Lace, Flowers and Pet Grooming Supplies

I am just having the worst time of it, Y'all! I've felt lower than a snake's belly for the last several days although nothing seems to be 'wrong'. I did get a migraine yesterday and the medicine for it made me stagger around like a tranquilized rhino all day. Bleck! I'll be glad when whatever this is goes away! Through it all, I did manage to get caught up on my Secret of the Stole. This is it through hint # 3. Hint # 4 comes on Friday. Lace is really, really, really hard for me...especially in my current less-than-enthusiastic-woozy-rhino-on-a-bad-acid-trip state, but I'm getting the hang of it, slowly but surely. Not that you can tell by these photos!



Mr. Bee gifted me with one more birthday surprise this week. He ordered me Tammi Bowser's 3.0 Quilted Photos Express Quilt program and her latest book! He really loves me....or he really screwed up and I just haven't found out about it yet! I'm going to try to get to the workshop and work some on my Wee Paddy portrait quilt tonight. Mr. Bee is off to Rockford, IL for some work thing so it'll just be me and Big Ben. He loves to go to the shop with me and chew on his toys (and occasionally the big bear I have on the sofa down there). I hope to get a couple of good night's work done on it before Stole Hint # 4 comes out on Friday. Placing the colors, although fussy work, was more fun than the sewing part! It's not hard, just boring. Big Ben isn't much of a conversationalist especially with his mouth full of fuzzy teddy feet.

I used the birthday loot that I got from Mum and Gram and bought a new printer. Got a heckuva deal. It's an HP fax, scanner, copier, printer/photo printer that Staples had on sale from $399.00 to $149.00. We got there early and of course they were all out. Fortunately we arrived at the end of another customer tirade about this fact and to shut him up, they offered the upgraded version of the same copier ($450) for the same price ($149) so we coasted on his coat tails and got one too! Right now it's making an attractive paperweight in our computer room because we haven't read the instructions although I do admit to poking a few buttons anyway.

Speaking of Bentley, and I always am aren't I? We got the coolest pet brush last week at the pet store. I thought Mr. Bee was out of his mind paying $25 bucks for a brush but this thing is amazing! It's called The FURminator. It's got one row of teeth so it's more of a comb than a brush and it gets out ALL of the undercoat. Poor old Sebastian-the-17-year-old cat has been less than thorough in his grooming lately and has gotten a lot of mats on his sides. I have been cutting them out periodically here and there which makes him look like a recent photo I saw of Tom Pickett. (Shout out to Tom in Ohio!) And while Tom...ummm... pulls it off...umm....sort of....Sebastian doesn't do so well with it and looks for all the world like he has a bad case of the mange along with all of his other problems. This brush got the mats out without pulling or cutting. I can't explain it. It was some kind of pet grooming tool miracle. He just laid there purring his old bones through and through while I got every one out. And Bentley...don't even get me started. He goes bananas. He makes half-assed scratching motions with his hind legs and staggers all over the place. We had to hide the brush because he goes berzerk when he sees it and wants to be brushed all the time. I highly recommend paying the price. It doesn't look like much, but you are obviously paying for some kind of elfin magic. That's the only way to explain how it works.

Here is a picture of the flowers Mr. Bee sent for my birthday. He always uses ProFlowers on the internet. They always arrive looking half dead, but then perk up once you give them fresh water and room to breathe. These don't look a week and a half old do they?


Off to work on my Wee Paddy quilt!