Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I'm very thankful to have the ability to share my crafts and dogs with all of you...  having the time, resources, and good physical and mental health to continue to run agility, and be creative, and then be able to share that with you, is truly a blessing.  I know I am very, very lucky, and grateful.  If you have the time off, enjoy it!  If you have to work, be grateful you have a job, and hope you have the time off later to enjoy (while we work!). 

I will be at a local agility trial this weekend, grateful to have the time to spend with Tesla, in the sunshine and warmth of Southern California...  I know many of my east coast friends will be hunkered down in a winter storm.  Take care, be safe, and be well. 

-Dayle

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Copic Collection Apps YouTube Video by Crafts By Two

If you haven't seen the Crafts by Two guys videos on YouTube, you NEED to check out these two wonderful guys!  They are the funniest crafty dudes on the web...  They concentrate on demonstrating Cricut products, but they do share other very interesting projects and ideas.  For example, one of their latest videos shows us two Copic collection applications for our smart phones.  Check it out here:

Crafts by Two Copic Collection Apps Video

They do keep reminding you that since they created the video, the application is now fully in English and reflect the North American market as well (not just in Japanese for the Japan market).   And it is also now available for the Android market.

I am grabbing my phone to download these apps RIGHT NOW!  So cool...  put your collection on your phone and you will NEVER purchase a duplicate pen color again!

The Crafts by Two guys also provide free of charge some SVG files of Sweet Stamp Shop stamps!  If you love the Sweet Stamp Shop stamps, here is a link to their website with the SVG files.  Remember, if you own a Silhouette, you need the Designer version of the software package to open SVG files.

Crafts by Two Sweet Stamp Shop SVGs

They also have a video on how to turn stamps into cutting files.  You can do this easily with the new Silhouette PicScan mat.

Have fun crafting with George and Ken of Crafts by Two!
-Dayle

Update:  I have been playing with the Copic_Collection app for Android by Too Corp.  I LOVE it!!!  So easy to add my collection, and so easy to view which colors I have and, *urm*, need....  I absolutely LOVE the complementary colors option...  shows me which complementary colors would go really well with the selected color!  And shows me more colors to buy (hee hee).   The only downfall I see (and the two guys mention), is that it doesn't save your collection colors to the cloud...  I will download the other app and play with it next week.  Have fun with them!  Let me know what you think of these apps. --dys
 

UDAC NADAC November 14-16 2014 Trial

Tesla, Alva and I had a lovely time at the local Valley Center, CA trial...  Alva ran in the Veterans on Parade, and had a great time entertaining everyone.  He didn't Q all weekend, but he had a blast playing agility with me again, and he didn't injure himself, and that is what is most important.  He even took a far tunnel entrance (he was supposed to take the closer one) in Chances, and that made me so happy...  look at my distance-challenged deaf dog go 40 feet away to a far tunnel entrance!!!  Whoo hoo!

It was Tesla's first foray into half Novice, half Intro level courses, so it was a good test as to whether she was ready to move up completely into Novice.  I think she is ready, but we do still need loads of work on weaves, entry and speed.  I'm not worried, though... she has the basics down, just needs to see them more in a trial setting.  This was only her third trial seeing weaves, so she's still figuring out how to slow down (WHAT???  Slow down????) to enter them properly without shutting down completely (it's all or nothing with her).  Here is her first NOVICE Weavers run, where she has to do the weaves 3 times on a course.  And this one was very tricky, as there were loads of tunnels to keep her running fast.  She only had problems with the first one, and then she kinda shut down on the last one because she just didn't know how to slow down yet...  and I think she was telling me "AGAIN???  ugh..."  but she did them!


And here is her Novice Jumpers run.  It is her first Novice Jumpers Q, and it was a very nice run at that.  She had problems for many trials with jumps, mainly because she preferred running straight and fast and not slow down to jump, so she ran past them.  The last 3-4 trials, though, she has learned to recognize them as NOT OPTIONAL, and has begun to look for them as obstacles.  This one involved many casual turns, so she couldn't speed up like she'd like, but still, she kept her speed and her connection with me.  Very good girl!


And, just to be fair, I need to present our official Train Wreck of the weekend...  Novice Tunnelers on Sunday!  I forgot where we were going, so I completely messed this up, but Tes had no idea I messed up, so I kept going and kept it fun for her.  She even had a switch into the second to last tunnel, and that is hard for us to execute!  Very nice ending to a train wreck... 


I had a beginner handler come to me after the run and say "I felt better after watching you have fun with your dog even though you messed up!  It made me feel better about my messed up runs!"  Yup, and really, the whole point of us being out there is to have fun with our dogs.  Period.  Make cookies out of squishy dough, and have a good time :-) 

-Dayle