Tour de Fleece, Tour de Poodle….

The spinning for Tour de Fleece has been coming along. I’m well into the second bobbin of the lovely Waimea Rooster merino/Tencel fiber from AlohaBlu.

I also finished making the steeks for my “So-not-my-palette” cardigan. Here it is before I cut the steeks.

This shot shows how I trimmed the loose ends of yarn, rather than weaving them in, one of the advantages of steeks.

I picked up the sleeve stitches and started knitting the first sleeve, but I discovered a mistake in how I picked up the stitches, so off to the frog pond. With a new puppy in the house, the heat and the early sunrise, I haven’t been getting enough sleep, and the light wasn’t very good when I was picking them up, not to mention the distractions at Common Threads, where I was doing it. I got off by one vertical row of stitches on the last few inches of the front. Oh, well. I get to have the fun all over again! At least this time I know I’m doing it right.

Common Threads met on Thursday at Lynda’s. Margareth was working on this great shawl, the Homestead Shawl from Interweave Knits’ Gifts 2015 edition.

Janet was working on her Washington Park Shawl. She has started the border, which has some challenges, but I should be able to show off her finished shawl before too long.

Other people were working on socks, baby knitting and needlepoint.

Meanwhile in Puppy Land, Dusty continues to grow. Yesterday, at 12 weeks, he tipped the scales at 8.0 lbs. This shot shows Dusty on July 13th (left) and July 23rd (right), so you can see how much he has grown in that time. (Check out the height of the play yard fence.)

You can also see that his facial hair has grown (presumably all of his hair, but the facial hair really shows up). His “raccoon eyes” have become less pronounced. He goes for his first grooming (other than by the breeder) on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see what he looks like when I pick him up.

How has his nibs, The Dustball Dude managed this phenomenal growth? Of course, by eating, but also by sleeping a lot:

He also has been muscle-building by playing a lot with brother Rocky, whereby big brother just needs to stay still or move his head a bit. Sometimes he can even continue to nap:

Dusty has also had a couple of walks with the family:

And some water play. On Sunday, we threw a toy in that doesn't float. He hesitated, poked it with a paw a couple of times, and then went after it with his mouth. True to poodle form, the bubbles came out his nose as he retrieved it. Go, Dusty!

We finally figured out how to get Dusty to eat enough in the evening so he could get through the night.

The Little Dude had his puppy boosters on Tuesday, which means he’s less likely to get Parvo now. We are still being cautious, though, and cleaning the pups’ feet as well as our own with disinfectants after we have been out on the street, until he has his final puppy booster on August 16.

Because we have a trip coming up, and Dusty won’t have full immunity until 10 days after his next puppy shots, we decided to try to train him to use paper, which we can put down in the bathtub of our trailer, so his feet never have to touch the ground at rest stops (always a danger area, because dogs from all over use the area). We will only have Rocky’s feet to clean, and our shoes to slip off at the door to the trailer.

We have trained Dusty to go on demand, so it was easy to get him to go on paper once he was used to going on the ground outdoors. We just put him on the paper and said, "Make potty." (Now if we can just get him not to go anywhere else...but that will come.) He’s sleeping well at night, now that we have figured out that he just needed a big dinner in the evening.

We expect to be leaving on our trip east a week from today, but that’s flexible. I'm planning on delivering the "Seeing Stars" quilt to our daughter and SIL, and take some quilting books to DDIL1, but shhhhh! It's supposed to be a surprise. Dolly will go along, too, so Daphne can meet Daphne Jr.'s counterpart.

What's on my needles: The “So-not-my-palette Cardigan” steeks done. Still hand-quilting my Delectable Pathways quilt.

What's on my Featherweight: I used my machine for the steeks finished, and now my machine is put away again.

What's on my wheel: Still the Waimea Rooster Merino/Tencel from AlohaBlu, continuing to spin for the Tour de Fleece, making good progress on the second bobbin.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Thornwood House by Anna Romer, one of the best books I have ever listened to. It had everything: Adventure, suspense, mystery and romance coupled with interesting, very human characters, some Australian history, with beautiful language and a feast of the senses, with sights, sounds, smells and other sensations. Find out more here or here. I feel as if I had just visited Australia without the need of a plane ticket. Now listening to The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury, also from Audible. Still reading Remember This by Shae Buggs on the Kindle app on my iPad. 

