Kiss My Knits!

I’ve been knitting like a fiend this weekend. When I say I’ve been working on Jayne hat orders that came in on Jan 6-7, understand that ten orders came in on Jan 6-7. It’s not a one to one ratio, where I always get one order a day. Some days, several will come in. Some days, none will. That just happened to be a busy period because it was the tail end of the Donors Choose challenge.

Busy or not, though, earlier this week I had to set aside Jaynes for just one night. I was over at Turtlegirl76’s the other night, and the knitters there were working on her favorite charity, Hats for Alex. They were all making itty bitty Jayne hats. SQUEEEE!! Too adorable. Busy or not, naturally I wanted to put my own work aside and throw my Jayne hat into the ring. So here it is, a creditable baby Jayne. It’s in Vanna’s Choice acrylic kindly loaned to me by YeaIKnit. Size 8 needles. You could probably go up to size 9, I’m just a loose knitter. No ties on the earflaps to get tangled. The orange is kind of brown, but really, the colors aren’t a bad match considering it’s for a baby hat. The yellow isn’t as lemony as it appears here. This is very inexpensive, machine-washable yarn. It’s acrylic, of course, but it gets the job done. I’d say this would fit a 3 month old. I always prefer to knit big, though, since kids don’t exactly get any smaller. I reckon I can post the pattern if there’s interest and if I can figure out where to put it.

Many thanks to Turtlegirl76’s cat Ripple for modeling. Also, for being slow enough to catch. He may be the old man of the house, but that doesn’t mean we can’t rob him of his dignity from time to time.

Speaking of that Donors Choose challenge, I was dropping Emily off at school last week and the music teacher was on car duty, shepherding kids into the building. She was literally jumping up and down with excitement as she told me the xylophones are being delivered this week. Considering that a few weeks ago the playground was torched, that’s a very positive event.

For those concerned, the burned sections of the playground have been removed and the playground reopened, so apparently it wasn’t a total loss. I don’t know about repairs, but at least the kids can play on it again. Sorry for the blurry quality of the pic, I took it this morning as I was dropping Em off at school, and frankly, it looks weird to take photographs of the school while it’s in session. I always think the teachers are going to call the cops or something.

Emily’s Clara Barton obsession continues. Here she is dressed as Clara Barton, jumping out of a tree with two trash bags (old baby blankets) as parachutes. Naughty, naughty Clara Barton.

Here’s a more modern nursing tale that would have Clara Barton beaming with pride. I guess medical personnel have always been daredevils, whether they’re jumping out of trees or running into gunfire. Great to see folks making women’s history this Women’s History Month.

I’m off to rustle up breakfast and knit some more. Hope y’all have a great day!

I had been doing so well at getting to bed on time, then Daylight Savings Time screwed me up. So very tired. Gotta get back on schedule.

So in lieu of an actual post, pics and links.

First, another ad from that 1943 Better Homes and Gardens. Get off the phone, kid, there’s a big steel order coming through. You can click on the larger ad behind the link and get bigger text, although it’s still a little faint. Sorry. No time to clean up internet pictures when we’re at war.

Interestingly, the same kind of baby bottles that this kid probably used are making a comeback.

Other links:
Pot helps memory in Alzheimer’s patients?
It’s like an urban Burmese tiger trap.
Stand back! He’s got a joy buzzer!
Maybe I can duct-tape my laptop to my treadmill. Hmm…
Delicious, delicious new fire alarm.
Nice bear… nice bear…
Just gearing up for the rain of toads
And finally, if you are so inclined, click to grow my minicity population.

Now, to quote Al Gore, “Peace Out!”

It’s Women’s History Month, so here’s a little gem from the October 1943 Better Homes and Gardens.

The small pic at left links to a much, much larger one.

Use Kotex – for the war effort!

The Jayne hat list as it stands.

Emily got some nice presents for her birthday. She got books, a DVD, and some toys including a Playmobil playset that she’s really enjoying. But the one gift which she’d been specifically asking for for months was a cuckoo clock. I kid you not. The kid really, really wanted a cuckoo clock. And so, now, in her room, direct from China by way of eBay, is this genuine plastic 14″ tall cuckoo clock. She’s thrilled. It plays a recorded cuckooing sound on the hour, once for every hour. She really wanted us to have it continue cuckooing all night, but we said no. “It won’t keep me awake!” she protested. Finally, I said, “well, it might keep us awake!” She slowly grinned and said, “That’s funny.” Yeah, Daddy and I are crazy that way.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when 8am rolled around this morning and that thing started cuckooing eight loooong times. Steve’s going to rig up either a toggle switch or some kind of photovoltaic cell, or possibly both, for it so that we won’t have to deal with this constantly.

But is it worth it for the joy that it brings my little weirdo? Yes.

This morning: knitting, stamping boxes, writing notes, and rustling up more straw. It’s the Jayne stuff that’s knitting-adjacent that slows things down sometimes.

Hats up for: Troup TX, Rock Hill SC, and… unknown. Hm. Guess I better contact that guy.

How the party went.

At the moment, we are unable to send e-mail, so bear with me if you don’t get a response to something you’ve sent me today.

