Just a Quick Reminder!

Today is the last day of the grand blog counter crochet poetry contest and pattern giveaway! You have until 11:59pm CST to submit your crochet-themed poem as a comment to the original post (here!) to enter to win. The winner will receive a copy of every pattern I sell. Second place will get a Toy Bundle, and the third place winner will receive my three accessory patterns (Newsboy, Shooting Starf, and Sweet Cocoa Cloche). The odds are still excellent, so if you’ve got time to knock off a limerick or a couplet, YOU could be a winner!

Flu and Back Again

Squeamish readers, read no further! We’ve had the flu at our house this week. Not fun. Fortunately the boys were sick first, and I was sick while they were sleeping. Well, mostly. I was still sick in the morning when they woke up (feeling better), and even when I’d stopped I was completely exhausted. There are few realizations more ominous than that you have been sleeping solidly for the past three hours while your children…have not. I was relieved to find them still in the house, even if repairing their unusual mischief was messy and time-consuming. We recovered! And we’re feeling much better today, thank you.

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my groove. I was on quite the roll before I got sick, but the two days spent in a vomit-filled, nauseated haze might as well have been ripped from reality. (One of my most vivid memories from that time is lying face down on the sofa, composing a riddle about vomit. “What rhymes with ‘comet,’ but looks like a stream…?”) I can’t quite remember what I was working on, what I meant next to do, what I was planning … I’ve been derailed and sidetracked through an excellent Anne McCaffrey novel that I finished today, and now I’m trying to see where to pick up. Aside from the living room floor, I mean. That one is obvious. There’s not really a point to this post, I suppose, other than to say hello! from the other side of a sickness-filled vortex of incoherence that knocked us flat. If my next project seems to come out of nowhere, - this is why.

Also, washing hands in soap and hot water is a basic but excellent way to prevent the spread of disease! Just a friendly PSA from an early victim of the flu. Flu Season! It’s here.

Almost Inexplicable

After the ‘fire hat,’ I turned to the project I had intended to begin in the first place - hats for the boys, in virulent warm colors. I wanted to make hats. I tried to make hats. Turns out I had hat fatigue.

After some time alone with Ravelry’s pattern browser, I decided to make a baby sweater - despite the facts that a) I have no baby, b) even if I had a baby, I’m not sure what the odds are that I would want to wrap said infant in such violent colors, and c) my eyes, my eyes, someone please help, my eyes. The pattern I picked is Beth Koskie’s Crocheted Baby Sweater, a simple free pattern available online. (Again, I’m not sure why I chose it, given my well-documented dislike of large stretches of double crochet in worsted weight.)

Still, despite all indicators to the contrary, I like it. It’s cheerful. It’s a completed sweater - an uncommon accomplishment for me, even in baby sizes - and I especially like the button I chose:

Like a small obsidian promontory thrusting up out of boiling magma. Now, isn’t that a cheerful image?

Fire!

I like how you can see Charlie in this picture, too, wearing Max’s ‘builder’ hat so he won’t feel left out.

A few days ago, Max and Charlie started playing ‘fire truck.’ (Fire truck is a game in which the couch cushions get pulled off the sofa and propped upright against the front, creating a deep enclosed area filled with bouncing little boys shouting, “WEEEE-OOOOH! WEEEE-OOOOH! WEEEEEEEE-OOOOOOOOH!”) Max, in particular, got really into it, describing hoses and water and fire, the whole thing liberally sprinkled with WEEEE-OOOOHs.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when he reacted to my announcement that I was going to make him a hat with an adamant “Fire hat!”

“What?”

“I want a fire hat!”

“…How about a hat the color of fire? Remember, we bought the red, and orange, and yellow yarn?”

“Fire hat!”

“Uhhh…”

He started bouncing up and down at this point, grinning and chanting inside his ‘fire truck.’ “Fire hat! Fire hat! Fire hat! Fire hat!”

So ‘fire hat,’ it was.

Max loves this hat - Max loves everything about this hat. He loves how it’s bright, retina-burning red. He loves that it’s big. He loves, most of all, the star on the front. (I knew he would.) And, almost unexpectedly, he keeps expressing his love of the hat. “Mommy, I’m glad that you made this to me.” Awww. I made it because I love you, sweetie.

I’m glad I made it to you, too.

Slippers, Take Two

I actually finished Charlie’s slippers three or four days ago, but I gave them to him right away. He put them on, ran off to play in delight, and promptly lost them, before I’d taken so much as a single photo. We found them this morning, and I immediately hauled out the camera.

