HighFiber: off-leash

Showing posts with label off-leash. Show all posts

Monday, March 23, 2026

Getting Out With Care

Well, it's done! The Traveling Woman is blocking.

Here's what it looked like right off the needles. I have quite a bit of yarn left over, although the bind-off used up a lot of what I had at that point.

Most of my time this past week was acting as chauffeur for Charlie, who still can't drive. He started out the week leaving the walker downstairs and just taking his cane upstairs at bedtime. He took up my place on the couch occasionally, and the dogs discovered that his lap was just as cozy as mine.

They still spent nap time with me, though.

Charlie has been using his walker less often as the week went on. Monday I took Dusty to the vet for his echocardiogram, which he needed prior to his dental appointment coming up. Charlie stayed home with Sandy. I had a dermatology appointment on Tuesday. Wednesday I drove Charlie to the dentist in the morning and then to his physical therapy appointment in the afternoon. These excursions also could read as "more knitting time," which is how I was able to finish the Traveling Woman Shawl. On Thursday, both dogs went to the vet, Sandy for his annual exam and immunizations and Dusty for a preoperative check on the little lump between two of his front toes. The lump will be removed during his dental appointment. Charlie went along. He didn't bother to take the walker. He managed the stairs just fine, although I had to manage both dogs.

Friday we went to Costco and a couple of other grocery stores. He managed with just his cane. It was a lot of walking, but once he's in a store, he can push a cart, which is stable enough. At Costco we found a new dog toy for the pups. They have very durable toys there, and it was reasonably priced. It looks like a dragon and is about 12" tall. They love it!

By Saturday, he was comfortable enough with just the cane that we were able to walk on the sidewalk around the block.

Sunday afternoon I drove us all to Alpenglow Park, so the dogs could play in the off-leash area. There were about 15 dogs there and several people with Chuck-Its, so Dusty got plenty of exercise.

We finished up the outing with a walk on the paved trail inside the off-leash area.

Beside chauffeuring duties, I did the usual laundry, changing the sheets and a little cleaning, and of course, cooking. I'm starting to put up meals for Charlie for when I go back to Wisconsin next month. Charlie doesn't like to cook, so I hope to have a week's worth of easy meals ready for him so he can just heat them up. Last week I made lasagne and put up two servings for him in the freezer. This week I made Black Bean Soup, Italian Tuna Pasta and Enchilada Casserole. I'll continue that activity this week. Any prepared meals he doesn't need while I'm gone will be good for camping.

I'm ready to cast on the Summer Sorrel top, which should be handy this summer. I also started working on my new book. I'm hoping to be done with chauffeur duties soon.

(If you're wondering why Charlie is disabled, see last week's post.)

I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry, BlueSky or Spoutible if you need information.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon or B&N and search for Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart". Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil, Mariah, Classic Tales Retold, Our Favorite Verses, More Classic Tales Retold or Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Almost done with my Traveling Woman Shawl, and ready to cast on the Summer Sorrel top.

What's on my iPhone: Still reading The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss on the AudiobooksNow app.

What's on my sewing machine: Put away until the next project.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Billy wonders why a doll who isn't good at something would say he was in The Science Lesson at School.

What's my tip of the week: I use small amounts lime juice (about 2 tablespoons or the juice of one lime) in some of my recipes, so I like to keep it on hand, but I don't like the kind that comes with preservatives. I've found bottled lime juice that is only juice. It will only keep for 60 days after opening the bottle, so I pour 2 tablespoons in each compartment of an ice cube tray, freeze the juice and then pop the cubes into a plastic bag for storage in the freezer.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog, and they are reproduced in print with a few changes.

The stories in Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Talking About Boys, Changes, Shhhhh!, Staying After and Money in a Jar.

The stories in More Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Welcoming a Stranger, The Rescue, Unmasked, Fuzzy Town––A Play and Sky Blue.

Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook. Poems included are Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

The stories in Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The stories in Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less, only 8%, because the vendor gets a cut. My author's page at Book Baby is here. Scroll down and click on any of the books that interest you. Find my books at Barbara's Bookstore as well, or ask your local library to order the books.

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 or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.

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Monday, October 21, 2024

Decisions

My books are due to arrive later today, and the (my) excitement is building. In the meantime, I got some knitting done. I've finished the first part of the border pattern.

I had to print the graph again. I don't know where I put the one I already used. Then, because it was only in black and white with no symbols, I had to write in the colors used for each row.

The dogs were at the groomer on Monday. They always look so nice when they're clean and nicely clipped.

Some time during the week was taken up with medical appointments and arranging for a new phone provider, which is done. Yay! My old provider had lowered the rates for all the plans but only for new customers or people who changed plans. I got charged extra on top of that because I went over my data usage during our trip. Now I have one with unlimited data for less than half the price. Yay!

Our ballots came Friday, but we've had the voters' pamphlet for almost a week. It's as big as the phone book we had when we were newlyweds living in Casper. The candidates' sections were about normal, but there were some measures that took a lot of pages to explain, including the arguments for and against. It took the better part of a day to read it all.

