“Use it up, Wear it out…”

“…Make it do, or Do without.” Ah, how many times were those words repeated throught my childhood? It’s impossible to say at this point, of course, but one thing’s for sure - it’s stuck in my head but good.
It’s in that spirit that I’ve embarked on my next project. (What? I’m still Christmas Knitting. It’s just that round after interminable round of 2×2 ribbing has gotten a bit…wearing.) You see, Greg got me one of these last week:

Which is great fun. But excuse me, disposable mop heads? What, am I nuts? All it is is a vaguely scrubby, absorbent pad that sticks to the head. I think we can do better than that. An inquiry on the Knittyboard yielded several results, but I was most intrigued by this one. Careful inspection of the images will show that the cover is simply a knitted rectangle with the ends folded over and seamed to create little pockets to hold it on. Easy enough! I grabbed some cotton from something I frogged (what? Turns out I’m not a sarong person…although I wore it a few times, and washed it. Pre-shrunk cotton, woo!) and because I just didn’t feel like messing with a new pattern, I’m making my own version. In garter stitch. What? No one avoids garter stitch dishcloths because they’re ineffective. They’re just, you know, dead boring. Hrm. Ribbing - garter stitch. Ribbing - garter stitch. You know, I’m getting the urge to go crochet something. O_o

Something to Show

Well, the visit was all right… but not much has gotten done since then. I do, however, have something to show for myself.

The instructions for these three puppets are up here. Go check em’ out! And while you’re here, go wander through my free patterns and sale patterns. Now I need to get back to Christmas knitting. Bother.

Just a quick one…

Check it out! I finished the nursery curtains (where the MIL will be sleeping)!

And just to prove I didn’t cheat, look at this!

Do you see that? Do you? The plaid is in perfect alignment. It matches. I am awesome. I love plaids, in general, and I loooooove this plaid. It’s so happy! Definitely my favorite of the fabrics I’ve worked with so far, both in pattern and in texture. Mmmmm. I’m so glad that I finally got one of these up on a window. The pictures are a bit yellow, but what the heck. Woo hoo!

Oh, shhhh! She’s coming. Gotta go!

Drape-strrrravaGANza!

That’s right! I’ve been sewing like a madwoman to get the sun out of our eyes. There’s not much to making curtains, really - in fact, they’re one of the easiest sewing projects known to Woman (shh…Man still thinks they’re Awesome) - but the fabric I bought for the drapes in the living room and dining room made me a little nervous. You know. Because it’s pricey, and slick, and just enough for the project. Naturally, this was the cloth that I started with.
When executing repetitive or nerve-wracking tasks, I often repeat a mantra or phrase over and over again through my head. With knitting or crocheting, this usually consists of the pattern directions (oddly enough, usually in abbreviated form. You know, ’sc, sc, sc, sc dec, sc, sc’…etc). To relax and focus while making the olive drapes, I said to myself, “Curtains are just big rectangles. Curtains are just biiig rectangles. Curtains are just biiig, expeeeeensive rectangles…”
Suddenly that one wasn’t helping so much, so I switched to a hastily composed couplet: “Curtains are easy, curtains are fun. A few simple seams, and your curtains are done.” See? That one’s still doing great. Now, to distract you from my newly-revealed quirk, may I present curtains?

They’ll look a lot more finished when I have the opportunity to add valances, but valances are currently on the back burner until all of the windows are covered, as are tiebacks. Anyway, That’s the picture with flash. That’s what the curtains look like when it’s dark outside. During the day, they look more like this:

It’s really cool - we get some copper-gold shining through, even a little bit of pink in the evening. So pretty. I’ve finished two, total, out of four. I’d show you the other one, but it looks the same as this one. Haha. I also finished something for Max:

Look closely: he’s hugging the curtains. He actually said, “I nuh noo, woowoo.” (Translation: ‘I love you, train!’ Is that not the cutest thing, ever?) No one can accuse the kid of being ungrateful…

Aside from that, we’ve been busy preparing for Thanksgiving. Greg’s mother will be joining us tomorrow, and we’ve been busy picking up and arranging things for the visit. Like, for instance, a shower curtain in the bathroom she’ll be using. And a curtain on the window of the room where she’ll be staying. Although, I’m sure that the construction workers across the street will have a few days off, right? Right? *Sigh* Fiiine, I’ll do that one next.

