My step-daughter forwarded the following email from one of her friends, who is also a dachshund lover.

Howdy everyone! You know what am animal lover I am. I am on a list serve for a dachshund club and rescue in LA and the following tragic case has come to my attention. Usually, if an animal is older or very badly injured it may be kinder to put them to sleep but this dog is young, was hit by a car, suffered a broken leg and, if this is corrected, will likely be adoptable to a loving home and enjoy a good quality of life. Since there is no Bill Gates among us, the money for the surgery (estimated at between $4000 and $ 6000) will likely come from many small donations. If any of you feel the spirit to make a small donation to this cause, it would certainly be something worth considering. Hope you are all well.

Felix is currently at Southern CA Dachshund Rescue. Down at the bottom of their page, there are directions for making a donation.

Donations for Felix can also be made at Wiener Wonderland.

THANKS!

6/18/08 – Update – Felix sees the surgeon tomorrow about his broken bones.

Now if my other 3 plants will just start producing too….....

I’m also knitting a Forest Canopy Shawl from sock yarn in sugar maple colors. Oranges, yellows, golds, and a little green.

I was working on my “Wool Peddler’s Shawl”
which I finished this morning.
I haven’t had a chance to block it yet.

Jinann surprised me with birthday goodies.

What a sweetie!
That’s a skein of Paca-Peds sock yarn, 20% alpaca, 65% superwash wool & 15% nylon. These will definitely be a pair of socks for me, when I finish my current pair of Wildfoote K2P2 socks.
The “Simple gifts for dog lovers” was a complete surprise. I hadn’t seen this anywhere, so I didn’t even know it existed. And in the lower right corner is a LIZARD measurng tape. Something else I hadn’t seen before.

THANKS, JINANN!

So, Monday morning – pulled out my yellow pages and looked up “Appliances”. Found Lane’s Appliances about a mile down the road. Went there and they had the first refrigerator we’d tried to buy from Lowe’s – in white – sitting right there in plain sight. Even better – since it’s a discontinued model – they were selling it $300.00 CHEAPER! than Lowe’s had it.

Best of all – They said they could deliver it

TODAY

Here it is!

Now on to the rest of the kitchen remodel – and Lowe’s WON’T be involved with any of it.

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Then this morning, Saturday, at 7:40 a.m. there was the Lowe’s truck in my driveway.

I was happy until I saw what they had dragged up onto my deck. It wasn’t the side by side refrigerator/freezer I had ordered. It was one with the freezer drawer on the bottom. They didn’t even have my side by side on the truck.

Hubby suggested we take the freezer bottom one, but I have now canceled the entire order.

So now I get to start all over again, in my search for a fridge.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Went to Lowe’s and ordered a Whirlpool. Two weeks later, the delivery date came and went – Lowe’s and the refrigerator never showed up. Went back to Lowe’s and was told that the refrigerator I ordered had been discontinued by Whirlpool. “Gee, someone should have called you. “Jake” (not his real name) said”. “Maybe, since you’re the one who took the order, you should have been the one to call me”, I said. Jake thought it should be someone in the office.

Then Jake started telling me all about the new refrigerator that Whirlpool was replacing the discontinued one with. And that he could get me the new one – bigger, more features, for $100.00 less than the price of the discontinued one.

Forgive me – I’m a Yankee, I have Scots ancestors, I ordered the new one.

I should have known better.

Two weeks later, and Whirlpool has not yet started making the new model, and doesn’t know when they will.

So I ask Jake what else he’s got – IN THE STORE.

We set up delivery of that one for today. I get a call at

6:30 friggin A.M.

I ordered it on Friday, and they can’t figure any of this out until 6:30 A.M., the day of delivery?

When/if they call on Thursday and say they’re delivering the thing, I’m going to tell them to come on ahead. But when they get here – I’m not answering my phone, and I’m not answering my door. Instead, I’m going to enjoy a little payback – and I’m not going to feel the least bit bad about it.

I’m sick and tired of promises broken.

I’m fed up with being lied to.

The worm has turned, people – it’s not going to be pretty.

I’m off to Home Depot to buy an ice box. Wish me luck.

First, if you go to the expense of buying a kit, you’re supposed to get enough yarn to knit the da***d thing. I’ve run out of yarn not once, not twice but FOUR TIMES.

Now, since I praise the shops who give me good service, I’m also going to post about the ones with customer service that is either non existent or stinks.

When I ran out of yarn the first time, Nancy of Handkntting.com, (no – I’m NOT going to provide a link) which is where I bought the kit, told me that they’d be happy to sell me more yarn. I told them I’d purchased a kit, and it should have enough yarn to complete the sweater. She told me, the kits came from Louet, and since they had no control over what went into the kits, well, they’d be happy to sell me more yarn – but that was all they could do bout my problem.

I’ll NEVER buy anything from Handknitting.com again.

I had my email removed from their email list.

So, I contacted Louet. I ended up speaking to 3 people. The first one just passed me along to someone else. Numbers 2 and 3 listened to the problem. Then they started asking me questions. Was I using the right size needles? (yes) Was I getting the specified gauge? (yes). Was I following the pattern? (yes – although this pattern is the most confusing piece of crap I’ve come across in over 50 years of knitting!). If I was making a size 2X, had I ordered a size 2X Kit? (Yes – I found that one REALLY insulting). Was I using the colors in the specified order? (yes).

Finally, they agreed to send me 2 skeins of yarn for the 2 colors I had run out of.

Three weeks later, when the yarn still hadn’t arrived, I called Louet again. After an hour on the phone – once again I had to talk to 3 people – they agreed to re-send the yarn. (The original shipment of replacement yarn never has made it to my house)

Every time I’ve called Louet, it’s taken at least an hour on the phone, (yes – long distance) talking to anywhere from 3 to 5 people. And I’ve had to explain, re-explain, beg, plead, and grovel, just to get what should have been in the kit in the first place.

Will I ever buy another kit from any company, for any reason, ever again?

HELL NO!!

On top of running out of yarn multiple times, this was the most aggravating pattern I’ve ever come across.

It’s an 8 page pattern, but 2 of those pages are pictures, 2 pages are schematics, and 2 are how to’s for the techniques used in construction of the sweater. That leaves 2 pages of actual pattern. The pattern covers all sizes from toddler small to women’s 2X. Readable it is not. It has taken me 4 years of deciphering the pattern, getting fed up, throwing it in the back of the closet for months, and re-starting it, to get this finished.

I’ve been knitting for over 50 years, and if I’d had any idea what a B**CH this sweater was going to be, I’d have forgotten all about it.

It’s finished, it’s pretty, and

I STILL DON’T WANT TO WEAR IT.

This knit was so annoying, that I’ve come to hate everything about this sweater, so I’m shoving it in a plastic bag, throwing it in my closet, and I don’t care if it never sees the light of day again.

Here’s some photos.

Vicki wearing the sweater.