Michelle's Baby Blanket

A friend of mine recently had a baby late last month. I was excited for her, but at the same time... a little jealous because of my lack of ability to have children (as some may know, my husband and I have been trying for almost a year now). She's one of my closest friends I have here, and she has done a lot for me. Such as, photographing my wedding, which was huge.

I don't like to knit for other people. Usually, you know I care about you if I knit something. I will knit the occasional sock for Christmas for a very close family member (Tyler got his first pair of socks last year), but I usually knit things for myself. It's difficult to explain why, though. Everything I make I feel like I put a ton of work into, and a lot of people don't realize how much work goes into knitting. That being said, I need to know that the people I gift handmade knitted items to will appreciate the work put into them.

Michelle has recently become one of the few in my "knitting gift" circle. She loves everything that she receives, has done so much for my husband and I, so I wanted to give something to her to celebrate the beginning of their new baby's life. I decided to make them a baby blanket!

The pattern is just a simple Old Shale pattern found in a stitch dictionary. I wanted to make her something that looked impressive, yet was easy enough to get done in a quick amount of time. I had started this a week before the baby was born, so it needed to be done... quick! I panicked, thinking I wasn't going to be done in time, but after a couple of days of really furious knitting, I finished. I didn't finish before the baby was born, but it was done when I saw her next.

Her and her husband chose not to know the gender of the baby, so I picked out a neutral yellow color. It turned out really pretty! And, she loved the blanket, which definitely made all the furious knitting worth it.

Amelia At 15 Weeks Progress

Amelia turned 15 weeks this week! She had her final set of puppy vaccinations on Friday, which I was excited about. Those are finally done, so we have been trying to take her out, finally on grass. We have been careful not to take her on strange grass, because I have been terrified about her contracting parvo, or even distemper.

We take her out to potty on the grass outside of our apartment, but when we go for walks elsewhere, we walk out in the street. Occasionally, I come across drivers who have an issue with it (like the grouchy woman who was determined to make her point that I should be on the sidewalk), but I imagine they don't realize that I have a reason for it. So the fact that we can start behaving like a normal dog walking family, and not some obsessing weirdo, is a good thing.

Anyway, we have been having issues with her having loose stools. Every time we visited the vet, we came home with some kind of medication. First it was some medicine that we had to give her in pill form, next, we were given some powder that we were to sprinkle on her food. Neither worked to hardened her stool up. Finally, I decided to switch her food. We switched from Nutro Max Large Breed Puppy to Purina ProPlan Large Breed Puppy. We changed food cold turkey because I thought... How much worse can her poop get? I was glad I did, because almost instantly, we had much more solid poops.

With all the medication she was being put on and the problems with her stool, I was also starting to get even more disappointed with our breeder. I had paid much more money for this puppy than I ever spent on an animal, I expected her to be healthy. However, apparently it was my fault for feeding her food that she didn't like! Oops!

We have successfully got her potty trained with a bell, which is really exciting because that was my number one thing I wanted. I did not want a dog that had accidents in the house. As much as I complained about her "not getting it" when it came to potty training, I think I was extremely lucky in how quickly she picked it up (as opposed to those who struggle for months with potty training). Now that we have been training other things, such as sit and stay, I am coming to the conclusion that yes, she is also very smart. We now know sit, stay, and on occasion, down. We make her sit and stay for food, any kind of treat she gets, and even before we open the door to come in the house from a walk. It has been a difficult road to train her, but I am determined! So far, it has been worth it.

Power Supply Replacement

About a week and a half ago, my husband turned on the computer to play his most recent favorite game, Elder Scrolls Online. He came out to fix me a cup of iced tea. When he was handing it to me, we both heard what sounded like a electrical explosion coming from the other room. We both looked at each other and ran into the bedroom to see what the noise was.

What greeted us was a smell of some kind of burnt plastic or electrical wires. And hey, the computer was off. Nor would it even turn on. It was a huge heart-sink, because just a few days prior - we lost our television due to a cat knocking it off the stand and the screen completely cracked. The only thing left in my head was: What more could go wrong?

Tyler bought a new power supply for it, and yesterday, it finally arrived. He was concerned that when the power supply went out, it took other parts of the computer with it, so I was nervous to put it in, just because I didn't know what I was getting into, and how much damage was really done.

This is my older power supply. I had bought it about the the time when I upgraded my graphics card, several years ago. The graphics card that I got required a higher wattage than what my computer came with. As you can see from the broken piece where the power cord goes, we've been having a few issues with it prior to it going out. I should have known something was going to happen, huh?

I don't remember it being so complicated when I put in the old one! A lot of cords, needing to go to many different places. And a lot of unused cords. Sheesh! But, eventually we got everything plugged in and successfully working. (Although it looks like the DVD drive was a casualty from the the power supply going out - it doesn't open or work anymore).

And, a last peek at the running computer before I closed it up! I was so excited that the damage wasn't more extensive (and expensive) than what it was. Whew!

I took several photos of Amelia puppy last night, so be looking out for those in the next few days!