The yarn for the Color Craving shawl I am making for Dyeabolical Yarns arrived yesterday!

These are the colors I get to use for the project, aren’t they beautiful? And Rachel said she didn’t mind which I chose for the stripe section. While I adore yellow and grey together, I couldn’t resist putting the blue and the yellow together in this case. So, as of this morning, after working on it last evening, here’s where I am:

I’ll be honest, this is NOT my favorite knit so far. The yarns are WONDERFUL of course. But, knitting something with that dramatic of a turn in it is kind of a pain in the butt. I brought it to work today, so hopefully I’ll get an hour to work on it today. Though to be honest, work breaks have been few and far between lately. In any case, I’ll try to post daily progress photos during this process, because it’ll be all this project all the time until I am completely done.

In your daily Lizzie update, we are adjusting very well, all of us. I didn’t take new photos last evening. But, we are getting a solid half hour of fetch/tug/jump time after work. And, Mr. Ink says she does it at lunchtime too. Between that and a nice long walk in the evening, her activity levels are dramatically increased. Mr. Ink commented that she looks hungry. We were told to keep her food amounts down so she could get back to a reasonable weight. However, we weren’t told what that reasonable weight is supposed to be. Plus, with increased activity levels, she may need more than we were instructed to feed her. As such, we’ve decided we need to set her up with a vet appointment, just so we can get some of those specifics. Plus we need to get her preventatives anyhow. Between now and then we’ll have to make a list of questions to ask the vet.

Miss Butterfly was the last one out the door yesterday, and it was Lizzie’s first day in a kennel. I asked before I left if she was comfortable putting Lizzie in the kennel. She didn’t really like doing it with Coco, but Coco was stubborn. She thought she wouldn’t have any trouble with Lizzie and agreed to do it. Once done and she was out the door, I had to hear how bad it had gone, she (Miss Butterfly) was in quite a lot of distress over leaving her. But, she went to school anyhow. I warned Mr. Ink about it, that reports were that Lizzie didn’t like being in the kennel, but that he should evaluate with the expert eye. At noon, I got a message from Mr. Ink. “Miss Butterfly decided Lizzie should have her water bowl in the kennel too. You can imagine how that went!” So, Lizzie probably had an uncomfortable and wet morning. Thankfully we picked a kennel pad that’s waterproof, so the outside needed drying, but the foam core was completely dry.

The more time we spend with her, the more I am convinced that she had some very good training at some point. She never goes near the garbage. She might want to get up on the couch, but she’ll go to the couch, and then look at me, waiting to tell her if it’s ok to go up there or not. If I don’t indicate, she doesn’t jump up. She never begs at the table, she’s never underfoot and begging while Mr. Ink is cooking. She’s lost a little of her politeness when we go for a walk, so additional training will be necessary there, and perhaps a harness. The only other time she’s a little insistent is when I go to bed and Mr. Ink hasn’t gotten there yet. With no prompting or asking, she gets up on the bed with me. Now, when I tell her to get down, she will. But, she certainly doesn’t ask. This morning I got out of the shower and headed back to the room to get her, and noticed she’d jumped up on the bed with Mr. Ink once I left. Now, Mr. Ink always wanted Coco to be more than a floor dog, but Coco was a solid floor dog. We used to try to put him on the bed from time to time, but all it would do was stress Coco out. So, naturally, Mr. Ink complained NOT AT ALL when Lizzie got on the bed this morning. In fact, I walked back in the room and they were both grinning from ear to ear about it.

The biggest news of the evening was that we got a visit from Miss Marja and Max! IT went quite well actually, about as well as can be expected. There was no growling or territorial behavior. Just a lot of sniffing at each other, and tail wagging. Miss Marja brought some lovely treats and a toy, though Lizzie wasn’t interested in showing off her play skills. At one point I was feeding both Lizzie and Max treats, they were pretty close together, and neither of them were trying to steal food that belonged to the other out of my hands. So, I am going to say it was a good success, and we’ve brought two very good dogs into our lives.