10/25 UPDATE: charming lucy dog has recovered from her uti & has found a good temp. home this week, but we’re still looking for a permanent new home in pdx! we have some possible leads to check out when i return next week! thanks again to everyone for helping us through this crisis!

10/21 UPDATE: lucy is now out of the garage situation and at a familiar friend’s house for the weekend. still working on finding her another situation after that. thanks for everyone’s help & tips!

this past weekend miss lucy passed the decade mark! here are a few more photos from our family portrait shoot with rachel the other week to mark the occasion!

we’re both a little slower and a little greyer than when we first met, but still hanging in there and hanging out together.

still running in place, trying to catch up with everything after being away for a week! i really wanted to bring you another installment of last week’s trip today, but instead spent a few hours in a photography studio getting lucy through her first photo shoot! love these 1st two family photos rachel the photographer posted on twitter, can’t wait to see the rest next week!

it’s only 8pm, but i’m gonna head to bed, get a good night’s sleep and post the trip pics first thing tomorrow!

lucy’s boarding place emailed more photos this morning! on the right, you can really see the grey hairs my lil ol lady is getting around the eyes and snout now that she’s 11. on the left is a photo of my girl when we first began hanging out together 9 years ago. we were both so young and spry then!

i received several emails asking about lucy this week which made me realize i haven’t updated her fans recently! well, she’s doing great! although the continual rain and all the forced indoor time away from nature and other dogs and people is making her cranky.

while i don’t mind the weather because it gives me an excuse to get a ton of work done, miss lucy has taken to standing next to me after a few days of boredom and whining for hours on end to be taken places. i have a few in-town friends that love to have an occasional lucy weekend visit, but sometimes she just needs a big pack of dogs.

so, this weekend she’s at one of her favorite kennels bossing around the big dogs and mothering the little ones! and i get a break from the constant whining.

i’m feeling better, a new computer is on the way, but lucy is worse. we’re on the way to the vet now!

ai-ya, this is a few days late as i haven’t had a readily-available wifi connection for a few days. there must be a way / a device to hook up an apple laptop to an i-phone to receive internet connection, no? or some other way to ensure my laptop always has a connection, even when i travel…

renegade was crazy busy and super fun reconnecting and/or meeting so many of you, so i wasn’t able to snap more than a few photos of the melee. despite the crowds, my booth neighbor made it a priority to watch the game and enjoy a beer on sunday. and a visitor to my tables was wearing a hilarious shirt!

besides not being able to take photos of some of my favorite things at the fair, i wasn’t able to really shop either! although most vendor’s online shops are closed for the holidays or depleted so you can’t really see what i’m raving about [and i can't really shop after the fact as i'd hoped!], here are some new-to-me highlights off the top of my head: a new wood bead and rope necklace from tanya aguiniga, striped fabric necklaces from muak, adorable bird drawings from small adventure, hand-drawn ceramics by pika hue, canoe goods by miss natalie, twig and bark jewelry by i am dorkas, fabric and paper goods by leah duncan.

meanwhile, email reports from portland testify that miss lucy is having a grand time with her pack of friends at dog camp! i love my lu, but it’s great not to have her with me to worry about during this year’s holiday visit to the bay area! last year she got sick for a few days after getting into our friends’ garbage, her favorite naughty past-time, which was stressful.

i did a trade show late last week – here’s a preview of new notecards on the way!

at the same time, miss lucy had major swelling under one of her eyes. a visit to the vet confirmed a broken tooth that needed surgery, while a visit from a new vet confirmed she doesn’t have the terminal tumor that was suspected all this year – she actually has SARD, a condition in which dogs go blind virtually overnight. although her vision is gone forever, she got a clean bill of health today and we’re both recovering from a sleepless and painful week! here’s to many more days and nights with my girl!

this past week i was out of the studio and camping on a river with a group of friends! i think we were a dozen adults, 7 kids and 7 dogs. fun times!

lucy used to love camping and swimming before she became blind – and she still does! the other campers were amazed at her bravery as my girl carefully dogpaddled her way around the river and vigilantly scoped out low-laying food in the campground.

although we returned a few days ago, she’s still sleeping and recovering. i’m learning that lucy requires frequent party-like conditions to keep her spirits up and her mind off her health problems!

i’m back and recovered from urban craft uprising in seattle this past weekend! so much fun, and a treat to meet all of you in seattle!

sunday morning the weather was finally back to my liking [overcast and cool], and i was able to get to the sculpture park before the show to take in some water sights, sounds and smells. sigh, this is the only thing portland doesn’t have! i miss being next to the ocean.

meanwhile, down in portland, lucy was having a blast charming the staff at her new boarding place! this was the first time i’d left her in stranger’s hands since she became blind, but it looks like she did fine!

we both had different but great weekends! this upcoming weekend lucy and i will again be doing an event together in the wine country area of oregon, in newberg… come say hello!