There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, “Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams.” Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, “How good or how bad am I?” That's where courage comes in.

-- Erma Bombeck

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Monica is the winner of the cashmere yarn contest! So, a skein of cashmere laceweight dyed in the colors of the beach ~ blues, tans, creams, beige ~ will be on its way to her early next week. I'll try to remember to post a photo of it before I put it in the mail (I forgot last time ... Vi will have to post a photo on her website of the silk laceweight she won).

This has been great fun, and I've visited alot of new blogs that are really great ... some I've left comments on, but not all (I really need to work on my poor commenting habits ... I read alot, but don't comment often, which is not very nice. I'll work on that).

I'm planning another contest for the beginning of next month. I'd like feedback on whether I should give away some yarn, or some spinning fiber. I have alot of quite nice yarns ... my favorites right now are Isis (these names are the ones I've given my yarns, on my website): cashgora / merino and Lyra: alpaca/merino/silk, and all of the laceweights. So, it may be one of these yarns. Or some handpainted spinning fiber: merino/silk/cashmere top, merino/angora/silk top or camel/tussah top. Got an opinion? Leave me a comment.

Ok, so the skein of cashgora/merino was just doomed from the moment I brought it into the house. I knitted a moebius with it, and totally f*cked it up. Blast it. I swear I only had one twist in the moebius, but when I cast it off ~ what? not one twist. Two twists. Two twists don't work. I'll either give it to my daughter to play with her dolls, or else to the Dog. Nah. He'll just eat it and then I'll have to clean it up again when he throws it up.

Doomed. Just doomed. Crap.

So, I don't have any knitting photos, since this stupid thing is what I've been knitting on for the past several days and everything else is therefore in its same state. The moebius was a pattern I was designing ... the pattern works, but I'm so disgusted with my idiotic mistake (how long have I been knitting? Way Long Enough to figure out how many twists there are! Jeez) that I don't feel like knitting another one. Maybe later.

So, someone asked in the contest comments what kind of dog is 115 pounds at 8 months old: Phoenix is a cross between a Great Pyrenees and an Anatolian Shepherd. Both are huge, strong dogs, 100-150 pounds or more (I hope he's not more than 150 pounds ... time will tell.). He looks more like an Anatolian in coloring with his tannish-gold fur and black muzzle. Both breeds are intelligent, independent and bred to guard animals. Phoenix hasn't grown up with animals, so he guards us instead. He doesn't like strange men too much (though he doesn't bite, he can be pretty scary with delivery guys and such). He is incredibly gentle, very entertaining and really wonderful. But also incredibly stubborn. He'll be going to doggie school, with me, in the near future.

Here he is with one of my friends two year old daughter (he loves, loves, loves little kids ... probably because they are just the right height for licking):



And here he is with my son (one of his main squeezes and definitely his favorite chew toy):

(yes, that is my antique great wheel in the background, which I purchased about 5 years ago and still haven't finished fixing or actually set up to use. It looks pretty, though. I just prefer my Majacraft Suzi and my wee Robin to actually spin on.)

And I liked how While Tangerine Dreams showed us what's on her bookshelves. That was fun to see. So, here's what's on a few of my favorite bookshelves (if you click on the photos a larger version will pop up):

And here is my bookshelf (that our friend Paul made for me) (I so love my bookshelf ... and having my books finally, finally out of storage after nearly three years), as well as the staircase (the tree on the left of the photo is one of two that goes from the floor of our basement up to the ceiling of the first floor; the window is in the center of the stairwell and lets alot of light onto the stairs ... it was one of two Window Splurges when we built the house ~ the other was the set of french doors opening onto the screened porch):

Ta for now.