sutton075

Saturday, my sweet dog Ike died of hemangiosarcoma. Tragically, we had no idea he was seriously ill. In fact, he'd had his senior exam not long before this. We were constantly alert to Ike's daily health, and probably nothing would have changed the sad outcome. I'm sharing these details in the hopes it may help someone else...although sadly, there is very little that can be done to prevent or treat it. At the end I will list a few suggestions. Ike's symptoms (*this may not be the way it is for all dogs): 1. Ike was 10 years old. Over the last several months he seemed excessively tired at night, preferring to remain on his pillow in the living room rather than climb the stairs to join us. We'd mentioned it to our vet who surmised multiple possibilities for this. Maybe it was joint pain. We even considered that he wanted to be downstairs to stay with our other dog, who had started sleeping downstairs as well. Maybe it was just part of aging. Looking back, it was the c...

It is with the deepest sadness that I have to share that we had to say goodbye to Ike on Saturday. He was 10 years old. He was a good boy. Ike's Purpose Ike had many jobs to do here on earth, and he did them all without us asking. We adopted him when he was seven years old, and he knew that in order to stay with us, his first job was to get along with Kelly, our bossy female spaniel. From the start he was a gentleman and always let her have her way. His next job was to help my husband Mike recover from a life-threatening illness. When Mike came home from the hospital after 41 days, Ike provided TLC, the most powerful medicine around, especially when administered by a warm and furry canine companion. On a daily basis, he kept me company as I worked from home, and was the best office-mate ever. Then he became a certified therapy dog, giving unconditional love to all he met. Finally, as our 16-year old Kelly became blind, deaf and in the throes of dementia, he stepped in an...

A few weekends ago when Riley stayed over we did we did some watercolors.   I was inspired by this napkin on the counter. My rendition of a pear. This was a fun watercolor, I didn't stress over a perfect likeness.  My watercolors are for weaving cartoons not final products. Making a good start, using my 12 inch Mirrix loom with cotton seine twine with a sett of 8 epi.  Weft is Appleton 2 ply tapestry wool.  Three strands bundled together.  Above you can see I am weaving the area surrounding the bottom curves of the pear. Can you spot the Oops?  I have blocked in an area by weaving too far on the exterior of the pear.  Total rookie mistake! Meet and separate. Bubbling. Finished! Tomorrow I will cut this off and mount it.  This was a diversion, I really should be weaving Red Rocks for the Tapestry Weavers South show in May.

After finishing Road to Mamers it was time to plan the next tapestry.  Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective I have more tapestry ideas and enthusiasm at this point than skills. I admire the work of tapestry weavers who also draw, sketch and paint, like  Tommye Scanlon ,  Sarah Swett  and  Janette Meetze .  Alas, I do not draw or paint.  I did take a gazillion pictures when Rachel and I were in Arizona though. Each day we were surrounded by gorgeous vistas that took my breath away.  I blogged about it  here. So I went through all the photos, chose one and played with enlarging it and isolating an interesting piece of the picture. The view from our room at Sky Ranch Lodge. With some computer manipulation  I isolated the part I wished to weave and used the cartoon effect to edit the image. I pulled out my Navajo weaving books for inspiration.  Should I border this with some stripes or Navajo motifs to honor the re...