Soul Brothers

The Gods have been conspiring against my Mummy and it has TOTALLY worked in my favour. Yeah God! It’s been so hot in her bedroom that her and Daddy have been sleeping with the curtains and window open. Of course this means that the sun streams through the window very early and wakes her up. Also, she’s been going to bed earlier and therefore, rising earlier. What does this all mean for me? Well, she has time to take me for an early morning walk with my new Soul Brother, Cabot. Cabot is one of Itchy’s babies. He lives down the road a bit and I have been hanging out with him and his entourage of feline bros & sistas. (I still haven’t learned to tread lightly around the kitties because, well, because I LOVE them SO MUCH that I can’t contain myself when I’m around them.)

This week Cabby and I have been hitting the beach. Let me tell you how much I love my time with my Soul Brother. We are truly Brothers from another Mother. He just gets me, ya know. Our walks are not about losing weight and exercising our muscles. Nope, our walks are more about sniffing stuff...

...tending to our hearts, having some laughs, shedding some tears regaling "tails" of our sistas and brothas that have passed on to the big doggy (kitty) park in the sky and just rolling in sh!#.

THE WIND UP.....

OH, YEAH!!!

Like any good friendship, ours started off tentatively. You know, you gotta check each other out. Dip your toe in slowly so to speak .  It takes a lot of courage to let another mutt inside because we all want to protect our heart.

But once I got to know him, and him me, we have the best quality time together.

Sometimes he takes the lead...

and sometimes I do...

Sometimes we chase chicks....

or sticks...

Sometimes we say nothing at all (NOT!) and just take in the views...

This is a golf course our neighbour built in their yard!!!


Sometimes we take a little alone time to consider our own thoughts...

Once in a while, one of us has to talk the other off the ledge...

Whatever we are doing, saying or not saying, I am blessed to have found such a great friend in Cabby and treasure every moment I spend with him. (If only I could get him to go swimming with me.  One can dream!)

Licks and Wags....PEACE OUT PEEPLES!

Unexplained Absence

And no excuses really.  Just been busy living life, been under the weather and having some issues with the blogging website.

Farmer Mac's Bounty....How proud are we of him?

A tour through the Flower Gardens

My Rose of Sharon....the crowning glory in my garden.  It has been blooming for several weeks.  A bloom only lasts a day so blooming for several weeks is a great thing for its first year in my garden.

My favourite annual purple poppies planted from seed that has been in storage for 5 years!  Not sure what or who that interloper is crawling up the poppy but I give everything a chance until I can identify it.

The annuals in the centre of my Circle Garden.  Poppies, poppies and more poppies.  Sweet Peas and Morning Glories.

My prolific zucchini patch.  The joke between Itchy and I is, "What is the zucchini recipe for the day?"  Seriously!  How many zucchini dishes can one make.  I've made baked zucchini with onions, garlic and parmesan cheese, potato and zucchini pancake (I might have set the oven on fire with this one.), Paula Deene's zucchini bread which everyone ranted about and the only thing I like about it is the brown sugar/cinnamon crunch on the top and I added that to the recipe myself.

Thank goodness, Ernie is taking over again tomorrow.  My post was a bit bland.  I know, you've been waiting for over a week and all I served up were some lame photos.

That 70s Show.

Itchy and I have been scratching....okay, itching, to take on a project reminiscent of decades past....The 70s. While I was but a youth, Itchy was most-likely in her prime. Ah yes, I can picture her now, arms flailing in the air dancing around an impromptu bon-fire. Beads dripping from her neck, a hand strung crown of daisies sitting precariously upon her long flowing locks. A fringed suede vest is worn upon a tie dyed t-shirt emblazoned with rings of brilliant colours. A metal PEACE sign strung on a leather lace care freely hangs around her neck. In case the emblem around her neck goes unnoticed, she also has one on her belt buckle which holds up the bell bottoms jeans that hug her hips. And of course, she has an anklet of bells that jingle with each step her bare feet take. The faint scent of patchouli (that is patchouli I’m smelling, isn’t it?) wafts through the air with the sway of her arms as her and her hippy pals sing Kumbaya. Sorry Itchy, I don’t think sparkle dust was invented in the 70s.



Me, I was probably home watching the Brady Bunch or listening to my Donny Osmond music on the record player. Not to say that I didn’t have bell bottoms, but I was far too young to be dancing around in a field of daisies to the likes of Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Dylan, or CCR. I can, however, clearly imagine my pal Itchy there. Hell, I don’t think it would take much convincing for her to partake in such frivolity in the year 2010. Some things never change.


So what nonsense did Itchy and I get in to....well it relates to her years gone by t-shirt. We decided to experiment and combine our love of wool with our love of bold colours and put our hand to dying. But of course we couldn’t take the easy route and use regular store bought dye. Nope. We opted to try Kool-Aid. Turns out that both of us have wondered about such a project for years and decided to tackle it together.

Itchy came over with her wool, syringes to be used for application and her imagination, of course. She also brought along a WIP (work in progress). A pair of thrummed socks. For those who aren’t aware, thrummed items are made by knitting in the usual style, but every couple of stitches you knit a piece of roving (a small bundle of fibre) in with your fabric.

This is roving

The end result is a pair of extremely warm, very thick socks or mittens. In the North, the Inuit were/are known to put a large clump of muskox down in their gloves to keep their hands warm. The principle is the same. Anyway, as Itchy and I were chatting away, her knitting project must have fallen off the back of the couch because the next thing I know, Ernie is rounding the corner of the island in our kitchen with Itchy’s sock in his mouth. The sock is still mounted on her double-pointed needles and a tail of yarn dragging behind him. And isn’t he proud of himself.....

