Kiss My Knits!

A few weeks ago, Emily and I went to the Schiele Museum while my husband was in Kentucky. My friend Rachel had suggested this. She knew that Emily had developed a keen interest in space, and the Schiele museum has a great planetarium and is only a half hour down the road.

Emily enjoyed the museum all right, but not in the traditional way. She whizzed through the museum at a pace I call “Stropewalking.” It’s when you’re getting to where you’re going and woe betide anyone who gets in your way. It’s named after its creator, my mother. Genes control interesting things.

As soon as they announced the planetarium show, Emily stopped her power tour of the museum, where she’d been basically killing time anyway. We had a GREAT time at the show. The Schiele museum cleverly placed their gift shop outside the planetarium exit, so there was nothing for it but to buy glow-in-the-dark stars. Immediately. I knew where this was going.

Sure enough, when we got home, they had to be put on the ceiling in representations of the actual constellations. I’m not going to have my daughter stand on a ladder and try this, so it fell to me. And so now she has semi-accurate representations of many constellations on her ceiling. Emphasis on the “semi.”

The interesting part is that although the pack came with small and large stars, she wanted to stop when we ran out of small stars. She knew that constellations had both small and large, and she didn’t just want to dump the big ones in there willy nilly. So when I suggested we go back to the planetarium yesterday, she was delighted, not least because she could get more stars to go on her ceiling.

The Spring Sky Show was at 3, but she had her shoes on at noon, and I couldn’t stall her for long. We wound up hitting “Oceans in Space” narrated by Avery Brooks at 1pm. Emily sat upright with great interest. We hit “Dinosaurs” at 2pm – not that great for us, but we watched the stars go since they left them running. Emily listed sideways in her seat. Finally, we hit the Spring Sky Show at 3pm, hosted by “Joe.” Emily was interested, but nobody but an immediate family member would know it, since she was practically on the floor.

Joe’s good. Next time we go, I wanna shoot for a show that Joe’s running.

Emily left the show with more questions than last time, like “Are all stars except the sun in constellations?” And “Do all people live in the Milky Way?” This time, not only did she wants the constellations on the ceiling, but she hit me with questions like, “What were the stars in the Summer Triangle?” She already knew Castor, Pollux, and Sirius, but now her individual star repertoire has expanded to include Deneb, Altair, and Vega. They’re appropriately labeled, with dotted lines connecting them.

I’ve found some things online that I wish I had, like glow in the dark yarn or glow in the dark thread because let’s face it, my pencil marks leave a little to be desired.

Next week the Spring Sky Show ends and the Summer Sky Show stars. Emily has expressed a desire to go back. I’ll get out the stepstool and limber up in preparation.

Something besides Emily art today. Knitting content!

Pattern: Knitted Kitty by Lilian (warning: pattern contains profanity)
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpaca sportweight
Needles: #5 (3.75mm)

Bertha at http://karmakitties.com/ sent Emily a care package in December. I knew some things I wanted to send her, like Koigu, but based on her blog, everybody who sends her packages includes some kind of really beautiful thing for her toddler. I got intimidated! There were any number of things I could send, but I honestly didn’t have the time to knit something worthy. So I procrastinated and procrastinated, as I am wont to do. Finally it had gotten to the point where it was just shameful, and I had to send something. I finally abandoned my plans for sweaters and darling little original hats in favor of a very cute and easy pattern so I could get something in the mail to her already.

This was an incredibly easy pattern. You don’t even have to know how to purl. If you can knit a rectangle, you can make this cat. You make three little panels, then seam them up and stuff them. Voila. Cat.

The eyes are spare embroidery thread, and the nose is leftover pink alpaca. I’m a little concerned that I didn’t fasten them securely enough, but I trust Bertha to be able to fix them if they come undone.

I’m told that June is quite happy with the cat, so it looks like this was a good choice. I’m hapy to have a new pattern to add to my repertoire. Quick, easy, and cute – just how I like ’em!

Faster, Gartercat, Kill, Kill!

It just occurred to me that school’s ending soon and I haven’t made a teacher gift. Now, I know I’m not obligated to make a teacher gift, and I may not make one, but I did do these knit flowers in 2005, these earrings in 2006. So there’s kind of a precedent now. Plus I knit baby sweaters for her kindergarten and first grade teachers, who both had babies. Soooo… yeah.

Any suggestions? I have one main teacher and a dream team of at least three other specialists.

I’m back on the Jayne horse again now that I can breathe better. Not perfect, but better, and that’s good enough! I’ve got four hats and four kits waiting to go out, so I’ll be hitting the post office momentarily. Actually, only three of those hats are going out. I’m waiting for an e-mail back from a guy in Oregon – I’m missing his address. Hats next up to: CA, MO, CO.

Emily got it into her head earlier this week that we needed to make gelatin. Not “Jell-O,” “gelatin.” This is because she found it hilarious to pronounce the word “juh-LAH-tin.” Ah, jocularity, jocularity. We made some yesterday and she had it last night. “This is DELICIOUS!” she said.

She’s on a cooking spree lately. At her request, we made lemonade yesterday, the only way we always make it – from scratch, with lemons, water, and sugar. Here’s the recipe. Only modification: she doesn’t like pulp, so we squeeze the lemons through a sieve.

