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Three days ago Matt and I went to go see two Great Danes, fully intending on taking home just one(if any, we’re picky like that.) I even gave Matt a standard speech about how same sex bonded pairs of dogs were more or less a myth, the results of humans anthropomorphizing dog emotions into a complex foster-sibling relationship that does not exist. The dogs really don’t care if they’ve been buddies for however long because biologically they were meant to go off and create their own social circles based on their reproductive opportunities.

I just want you all to know that when I decided we should take both dogs, it was not because of a flawed pop-ethology theory of doggie buddies. Obviously, the dogs had decided to lace their drool with a psycho-reactive mind control drug and used state of the art hypnotic suggestion technology on me. I was helpless to resist.

Right, so want to see the babies?

Sydney, Georgia and me on their first night

The marle (gray & black in the foreground) is Sydney, and the fawn (standing next to me) is Georgia. I decided that since they weren’t trained (at all) and didn’t recognize their original names that it would be better to give rechristen them, both are 18 months so adapting to their new identities was a fairly graceful affair. According to the original owners neither is leash trained, housebroken, or obedience trained but they are “kinda” crate trained (and I have a huge neon sign saying “Sucker” across my forehead.)

The first thing Georgia did (post-butt sniffing) was check out the kennel (which our dogs don’t use, because they have our nice comfy bed to take over in the middle of the night.) Danes are not outside dogs, and Labs really are way too social to want to sleep alone, so the kennel is more or less for the benefit of Elle, the chicken, who thinks it’s a swimmingly great vacation home when she needs a break from her coop.

Wouldn’t you know it? When we brought Sydney into the mix, and all the butts were sniffed she went right over and started checking out the kennel.

Georgia

Georgia is unconvinced that the big pillow on the floor is actually meant for her use. Because she’s such a big girl (seriously huge– even in Dane terms) at such a young age, we have to be very careful with her joints– which means convincing her that the pads and pillows around the house are for her use.

Syd and her blankie

And then there’s Syd, who is only too happy to declare that everything is hers. Sydney’s a sweety but she’s under socialized with other dogs, hates/fears leashes, distracted by every little thing, insecure and possessive. On the upside; she likes people, she’s already more confident and really digs training. I’m going to ignore the leash thing for a while and just work on her basic manners and obedience skills, I hate putting off something as important as leash training but I don’t want to traumatize her by forcing the issue.

Greta seems to have taken over the potty training for the young’uns– so there haven’t been any accidents in the house. I never trained her to keep an eye on other dogs, but for some reason she’s taken it upon herself to alert us when someone needs to go outside and to reward them when they are done with a barrage of head nuzzles and licks. There is no doubt, Greta is the most awesome dog– ever.

The collar is now on Lexi’s dress, and the sleeves are basted on but still need to be serged. The pixies’ work ethic seems to leave a little something to be desired since they keep getting distracted by things like watching movies, making soap, taking the dogs for walks, reading books and buying holiday print fabric. Those darned pixies are much better at buying things than finishing projects.

Have you ever seen a fabric and thought “Wow that is perfect for X project, I’ll get it!” and then you pay for it and get it home and can’t effing remember what project you had in mind? Yeah, that’s exactly what I did– twice now. I have two different sets of coordinating Christmas fabrics in 1 yard, 1/2 yard and 1&1/2 yard lengths– and now I don’t know what I intended to make. But it must be good enough to make at least two– I have no clue.

I’ll probably remember, on Christmas Eve. I think the holiday stress from last year is finally catching up with me.

Whatever the project is, I know it requires quilt batting, because when I picked out the first set of fabrics, I also made a point of getting low loft poly quilt batting, which is weird because I actually have cotton quilt batting. I seem to have lost my mind, if you see it would you kindly return it to me? I miss it.

The pixies also found a nice online source for loaf molds for soap making and faster than you can clap your hands and say “I believe in fairies” they were ready to order. (I’m liking the pixies because blaming them for everything means I don’t have to take personal responsibility– pixies are awesome.) I’ll post when my order comes in, but I believe they use USPS priority mail, the prices are great; my only real complaint is that Spiritcrafts isn’t very well advertised, so I haven’t found it till now. If I’d found them sooner I would have molds and cutters already– instead I’ve been using a plastic bin for my cold pour mold (which, granted does work, but doesn’t make my soap very pretty.)

So right now I’m working on: a batch of castile soap (which is taking an agonizingly long time to saponify, typical for non-pomace olive oil), Lexi’s dress, trying to remember the mysterious forgotten intended holiday project, and reading “the Ghost Map” by Steven Johnson.

Today is Lexi’s birthday, the Lex monster is 5 years old. Right now she’s celebrating by eating a small box of white chocolate. 5 year old + sugar= oh dear what have I done!?

