Some of them are pretty excited:

Others are maybe a bit more laid back about it:

It’s a good time to put on a costume, if you’re so inclined:

Or your fancy party clothes:

And there’s possibly even been a bit of caroling going on:

Of course, there’s always that one family member who puts away a bit too much of the spiked eggnog at the holiday party:

Calvin is having somewhat of an impulse control issue about waiting till Christmas morning to open presents:

This is the second time I’ve had to drag him out of this one, and rearrange the (increasingly more shredded) paper in the bag. And it’s not even his present.

Winter has decided the presents don’t need to be unwrapped to be useful:

We hope everyone has a safe, wonderful, and abundant holiday, and good things for the year to come!

We had a blast! Above is a ‘self portrait’ by Joy – the rest of the pics can be found here.

Recently, I decided it was time to buckle down and finish it. And I did!

It’s not quite how I pictured it in my head before I started it, but it did turn out fairly decent and my mom loved it. I’m now free to go back to woodburning other projects, though I don’t think I will be trying out any more photo portraits any time soon.

I did also finish that beadwork piece I was making:

and got it sewn onto a collar:

I tried to get the loom warped again to complete a second collar design, with my original, wider ladybug pattern. Even though I now had the correct thread, it didn’t go any better than the first one and (once I’d untangled and salvaged all my expensive beading thread) I decided to just buy another loom. I was intrigued by one I had seen online that uses a technique that produces four finished edges – no snarl of warp threads to deal with at the end – and bought one off eBay.

Within two days I had my new Versa-Loom and was off and running with a small sample project (to learn the new technique before getting into something complicated) using some really pretty beads I’d bought years ago and never did anything with…

That piece became a bracelet for Joy.

Having gotten the basic hang of working with the Versa-Loom, it was back to ladybugs. One problem I ran into, which was more noticeable with my wider pattern, was that even though all my beads were 11/0, the green was a different source than the other colors and slightly smaller, which made the rows a wee bit uneven (hardly detectable in the finished pieces, but it annoyed the crap out of me) so I’m looking forward to having them gone… at the same time, I didn’t want to waste them. I am now almost finished the original ladybug design which will go on a 1″ collar. I am not sure what I am going to do with it since it’s not really Paddy’s style but I had a ton of beads in those colors to use up, and really wanted to see my original design in a finished state. The smaller one I made for Gwen lost a lot of the detail of the head and antennae of the bugs.  I am going to be using delica beads from this point on, which are a lot more uniform and come in a huge variety of colors and finishes.

I have some great patterns I found online and more ideas for designs of my own, and am having fun with the beading. It doesn’t involve a lot of setup, unlike sewing (since I still don’t have a place to permanently set up my machine) or worrying about pets snagging power cords and burning themselves (or me burning myself) as is the problem with woodburning. It’s something I can sit, anywhere, and do as much or as little at a time as I feel like, and the process is very calming, almost meditative.

One thing though, I don’t think I will want to see another ladybug for a long time after this.

Who knew that Paddy would sound like a cross between Scooby-Doo, and Lurch from the Addams Family, if he could talk?

Which is exactly what got us in trouble in the first place.

It all started when I was sitting at the computer surfing Craigslist one day. I routinely scan the Pets section for lost animals that might be at the shelter as well as flagging the puppy-mill people that post in violation of Craigslist policy. My eye was caught by the all-caps posting for free Pit Bull and Irish Setter mix puppies, and thought, “that’s crazy, this I gotta see.” I clicked the link…

…and came face to face with a little chocolate puppy with the cutest fuzzy ears I had ever seen.

I stared at the picture a while then I showed Joy, and she too was smitten. We began playing the ‘what-if’ game, since, you know, we had been planning on getting Paddy a companion at some point… but we quickly dismissed the idea because we’d really wanted to wait until Cricket was gone, and wanted to save another shelter dog, and didn’t want a puppy. And that was that. Until we went back and looked at the picture again and again. Maybe Paddy needed a friend now? He was out of his crate (this was before the Chair Incident) and it would be nice to have the two dogs grow up together… Eventually we decided that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to at least email and ask about her.

