400th post!!! - The dog with.................

............................the dirtiest face in the world!

............................the longest tongue in the world!!!

So what have I been up to?

Oh dear, I really need to update don't I? Well here goes........

On July 3rd Colin travelled up to Fort William in torrential rain to climb Ben Nevis the next day for his 365challenge. His usual travel companion Dave went with him and they were met up there by several others, who all managed to make it to the summit in about 4 and a half hours.


One of our oldest uni friends, Paul, who lives near Edinburgh also travelled up for the day and joined them too. (Nice legs, boys!)


When they made it back down to the bottom, Paul's wife had been off to buy champagne for them all to celebrate completing the 3 highest peaks in the UK.


In the meantime, not being into climbing mountains, or any kind of exercise for that matter, I had a houseguest to keep me company. My mum!


We didn't really do much, just pottered around, and treated Susie to a lovely juicy bone which she was very chuffed with.


On the Sunday was the thrilling Wimbledon men's final. I decided to support Roddick as he was the underdog and because he had beaten Murray so if he won it would mean Murray had been beaten by the eventual winner and he would be excused, hahah! Dave and Colin arrived back during the 4th set and Dave is a big Federer fan so there was good rivalry going on there. Poor Dave needed to drive back to Reading but hung on to the bitter end.

In books, I have just finished One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson, (see review below) and have decided to try A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini next as several people have recommended it to me.

In knitting, I still have several WIPs but that hasn't stopped me casting on a pair of Conwy socks from the book Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush. The photos in this book do the socks no justice at all, it is much better to look at the finished ones on ravelry to get a better idea of how they turn out. I am using a variegated red/orange/dark red yarn that I got at Woolfest last year from KnitWitches yarns.

Hopefully in a couple of hours I will be able to hear properly again after at least 5 weeks of having blocked ears. Since the infection I had, my left ear has never "popped" and then a couple of days ago my right one got blocked with wax. I am going to get them syringed this afternoon, so hopefiully I will be back to normal.

a cooling shower

We went off to the forest earlier and as usual madam found the mud and water!


Which resulted in a hose down after. "Oi watch where you're sticking that hose, dad!"


She actually loves the hose and was having a good drink from it too.

There, all done!

Eastham Country Park

We made a discovery yesterday. We were wondering where we could go to take Susie for a walk, and we were going to go to the beach but it is more or less at the top of the Wirral to West Kirby beach, a bit of a trek. We had a look on google maps to see if there were any beaches nearer and found not a beach but a lovely country park called Eastham Country Park, and it is only about 10 miles away. So off we went.

Firstly this gate was amusing, if you click on the photo you'll see why! Apparently this was the original gateway to the old Victorian park


which used to have a zoo in it. This was the original bearpit which had two bears (not these two!). Look at the awful cramped conditions.


I'm not sure what would have lived in this dark little hole.


There were some lovely new green leaves on the beech trees


And these mushrooms seem to be doing a lot better than my meagre efforts!


The park is directly in the flight path for Liverpool airport and about every 5 minutes there would be a roar as one of these passed overhead. I don't know how that airport would survive if EasyJet went bust!


This was a huge felled tree that we found - I positioned the models to show the scale


and this photo I like because she looks so puppyish.


We'll be going there again now that we have found it.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The postman has just been and look what he brought!! Cookie's book!

I had a panic last week because I had pre-ordered this book from The Book Depository. I had an email to say that they now had them in stock and my order had gone to packing. The next day I had another email saying they cancelled my order so I emailed back to ask why and they said they had underestimated the demand and had to cancel some orders cos they didn't have enough. Amazon didn't have any either so I went on the message boards in ravelry and Terri PM'ed me to say that Socktopus had 7 copies left when she last looked. By the time I got that message another 6 hours had passed so when I went to look they had 2 left. I snaffled one quick and now it is here! I'm too exited to look at it now! (BTW they are waiting on more, to arrive 3rd week of April if you want to pre-order.)

We went to the beach at Thurstaton on Sunday morning and we lost a tennis ball but gained a punctured football! The beach wasn't a great one, a bit stony, so I think we'll go back to West Kirby next time. We did stop in Church Farm Organics though and got a few tasty treats.