Friday we finished our assignment (filling out our ballots) and went to the drop box that's on our way to the park.

It was a lovely day. We had a detour to get to the ballot box, but it wasn't marked as such, just the road was closed. We made it, though. It's a drive-through drop-off, but we always park, so we can get out and take photos.

From there we went on to the park to give the pups some off-leash time and have a walk on the off-leash trail. We've been getting rain, so the air quality is back to normal, but catching good weather between rains is important.

I forgot to start the Walk for a Dog app when we left the car, so we actually walked farther than this. I actually started the app at that green upside-down teardrop shape that has a white dot in it. I let the app run all the way back to the car when we were done, though.

We had some of the new black bean soup recipe again, this time with some fresh bread. This is a small loaf, baked in a pan that has room for four little loaves, but I used it to bake only one. I use a half recipe for these little loaves.

In family news, my brother-in-law sold his Class B camping RV (that's the van type) and decided to buy an R-Pod 171c (c=classic), which is like ours, but without some of the special features, such as the front window, the outdoor shower, the internal vacuum and the solar panels on the roof, and the outside speakers, but they gave him an awning with it. I'm not sure what kind that is. It could be like ours. I don't think he get the TV, either, but we almost never use ours. We watch DVDs on my laptop, if we need entertainment. This isn't his, but this is a photo of the same model. He got it from the same dealer we got ours from, but they took down the photo after he bought it. Next time we go camping together I'll get a photo of his actual rig.

This is our 171 Hood River Edition with the awning up, for comparison. You can see the big front window that he doesn't have. (The handle sticking out next to the door lifts and closes against the door. Ours is open. His is closed.)

The Wisconsin grandkids are in a couple of ballet productions coming up. First will be "Alice in Wonderland" and then "The Nutcracker." I'll post photos when there's something to show.

The Beaverton family is getting into the Halloween mood by reading some of the scary stories from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. They will be coming to visit us over Thanksgiving. For a whole week! That will be fun.

Meanwhile, our grandkitty is learning how to hide, presumably to be able to jump out and scare people when the time comes.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart". Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil, Mariah or Classic Tales Retold, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still working on the Oregon Cardigan.

What's on my loom: Still in its corner under the windows.

What's on my sewing machine: Still its dust cover.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: This week's story from #TheDollsStorybook is Being Green Makes It Easy, which first appeared in 2020, and has been updated.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Started listening to Dean Koontz's new book, The Forest of Lost Souls. Also reading a physical book, In the Shelter of Each Other by Milree Latimer. Not very far into either yet.

What's in my wine glass: Pinelli Montepulciano D'Abruzzio 2021. Fairly nice.

What's my tip of the week: We like to get those English cucumbers because they don't need to be peeled and they have a nice flavor. They last longer if you take them out of the plastic shrink-wrap, however, unless you're ready to use the whole thing. I remove the plastic entirely, then wrap the cucumber in dry paper towel and store refrigerated in a zipper bag. They last quite a long time that way, even after cutting.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes.

The stories in More Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Welcoming a Stranger, The Rescue, Unmasked, Fuzzy Town––A Play and Sky Blue.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

The stories in Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less, because the publisher gets a cut.

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Monday, July 10, 2023

Dog Days

A busy weekend with the grandkids ended at the beginning of the week, with (among other things) a trip to Lava Lands Visitor Center just south of Bend, where we did a couple of short hikes. Short, because it was very hot, and our granddog, Louis, was having trouble with his feet on the hot pavement and sand trails.

I think poodles must have tough feet, because our dogs didn't seem bothered by it, but they were happy to drink a lot more water than usual. We had some beautiful views, and it was fun just being together.

The boys both wanted to hold Sandy's leash. I remembered the trick I learned with Therapy Animals of Utah of adding a second leash to the collar (or harness, in this case) so one of the boys could hold one leash and I could hold the others. They had to take turns.

After the visit, Louis decided he had had enough of being in the car, so he shredded his car bed.

On July 4th, the kids left to go home. I was singing in the Festival Chorus for the Fourteenth Annual Sound Fourth! Fourth of July Concert. It was a lot of fun, and the imperfect but charming performance by the Cascade Horizon Band brought back memories of celebrations from my childhood, where a small band performed on a bandstand set up on the shore of Jamaica Pond, where we lived then, just outside Boston. This was my view of the audience and our director, the only downside.

That night, I took Sandy out to our front yard to watch the fireworks, hoping the experience would inoculate him against fear of the loud bangs we're subjected to every July 4th. I held him up to see, and every time a rocket when up, I pointed to it and raved about how beautiful it was, and weren't we having fun. He seemed very interested and not at all frightened. (Photo from The Source Weekly.)

Later in the week, we took the dogs to the off-leash dog park at Pine Nursery. The meet-up group was supposed to have an event there during which dogs of participants could socialize with each other, followed by beer and eats at 10 Barrel Brewing's East Side location. When we got to the park a few minutes late, we couldn't find anyone, but the dogs got to have some off-leash time. While we were looking around, another person came, a lady with a silver miniature poodle a little smaller than Dusty. She was also looking for the group. We talked and decided it was late enough they must have cancelled. The three of us decided to go to the brewery and meet there.

