Novita

We just celebrated Valentine’s Day, and today is Family Day in Canada. So, it’s a perfect day to show you all our newest family member.

Gibson face

This is our new dog, Tiberius; Tibbers for short. Tiberius is a rescue dog. He was found wandering the streets of California and was taken to a rescue shelter there for a month. After that he made the trip up to Canada and another shelter for a few more weeks. Now he’s with us. This photo was taken while he was still in California – you can tell by the lack of snow!

What a wonderful Valentine’s day gift to our family. He came over on Saturday, so our Valentine’s celebration was all about getting to know him and him getting to know us.

Gibson

Without seeing his parents, there’s no sure way to tell exactly what breed mix he is, but the pet adoption agency thinks he’s Dachshund/Manchester Terrier mix.

We found a great adoption agency in the city near us. Calican Rescue Foundation. They specialize in adoption of small dogs, which are a lot rarer here. Everywhere else we looked were only large dogs. We just don’t have the room for a large dog. Calican bring them up from California, which has a lot of smaller dogs available. We loved what they were doing.

Something else that really impressed us with this organization was how they don’t even place the dog with you unless they think it will be a good fit. The first part of the process is a phone interview. After that, there’s a one week trial in the home. So our Tiberius has a week to get used to us and us him. I can’t see any troubles though; he is a really sweet dog.

A big inspiration for me came from Novita over at Very Purple Person. Novita blogs about caring for foster dogs, and has had a few go through her home in the few years I’ve been following her blog. That sounded wonderful to me. I thought I’d suggest it to my family. Well, there was no way my family wanted to care for a dog and then let it go. NO way! That conversation did open the door to some talks about adopting though.

He has quite the personality too. He’s very well-behaved and learning commands quickly. He loves to cuddle, and is a bit mischievous. I came home to find only one slipper at the front door when I’d left two there. He’s made off with one of my son’s socks, and pulled a stuffed toy off the shelf. After that, we bought him his own stuffed toy and he’s content to leave the other one alone.

We’re having a wonderful Family Day with our newest family member.

Michelle

I’d read about the Sewy Rebecca bra on Sigrid’s blog. It’s one of her TNT (tried & true) patterns, and they look so lovely. She really does a wonderful job. So after admiring so many of her creations, I wanted to try the pattern for myself.

krprebecca_rosakopie_p1

This is the stock picture from Sewy. Isn’t that a lovely bra? I ordered it from Sewy, which is a German web site. It was a while ago, so I can’t remember the whole ordering process, but I’m pretty sure I emailed them and they sent me a Paypal invoice. I didn’t have any problems at all with my order.

I did have a problem once I got my order though. The instructions are all in German! I started searching on the web. I’d read ELingeriA, had carried the pattern at one time and had a PDF instruction page in English. But ELingeriA had closed. Hmm.

My search continued. I made various attempts to get the instructions, but was beginning to think I would have to use Googe Translate and hope for the best. I did get the PDF from Renee at Miss Celie’s Pants.

I have my PDF English instructions. And for future reference, I am willing to share it.

It was time to sew. I had bought a really beautiful material packet from Merckwaerdigh on eBay. She’s in The Netherlands, but I’ve never had a problem with ordering from her either. She’s always very helpful, and has beautiful fabrics.

So, I have my pattern, English instructions and beautiful material. And I sewed. My bra turned out very well, but… Oh, there have been a lot of buts in this journey to sewing my own bras.

In this case, the cups are too small. I thought the ‘European’ sized bras I had bought in specialty stores were the same as European sizes. It turns out they’re not. This bra is definitely 1, and possibly 2 cup sizes smaller than I need. I am still very pleased though, with this very beautiful bra.

Sewy Rebecca front view