What's in my wine glass: Lindemann’s Cawarra Shiraz-Cabernet 2014. Always a nice choice.

What's my tip of the week: Do you have hummingbird feeders? You don’t need to buy expensive feed for them. Boil water and mix it with sugar. Allow to cool at least until lukewarm. A ratio of 1 sugar to 4 water works. Use regular table sugar only (sucrose) from cane or beets. Never use honey or artificial sweeteners. Hummingbirds don’t need the vitamins nor especially the red dye in most commercial hummingbird feed.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.

Adventures in Color

This week saw some progress in spinning the Waimea Rooster Merino and black Tencel roving from AlohaBlu.

I’m loving the colors in the singles. Sometimes my bobbin looks gold, then it’s blue, then a purplish pink. Never boring.

I’m getting ready for Tour de Fleece, which starts July 2nd to coincide with the Tour de France. (While they’re spinning bicycle wheels, we’ll be spinning fiber.) The Knitting Community Orphans will have a team on Ravelry. We’re focusing on AlohaBlu fiber in this first participation, and she has designed the special colorways for us: “The Frog Prince” and “Knitting Community Orphans,” both based on the photos from our Ravelry group. You can participate with any fiber, but a bunch of us will be using AlohaBlu fiber. It should be fun.

Common Threads met at my houseon Thursday. Karan brought this lovely shawl for show and tell:

Everyone was knitting. It was a companionable meeting, as they usually are.

I had planned on spinning, since we met at my house and I was expecting a small turnout at first, but at the last minute several other people were able to join us. It would have been a bit crowded with my wheel out in the room, so I worked on the ribbing for my “So-not-my-palette Cardigan.” Since then I have made more progress and am into the colorwork section.

I'm using this pattern by Kathleen Taylor for sizing and shaping directions, but with colorwork patterns chosen from Alice Starmore's book, Charts for Color Knitting.

The next band of pattern will be bright green and a very dark green. I can hardly wait to start on it. After that will come a band of several shades of gold.

Speaking of colors, we thought the puppy we were considering was going to be blue. Last Sunday, we decided we liked one of the boys better than the other and made our pick. We shot the breeder an email to let her know we would take him, if he was still available. She emailed back saying that she had just finished grooming all four pups in the litter. Oops! The guy we picked is going to be silver instead of blue. Did we care? Actually, that’s better. He will still be a color that doesn’t show the dirt from the trail so much, but he will be easier to see in dim light as we get older. Here’s a link to poodle colors. (Scroll down to find silver.) Silver, blue and black all come into the world black. The puppies that won’t remain black have some white hairs among the black hairs between the pads on their feet. As the pup grows up, he will lighten until he reaches his designated color. They call this “clearing.” In miniatures (like ours) it can take a couple of years to “clear.” In standards the change happens even more slowly. The hair on the feet and face are the first to show the lighter color. At four weeks, there should have been some lightening in his face for a blue, but it was quite a bit more than should have been the case, thus the surprise. Here’s our little guy after grooming a week ago.

His blue siblings have much darker faces.

We are officially the owners of half of this pup. I’m not sure whether the half we own is the intake half or the output half, but we don’t have to look after him yet, so it doesn’t really matter. We have named him Dusty. We plan on picking him up July 1st.

The decision-making process has been an adventure. First, we had to decide how soon to add another dog to the family, then pick the right one. We consulted a pet psychic to help answer these questions. She told us Sunny still hangs out with Rocky, so he doesn’t miss her, but he misses her warm body. He was OK with waiting to get another dog until later on…at first. We were looking at a litter of four that had the two “blue” boys and one blue girl. Rocky did not want the white boy in the litter, because he was “bossy.” The breeder confirmed that the white boy was the first born and was the alpha. Rocky liked the girl first, but by the time we found that out, she was taken. We thought he just wanted a girl and had made up our minds to wait for the next litter, but then the pet psychic said Rocky had contacted her and had decided he liked the two boys, too. She asked us if we were drawn to either of the boys more than the other, which we were. Although they looked identical in the photo, we both liked the one on the right better.

