EXTRAVAGANCE

My swim went well. Am getting better at using legs properly. I can get back to my routine now. 


Going to have to work this out when John retires at end of April. We are having another room built on the back of the house so we can do stuff together or separate. I do not like being out of sync. 


Mind you this Xmas/New Year was very good. Until last night, we ate Chinese, I ate nothing I ought not. I had said that I wanted no goodies and if I was going to the stuff I am allergic too, it would be the last day of the holiday so I could swim the next morning.


So far it worked. I woke with a thumping head but it has gone and so far no other effects. I feel really good about it actually. I stuck to what I said I'd do. Xmas/New Year is always a problem food wise. It usually has me eating the wrong foods too often and being ill for the two weeks. Not this time. I enjoyed the time with John. 


Did I mention the real extravagance of a second coffee machine? This one is not a bean to cup but uses pads or ground-which was the reason for getting it. There are a lot of coffees only available ground. Now I can have all sorts of different coffees but most especially much easier for my evening de-caff.


The weather is terrible today. Very high winds with rain. It makes the house sound like a train. Very loud. Even the dogs got disturbed.


Listening to records today. Real records on a turntable. So far have listened to Amy MacDonald's A Curious Thing and now Laura Marling's I Speak Because I Can.

EXTRAORDINARY

I am feeling extraordinarily good today. In fact I have been for quite some time. Not in my boy, which is pretty much same old crap, but in my spirit I am good. This new outlet for my creativity has really added a new and good dimension to me and my life. I love to do it. I love working and not being sure what the result will be. I splosh about and end up with lovely yarn. Now THAT is groovy man!(Yes I know it could have been COOL, but bugger it, this is my blog.)

My talk and dem went well last night., Rained all the way there and all the way back and most of the night. The dogs, therefore, had newspaper left down for them and they slept free and not in their cages as they had not been out at all. Too much work letting 6 hairy dogs out into a wet garden.

I have started a new blog named KNITMAN’S KITCHEN. I have not put anything up on it yet. I thought I would use it solely for my yarns rather than get it all mixed up here. Good idea? Thoughts welcome. At present, I just alter the timing on the yarn posts so it is always first or second post. No hassle. Maybe my readers prefer it all on the same blog?

I noticed that the kitchen wall above the dogs’ crates was more or less bare and it occurred to me that it would handy to have shelves there. I could put all my dyeing stuff there, in easy reach, and not have such a mess around the place. I mentioned it to John. When I got back from doing the church last night the shelving was up and he had arranged all my dyes and pots etc on the shelves for me.

I have two solid dyes to offer up and also two hand paints. I shall probably do more today.I wan to just go and do it now, but I have other priorities right now, like dog washing. I am finding it hard for nwo to do the essentials as all I really want to do is paint.

Needless to say, my knitting time has reduced drastically. I am half way up the leg of both socks using the Global Warming colourway. I dyed these amongst my first dye work and each sock is entirely different! They were 50g hanks, dyed with the same colours but one was the dilute of the other. An odd pair of socks but I wear odd boots so why not odd socks?

NIGHT AND HOUSE WEAR FROM BRUSSELS

I am using Live Writer to upload this post. Perhaps It is easier and better than Blogger.

This is one of the t-shirts that John bought for himself. Much to my surprise.

He also bought and and this .

I bought this pair of night trousers and also this long sleeved shirt and this one .

It is still very cold outside with snow and ice. –4c with –8c coming along with 20cm of snow for tonight and tomorrow.

Now it’s time to publish this and see what happens. Will it look as I want? (I have come to know that my blog looks different in IE, Chrome and Firefox!) (I have just checked this post under IE, Chrome and Firefox and it now looks the same in all three browsers. So it looks as though I shall stick with Live Writer.)

STORMY WEATHER

Today my friend Marilyn visited and John, she and I went out to the local Italian for lunch. We quite enjoyed it. we would have meandered around town except for this awful weather. Cold, windy and wet.

The weather has been awful all over, especially in the south west and floods etc are forecast.

