She'll be Coming around the Corner When She Comes

(With apologies to whoever it was who came around the mountain years ago, wearing scratchy red pajamas and driving six white horses, no less.)

I've reached the 72 inch mark on the long side of the Rosebud Pink Wrap and now I'm heading into the last corner! Can't tell? How about a closeup of the third corner.

I get to decrease on every row now, and it's moving along pretty quickly. Next time you see this project, it will be blocked.

We've had some good things happen here this week with Ramius and Finn so since I'm pretty sure half of you are only here for them anyway, I'll share. I don't believe I've ever shared this with the blog, but Finn has allergies. Not occasional sneezing allergies, full on ear infections, pulling fur off his feet to nibble at the itchy places, scratching his fur out allergies. He will actually come running to me when I get out the hydro cortisone cream because he knows it makes him feel better. He has both food allergies as well as environmental allergies and we had tried a number of things with the vet in Virginia. Everything would help clear him up and heal his skin, but it was just reactive - we weren't preventing the allergic attacks in the first place. Since we moved here to Texas, his allergies have been getting slowly worse so on Monday we went to the vet here to get a new perspective and try to get the little guy feeling better. They asked lots of questions about his past allergies, treatments we'd tried and just got a feel for what was going on. Then he asked if Finn had ever had a cortisone shot. Finn had briefly been on cortisone pills but he had never had a shot. Apparently giving cortisone shots is one of those things that older vets are more comfortable with than newer vets because cortisone can cause trouble if there are other health issues happening in the animal. Except for his allergies, Finn is a healthy dog, so he got a cortisone shot on Monday. (Our new vet has never had a bad reaction to cortisone shots in otherwise healthy dogs and even treated his own dog's allergies with it.) Finn hasn't scratched himself or picked at himself since. It is such a huge difference in his behavior! I know he feels better, his skin is healing and I think he can actually think more clearly without the background "itchy, itchy, itchy" he had running through his head 24/7. At this point we wait and watch to see how long a single shot lasts for him and then we'll figure out a plan with the vet.

Ramius got to go meet the new vet yesterday for a general checkup. He is allergic to his yearly vaccinations so after he'd had them at age 4, I decided to stop getting them for him and just take him in for checkups. He's an inside cat and it's just safer for him health wise not to get the vaccinations. He's never had his teeth cleaned and at 14-1/2 I figured he desperately needed them done. He does need them done but they really aren't too bad at all (the vet says this is because he has good genes). Apparently Ramius also has the coat of a 3 year old and is in very good health. We're getting his teeth cleaned on Monday and the vet said that should hold him over for another 15 years or so! It was good to find out that he was in good health. I hadn't noticed anything going on with him, but at 14-1/2 I could have just seen them tell me that his legs were fixing to fall off or something. (Just to be sure, I've checked and his legs are all firmly attached - didn't want to start a panic.)