"Look, Mommy, I drew you!"

Apparently I look like a Ninja Turtle.

Party Favors

With her early-summer birthday, I usually try to do something summer related as a party favor. Last year we only had 3 kids over, so each kid got a sand pail with chalk, a small shovel, and a bottle of water in it. This year we had a dozen invitees, so I bought a couple 6-packs of scented bubbles (they're supposed to smell like different things, but they all smell like sno-cones to me) and some fancy tissue paper. I traced & cut star shapes out of cardstock and wrote on them with a silver Sharpie. Simple, easy, cool.

The kids really liked them, but I handed them out at the party as were waiting for the food (it was a at a big bounce-house place, so we were having the pizza they supplied with our "party package"). The only thing worse than one kid whining "When are we going to EAT?! Where is the PIZZA? I am TOTALLY STARVING TO DEATH RIGHT NOW!" is ten kids, all at top volume, in order to be heard over the noise of the indoor play-place. I grabbed the basket and started thrusting small packages into sticky hands as fast as I could while I whispered to my husband for the love of God, go find our party hostess and figure out where the hell the food is before they start gnawing on our limbs.

Before the pizza and accompanying "party hostess" made their way back to our bright-blue party room, I realized two things, two terrible and tragic mistakes I had made:

1. If you're making party favors to give to little kids, make sure they can untie the ribbon themselves, otherwise you will have a room full of preschoolers squealing in frustration because they cannot get your super-tight double-knots off the thing they want so much to open; and
2. It is not a good idea to give 10 kids sticky colored liquid unless they are outside and possibly surrounded by fire hoses.

I apologized to the parents, who all gave me a wave and a "Please. This is nothing. Two drops of water-soluble pale-blue bubble solution on that shirt will be totally eclipsed by something much worse any second now." But the kids loved the bubbles, and they all ran around blowing bubbles, smelling each other's bubbles, trading colors, and generally having a very good time with the stuff. Most importantly they stopped whining until the food arrived.

The only major problem was some tears from the birthday girl, because she can read her own name now, so she thought all these were hers. "But those are my presents! My name is on them!"

Class Picnic

Yeah, this happened two months ago, but the photos were on a 2MB memory card and do you know how long it takes to fill one of those things up? A long time. And it takes even longer for me to get around to uploading the photos.

Her school has an end-of-year picnic for each class, and students' families are invited to pack a lunch and come eat with the kids on the next-to-last day of class.

Sushi for a picnic? This is how we roll. Get it? Ha!

I had packed her the usual in her lunch box that day (cream cheese & jam sandwich, carrots, water, grapes) but as a surprise I stopped at the grocery store on my way to the picnic and got some sushi, a crisp apple (out of season I KNOW!) and some strawberry-flavored sparkling water. She was pretty thrilled, and I was secretly gloating because all the other parents were so amazed that an almost-four-year-old ate sushi with such enthusiasm.

She was pretty pleased, too.

Blue Leaves Hat

This thing was so easy. She picked the yarn and asked for a hat, and I figured since she would probably wear it twice and then toss it somewhere, it couldn't hurt if it was something I could wear too, right?  I originally made 95% of one using this pattern. It did not go well. Too big, too floppy, just not right at all. So I pulled it out and started over. She was quite upset. She had been hovering and bugging me about when it would be done ("Is that my hat or your hat? It's my hat? Is it done yet?") and when she saw me frogging it she wailed "Mommy! Why are you pulling out my hat?! It's MY hat and I want to wear it right now!"

I gently explained that keeping the hat in its present form would make her look like some sort of smurfy pastry chef, or like a blue glob of goo was digesting her head.  She was undeterred and continued to whine. I gave up and started knitting the new one with the unused end of my 2nd skein, and let her wear what was left of the first hat until I needed the yarn. She eventually grew tired (and probably hot), and I found it under the dining table.

I picked a totally different pattern the second time around, with a little more attention to yarn weight and texture. This worked very well. It was my first time working off a chart, and I think I didn't screw it up too much. The hat looks okay, at any rate, and she is quite pleased with it. I made the "adult" size, and even though she's 4 and has a smallish head it fits her okay with the brim flipped up. It's a little big, but that means we should get some years out of it and unlike the first version, is not so huge it's falling over her eyes all the time. I can wear it too, which is  nice.

This yarn (Cascade Cotton Rich) is quite nice to work with - all the cool comfort of cotton with a little spring in its step. I really loved this pattern - so simple once I got going, and gets lovely results. I think it would be a great pattern for a yarn splurge, like some luxe wool-silk blend for winter. I love finding patterns like this, that look great and don't take up a lot of yarn, because I can spring for 1 or 2 skeins of something awesome and feel like I'm living the high life without spending $160 to make a sweater.

