(Finally) Some Knitting (and Sewing)

Knitting! Gifts! Exclamation points! Parentheses!

I’ve been working on a few hand-made gifts for a while, but have held back their pictures so as not to spoil the surprise for the giftees.  Now I can finally share.  

Specimen 1: Parents’ Little Helper Bucket (from the Toy Gathering Bucket Sewing Tutorial at Sew, Mama, Sew!)

Recalling life with a newborn, I can remember countless times settling down to nurse the baby, getting us both comfortable, and then realizing that I couldn’t reach my water.  Or my chapstick.  Or the phone.  You get the idea.  Once I got the hang of nursing (and that pesky cesarean scar healed), I could hop up and grab what I needed without disturbing the baby.  But until that time, a basket, bag, or bucket to hold a few comfort items was a lifesaver for me.  This fabric bucket can hold whatever might comfort mom or dad when it comes time to feed the baby.  Stash the aforementioned water, chapstick, and phone.  Toss in a snack, pen and paper, a burp cloth, a tube of nipple cream.  Then scoop up the bag in one hand and know that you can relax with the baby and have whatever you need within reach.  This one uses fusible fleece to help it stand up tall.  Toss the bucket into the washing machine when the baby barfs on it or you spill/spray milk on it (parenting babies is so glamorous).  This was made with bits of two fat quarters of quilting fabric (the exterior) and part of an old flowery sheet (the interior).  The bucket makes a great delivery device for other gifts as well (this one held baby sweater, hat, and socks).  Later you can use for a toy bag, an Easter basket, or a really wacky hat. 

Homemade fabric bucket, light orange with dark orange outside pockets, a peek of flowery lining visible

An overly bright view of the inside of the orange fabric bucket

Specimen 2: Orange- and green-striped baby sweater (from EZ’s Surplice Baby Jacket knitting pattern by Elizabeth Zimmerman, with commentary by Meg Swansen, Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2007)

This is a very easy garter-stitch sweater, knit in one piece beginning at the bottom.  Decreases along each side create the inner edge; strategic increases create the sleeve-shaping.  The only seaming is at the top of each sleeve.  I used three-needle bind-off for this, but kitchener stitch would do just as well.  Zimmerman and Swansen have given us more of a recipe than an exact pattern, with many possibilities for personalization and variation.  Button plackets, ribbed cuffs, a foldover collar, longer or shorter sleeves are all possibilities.  The  yarn here is KnitPicks Shine Sport in Grass (the green) and Marmalade (the orange), a very soft washable cotton yarn.  This one has buttonholes all around the bottom to make it widely adjustable to the size of the baby, but in the end, worried about the baby choking, I left off the buttons.  Ties might have been nice, but the overlapping points of the sweater will suffice for most purposes down here in the South Texas sunshine.  

Orange- and green-striped, hand-knit, baby surplice jacket

Specimen 3: Orange- and green-striped baby hat (from the patterns of my fevered brain)

This matching baby hat is made with the same yarn as the sweater, with a soft ribbed edge and stockinette top. 

Green- and orange-striped, hand-knit baby hat

Specimens 4a, 4b, and 4c: Infant and toddler socks (from the patterns of my fevered brain)

The grey/black pair of infant socks on the left of this picture are 24-stitch socks that are quick and fun to make. I can make one infant sock during a World Cup soccer match, provided I knit steadily, stopping only occasionally to blow a pretend vuvuzela.  I have a theory that baby socks knit during World Cup matches impart special kicking power to their wearers.  The greenish sock at the center is another infant sock, which has acquired a mate and been gifted to a neighbor for her new grandbaby.  The toddler sock on the right has a mate-in-progress and is destined to be launched to Canada to celebrate glorious Exceptions.  The yarn here is KnitPicks Essential in Lily Pad Multi (the greeny) and Carbon Twist (the grey/black). 

Hand-knit baby socks: one pair of grey/black infant socks, one greenish infant sock, one greenish toddler sock

Fancy-schmancy Presentation Idea A: Using the yarn wrapper

Some smart person on the internet suggested giving away the yarn wrapper with hand-knit gifts to share both fiber content and laundry care with the recipient.  Some people even include a bit of the yarn in case of future repairs.  I rolled up the baby sweater and hat and tucked them inside the skein band from their yarn to make this tidy little package.

Striped baby sweater and hat, rolled up and tucked into the yarn wrapper

Fancy-schmancy Presentation Idea B: ribbon and tag 

Baby socks are too small to tuck inside yarn wrappers, so I often tie them up with a ribbon and a card.  I write the fiber content and care instructions on the card along with a message.  In the case of socks I always point out that baby socks make great Christmas ornaments.  I bet many of the baby socks I give spend more time on Christmas trees than on feet.  Babies grow fast.  

