Happy Stuff

I was sitting watching the Olympics a couple of nights ago, and I was thinking about starting a new knitting project, but then I realized that I couldn't start something because I had unfinished business. I just wasn't happy with the arms on the baby Poonam sweater I finished last week, so I took them out and reknit them. I am so glad I did because I took over the finished product to my friend's house today, and her little baby was quire pleased with his fashionable new item. He'll probably only wear it a couple of times, but I enjoyed knitting it, and his "knitting mother" seemed to really appreciated it.

In other happy news, we had a guest this weekend. Her name is Hershey, and the picture above is a picture that I took last fall and posted on Facebook, hoping to find her owner. She followed my friend and I home from our run one morning and was ADAMANT that we help her. I figured that someone in the neighborhood had lost her and was frantically looking for her since she appeared to be a purebred and was so darn cute. I took her inside to give her a little food, and then Russ went in search of her owner. We, of course, were limited on time since we had to get to work, so when we couldn't find an owner, we let her out into the "cold cruel world" again because we couldn't leave her in the house, and our dogs are inside/outside dogs. When we came home for lunch, she was in the house again because Kai had heard her crying outside her door and took pity. We really didn't want another dog, but now we really felt responsible, and, on closer inspection, we discovered that she was very thin and not well taken care of.

To make a long story short, she was adopted and is now doted on by a neighbor who had lost a beloved dog a year or two before, after we showed up on her door step and told her that she needed a new dog. Part of the deal is that we are "dog parents" when our neighbor leaves for the weekend, which is fairly often. Hershey stays with us, and, unfortunately, has taken on some of our dogs' bad habit, like sleeping on the warm laundry on the couch, that is waiting to be folded. I discovered her here with Gidget after returning with the rest of the load. Sigh!

Tiny Aran

In teaching, you start having colleagues who were also your students as soon as five or six years after they graduate, so you can imagine that since I've been teaching for over twenty-five years that I have tons of ex-student-fellow teachers. One of them, who has actually moved on up to teaching at the community college next door to our high school, had a baby in December. She's a knitter. Additionally, she's a "math teacher" knitter, which means that she probably doesn't improvise as much as I do, preferring to be mathematically accurate instead of just "guestimating." I'm a little unsure about how these sleeves are going to work out, but I'm pretty happy with this Baby Poonam. I'd better hurry and deliver it. We're back to kind of normal California winter weather. I'm not sure it even hit 50 degrees yesterday. Brrrrrr!