Pattern:  Lace-leaf hat by Sophy T. O'Donnell
Yarn: Cascade Cotton Rich
My Ravelry details are here.

P.S. The other hat in the above picture will be blogged soon. I have mixed feelings about it.

I Guess That's One Way to Keep Cool

Tow your own ice truck around town.

"I made a smiley guy, mom!"

"I made a baby smiley guy too! He's mean but the baby guy is happy."

My husband has recently expressed a desire for a new tattoo (he has two) and is also encouraging me to get another one. Piper has been drawing these lopsided "guys" all over everything lately and I love them so much I am seriously considering using them for a tattoo design. Is that weird? 

Shrinky Dinks!

She got these for her birthday, and during one recent (looong, boring, HOT) day we busted them out. I didn't even know they still made them, did you? And what better way to cool down on a hot summer day than baking some plastic?

Piper thought the first part - the coloring - was pretty cool, but she got really concerned when I put them in the toaster oven. "Mommy! What are you DOING to the mermaids?!" I think the process sort of disturbed her. At least the first batch, anyway. The second batch, she was fascinated by the curling and shrinking and seemed quite sorry when we did the last one. After they cooled and she discovered she now had multiple small creatures she could stuff into an old cocoa tin and carry around (and shake and make a LOT of noise), she was pretty happy.

They came with little cardboard stands, so we set them up and had a little play, which probably should've been titled "Medusa and Zombie Mermaids Beat the Shit Out of Some Small Sea Creatures."

Cue Darth-Vader-Style "NOOOO!"

Complete with shaking my raised fist at the ceiling, right there in the freezer section of the grocery store.

Simo Dress

So here's a project I actually did complete:

Bribe her with a sucker? Why, yes I did.

Pattern: Simo by Cirilia Rose
Yarn: Berroco Weekend (75% Acrylic, 25% Cotton; 205 yds, 100g)
Needles: Uhh...8 maybe? I finished this thing like two months ago, I'm a bit fuzzy...
My Ravelry page for it is here. 

This thing is so stinkin' CUTE. And it was pretty easy. I think it only took me 6 or 8 weeks, carrying it around and working on it here and there - at a birthday party, as she ran amok in the children's museum, or while yelling "DO NOT STAND ON TOP OF THE MONKEY BARS OH MY GOD PLEASE GET DOWN BEFORE I HAVE A HEART ATTACK" at the park.

It's not written to be worked in the round, weirdly enough, but I did it that way anyhow, because given the choice between all that purling and turning and then some awkward join-up of yoke and sleeves and THEN two huge seams to sew vs. barreling right through in the round, only one piece to keep track of, a much-less-awkward join up of yoke and sleeves, and only a couple ends to weave in...duh. Of course I took the easy way out. It did, however, take me four freaking days to figure out how to sew up the sleeves. The very last little bit of finishing, and I was so stuck. In the end it was pretty obvious (sew the tube to the armpit), and I smacked myself upside the head for not figuring it out sooner.

There is a scarf included in the pattern, which I made in a violently bright pink color specifically requested by Piper. She wanted the whole dress made in that Barbie-vomit shade, but I persuaded her that a pink scarf would be cooler. Unfortunately, it never seems to be near the dress when I have my camera. Hmm, now that I think about it, I haven't seen it in a couple of weeks, not since she was using it to tie up one of the cats.

This was a nice yarn to work with. It's cotton-acrylic, in that mutlti-strand way, so I had a problem here and there with snaggy loops when the yarn bunched up, but it wasn't too bad. I normally avoid acrylic, but I thought 100% cotton might be too heavy or stretchy, so I gave this a go. I finished this a couple days after Easter, and she's worn it a few times. It got quite a bit of use on our recent visit to Michigan, when I discovered I had packed for 90-degree weather but they had 65-degree weather.

It's really too hot to wear it these days, but that doesn't stop her. She LOVES it, which makes me unspeakably happy.

2 Projects Per Month: 2011 Halfway Tally

As an alternative to my usual lame New Year's resolutions, I vowed that this year, I would power through my backlog of knitting projects by completing two items per month. I had almost no rules - the projects could be totally new or polishing off a work-in-progress, there was no particular order other than that dictated by holidays, birthdays, or swap requirements. Now that we're halfway through the year, I decided to take stock.

The news is....not good. I am not even close to meeting my goal. Take a look:

January: Grandma's Hat, Yet Another Milo
February:
March:
April: Bunny Nuggets
May: Simo Dress & Scarf, Pink Poncho
June: Do the four things I've started and frogged count?

