Back to the grindstone...

Rain today, yeh, so much cooler for working in a classroom with no air conditioning, with the 85 to 90+ degree heat we have been getting I was dreading going back to school.
I'm only a volunteer so I can walk out whenever i want but I wouldn't do that.  The 'powers that be' refuse to fix the ancient air-conditioners and the ceiling fans only work on the highest settings which means papers are flying off tables and its just too 'windy'. 
Heres the poopster just a couple of weeks before she left us, I'd just given her a pigs ear and she wasn't quite sure what to do with it. 

I've been trying to get back into crochet, mainly just for something for my hands to do at nightime when I'm watching t.v.  I hate sitting there with nothing to do. I would love to get back into embroidery, I'm trying so hard.....bought the most gorgeous embroidery threads and sat and looked at them and played but the passion I once had stays deeply buried. 

Back to the crochet, I'm doing a blanket, using as many of my stash colours as I can, its on the diagonal and will be roughly 5ft square. I'm just about two inches off the half way mark and then I can start decreasing. One 100g ball does 7 rows at the moment so My stash is getting down and the lids stay on the yarn boxes without being weighted down with other boxes.  The granny squares are from the cover i did for my cube. I was just checking  a hint from another blog about how to load photographs. When you are composing and want to add a photo switch to HTML, add photo and then swtich back to to compose.  At the moment I can only add photo's that have been already in my blog.  Now I can add a photo or two I might get back into blogging.

UHRU

Jan

Poppy

R.I.P. Poppy the Poopy Puppy

1997 - 2013

Its been a week now since Poppy went over the Rainbow Bridge, my faithful friend, my comfort.  The picture is an old one since I can't upload new photo's.  A very contrary dog, she didn't play with toys unless food was involved - she loved her Kong. Squeeky toys were out as was balls and sticks, she would look at you as if she thought it was beneath her to actually chase after them - you threw it you go get it.  She lay by Miks side in his last couple of weeks, her head pushed up under his hand. She wasn't  a cuddly dog, cuddles were on her terms yet she would sneak into the boys beds and sleep under the blankets curled up by their feet.  Storms freaked her out and she would jump on my chair and try to get as close to me as she could, burrowing down between me and the chair arm, yet she slept through two of the worst cyclones I have ever been in.  It was heartbreaking taking her to the vets knowing what the outcome was going to be, even then she managed a pee or two in the beautiful rainforest garden where our vet has his practice. I could have kept her at home till the end but that would have been a painful slow death, I could have paid hundreds of dollars for surgery but that would have given her a few weeks extra, the mammary cancer too advanced for it to be cured.

One minute she was fine, no problems, just a lump that didn't bother her, no pain, still kept her appetite and then bang it accelerated, literally eating her away before my eyes.

She was intact, we never got her fixed up as we were going to let her have at least two sets of puppies, but that never happened, Mik got sick and we just let it slide. Keeping her inside whenever she came into heat.  What I didn't know was that a lot of bitches that are not spayed and haven't had pups can get mammary cancer.  She lived to a ripe old age, she had a healthy diet, walks by the lake and a lot of love, what more could a dog ask for.