Happy Xmas

Happy Xmas morning. Tea in a Nobu lookalike Dunoon mug. A treasure from Motomachi Takarada...

Rainy Advent

Sherlock

Recovering

 Claire is eating well and resting well, and gets up for a peewees on the petsheet, so she feels at ease. She's been having wet food and slurpy vegie soup mainly, with a teeny bit of kibble in the mix. Traditional miso soup base this morning with kelp and fishies together with cabbage, carrots, radish, a hint of broccoli and Chinese cabbage and bean sprouts. Good way to hide the antibiotics and painkiller...Seems to go down well. She just went out for a copious morning dump in the garden, and now she's settled in the beds again and probably feeling good...

 I've been knitting Etta, a cardigan by Dallas Ann Prentis aka The Violet Pie. She was so kind as to offer me the pattern as a gift! Thank you so much for this blessing. It's going to be a beautiful cardigan with a coloured collar, and after the first patterned color section it's just straight up, so I can drop it at any time to tend to Claire. I love the slipstitch pattern and the Noro pops well without being too insistent. The wool is from Rose, the gorgeous indie lys in Tokyo with all own yarns and colours. I bought it thirty odd years now, it's been waiting patiently in my stash, unseen but not forgotten, for this moment.

Home safe

 Home safe, with a pile of meds and a visit to the vet scheduled for Monday. She had a bowl or two of trout vegie soup and went out for a long peewees in the garden, before settling down now on her pallet.  She's still a bit wobbly on her back legs and doesn't know which bits of her body to trust, which ones are the sore bits and what movements are okay, so I'm trying to stroke and gently massage her back, hindquarters and tail so she gets a feel for where she's at and can relax....now to heal up nicely!

Mastectomy

 Claire goes under the knife today. She has been miserable with a tumor, growing apace...and my vet and I agree that in spite of her age a clean cut could give her respite for however long she may still have.

 I made a smelly pillow to comfort her at the vet. Two weeks worth of Mummy sweat in an unwashed pillowcase stuffed with my nightie. Pungent...hope it reminds her to come home and not go wandering off with the girls across the rainbow bridge...

Fresh trout

Courtesy of good friends! Itadakimasu!

Drizzle

It's a dull day, the drizzle is fresh on your face as we took a leisurely local walkies and are now ensconced in various locations around the kitchen and sitting room. My computer crashed, so I'm tentatively getting to know this new baby, very sleek and 
pretty. 

Sherlock has a tendency to pee on Lady Claire during walkies, so she had a wee shower today when we got home...nothing like being all freshly washed. Meanwhile Sherlock is blissfully ignorant of the work he creates around him and is snoozing by the window. None of  us are getting any younger, but all is well. Blessed be.

Autumn Walkies

As autumn approaches we can expand our walkies down the hill, the dogs enjoy going further afield and revisiting sites they probably dreamed about as they waited in the air-conditioned rooms for summer to pass. A tradesman I walked passed stopped me and asked if I hunted...literally, "Do you do guns?"...I laughed, and he confirmed he knew many setters were being abandoned as the popularity of hunting wanes in Japan with the ageing population. Beautiful, gifted dogs, he murmured, quiet and well-behaved, as Sherlock jumped on Nobu and knocked me in the jaw as I pulled him off...

Time to get out the knitwear, this is a cowl made to celebrate the 8 million users of the free knitting site, Ravelry. It's the Octo Million Throw designed by Mary Ann Byrd, and each color stripe represents the number of users joining over the twelve years of activity. I've been joining in a celebratory knit-along, it's fun! 

Summer Projects

Back to school now but the grandkids have made me a lovely keepsake.

Birddog Hunting Mitts Published

 Inspired by this beautiful picture of Scotland taken by Sven Riddell, and of course by my darling rescued English setters, Lady Claire, Nobunaga and Sherlock Holmes...I wanted to make some fingerless mitts in Scottish yarns to celebrate these darling doggies. 

 With the generous help of Japanese designer Takeko Tanabe, I made it happen! Knitted with Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift which I bought in Tokyo, I hope it makes a lot of people happy and raises awareness of the plight of abandoned birddogs, these beautiful creatures who make the best family pets!

 So go to Ravelry and download the free pattern, Birddog Hunting Mitts and off you go knitting to spice up your winter wardrobe. And spare a moment for the doggies, and adopt, foster, or maybe just find out about and donate to your local birddog rescue!

Photos modelled by Kottemama

Summer is almost here

 Wearing a lovely summer cardigan knit with Noro Eisaku Melody yarn,  a luxurious blend of cotton, silk and wool...it'll soon be too hot for any cardis, but on the train you need a wee wrap because the air conditioning is drastic. 

 The cardigan pattern is called Tanrenga by Svetlana Volkova, and it's available for purchase in Ravelry. Meanwhile I'm contemplating another testknit cardigan in Melody, blue this time with lots of feminine frills...I bet the dogs hate me by now, although I still make time for homemade soup and walkies...not to mention the visits to the vet for heartworm medication and brushing and grooming, washing the doggie bedding...and all the other things that make a dog's life pleasant and fun!

Photos by Lelantos

Elven Path

Looking up

English Setter Origami

Sherlock turns his back,

 Claire declares it delicious…

Original Origami copyright Japan Afghan Hound Rescue Rie Yahashi.

Mayday

Treats at the gate

2year Rescue Anniversary

Sherlock has been with us two years now, and he's grown luscious and plump, able to calm himself (at times!) with headshakes and sit, ears flapping wildly and expecting some stroking to take his mind off the excitement. He's great at the doorway now and knows to sit on the mat waiting for his turn to get his collar put on, still not perfectly calm at the gate where he cavorts and barks in a frenzy, but it's a whole load better than when he came. 

A huge thank you to Gundogrescue CACI who brought us this little bundle of nervous energy straight from the pound two years ago...a leaping Polunin, a frenetic Sherlock Holmes, so eager to please and so totally subjugated by a previous demanding owner, hugging the ground in fear of being kicked or chastised, bursting out of his sausage skin in every direction vocal, brain in overdrive, hyper. 

Serendipitously I found the perfect boucle yarn, Rainbow Loop, for Sherlock's ears. There's a great slow food cafe with gorgeous herb dyed yarns at Yumeya  in Nasu on our doggie holiday.Much thanks to Cherie Marie Leck for generously sharing a beautiful Puppy Love hat pattern which I adapted to make it look somewhat like Sherlock, or rather seven Sherlocks in all. He's wearing a name tag (mother of pearl buttons) so he never gets lost or abandoned again, our little furever darling.

 

The Green

Testknit sweater finished…Make Me Shine by knitsanddolls in Ravelry. Noro Melody yarn with Rose silk alpaca.

In the Moment

Make Me Shine testknit on Ravelry. Noro Melody with Rose Silk Alpaca.