Her birthday party was on the 2nd, so today is more or less going to be a quiet affair with some cupcakes, a stroll down to the park and library, and if the weather permits some running through the sprinkler.

I have Lexi’s latest dress cut, pieces surged, sleeves basted, pin fitted, and darnit– it’s just not finished. My last excuse was that I didn’t have the zipper and I needed new blades (upper and lower) for the Babylock. I have the zipper now, and the blades did come in the mail, but I haven’t put them in the machine yet. I briefly considered adding eyelet lace but that would be a poor excuse for my procrastination since I think I actually have eyelet lace somewhere.

I’m on the verge of breaking down and admitting that pixies are not going to sneak in and finish my sewing projects. I’m not quite there yet, just very close.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s been a while since I blogged regularly, I really ought to do something about it. I’ve fallen out of the habit.

I haven’t done much that’s been yarn related, which is probably somewhat responsible for the non-blogging that has been going around here lately. Although I am starting to get my craft on again, I’m just not terribly yarny at the moment.

Or seasonably appropriate. I try to stay on top of the handmade gift making prior to the holidays, which means starting about yesterday in order to make sure that everyone that wants a handmade goody gets one.

Today my crafty goodness is centering around Christmas trees. My great-grandmother Cora used to make the most fantastic fabric centerpiece trees out of holiday calico prints. I think my mom might still have one packed away somewhere, I haven’t seen it since I was a kid. My version is scaled down (4 inches tall instead of 20 inches), all straight lines (Grandma Cora’s had zig zagging curls so that you could actually hang treats on the “branches”) and I added a little trunk.

I was only planning on making two more of these if this one turned out (I wasn’t sure it would but I think it’s kind of cute now that I’ve finished it.) I’m now sorely tempted to make a tiny saccharine sweet textile forest. I’m thinking the next one should have some strategic rickrack.

On the chance that this might turn out I took pictures of the construction process. So here are the instructions:

1) Cut six triangles of fabric. Make three pairs with fronts inside. Stitch around using only 1/8th inch allowance (if you’re going to sew with a machine give yourself 1/4 inch allowance) leave bottom open.

2)Trim corners and turn, finger pressing seams.

3)Line up triangles and stitch with a running stitch straight down the middle, turning in allowances over the bottom.

4)Stuff with filling (I used poly-fil) Stitch the bottoms closed (I used a hidden stitch, but a whip stitch will work.

5)Glue brown felt onto something round, I used the plastic lid from a spray bottle, but a little one inch pvc pipe or a wooden thread spool would also work.

6)Glue trunk to tree.

just use YouTube.

I’d forgotten the combination on my bike lock and was not looking forward to taking cutters to the cable to get it off. I watched the video, and in under two minutes I had the mad skills of a master locksmith. Yay!

Okay, maybe not the master of anything other than being a somewhat absent minded bicyclist. I can be at peace with that.

I can’t be at peace with is how easy it is to hack my own lock. If some idiot watching a 1 minute YouTube video (that would be me) can unlock my lock in the next minute– how safe is my bike? Maybe I should just scrap the lock and buy a more secure one. But what if I lose the key or forget the combination again and it’s not hackable? Then I lose the lock because calling a locksmith would cost more than taking cutters to the lock, I have prior experience with this very dilemma– can you tell?

I was going to head down to the library today, I forgot that it was Sunday and they tend to frown on patrons breaking in and perusing the books when they are closed so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

There’s this issue. A sensitive issue. A blight really.

I’m not sure there’s a delicate way to bring this up but its a topic that should discussed with frankness and maturity.

It’s called ‘muffin top‘ (and no we’re not talking about delightful baked goods) and it’s a plague. A pandemic. A very big problem.

A few years ago it seemed restricted to the 13-23 year old female population of this country, so I didn’t do much more than make the sign of the evil eye and avert my gaze. But now it’s infecting women my age, and I’m concerned, horrified, appalled, filled with fear and dread.

The cause of muffin top seems to be that women are no longer aware that they can buy clothing which fits some areas (namely the butt or waist areas whichever needs more room) and take them to this person called a tailor, or (gasp) an alterations seamstress. Seriously. Honestly. Hand on heart sincerely.

For as little as $10 a muffin top tragedy can be averted and pants can be cut and hemmed to the right length. All it takes is $10 and the will to survive, or at least the desire to live a somewhat normal life, and about an hour.

I bring this up because my neighbors teenage daughter has been a long time muffin top sufferer, but more recently this trend has affected her mother. Its so sad– now muffin top has infected a whole family.