Not the best picture but between me rushing to grab my camera, laughing my ass off AND drawing Itchy’s attention to the little klepto, I was a little shaky. I was able to wrestle it away from him and return it to her with only the slightest amount of Ernie drool appearing on the fibres. Let’s face it, Ernie could do pretty much anything and Itchy would forgive him. The sun rises and sets by that dog and her own mob of hooligans and pretty much every other neighbour’s menagerie. Let’s just say he was lucky Itchy was so kind-hearted because he could have been in big trouble. Even the sun shine’s on a dog’s ass, is all I have to say.


Let’s get on with the show. Several days before hand, we found a few sets of instructions online detailing how to dye with Kool-Aid and then drove all over Charlottetown trying to find an assortment of colours. Who knew Kool Aid would prove to be so elusive?


Then we set up our plastic cups and carefully measured the correct ratio of water to the Kool-Aid powder setting off a cornucopia of aromas which induced a few more wholesome memories of the 70s. Since we seem to be very limited for types of Kool-Aid in PEI (we could only find 6 flavours and there are...well check this link out), we resorted to using Jello. Note to self, next time use sugar free. It turns out that you activate the STICKY factor when it gets wet. Sticky and wool don’t mix well. Also, if you are slow to use your dye, it starts to turn into Jello. Hmm? Who knew? Gelatinous Jello and wool don’t mix so well either. Lastly, if you use the product that contains sugar, the colour seems to be more diluted. Sugar free is more concentrated. With each cup that we made, we attempted to carefully place its corresponding package in front so that we wouldn’t get confused later on. However, there came a time when one concoction got away from its packaging so I bravely (stupidly) took a sip from the cup. (As any survivor of Jonestown will tell you, “DON’T DRINK THE KOOLAID!!!!”) Let me forewarn any other idiot that might attempt to discern the colour of Kool Aid by taking a sip of straight Kool Aid without the benefit of sugar. Just because you might be able to SMELL the flavour doesn’t mean you can taste it. NARSTY!


Once we had our rainbow assembled, we decided to do a colour test. Isn’t it pretty?

We also did a few combinations of colours because we weren’t quite satisfied with some of the colours that were generated.


We washed our wool in warm soapy water and then stretched it out on top of a plastic bag on the countertop and set to work. While I fiercely applied my dye using a chunkier effect, blending one stripe of colour into the next, Itchy daintily sprayed and sprinkled her wool with careful consideration.

Geez...can you tell which one is which?

Once we were satisfied with our respective application, we set to cooking our yarn. Itchy finished hers off in the microwave while I did mine in the steamer basket of a double-boiler. The end result. Itchy’s colours subtly blended together while mine came out looking like something a Rastafarian would wear upon their head. When her husband politely asked what I intended to make with mine, I threatened I was going to knit him a tie-dyed sweater. Perhaps it would cause him to reflect upon his time spent in the 70s.


TO BE CONTINUED.....

Day Three - Camping....Can Only Be Described In Pictures

Me, Mum & Dad had such a great time at Tignish Shores that we decided to go back and spend the whole day there.  Mummy packed a picnic, some fresh agua pour moi (I'm tri-lingual, didn't you know?) and the beach towels and off we went.  First we stopped at yet another fishery.  Sorry, I asked Mummy what it was called but her memory seems to be failing her.  She NEEDS to take pictures of the signs!

WTF?

Let me outta this FREAKIN' TRUCK!!!!  This is NOT RIGHT!

From here we went to Jude's Point where we, yes all three of us, indulged in some nummy onion rings and fried clams.  When we had been there the day before, the place was empty.  Today was a different story.  There was a big bus there and it looked like a million people there.  Well, some nice lady came over to meet MY CUTENESS and told us that it was a family reunion.  She said there were thirty adults and all of their off-spring there and there were lots of those.  Family had come from all across the country and apparently they gather every five years. I'm kinda hoping my own family reunion will be far less than 5 years!  I'm thinking, like, 5 weeks?  Anywho....renting a bus is a great idea!  It takes them where ever they want to go.

Come on!  Enough chatter!  Which way to da beach?

Can you imagine having this whole beach to yourself for the whole day?

This about sums up the day....

This is me.  I'm LIFEGUARDING my Daddy, just like my big bro, Rookie, used to do.  He always kept a close eye on all the people in the water to make sure they were safe.  Remember Daddy?  I really miss my Big Bro.

PEACE OUT, PEOPLES!

Camping Day Two - Part Two....

Where was I? We packed so much into Day Two that I had to split the pics into two days.

Any...whoooo....we started back down the coast and ended up at Tignish Shore.  The most beautiful beach EV..ER!!!!  Wouldn't you agree?  This is looking toward Judes Point (North)

We pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves until we met these two hunting sea glass.  Mom and Dad joined right in and have their own collection now.  Brown, Green, White, Red and Blue.

This little fella, far smaller than I, kept us company as we walked along the beach.

Tignish Shores looking South-East.

Look at the beautiful flowers Mummy found at the beach.

Before I knew it, it was time to leave this most amazing beach behind:(

Race ya to the car.....

READY!

SET!

GO!!!!!

AM....

I...

THERE...

YET?????

PHEW!!!! I'm pooped.  Let's get back to the trailer park!

Snuggle Time with Daddy....um, yeah Mummy, that's your pillow.  But...I'm...I'm....getting...

REALLY....SLEEPY.

Can't hardly keep my eyes open....(PEACE OUT, PEOPLES!)