My show tomorrow, the Lhasa Apso Association of Wales and South West Championship Show is in Stroud, Gloucester. Where many of the weather warnings are! It ought to be clear by tomorrow though.

I am knitting two pairs of socks. One is using the yarn I was sent as a present from a knitting friend. I will report on that when they are done. The other pair is using the yarn I dyed yesterday. I decided to use the yarn over cable a la Charlene Schurch. I am quite pleased with the way this yarn is knitting up. I am using 1.75mm Hiya Hiya's. The yarn itself feels really good, 80% merino 20% bamboo. This mix is fast becoming my favourite.

I am wearing a black and white ensemble tomorrow with a red turtle neck. No photograph but maybe I can get one tomorrow. It includes Dr Martens in white with black stars on them.

HERE you can see a picture of Whitney when she took RBIS in Scotland, along with the BIS and the other winners.

MY GUIDE

I had a call from my former therapist at the weekend. Yes, we still keep in touch, 10 years after I stopped being his client. I was for five years. He has become the good father figure I never had. He made a promise to me when he first became my therapist that he would be there 24/7 for me always. He kept his word. I needed him to be at first. This man never once told me there was anything wrong with me, he never labelled me, diagnosed me. He just let me be and talk about what I needed to talk about and guided me. He suggested, gently, reading matter. I'd read and discuss. He followed the 'client centred' approach. I still am appalled that Carl Rogers had to come up with this as a theory for therapy!!!! Any moron should know it has to be client centred!

Anyway, this man saved my sanity, if not my life. I am where I am today because of him. His coming into my life was foretold to me by a complete stranger, a couple of years previously. They had described him and told me the car he he drove. I took no notice until the day R. came to my home having been called by John, I think, because I was having severe flashbacks. It was as he was leaving that I noticed the car and the foretelling came back to me. At the time, I thought it was nonsense. The person me told that the man he was describing would alter my life completely. He was correct.

I have woken up late to wet and dull weather. I didn't go to the pool. I knew when I awoke during the night for the 4th time I would not be going. Too sore today. And too tired. This not sleeping more than a coupel of hours at a time, and dreaming when I do, is a pain.

I have been watching the second series of Damages. I am surprised to find myself doing so because after watching the first, I decided I didn't like it. there were no pleasant characters, no one to empathise with, no one to support. However, it is riveting! So I am watching it and enjoying it and wanting to know what happens next. I found out that my local Blockbuster rents the whole season out for the week for just £6.

HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER

I went to Paignton in Devon yesterday for another dog show. Whitney won the RCC (res Best Bitch). Angie, whom I go with,( we share fuel costs), won both her classes with her dogs.

The day was awful. It rained all the way there (260 miles) and all the way back(260 miles) and the whole time we were there.

I wore my ivory tux, lavender trousers, silver/lilac waistcoat, lilac cravat and purple, lilac and pink Kickers. No photo but I will get one taken. I shall ask a neighbour to do it for me.

On the way home, we stopped for coffee. What a performance. Bear in mind we both have buggered spines. Just getting out the car was a performance and a half and had you heard the grunts and groans but couldn't see us, you may have had a different image entirely of what we were doing.

We got our coffees and got in the car. As I was reversing , my wet foot slipped off the clutch and the car stalled and jerked and Angie's coffee, which was on it's way to her mouth, spilled down her front. All I heard was : ohh, my titties!!!! I hadn't at that point seen what had happened. I burst into hysterical laughter and she joined me. It was quite a while before I could stop laughing. Now, it wasn't her scorched boobs that made me laugh but what she said and how she said it. It still makes me giggle when I her recall her tone, like a very surprised little girl, and her use of the word 'titties'. Well, it tickled me anyway.

The weather is YUK today. Cloudy, grey and very hot and sticky. Still air. Fortunately, the dog show in Bournemouth on Saturday has sunny and dry weather forecast. After this show we have almost two weeks without one and then I have 4 in under two weeks.