Grey/black hand-knit infant socks, tied together with a blue ribbon and a card that reads: “When these wee socks are outgrown they make sweet ornaments. 75% wool/25% nylon. Machine wash/tumble dry low.”

Specimen 5: G’s Treasure Bag (from Traci’s Trinket Keepers Sewing Tutorial at Amazing Mae)

This was a fun, quick, and easy little gift for a five year old’s birthday.  The bag is reversible and the tutorial gives instructions for varying the size.  The carabiner can be clipped onto a belt loop, bike handlebar, or some other place in order to stash the treasures of the new big-sibling away from the pokey fingers of the baby. This one held a small notebook and pencils.  I printed out large, fancy upper- and lower-case G’s as templates for the felt applique.

Homemade fabric treasure bag with red carabiner, blue side with red, felt applique, lower-case g

Inside-out view of the treasure bag, red side with blue, felt applique, upper-case G

Hey You Guuuuuuuuuuuuys!

Have you heard that the Sesame Workshop (the production company that has produced many great children’s television programs, including Sesame Street, Dragon Tales, and 3-2-1 Contact, among others) has resurrected and revamped The Electric Company?  I fondly remember this show—that featured the likes of Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno, and Morgan Freeman, among others—from my childhood.  When I heard it was being rebooted, I was skeptical.  

Check out this Then and Now spot and then come back.  

Sonar X4 and I have watched two of the new episodes, and at first I thought it was completely cheeseball.  But I’m trying to keep an open mind and give it a chance.  The storylines and the acting are fully campy, but familiar features like the Sound-out silhouettes are there.  A number of celebrities have appeared already, including retired NFL player and sports commentator Tiki Barber.  

After one whole episode, I started to warm to it.  The camp aside, the show, which claims to target six to nine year olds, does not talk down to kids, and pulls in a good variety of simple words and more advanced words when demonstrating a concept.  

For example, in the episode we watched today, they were talking about “-ight.”  They started with the standard words—“right,” “light,” “might,” etc.—but went on to do “frightening,” “bullfight” and others that pushed beyond the basics in a clever way.  They even joked about how it can be confusing that sometimes the sound is spelled “-ight” and sometimes it’s spelled “-ite.”

But today, I was completely won over by this closing music video.  I defy you to not get a warm fuzzy feeling in your chest, or to not at least tap your feet.  I admit to doing the electric slide through the kitchen when I listened to the video a second time.  Shh, don’t tell anyone.  

So I’d say the show is worth a look-see (or a Plug in, if you want to follow the electricity metaphors), if it’s available in your area, even if you don’t have a young person around to share it with.  

The NaNoWriMo Post-Election Update

Proud to be an American

Wow.  Just wow.  I’m still so excited and proud and relieved about the results of the presidential election.  Disappointed in the outcome of some local races, but I have a good feeling that things will work out for the best.  

I want to hold on to this hope and enthusiasm and do Something.  I’m about as far from the White House as most of us, but I think we can all find some little way to Be Nice, Live the Hope and try to make our communities and our country and our world a better place.  

For me, this starts small, helping out a little more at the kids’ school, on the philosophy that every little thing we can do to make the whole school better helps all of the kids.  I’m also investigating volunteer opportunities at the local library.  

What thing, small or large, can you do to help us all live in a better world?

A Month of Literary Abandon

In other news, we are in day six of NaNoWriMo.  For those of you who don’t know, this is a crazy, month-long, writing extravaganza, in which people from all over the world try to write a novel in one month.  The goal is to write 50,000 new words during the month of November.  And this year is the tenth anniversary.  More than 120,000 writers from all over the world, many of them just regular schmoes like us who might never have written a thing in their lives before right now are whipping out blank sheets of paper or opening up text files and starting to pound out stories.  

There are writing forums, a procrastination station, a very cool word-counting widget that lets you mark your progress, weekly encouragement newsletters from writers un-famous, famous and infamous.  Last year Neil Gaiman put in his good cheer, among others.  Brian Jacques, Meg Cabot, and Philip Pullman are among the list of notable Pep Talkers this year.  And at the end of the month, if you’ve written more than 50,000 words, you can verify your word count with the word counter robots and you get a lovely certificate and badges for your blog or web page, as well as the satisfaction of know that you did a hard thing.  

Participation in NaNo is free, but The Office of Letters and Light, the non-profit organization that runs both NaNo in November and ScriptFrenzy in June, takes donations to cover their overhead costs as well as in support of the Young Writers Program.  YWP seeks to provide materials and support to get young people involved in writing as a valuable form of self-expression.  Their motto: “We believe in ambitious acts of the imagination.”  The goal this year, in honor of the tenth anniversary of NaNo, is to get donations, big or small, from at least ten percent of participants.  They’re up to 3.6 percent at last count.  

