Kiss My Knits!

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.

How’d that space Brownie meeting go?

The furnace busted late yesterday. It didn’t seem so bad at the time, since it was in the high sixties, but today… today, not so much. Emily got up and went into the den to lie on the couch and kind of ease into the day. While she was in the bathroom, I tossed the couch blanket into the dryer to warm up for a few minutes. Then I fixed her breakfast and asked her if she wanted her hot water bottle. She said no. So I took one of Steve’s clean sweatsocks, poured in some uncooked rice, knotted it, and threw it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Made a great heat pack even if it smelled a little like rice. Now I want some of my husband’s chicken teriyaki.

The rice socks retain heat for at least a half an hour. She said it was too hot, and she didn’t want it anyway. That’s okay, it felt fine to me and saved me from making one of my own! This kid routinely wants to wear miniskirts in the winter, so probably she really was okay in her flannel PJs.

The furnace guys can come out tomorrow morning to fix it. And we’ve got a kerosene heater that we can fire up to heat things up before bed, so at least we’ll have a better temperature to cool down from. I think we’re good for now. We may head out elsewhere later – or else just I may head out elsewhere later. My husband and my daughter are both hot-blooded Italians. I’m a WASP with chilly feet.

Links:
Gravity powered lamp.
Beautiful monasteries.
Giant frog fossil found.
Teenager disproves goldfish memory myth.
Tattoo of the year.

Move over, Lucy Liu, there’s a new star in town. It’s… Clara Barton!

Yes, my daughter is obsessed with the Civil War nurse and activist who founded the American Red Cross. Emily attributes all sorts of amazing, improbable, and very naughty activities to Clara Barton. According to Emily, Clara Barton:

1) left the emergency brake off in a car on a steep driveway
2) hid mashed potatoes in her hat
3) caught a hard baseball in her mouth
4) jumped out of a tree using trash bags as parachutes

The list goes on and on. Clara Barton is her Chuck Norris. Now that she’s been studying about the moon in school, apparently Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Clara Barton all went to the moon together. And had a tea party.

This is all hi-LAR-ious to her. She’ll start giggling uncontrollably as she tells me the outrageous things Clara Barton did, and then, in high dramatic fashion, I’ll widen my eyes and wave my arms and say, “Nooooo! Clara Barton did not pop popcorn without a lid!”

Why Clara Barton? I have no idea. But Clara Barton’s lasted longer than Lucy Liu, proving that substance trumps style. And now Emily wants to join the American Red Cross, so I guess that’s a positive development. I just need to warn her that her days will not consist of shenanigans like opening umbrellas in cars. That’s just for Clara Barton to do.

We had a great day off from school yesterday. It was wonderful kite-flying weather and we took full advantage of that.

I think the good day yesterday carried over into today. Emily got up at 4:15 this morning. I went back to bed after getting her breakfast. About 6, she started singing “Accentuate the Positive” at top volume. This is a song she knows because I have a songbook called Ultimate Swing Standards and I regularly play this on the piano. Apparently something stuck a few days ago. Emily decided yesterday that it was hilarious to write out the lyrics, but to spell them all wrong, like “latch on to the a-fur-mu-tyve, don’t eat with mister in-be-tween.” It’s deliberate, I promise you. Oh, for a digital camera.

At 6:30 she came into the bedroom and started putting her pajamas in the clothes hamper, and told me “I’m ready to go to school now! Let’s go!” I was hoping for one more time hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock, but all righty! I guess I’m up now! Emily got to school early, in a stellar mood, singing “Accentuate the Positive.” I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that it’ll be a good day. I further predict she’ll be the only one in the school singing Mercer and Arlen tunes.

Emily frequently wants me to show her how to play certain songs. This usually consists me of pointing to keys for her to push. She does know middle C, and I labeled some of the keys. We’ve gone over a few ideas, like repeats and tie notes, which she’s used with a little lap harp she has. I might try to teach her how to read music. Based on my own childhood experience, though, I learned the piano better from a teacher than from my mother, who also plays. When you’re a kid, there’s just some mental component to having someone outside your family teach you. Go figure.

I wonder at what point Emily might want or be ready to try piano lessons… hm…

Hats up for: Ontario, Illinois, and Lancashire in the UK.

I’ve put the hot pink hair on the new doll, but can’t show you without my digital camera. This doll’s head is less firmly stuffed than her friends’. This was fine when it was just the head, but I didn’t account for the added weight of the cotton chenille hair. Now she’s a little floppy-necked. I showed her to Emily and asked if I should redo her neck, but Emily said she was fine like she is. “That looks like nice hair. Elizabeth and Taylor are going to love her!”

The doll has panties, but still needs a belly button and a pink dress. Emily won’t name her until she’s completely done. There’ll be plenty of time to take pictures. Hopefully Canon will turn my camera around quickly.

Lots of kits to go out, but with Emily out of school today, it’s throwing me a bit off my schedule. I’m right on track with the Jayne hats, though. There’s one boxed up and ready to go to Wisconsin, and the next one goes to Canada. I’m assuming the post office is closed today.

I’m being called away to play. I have a feeling not much grownup work is going to get done today.

Since I don’t have pics, how about links?

Neighbor’s revenge.
Eaten by trees
Judge Judy lays the smack down.
And lastly, after receiving eardrops all week, my cat wishes she had this.

Emily’s feeling really good, but she’s sneezing like crazy today. She’s got a bit of runny nose, too. Not sure what’s going on there, since it’s not really allergy season. I suggested she have more healthy snacks than usual. She chose strawberries. (At right: the only strawberry pic I have on my server. Go Kaylee!)

This is kind of weird. She’s never wanted strawberries before, when they’d be samples at the grocery store, or when I’d offer them when I was making smoothies for myself, but all of a sudden, she’s asking for them. I don’t know why, but fine. If she’ll eat them, then that’s one more thing in her diet, and that’s cause for celebration. As my mother would note, strawberries are packed with antioxidants. And the vitamin C has to help, even if she’s got high energy with her sniffles.

Mr. Tvini, on the other hand, is definitely not well. He came home early, feeling sick. This is fairly unheard of. He crashed on the couch and stayed there, watching old Thin Man movies and dozing in and out. When it came time to put Emily to bed, he joined us for her story and stayed collapsed on our bed, fully dressed. I turned out the lights and left him there. He slept until just now, when he stumbled into the den, grabbed his pajamas from the dryer, and shuffled back to bed. Poor guy. I’m glad I took a short nap today so that I’m fully charged to take care of everybody.

As for me, I’m washing my hands and taking lots of vitamins. I do NOT want to get whatever he’s got, and possibly whatever she has. The rule is that one person in the household has to be functional. I guess right now that’s me. Tonight I’m watching African American Lives 2 and knitting like the wind. The orders I’m working on are from Dec 10-12, and they got an “eight to nine week” delivery estimate, but I’d like to pull ahead on the line a little bit. Tomorrow, if everyone’s well, I’ll be out at knit night and I can generally crank at least one out there, so that’ll help.

Also tomorrow night: Girl Scout cookie delivery. Knitters need their Thin Mints!

Hats up for: FL, NV, WI.

ETA: There’s a little scurrying scratching sound coming from the attic. Could be mice. Or possibly gnomes. Note to self: get gnome traps.