My Gracie

Miss Graceful
Gracie
The Tiny
Tin-E Loc (with the Notorious D.O.G)
The Worm
The T
Super-T
T-Biscuit
Little Whoozit
Turtledove

A dear child has many names. She even had her own songs.

She left us too quickly. To everybody who left nice comments about her and sent her kisses, you have my undying devotion. Nobody deserved it more. She was much too shy to ask. It was so touching to see her becoming brave enough in the last couple of years, to actually sniff the outstretched hands of friends and strangers stopping us on the street.

At 15 years of age, she was happy and running around, up until her very last day, and for that I am very grateful. In the 12 years we had her, she was my constant companion and my joy. Always there for me. Playful and elegant, her racing name, Miss Graceful, described her so perfectly. Although she started out as very shy and scared, she grew confident and she relaxed. It was heartwarming to see her come out of her shell. Heartwarming is my favorite word when I think of her and her gentle ways. Although she liked attention, she was not demonstrative, and therefore, a lick on the hand from her was extra sweet. She was very intelligent, and so amazingly human in her expressions and her emotions. And after so many years, our bond was still growing and growing.

We were so proud of her. And we were so honored to have been picked to be her parents.

This is the reason for my absence. I miss her so desperately, and so does her little sister. I have not felt like blogging or even knitting in the last two weeks since it happened. Just trying to get back into things now.

So close

(I have been told that some of my pictures are not showing up in Safari and Firefox. I am sorry, I don't really know how to fix that at the moment...)

C'est la vie! I was going to have this finished this week for sure! Absolutely one hundred percent finished. Absolutely for sure. But now I have decided it is a little too long and I will shorten it by an inch or so. The neck shaping has to be redone, so that means all of the green part will be ripped.




It's my own fault for straying from the pattern. Originally the neck shaping was to start a little sooner, I just thought it would look better this way.

None of this will happen before the weekend, though. It's so hard to put it down, because I am very eager to finish. I am not letting myself work on anything else before then.

Gracie is wondering if she can help.

My babies

A picture of my pretty girl, Miss Graceful, whom we call Gracie. We have had her since she was three, and now she is fourteen and a half! When we first got her, she had been mistreated, and her former owner had returned her to the kennel, and exchanged her for a "better" dog. Can you imagine! Apparently she had spent nine months cowering in a corner and being terrorized by that person's other smaller dogs. When we first met her it took us an hour to get close enough to catch her, she was so shy and scared. It took about six months before she could believe that being petted was a good thing, she would just suffer through it, and try to get away. Gracie was our second greyhound, and she benefited greatly from having had an older and more outgoing sister. She has become much, much more relaxed and confident, and now she is a completely different (and completely spoiled) dog, although she seems to like it best when having our other dog close by.


Our number two dog is called Pippi, as in Longstocking, because sometimes her ears stick out in a Pippi kind of way. She is a very playful and mischevous little thing, and very affectionate. In the picture she is on a daybed in my workroom, which she now considers hers. Finding the most comfortable and soft spot to lounge is her special talent. Usually in a sunbeam. And she of course prefers our down comforter. Pippi has a lot of toys, which she likes to spread out all over the floor of our house. She is only three, so has an incredible amount of energy. She loves the snow, which she had never seen before we moved to Massachusetts, and goes completely crazy whenever we have a good snowfall. She makes me laugh a lot.


Otherwise, I am not quite done with Birch yet, as I am having to fix a mistake which happened about four rows down. My handy, dandy crochet hook has been a constant companion throughout this project, as it seems to be very easy for me to make mistakes when knitting lace!