Kiss My Knits!

Emily’s reading “The Wizard of Oz” in her advanced reading class at school. She has really, really taken a shine to it. Just now I heard her playing with her dolls:

Doll 1: “MY JOINTS NEED OIL!!”
Doll 2: “Sounds like Shauna’s in trouble!”
Doll 3: “We have oil!”
All dolls: “Yay!”

I loved the Wizard of Oz as a kid. I remember reading all the books in the sixth grade, and getting teased for it by some kids in my class, who weren’t real big on reading and I’m sure thought that the Wizard of Oz was baby stuff. At the time, their teasing bugged me, but I wasn’t about to stop. I’ve got all 14 of L. Frank Baum’s books in paperback on my shelf, and no amount of de-cluttering will get me to part with them.

That is, I thought I had all 14. Lo and behold, I’m missing book 1. Yep, I don’t have The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I don’t think I ever bought it. I have no idea why. It’s an appalling lack. I’d like to have it, but I settled for getting a big illustrated copy from the library for Emily. Maybe one of these days I’ll get a used paperback and we can go through the series.

My friend Laura and her youngest boy came over today, and it was great. Emily’s cornucopia of Playmobil stuff was fun for him to play with. Afterward, it looked like Godzilla had rampaged through TinyTown, but that’s what I expected. In years past, this would have been a big issue for Emily, but I took a chance that she could handle the chaos upon her return, and she’s doing fine at rearranging stuff the way she wants it without being upset because it was messed up to begin with. Excellent progress. Of course, she did also come up to me later and say, “He didn’t play with my Groovy Girls, did he? I don’t want that.”

Emily’s been extra cute lately with the holidays getting her all worked up. I went just now to get the video camera to record some of this for posterity, but the battery’s completely drained. Something to fix before this weekend’s cookie bake at her paternal grandparents’. This is a new tradition on that side of the family – my husband’s mother heard about the one we have on my side of the family, and loved it so much they started their own. So come this weekend, there’ll be a dozen people staying overnight in a three bedroom house. Should be cozy. My husband’s family is great, but that’s a lot of people for an introvert to be constantly around. Wish me luck! 🙂

Several of you very generously lent me the foreign currency you had jangling around in your drawers. I wanted to let you know what happened to it. No, not “happened to it” like that, it’s fine, I’ve got it and you’ll get it back!

I took pictures of all the bundles that each person individually gave me so that I could remember exactly who gave me what when it was time to return it. The down side to this, I didn’t realize until later, is that about half of these coins from various nations are of similar size and have Queen Elizabeth on the front. Soo… I’ll do my best upon returning these, and if I get something of yours wrong, please let me know.


On Monday I got in the final bit I’d been expecting, a bunch of Australian currency from a Browncoat Down Under. By the way, Aussies, your money is very cool. I spent that evening doing some research on the internet and parceling the coins out into individual baggies by country, labeling them and writing a little fact about each. A Parisian Browncoat very kindly answered my questions about the 10 centimes coin that my mother lent me. The up side of being one of “Those Moms” as my husband puts it, who includes wheat germ in chocolate chip cookie recipes is that you also go all out for this kind of thing too. Emily didn’t show much interest in this while I was doing it, but I got this note from her teacher today:

“Emily was a big hit yesterday with the “money from around the world.” You would be so proud of her. She stood in the front of the room and shared each bag of currency and told the class where each one was from. She did a great job! All of the other students were like “Wowwww!! Where did you get those from???” She responded to their comments and questions very appropriately. I, of course, was beaming from the back of the classroom, enjoying the positive interaction.”

So a huge THANK YOU to everyone who so generously donated. It turned into a learning experience for 18 third graders and an especially positive experience for my daughter. I owe you all – big!

Anybody want to do a swap? The catch is that while I would be your swapper, your swappee would be my daughter.

She keeps talking about getting a package in the mail. Further discussion shows that she doesn’t really care what’s in it, she just wants a package. She’s not a very demanding child when it comes to mail.

Emily was in the kitchen, leaping up to try to reach the gummis that are on top of the fridge. The box was just a little bit too far back for her to reach, so I moved it closer to the edge so she could still jump and get it herself.

