A Blogiversary and Cassidy

Today is my 5 year Blogiversary! Yes, 5 years ago on Groundhog Day (great holiday, really great holiday!) I started my blog. This was before Ravelry folks, if you can remember back that far. Some posts have flown off my fingers, some posts have been a fight. When I started I had just begun spinning and I didn't know a thing about crochet. I'm more confident in my spinning, and I know enough crochet to know to get the book out and look things up before I do anything. Ramius has blogged. And then Finn joined in. When I started blogging Finn wasn't even born yet. In fact we had Bear at that time, our first Golden Retriever.

I never put Bear on the blog because he was going downhill quickly and I just couldn't share him with the blog and then have to explain when we made the toughest decision a pet owner ever has to make. I didn't know if anyone would read this blog and I didn't know who they'd be if they did and I just couldn't put that much of me out there on the Internets. Bear was 10 weeks old when Mickael and I started dating and he was 100% sure that I had actually given birth to him. He was a dark red Golden and he was 80 pounds of muscle and wiggles. He had food out all the time and only ate what he needed. (Finn would eat until he explodes and then he'd try to eat some more.) Bear's weight, once he got to a full sized dog stayed between 79 and 81 pounds his whole life until the last year or so, when he started losing weight. Bear loved to go swimming and was the first Gibbons dog to go off the diving board willingly. Bear knew how to turn on the hose to get a drink of water and as much as he watched our hands and feet when we drove, I'm pretty sure that if he could have, Bear would have driven a stick shift pretty well. He loved turtles but was afraid of the dark. He would chase armadillos and thought it was funny when cats ran up trees. Bear loved Ramius and would allow Ramius to lecture him, but he wouldn't play with Ramius until he was almost full sized. It's like Bear knew that Ramius was tiny and could be hurt. He even let little kitten Ramius eat all the whiskers off one side of his face. (We put a stop to it as soon as we realized what was going on of course.) Bear fell head over heels in love with baby Caleb when we brought him home from the hospital and tried to trade his toys for Caleb. When he realized that one toy wasn't going to be a good trade for baby Caleb, he brought me combinations of toys, trying to find the magic mix of squeaky toys and wooly men so he could have the baby. The day Caleb learned to roll, Bear changed his mind - Mickael and I could keep him. More than once Bear gave Caleb a soft place to land when he rolled off the sofa since Bear would sleep next to it. Bear was a huge part of our lives and while I wasn't planning on writing this blog post all about him, it's fitting that I share a tiny bit of who Bear was with you. You guys would have loved him.

In knitting news, I'm still working on Cassidy. I'm doing increases now and I'd love to finish the fronts this week. I'm still hoping to finish the whole thing by next Friday before the Olympics start. I'll be letting you know next week what event I'm doing - gotta swatch first!

Finn appreciates all the well wishes for his weight gain, naturally. When we first found out he was overweight, the vet said to keep him on his regular food because at his age then (and now) he wouldn't have any trouble getting his weight down. So, he's never been on a reduced calorie food, I just needed to adjust his amounts a bit after he lost the weight so he wouldn't keep losing weight. I've increased his amounts by 1/4 cup a day and we'll see how he does with that for a bit and I'll increase it more if we need to. Just like weight loss, it's important to gain weight gradually too. That means no Sonic or Whataburger for the little fuzzy baby.