Meet Aunt Edna

This is DIMARA AUNT EDNA, the new arrival at Tantra. Thanks to John and Mandy (Dimara). Her dad is Dimara Gorgeous George (2cc's) and her mum is Ch Dimara Misstical. She is 10 weeks on August 1st.
We drove up to collect her yesterday. She has been as good as gold and has not been at all phased by the crew already in residence. Despite what you see, Edna will be a silver grey eventually. It might take 2 years, it might take 6 but she will go grey.

On Sunday we went into Peterborough to the shopping mall. I have been wanting a very light coloured jacket, white or cream, for ages but had no luck in finding one at all. Now you may think this is daft, as I do, but I have before said to my dead Mum, 'look I want such and such' and I find myself directed to just where I need to be. I first tried it as a joke in a small town in Austria. I said to John, I am going to ask my mother to find a yarn shop for me. Well, I looked around, and I said to John, up here. We went and then I said, now right. And guess what? There it was. The yarn shop.

Anyway, I tried the same thing out on Sunday because we were both fed up looking. I spun around in my chair, moved out of the shop we were in and and 2 shops down, I went in and asked if they had a white or off white jacket. The assistant handed me the last Ivory Tuxedo they had, in my size and on sale.(My mum only ever bought on sale.) I bought it. I had not thought of a Tuxedo. It really shows off my waistcoats well. Oh, and she called it a dinner Jacket not a Tuxedo as we don't use that word here really. 'But Mum, I said, I still need a light jacket that isn't quite so formal.' We went and had coffee at Cafe Nero (really good coffee). When done, i said to John 'lets go up here'. Outside not in the mall. I saw the only shop open-a menswear store. And yes, you guessed it-a very light oatmeal coloured suit, on sale and in my size. Just what I wanted. I said to the guy i wanted it but not to bother with the trousers. At that he promptly knocked another 30 pounds off the price!

I also bought two Panama's and 2 Trilby's. On sale of course. John bought half a dozen shirts for work.

I will photograph them when the weather improves though we have just been told by the Weather Men of the BBC that we can expect this wet cold and stormy weather well into August......

I have had bad pain today so I popped a morphine about an hour ago and I feel better. weird really. I started off just feeling very tired and weak, not really that much pain but it grew on me as the day went on until my legs and hips were playing a tune up and down my legs. Stopped now. As have my hands. The morphine is the only drug that seems to stop my hands hurting. I still don't take it that much.

Oh, today I tried on lavender jeans, lavender, pink, silver waistcoat, lavender cravat, winged collar white shirt, the Tuxedo and a Panama with a lavender-ish band along with Kickers in three shades-purple, lavender, pink. That's me sorted for Paignton Championship Show. (The Tux has a zip up cover which it will stay in until I arrive at the show at unpack the car.)

OH CR*P!

Not a good day so far. I can barely walk and am having to use the sticks inside today. I didn't feel this bad last night when I got home from Blackpool.

Blackpool was a lovely day, windy but warm. It got a bit too warm for my liking. Whitney showed herself off as she always does and was 2nd in her Limit Bitch class.

Over two weeks ago a woman bid on my yarn. She won. After a few days she wrote and asked if she could delay payment until items she was bidding on finished the following week. Although miffed that she had not asked this of me on the day of having won the bid, I agreed. SEVEN days after the second wins she still had not paid and had ignored my communications. I started and unpaid item dispute with Ebay. Today I found that she has won more items and not only that has written to me sating how shocked she is at the unpaid item dispute and , get this, telling me how much postage she should be charged!!!!! Lets make one thing clear now: the weight I give of the yarn is just that-the yarn. The CONE weighs more!!! Plus, not being a business, I do not have access to boxes and any type of packing I want. I have postage bags and the yarn has to fit in those. I also have to pay for them. If someone buys a lot, then they get more than one package. It isn't rocket science. It really pisses me off that I will not be able to leave negative feedback for this rude buyer. I will have to be content with leaving none. However, I can BAN bidders and guess who will be first?

