Quilting, sewing, our life, attempting to cook....

We had been talking for awhile about getting a second dog, Henry is getting up there in years and we thought he would like some company.  One night in early March, Kyle was perusing craigslist and usedeverywhere for good deals locally and he came across an ad for a “free dog to a good home.”  Of course, he showed me the ad (because like I would turn down a dog!) – the picture showed a skinny Treeing Walker Hound and the ad said he was 15 months old. 

Kyle suggested we go and meet him.  Because I can do that, go and meet a poor lonely animal and then leave them there – all poor and lonely. Sure.   And because it is so easy to walk away from hound dog eyes.  Sure sweetie, let’s go and “meet” him!!   Well, we load up the little truck with a leash and a blanket, and away we went!   We pulled up to this house and there was this little dog, trying to hide from us in his dog house!  He was tied to his house by a leash, he was underweight and losing his hair off his back.  He was obviously stressed and not in very good shape.   Kyle took one look at the dog, then looked at me and said “get him in the truck!”   Just going to meet the dog, huh?  Well, you don’t to tell me twice, in the truck went the dog and off to our house we drove.

Here he is…handsome, isn’t he? I am so happy we made the space in our family and home for him.

We called him Waylon.  It suits him.  He had very little training when we got him so has taken some work, he doesn’t know his boundaries very well and hounds are notorious for getting distracted by a scent and following it.  He is getting far, far better though, the biggest thing has been training him to sit and stay, because then we he is trying to make a break for it we can stop him with those commands!  He has come in leaps and bounds in the eight months he has been here.

He is really quirky, when he has been at home without people for a few hours he talks when we do come home – you ask him how he is doing and what he did while we were gone and he howls and chats with you!  He is like a pesky little brother to Henry sometimes, but Henry is patient.  He loves to eat, when we first brought him home he would gobbled his food down but now he is a little slower with it.  He LOVES the cat, he stares adoringly at her.  He also loves his bed, I don’t think he had anything really soft to sleep on before we brought him home because at times you can’t get him away from his comfy dog bed!

Oh, and he is a thief.  He started with dishcloths, moved onto Kyle’s socks and lately he has been stealing my panties!!  I guess that makes him a thief and a weirdo!

A few days ago I came home from work and he had been up to no good, but I think he had an accomplice in the form of Eleanor.  As you can tell by the photographic evidence, these playing cards were all over the floor, which I believe were knocked down by Eleanor, and Waylon had obviously been gambling with them.  I can think of only two options:

• He wants to be in the dogs playing poker picture, or
• He mistakenly thinks he is named after The Gambler (Kenny Rogers) instead of Waylon (as in Jennings)

I notice they were wagering with cat toys, chew toys, stuffies and radiators.  Curious, very curious indeed!

I also love the guilty look on Waylon’s face and how he is sitting on his bed.

This is our Henry - he is almost eight years old and is a Black and Tan Coon-hound.  Kyle and I adopted him a few months after we first met and he is by far my best pal.   I guess I could this picture his fall portrait.  Just kidding.  Sort of.

He is handsome, faithful and really, really funny.   He adores Kyle so much it is almost a little ridiculous, he cries in the morning when Kyle leaves without him!!  Mind you, I don’t know if he is crying because Kyle has left or because he thinks he is missing out on a truck ride!

Today Henry and I took a trip down to the creek to hunt down a missing-in-action Waylon, here are some pics from that jaunt.  This is my favorite time of year in our back yard, it is after the fish have finished spawning, so the dogs don’t have fish to hunt down but before the creek has risen for the winter – in a few months the creek bed where I have taken these pictures will be above my head!!  We think it gets to around 16 feet deep.   I also love the colours of this time of year.

I love when the water looks like this – so smooth you could almost walk on it…

The trail home.  Henry loves to show me how fast he can run here!  Years and years ago (100 +  years!), there was a lot of mining around here and this are is actually a dike that used to have tracks for the mine carts!

Lastly, this is my latest quilt design.  It has been made out of a couple of charm packs and some yardage from Fig Tree Quilt’s Strawberry Fields line.  I LOVE  this line! 

One the quilting/sewing/pattern front – this is the third pattern I will have typed and completed, once it is done I will have all three listed in my etsy shop.  After that, my goal is to list one pattern a month.  My aim for my patterns is to write them so they are unintimidating for a beginning seamstress, with lots of step-by-step instructions and tons of pictures.  I want them to be encouraging and uncomplicated, even for the more complex designs, I want anyone to be able to use them.  It is a little hectic right now because we are also in the middle of some home renos!  (but, one of those renos is building my sewing studio – I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel).

At about 4 am on Monday morning I ended up on Kyle’s side of the bed because it was closer to the bathroom and I was had been up no less than 3 times quite sick. Because I am a control freak the alarm clock is on my side. So, when the alarm clock went off at 6 am I kept whacking him in the forehead to shut it off, the longer it buzzed the harder I whacked. He was all “Whoa, whoa, what, what, what?  What did I do? Why are you hitting me??”  I must have hit him a good 5 or 6 times before I became fully conscious.  And I guess considering that Kyle is blind as a bat without his glasses, it was a double-whammy because he couldn’t see where the abuse was coming from! 

What a way to start the day!

On to other things…

We recently returned from a trip to California.  We took a cruise from Vancouver to LA and then stayed in Anaheim for a week.  It was such a wonderful break! 

This is getting ready to leave Vancouver…

My sweetheart…

Did you know you can MINIGOLF on a cruise?? I was so excited about this!  I won.

We went on the Warner Brothers Studio Tour – and I got to visit Central Perk!  Having grown-up with Friends on TV, I was tickled to be able to sit on their couch…

Lastly, one day we found this lovely beach – it was totally abandoned!  I couldn’t believe it.  And Kyle snapped this picture of me, I love it…