That’s our pumpkin. The kids use it for a heavy, awkward, but somewhat fragile ball. Anyway! Charlie, bless his heart, still has to be misdirected into posing for the camera. (”What do you have there, honey? A book? That’s great. Hey - what’s on your feet?) The slippers were simple to adjust for his only slightly smaller feet, quick to make, and they are loved.

So, a single ball of Wool-Ease yielded two pairs of slippers, with some left over. Not bad! I need to make my boys some more warm things for the impending winter. Our collection is still a bit slim. I think we’re off to a good start, though, right? Two pair slippers, check!

When Max saw what I was doing, he ran to find his slippers, pulled them on, grabbed a book, and joined in the photoshoot.What a little ham! But a cute ham.

Simplici-T Itself

Be warned. This post contains a lot of kid pictures and some sentimental ramblings.

(Oh, yeah! I cut the kids’ hair, honey. It was time. Looks cute, right?) Even though I made Max some slippers a few months ago, they have their issues. He tends to lose them a lot, and when he does wear them, they slip off of his feet when he’s roughhousing. Then he gets upset, because he really loves wearing slippers.

So when I ran across a stray ball of bright red Wool-Ease at the Arts & Crafts store I knew instantly that it wanted to be slippers for my little boys. (There’s enough left for Charlie’s pair, too. Which is good, because now he really wants some!)I made them a simple T-shape, folded it in half, and seamed most of the edges. Simplici-T! Was that enough explanation for the pun? Anyway, while I was taking these pictures I was struck by how much my little guy has grown. He’s grasped the concept of the photoshoot, for instance.

This pose was his own idea. We’ve been doing a lot of ‘big kid’ things lately - checking beginner science books out of the library, making jack-o’-lanterns with construction paper and glue, experimenting with shadows. He’s been asking a lot of questions. Why do leaves change colors, how do pumpkins grow, what do horsies eat…and his scribblings have evolved into sometimes recognizable shapes and even a few letters. I remember when he was smaller, how suddenly one day I looked at him and said to myself “That boy is not a baby anymore.” There was another day, a year or so later, when I said, “I can’t call him a toddler anymore.” I’ve been calling him a preschooler since then, but I’m not quite sure what to make of these recent developments. I don’t think there’s a label for this one…he’s just a child. Eek! He’s only four! Not fair.

Mmm, what a horrible digital camera we had when he was born. (I do have better pics of him as a baby, but not to hand at the moment.) So little. Sniffle. What’s next, preadolescence? Sigh. What? Slippers? Oh, right. I think I’m going to go cry a little while I make a pair for Charlie.

Wanta Panta?

Don’t you wanna?

Let’s just go ahead and mark down the panta as another accessory that is Good in Theory. I decided last night to make Amie Hirtes’s Honey Panta, because I thought I could use something warm for my head that was not yet another hat. It looks cute on the pattern page, too (although the fact that no one is wearing it is a bit telling).

I don’t blame the pattern…I could tell right off the bat that I wasn’t getting gauge. Not because I measured, of course, but because the middle section alone fit easily around my head. (You’re supposed to add some Tunisian tabs in the back.) Since I was kind of going for quick, simple, and finished, I decided to just go with it and eliminate the tabs.

I used buttons instead of velcro, for a host of reasons that should be obvious, simply chaining some button loops at the end. It was satisfyingly quick and complete. And it’s not awful, or anything, just not the most ragingly stylish thing I’ve ever made. I’m probably even wear it a few times. They say it snows here, you know.

Possibly the World’s Most Adorable Unicorn

Caught on camera.

I was out for a walk barefoot in the grass, seizing the rare opportunity on one of autumn’s sunny days to uncurl my toes in the clover before rain and chilly weather makes that impossible, when I was startled by the sight of a small equine figure munching happily away!

Obviously startled it stopped its feasting on the sweet blossoms and turned to watch me with a wary curiosity. It was then that I noticed the small golden horn winking on its forehead - no ordinary horse, this, I had discovered a unicorn! I froze, hardly daring to breathe lest the charming creature decide it was in its best interests to flee, but fortunately the unicorn seemed soothed by my stillness.

Turning back to its lunch, the unicorn resumed munching on the clover for a few more minutes, before the magical creature decided it was time to go, and vanished in a twinkle of sunlight.

Pattern is Fran Goreham’s Clop and Ali, from June 2004 Crochet World. I’ve wanted to make one for years, and I have to say it turned out as well as I hoped it would.