Cheapo Kid Fun

Looking for something fast/cheap/easy/fun/educational with which to entertain and amaze your toddler/preschooler/small child?

Might I suggest a flannel board?

Flatten one of those cardboard boxes you have sitting in your living room (what do you mean, “I don’t keep boxes in the living room”?), tape it that way. Cover with flannel, attach a string on the back, hang on the wall with a nail. Tada! Flannel board!

Sorry for the dim, grayish picture. It’s a dim grayish day. Now you need some pictures. I used some that my mother-in-law gave me for Max last winter. At first I was a bit at a loss in terms of what to do with them - I don’t have a bulletin board, after all - but it wasn’t long before I realized that they wanted to live on a flannel board. Just glue felt to their backsides, and voila!

Isn’t that fun? Max thinks they’re great. Now, if you’re not familiar with flannel boards, be aware that the pieces don’t stick as firmly as, say, a magnet to the fridge. They stick plenty well enough for kids to tell stories, put them up, take them down, have fun. Whatever.

So let’s review: 1 1/2 yards of flannel - $3.84. 10 pieces of felt - $2.00. Total out-of-pocket cost to me: $5.84, plus tax. Not bad, not bad at all. Your cost will vary, of course, depending on what you have on hand. You can use cardboard, plywood…something stiff, squarish and light. The flannel, of course, is a must (it’s in the name), and you can staple it, tape it, tack it on. For pictures? Whatever you want (as long as they’re not TOO heavy) and just stick felt on the back. Others have recommended velcro or a strip of sandpaper, but I prefer felt. It’s cheap, friendly, comes in a variety of colors - and felt’s never abraded anybody. And that’s it! That’s how to make a flannel board.
I might make Max another board. I’m probably going to make him more/different figures to go on there, and I’m definitely going to make a pouch to corral all of those pieces. But, I bought the flannel when I went to Walmart, and the clouds were really the best I could do when what I really wanted was a nice solid; perhaps a green. Come to think of it, I’m almost sure I saw some solid flannels at Joann’s when we were there. I should go back there, and get some. Huh? What are you implying, of course that’s the only reason I’d go back there so soon. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Uh…

Hey, look - llamas!

Window Treats

Max’s toothy little problem did put a dent into our ‘fixing up the new house’ budget. We looked through our plans, and came to the decision that the drapes would be the place where we cut the first corner. It was a little sad - we had decided to buy some nice drapes for the house, even picked some out - and while we weren’t going for something too fabulously expensive, it was a bit extravagant for us. On the other hand, that means that I get to make the curtains, now. Which I like. It was that, actually, that sort of pulled me out of my stress-induced stupor and relit the flame under my crafty behind. I went on Wednesday to see what I could find at Walmart in the way of curtain-y material (which, you might have guessed, was not much). I did find some suitable fabric for Max’s bedroom

and his playroom. He picked it out himself.

Then today, we all trooped off to the nearest Joann’s. Which is, like, 10 miles away. (Edit: I lied - mapquest says it’s only 8 miles away. I guess the thirty minutes it took to get there threw me off. ;)) Don’t laugh, mom, that’s through heavy traffic. Anyway, it was great, because they were having a 40% off sale on all of their home decorating fabrics. We got some in a nice dark olive green for the living and dining rooms:

and some perky plaid for the three windows that face the front of the house.

The plaid was a red tag fabric, which meant that the 40% off didn’t apply. BUT, when I got up to the cutting table, they told me that it was actually 50% off! So it was much cheaper than I had calculated. They asked me what I was doing with all of this fabric, and I explained that I’d moved into a new house and was making drapes for all of the windows. Then, this nice older woman came up to me and said that she’d heard what I said, and handed me a coupon for $15 off of my purchase. Wow. I was floating.

And on the good vibes of saving so much money, I bought something little that I reeeeally wanted.

It’s a wool-cotton blend (no acrylic! Some nylon, though) and sooooo soft. I’m not sure what to do with it. It may become my first petting stash yarn. They had some lovely soft wool there, too - I don’t really have a LYS, so it was my first experience just petting nicer yarn, and actually buying it. (No shipping!)

