Saturday, January 26, 2008

Bulletin Board Forums at BerninaUSA

1-26-2008

I use to post at the Bernina site and read their boards, but it has been about three years since I was last there. Does anyone know if the forums are still available. I went to the site and can not find anything about them.

This site has been very helpful to me in the past, but there were times when no one here could answer my questions at the time. The Bernina site was very useful to me because it put me in touch with others that use the same machine and could help me when persons here couldn't.

I had to take a long absence from sewing of all kind. I had competely burned myself out and I got to the point where I wanted NOTHING to do with sewing of anykind. But, I am now leaning in that direction again and feel myself being pulled back to what I once loved to do more than anything, (QUILT).

Hopefully, before long I will be back to hand quilting my husbands' quilt that has been sadly and patiently waiting for me in the hoop to come back to it.

Wish we well.
Sandra from SC

Friday, January 25, 2008

Success !


Well, here we all are ! DD#2 marching towards the house, Maggie, the Lab, alongside, DGS (8) wondering why Poppa is taking yet another photograph, DGS (10)inspecting the last one taken, Moi (21) walking with DGD (12) and finally, Holly bringing up the rear !
Our lawn is green, only because we water it, the paddock is green because of irrigation, the bit in- between, shows how it would look if not watered...
Hope the w/end is going well for everyone. Any news of Jane yet ?
Marion.

Oh dear !

Inspired by the photos of the dogs I have spent the last 15mins trying to post a photo of my own, but it seems to have got lost in "Cyber Space"... I'll (perhaps) try again later !

Bee. I'm sure we would all love to see a picture of Gus. He has become a bit of a favourite here on the BB. ! So pleased to hear that the recovery continues to go well.

Busy days here still, with DD and her three children here, plus her dog ! Our dog has been exhibiting very strange behaviour ths week. Lots of running off with shoes etc. Something we thought she had stopped doing. .The visiting Lab is part of the family but Holly doesn't seem too keen to share and objects to not being allowed the freedom of the house . She likes to play with the children but doesn't like them taking her space !!! She'll be sorry next week, when they are no longer here..... ask me how I know !?!

The weather has continued to be fine and sunny. It makes everything so much easier. DD has been busy driving in and out of town, catching up with her friends and the friends of the three children. Not much of a rest for her but she seems to be enjoying herself, I hope so anyway.

Can't believe that we will be off to Scotland in a months time ! I've hardly given it any thought. Before then I am hoping for a visit from a school friend from England. We haven't seen each other for over 40 years ! I wonder if we will recognise each other !!! The timing isn't good, she is likely to be here the week before we go away, but I couldn't forgo the chance of seeing her again.

Off to take the DGS's off for a walk. DD and DGD are still in bed !
Enjoy the w/end.
Marion.

a photo of Gus ,maybe

Great to see the pets having fun. we took Gus for a check at the vets and they are so happy with him , it is one month today and the improvement is magic. possibly he will always have a droopy face, mix his back feet up and have scar tissue but nothing is life threatening. Just magine a very large dog, a very small vet, sitting on the floor with Gus on her lap and the vet nurse in front of him, showing me how to massage his shoulder to fix the tissue. he was in heaven!!!!! he was grinning like mad and loving it.Bee in NZ

Pictures

Laura and Pat, I don't see any buttons at all on my posting page. That's why I can't figure out how to post a picture. When I'm not on the run, I guess I'll have to e-mail Pat and take her up on her offer to walk me through this--if I can even post a photo, since I can't find any of those buttons you guys are talking about! Hmmm. What's wrong with my posting screen??

Anyhow, after my comment yesterday about chronic pain I went right to the phone and made the appointment for Kira's surgery. My shoulder pain made me realize how she must feel with her knee. Her surgery is scheduled for Feb. 6. I hope she has an easy time of it. I don't look forward to the recovery time with two other dogs who aren't going to understand that Kira will not be allowed to play for quite a while. I just want the dear dog to be okay again.

