Author: sajbat

Prost!

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I only buy Bonne Marie jam or jelly only partly because the jam is quite tasty.  The real reason is that I think that those particular jars make nice drinking glasses. As a side benefit, it’s exactly a 4 oz. pour to the top of the bumps.

Now, I have been teased about my use of jam jars as wine glasses(*cough* susan *cough*), so I thought I’d try to dress them up a bit.  I saw a bit on glass etching in a recent issue of ReadyMade, and thought it would be perfect. The hardest part was figuring out exactly what to etch on them–I finally settled for “cheers” in different languages after seeing that done on glasses at cb2.

It took some looking to find letters that  wanted–not too cutesy, curly, or otherwise fancified.  A nice, solid font sticker. The crap that was actually in the glass etching section was all ugly as hell–stupid grape stencils or wedding motifs. Why do people think that “crafty” also means “chintzy”? I ended up using the “remarks” letter stickers in the “jfk neutral” series–a cool bold sans serif. I did feel some embarrassment at buying scrapbooking supplies, and ducked out of the store as quickly as possible.

I followed the instructions as in the article–first I spelled out the words, then bordered them with masking tape, then painted the entire inner area with glass etch.

 

As you can see, I wasn’t terribly particular about getting them exactly straight. This is partly because the children, who had been playing downstairs nicely at first, decided to come inspect what I was doing.  Since there are big letters warning of death if you touch the etching cream with your bare hands, I spent much of the time yelling trying to get them to stay away and also to work as quickly as possible, so precision went by the wayside. The first one I did I only let the etching cream sit on for about 60 seconds and for the rest of them I let it sit on for a good 10 minutes, though I can’t say there’s any discernible difference between the two.  After rinsing them off, they looked like this:

Hmm…I think they look…okay…not amazing or anything.  But they are a bit more fun than plain jam jars and look pretty cool once they’re filled. I really like the idea, though I think it might look better on a smooth sided glass and if I do this again I’d make sure to put a much heavier layer of the etching cream on because these turned out a bit blotchy. Or maybe just do a design of polka dots or something…

The family escaped unscathed from the close encounter with etching cream, and last I checked, the wine is still just as tasty. Cheers!

Gender Identity

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Last night, the family was in a odd configuration in which the boy was in the bathroom, on the toilet, with the door closed and the rest of us were sitting outside. You know that seems to happen sometimes?  Anyway, a conversation ensued which went like this:

Girl: I girl, you (pointing to Eric) boy, mommy girl!

Eric: What about your brother?

Girl: Ummm…boy!

Me: What makes someone a boy or a girl?

Girl: ‘Cause! Just ’cause!

Boy (from inside the bathroom): Hey, girl, let me tell you.  I’m a boy because I have a penis and you’re a girl because you don’t.

Girl: I have penis, too!

Me (yelling through the door): She says she has a penis, too.

Boy (not missing a beat): Well, then, she’s a boy.

Glad that’s been cleared up.

Washcloths

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I am incredibly competitive.  I absolutely hate to lose at anything unless I feel like I have absolutely no skill whatsoever at it.  For example, I wouldn’t really care if I lost a game of Scrabble in Bosnian. I am a somewhat gracious loser outwardly, though internally I fume.  I am a horrific, horrific winner.  I try to come across as humble (aw, shucks, I WON? How did that happen?) but really I gloat mercilessly (YES! I rule! And you suck!).

This extends to almost anything in my life, including, believe it or not, knitting. So peaceful and quiet knitting is, you say, how can she possibly make a competition out of this? (Incidentally, there ARE international knitting competitions, most notably “Sock Wars” and “Iron Knitter,” but that’s not what I’m referring to here.) Really, for me it just means that I don’t think of knitting as hard. I mean, doctoring? That’s hard work. Teaching? Hard. Trying to wrap your mind around gravitational physics? That’s hard, too. But I don’t think that anything involving 2 sticks and a bit of string should be difficult, and I never quite get when people say that they just couldn’t get knitting. Most of these women have raised children, a task considerably more complicated and arduous, but protest that they just couldn’t make it work.

Moving on, what it comes down to is that I had yet to find a project I couldn’t knit successfully. This all changed with a recent pair of mittens.  I was so excited about them. They’re a pair of mittens with the pattern of Van Gogh’s Starry Night on the backs-hold both mittens together and you get a complete picture. I purchased the pattern and yarn MONTHS ago but hadn’t been able to get to it until recently. Eagerly, I sat down and began. I got to the first pattern row, and realized that the color floats were too large to work as fair isle, but still I pressed on.  Eventually I had about 6 strands of yarn coming off the needles and had no idea if I was coming or going.  I ripped it out.

