So now that the painful lump in Girlchild's knee has been diagnosed as Something Not Really Bad and the wave of relief has faded a bit, she's starting to realize that she's stuck with bad knees and probably inherited them from me, along with the need for braces, nearsightedness and astigmatism. Suddenly the big boobs don't seem like such a gift.

I've updated the links on the blog to include the crochet ring (I'm not sure it's active yet) and Purling Puppies, though I need to add a graphic. Little by little I'm trying to update the decor of the blog, it's looking tired. It needs a new and better picture of Murphy, too.

A Murphy story. A few weeks ago he had that bad experience when the female mutt next door grabbed him and tried to hurt him. It didn't seem to affect him much, he's still friendly with other dogs, and has befriended a cute little longhaired daschund and a gorgeous Papillon in the past couple of weeks. He didn't become timid around strange dogs, thank God. It's been a while since he and the Mutt Next Door encountered each other, but the other day the neighbor and I both had the dogs outside at the same time. Murphy spotted his nemesis and drew himself up to his full half a foot high and threw out his manly 8 lb. chest, and growled like a Rottweiler - it's amazing that someone so tiny can muster such a deep, threatening rumble from his chest when he needs it. The message was clear, "Bring it ON, bitch!" So he's not timid around new dogs, but he has put the neighbor dog on his permanent enemies list. Probably a wise idea, I don't think that dog can be trusted, she doesn't seem too bright and she does seem territorial.

My 16 inch Inox needle arrived from Needles! so I can start a bottoms-up bucket shortly. I love this needle store, they ship fast and communicate very well, and appear to carry just about everything. I also bid on a lot of vintage crochet books on ebay - the crochet craving has reawakened and I spent some quality coffee drinking time this morning paging through the "vintage patterns" - I'd love to find a source for the old Herrschners' crochet books from the 80s, I used to make a lot of stuff out of them.

And now it's 7 and I'm running late as always, so I had better hustle into the shower and get myself together. One more day til the weekend!