We had a nice visit with Maggie and Asta. The dogs exchanged sniffs and we exchanged phone numbers. After we got home Maggie sent a text saying she received notification that the meeting at the dog park had been cancelled due to excessive heat. We had tried to sign up at the last minute but couldn't, so maybe it had already been cancelled then.

Sandy had another puppy training class on Sunday. Among other things, we got some tips on loose-leash walking. Sandy amused the class with his nonchalance when the trainer gave each dog a chew stick. Sandy played with it like a cat with a toy, then took it in his mouth and rolled around on the floor, stopping on his back as if he were just going to take a nap. One of the other dogs is pretty high-strung, and two others are a little nervous, so he got a lot of attention for being laid-back.

After the kids left on Tuesday, I got back to the quilts. I have finished all of the pieced blocks now. I'm using a pattern called "Disappearing Hourglass." You take an hourglass block, cut it up, move things around and put it back together to form a new design. This is an hourglass block, one I made for Johan's quilt to go with green.

You measure the block, divide the size by three and then cut it into thirds vertically and horizontally. After you rotate the nine resulting pieces and sew them together you can end up with this (but there are other variations):

Here's what the block looked like after cutting:

This is how the pieces were rotated before sewing them back together in their new orientations:

There's a YouTube video demonstrating the technique.

I had decided to put the blocks on point with setting squares. First I had to figure out how to arrange the blocks, because they are all different from each other. I gave up my design wall when we moved, but I decided I could do it on my computer just as well, so I took a photo of each block. Then I put them into a word-processing document and arranged them in rows, moving them around until I was satisfied that the individual fabrics and other characteristics of the blocks were dispersed. Here's a screen shot of what I ended up with. (They aren't very evenly spaced, because I didn't think that was important.) There is one block where I forgot to turn the center square. Can you find it? I think it make the quilt interesting, as do the blocks where the pattern just about disappears.

Now all I have to do is sew them together in diagonal rows, with the blocks in each row of my screenshot in the same locations, only on point. I hope to get that done this week.

While the kids were here, Johan found a beetle that had a body about one inch long and striped. He said it hissed at him. When we went to look, the beetle had run off. However, a few days later, I found this fellow in the dog water dish. I "rescued" him and left him on the rail. He was there long enough for me to get a photo. Peter looked him up and learned he was a Ten-lined (hissing) June Beetle. Perhaps I shouldn't have saved his life, because the larvae feed on roots of grass, bushes and trees, but I did, and he left after he dried out.

In other dog-related news, we found another one of Sandy's teeth, this time on the mat the dog dish rests on. We now have two souvenirs of his early puppyhood.

I've continued to experiment with using the pressure cooker to heat food that normally would go in the gas oven, since our new trailer won't have one of those, just the microwave/convection oven that needs electricity (shown below, with the sticker on the door).

We will have the gas cooktop, so if we are camping where we don't have electricity, we should be able to heat things up in the pressure cooker on that.

Here's what I have to work with, shown here on the stove in my house kitchen.

This is a Presto 6-quart pressure cooker with several choices of racks. I found a silicone "sling" online that can be used to put around a dish or bowl in the pressure cooker for reheating. I'm also getting a springform pan I can use. As I've done with the plastic food storage containers, I can line it with heavy-duty foil and freeze a casserole. The springform pan will be easy to remove from the frozen meal and then replaced for cooking, so I can use the same pan over and over. The square containers will not go into the pressure cooker, obviously, so I will need to put the food on a metal rack.

I have bought new sheets and a new duvet cover to replace the old ones, which are worn out.

Now I'm knitting a new dishcloth with some of the yarn I used for warp for the rugs I made for our fifth wheel.

I decided that grey, aqua and teal will be the mail colors in the new trailer. The woodwork is grey, and the upholstery is an exciting beige. The rugs have grey and beige in them, but also some aqua. I can probably only use two of the rugs at a time in the new trailer, but it will be good to have a spare in case one gets muddy.

We hope to be able to pick up our new camping trailer next week.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart" in Children's. Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil and Mariah, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.

Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.

What's on my needles: Still the Kultainen käki cardigan and the EmPower People Kerchief (hibernating), but also the dishcloth.

What's on my loom: I only made a few picks on the placemats.

What's on my sewing machine: Still the quilt, but ready to put the blocks together.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: In Reading Things, Mandy reads her knitting, but also other things.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to Die Unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende. I'm really enjoying listening to it in German at .7 speed (70% of normal).

What's in my wine glass: Bodegas De Olmo Garnacha 2019, from Spain. Very...Spanish.

What's my tip of the week: I should have worked back from a finished size for a block that was an even number, such as 10" or 11" instead of 10.5", which is what I got starting out with an arbitrary 7" square to make my original half-square triangles. When you divide a finished block size by 3, it's nice if it's something you can measure accurately with a ruler divided into eighths and sixteenths instead of decimals.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes.

Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is available from BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. The stories are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The three stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.

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