The dogs are really very clever, including the puppies. None of them have jumped up at me today and have approached me carefully. Whitney asked if she could ge ton my lap. I let her. She just lies there staring at me. When I look in her face, I sometimes want to cry. Not sure why. I just know I love this dog like I have not allowed myself to love a dog before. It is scary for me. I fell for her when she first arrived and she has for me too.

Today is cool and dull so don't know what happened to the hot sunshine we were supposed to have. It is supposed to be 30c+ next week. The warmth is good for me BUT when it gets too warm, I swell, just like others do, but because of the swelling, the impingement on my spine is worse and thus I get worse. Of course, one cannot command the weather to regulate itself to keep one at just the right temperature!

Brrr

Well yesterday at the dog show it was COLD! It did me no favours at all. It was windy too. So my legs became painful and it was rather difficult.

I got a 3rd with Micah and a 4th with Whitney in large classes (9 and 11). As I know dog people read this blog, I can't be as forthcoming as I usually am. Meaning I can't say what I would want to say about judging and what goes on at the shows. I can't write about judges who don't know the breed or judges who place dogs according to who is holding the lead, or about judges who diagnose defects without benefit of x-rays and knowledge, or judges who only give high awards to their friends, or how certain dogs become Champions just because 3 friends gave them the required award.No I cannot write about these things at all. I can write though that mostly what happens is above board. When it isn't, it is obvious and one crosses those judges off one's list. I do wonder if those who judge the wrong end of the lead realise they are being watched by people who KNOW? Or are they so arrogant as to think we are all stupid?

I have sold what I want to sell of the puppies. (They have not left yet - too young.) I have also found a very good home for Lui, I think. I am disappointed to be letting Lui go but he will much happier to be just a house dog. He HATES to show. Despite all his good physical attributes, I decided against breeding from him as I do not want to pass his temper on. You can bet your life that he will sire an excellent puppy that will also not like to show! Temper is so important. It is number one. Most puppies go to pet homes and they need to be sound and stable.Too many people ignore this. Obviously there is nothing about Lui that one would describe as bad tempered, he only doesn't like the crowds and showing. I have seen dogs though at shows who are scared, who are aggressive, who do not have the 'gay' character that Apso are supposed to have. They are also assertive and 'chary(wary) of strangers. Too many people use assertive to excuse aggression and chary to excuse nervousness. A dog that will not show, that continually drops his tail is not 'gay and assertive'. Nor is a dog that refuses to be handled or touched by the judge.

Again, I have not gone swimming today. Feel too weak and sore. Mainly weak. I seem to be going thru a fatigue and weak phase rather than a bad pain phase. Trouble is for pain I can take drugs. For this, I can do nothing.It is more than irksome! Even my fingers feel heavy.

I have been having some very odd dreams recently. I am one of these people with a vivid dream life. I dream nightly and recall them. I know everyone dreams but many don't recall them. I do. In technicolour too.

The night before last I dreamt I was in some sort of Jane Austen period drama. I was having bad stomach cramps and the two women in the dream were asking me what was wrong,I was unable to tell them because everytime I tried, I burst out laughing. I was trying to tell them I was not ill but in labour!!!! Now I have dreamt of being in labour once before and I could feel these painful contractions. I awoke thinking this was very odd when I had the contractions again! Turned out I had food poisoning and this was the beginning of a 10 day illness. I couldn't stop throwing up. Anyway, this time I am not ill though I wonder if I was having cramps from the IBS.

I also have dreams that herald change in my life. I am mostly not aware they mean this until the change occurs. For instance, last year's grief was indeed heralded by a very clear and to the point dream. I missed it's meaning, but I guess I wanted to.

I have also had dreams that come true. For some reason I dreamt of the Russian nuclear sub that sank years ago. I dreamed it before it appeared on the news. One of the most vivid dreams, and scary, I have had was I awoke from sleep and was in the kitchen of my flat, making coffee when I saw a mushroom cloud rise into the air. I was terrified. I calmed down when I realised that the bomb had gone off in Iran, not London. Given the present situation, this dream is often on my mind now and I dreamt it in the 80's.

Oh and guess what? Today is cold, wet and grey. Just for a change. Global warming anyone?