Speaking of which, the Chester Food & Drink Festival is on over Easter weekend. Mmmmmmm, hog roast for lunch, slurp!

Snoozy Susie

Delamere

We went out to Delamere Forest Park after lunch today to give Susie a bit of a run out. She hasn't had a lot of exercise this week so she needed it. First she found a rather big stick but got fed up of that pretty quickly when she discovered the muddy puddles.....








and ended up looking a bit grubbier than when we started. There were lots of other dogs running about and lots of cyclists to avoid if possible. There is also a new Go Ape adventure there where you basically traverse through the trees by various ropes and swings. Not my thing, we'd have to go there with someone who wanted to do it so that Colin could go up and and I could stay on the ground.




Then it was home time, looking a bit sheepish from getting all mucky. I put the hose on her with a bit of dog shampoo out the back but forgot I'd have to get my hands wet to get all the shampoo out - the water was FREEZING!!!

Susie went to the beach today.....

(click the pictures for larger versions)

........she played in the sand with the ball................she went in the water and got a bit damp........
......and she found herself a nice young man.............
a toyboy actually, he was only 3, called Max. They are very similar in appearance, except he was a bit chunkier than her. They even had matching collars - hers is red and his was black! Made for each other.

I'm not common

I was driving to work yesterday and everywhere I went I saw those little Fiat 500 bubblecars. They have only been out a little while but they appear to be very popular. In my 3 mile journey I saw at least four of them. They look tiny though. In the two and a half months since I've had my car I've only seen 3 others the same and only one the same colour - makes me feel like I have something rare and a little bit special.

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I haven't knitted anything in 8 days!!! Tell a lie, I got my mum knitting a scarf while she was here visiting and I did a few rows for her, but apart from that - nothing. The last time I knitted was last Thursday in Ireland but that was one repeat of the pattern on the leg of a pair of Monkeys. I think it is because I am feeling a bit "meh" about the two things I have on the go. I am using a self patterning yarn for the Monkeys and it is not particularly showing the pattern off well. On my Amused I thought I'd be clever with my provisional cast on and now I am almost at the point of separating the arms off, I am worried that when I undo the cast on it will be all wrong. So I am deliberating whether to rip back and start again with a crochet cast on like it says in the pattern.

So everything has come to a grinding halt.

I am waiting on some yarn from ebay which I won and paid for on 15th February and which hasn't turned up yet. I emailed the seller yesterday but haven't had a reply yet but then I checked their neutral feedback and it said that it took ages to arrive. Just a waiting game there then, I hope. When it arrives I'm hoping to make this Drops Jacket with it - mmm, lots of cables.

Sign ups for Sock Wars IV are open if anyone is interested, you have until 1st May to do so. I am not going to participate this time because of the problems I had in Day of the Dead and it is run the same way.

How old?

Would you believe that this man is 90 years old? That's Colin's dad and we were over in Ireland for a few days last week to see him on the big day. He is fit as a flea and puts me to shame! This is him with Colin and his sister Fiona.


Fiona gave Colin this shirt and I told him that from the neck down he looked like Noel Edmonds - he was a bit miffed at that!


Here is the birthday cake with some little golfers on it, Sean still plays a few holes every day.


And this is my old car which lives in Ireland now. Look what they've done to it - put one of those funny Irish number plates on it! That's its new owner giving it a kiss, Colin's niece Rachel.


So we were away from Wednesday to Saturday and when we got back my mum came up to visit from Sunday till this morning. I think she fell in love with Susie when she met her - well who wouldn't? Look at her!

The C word.

(No not the rude one, the scary one)

Eighteen months ago, it was a word beginning with a small "c". It was something you heard on the news that ageing celebrities had died from after "a long battle with". It was something your neighbour's, auntie's, second cousin's hairdresser had had, and was mortified because her hair had fallen out.

Then it came crashing into our life with a giant capital "C", when Colin was diagnosed with a soft tissue sarcoma in September 2007. And it has been a part of our lives since. Happily he had it removed - it was a lump on his forearm - and after 6 weeks of radiotherapy in Nov/Dec 07 he was put on regular check-ups and "touch wood" he is fine. When his sister lost her battle in June 2008, he took it upon himself to raise money for Cancer Research UK and you can read about his efforts (and maybe sponsor him???) on his website 365challenge.co.uk and read about the gathering momentum of the publicity for it on his blog.

