Yes. I let my dog play in the shower. Sometimes it’s the only way I can get her to be quiet long enough to get myself ready in the morning. My apologies to the planet for the wasted water.

And sleep has been in short supply here lately. Shawn’s hacking cough kept us both up at night for a good portion of the past week. And Laika’s…having issues, I guess you would say. We’ve altered the nighttime routine in hopes that will help her sleeping patterns — i.e. stop her from waking us up at some point between 1am and 5am every night. So she pretty much gets run of the house all night now (sorry, Peema…), and it seems to be working so far. She’s been coming into the bedroom to get one of us up at 6am to lay on the couch with her, but we’ve declared that we can both live with that.

I’ve been really busy for the past few weeks. After two muslins (the pattern was old and needed a lot of work to fit like I wanted it to), I’m almost finished with my ball gown. And now I’ve added two Halloween costumes to the pile of projects in my sewing space. Finding Halloween costumes in Ukraine has turned out to be a difficult task. You know how in the States, you would just run to the nearest Goodwill, Dollar Store, or Target, and pick out cheap things that you could make into something? It doesn’t work that way here. You have to buy real things - with real (over)prices - and work with that. Or start from scratch. Right now I’m working with $30 worth of fabric that will soon be a costume for me. Today we went to a local mall, and $40 later, we’ve got the beginnings of a costume for Shawn. It still needs quite a bit of work and there will be another trip to the fabric store, but we’re on track to actually have costumes by the 31st.

In interesting neighborhood news: When we came back from shopping today, we noticed that they are building a wall down the middle of the street behind our apartment building. Which should do wonderful things to the already terrible traffic. A little further on, we found that they are building another wall blocking the back alleyway we often use as a shortcut to get home. I’m starting to get a little worried that we’ll wake up one day to find that we’ve been completely walled into our building. That might just be the last straw.

Her dog, Charlie, is a super-sweet, well-behaved Shih Tzu. No problem there. Our dog, as you know, is a super-hyper, non-behaving Doberman. Charlie thought the best way to spend the day would be to lay on the couch together and snuggle. Laika thought that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. If there’s another dog in the room, the best thing to do is Play, Play, PLAY!!! You know I was totally on Charlie’s side, but, unfortunately, Laika out-muscles us both.

The following is what ensued when the two were brought together. You’ll notice the crazy camera angle. That’s because Charlie thought the safest place to get away from Laika would be on my lap. That crazy Doberman would never lunge and snap at her owner, right? Sorry, Charlie.

So I would tolerate about an hour of Laika basically getting in Charlie’s face and going “HEY, HEY, HEY!” And Charlie snapping back with “Get out of my face, you freak!” Then I would force them apart (well, mostly the force was on Laika’s end) for an hour of mandated rest time. This went on for the longest 9 hours of my life. On the positive side, I was only bitten 3 times. As you can see, it could have been much, much worse.

The weather changed dramatically here over the weekend, as a reminder that summer is officially over. Which means we’ve made it through summer number two here! Unfortunately, it only reminds me that we still have to make it through winter number two…

We took Laika out to the parking lot behind our building yesterday to play frisbee. Apparently she finds the crisp autumn air rejuvenating.

And I’m a little behind in discussing it, but August 24th was Ukrainian Independence Day. The President decided to stage a huge military parade in downtown Kyiv in part to display Ukrainian military might to Russia. A little warning, if you will, in case they decide to move in here next. So after a week of traffic jams in downtown Kyiv while 90 or so tanks practiced driving in formation and hearing military jets practicing fly-bys above our apartment, we decided that we needed to see this parade for ourselves. Unfortunately, most of Ukraine also showed up, so we didn’t have a very good view of the Ukrainian military prowess. Here are a few photos, though. Most of them are hazy because as soon as the first tanks started rolling through, the air was immediately filled with diesel fumes. Lovely.

I ended up doing quite a bit of quilting this summer. With two pregger friends, I had to come up with some great, unique baby gifts. And quilts were the answer, complete with minky backing.

And just this morning, while I was supposed to be working on about 4 other things (oh, wait, I’m still supposed to be working on those things…), I finally finished my challenge quilt.

The story behind the challenge quilt is that before I moved to Kyiv, my mom and I picked out a set of fabrics that we both liked and decided we would each work independently to make a quilt by the time our tour here was over. And then it would be a surprise to see what we each came up with. Well, I caved while my mom was here and showed mine to her, ruining the surprise. (In my defense, I don’t have any sort of craft support group here to give me feedback when I make things. It’s not fair.) But there are a few other people who will be in on the surprise when I get back to the States - our “judges,” if you will - and I don’t want to completely ruin things for them. But I will show you a picture of the label on the back. It will give hints, but I’m just as proud of how it turned out as the design on the front.

