Being Back Home

The first week after a vacation is always an adaption time, especially if you are also recovering from jetlag.

We just finished emptying all 15 suitcases but our entire house has become an utter mess!

 

Had a lot of cuddle time with the dogs.

Shipped out the orders we got when we were away.

Figured a way and found a firm to ship to the US by prepaying tariffs.

Contacted all customers to pay those said tariffs.

Made a million different shipping profiles for all the shops so that from now on US customers have paid tariffs right away during checkout.

Cuddled some more dogs.

Went diving but was too jetlagged so it ended up a day on the sea with friends, which was perfect.

Photographed and listed some pieces we scored on our trip and also a scarf that my mum knitted on our vacation.

And finally cuddled some more dogs 😂

Week 2 will be easier, l think...

Happy Easter!

We wanted to wish you a happy Easter weekend, or if you do not celebrate that,  a happy weekend :)
We kind of tried (bribed them) to picture Mimi and Ernie as Easter bunnies.

As sweet as our doggies are, we do not train them to 'stay' and such, they are adorable and sweet and come as soon as you call them but we do not train them strictly which is why we did not manage to take pictures like BarkHaus, the difference is funny to see how miserably we failed :)

Anyway, Happy Easter :)

Hide and Seek

Remember the Juanita's?
One (Lulu) is missing in this picture...

Even though there is a cushion and plenty of space for her...
Did you spot her yet?

Between stashes of fabric she somehow discovered a little hole for herself and happily lies there these past two days (she does get up in between of course).

Lulu the little flying sausage, now looking very innocent. We discovered that everything we heard about Dachshunds is true and than some; they are incredibly naughty, but also a delicious delight :)

Zeyno

Yesterday we had to say goodbye to sweet Zeyno, our biggest dog and one that has been with us for fourteen years. It was her time and she has had a very good life. She has been loved and pampered.

She never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a big, good hearted dingus that let all the other dogs use her as a mattress  and boss her around. We haven't known an other dog as patient, innocent and with good intentions as she.

Zeyno, thank you so much for all the love and the smiles and the warmth you gave us all these years, you will be missed.

The Juanita's

A little inside peek of our crazy household :)
These 3 are our smallest dogs, Olivia is just 4 kilograms (8.8 lbs) Lulu is 5.5 kg (12 lbs) and Truusje although not much bigger is 7 kg (15.5 lbs). They are not much bigger than cats, in facts you have cats bigger than them, but they are the bosses of the pack. Each is bossier than the other, and we call them The Juanita's. Becoming a Juanita requires some character trades and a bit of a body type too.

A Juanita is of course always a girl, she is stubborn, bossy, requires lots of attention and basically has the ability to terrorize a dog 5 times her size without much effort. They are small and dark haired and normally are not much for sharing so when all 3 Juanita's of the house were in one basket I took pictures right away as it never happened before. They are like a coven of witches or members of a gang :)

New Family Member

We have a new family member. With already 10 dogs we didn't really 'need' another one but she happened to just be a dislocated family member who now found her home :)

She is a terrier and sausage mix, and has a super long body with short legs and a very funny walk. She is super sweet and the rest of the pack was very quick to accept her. She came last Friday and not even a week later she is completely at home. Like all the other family members she is adopted, we are all for the 'adopt, don't shop' movement :)

We called her Lulu and we already love her :)

Another sad Goodbye

Just when we started to get used to a house without Lucky, our old little Bibi passed away, 1 week after Lucky. Two losses in such a short time is heart breaking and we have a few more old dogs and the thought of loosing them is horrible.

Bibi has been with us since 2002, we do not know her exact age but it must have been around 15/16. We found her on the streets in very bad shape but thanks to a never ending appetite she recouped well and never had any health issues in all these years.  Until we discovered a lump in her breast last year. As you might remember we lost Daisy and Lily from breast cancer, we both had them operated which did not help much and took weeks for them to recover. Because of this we did not have Bibi operated on. She actually lived longer than the two who we had operated, but I think her good appetite helped a lot. When she all of a sudden stopped eating we knew it was her time.
Instead of letting her go on her own, we took her to the vet to have her put to sleep. This decision was because we know that even when they do not eat and drink it takes days for them to pass away, which is painful for them and agony for us to see them suffer. Bibi's tumor was swollen due to an abscess and looked horrible and painful.

This the last picture I took of her, the day she passed away, she now lies in the mountains with her other brothers and sisters.