Yesterday I looked at her and thought about how much she was growing up, and took a chance. “Would you like to cut the lemons?” So I showed her how you curve your fingers to avoid cutting them. I watched her like a hawk but didn’t really interfere. It could have been really bad – nothing stings like lemon juice in a cut – but she did great. The cuts didn’t exactly bisect the lemons perfectly, but so what? It’ll come with practice. She picked out the bag of lemons at the store, since one of those 2 pound bags gives just about the perfect amount of juice. She didn’t boil the sugar in the water, obviously, but she did pour the cooled syrup into the pitcher. She cut the lemons, and she helped a bit with squeezing, but it’s hard for her little hands. I did the trick where you roll the uncut lemon on the counter to make it easier to squeeze after cutting, but even so, it took some muscle.

Emily poured in the water and the lemon juice and stirred it with a wooden spoon. And she’s been drinking it regularly. I took the opportunity to point out how food we make ourselves tastes so much better. I am a mom, after all. We say these things.

Today’s Emily art is Musical Lin. I don’t know who Lin is, but clearly she enjoys belting out the tunes. Time to get another kit packed up. Hope y’all have a great day!

My allergies are definitely getting better. I can often breathe through my nose now, although I make some alarming sounds doing it. Unfortunately, all the lying on the couch has messed up my back. It’s an old injury that flares up from time to time, usually from neglecting to exercise and keep the muscles strong and limber. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another.

Emily’s EOG tests are done, much to everyone’s relief. “Now I can go to fourth grade!” she says. I have it on good authority that her teacher was going to recommend her for fourth grade regardless of how she did, since the teacher says that’s clearly where she needs to be, so all the angst Em felt was probably for nothing. Well, I suppose it builds character.

Em got to announce the weather over the loudspeaker yesterday morning, to her great pleasure. She likes to get to school early so that she has a better chance of being around when they pick someone to do these things. The bell rings at 7:30, and they ask kids not to arrive before 7:00, but you’d better believe Em’s ready to go at 6:50, standing at the door and staring out like a dog with a full bladder, ready to bolt at the first opportunity.

No, I did not just compare my beautiful child to a dog that needs to pee, and if you thought you read that, you’re mistaken.

Today’s Em art: Mother Nature. It seemed fitting given the pollen. I dig Mother Nature’s groovy frock and boots, and the fact that she has hearts for fingers.

Time to go clean out the freezer. It had something pressing against the door and popped open in the night, and now everything’s ruined. Well, it’ll be an opportunity to start fresh, eh?

Still knocked out by allergies or whatever. Yesterday I didn’t take Benadryl until evening, as it’s not really fair to Em for me to be out of commission for the whole day. Of course, pushing her on the swing outside isn’t exactly the best thing, but again, you do what you gotta. If it were just one day, then I think I could get away with keeping her cooped up inside, but it’s not, and she’s working hard on the EOG (end of grade) tests at her school, so she deserves a good time.

The Benadryl is giving me weird dreams. A couple of days ago as I drifted off, I had what I thought was a great idea. It’d be marketable, I could make it without too much trouble, and it’d be inexpensive to produce. I decided I was so sleepy I didn’t want to get up to write it down, but how could I possibly forget what it was?

Needless to say, I forgot. Of course, as hopped up as I was, it could have been an automatic carrot launcher or something. Who knows?

Last night I dreamed that someone was over and spending the night. She was going to share my bed, but in the morning I discovered that my cat had fleas and I was worried about her and the house. Then I was joking around with the cleaning crew that had mysteriously showed up. I’m fairly sure this is because a) I saw an episode of Dead Like Me where two co-workers had to bunk together, and b) I haven’t been able to clean at all over the last couple of days and the house is in a bad state and it’s depressing.

I’m about to send out mail canceling Brownies today. I’m no good to anyone like this.

Today’s Emily art was done last night. We had a big storm come through here with thunder and lightning. I love the unhappy expression and “oh no” of the figure at left, but I also love the bug eyes and crazy hair of the lightning victim on the right. Even more, I love that she spelled “lightning” right for this context, which is more than 75% of the internet can do.

Okay, time for another exciting day of lying on the couch watching Voyager reruns and trying to breathe.

“Hello Heather,
I’m sorry for what happened to your needles we will be more than
happy to replace them for you all you would have to do is send us your
broken ones and we will ship out new ones if you have further questions
please feel free to contact us at www.clover-usa.com Thank You!!!

(name)
Customer Service”

YAY! I owe you one, !

Okay, at this point, everybody I owe a package to should have one – except Bubba. Sorry, Bubba, bear with me.

Anybody out there still waiting for a swap package from me?

That benadryl knocked me out yesterday. I got Em and we went home and I was in bed by 3. I got up for a while around 8, but I was still pretty sleepy.

I haven’t taken any yet today. I need to do things like pay bills and get groceries and didn’t want to be completely out of commission.

I’m still stopped up, but not quite as badly. I was running a fever of about 99.5 yesterday, so maybe it was a cold. Or maybe my system’s just in full freakout mode from lack of oxygen. Well, whatever, hopefully tomorrow things will be better.

Today’s Emily art: ” Jamie Is Talking To The Sun.” I think the object at left is a house, not a rocket ship. Or maybe it’s both, I didn’t ask. Emily sometimes tells me she wants to be the first person to go to the sun, so maybe that’s how she’ll get there.