Bamboo vs. Birch...

So... I started working with the 4mm/G birch hook that I got in the mail yesterday afternoon, and I HOPE I'm not going to regret my purchase. As you can see in the picture below, the hooks are beautiful with the turned ends, and I like that they're extra long.

However, check out the picture below. The hook in the front is the bamboo hook and the one in the rear is the birch one. Notice how deep the throat is on the bamboo hook; it's twice as deep as the birch one. As a result, I've been having a hard time because I keep splitting the yarn when I'm using the birch hook. Maybe this is something I'll get better at with more use, but right now, that's incredibly frustrating, and I hope it's something I can work around.

72-square quilt block for twinfibers

Yesterday, I finished up the quilt block I made for Jessica/twinfibers for the SewConnected block swap. She sent out vintage sheets and pillowcases. Here's what I made for her:

Oh yeah: birch crochet hooks!

Oh yeah! My new Britany birch crochet hooks arrived yesterday afternoon! I am SO happy to get them. I was going to empty the hook roll I made for my metal hooks and house these birch ones in it, but the birch hooks are 9" long and that hook roll only fits 6" long hooks. So, I'll have to make another roll (which is fine--I'm getting good at making them).

Did you know dogs can smile?

Iggy and Stuart regularly "grin" at us, but here's Iggy smiling (hee hee!):

Iggy Pop's face

I dug through my "My Pictures" folder and found a bunch of pictures of the dogs and cats that I'd forgotten about. I need to get some of these pictures blown up and matted and framed because they're really good pictures.

Here's an interesting couple of Iggy Pop. The first picture is when she was about 6 months old. That is the very best picture I've ever taken in my whole life--it's not cropped or anything; it's just the perfect shot. The second picture is when she was around a year old and she'd started going gray already. The last picture is from December of last year. She's seven years old now and is mostly white in the face (which is why that pastel painting with the white-faced dog looks so much like her!).

Guess what we DIDN'T do yesterday afternoon...?

Loan closing... 2:00 yesterday afternoon... ha! ha! Can you believe it was canceled AGAIN! And get a load of this: we were confirmed for 2:00 yesterday afternoon and had a notary (Becky) assigned to us. We were supposed to be at the bank branch right down the street from us. Well, at 11:00, I got a phone call from another notary and she was waiting at the bank for us. Huh? Turns out the 2:00 appointment was canceled and rescheduled for 11:00 (but nobody bothered to call and tell me this, which wouldn't have mattered because BGR couldn't make it at 11:00 anyway--which is why we wanted to do it at 2:00).

So... everybody got back on the same page, and we were on for 2:00 yesterday afternoon. Then 1:45 rolls around and the phone rings, and guess what? The paperwork never has arrived from the corporate office, and we can't close at 2:00 so the loan officer will have to call us back just as soon as it arrives.

And 5:00 rolls around... phone call comes in: paperwork never arrived, can we do it at 8:00 this morning if he can get the paperwork? He'll have to call us back and let us know if he got it or not. Currently, it's 8:10, and we haven't heard a word from him. The bank branch doesn't open until 9:00 this morning anyway so I'm not sure how he planned on us signing at 8:00.

BGR's p.o.'d. He just left (which made ME p.o.'d because he leaves me here to make excuses for him--granted he'll only be five or ten minutes away, but it still aggraves me).

Dogs in Pastel Painting

Mary Detwiler from http://www.dogsinpastel.com/ got back to me, and it's okay that I post a picture of the wonderful original pastel of an Italian Greyhound that I bought from her last week. Here's her Etsy Store and here's a picture of the painting I bought:



This little sweetie looks just like Iggy Pop.

The painting came in an 8x10 mat, but I'm going to have it matted bigger so I can put it in a bigger frame.