buying a home

Some of you know I'm buying a home in Haines, AK, a small town about 50 miles north of my old home town. I'm all excited and nervous at the same time. I had a house in Washington about a year and a half ago that I hated. The house wasn't bad, it was the place, the attitude, the location, the utter flatness of the landscape nearby and the ravaged logged hills further away. That purchase turned out to be a big mistake that's haunting me... I was miserable there. I thought I wanted to live 'down south' in a small coastal town because I'm from a small coastal city in Alaska. I was wrong.

Now I'm afraid I'll be wrong again. AGH. I know I want to live in Haines, I know I can't live in the big fat part of Alaska. I just don't want to be wrong again, I can't afford it in terms of money or sanity.

So, anyway, I'm packing boxes and juggling logistics and it's going to work out...one step at a time. Dog drugs came in the mail today, tomorrow I have an eye doctor appointment, the dog has to get shots on Saturday. I need to buy an axe (I have a woodstove!) and a weed eater (I have a yard) and probably a new pair of X-tra tuffs (it rains there). Most of the time I love my totally solo life, but it would be easier if someone were here to help with all this stuff!

She said that picture wasn't flattering

This is what she looked like just after the surgery...she claims it's all my fault! The stitches up closer to her head was for a fatty (non cancerous) tumor, and the set between her forelegs for a cancerous one. They had to take an inch of skin all the way around the cancerous one...she had a sort of chest lift pulling all the skin tight.

Thing is...I knew she'd have the fatty one removed some day, it was around for a long time and grew very slowly. When the day finally came, I was not ready for it at all! The surgery meant she's an old dog now because old dogs get cancer when their immune systems start to slow down. ...oh dog.

Her highness waiting for me to pack her favorite toys in the U-haul.

Dog of my life

This is Ceilidh ("kaylee"), the dog that owns me. She's an 11 year old chow/heeler mix with chow fur, heeler smarts and a little of the attitude of each. She's smart enough to know that a person holding a treat expects her to sit, and if they don't give over the food she'll lay down knowing that's the expected next dog action. She's also stubborn enough to say "make me" if she knows sitting won't get a treat.

It's not that she's untrainable, she still remembers how to heel, something she learned 10 years ago. She only walks politely at my side when I'm mad at her...or maybe that's the only time I demand it. Maybe it's the dozens of names she has including the various middle names...Hooper, Chuckie, Bugs, Ceilidh-Sue, Ceilidh-Marie, Ceilidh-Ann, DOG!, among other things.

I keep saying the next dog will give a hoot about her human and not pick fights with other dogs, but I'm so used to her royal standoffishness... oh dog. I complain about her all the time, but when she had to have 2 lumps (one cancerous!) removed this winter I was more than willing to pay the thousand bucks. (oh dog) What would I do with out the annual dog hair festival?

Oh and then there's the way she sidles up to anyone with a Yummy Chummie and tells them I starve her and beat her.

rocks

I was cruising my folders for something to share and found these. They're rocks I collected in British Columbia on a beach where the Orca whales rub on the gravel. I don't know if my rocks were touched by whales, but I like to think they were. The beach is on the north east-ish side of Malcolm Island near the north end of Vancouver Island. Beautiful wild place.

The beads...oh yeah the beads. I did two little discs of flat round peyote then made a sandwich with the rock as the bologna (hold the mayo please). Then I stitched the disks together and filled the space between with peyote stitch and finally by filling the remaining gaps as neatly as possible.

Here's a tutorial for flat round peyote that looks pretty easy to follow. I couldn't find the one I used to start way back when. I did see one that starts with 3 beads but the increases in that are difficult for me to keep flat.

A 5 bead start will give you a 5 pointed star like the rock at the top of the post, a 6 bead start (like the tutorial in the link) will give you a 6 pointed star like the 2nd rock.

mama mia!

We went to the movie "Mama Mia" yesterday, it was hysterical! I haven't laughed that hard at a movie for ages...Pierce Brosnan singing ABBA songs, what a crack up! Meryl Streep did an awful lot of leaping and prancing about, either she's in great shape or the stunt double did a terrific job of looking like her. Good pick me up movie.

I'm packing up to move again...it's been a decade of moving from house to house for me and I'm ready to stop! Let's see there was out of a house and onto a boat in Seattle, then from the boat to a house in Canada, then from that house to a mobile home in Juneau then 5 different apartments in Juneau then down to Washington where I bought a house that turned out to be so wrong for me it was less than a year before I packed it up and moved back to Alaska...now it's from Anchorage to Haines where I will become a home owner again. I want to love it there and maybe even grow old in a small maritime town in Alaska. (holy sh*t, I've never written down the number of moves, that's crazy!)

