Caribou redo

BEFORE

This is the rug that has been lying in my dining room for several years....the dogs love to scratch at it and make themselves a nest before reclining on it....it has suffered from this treatment and really was in bad need of repair. Click HERE to see the progression from disrepair to repaired and washed. I was always afraid to wash my rugs, but now I'm a believer in living with my rugs and washing them when they need it.

AFTER

Insight?

okay, this may be totally random and weird and it may give you too much insight into my psyche....but here goes.


last night i woke up at 2:30 am with a horrible migraine headache.

i don't get these very often any more and when i do i can usually knock them out with some excedrin....or it's equivilant. however, i'd taken the last one sometime last week and failed to get more....bad thing about being a procrastinator....so now i'm up at 2:30 and having to throw on shorts and a sweatshirt and drive to walgreen's in the middle of the night.


so, i get home, take my excedrin and go to the den to try and stretch and relax and do things that i think might help me unwind.

i did this for about 15 minutes and then headed back to bed.


now, backtracking, earlier in the evening, i got a message from someone in a group i'm in on facebook. we had a page with our favorite quotes and i had put mine as "live the life you've imagined".

she asked me what that was.....i still haven't answered as i wanted to think about it for a while......creating rugs, being able to get up early and walk the dogs down some path in the woods that we'd created ourselves, having the luxury to plan and cook meals most nights, working part time at the job i'm currently in, vacationing to different spots every year....lots of things come to mind.

also, before falling asleep i started reading a new book called "saved".


it has stories of animal rescues and the people the animals are now with....i read the preface and 1 story from this book before going to bed last night. i had also finished reading "the big leap" earlier in the day.




it's about taking your life to the next level and about how we have "upper limit problems"....that we have a thermostat that is set to let us only feel "so good" and how to go about breaking those barriers....sometimes when people have a good day or have hit a milestone they either start destroying their relationships or get illnesses or what have you.



so, of course in the middle of the night when i woke up with the migraine i started wondering if my migraine was caused from an "upper limit problem"....i had just had a great day off work, had time to plan a nice supper and everyone loved it and i had also gotten the laundry caught up, the dogs were calm, we had decided on what to do with the rest of the decorating scheme in the den....things were really starting to come together....it really couldn't have been a more perfect day.



now, i go back to bed and i have the oddest dream. i go out to my backyard and i have lonnie with me (lonnie is not that great with dogs he doesnt' know) and there is a rottweiler in our backyard. lonnie doesn't seem to mind him and goes back in the house. when lonnie is back in the house i go up to the rottweiler to see if he has a collar or tags on....he doesn't, but he starts talking to me

....telling me that he is so sorry he scared me, but he just needed a place to stay for the night, that he us really friendly, but that people judge him by the way he looks and how sad it made him that he didn't have a home or someone to love him. so we are talking about his problems and when i turn around their is a humongous dog behind me lying down

.....he looks like a big newfoundland but he is probably 10 feet long....he started telling me in his elvis sounding voice that he has also lost his home because he is so big and eats so much but he really just wants to find a home where he can be of service and help protect people and their animals.....while i'm talking to these two dogs I wonder out loud to myself, "i wonder how many dogs talk and feel this way" , as i turned around there were about 20 dogs at my back fence gate waiting to talk to me and tell me their stories and needing my help.

and then I woke up.

What does this mean?

Rug repairs

Upon first looking at this picture of my caribou rug it really doesn't look all that bad.

But upon closer inspection you can see how much dog hair it has on it and how many pieces of wool have been partially pulled out or pulled completely out.

The dogs LOVE to lie on this rug, and before they do, they paw and scratch at it and turn around and get everything just right. However, it makes it comfy for them....but not so great for the rug.

So what do you do with something like this?

Tune in tomorrow and I'll show you what I did.

Click on the pictures to see them larger.

She's hooked!

I was hoping to finish hooking Cleopatra's rug during Memorial Day weekend and I'm happy to say that she is finished.....finished as in hooked. I'm pleased with how she turned out....maybe a little tweaking here and there, but always happy to complete a project.

Want to rather than need to

Ahhhhh....I have all 3 walls of the den painted "Apple Polish" red.....I was going to paint the trim today, but I'm really not happy with the color I chose....I guess I should have brought the paint swatches home with me first.

I bought a color called "renoir bisque"...once I got it home and next to the ceiling tiles it looked a little too peachy....definitely need something more in the brown tone.

I find this as a good excuse to hook....it's a holiday after all....an EXTRA day....I plan on spending it doing things I WANT to do....not necessarily NEED to do.

I'm hoping to get the rest of Cleopatra's ear hooked in and having her rug completed.

Enjoy your EXTRA day,

Tammy

Close Memorial Gardens

Last weekend we went to Close Memorial Gardens here in Springfield. It was a beautiful day and the dogs loved having a new place to explore.
Once again, I've been playing with my new Flip Video.