Contest and Pattern Giveaway!

Hey everyone! I’m having a contest. If you’ll look over to your left, there, you can see that my little dragon ticker has rolled to over 250,000 hits. (You can thank my dad for this, by the way - he pointed it out to me.) And there are prizes!
The winner will receive a copy of every pattern I sell. Second place will get a Toy Bundle, and the third place winner will receive my three accessory patterns (Newsboy, Shooting Starf, and Sweet Cocoa Cloche).

Interested? All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post containing a crochet-related poem you have composed. (Also make sure your contact info is accurate. Sometimes I can’t reply to comments because they’ve made a typo in their email.) You can enter as many times as you like, one poem per comment preferred. Contest closes October 31st, 11:59 pm CST.

I look forward to reading your entries!

If at First You Don’t Succeed,

…You must have done it wrong.

The kids were surprisingly willing to get back in the car Wednesday. I was pretty cheery, too - we left much earlier than we had on Tuesday, moving quickly along a route that was much more familiar the second time. We made it to the last intersection, I turned confidently to the left…and realized that, once again, the directions failed to match up with reality.

I turned around - no mean feat on the back roads, let me tell you - and did what I should have done (and would have done, had I not gotten horribly, horribly, horribly lost) the day before. I stopped at the Sunkus and asked for directions. (Oh. Right. A Sunkus is a convenience store.) The problem with this is twofold: one, the quality of local English declines sharply the farther you get from base, and two, my Japanese skills are pretty much limited to courtesies, purchases, and menu orders. Ooh! Also numbers. Anyway, my vocabulary is not well suited to getting directions.

Fortunately, I had with me the three things that I’ve always maintained would smooth out an English/Japanese conversation: my pocket dictionary, a pen, and a piece of paper. The expression on the cashier’s face when she realized that I needed directions was pretty funny, and it was even funnier when she ran to the back and returned with two more women. The three of them attempted to give me directions (and I can only assume they were able to guess from my mangled Japanese where I wanted to go because it was so close… ‘Children’s Land and Botanical Gardens’ was not in my dictionary) but we ended up drawing a little map complete with tiny stoplights. As they drew each intersection they told me which way I should go in a chorus - “Raito, raito,” then “Lefuto, lefuto,” (and bless them for knowing that English). I thanked them profusely and left.

Getting there was so easy.

It’s a bit of a low-key place, but it’s free (you only pay for rides and food) and it was nearly deserted. The weather was gorgeous! We saw the monkeys (next to a squirrel exhibit and a pen with two goats in it) before passing what the display claimed was a genuine totem pole, bestowed upon them by their sister city in the Pacific Northwest. So that was odd. We followed the path up and down some serious hills to see a few more animals before heading back up for a snack and some rides.

Four carousel rides in two days! My kids are so spoiled. They spent some time splashing around in a trio of cone-shaped fountains with a little Japanese boy while his mother and I chatted a bit in choppy little bursts. I was surprised to discover that I comprehended a lot of what she said to her son - I guess I understand more words than I can just pull out and use, which is pretty cool.

After that (and a couple of train rides - I’ve used the word spoiled already, right?) we went over to see something that had caught my eye.

Yeah. That’s something, isn’t it? There was a little sign in English near the statues, but I didn’t find it very illuminating. My best guess from what I read is that the gardens were the site of an ancient Japanese settlement where they excavated clay figures (shaped like that) which they memorialized in representation of the ancient reverence that they have for family. Awww.

While we were there we were overtaken by a squealing mob of Japanese five-year olds on a school trip picnic. Their teacher had a plastic grocery bag crammed full of maple ‘helicopters’ that she was passing out to kids by the handful. She gave some to Max and Charlie, too (although she called them ‘propeller’ …and they probably spell it ‘puropera’) and Max ran around noisily with the kids while Charlie decided he was having none of that foolishness and stuck close by.

Keiko (the teacher) had the best English of anyone I’d talked to that day. I guess she teaches it in her class, since she had all of the kids that came over to stare at me introduce themselves in English. Once they sort of lost interest in me she and I talked in a bumpy mix of English and Japanese that actually worked pretty well.

When the kindergarten left, it was time for us to go as well. I lured my boys back to the car with a box of Koala no March (OH so good. I’ve almost completely quit American candy since moving here. What’s the point? I only buy it when I can’t get the Japanese candy - Japanese candy kicks butt) and made it back home easily with my happy but exhausted children.

There’s something to be said for ‘try, try again.’