Reading*Crafting*Baking: 4-Legged Assistant

This is Seamus (pronounced Shay-mus). He's a 3 year old cocker spaniel and he is my crafting assistant.

It goes back to when he was just a little, 7 pound, 8 week old bundle of fur.

He just wanted to be held, so I set him on my lap, picked up my needlework, and didn't think anything about it. After a while I felt a gentle tugging on the embroidery floss. I lifted my work aside and saw Seamus had rolled onto his back and was batting at the floss with his paws, trying to nip it with his teeth. My first thought was "Aw, that's so cute." But I have since learned better. I should have taken it for what it was: A Warning.

I had to become very careful with my notions. Skeins of floss and spools of thread would disappear. I later found them in his favorite hiding place, under my bed. The labels would be ripped off the skeins and the floss would be unraveled, damp with puppy spit. The thread on the spools was untouched, but the ends of the spools would be chewed to the point where I could no longer use them in my machine.

Seamus has a weird obsession with fabric.

I live in a very small apartment, so the easiest thing for me to do when I need to measure and cut fabric is to move my coffee table and spread it out on the floor. No matter where he is, I swear Seamus can hear me unfolding fabric. As soon as it's set out and I start measuring, he appears. His favorite thing to do is to plop his butt right on the fabric and stare at me, like he's daring me to cut around him. If that doesn't work, he sprawls across it. He doesn't just lay down, he spreads out as far as his body, legs and tail will go, covering as much of the fabric as he possibly can.

A couple years ago, when he was still just a puppy, my parents redecorated their family room and went with a lighthouse theme. I found some pretty Waverly decorator fabric, covered in lighthouses, and decided to make pillows for their couch. As I measured and cut the fabric, Seamus sat next to me, watching my every move. I dropped all the scraps into a pile beside me to deal with when I was done. Like something out of a cartoon, Seamus got up, sniffed through the pile of scraps and selected one. Carrying it in his mouth, he proceeded to creep across the room, heading toward the bedroom. I called out to him. "Hey, what are you doing?"
He froze, dropped the scrap of fabric and sat on it, giving me the 'What? I'm not doing anything' look. I don't know if he thought I didn't know he had the fabric because he sat on it or what, but it was one of the funniest things I ever saw him do.

I try just about every craft project I can get my hands on and several years ago, I bought my first and only latch hook project. It's a small rug of the Mary Engelbreit Scotty dog design and I love her work, so I thought I'd give it a try. Every so often, I take it out to work on it, and, of course, Seamus has to help.