So, if I totally power-knit for the rest of the year and finish three projects per month...hmm, that idea is so ludicrous I'm just going to stop right there. Most of the projects I have managed to finish this year remain unblogged, because it's gotten difficult to find time to take the photos, upload them, then sit down to write about the finished object.

Part of the problem is that I have been pulling apart as much as I've knit lately, sending myself back to zero on a weekly basis. And despite the magic of Ravelry, I still feel like my to-knit list is super disorganized. I'm having trouble putting a pattern into my queue more than once, so even though I'm making multiple items with the same pattern I can't put all the projects into once computerized list. I think I am also falling into the trap of "too many things on the needles at the same time," splitting my focus and forgetting where I'm at with each project.

In other news, we've had exactly two showings of our house. The only feedback we got, from one showing, was that "the house showed well, but buyer decided she wanted a two-story home." Our realtor had an open house and not a single buyer came. It's sort of depressing.

Even though the neighborhood (and not-from-this-neighbhorhood) kids are out in full force now that school's done, thus making me a nervous wreck and thoroughly miserable most of the time that I'm home, for the moment it's okay if the house doesn't sell. My husband got a new job and will be doing training for the next few months, after which he'll be assigned to a permanent post. The likely locations for that post are on completely opposite ends of the city, and not near Piper's school, so we won't know the best location for us to move to until the fall anyway. Even that could change during the late winter/early spring, when we'll know where she will be going to kindergarten. We are not sending her to the neighborhood school here, and most of the other public schools in this district are not so great either. We will be making the rounds of lottery drawings for charter schools, or possibly finding a way to send her to a low-cost private school on the north end of town. Since the north end is where she goes to school now, and that's where all the parents with school-age kids I know are, I know almost nothing about the schools on the south end of town. If we have to move to that area I'll really be in a pickle.

Grandma's Hat

Back in January, when I heard my grandma was not doing well with her chemo, I decided to make her a hat. Something soft and fuzzy and WARM.

I was still working on the Torture Tomten (which remains unfinished and is so horribly screwed up that I think it will have to be frogged) so I had all this fuzzy pink acrylic stuff sitting around.

I used the Felicity pattern (also seen here), some slightly bigger needles to accomodate the bulky yarn, and after a few days I had a fuzzy pink hat.

Hello, welcome to my dimly-lit bathroom. 

Fuzzy and pink is not normally my thing, but it turned out pretty cute.

I sent it to her with a nice little letter and some of Piper's artwork from school.

My grandma passed away about five weeks after I sent this, but as far as I know she did get it. I hope it brought her at least a little comfort.

4!

Yesterday was her birthday, my baby girl is now a whopping FOUR years old.

Unlike last year, where almost everything was handmade (including that quilt sewed entirely the night before her birthday), I did not make any gifts this year. I also did not make her cake or cupcakes, because she told me she didn't want me to.

(sniff, sniff - cue one mama's heart cracking just a bit)

She told me, "No, I don't want you to make the cake. I don't want cupcakes." She wanted "a pink and blue Hello Kitty cake from the bakery at the store," a sugar-laden mountain of frosting she had seen at our local mega-mart. So, rather than bust my ass making the totally-from-scratch, blueberry-filled, topped-with-homemade-blueberry-whipped-cream cupcakes I'd planned, I ordered the cake.

It was pretty good, actually.

We also did not do the party at our house this year, because it was just too HOT. She has many more friends this year, 11 classmates plus a few others, and even if each kid only brings one parent, that's still 20 extra people to cram into my house. Last year it was about 100 degrees the day of her party and this year promised much the same thing, so we just invited some school friends to the Monkey Joe's closest to where they all live. It was totally easy, all I had to do was show up with the cake, and absolutely worth the money. The kids got to run around in air conditioning and have a blast, she got to have her best birthday yet, and I did not have to cram 20-30 people into my house. Which turned out to be a good thing, since we have gotten a couple calls to show the place, including one yesterday which only gave us 20 minutes' notice. I am so happy people are finally looking at the house that I can't say no, but I also cannot imagine trying to evacuate over a dozen party guests and clean the place with 20 minutes' notice. Yesterday we were gone when they called, out having family birthday fun, so we'd left the place not exactly pristine, and my husband worried that nobody was ever going to show the house again because the beds weren't made and there was wrapping paper on the floor, but I assured him that a crock-pot soaking in the sink and a few scattered birthday cards were hardly the worst things a real estate agent could've seen.

