Kiss My Knits!

Look what sent to Emily! It’s chock full of Florida-themed goodies. A bicycle license plate, stickers, an alligator tooth (not pictured) and a cute little mermaid doll! Emily loves this doll. She particularly loves the hair, which I pointed out looks just like hers. This morning Emily cut off a little piece of “Aurora’s” hair and asked me to put it around the her tiny wrist as a bracelet.


Emily is so full of Christmas that she may explode. It’s interesting to see the way her mind works. While she’s super-excited about getting gifts, she’s also doing something a little unusual. She’s making little gifts for Santa and the reindeer. Last week she made a little sign, pictured, reading “Things for Santa” and stuck it on a cardboard box.

In the box are cookies (of course), gummis (I can’t believe she’s sharing these), and assorted things she’s made. I taught her to finger-knit and she made a little green bracelet for Santa. Also, she made Shrinky Dinks (I shrunk them for her, she can’t use a heat gun) that are name tags for the reindeer to have. Santa just gets cookies from other houses. He’s loading up at ours.



Emily had to miss the Christmas cookie bake this year, so we wound up making some today. It’s been busy all day. Emily’s clearly getting some energy back now that she’s on antibiotics. Combine that with it being Christmas Eve and it’s been hard to carve time out for non-Emily things. It’s been everything from “I want you to play Chutes and Ladders by yourself” to “I want you to paint fish on my wall to cover up the blank spots.” I need ten minutes to myself!

At left: Thanks again, !

Bertha79, who now maintains her blog at karmakitties.com, sent Emily the sweetest care package! She got a kick out of all of it, but of particular interest to her was the kaleidoscope. Neat!

Also, check out the windfall from Germany! This is a package from a Browncoat to whom I’m sending a hat. I’m pretty sure that Emily is set on candy for life now. Of course, she wouldn’t agree – you can never have too much sugar!

Not only did the box have all this candy in it, but you aren’t seeing the chocolate bar or the two bottles of German beer he sent. My husband, who homebrews, was very appreciative. He’s bottled up some American pale ale to send back, so now it’s just a matter of getting past the holidays so we can return the favor for this wonderful guy.

Emily continues to cough and sniffle, and now I think she’s picked up a little impetigo. We’ll be going to the doctor tomorrow morning, and I doubt we’ll make it to our annual cookie bake tomorrow afternoon since we wouldn’t want to infect any of her cousins. These care packages are a wonderful pick-me-up during a somewhat stressful time for her. Thank you all!

Jayne hats up next for: Austria, Austria, and California.

E-mail from today:

“…WHY did you not sit me down, tie me up and force me to watch this before today???

And so, another Browncoat is born. Amen!

ETA: I might as well make this a proper post.

I just got the list of Emily’s spelling words for tomorrow. They start out okay but get hard pretty quickly. It starts out with cosmos and pecan, but then quickly progresses to muumuu, enzyme, perquisite, hircine, and mucilaginous. Yikes. We went over some, but she spelled “decoy” as “decoi” so I don’t know how this will go. Well, it’ll be a character-building experience.

I’ve gotten exactly one cuff on the fuzzyfeet done. I wound up running quite a few errands this morning instead. I have an eBay purchase to ship that wouldn’t fit in any of my boxes here at home, and I really wanted to get that out as soon as possible.

Now I’m watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer with my daughter while I consider whether to do an afterthought “bullseye” heel on the slippers instead of sticking to the pattern. That heel looked pretty darned good on these socks.

Tonight if we’ve got the cash I want to hit the Vietnamese place up the street. There are some spring rolls calling my name!

A big thank you to for her generosity! Emily was so excited to get this that she couldn’t wait until after dinner. Hence the pizza slice in one hand as she reaches for a package in the other. sent a card, a heart-shaped notebook, some Crayola twistable colored pencils, and some super-cute hair barrettes. Emily opted not to wear these this morning, because it is “Read and Relax” day and she said, “they might push into my head on the pillow.” However, I’m pretty sure she wants to put them on when she gets home. She wasted no time with the gummis, though. All in all, a hit. Thanks, !

Em’s still feeling a little sniffly, so she woke up a little later than usual and got her class about ten minutes late. She had to carry in a tray of cupcakes, so I came with her to open doors before her. Because of this, I got to see some of Read and Relax day. Some students were already going up the hall in PJs and jackets (it’s cold out there!) and the teachers were in bathrobes. Emily’s class was just starting to go to the bathroom in groups to change into pajamas when we arrived. I love seeing her in new environments. This time, I got to hear her go into her classroom with a breezy, “Sorry I’m late!” Hee!