While I was waiting to hear from the breeder whether that boy was still available, Rocky started pulling on my pants leg and dancing in a circle. He was clearly excited and trying to tell me something. Then my iPad went “ding,” indicating I had an email. It was from the breeder, telling me the boy we preferred was still available, but he was going to be silver. Rocky seemed to be telling me, “We’re getting a puppy!” 

Speaking of Rocky…and colors…he is a lovely basic black. Here’s a photo of him right after his grooming appointment on Monday.

For an older dog (11+ years), he's still pretty dark. 

We have been doing some walks and hikes, because the weather has warmed up and is nice. (It’s about time!) It could still snow, but that becomes less likely every day.

What's on my needles: Still hand-quilting the “Delectable Pathways” quilt. Working on the “So-not-my-palette Cardigan.”

What's on my Featherweight: Still waiting for the next project.

What's on my wheel: Still the Waimea Rooster Merino/Tencel from AlohaBlu.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Split Second by David Baldacci. It was interesting, typical Baldacci. Now listening to Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara. It’s a long one, but is interesting so far. Reading Remember This by Shae Buggs on the Kindle app on my iPad.

What's in my wine glass: Glenn Ellen 2014 Merlot in the big bottle. It has been one of those weeks.

What's my tip of the week: If you’re knitting a pullover or steeked (cut open after knitting) sweater on circular needles and want to try it on, just put half of the stitches on another circular needle. Then it can be slipped over the intended recipient’s head to check for size. If you change needle size from the ribbing to the body, you can do this without any extra work. Just stop working the first row with the larger size when you reach the halfway point.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.

Groundhogs, Wheels and Bowls

Last Monday the American Girl Knitters Ravelry group started its February knit along (KAL).

We were given a discount on any pattern by Una Hendry (from lots of choices) and had to finish one item from any of the patterns, post in the KAL thread and link to the KAL from our Ravelry page for the project.

I wanted to use leftovers and found Stroll sock yarn among my scraps in “White,” “Flagstone Heather” and “Rabbit Heather.” These last two are tweed. They were left over from three pairs of socks. It’s the middle of winter here, so I couldn’t see a sun dress or baby doll PJs, so I picked this one of the three ski sets. 

I made the ski pants from the “Rabbit Heather” first, because there seemed to be more of it, and I wanted to make them all one color. Dolly is holding her foot up so you can see the stirrup that goes under the foot.

After finishing the body of the ski sweater and as I was making the first sleeve, I realized I might run out of the “Flagstone Heather.” I decided to stop the first sleeve at that point and knit the second sleeve using the other end of the yarn. I got through the second pattern row at the shoulder before I ran out. I could have substituted one of the other colors without too much difficulty by altering the pattern slightly, but I had a skein of Essential sock yarn in “Ash,” which is pretty close to the “Flagstone Heather,” although not tweed. I substituted this for “Flagstone Heather” in the last two pattern rows on the sleeves. Some of it disappears into the seam at the shoulder anyway, so it wasn’t noticeable.

I used the leftover “Rabbit Heather” as the main color for the hat and used the Essential “Ash” along with the Stroll “White” for the contrast colors. Also not noticeable.

Part of the fun is the staging. As I did with the January KAL project, I used the chair and ottoman I made last month and the iPad for a roaring fire.

I added some “popcorn,” crushed styrofoam peanuts (an idea I found on Pinterest) and a cup of cocoa, with “marshmallows,” (also styrofoam peanuts, a couple of pieces that turned out the right shape). The perfect setting for après-ski.

I still have some things I need to make for Dolly before I put her aside to finish my hand-quilting and other projects.

The Spin Along started Friday and is still going on. I started out with this lovely fiber from Christina “Aloha Blu.”