We got an almost immediate response; the lady said that puppies were the result of an accidental breeding of her brother’s Pit Bull and an Irish Setter belonging to a neighbor, the mother couldn’t deliver the pups and her uterus was rupturing, she’d stepped in an paid for the C-section to save the mom and remaining puppies, and raised the litter in her house. We had been interested in coming to meet the pups and mom, to get an idea of temperament, but she said she was all the way down near Clemson, SC and offered to meet us halfway in Greenville with the puppies.

At the last moment we stopped and asked ourselves: ‘what the hell we were doing’? We didn’t need a puppy in the house, this was a 12-16 year commitment we were talking about, and here we were about to meet some stranger in a McDonalds parking lot and try to evaluate the personality of a (probably carsick) puppy in that setting… and with all the dogs sitting in the shelter needing homes we were going to drive to SC to look at a puppy, all based on a photo…had we lost our minds? We decided to tell the lady that we were sorry to but we’d decided to wait on getting another dog – the day we’d agreed on meeting, Joy had to work late and it was sleeting, anyway.

But even so… at the last minute, we decided to add a P.S. to the note: to let us know if little chocolate puppy with the fuzzy ears puppy didn’t get a home within a week or so.

A week passed and we didn’t hear anything. Relief warred with disappointment, but it was all for the best, we figured. And then the following Sunday afternoon, we got an email that all the puppies had gotten homes… except for the little girl we’d taken such a shine to. Uh-oh.

The biggest reason we were so conflicted over this was not so much the addition of another dog – it was pretty much decided that we’d be getting one at some point – it was the fact that we felt really guilty that she wasn’t a shelter dog. If we did this, that meant the space we’d saved for some future dog that really needed saving would be taken. But, looking at it from the other side, we weren’t financially rewarding a backyard breeder, the mom was now spayed so we weren’t perpetuating a cycle, and ‘free’ puppies often become shelter puppies once the novelty of an impulse adoption wears off. From this standpoint, if we brought her home, maybe we weren’t saving a shelter dog this time, but we might well be keeping one out of a shelter. We decided that we would at least meet the little pup; if she was not the temperament we were looking for, we’d walk away. Even if we did take her and she turned out to be too much for us, we could foster her for a while, get her started on vaccines and training and then find her a more suitable home.

Off to Greenville Joy, Paddy, and myself drove, to meet in a park with the fuzzy-eared puppy and her mother. It was dusk when we arrived, and bitterly cold. There were two puppies – the lady’s brother had decided to keep one of the smooth-coated little girls and she came along for the ride. The little fuzzy-eared puppy was even more beautiful in person, and it was clear watching the pups that she was definitely the calmer of the two. The other one, who looked like a little miniature Paddy, was wild and fearless. The darker one wasn’t shy, but thought about new situations before rushing forward. The mother was awesome, she had a perfect temperament – confident, friendly, and well-mannered. We also found out the poor thing was eight years old and this wasn’t her first accidental litter. At least she’s spayed now, and I sure do hope they get that other pup spayed too.

Gwen’s mother, Sheba

Paddy ignored the puppies but was, of course, totally smitten with their mother. It was getting darker out and the wind had picked up. I think it was flurrying a bit. We’d really seen about as much as we could see of the puppy’s personality under those conditions, and she really did seem like what we were looking for. It was time to make a decision… we walked off a bit and discussed it quickly one last time, then walked back and I scooped up the little chocolate puppy. The four of us headed back up the mountain pass for home, one snoozing in the back seat, another curled up in my lap, and the other two of us alternately excited and worried we’d just done something really dumb.

The puppy, who became “Gwendolyn Fiona” is now just under 17 weeks old, housebroken since the first week, she’s doing really well with the cats, and Paddy absolutely adores her.

I think we chose well.