And A Month Passes......

One of Grover's greatest joys in life, diving after rocks.

I will blame my tardiness in writing a new post on life changes and just generally being away from a computer with a keyboard.  A lot has happened in the past month, two of which are changes that are truly major events in just about anyone's life, I think.  

The most amazing, of course, was the birth of our very first grandchild, Wilder James Delmore Redding.  He was born at 8:43 am on Wednesday, May 2nd, just as I was lining up to board my flight home from Oregon, where I had been for the past week, expecting his arrival.  However, the induction procedure was postptoned a couple of times, and even though I changed my return travel arrangements and stayed 2 days longer than planned, I missed actually getting to meet him.  But he is here now and he is healthy and my son and daughter-in-law are totally infatuated with him and all is good.  I will be returning to Oregon for son Ian's graduation from Oregon State in about 3 weeks, so I will get to meet baby Wilder then.

About 1 year ago...

The other big life change is of course our retiring from our Real Estate business.  It is now real and it has been over a month since I went in to our office for anything other than to clean things out and bring them home.  I always did my blog posts from our office, as I generally had time to spend organizing photos and my thoughts while I was there.  So it seems odd to be doing it at home.  We are still in the process of cleaning out years worth of accumulated "stuff" at the office and the building itself is for sale.  Sam is doing most of the cleaning out of old records and office supplies, etc.  For my part, my loom room is totally empty now and my studio at home is now quite full.

So I now have almost everything all in one place.  Sadly, however, since it is now full on spring and outdoor work season and it stays light so late, I am finding little time to work on projects in my studio.  And when I have had time to get out there, I have been working on a super-secret project, about which I will post later.

Grover and I have attended two agility trials since my last post, one right before my Oregon trip in April.  This was a 3 day trial put on in Zanesville by my club and we did not have a very good weekend.  Out of 10 runs, we only had one Q.  Most of our runs were good, but it takes only one little mistake to miss out on qualifying.  But this past weekend we attended a trial in Dayton at a facility we had never been to before and we had a pretty great weekend.  Only 4 runs over 2 days and we had 3 Qs, including QQ #19 on Saturday.  We came SO close to getting our 20th QQ on Sunday, but at the end of a perfect jumper's run, I pulled up too soon, causing Grover to hesitate just enough to knock the very last bar.  Talk about frustrating!  Grover also was 3rd place both days in standard, which rarely happens.  There were very few border collies at this trial.  They are always way faster than we are!  Doesn't he look happy?

Our next trial is the first weekend in June, right before we go to Oregon.

Sam and I have been working on getting the gardens in.  So far tomato, pepper, basil, parsley, oregano and thyme plants have gone in.   I have also planted seeds for Swiss chard, kale, lettuce, beets, cukes, butternut squash and pumpkins.  I still need to plant corn and would like to get some sweet potatoes and onions in as well.  We are harvesting asparagus and the garlic has come up.  Sam has hunted for morels with some success, but nothing like last year's bumper crop.  The bees are doing well and I hope to get a honey harvest before too long.  

As far as fibery stuff, we have two old alpacas who need to be shorn at some point.  The set up and clean up will take longer than the shearing!  I still have a lightweight cardigan sweater on my needles, but have not been working on it a lot due to what seems to be tendonitis in my right elbow.  I am down to part of one sleeve to finish and I will be done.  I would like to finish it before our Oregon trip.  I also have some cotton/linen towels in blue and white on my small loom.  They will be so nice.  I haven't used the linen blend for towels before and I like weaving with it.  The blue and white check is rather classic.  I like it.  

I need to put a rug warp on the big loom and weave some more selvedge rugs.  I almost forgot to add that I bought 40# of Pendleton wool selvedges on my trip to Oregon last month and checked 30 pounds of them through as baggage on my flight home. Thank you Southwest no fee baggage policies!  I couldn't fit the other 10 pounds in my dad's old army duffel, so will get them next month.  That should hold me for a while, I think.