We started Friday at noon. I chose to start with the two ounces of Targhee “Saturated Spring.” As of Sunday evening, after the bowl game, I had this much done with still about 45 minutes worth of spinning left to finish the 2 oz. bump of fiber.

If you’re reading this Monday morning, I am still spinning away. I plan on Navajo-plying, also called “chain plying,” because it’s similar to making a crochet chain. The loops are much bigger, and you make them as you spin in the opposite direction from the direction you spun the “singles,” which is what you call the individual ply.

Here in the high mountains, the sun shone brightly on Groundhog Day. I know that’s supposed to mean six more weeks of winter, but I wonder if it means ONLY six more weeks. That would turn out to be a short winter for us. To keep warm (even in the house it’s cold) the pups wear their sweaters and soak up the sun when they can.

Rocky’s sweater is made from left over Swish in “Lava Heather” with some “Squirrel Heather” and “Dove Heather” for contrast. Sunny’s is also made from “Lava Heather” and “Dove Heather,” but with “Dusk” as the other contrast color.

Even after a couple of warmer days (high 30s) we still have about three feet of snow on our roof.

Common Threads was cancelled because we had a blizzard, which creates a parking problem, but some of us managed to visit Joanie on Friday. Quilters: Vintage Stitchers meets again this coming Thursday, so there’s some hope for some quilting eye candy next week.

What's on my needles:  Still the “Time for Tea” party dress for Dolly. The Trickle Socks, waiting.

What's on my Featherweight: Still doll socks, tights and undies. Will start on Regency outfit for Dolly soon.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz, his latest novel, which came out in December. I really enjoyed it and think it’s his best so far. Then listened to Her own Devices by Shelley Adina. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series. I never thought Steampunk would appeal to me, but it does. Now listening to From a High Tower by Mercedes Lackey. Good so far. Still reading A View to Die For by Richard Houston.

What's in my wine glass: Crane Lake Malbec, one of our favorites.

What's my tip of the week: If you know who won the Superbowl, don’t tell anyone the result unless they indicate that they already know. They may have recorded the game.

Peggy Visits the Frog Pond

On the bright side, the first appliqué block of the First Ladies Quilt, the "Martha Washington Wreath," is finished.



There will be two of these, and I have started the second one. I'm using the needleturn method. My local quilt shop, Davidene's Quilt Shop, is having a class in Eleanor Burns' Tales of First Ladies. The next class is next month. (See last week's post for the first pieced blocks for this quilt.)

I've also made some progress on the paper-pieced Pine Burr quilt. Here's the second of 16 blocks. (I haven't removed the paper yet.)

The grey fabric in the big triangles will also be used in the borders. I had bought 1/2 yard of it on sale at Elaine's Quilt Block, a quilt shop in Salt Lake City. Then I decided I needed more, but they didn't have any. However, they were able to give me the name of the line of fabric. After an online search, I found some at an Easy shop, No Place Like Home Quilt Shop. In two days I had an extra three yards. I couldn't have found it without the help of the nice ladies at Elaine's!

The local quilt guild met Thursday evening, and we had a demo on paper piecing. Saturday I put into use what I had learned and finished the block in less than a day, about three times faster than the first one. (More about the quilt guild meeting later.)

There's a Spin-in in the Knit Picks Knitting Community scheduled for the end of this month. Here's what I'll be spinning:

There are two braids of hand-painted roving from Greenwood Fibers. The one on the left is Polwarth in "Lavender Hedgerow" and on the right is Heathered BFL in "Jingle Bells." I purchased both from Wasatch & Wool in Park City, our own Local Yarn Shop. The fiber in the package is a gift from a friend, a souvenir from New Zealand, from a small supplier. It's Merino sliver.

So far, so good. Now here's the part where Peggy dons her swim fins and walks slowly down to the frog pond....

The Brick Cardigan was coming along great. I had the decreases finished, the short rows turned out almost invisible. Then I tried it on. It was very loose in the neck, clearly too soon to start the ribbing, although that was next in the pattern. That would have been easy enough to fix, but it was also too snug at the armpits.

If you've been following this project, you'll remember that I tightened the gauge to get a firmer fabric and went up a size in the pattern. I thought I had enough rows in the yoke based on my gauge, but clearly I didn't. (It's the math.)

