Fall.

It was a ridiculously nice day weatherwise. Not so, football-wise. In the last year or so, the city of Iowa City opened a second dog park on the east side of town not far from my sister's house. We've driven by it often, but never stopped. Today, with the weather incredible, we met my sister and nieces there. It was the place to be post-football pain.

Nola is finicky. She only fetches a blue racquetball. A idiosyncrasy she picked up as a puppy from our then-neighbor's golden. Rykert has primary dog park duties, so he's found that an old racquet is the best way to burn her energy.

Grace had racquet responsibilities today. (Anna helped me behind the camera, and played with the smaller puppies.)


She quickly found she attracted another participant.


Rykert has taught her to retrieve the ball and drop it on the racquet. Of course, with a new participant, it needs some more work.


Of course, eventually, the ball accidentally ended up on the other side of the fence.


Nola thoroughly enjoyed her first trip to this dog park, and the extra company.

Collision.

I spent today at a Continuing Legal Education seminar. During which, my worlds collided.



Do you see the title of that particular presentation?

Finally.

So the old adage goes, "the cobblers children have no shoes." The same may be said about the knitter's spouse. Well over a year ago, Rykert commented that he needed new slippers. His bare (or flip-flopped) feet were cold in the morning when he took the dog out, fetched the mail, or put the recycling out. I scoffed at buying a new paid, and instead set to work to knit him a pair of felted clogs.

And so using yarn (Lamb's Pride Bulky) I had on hand thanks to a close-out of a knitting store in Des Moines the defunct Village Knit Wit), I knit him a pair of clogs (the classic Fiber Trends pattern). I was working at home at the time, and literally knit them in about 24 hours. And then they sat.



Until finally, I got the energy to felt them.



But knowing that he would be hard on them and that come spring they would probably be worn on docks, I wanted to give them suede soles. As luck would have it the yarn store closest to our house had a pair of soles in the right size and the right color in stock. But again, they sat.

Sewing the suede bottoms on was a huge pain. Particularly in the toe region. So they sat for close to a year without soles.



A few weeks ago I was praising myself for finishing all of these small lingering projects, and he continually cleared his throat and gestured toward his unfinished slippers. When the weather turned cool, he would walk downstairs on a couple of Saturday mornings (the only time we're both home in the a.m.) and make comments about how cold his feet were and how it sure would be nice to have a pair of slippers. He's nothing if not subtle.

At that point I was in full-press costume mode (and wedding projects for my sister). So I did what I do best, and I ignored his pleas. Until one day, I just couldn't take it anymore. So to quite his subtle criticisms, while he was at work, I finished them. It took exactly one episode of The Office and a bit of 30 Rock.



I can report that he is a happy customer. And the knitter's spouse now has woolen clogs.

Pizza.

A few weeks ago, I took a cooking class at New Pioneer Coop with one of my friends. The class was Pizza from Scratch, and it was worth every penny of the reasonable $15 we paid.

The class covered making different kinds of pizza: traditional hand tossed, stuffed crust, deep dish, and cracker thin. It was informal, and the instructor answered questions throughout. At the end of the evening we were sent away full from sampling each variety and with a stack of recipes to try them at home.

So we did. Rykert and I tried the deep dish and stuffed crust a few weeks ago with decent success.



If you are interested, the instructor has a website where many of the recipes are posted. And if you are local, I'm sure the Coop will be offering the class again sometime in the future.

A hat so nice...

...I knit it twice.



There's really not much more to say about this hat. Same pattern; same yarn. The only difference between this and the first is that for this version I used US 8s to make it a bit smaller.



A couple of weekends ago, my stack 'o hats got a bit smaller as I found heads for a few of them.

NaBloPoMo

Apparently November is National Blog Posting Month. Who knew? The project challenges bloggers to blog everyday in November. I tried it a few years ago with limited success, and am now considering it again. So we'll see how it goes. Day 2, and so far, so good.

I'll be busy this month, so I'm not making any promises. My sister is getting married in a couple of weeks, and then we'll be in Louisiana for a week over Thanksgiving. But I'll try. The content may be boring at times, so I apologize.

Halloween Recap

So Halloween has come and gone. Here are the highlights:

Rykert, sadly, had to work a 13 hour shift on Halloween, so we went out on Friday night instead. He was Freddie Mercury.



This picture really doesn't do the costume justice. It was kind of a last minute costume choice, so we didn't have time to do much. If we were going to recreate this costume, I would definitely sew this jacket. Sadly, there were many young pups in downtown Iowa City who did not know who Freddie Mercury was. The costume was clear though, and when people "got it", it was fully appreciated.

My sister and her husband were a punk rocker and Rizzo from Grease.





My other sister was a devil in a blue dress.

The rest of this years sewn costumes also seemed to make it through Halloween, and are likely now residing in the dress up clothes box.

The flamenco dancer.



The Greek Goddess.



And the Fortune Teller.



Unfortunately, we now have to wait 364 days to do it all again. I think I'll start planning now. I think more holidays should involve costumes, don't you?