Finished the front of PinUp Girl this weekend. Tried it on (did a quick sewing up of the shoulders and a few stitches on the side, just enough to keep stuff together). VERY lowcut. Dave was appreciative. I’ve decided I’m going to do 3/4 length sleeves rather than full length, so I need to figure out the math/ how many stitches to cast on etc.

Rigel’s been sneezing like he has something up his nose, so I’m going to take him in to one of the local e clinics (my favorite that I generally refer to) and sedate him and look up his nose. What fun. He does have allergies, Dave & I have allergies, all of our allergies are flaring up, but Rigel’s sneezing is a little too violent for my peace of mind. I’ve taken foxtails out of dog’s noses before, as well as a 2 inch stick on one memorable occasion. I keep a very close eye on Rigel while we’re on our walks but it’s certainly possible he got a foxtail up his nose — I’ve seen plenty on the sides of the wood chip path where we normally walk him. (Foxtails are stiff grass awns that, when grouped together on the seedhead of a stem of grass, look like, well, a brushy foxtail. The individual awns (also called foxtails) break off and cause problems because they are barbed so they’ll only move foward. They most commonly get stuck in dog’s paws, ears, noses and eyes. Occasionally you’ll hear horror stories of foxtails migrating through the fur, then the skin, then the muscle into the chest cavity or abdominal cavity and causing horrible abscesses.)

Friday I worked at a clinic in Downey. They close for a large lunch hour, and I was prepared: I’d found out the location of the nearest LYS — Stitches in Time, in Bellflower — the night before. Very friendly owner and staff, probably the nicest I’ve met in this area. And they had the magnetic boards! I bought one as well as some Addi Turbos for PinUp Girl (decided I’d rather work back to back on circulars).

Saturday I worked in the morning at a local clinic but that afternoon I’d signed up to attend afternoon tea at the Vintage Tea Leaf in Long Beach. What a wonderful place! Endless pots of tea, scones, lovely soup (cheese broccoli for me, mushroom for everyone else, I just really don’t like mushrooms), endless sandwiches, and then dessert. We were torpid and stuffed afterwards.

This week I have to do preps for my May Day tea: baking bread, shopping for ingredients, making the herbed cream cheese, etc.

I performed a home chemistry experiment in preparation for the May Day tea: removing the tarnish from my silver spoons using aluminum foil, hot water and baking soda. It worked! basically, you lay the aluminum foil shiny side up in something that can hold enough water to cover your items (I used a large cookie sheet). You pour boiling water over it all and add a lot of baking soda. You let the reaction continue until all the tarnish is ‘gone’. You can google ‘silver tarnish baking soda’ and come up with a ton of links explaining the actual chemistry; the short version is that the tarnish is ‘transfered’ to the aluminum electrochemically.