The most difficult thing about moving to and living in a small isolated town is shipping. Whether it's your entire household or on line purchases shipping to a zip code with less than 10,000 people requires creativity or money (or both) I'll be driving my stuff to Haines in a U-haul (about 2,000 dollars cheaper than a shipping company) but...U-haul doesn't have a store in Haines. I'll have to take the truck to Juneau on the ferry to drop it off. Thank goodness I was able to get reservations for a big vehicle!

On the creativity side, I've done a little bit of stitching and a lot of on line shopping for inspiration. Last winter's big project is up on the Beadin' Path website, check it out!

don't kick the neighbor's dog

So there's this house down the street a ways where 3 huge scary dogs live... One of them can climb a 7 foot wood fence! She broke her tie down today and climbed the fence to attack my dog, I kicked her. Not hard enough to do her any damage...

two more

A little more embroidery, I like the small fish with the heart, but am not far enough along on the skull to know if I like it. Trying not to pass too much judgment in an attempt to be all not-so-darn-anal about making a little art. Art therapy and all...

Trying to figure out the easiest, most economical way to get my stuff from Los Anchorage to Haines... shipping company A. doesn't respond to emails or phone messages. Sent another inquiry to shipping company B. U-haul doesn't have a store in Haines so I'd have to take the truck to Juneau if I did that. 100 extra bucks isn't too awful, but I'd have to figure out what to do with the dog for a day since I don't imagine catching the next ferry back would happen. It just doesn't work that way when you need it to. The U-haul dude suggested that I take the truck to somewhere in B.C. which is somewhere between Prince Rupert and Prince George...about a two or three day drive from Haines. Very useful, U-haul dude, thanks.

fabric fish progress...beadfish resting quietly

Here we have the fins covered in black and white batik and stitched with some lovely green floss. I like this fish!

I'm having so much fun with the fabric fish, it's easy to work on anywhere. There are no beads rolling trying to escape! I think I'm falling in love with thread again, yay! It might be the beginning of an art quilt. A one square at a time so it's not so overwhelming type of bed sized art project!

Dog walk today over near Campbell Creek Airport (one of 4 in Anchorage!) There was a bear mauling in that area a few weeks ago, but across the road near a salmon stream. There aren't fish on "my" side of the road and I do my best to be "bear aware" and avoid heavy brush and areas where there's fresh poo. However, I wasn't the first one to see the beautiful bull moose grazing off to the side of the trail today! The doggie saw it first and was wise (tired) enough to leave him alone. Huge beautiful antlers still in velvet. Anchorage really is part of Alaska.

my food post sans pictures

There has been progress on the embroidered fish, but it's over there and I haven't taken a picture.

I've always had a small problem with salads made by professionals...you know the ones that slap you in the face with an overlarge piece of lettuce. Salad dressing splatting and dignity lost. At home tool to prevent salad slapping: scissors. Yup, my salad was eaten with a spoon folks. I cut the "baby salad greens" aka weeds, with a pair of kitchen scissors and could still peruse the interweb while I ate a semi healthy snack.

I *heart* eating entire meals out of a bowl with a spoon. Dunno why, (hey blogger doesn't think "dunno" is spelled wrong") dunno why I love the spoon and bowl thing, Mom didn't serve meals that way!

sew what

I got the urge to make another kind of fish a few days ago. I wanted to do some embroidery and quilty kind of stuff. I used one of my felt fish as the base and some of the (way too) many batik fabrics for the colors and textures. I've re-done the face 3 times, I was making it way too complicated and it looked bad.

to flash or not to flash

...slowest beader on the planet. I could pretend there's just SO much going on in my life that I haven't a moment to spare, but that's a load of b.s. I sort of got bored with just poppies so I'm adding a daisy like flower to see if that doesn't keep me a little more interested...

Interesting how blogger decided to fit those pictures in...I asked for a left and right justified but it wanted to wrap the type around.

In other news: Today at work my supervisor started talking in some alien language about what she wanted me to do with this tray full of fire polished beads and some of the size 15 delicas, she seemed so certain that I could understand what she was saying it made me think I was nuts for not understanding. Ok, maybe not an alien language just out of control micromanaging....

the interweb inspires

Just a quick post before work...I was cruising my bookmarks and stopped in at a blog I'd marked ages ago: Spirit Cloth

Her work is inspiring, the fabric beautiful and now I don't want to go to work!