I have been puzzling over the identity of my Secret Pal. Here are the clues I have so far:
- She is withing 500 miles of southern New Jersey
- She lives in the North Eastern section of the United States (and got snow on April 3rd)
- She is a sock knitter
- She has participated in Secret Pal exchanges before
- She is going to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival next month
If she lives where she got snow yesterday, and is still going to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival next month, she has got to be a pretty serious knitter and/or spinner/weaver/ fibre person to make that trek. I'm about two hours away from the festival, and haven't gone in a couple of years. Hey - maybe she has a booth there! Vendors come from all over the place.... How cool is that? Ah, well, still no idea. Not even sure if she is a "she" or a "he".
As far as my going to the festival this year, that's still up in the air. My niece graduates from college that weekend. I think on Sunday, May 6
th. Maybe I can get away on Saturday. It depends on how Mellie is doing. If she's going through a bad spell, I won't want to leave her for the day.
Speaking of Mellie, she's doing great.
Criquette suggested that I try giving her some tuna if she is getting tired of chicken and beef. I bought a dozen cans, and since then, she has been scarfing up the beef, both ground and shaved! Oh well, it's nice to have the tuna in the pantry as a backup. In the meantime, what to do with the tuna......
Yes, that's little Joey. He ate a whole can of tuna himself. The-Whole-Thing. He even drank all of the tuna juice.
Blech! I couldn't give Joey an extra special treat without taking something to the bunnies. There was a half bag of "spring mix" lettuce in the fridge that would expire the next day, so the bunnies got it. Left to right, this is Momma Bunny, Sunshine, Little Boy and Mr. Darcy.
The last picture for today is a shot of sweet Mellie when she was a puppy, with my beloved Scarlett. We lost Scarlett four years ago today, and it still hurts...I suppose it always will. Scarlett was the first dog that was mine, all mine. She was a Christmas present (in July) from Mom and Dad.
OK, just one more picture. This is Scarlett with her sister Katie when they were seven weeks old. Such sweet little things. Katie was Mom & Dad's dog for about 6 months, but she was so bad (she ate clothes, tablecloths, a chair, a pincushion, she escaped over the fence, etc.) that she came to live with me, my sister S and Scarlett. She never did another bad thing. I think she just wanted to be with her sister. That, and we had a Chesapeake Bay Retriever at the time who taught Katie manners.
Oh, you would like to see a picture of the
Chesapeake? Her name was Scupper. Here she is by the pool with Scarlett. Scupper was 11 years old, and Scarlett was just 8 or 9 weeks old.
Ahhhhh.
And here is Scarlett at 3 years old:
And here is Katie at 3 years old:
And this is, left to right, Mellie (at 5 years old), Scarlett (11 years), and Emma (1 year old). Scarlett would only live less than a year after this picture was taken. She was the alpha dog and had us all under her thumb, or paw as the case may be. She was loud, bossy and demanding, but I loved her like I had never loved before.
That's really an end to the pictures. If it's true that "the more you cry, the less you gotta pee", I'm good for at least a week.
See how white her whole head is in that picture? Compare it to the next photo, which is one of my favorite pictures of Scarlett.
This is a portrait of my lovely girls, past and present, done by Kristin Osgood, an artist who works with my sister. She really captured the personalities of each dog - their eyes are so true-to-life, it's almost freaky. She incorporated a lot of personalized items into the painting - forget-me-nots, their favorite toys, how they all center around Scarlett. Kristin is so very talented, and she really "got" each of the dogs and captured them magnificently. I'm afraid my photography of the painting doesn't do it justice.
