Updates

Updates - John was gone this week, and I was on my own. 

Tuesday, our dog Sammy had an appointment for a one-shot radiation treatment on a spot where the vet had removed a small, but cancerous tumor.  This was to happen at Texas A&M's College of Veterinary Medicine, so on Tuesday, I took a morning off work and off I went.  Oops! It turned into the whole day.  It's a teaching hospital, and that takes a little longer, but the primary delay was the procedure wasn't going to happen until they did their own evaluation, their own blood work, and lined up on the anesthesiology schedule.  They needed to keep him a while afterwards.  A&M is two hours away, and Sammy doesn't mind road trips if he can roam the car.  This is Texas country driving with high speed limits, and I needed him to not roam all over my body (I had nobody to help me with him), so I put him in his crate for the drive, which he hated.  It ended up being a 12-hour day, including the 4 hours on the road. 

Perhaps because he was knocked out for the procedure, he was off his game afterwards.  He whimpered the whole way home, yet when I stopped the car and checked him out, he seemed okay.  When we finally got home and he seemed to have no appetite, I was worried, but after a day or so he was his old self. 

I haven't done much knitting, just a little "doodling."  Some more knitting parts arrived, though.  I had ordered a bunch of odds and ends to fix up a couple of machines that were donated to our knit club, a 270 with missing parts, and a 970 with a missing CB-1.  I haven't found - and may not find - a CB-1 (has anybody got one for sale?).  Parts came for the other machines, and it's always fun to have knitting items arriving, and they're going to turn out just fine.  However, not sure I want to do this very often; I'd rather knit that fiddle with machines.  In fact, I'd MUCH rather knit. 

Whenever we "adopt" homeless machines, we get to fix them, store them or sell them or find them homes.  We obviously don't have time and space for this, so why keep stumbling into it?  Well, for years, I wanted that first machine, but I couldn't afford it, and when I finally got one, it was like a dream come true.  Then, I kept wanting to add accessories and upgrade, and add different gauge machines, and it was always expensive.  I was always thrilled when I got the newest item and was able to do more because I had it.  John totally understands my emotional history with these machines (he was there and bought me my first one).  He also gets sucked in to the challenge of fixing up anything mechanical.  We're a terrible influence on each other in this area.  :)

I have two more seminars this year, Princeton, Minnesota and Dallas-Ft. Worth in October.  In 2016 I'm going to teach a seminar in Albuquerque next Valentine's Day weekend.  Some other 2016 seminar possibilities are in the hopper.  I'll let you know. 

You know, I love to link to knitting blogs, but I don't see much activity this week.  Tip me off - am I missing some good, new blogs?  Some my favorite blogs to follow don't have much knitting lately.