I can't believe I'm spending $1500 on dog surgery!!!! I guess that's cheap though for a watchdog, companion, and faithful friend. Hey, now that I think about it, Kira was the only dog that we got free. I guess I'll just pretend she's a very expensive purebred.

Just got the Wii game console for my kids. Nice to see them physically "playing" sports instead of sitting in front of a computer or video game screen. The crazy thing actually makes you sweat! I was "bowling" on it last night. The stuff we do...

Jean

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Jean, Laura's directions are right on. I wasn't sure how to post a photo so I just stumbled along. Once it was done though I thought it was pretty easy to do. On my screen the button to click on is right next to the spell check button. Once you click on that the rest is a piece of cake. If you still have troubles you can e-mail me at seals2441atyahoodotcom with your phone number. I will call you and walk you thru it.

Laura your dogs are beautiful. Looks like they play together pretty good. My Lady is twice as big as Sassy and has a tendancy to run her over. They love to play chase. My grandson tells me they are training for NASCAR!!

Pat in Flint

Attaching a picture


To attach a picture, sign in and go to the posting page, as usual. On my screen, at the top right of the posting area, there are various buttons. Mine include automatic numbering, bullets, spell check, and a little tiny picture of a mountain (blue sky). If you click on the picture, a window pops up that lets you browse your computer to find the picture you want. Once you find it, follow the on screen directions to choose a lay out. Finish your post, and voila, you have a picture.
These are my babies, Ike and Schuyler.
It is going down to 12 degrees F tonight. Remember, I live in Alabama. This is the kind of weather I moved down here to avoid! At least nothing has budded out yet, so it's not going to freeze back anything I wanted to keep. I wish I could stay home and work on Mom's quilt, but I'm sure I have to work tomorrow. They won't call school on account of cold...
Laura in Alabama

Pictures

Pat, I loved your doggie pictures. How do you attach a photo to one of these posts? I don't see where to do it.

Ugh. I pulled something behind my shoulder blade and it's been hurting me for four days now. I can't wait till this goes away. I don't know how I'd deal with chronic pain, because I don't like this!! Hmmm. Come to think of it, that must be how poor Kira feels. Must schedule that surgery.

Jean in VT

My Dogs


I love hearing about everyone's pets. These are my two dogs, Sassy and lady. Both are Heinz 57 variety and loads of fun. Lady is the brown and white and Sassy is black and tan. Sassy loves to go for a ride but Lady gets car sick. Not fun for anyone.
Have been working on a mystery quilt in my spare time.....have to do the borders then I can take it to the long arm quilter. On Monday this week some quilting buddies came to Flint and we went to three quilt shops in my area. We did a good job finding lots of things we just had to have. Spending the day with quilting friends is a great way to be inspired for a new project. Or to get me moving on some UFO's.
Take care
Pat in Flint

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

dogs

Rosey, thanks so much for passing my post onto Celia. It really helps to have someone who has been through this with her dog giving me input. DH read Celia's post about Riley having his surgery done and is ready to schedule Kira's. It's sad to see her lifting up her back leg, not wanting to put weight on it. Hopefully if we can get it fixed before it gets any worse.

As I told Celia via e-mail, we have quite the motley crew here. Kira is a husky/shepherd/collie mix and the dearest you could ask for. We also have a Riley, a hound mix that I affectionately refer to as dumb, yet she's the most obedient of the three. Rounding out the trio is our poowawa (poodle/chihuahua) Chiquita, who is about one-tenth the size of the others but thinks she's boss. She's my lap dog, and she thinks I belong to her instead of the other way around. Honestly, it's like raising a passel of kids all over again (I have five of the two-footed variety of kids!).

Just so no one wonders why all these dog posts are on a quilter's forum, I will say that we quilters love our animals, and our animals love our quilts! Now I wish life would settle down a little so I could finish the log cabin blocks I'm making for my niece's wedding quilt!!