In my personal novelling quest, I have achieved 8500 words so far.  My goal is to write 2000 words per day.  I missed goal on the first, which was a planning and mapping day for me.  I also missed goal on Tuesday (the election was just too distracting and exciting), but managed to make up a little ground yesterday.  The tickle of sinus congestion promises to be a challenge today, but I’m hoping to hit 11,000 before I go to bed tonight.  

If you’ve ever thought that there might be a novel knocking around in the back of your mind, this is a fun and butt-kicking opportunity to start to capture that idea and get it down on paper.  It’s totally not too late to start.  I try to write in 15 minute bursts here and there throughout the day (though mostly during afternoon naptime and after the kids go to bed), and on a good day I can spit out 300-400 words in each 15-minute stretch.  If you can manage to get a friend writing at the same time, it can be very motivational to have 10- or 15-minute Word Wars, races to see who can write the most in a short burst of time.  (Go ahead, suggest another metaphor for me to throw in that messy mix)

I’m eglentyne on the NaNo site.  Send me an email to eglentyne at gmail and I’ll add you as a buddy.  

Writing with a friend—or 120,000 friends—or writing with a deadline can make the writing fun and really get the words flowing.  

Give it a shot.  At least drop by the site.  And leave a fiver in the jar as you pass through.  

Standing hose and What I do and What I don't do

“Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual difference.”  Paul Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945)

So I started making a pair of Kilt Hose for my uncle last Friday.  Kilt Hose are BIG socks.  Knee-high Man Socks.  These are knit on US Size 2 knitting needles, with sock-weight yarn and start at a staggering 108 stitches per round.  Breathe deep with me, because there is hope, as they diminish with the lovely curve of the human calf to a more manageable 76 stitches for the ankle and the rest of the (man) foot.  

Here is what they looked like sometime earlier this week, with the cuff folded up.  Maybe about five inches total.  

Here is what they look like this morning.  With the two inch cuff folded, they now come in at just a shade more than seven inches, and they still stand up on their own.  Pretty impressive since they’re not knit in a tight gauge.  In fact they are squishy-soft and completely yummy to hold in my hands.  Any bets on how much longer they’ll stand on their own?  Nine inches?  Twelve?!

In other news of the crafting type, I am still elbow deep in Halloween costumes.  I came across this Suburban Kamikaze post the other day.  I love this—both the idea and the loving and irreverent sarcasm—and if a knight had been requested in this house, there’s an entirely good chance that we would have sought an acceptable substitute for chain mail.  Like window screen maybe.  

Before you go grumbling in your tea about Suburban Overachievers, I think a defense is in order.  

It takes time to do these insane things that I do.  Time that gets deducted from other things, like sleep and eating.  I don’t like giving up sleeping and eating, so the time that I take to make ridiculously large socks or insanely complicated Halloween costumes for small children that will be worn once and then relegated to the dress-up bin has to come from something else.  

I have three kids.  Partner and I do all of the things that three kids need parents to do.  Including a lot of laundry.  When I’m not writing, I do sew, I do knit, I do walk an awful lot, I do volunteer a little bit at the school, I do bake all of our bread, I do cook weird things sometimes.  I like to color in coloring books with my kids and to build things with K’nex.  

Whether I’m writing or not, I do not watch more than two or three hours of television a week.  I do not wear make-up, paint my nails, shave my legs, or color my hair.  For that matter, I do not blow-dry, curl or style my hair beyond combing it—sometimes with my fingers.  I do not ascribe to the consume-as-much-as-possible model of democracy and patriotism.  I do not believe in the “Bush Doctrine” (unless we’re talking about sex).  I also do not iron, my house is generally messy, and I spend an absolute minimum time shopping for anything.  

How much time out of the week do/would these things take me?  

These choices obviously do not suit everyone, and that’s great.  How boring would a world full of me be?  (Oh hush, you know it would be maddening.  After a while anyway.)  Every parent has limited time.  Every parent has to seek a kind of harried balance in one way or another.  Trade-offs will be made for the things you find important and happy-making and useful.  This is my balance point.  It teeters this way or that sometimes.  But so far it hasn’t fallen over completely.  

I won’t kick myself with guilt over the things I do and don’t choose, as long as you don’t kick yourself with guilt over the things you do and don’t choose.  And we can get together over kamikazes.  Or tea.  Whatever you choose.  

What Kind of World Do You Want?

Start Now. 

Lovely song.  Lovely idea.  

“History starts now.”