has come to realize that I actually need the companionship a dog provides. I'm alone a lot due to his work schedule and the fact that my multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) keeps me pretty much home-bound. So I have been on the hunt for a new companion. It has not been without it's ups and downs, let me tell you. If I go into a shelter (because I do not need a pure breed) I will be ill for at least another day afterward. I was prepared for that prospect if there was a good reason to suffer in that way. I filled out applications online for nearly all the shelters and foster organizations in our immediate area. Sometimes I received a response in a timely manner and other times not. There were a couple of potential adoptees that fit my criteria - Chihuahua mixes for the most part. But they seemed to get adopted out to others before I could arrange to see them in person. 

Finally, a local organization with volunteers who foster dogs and cats listed a black and tan "Chi-weenie" on Petfinder.com. She was cute (sometimes the photos of the dogs online aren't the best; you can tell folks have had a hard time getting them to be still) but I was a little nervous about the Dachshund aspect of her anatomy. Turns out she's well proportioned after all. 

She's young, about a year old, and came with the name Gracie. We see no need to try to change that. 😊 And so far she looks to be a very good fit for our household. She's also a good fit on my lap.

 The trick may be to convince her that she can't spend all day there!