So, off to the frog pond. (For anyone who is a nonknitter or new to knitting, frogging is where you rip out your knitting, as in "rippit, rippit," or what the frog says.)

I'm back on track, but planning on working the decreases every other right-side row until I have about three inches of yoke. Then I'll evaluate how it's going. At some point, I'll change my decreases to every right-side row if I need to, which is what I expect.


More on the bright side, as I was ripping it out, I noticed a mistake I had made in the pattern. One of my cables went over to the left instead of to the right. I could have fixed it later, but it's much easier this way. Here's my mistake, which I left behind in the frog pond:


Common Threads met at Georgette's on Thursday morning. Lynda picked me up. I had planned to walk, because Georgette lives right up the street, and DGD was using my car to take Joanie to the doctor, but Lynda offered to pick me up, because she was going right by my house.

Lynda was making a scarf to go with the hat she showed off last time.


Janet had some news: She has been asked to allow her baby blanket out of Weepaca to be on display at The Wool Cabin (a yarn shop in Salt Lake City)! She's working on another one now. She's a beautiful knitter, although she considers herself to be "a quilter," which she also does well.

Thursday evening was our monthly quilt guild meeting, where Dianne did her demo of paper piecing.



She had been working on a kit she bought several years ago at The Stitchin' Post in Sisters, Oregon. (Unfortunately, the kit is no longer available.) She demonstrated how she does paper piecing using this kit. It depicts the Sisters mountains that give the town where The Stitching' Post quilt shop is located its name.


This part goes under the mountains:


The demonstration was followed by lots of show-and-tell. The group had watched a demonstration of Hawaiian appliqué last month, and several people brought their projects that resulted from the meeting.


It's great meeting in a quilt shop, where we can be inspired by the lovely fabrics.


Linda's heart quilt was great for a February meeting:


Besides the heart quilt, Linda was finishing up a churn dash quilt.


Jill is finishing up this Easter egg quilt.


This star quilt is almost a miniature.


It wasn't supposed to snow until Saturday, so DH and I had planned to go on a hike on Friday, but it snowed. (Boo, Weatherman!) The planned hike had to be moved to a location that wouldn't be muddy and changed into more of a walk. At least the pups got to run off-leash for a while.

This is absolutely not normal snow for February, or even March, in the mountains of Utah. We usually need snowshoes to walk this trail this time of year, and there is no ground to be seen. I wonder where our snow went....

What's on my needles: Brick Cardigan, working on the yoke...again. Also the second Martha Washington's Wreath appliqué block for my First Ladies quilt.

What's on my Featherweight: Pine Burr, second block finished, third in the planning stage.

What's on my loom: Still some warp for another scarf, but still folded up.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Threading the Needle by Marie Bostwick, from Audible. Now listening to A Second Chance, Vol 3: The Chronicles of St. Mary's by Jodi Taylor. Also reading Charlotte Collins by Jennifer Becton on the Nook app.

What's in my wine glass: C K Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon wild reed Canyon 2012. A lovely wine.

What's my tip of the week: When frogging (see definition above), I like to rip until I get to the row/round before the one where I want to start, then take out the last row/round of stitches one at a time by inserting the needle into the middle of each stitch in that row/round, then pull the stitch above out of it. It's so much easier to pick up the sts and have them facing the right way on the needle while the yarn you're removing is still in them.

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.

High in the Clouds

It was a busy week, as usual, The little rug from my weaving class came off the loom. It's almost finished. I still need to decide the treatment for the fringe. Here's the front. 

The back is the same as the front, except that the colors are reversed, and the clasps show up. You might remember from last week that the brown blocks with rows of orange were made by catching the orange with the brown in a clasp and then moving the clasp to a spot where it would be hidden in the background but allow the color to show where the weaver wants. So the clasps show up on the back. No way around that. 

Lynda and I took a trip down to Spinderella's in Salt Lake City on Wednesday to see what could be done with the llama fiber I got for free.