If you want to avoid your female dogs to get breast cancer, please let them be spayed as soon as possible, best is when they are 5-6 months before they produce hormones. The older they get the more risk, especially when they have had pups spaying doesn't help much anymore.
We learned this the hard way by loosing 3 girls in 1 year, our 3 remaining girls are all spayed and hopefully will stay with us for a long time.

The love she left behind

Loosing Elsie a few weeks ago  was heart wrenching. You all know how much love, respect and tenderness we feel for all our dogs, but Elsie was more than a dog and more than a human. She was a little superior being, kind of an E.T., you know?

But when we saw an ad where somebody was looking for a new home for an other little black terrier, we knew that we would love her too. 

She was the  cutest little thing, the only problem was that this cutie lived in Ankara, about 900 km (560 miles) from our home, impossible to pick up by car.

I called the owner of the dog, a sweet lady who had to give her sweet Zeytin (Turkish for Olive) away due to a family issue. She clearly wanted to give her a good home and we clicked pretty quickly. Coincidentally a friend of ours was also in Ankara and would be coming back to our town in a few days, so we figured she could bring her. Unfortunately none of the bus companies accepted animals in the passengers compartment, only by the luggage, which is cold and airless, and as the bus drive would take 12 hours totally not an option.

Zeytin's owner was so convinced that she found a good home that she did not give her to anyone located near her and actually paid and send her to come by plane, which is just a 1 hours journey. We went to pick Zeytin up at the Airport (which is also a one hour drive) and waited for her arrival.
We were a bit worried how it would go, but Zeytin arrived well and was not cold or afraid.

Once out of her bag she dragged my mum through the airport to a green part and was curiously looking to us and her surroundings. Once at our car she jumped right in and was on my mum's lap the entire journey back, you would never have guessed that we just had met.

While she got used to us right away, introducing her to our pack at home took a while, but now she even plays with some and is already feeling completely at home.

On Sunday, 2 days after her arrival we went to the beach and took her with us, as she is so small she is very portable :)

She had the time of her life, running around and even jumping in the sea, it is a great experience to see a dog who had a rough time, recouping so quickly and enjoying life so much.

You might think we're crazy with already 10 dogs, taken a new one (again), but mum needed one who looks like Elsie and although I was not very enthusiastic of taken an 11th one, I am glad we did as she makes my mother smile again :)

Zeytin is very happy with her new home and surroundings, she now gets 24 hours attention, which is a huge improvement of her previous situation and has a lot of green to jump around in.

We also came across this on Pinterest, very appropriate for the occasion, you often hear people saying 'I will never have a pet again' when they loose one, well this furry guy makes some good points:

Happy Halloween!

In Turkey Halloween is not celebrated, actually the entire concept is also pretty new to Europe and is more a way of costume parties than the traditional celebrations in the US. It is called Cadılar Bayramı here which translates as: Witches Celebration.

Mimi however loves to dress up as you can see here, and found Halloween a good excuse.
Happy Haloween from us and the 13 furry kids :)

This and that

I told you about the next knitting project last week. It is a Ravelry pattern.
People that had made it told all how they did in just one day. Right, yeah it took me a week, much to Estella's fun. Let me say in my defence that I knitted with much thinner wool than indicated in the pattern, and I had to put number tags on every rectangle lest I got hopelessly confused.

The thing grew and grew, till I disappeared behind it.

Here it is sewn together, a very large thing indeed. My fear was that the wool that I had used wouldn't felt properly. It was hard to believe that those very elongated rectangles would become squares after felting.

But lo and behold, wondrous indeed, they did became squares! I just put it in my front loader washing machine at 60 degrees with the other laundry. I didn't dare to do it at 90 degrees, next time I will for I hope a thicker felt.

Not that this one is thin, it is very nice. I want also to try knitting wool together with a synthetic ribbon yarn and see what happen when felting. I hope that it will produce bobbles of ribbon enmeshed in the felt. We will see.

And this is the next experiment (for a bag). Thick wool knitted with 6 mm needles. I than traced a drawing on the knit stitching through  paper . After removing the paper I appliqued a fake leather cord with a zig- zag stitch.

I was afraid that the machine stitching would flatten and distort the knitting, but that didn't happen. In fact it makes the knit firmer. I did put the pressure of the presser foot at the lowest. It looks so neat that it does not seem hand made anymore. Duh!  Well, some veining with embroidery floss will help.

And here is Tommy, as happy as a clam, restored to full health and one of the tribe :)

He has that delightful gait that young dogs have, all loose limbed and floppy. Sweetie pie. They all are, really.