So I leave you now, with happy thoughts and this image:

Enjoy your day.

Assessing the Damages

Things went relatively well at the dentist’s yesterday. By which, I mean that between the cardiology consult, the referring x-rays, the insurance, the sedation, and a hungry, hurting two-year-old, it only took us three and a half hours to have a twenty minute procedure done. Max is now wearing a temporary stainless steel cap (crown?) on his tooth-stump. Heaven help me, I feel like a verybad mother. Greg says he looks like a pimp. Greg is not helping.
Max is… a very special boy. He is sweet, he is loving, and he is very, very bright. Some of you may remember me talking about his developmental problems at the beginning of this year. By now, I think I can say with confidence that his only limitations are physical ones. His speech is delayed, not because he can’t understand or learn the words, but because his mouth cannot easily form the correct sounds. His motor skills were delayed because his muscles didn’t have the strength for him to progress normally. Since the day he was born, so quietly - when we found out that he had a hole in his heart - occasionally it strikes me what a frail vessel his body is to carry my precious baby.
This was one of those occasions. Max has weak teeth. Not just in terms of enamel, and cavities - which he has (the dentist told me weak teeth are often associated with his type of heart defect) - but apparently structurally as well. It’s just one more way that his body failed him, one more thing to worry about. For a long time I blamed myself for his cavities, thought that I wasn’t brushing enough, or feeding him too many snacks. It was only recently that I realized I couldn’t shoulder all of the responsibility for them - weak teeth, plus his tendency not to swallow consistently (leaving puddles of saliva or food just sitting in there on his teeth while he plays) are stacking the deck against him. I’m still feeling the relief that comes when you realize that it cannot possibly be all your fault.
I know that this is not the usual content for this blog, and I half-apologize for that. I like to keep this more of a crafty space than otherwise, but it’s been a peculiar day. I feel like I’ve been in a coma, and when I woke up I couldn’t quite understand where I was or how I had gotten here. Today was the first normal day in forever - Greg went to work, I stayed home and played with the kids, we went shopping. It was normal, but Max has a silver tooth, and we’re in a different house, and everything is still in boxes. It reminded me of the visit I made to my family earlier this year, when (I believe the number was) 94 tornadoes touched down in the state one night. One actually came close enough to our house that we heard the train-noise that is so often described. Everyone ran to the ’safety spot,’ where we stood in a huddle as the windows rattled and the storm passed us in the dark. In the morning, the world was strangely different. The temperature had dropped 30 degrees from the previous day, the shed had tipped over, trees were dotted with pink tufts of insulation like so many flowers. Some lawn furniture had flown a hundred yards away, other pieces were still grouped together but had moved only fifteen feet. Everywhere you turned, something was almost right, right next to something very wrong. Today was only the calm within the storm for me, though - tomorrow Greg has (elective, long-scheduled, orthodontic) surgery at oh-early-thirty and will be home convalescing for two weeks. And his mother is coming next week for Thanksgiving.

In other news, we have ants. While my first thought was, ‘Oh, not again!’ my second was of poison. Lots, and lots, and lots of poison. Greg says that in any new construction you must expect a certain amount of buggy curiousity, but we will see if curiosity or the poison is what kills the ants.

Tomorrow we return to your regularly-scheduled craftiness. Maybe.

Something Happy

Word on the street is that my sister got the package. So here you go, the images you’ve all been waiting for:

Pocket Potter Puppet Pals. How sweet is that? I feel a little perkier just looking at them again. These were inspired by multiple hits on my blog, searching for “potter puppet pals Christmas present.” Apparently that’s a popular search. I have a pattern for them written out in my notebook, and perhaps it will be available in time for the truly determined to make a set for Christmas. But, um, we’ll see.

Dentist is in an hour. How do you tell a two-year-old he’s going in on an empty stomach?

