Shake Shake Shake, Shake Shake Shake, Shake Your Booty!

And here is Emmitt doing exactly that. I swear they know when I try to get a picture of them when we are at the river and try to screw up every shot.

Little bastards...

And Heathens...

I know they are just trying to get my camera lens wet.

This morning started out with a good river romp because this being the first weekend of the month, means it's bath time in our house. Sorry, no great bath pictures. At the time of actual baths, I am too wet and hairy to man the camera. You can see as we get closer to the river in the heat, they perk up and start moving towards their favorite swimming holes.

Emmitt tries to hurry me along from behind with a wet cold nose to the back of the knee but still looks away when I go to snap his picture.

Like any kids, they just can't wait to get wet and dirty. What's love other than 80 pounds of long haired border collie with wet sand in their coat snuggling with you on your bed?

And I do mean swim... Look closely, this is one of the few Great Danes you will ever see swim. They just aren't huge swimmers but last summer he decided that he loved to swim with his brother and hasn't stopped since. You would think he's too skinny to swim, but he manages it just fine, especially if there's a toy to go get and tease his siblings with. He loves to stand in water that is just deep enough they have to swim yet he can stand there holding the toy out of their reach. Like I said, Little Bastards...

After all this fun we went to the dog wash, washed them all up, trimmed nails, and got brushed and Tucker had his customary every couple of month trim jobs. I bought one of those de-shedding tools to work on their coats too. I'm hopeful since it pulled so much hair out of them. My front yard is now covered with as much fur as is left on the dogs.

In other news, we are officially a week in to the Tour de Fleece 2013. You may remember that I was working on this horrendous lovely pink Corriedale roving.

So pretty... *herk, gasp, herk*

Then I was throwing some beads into it on one of the plying steps.

And then plying it again with a third single that wrapped the first two core singles in hopes that it would trap those beads further into the yarn and keeping them integrated into the body of the yarn unlike that dreadful earlier attempt.

Remember that? Ugh, I wish I didn't. You can see the beads popping out of the yarn on their nylon leader and just hanging out, not really part of the yarn at all.

And then after all those steps, I gave the final yarn a good shocking cold water plunge after washing it in warm water to full it a bit and really fluff it up a bit and hold those beads in.

And I have to say, it worked. As you can see, those beads are part of the yarn itself. My only regret; and it's a small one based on the time suck this was already, that there are not more beads present. I wanted some that sparkled with the color elegantly like a night sky, but I feel this is more of the night sky within the confines of a large city. The city lights block all but the brightest. Granted, I didn't want the sky from the desolate dark desert where you can see the band of the milky way, that would have been overkill, but scattering of the night sky from the dimly lit suburbs would have been nice. Oh well, another lesson for another day.

In the end I have a perfectly usable 500 yards of 3 ply crepe dk weight yarn. Hope the person it is a gift for loves it. Don't worry fellas, it will be coming to the retreat before going to live at her house. And yes, she LOVES pink. Somebody has to.