Lynn and Jim, the owners/operators of Spinderella's, didn't think too much of the quality of the fiber or the shearing job. They thought it was really only good for making rug yarn. It would be very expensive to have them do all the work, and we wouldn't end up with much. Lynda isn't interested in rug yarn, but I am, so whatever I do will be by myself now. Lynda enjoyed seeing the operation, though. 

Lynn allowed me to use this tumbler of sorts (not sure of the real name) to get some of the dirt and short cuts out of the fiber. It revolves, allowing the dirt and short cuts to fall out. Lynda helped me run the fiber in this, then I took what was left home to pick through. 

Lynn and Jim taught us what to look for in the fiber, and to be brutal about throwing away anything with too much vegetable matter (VM) to be worth bothering with. We left behind a whole garbage can full of stuff. When I get done, I can bring back whatever is left and they will process it for me, or if it's a small enough amount, or I feel up to a challenge, I can process it myself. 

While we were waiting for each load to run, we had a look at their operation. Lynda and I share a little Patrick Green drum carder that operates using a hand crank. This carder really puts ours to shame:

Here's the carder at work:

Here the roving is shown coming out the end of the carder. 

After this, it goes through a machine that gently stretches the roving and blends layers of roving together. Then it goes to the spinning machine:

By the time we left, all of the little niches were filled will bobbins, all accumulating singles. It was worth the trip for both of us, but it was a dirty job running the fleece through the tumbler. Everything we had on needed to go into the laundry. 

Common Threads met at Kay's new place, a high-rise overlooking Salt Lake City. As we drove down, it was snowing, but it stopped long enough for us to enjoy the view. Here's the view from Kay's balcony:

Kay had just finished remodeling her master bath, complete with granite countertops and a new shower stall. She has plans to remodel kitchen soon, but its not bad now:

We had a nice time sharing information about our various fiber crafts and chatting. Julie and Jean were late because they had forgotten that Kay had moved and had driven to her old place, which was a long way away in the other direction. Thanks to smart phones, though, when they realized no one was there, they were able to look up the email with the directions. 

Georgette had made some baby hats, which she showed us.  

Before it was time to leave, Kay gave us a tour of the building, including a trip to the top floor, where the is a two-story party room for residents. Here's the first floor with nice view and fireplace. 

Lynda and Georgette admire the view from the stairs in the party room. 

The second floor of the party room has a serving kitchen and a big TV. (There's a small cooking area on the lower level.)

During Common Threads, I was able to get the second sleeve of Daphne's Green Pastures Cardigan finished. Now I've joined the sections together and am ready to start the pattern. 

The Green Tea Socks are coming along slowly. It's nice to have a small project to grab when I have to go out somewhere. 

Soren is bringing his family here for Thanksgiving. It should be fun. In the meantime, here's something for quilters:

(Only quilters would baste the turkey before dressing it.)

What's on my needles: Green Pastures cardigan for Daphne, ready to start pattern. Dogwood Blossoms, Christmas Waffle sweater and Green Tea socks with the heel almost done. 

What's on my loom: Making some progress on the Christmas present scarves. I discovered some mistakes in the pattern and had to take out a few inches, but now I have a slip of paper with an arrow that shows me which direction I'm headed in the treadling pattern. 

What's on my wheel: Full Circle Roving in "Wolf". First bobbin finished. No progress this week. I moved my wheel down to my fiber studio, so Soren won't get into it. 

What's on my Sewing needles, Featherweight: Delectable Pathways, piecing the Delectable Mountain block panels. Appliqué panel #3, No progress this week.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: I'm listening to Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer. Reading The Sweetness at the bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley on the Nook App, purchased through BookBub. Another intriguing story. Listening to the Fiber Hooligan podcast and the Knit Picks podcast.

What's my app of the week: Talkatone. It lets me use Google Voice on my phone. If I'm home, I don't have to worry about losing the signal if I go downstairs, because it uses the Internet, rather than cell phone service. It also doesn't use my minutes, so it's great for long phone calls. 

What's in my wine glass: Corbett Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon, the big bottle. Nice. (We don't get any bad wine.)

Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals were harmed during the production of this blog post.