Playing on the swings!


One of the many beautiful flower beds...this one overlooks the pond.


More footage of the gardens.


This iris gardens.


Seldom seen footage of Cleopatra on the run....she's so cute when she runs!

This is "I think" the native garden display.

Lonnie stalking squirrels

Memorial Day plans

So what does everyone out there in the blog world have planned for Memorial Day?

Grave decorating?

Personally, I get it, but I find it rather depressing......plastic flowers......yech....I just hate them.....I buy those cute little pinwheels to put on the graves I visit.

They are calling for spotty rainshowers here over our 3-day weekend, but I was hoping it would be nice and we could spend the weekend out by the pool, cooking out and just "hanging out".

If it does rain, I suppose I have lots of projects to work on.....finishing up painting the den red and then also all of the trim needs to be painted.

I'm hoping to make some time for hooking and journaling and maybe a little road trip....to where? Not sure, but sometimes it's just great to hit the open road.

Seeing if this works

I'm still working on learning some of the video software and how to upload it to Blogger....it's making me want to pull my hair out!

Making a nest

Just a quick video of Lonnie making his nest to suit him. He's such a sweet boy! He likes to lay in his dog bed next to me while I'm on the computer. I've got some new video software that I'm trying to figure out....it's quite a challenge and I'm working on a hooking video from last night.

Stay tuned.

Painting!

I love having a brush in my hand and making something look completely different.

the possibilities

the newness

the smell of new paint

Yesterday I started painting our den "Apple Polish" red.....LOVE IT!!

The paint is from Behr at Home Depot. It's a new line they have that has the primer mixed right in with the paint.....it said it would cover in 2 coats....did it deliver....YES!!!

Here is a little video of the before and after of the first wall.

The paint is not quite dry in the video, but I'm sure you'll get the idea of the transformation. I'll share more pics and video as things progress.

Not sure what we are going to do with the mantle and fireplace.....paint it red as well?.....we're thinking the trim might be an almond color....decisions, decisions.

At the end of the video you'll see my dog, Lonnie, with his favorite doll...he likes to undress her and carry her around by her hair...funny boy. He tends to be in more of my pictures because he follows me everywhere.

Today, I'll be removing the painters tape and probably be catching up on other projects....I expect all three walls to be finished by next week and then on to the trim.....or at least that's the plan.

Best of Missouri Hands

Yesterday, in the mail I received my copy of the

directory.

I've had fun today perusing some of the artists in my spare time.

If you'd like to go to their website just click on the symbol above.

This will be a great resource to shop for unique gifts and help support artists in Missouri.

New toy!

So, now that I messed around with my old camera being on the fritz for a month or so I broke down yesterday and got a Flip Video camera and also a new digital Cannon camera.....yeah baby...I was giddy from the whole experience!!!

Hope you enjoy the crazy little video that I made yesterday...my first one....of course it features the dogs.

I haven't been blogging as much as normal, because my digital camera has been on the fritz. It's maddening! Sometimes it will run long enough to take videos and other times I can't get it to turn on at all.....

....me thinks it's time to go shopping and get a new one.

Here is one of the last pictures I was able to snap the other day. Kenny and I came home from taking the dogs on a long walk and I found this huge-mongous vase of flowers sitting on my front porch.

Beautiful!

They are from my aunt Jo An.

The vase can be used to put crushed ice in and chill a bottle of wine....how wonderful is that?!

Misty Morning

Misty Morning
Originally uploaded by Skip To My Ewe

It soooo pays to get up early! I love the backyard when it looks like this....totally enveloped in a fine mist like a gift waiting to be unwrapped.
If you have sound you can hear the birds chirping their early morning melodies.

Brightening up an overcast day with wool

Yesterday was cool and overcast...I imagine our rainy, gloomy weather we've been having is how it would be if I lived in Seattle. It was a perfect day for dyeing wool. I had a previous customer contact me needing more wool for a project she was working on.....of course it wasn't a recipe that I had written down....that would make it too easy. I winged it and I think I came up with something that was fairly close and hopefully will work for her. The sample she sent me is on top and underneath is what came out of the dye pot. The white is a bit more white, due to a difference in wool suppliers.

Here are more wools that came out of the oven yesterday....mainly spot dyes.

In the photo below I think the first piece would make great fluffy peonies.

The second piece a wonderful sky and the last piece could be a night sky or some type of shadows.

Now, in the pics below, I think the first piece could make a great sky or water...going from dark to light.

The second piece would make a great background on a garden rug.

The last piece was my first attempt to match the wool in the very first picture....yep...not a winner for that, but would make a nice sky or ice.

Here is a bigger picture of the water/sky piece....I think this is one of my favorites!

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of further progress on Cleopatra's rug....it's coming along nicely and with all the gloomy weather we've been having I've had more time to hook!

YAY!

Go forth and be creative,

Tammy