Emily, wistfully: “I wish I had superpowers, so I could get the gummis myself.”

Heh.

Today was a jam-packed day. Up early and out to get bagels for the family, then I helped a family member out at the bank, which turned into a theater of the absurd culminating in the ATM keeping my card. Apparently I can get it back on Monday. Next stop, occupational therapy. We stopped by Mom’s on the way hom. She had a fantastic pea coat that was too big for her but fit me perfectly. I didn’t have a dressy jacket, so I was thrilled! Mom had gotten her Christmas tree but not decorated it yet. Emily was really excited by the thought of decorating it, so we wound up staying.

Home again in the afternoon, where Emily went off with her father to the mall. I got a call from a friend who needed help moving, so I wound up doing that, then returning some things to Target, then finally home again by about 6pm. Hopefully tomorrow there’ll be less running around.

Our local comic book store, Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find, is having a big two-day sale today and Sunday. One of the items on sale? This utterly ridiculous tumbler for which I have no practical need, yet which I have been wanting for some time. I loved Richie Rich comics as a kid. I used to get them at the local book store next door to the Moon Garden, the Chinese restaurant we’d get takeout from about once a week. They were great for reading in the car on the way up to Pennsylvania. I guess I still won’t get it – Christmas is coming up, so I’m trying to watch the budget better. Besides, it’s not like these are exactly flying off the shelves; I’m sure it’ll be there for a good long time to come.

Tomorrow: Mo’ Jayne hats.

So the one be-all end-all toy that my daughter wants for Christmas is a Ty Girl. Actually, she wants two Ty Girlz (yes, with a Z) so that they can play with each other. She talks about it daily. I think the main thing about these is that they come with a code she can redeem on the Ty Girlz website. She loves toy websites and this one looks like a doozy.

Now, on a skankiness scale of 1-10, with 1 being Raggedy Ann and 10 being Bratz, I think these clock in at about an 8. I think they wear too much makeup, look too grownup, have heels that are too high, and wear clothes that are too adult for an eight-year-old girl to play with. Some dolls are better than others. In looking for pics, they look more respectable online than they do when I see them hanging from the display rack at the toy store, for some reason.

Lately, I’ve been trying to not underestimate Emily. Interacting with kids is like hitting a moving target. By the time you get used to them at their current age, they’ve moved along and you’re treating them like they’re younger than they are. So when Emily asked me what my favorite thing about Ty Girlz was, rather than give Emily a non-committal answer or agreeing that they’re awesome, I told her that I didn’t really like the Ty Girlz. She asked me what I didn’t like about them, and I mentioned their high heels, and that I thought they wore too much makeup. I had no idea what to expect in response to this.

She handled it with good grace, standing her ground but not getting upset. “I really like them. I don’t think they wear too much makeup. I like their pretty hair.” Good girl! I may question your taste, but I’m proud of you for not buckling! I also allowed that their hair was, indeed, pretty.

Periodically since then, she’s said, “I don’t think they wear too much makeup.” She’s still angling for a Ty Girl or two. I think she’s decided Santa’s her best shot. I’m undecided as to what to recommend to Santa. But I like that our conversations can be more complex now.

At left: one of the best things about winter. Ahhh…

Speaking of orange, remember those two huge 4 pound cones I got in October? I’m down to about half of one cone. It’s going fast this time of year. I ordered more a few weeks ago, but God knows when that’ll come in. Brown Sheep, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

On a completely unrelated note, my lymph nodes are all swollen up. Well, not ALL swollen up, but definitely more so than usual. I don’t seem to be running a fever, and I feel fine, soo… go figure. I’ve had this happen mysteriously before, and it worried the doctor, who ran all kinds of tests and freaked me way the hell out, and then they just kind of… mysteriously went back down again. I suppose I shouldn’t be complacent, but I guess my body just periodically conducts some kind of systems test. I have no clue why.

If this were a TV drama, you’d be reading this post while sad music played behind you, dressed in nice clothes because you’d just come from my funeral, shaking your head at the injustice of it all. “If only she’d known,” you’d say.

Well, enough of that. I have hats to knit and Clementines to eat. Also, Emily’s surfing the Camp GroovyGirls website, and she wants me to play with her.