No matter, I thought to myself, I am a GOOD KNITTER. I’ll just use another advanced technique and get these things made. I tried intarsia.  Now that was an even bigger mess, and I had at LEAST 12 strands of yarn coming off the needles and everything was all twisted up and I ended up knitting them shut.  I ripped that out, too.

Not one to give up, I tried again and once more, failed miserably. I was defeated by knitting. Pathetic.

I couldn’t even bear to take a picture of the disaster, such was my dismay. Bad blogger now, too!

Dejected, I asked for help on some knitting sites and found that the mittens, as written, are UNKNITTABLE. That’s right–it’s not me, it’s the pattern! Only a bit of relief because, you see, I still failed to recognize that the pattern wasn’t knittable when I purchased it! Quite a blow to the ego, let me tell you.

What was I to do next?

Clearly, the answer was to knit something so mindless that they couldn’t possibly fail.

I dug around in one of my bins of yarn and found a whole bunch of pink and purple cotton I’d picked up on sale a few years ago.  I don’t like cotton much for knitting, so it had just sat there.  But now it seemed perfect to pull it out and just start knitting some random squares.

I tried different patterns and techniques.

The overall effect was very soothing.

And at the end of the day, at bathtime, the kids now clamor for the purple washcloths! They love them!

Yes! I RULE (at knitting)!

Cuteness explosion

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I know I just put up a picture like this on Facebook, but I can’t resist another one.  I love the girl’s sense of style!! This is what happens when you ask her to say, “cheese.”

I knit the legwarmers over the summer and she’s just started to take a liking to them. Made out of a self-striping sock yarn, super easy and fun. Everyone with older girls told me that there’s more outfit craziness to come–I can’t wait to see what she puts together.

Cold Day

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Today DPS cancelled school because it was going to be zero degrees. There was a lot of whining about the school closures on Facebook, especially from people who grew up in Wisconson and such, where they only close schools if the Packers lose and everyone is too depressed to do anything. Me personally, I’m happy to keep my kids out of weather that causes frostbite in 5 minutes.

On snow days, Eric usually stays home with the kids because his college closes as well. This time, they stayed open so I took off my 2nd day of work ever. When I don’t work, other people have to do the work I would have done, so I felt a lot of guilt about not going in, even though it’s not particularly busy right now. Then I felt guilty for feeling guilty about work and not putting my kids first. Do mommies get a guilt break, ever?

During the day so far, I think the girl has averaged about one time out per half hour because she screams when she doesn’t get what she wants. Screams. My ears hurt. I began to wish that school had just stayed open, frostbite be damned, because I just couldn’t take the screaming anymore. I know, I know, I’m terrible.

That all being said, we’ve done some fun crafty things and in some ways it’s been nice to be holed up with them, warm and cozy.

We started by making a paper snowflake garland. I had to look up how to do this, having forgotten from my childhood. It was so much fun! The boy loved doing this, and so did I. The girl did a few but got bored pretty quickly and found other pursuits.

Watching the snowflakes unfold was the most fun part!

These:

Turned into these!

Then we took some dental floss and clear tape and made a garland to hang in front of our fireplace. I think it looks just lovely–you can click to enlarge. (Full disclosure–prior to this picture, I took off of the mantelpiece: An entire deck of Uno, packing tape, 2 pairs of scissors, twine, a small stuffed animal, an old glass of water and and a knitting book.  It doesn’t really look that tidy all the time)

Then we started baking and made some cookies. The girl got sent to rewash her hands about every FIVE MINUTES because she kept licking them. I can’t attest that all cookies are 100% germ free. The baking has to kill most of them, right?

I chose thumbprint cookies thinking that there were a lot of steps they could participate in. Both kids had a lot of fun sifting flour and watching the mixer. They got a bit bored with making the dough into balls, but loved rolling them in coconut and finally thumbprinting. So, so tasty.

It is now, gratefully, naptime.

Now all I need to do is come up with some ideas for the afternoon….

If Only We All…

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Trying out my technique on the boy again:

Me: “Tell me something happy that happened to you at school today.”

Boy (completely serious): “Ummm, being a Zen Buddhist.”

Me (trying to keep the smile out of my voice): “How do you be a Zen Buddhist?”