On Monday he took Susie to the vet to have her stitches removed, and the results of the lump were in. It was a soft tissue sarcoma! What are the chances? The report was that they believed they had removed it all, and that it wasn't the type of thing that metastisizes but may reoccur at the same site. They do not do radiotherapy so we just have to keep an eye on it and if it reoccurs they will remove it again. We wonder if her previous owners knew, but they hadn't told Labrador Rescue about it and they hadn't noticed it. It's not really something that you would miss on a family pet.

But the bright side for her is that she has us. We will look after her no matter what. We love her to bits already and we'll be keeping an eye on that leg. And, now the stitches are out, she can go off the lead again and have a jolly good run around at the park, chasing the ball and meeting her new friends.

Back to the important things

Phew, I don't know what came over me there, maybe it was the fact that it was my 300th post and it needed to be significant. Anyhoo, back to the important things, knitting!

I have an FO and two WIPs but can't show any of them as they are for other people. One of them is a pair of socks for my step-dad which he knows about but I don't want him to see them until I have sent them to him. The other two are surprises but I think one person may have figured out what I am up to becasue I asked her for her shoe size!!!

As I hadn't worked on a pair of socks for over a month, I am all enthusiastic about them again. So much so that I have decided I want to design some myself. Whether there are any original sock patterns left to discover is another thing, but to help me along I have made a little purchase. Well, 3 little purchases but they only count as one really as they are a set of three books. The Harmony Guides to knitting stitches: Knit and Purl Stitches, Cable and Aran Stitches, and Lace and Eyelet Stitches. I have had these on my amazon wishlist for quite a while and when I saw them at £8.99 each (RRP £14.99) with free P&P I could resist no longer. Hopefully they will be here in a few days but not to worry because I need to finish these other things first.

Susie has had her operation to remove the cyst from her leg and after a week it seems to be healing well now, even though she managed to pop one of the stitches. The rest are coming out next week. The vet didn't know what the lump actually was so has sent it off to be analysed, but fingers crossed it isn't anything sinister, we could do without that, financially and emotionally. She has very quickly become part of the family and is very affectionate, especially with Colin, she won't leave him alone in the evenings and keeps pawing at him for attention.

As Diana famously said........

......there are three of us in this marriage!

I think she's settling in okay, actually!

Our new housemate!

In between Christmas and New Year we decided we needed a new housemate. Some of you long term readers will remember that we lost our old boy Podge at the age of 16 in October 2007, and our unsuccessful attempt with a puppy in January 2008. We thought we would wait until the spring to get another dog and not rush into getting something cute and fluffy. We decided to go for a resue dog because Podge was a rescue and a great success.

Anyway the subject came up over Christmas and we decided to start looking and went to a couple of rescue places. The first one had a couple of nice looking dogs but none of the temperaments were quite right. Then at the second one we took a border collie out for a walk but decided against him because he would have just had too much energy. We tried to think of a calmer breed and wondered about labradors.

We looked on the internet and there is a charity, Labrador Rescue with a branch in the north west so we had a quick look at their website. We had to register and have them contact our old vet for a reference before we could be approved as adopters. When they said everything was fine we waited to see if a likely candidate came up on their site. The next day I spotted a female, 4 years old and we rang them straight away. We were the first to enquire and we made an appointment to go see her on Friday.

We had to drive about an hour to Chorley up the M6, but it was worth it. She was unsure of us when she was first let out of her kennel, and barked and growled a bit but we took her around the garden and she was fine. We were a little wary, not wanting to make a mistake but we just couldn't leave her behind, so she came home with us.

And we couldn't have wished for a better dog. She knows loads of commands, if you put her food down and tell her to wait she won't touch it until you let her. And she stayed downstairs at night despite the fact that we didn't put up a stairgate and she could have come up anytime. She has been off the lead and played with other dogs, and she is very cuddly. We do have to get a cyst removed from her leg next week, and we have some drops for a waxy ear, but apart from that - SUCCESS!

Okay, so you want to see her now don't you? Here she is..........Susie.