Yeah, that Jayne hat’s not looking so silly now, is it? Man, that cracks me up. I might have to knit me one o’ them.

Speaking of Jayne hats, here’s the first of several non-orange Jayne hats. The color is a bit richer than the picture indicates. The person who commissioned these was concerned about the Lamb’s Pride itchiness, so I’m subbing Berroco Ultra Alpaca doubled. It knits up at 4 stitches to the inch on size 9 needles. It’s a little dense, but any bigger of a needle and it’s too loose, so I’ll stick with this. I’m a little concerned – by my calculations, this is 22 inches around and it’s for a 24 inch head. Is that enough negative ease? I worry about little things, and I always get nervous when they feel loose anyway. Of course it’s supposed to be loose on me, I don’t have a 24 inch head, but I still get nervous. The next one’ll be for a head 23 inches in circumference, and maybe I’ll snug it up a bit more. In my experience, people tend to measure their heads a little big.

Emily picked out the yarn for her doll. The body will be the same color as the others, but she felt compelled to choose the hair from among the colors at the yarn shop… so hot pink it is! I have a few more red options here at home which I will present to her, but I know from experience that once she’s picked something, she’s set on it. And that’s fine. It’s her doll, and if she wants it to have hot pink hair, then it will have hot pink hair.

I’m off in a few minutes to hit the post office to mail some Turino silk, then another yarn shop looking for a good green in Ultra Alpaca – with a stop at a coffeeshop along the way for a pick-me-up. Thanksgiving left me beat!

This morning, I was awakened by my daughter coming into my room and telling me, “Today, you need to start knitting me a new doll. This doll will have green eyes and red hair. And a pink dress… with a heart… that says “Elizabeth.” Note artist’s rendition to the right.

Because I was asleep, I muttered my stock response. “Okay, sweetie.” I wonder if she’s figured that out yet. Hmm…

This child couldn’t say the words “yes” and “no” at age 2 1/2. So even though this is an utterly outrageous request, I’m very thankful for it.

Do you have something in your life which might seem to be a negative that is actually something to be grateful for?

My daughter just karaoked “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in front of 200 people at her school’s family fun day and she did GREAT. On key, nice and clear, in rhythm. She always tells me she wants to be a rock star when she grows up. Oh, me of little faith.

I am KICKING myself for not being able to get a video. Just trust me. She was good. Rock on, Emily!

It’s been a rough couple of days. Yesterday there was construction in front of our house all day. No big deal, but when they started digging up our front yard at about 8:30 last night, we went out to ask what was going on. Some water pipe up the street had been cracked by tree roots, so they were digging around, trying to locate the shutoff to the water main with varying degrees of success. Well, not much to be done for that. And I felt for the poor guys, it was cold out there.

Somehow that “shut off the water” part of what they told us didn’t quite sink in until we tried to turn on the water at about 10pm and realized it was off. Fortunately, we had some fresh water already, enough for brushing teeth and for flushing the toilet should it be necessary. We hoped it would be on by morning, since Emily’s never known life without water.

About 1am last night, I woke up feeling terrible. I could still see the flashing lights of the water truck outside. I sat on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, saying little prayers. “Please don’t let me get sick when we have no water in the house. Pleeeeease don’t let me get sick with no water in the house.” Thankfully, those prayers were answered. And the water was back on this morning. You can bet your keister that I am not taking piped-in water for granted today. I feel very fortunate to live in a country where I can just turn a magic knob and clean water flows into my home. Amazing.

Today, I have a scratchy throat and feel awful, but in an entirely different way. Looks like I’m getting a cold. It wasn’t a big day for me to run around and do fun things to blog about, so instead I’ll share with you one from last weekend.

Emily’s been more active and engaged lately, wanting to hang out outside and asking odd questions like, “what does the skeleton of your teeth look like?”

Late last week we went outside, even though frankly I wanted to stay in. There are some little purple wildflowers growing near the outdoor spigot, and Emily looked at them, then looked around some more.

Emily: Isn’t it beautiful?
Me: What, sweetie?
Emily: Everything outside!

Good point, sugar. My mood lifted. Sometimes it just takes a shift in perspective to stop us from taking things for granted.

Here’s a picture of my girl up in a tree. Life is good.