Jean in VT

Celia's response for Jean

Well, at least we've got Celia on the board. I'm not sure what the problem was but once she's settled into their new home, she may have time to deal with it. Jean, you don't need to tell me how precious our pets can be. I'm so besotted with the Australian Shepherd breed and believe me, I had no intention of getting one. I went to a breeder of Aussies and her bitch, a blue-eye, blue merle came flying out the door at me (as only Aussies can do) and because she'd whelped not more than eight weeks before and had been nursing pups, her coat was sparse. She looked like a ghost dog and I left without seeing the pups, telling the breeder that that breed was not for me. Five or six years later, fate happened and I found Geordie on the floor of our vet's surgery, waiting to have his broken leg mended after being kicked by 'crack-addict' owners. He had brown eyes, was a blue merle and just about the cutest darned pup I'd ever seen. I paid for his operation and brought him home, cast and all. Two more joined him later on. I'm devoted to my dogs. So I can imagine how upsetting this is for you with your Kira and hope Celia's messages are useful.

And Jane is in recovery and likely feeling like a Mac truck hit her yesterday.

Snowing here again. We've had quite a snowy winter but living in the country makes it all not seem annoying...it's so beautiful.
Rosey


Dear Jean,

Rosey forwarded your response to me, and just wanted to say that Riley's surgery was done in January 2006 and it was a little more difficult in winter conditions, but really not too bad at all. The risk factor in waiting is that it could be damaged worse, resulting in the surgery being more complicated, and then more expensive. It's a bit of a catch 22 decision really. Initially post surgery, I think you might have to keep Kira separated from the other two dogs to prevent the surgical site being reinjured. It does take a few months to recover fully. I am only basing my comments on our own experience with Riley and not that I have any veterinary knowledge. We were however, very pleased with Riley's outcome and he doesn't appear to suffer any related problems whatsoever now. We have no regrets about our decision. Just a reduced bank account. LOL

I can send you some pics of him after his surgery, or answer any other questions you may have. Feel free to contact me at:
Brit4@rogers.com
Celia

doggie surgery

Celia, Rosey and Gus (!), thanks for responding to my question. I knew someone on here would know what I was talking about. From what Celia said, it doesn't sound like rehab would be all too awful, so we're leaning toward going ahead with the surgery. Riley is much bigger than our Kira, and if he had such a successful outcome, she probably would too. The one thing that's going to be tricky here is that we have two other dogs who aren't going to understand why Kira won't be able to play for a while, and Kira herself is going to have to be watched like a hawk or she'll be trying to play with the other two before she's supposed to. Good grief.

I wonder if it would be best to wait until spring for the surgery so we're not dealing with ice and snow and cold. Oh, my poor doggie. She is the sweetest thing too. They sure do capture your hearts.

Jean

For Jean in Vermont

Jean, your question re your dog's problem, I forwarded this to Celia. She has not been able to resign onto the board, for some reason and perhaps because she has so much going on in her life right now, building a new home and living elsewhere at the moment, it's too much for her to deal with. So this is her response and she's asked me to post it for her to the board. Rosey

Dear Jean,

Rosey has brought your post about your dog's ligament problem to my attention knowing that our black Lab Riley had the same surgery 2 years ago.

Unfortunately, the problem will not likely improve without the surgery. Especially if the ligament has really popped and will only continue to cause pain and lack of mobility. We tried to keep Riley on limited exercise for 6 months but he continued to favour his other leg and that became sore too. We opted for the surgery. It cost in the same range as your estimate but he has since fully recovered, and we felt it was worth every cent we paid. He was 6 years old at the time, and otherwise in excellent health. He was injured whilst out duck hunting with DH and slipped jumping out of the boat to retrieve. The post surgery rehab we followed as per our vet's advice was limited exercise and gentle massage and light bending of the leg several times a day to prevent stiffness, for several weeks. That was followed by short slow walks and increased them gradually until now he is back to 100% activity, with the exception of anything like chasing a ball or where he would have to come to an abrupt stop. That doesn't mean to say that he still tries to chase squirrels if he can get away with it, but we try not to let him. Ivon made him a carpeted ramp to be able to get up and down the 4 front steps but after about a month he was able to manage without it. For the first initial post-surgery days we used a large bath towel under his tummy near his hind legs, to take off some of the weight to help him up and down the steps.