Today, we’re having a birthday party for my daughter. She turns nine on Monday. I’ve written before about the Saddest Birthday Party Ever but this time, we have actual CONFIRMATIONS! Woo!

We had hoped to have it at a local park, but it’s chilly and extremely windy today, so that’s right out. So yesterday morning, I went into a cleaning frenzy. Gone are the narrow paths of bare floor between towering mountains of junk. Now they’re extremely wide paths between lightly rolling hills of junk. In other words, I’m no longer barring the door to people who might stop by, but will let them come in with a little “sorry about the mess.” I’m not exaggerating when I say it took me all day to get the house to this point.

I can’t do anything about the cracked tile or the peeling wallpaper right now, so I’m letting those go. The house is hygenic and there’s room to roughhouse a little, so that’s good enough.

Later this afternoon, if all goes according to plan, five Girl Scouts will descend on the house. There will be pizza and cupcakes and ice cream. There will be a pinata, the one thing Emily wants with all her heart and soul. There may be pin the tail on the donkey and a ring toss game. Most importantly, there will be kids. It’ll be interesting, because Emily won’t be able to leave the situation as much if she gets overwhelmed, but she’ll be on her home turf. But she’s been wanting to have friends come over, so I think this is going to be a good day for her. It’s certainly a big milestone in her social development.

As for me, I dreamed about the party most of the night. I’m alternating between freaking out and reminding myself that it is no big deal to have a few friends come over. Wish us all luck!

ETA: One girl and her sister cancelled because she’s under the weather. And then there were three!

E (again) TA: A good time was had by all. Post to follow later. I’M QUEEN OF THE WORLD!!! WOOOOOOO!!!

Meet Jennifer!
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull for doll, panties, and dress. Crystal Palace cotton chenille for hair. Embroidery floss for face.
Needles: #3 for the doll, #2 for the dress
Doll pattern: Basic Doll from Toys to Knit by Tracy Chapman
Dress pattern: Me!
Turtlegirl76 suggested eyelets on the waist of the dress with an eye toward running a ribbon through. I decided not to do the ribbon, but I liked the eyelet idea.

Notes: This is the third one of these dolls I’ve made. This is not because I have any great love for the pattern. In fact, I think it’s rather poorly written, but my daughter seems to love these dolls. She picked out the color for the hair and dress. She specifically requested a dress, not a skirt and shirt, and asked for a purple heart. When the doll was done, she elected to find a scrap of Jayne hat yarn and make it into a hair tie.

At this point, I don’t have a whole lot more I can say about the pattern beyond what I’ve said about the previous dolls. Also, I’m tired and my wit has preceded me to bed. I’ll be joining it in a moment.

Here’s Emily’s original concept drawing. The main difference is that she picked out hot pink hair when we went to Charlotte Yarn, but I think that’s mainly because she felt like she had to pick whatever color they had, and that was the closest to red. Once she’d picked it, there was no swaying her to any other color. She also made sure to tell me early on that the dress should be sleeveless, unlike the drawing.

Emily chose the name Jennifer in the same way she chose her other two dolls’ names – by getting me to go to a baby names site on the web so she could pick one from a list. She tells me that Jennifer is older than Taylor but younger than Elizabeth. The three dolls have already had some pillow fights, so it looks like Jennifer is fitting in just fine.

This was originally going to be a post called “What the Hell is wrong with people?” but I find a lot of the fire has gone out me. No pun intended.

Last Monday, we pulled up to my daughter’s school to drop her off and noticed that the playground was roped off with yellow tape. Apparently over the weekend, it burned. And that’s really all I know for sure, “it burned.” The blue plastic slide is melted. The yellow vinyl covering the metal skeleton has scorched and peeled away in the places closest to the heat. If Salvador Dali designed kids’ equipment, this is what it would look like.

My daughter’s teacher says, “We don’t know if it was accidental or on purpose. Apparently, there is not enough evidence to know.” But how can this NOT be deliberate? I’m having trouble coming up with a scenario in which a vinyl, plastic, and metal playground spontaneously combusts. Lightning strike? Fire sprites? Personally, I suspect someone was fooling around up there with matches or a lighter and things burned a lot faster than they thought. At least, I hope it was stupidity and not deliberate destruction.

The teacher says, “This was a playground that was donated to us from an outside sponsor.” Our school proudly displays the oversized novelty check for 10 grand that we got from a corporation in or around 2003. Since our school is not exactly swimming in cash, there’s no way they could have afforded it otherwise. The teacher continues, “I assume that the damage is covered under our insurance, but I don’t really know any details about the possibility of it being replaced.”

I try to come up with the bright side to everything, but I’m having a hard time finding the plus to someone destroying a playground at a children’s school. The culprits hopefully learned that things burn fast? They understand what guilt and remorse feel like? I can’t even be sure of that.

It’s been more than a week since this happened, and now there’s orange mesh around the playground. That’s all the progress I’ve seen. The kids still have four swings and some other playground equipment, albeit older and ALSO with a messed up slide from earlier vandalism.

I’ve asked Emily if she knows what happened. She doesn’t. That’s going to be a tough one to explain.