First Day of School/Last Day of School

One of my friends saw this and said "She went from having baby arms & legs to having big-kid arms & legs!" It's true. She's all limbs now.

Fingers to the Bone, I Tell You

Where have I been?

Oh, my friends. I have been knitting. And knitting. And KNITTING. Trying so hard to catch up with my "2011 = 2 Finished Projects Per Month" goal I set for myself.

I finished the dress that was supposed to be done in time for Easter (eight or so days late, which for me is like finishing it on time) AND the matching scarf. I screwed up the scarf bind-off so one side curves oddly and I tell myself 'that's just to keep it from sliding off her neck' but the more I think about it the more it bugs me, plus I know there's a couple mistakes in the lace pattern and it's only a 20-row scarf so I will probably just rip it out and make a new one. So if I finished two parts of what is technically the same project but one will have to be re-done, does that mean it's a draw?

I'd show you pictures, but they are still on the memory card which is in my camera in the cupboard, and the only reason I'm getting to type this right now is that my husband has a rare afternoon at home and is currently entertaining our almost-four-year-old (less than two weeks until her birthday!) in the other room and I got out MY NEW NETBOOK which was a Mother's Day gift from aforementioned husband and I am now frantically trying to bang out this blog entry before they get tired of playing hide & seek and realize that it's past lunchtime and I have nothing to feed them.

Ahem.

Back to the knitting: I am working as fast as I can on a bright pink version of this poncho, which my daughter has asked me to make for her school friend. She's been begging me to do it for at least six months, and when do I get around to it? Oh, a couple of weeks before school ends. I knit 13.5 inches of that feather & fan pattern in just two days, and then my arms hurt so bad I had to take a two-day break. Using my sucky super-long metal needles, which were all I could find when I started the thing, is really slowing me down. I am now only halfway done with the knitting, and I have to finish the thing this weekend because this upcoming week is the last week of school.

Assuming I finish it in time, I'll have to remember to take pictures of it before I give it away.

I also am working on: a sweater for P that needs sleeves and its approximately one billion dangling yarn ends woven in; more tiny bunnies like the ones I made P and her friend for Easter; a hat for my brother; a hat for my sister; six things for crafting debts; a shawl for my mom; a hat for me, a hat for P; and a hat for somebody else that's turning out so cute I want to keep it for myself.

I don't have any pictures of those projects, either. I'm just a tease today. A big knitting tease.

Whew!

So, it's May.

Summer is sneaking up on me again. And, as of today, my beautiful little girl has only one month left to be three years old! I have not planned a party. I have not planned a gift. I have neither designed nor started work on this year's birthday shirt. We haven't decided what we're going to do this year - usually on the day of, we take her out for breakfast (pancakes) and a day of fun. She's much better in the car now, so we have been thinking about daytripping out to one of the NC aquariums.

Piper and I spent most of her spring break with friends in Nashville. It's about a 7-hour drive, and she did very well. On the way there, she was a bit squirrely for the last hour, but here's the thing: she didn't sleep during the drive. At all. So I am perfectly willing to give her a hour of boredom and seat-kicking. We went to visit some friends who moved in the fall, friends who have a little boy about a year younger than Piper. The two kids were buddies before the move, and picked up right where they left off. There were a few squabbles over toys and cranky hours after missed naps, but on the whole they did very well together.

For my part, I tried to be as good a houseguest as possible. My friend has only made a few new friends since moving, and I know only too well how lonely it can be when you're alone with a kid all day in a strange place. So we talked. And talked. And talked. We played with the kids, she took me out to see the hipster district of Nashville (where we went shopping for vintage books and vintage clothes, eee!), we ate some kick-ass food from Cafe Rakka, and we talked some more. It was so nice to have company all day long, and her son is such a sweet little guy that I didn't have to worry about him whacking Piper over the head with things, or playing games involving guns and killing. Piper's sharing skills were not always up to par, and that is something we need to work on, but I think both kids had fun. She is already asking when we're going to visit again.

She's out of school in a few weeks, and after her birthday we will probably go visit relatives in Michigan for a while. We have to be back before the end of June because I've signed her up for some dance lessons this summer, which I am pretty excited about.

I am also excited about my almost-finished knitting projects. I am thisclose to finishing the dress I'd planned for Easter - only a week late, that's basically "on time" for me - and most of the way done on her sweater as well. The sweater was supposed to be a surprise, but she came out into the living room one night long after she was supposed to be asleep, saw me knitting away on it and asked "Mom! Is that for ME?" So much for the surprise. But she loves it anyway, and keeps asking if it's done yet. Soon, kiddo...I hope.