I don’t know what I as a neighbor can do to help these poor people, so instead of maturely addressing my neighbor, woman to woman– I have decided to blog about it and expose the truth. Tailors (and perhaps some moderate diet and exercise) are the only known cure.

but I was one of the blogs that had iframes inserted into and was deemed dangerous by Google.

I’m safe now. Blog updated to the latest version, bad posts cleaned or kills and nasty files deleted. So now I need to check over my other blogs.

Fortunately all it did was was insert code to link to a bunch of stupid German casino sites and alter a few posts to talk about my phallus (how embarrassing for me– my tiny penis is a constant source of shame– those cruel bastards!)

Please go to Tips tricks tools & techniques to learn more about this attack, especially if you have a Wordpress blog. And if you notice a blog that is running particularly slow or see the IP address 61.155.8.157 transferring information email the blog owner so they can clear the nasties.

When I first heard about the proposed changes to the US copyright law, I thought it was just another internet rumor. I was wrong.

Before 1978 US copyright was an opt in system (unless we go back to the first English copyright laws in which case it was mandatory– because the monarchy wanted to know who to blame for certain works produced from that new fangled printing press.) In 1978 artists and writers were given an opt out system, meaning that from the time a piece was created (unless for commission) it automatically belonged to the creator of the work. Sonny Bono did something too, then he died– you’ll have to look it up on Wikipedia because I’m on a roll now.

Jump to now, where there is a legitimate problem with orphaned works, creative works that have no known copyright holder or the known copyright holder is dead without any apparent heirs but do not fall into the current definition of public domain. In an ideal world we (the public) would be able to hunt people down and ask for their permission or give fair use attribution, but this is often a less than ideal world so someone came up with a truly idiotic idea as a solution.

That idiotic idea is the revocation of automatic protection under copyright statutes, unless the creator(s) of a work submit it to a private registry within a period of time and goes easy on copyright infringers that can claim that they tried to find the original owner of a piece.

So if Mary wants to copyright her shawl pattern, under the proposed legislation she needs to pay a fee and register it with a private company (that as yet does not exist) and even if she does that an infringer can come along, create an obviously derivative work, and claim that they tried to track Mary down, but couldn’t so they aren’t liable for any damages to the value of Mary’s work. And if Mary’s name is on the shawl pattern but she didn’t register it (to a private company that does not exist yet) then she’s basically given it into the public domain as an orphaned work.

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but we’re primarily a service and entertainment supported country here in the US and this legislation would make it even easier to reduce the value of creative works by bootleggers and not very nice people.

Some links:

Op-ed in the NY Times

Photo advocates divided over Orphan works

Senate Committy OKs Orphan Works Bill

Great Danes were originally bred for hunting wild boar. When hunting wild boar went out of vogue, Great Danes evolved into the biggest sissy dogs on the planet. I tried to get Greta to tap into her primal ancestry and give me a noble boar hunting face.

We tried using the squeaky ball to imitate the grunting of an enraged wounded boar. Using a squeaky ball turns out to be a poor way to tap into primal energy.

We finally had to resort to gravity. (Greta is such a ham.)

Ah that’s better, it even gives her the cropped ear look.

(If you could just turn your monitor upside down, you’ll experience the terror that a wounded boar must have felt.)

Labs were also developed for hunting. Sunny knows this and taps into her primal side rather well.

There. Right there. That’s the kind of dog face that makes squeaky balls quake and squeal in terror. Yes. Very nice.

Now time to kiss Greta.

Awww.

I guess it’s obvious from the pics that we were taking advantage of the nice weather. I dread the end of spring break, come Monday I’m back to the books– and playing with the girls is so much more fun.

This buxom blond is Miss Sunnie, she’s 2 years old and a complete sweetheart. She’s also a typical lab personality; open, friendly and full of energy. Newest member of the household.

She’s also a little tuckered out at the moment.

Sunny is a leash puller, which (seeing as how she’s a hundred pounds of motivation) can be problematic, so I put her on the leash and we played stop and go game in the fenced portion of the yard. She’s catching on.

As I’m on spring break from my studies, I figure I have plenty of time to work with Sunnie on this part of being a nice dog. She’s already house broken, knows the basic commands, doesn’t bark, and is very polite so I have no doubt that she’ll understand that the leash is not meant to drag her humans around by the end of the week. (For, as Greta will tell you, the leash serves as a reminder to keep humans from running out into the street after ice-cream trucks and squirrels, it shouldn’t be used for discipline or as a control– a properly trained human respects the leash.)

Greta thinks Sunnie is the bomb, and after one good butt sniff she was delighted and acted as if Sunnie has always been her best friend– even though she did not approve of Sunnie laying on her couch, even best friends must have some boundaries. Sunnie now has her own pillow and Greta seems content to let the violation of the couch slide as a newbie mistake.