Today, I’m making Fuzzy Feet for Emily’s teacher. Emily had wanted them to be yellow, so I made up a swatch out of the Berroco Ultra Alpaca I used for the Alpaca Jayne hat. Frankly, though, I was pretty sick of working with yellow, so last night I showed some of Creatively Dyed‘s Merino Twine (right) to Emily and asked her if she wanted stripey yarn instead. “Yes, stripes. That’s much prettier.” Yay! So I did a swatch out of the Merino Twine on size 9’s and it felted just fine. Swatch is below. It may be a little wide still, so maybe I should drop down from 44 stitches to 40. I dunno. Also, the stripe after felting has, we shall say, “a handmade quality.” I’m okay with that.



Got a couple more hats ready to go out today, as well as quite a few care packages which may wind up waiting a few more days. Time is not on my side.

I haven’t had coffee in a while, going for cocoa at my knit nights instead. I might have to go ahead and have a mocha today. But first, Fuzzy Feet!

Emily’s back in school. She got up and took her own temperature and reported to us what it was. She’s still sniffling and coughing, but I don’t think she’s contagious and she really, really wants to get back to school. She says her friends miss her. I’ll bet she’s right.

Email to jaynehat.com is still getting through only sporadically. This is troublesome, because I just ordered a thousand more business cards with that address (thanks again for Li’l Jayne, ). The first set of cards went fast. The next set will be double-sided, with care info on the reverse.

The DNS issues with our various sites should be resolved soon. I worry that someone who ordered two months ago will try to write me and it’ll bounce, and that person will think I’ve vanished. Let’s keep a happy thought and hope that doesn’t happen.

I had planned to make a long post this morning about visiting my in-laws and how I taught all the kids in the family to finger-knit, or more accurately, to finger-crochet. Then I suddenly realized that I had neglected to make a Christmas gift for my kid’s teacher. So now I need to have three hats and a pair of Fuzzyfeet finished by Friday. This isn’t counting the packages that need to go out. So much for the long post. Maybe if I make good time this morning, or if Em stays in school all day, I’ll have time for more fun stuff.

On tap next: watching Superman Doomsday and knitting like the wind!

Sick Emily, Jayne hats, and care packages

Day two: Internet still not restored. May have to resort to cannibalism.

Eeeee! Look what sent Emily! You may know for her super cute ferret Jayne hat or her Vinnland socks (the green ones I’m making) but you may not have known that she makes soap. These smell fabulous. Thank you so much, ! Emily will be using one of these – or, honestly, probably more than one – in her bath tonight!

ETA: In Jayne news, am working on orders from Oct 20th. Still getting them out faster than the eight week delivery time estimate. Yay!

Well, Emily had her debut in the musical theater tonight as a member of the chorus. She’s in the pink shirt with the two braids. She’s the tallest one, as usual. The third and fourth graders were off to the sides of the stage, while the fifth graders played the actual parts.

Right: Check out the Wells Fargo Wagon! I wondered how the heck they could afford all the stage dressing, since our school is, we shall say, dirt poor. Then the principal mentioned she’d seen the same production at another school last week, which makes me think that the district shelled out for the rights to Music Man Junior as well as the settings. She also said that our production put theirs to shame, which I totally believe.

Left: sign definitely not needed. The music director stationed this teacher at the back with this little baby. The reverse side says “SING NOT SHOUT.” Emily wasn’t supposed to have the solo she did, but she decided to sing a line along with the soloist. Nice and loud. And she sounded great. I don’t think anybody noticed, but she was fabulous.

Link to an AVI of a bunch of eight year olds singing Meredith Wilson – IF YOU DARE!

Upon coming home, she immediately popped in the DVD of the Music Man which I had cunningly left sitting at the edge of the coffee table. She’s singing along with the songs now. She’s going to be a star, I tell you! A star!

And now, if you’ll pardon me, it’s time for the star’s bathtime and jammies.

Tomorrow night, Emily’s school will be doing The Music Man. I assume they’ll just be doing selections from it, since I doubt they have a pint-sized Robert Preston ready to sing “The Sadder but Wiser Girl.” They will, however, be doing Iowa Stubborn, 76 Trombones, the Wells Fargo Wagon, and Pick a Little Talk a Little.

Apparently they’ve got the stage dressed as River City, complete with a Wells Fargo wagon and horse, “a big orange ball” for some reason, and hats for the kids.

Emily will have two solos – well, duets, since they pair the kids up for the solos. In Wells Fargo Wagon, she’ll be singing, “And once I got some grapefruit from Tampa” and also “Oho the Wells Fargo Wagon keeps a-coming!”

I spoke with her music teacher, who says that in rehearsal, the kids are really more shouting than singing. For those not lucky enough to enjoy this gem in person, I point you to two things:

First, this list of terms used in the Music Man with which you may be unfamiliar.

Second, this audio rendition of David Sedaris reading “Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol” in which he takes on the persona of a drama critic skewering a local elementary school production of A Christmas Carol. Heh.

As for me, I’ll be running the video camera. First karaoke, now Broadway musicals, tomorrow, Hollywood!