Riley is quite large at 109 lbs and although not overweight we have slimmed him down a few pounds to alleviate weight on his hind legs. Another thing that helped was a bed we made him so that he could sleep and rest stretched out. We couldn't find one to purchase so we made one as follows:

We bought a double bed sized egg crate mattress foam and cut it in half. Stacked one half on top of the other and then pinned a twin bed sized comforter all the way around it with the large quilting pins, and laid his blanket on top. It worked perfectly for him and he seemed to recover very well that way. He is now on glucosamine and chondroitin 2 pills twice daily for a total of 2,000 mg per day. That would be subject to weight, so if your dog weighs less than 109 lbs it would be advisable to ask your vet what dosage you would give. The ones supplied by the vet are very expensive but I buy Riley's at the Wal-Mart and use their Equate brand family size bottle. He does fine on them and is well and happy again.

I hope this helps.
Best regards,
Celia

from Gus to Jean

My mom is taking me to our vet tomorrow for something similar and will ask while she is there. When I decided to fight with a car my shoulder has a ropey thingy on it , not supposed to be there, and we are going to see Brett the vet about it. It is probably a cartilage problem but doesn't seem to hurt. As I am very thick my mom says who knows what I have done. Love Gus the dog. Ps she is still in shock after paying our bill.!!!!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

doggie question

This isn't a quilty question, but I know there are so many dog lovers on here that no one will mind. Our 6 year old husky mix has apparently torn the ligaments in her knee and is limping. The vet says it'll cost $1500 for surgery and then she'll have six months of rehab (whatever that entails for a dog?!). I'm currently trying glucosomine controitin (sp?) pills to help her, but they're supposed to take 4-6 weeks before you see much improvement.

My question is, has anyone else had this surgery for their dog? What are we talking about for rehab? (At the time, I didn't ask the vet much about rehab because I was still under sticker shock over the cost of the surgery.) I was hoping that putting the dog on a diet (she's a bit overweight) and trying the pills would make enough of a difference that we might get away without the surgery, but now I'm not so sure. SIGH. It's only been two weeks, but we're all feeling badly for our baby who is limping. Through it all, she continues to appear happy, but we feel badly all the same.

Jean

Monday, January 21, 2008

THANKS

for all your good wishes. I'm on an eating binge tonight as I'm cut off from everything other than clear liquid at midnight. I've packed a full suitcase because I'll be going to a rehab place in a few days and I was told when I called about it, that I need to bring working out clothes. I've got a bunch of T shirts, socks and loose cotton knit pants I use at the gym. Also have two books. I wish I'd had a chance to set up the I Pod but my techies didn't respond. I know they had midterms this week. Greg was concerned about physics.

I have to shower tonight with some special pre-op scrub and AGAIN in the morning with some more of the same stuff. Sounds a bit hyper to me. My poor skin is just recovered from the horrible itchies I suffered from all fall and December.

Even Shadow got a bath and a newly laundered bed for her trip to Koko's house during my absence.

Jane

feral cat adoption

Jill, our elderly friends adopted a 2 year old feral cat last summer thinking she'd be their lap cat. Many surprises there for them and for the cat. She finally lets them touch her, fleetingly. She will come near and even walk on the back of the sofa where they are sitting. They can talk to her now without her running. Her favorite place is sitting in a window, looking out. They are traveling in a motor home with her! She escaped once and of course they couldn't catch her. She runs from rather than to them. But, she did come back to the door and let her new mommy bring her in. Wish someone would have advised them before this adoption. This is their first cat, lots of new experiences for all. We are hopeful she will further adapt; they have made big strides. And, they do love her.

Lovely weather today, 65 and sunny. Glad the plants (well covered with newspapers and sheets) survived our cold nights and look happy. Replaced many 10 days ago thinking our winter was past. Usually only get one spell of freezing nights and had that in December. 28 pots of herbs and flowers on our flagstone patio (back) and courtyard (front). Gardening is much easier here with no weeding since all is in pots. Lifting is up to dh, which helps. The daffodils are up and tall. 2 amarilys are poking thru as are the purple lilies.