And then there was some knitting to mix things up a bit. I used the Chullo Pouch pattern from Bag Style, although I only used two colors (recycled from old sweaters!) instead of the 7 or so the pattern called for. And I kicked it up a notch by making a lining out of some cotton twill so that I could install pockets and a zipper for security. I think this is going to be my fall/winter carry-all.

Finally, a project from last week. Again, while I was supposed to be doing other things. I’ve had a vision in my head for a while of the perfect dog toy for Laika. The main problem we have is that she seems to think that we buy toys for her so that she can destroy them as quickly as possible. The last two toys we’ve purchased for her promised to be tough enough for aggressive chewers, yet she managed to destroy them in under 30 minutes. And these were not cheap toys. The toys that have lasted for a while have done so only because I take the time to sew them back together every day or two. Not exactly a fun task for me.

So last week, I used the Wee pattern from here, modified it slightly, inserted a squeaker (left over from a destroyed toy), and now Laika has here own Wee. Although not as pretty as the one in the pattern. But it’s lasted for a week, which is more than I can say for most things around here.

Today on Laika’s mid-day walk, we were slowly cruising around Golden Gate when the sprinklers came on in the park. This summer, Laika has learned that she LOVES sprinklers. Almost as much as she LOVES chewing on my arm when I don’t want to take her for a walk. So we heard the sound of sprinklers and before I even knew what had happened, she had jumped over the little fence separating the path from the gardens and sprinted over to the closest sprinker that had popped out of the ground. And she stood there in the spray with her eyes closed, mouth open, and nose pointed to the heavens. Just watching her pure enjoyment of that experience was enough to make me forget myself and just be happy. Ahhh.

As we moved through the park, visiting all the sprinklers (yes, she needed to spend some time with all of them), we attracted quite a group of babushky that followed us around proclaiming over her cuteness. It was a little awkward with the first one because I had no idea what she was saying, but as soon as another one joined, they were talking together and I just became a part of the show. What a good dog! What an excellent dog! What a beautiful dog! Laika stared at them blankly as their cooing rudely interrupted her enjoyment of the sprinklers. I tried to leave once, but they all ganged up on me. She’s enjoying herself! You must let her play! Finally, they wandered off to poke a baby or something and Laika and I were free to make our way back home.

I know it’s hard to believe, but here’s some photographic evidence of exactly what our little ball of fur has turned into in just one year’s time:

As you can see, I was not disappointed. All kinds of knitting goodies, sewing goodies, candles, and assorted odds and ends! And books full of projects to add to my always growing I-must-make-that! list.

Then, earlier this week, Shawn surprised me with an early present as well. (Although he swears it’s a gift from Peema…) So far this is turning out to be a pretty good birthday!

And just for your amusement, here’s today’s feat of flexibility as performed by Laika. Yes, she was actually sleeping this way until rudely awakened by a camera flash. And, yes, she’s all legs.

Today is such a rainy day. Even Laika doesn’t want to leave the house. Every time we get to the bottom of the stairs and I throw the door open, she just looks up at me as if I’ve asked her to jump into a pit of hot lava. And then I’m forced to remind her that she’s the one that has to do her business outside and I’m the one that should be angry. At least she’s been calmer since Shawn decided to start her on a new diet. Throwing half a chicken down on the balcony and watching her chomp on it isn’t the most pleasant thing, but I feel like we’re already seeing some benefits. Most importantly, some calm time in the afternoon. There were days in the past she would literally be running circles around me while I stood screaming for her to please, for the love of god, just lay down. These were not good days. So the fact that she just went into the living room and laid herself down for a nap is pretty great.

I had a Ukrainian Life realization earlier this afternoon. I was working on cutting out a pattern for a summer dress, and our housekeeper came in and asked if it was from Burda. After I finally understood what she was saying (trust me, “Burda” with a Ukrainian accent is not easy to understand), I showed her the pattern envelope and said I bought it online. She looked confused and asked if the pattern pieces came out of the envelope as well. I suddenly realized that I have never seen individual sewing patterns here. So I asked her and she verified that the only patterns available are in Burda and one other magazine. How sad is that? To only have access to whatever patterns are printed in those two magazines each month? So then I pulled out my big box of patterns to show her how it works in America. She seemed to think our system was much better until I mentioned the difference in price. Burda magazine costs about $3 here and comes with about 30 patterns each month; my Amy Butler pattern was $11.95. Again life comes down to economics. But who can put a price on the memories I have of sitting in the fabric store thumbing through pattern books with my mom searching for my next great 4-H project? I’ll stick with the American way.