Worst Moving Day Ever

Yeah. Like I said. Greg and I closed on our house on Friday, a procedure which had been described to us as thirty minutes of paperwork. We were pretty confident in that number, having already been through the ‘thirty minutes of paperwork’ two times. (Yeah. If you’ve never had a mortgage, be aware that getting one makes you personally responsible for the deforestation of an acre of rainforest.) Unfortunately, this time it turned into four and a half hours of fighting with the lender over more closing costs they said we wouldn’t have to pay. And we didn’t - it just took four and a half hours to bully them into not ripping us off. (I am now firmly of the opinion that mortgage lenders are evil. Bah.)
This cut severely into our last-minute packing time. Greg and I stayed up packing until 11, when we ran out of tape. We stared dumbly at the empty roll for a few minutes, realized that by this time all nearby tape-vending facilities had closed, and went to bed. Max woke up, crying, at about 1:30. Since we had our alarm set for 5:30, we were a little less than thrilled. It took both of us to get him back to sleep, and we crawled back into bed for a few more hours of rest.
We got up (before dawn, ew), and I kept packing while Greg went out for tape and donuts. After two hours of work, we went to get the kids up so we could go get the truck.

During the night, Max had broken off one of his front teeth. I am not even playing.

We were shocked; I cried. I actually thought I was going to throw up. A frantic search of his room and bedding failed to uncover the tooth. Greg thought he must have swallowed it. We stopped at the ER and got the number for the emergency dental clinic - they told us that unless he was in a lot of pain, we should just come in on Monday. THAT’S reassuring. We kind of just went about our business - I mean, we had to move that day. Max was drinking yogurt smoothies through a straw, and crying, but mostly just being himself. Moving into the house was actually fairly smooth. We paid someone to clean our quarters up to inspection standard (worth every freaking penny), had friends help us move, and the house is awesome.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night, scared to death, because I remembered that Max has a small heart defect that requires him to get antibiotics prior to any dental work. I guess that the defect renders him more vulnerable to infection, and bleeding in the mouth is more likely to cause infection than elsewhere on the body. So, by my reasoning, he really needed some antibiotics for this mess.
We went to the ER again on Sunday, since the main clinics aren’t open on the weekend, and apparently the doctors agreed with me, since we got some penicillin for him. (He hates it, by the way. Super.) Then, today, we went to the dental clinic, but they couldn’t help us much since their pediatric dentist is gone. They did evaluate him, and there’s enough tooth left to attach something to, like a cap or a crown, but they told us he’d have to be sedated (because of his age) and we’d have to find a dentist in town to fix it.
So. Um. We have an appointment tomorrow morning, which may or may not be the end of this. And it’s probably going to cost a lot. Which isn’t the main issue, but it’s an issue. Mostly, we just want him to be able to eat without hurting, and protect him from infection, but rebuilding the tooth would be nice, too. Sigh.

Losing Ground

Things are beginning to back up here, a smidge. We’re closing on our house either tonight or tomorrow, and then come Saturday we will be moving in! WOOOOO!

On the other hand, I’m two full days behind on my NaNo novel (NaNovel?) and unless I can crank out some words today, it will be three. The package for my sister is sitting on my sofa, along with the slowly progressing knitting project. With all the things that are slowing down, you’d think that I’d be on top of the packing, right? Wroooong! It reminds me a bit of our very first move as a married couple: my dear husband was in Basic Training, I was 6 month pregnant and in college, and I kept packing and packing and packing but would probably have failed to finish in time without the day my family came to visit and packed up half my house for me. Ahhh, those were the days.

We’re not moving very far away, so if worst comes to worst we’ll just pile things that are still out into WOE boxes and hand carry them over, setting them in a corner to sort later. (We’ve found that, on average, it takes us 6 months to a year to unpack every box we move with - at which point it’s usually time to move again. Not this time, though! Yaaaay!) If you’re not familiar with the term ‘WOE,’ I’ll explain: What/Where/Why on Earth? As in, What on earth is that? Where on earth does that go? Why on earth is that out/hasn’t that been thrown away/put away/whatever. Haha. Ha.

At this rate I won’t have time to go to Kid n Ewe. We were suppose to move last week, darnit! Hrm. Mebbe I can sneak off Saturday afternoon. I hear they have sheep and llamas there - Max would love that.

In other news, Charlie rolled over today. Twice! Although, I’m not sure if it counts as a full roll-over if you finish with one arm pinned behind your back.