Big reorganization in this quilt/computer room. Have 8 large bins (filled and labeled) beneath the sewing table. More in the closets and smaller ones on both bookshelves. Since more space is not going to happen, this helps. Now, I need time and motivation to actually finish all these projects!

Speedy recovery wishes, Jane.

Blessings,
MJ in AZ

Cold is all relative...

If I said that it was three degrees above zero F. and that it's so cold down here the dogs are lifting their paws, Heather would say...cold, you don't know what cold is until you hit Thunder Bay, Ontario...It's so cold I'm going to hop in a bath, get my flannel nightie and pyjamas and housecoat and kid mohair sox and my fleece lined slippers on...I haven't warmed up all day.

Jane will be on her way to Asheville in the a.m. to meet a masked man with a sharp instrument. Hope all goes well, it has to be better than your last experience and in a better hospital. Will you be able to sleep tonight, though...I hope Shadow will sleep on Mom's bed and comfort her.

Doris, I sneezed so much with that cold over Christmas, took eighteen days before I finally felt human, thanks to antibiotics, threw my back out, a new experience and I'm starting to sneeze again. I think it's something that revisits.

Jean, I think that is green grass underneath that cat...isn't it...

Rosey

having a cold spell here!

JANE IN NC - I hope your knee surgery goes well, and that you get the iPod figured out. DH got one for Xmas along with a turntable that plugs into the computer. Now he is recording all his old 33LPs and putting them on the iPod. As our son said, "Mom....it's keeping him busy." LOL! It sure ain't golf weather here, so the kid is right. ;o) DH was due for a new laptop and the iPod accelerated the purchase. His old laptop did not have enough memory, and iTunes was causing everything to freeze up. You need more than 256MB memory...... his new laptop is leaving us behind in the dust. LOL

JEAN IN MILL BAY - I think I've had the same 'crud'! I've been sick for over three weeks, just finished up a 2nd round of antibiotics for sinus, thought I was getting over it and had a 100F fever on Friday afternoon. I'm laying low, staying inside, and all activities are off until I get over this stuff.

GRACE in ONT - Better the luggage arrive home a day late, than to Texas a day late! Glad you had a good time in Texas.

JILL IN PORTLAND - The Smart Cars are sooo cute! Over in Europe people park them nose-in, in spaces meant for parallel parking. THAT's how short they are! and parking spaces are very dear in all of UK and Europe. Often we'll see two parked side-by-side, nose-in. You can pick them up, also, if you have a couple of strong guys. LOL

Sunday, January 20, 2008

just a little sun......



It's been so rainy so far this winter!

Colder temps than usual too.
Even though this guy above has a nice thick coat we have fixed him up


with a nice new dog house with a low voltage heating pad.


Not sure he will ever trust us, we trapped him a month ago or so & neutered & released him.


He has the most beautiful sweet look on his face & I'm so sad that he was


never able to trust & enjoy human companionship.


Would love to neuter whoever felt he was undeserving of a loving home,


probably by not spaying his Mom.


No quilting going on here to speak of, a quickie baby quilt that's still at the quilters & that's about it.


Was suppose to be at The Road To Ca. this weekend but spent two weeks with a sinus, cold combo & lost all interest to travel, so we stayed home.


Home is just the best place!!

Here's my little Smart Car that is on order!

Any idea's for plates?

The cool stuff like, EPANTS (as in smarty pants) or Alec (as in Smart Alic) are gone, best I have come up with is PARK ME

Our dealership opens tomorrow & I guess they have 50 cars, but we are

down the line & probably will get ours in late spring.

Good luck with your surgery Jane, I know it will be a great success & you will back on your skateboard come summer!! Wish I had a quilt going to your show, that was so much fun!

I'd like to say I'm off to quilt, but I think a little nap in in order!

Love, to all, Jill