Boy: “Well, I try to be like Stillwater and am just very peaceful and quiet.”

 
 
 
*As a side note, I highly recommend all the Jon Muth books. “Zen Shorts” is a good place to start.  Great stories that introduce Zen principles and approaches to life problems in a way that kids understand, all illustrated with beautiful watercolor paintings.

The Cowl that Swallowed Me

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For Christmas, my sister gave me a project to knit! At first, when she handed it to me, I thought she was giving me yarn and a pattern to knit a scarf for her, and was like, “Oh…how thoughtful of you for yourself.”  But no, it was for me!

Pattern: Chunky Seeded Cowl

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Bulky Natural

I love this! It’s big and chunky and I feel for a second like I’m a hip Brooklynite walking in Park Slope instead of a Denverite schlepping it on Larimer.

I would never, never have bought this color for myself–am not usually a fan of chartreuse, but I think it looks just lovely all knitted up.

The fabric is lofty  and heavily textured:

And in case of a sudden snowstorm, I can pull it up over my head to protect my coif.

I happen to have a skein left over and think that a slouchy hat would be the perfect companion piece.

Thanks, Sapana!

Fixing Nemo

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[Let me start by saying that I had  a clever idea for this blog post comparing my quest of the perfect Nemo hat to that of Ahab and Moby Dick.  It was funny.  Then, I mentioned this to Eric, who proceeded to tear it apart bit by bit until it was unusable.  Something about how Ishmael isn’t Ahab and how Ahab hated Moby Dick for eating his leg and how nothing really fit and I really don’t care because every time I’ve tried to read Moby Dick all I can think about is how I’m wasting precious minutes of my life being bored out of my mind, but still, it ruined my analogy and I didn’t want to get mocked by other intellectuals so instead you are left with this:]

The girl hates hats.  The girl loves “Finding Nemo.” It is cold in Colorado, and one needs a hat for the winter.  I thought, why not make her a Nemo hat?

While I was making it, she seemed pretty excited–it’s pretty fast and only took me a few days.

Once I added the eyes, though, she backed away slowly, fear in her eyes.  I got the boy to model it:

Pattern: Fish Hat: Dead or Alive

Yarns: Loops and Threads Impeccable Worsted

I guess it might be a little freaky to see friendly little Nemo eating your head. And before someone starts, I know that it’s not an exact replica but it’s close enough for a 2 year old’s hat.

So after much discussion, we figured out that the big felted eyes were scaring her.  She insisted on a change to “puh puh buttons,” or “purple buttons.” Her favorite color is purple.  So we dug up a few buttons from a sewing kit that the boy has, and he insisted on sewing them on himself.

 

 

 

 

After that, it must have been slightly less scary, because she agreed to put it on for a little bit.

Then she wore it to the store, where it kept falling off her head and I realized it was too big, even though I’d sized it down for her head.  I added a messy looking but functional dart in the back, figuring it would be hidden by the floppy tail.

 

And did she love it then?

No. She completely and fully rejects the Nemo hat.  Won’t wear it.

The boy likes it, though, and will wear it.  With one request–“Mom, can we put the big eyes back on again?”

 

 

The Hills are Alive…with Bandits

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I recently got the Sound of Music, now restored to a very nice high-def.  Now you can really see just how ugly the children’s curtain playclothes are and realize that Captain von Trapp had every reason to be horrified.   I remember when it was broadcast on network TV once a year and the whole family would gather around to watch.  I’d always take a break right at “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” Blech.  I still can’t stand that song.

The boy and I watched the first half the other night.  It is long.  Really, really long and you see how much they cut out of the movie for the TV version, which I’d never known.

What was kind of funny, though, was the questions that the boy asked while we were watching it.

“What’s a telegram?” he asked after Rolf delivered the first one. I suppose there’s no reason he’d EVER know what that was!

“Well,” I began, “It’s sort of like an email, but they didn’t have computers so they had to deliver it by hand.” I figured I’d leave the whole lesson on Morse Code for another time.

The next one came shortly after that, when Liesl and Rolf are frolicking before the impending thunderstorm.  “What’s going to happen?! Are they going to be okay?!” He was genuinely terrified for them.  I think this is sort of interesting, but I wasn’t sure where it came from.  I wonder if it’s because many kids’ movies nowadays have their characters in almost constant peril.  Think of the latest Toy Story movie–I mean, the characters are rarely just enjoying a free moment.  Some of it might be that thunderstorms are just scarier to little kids than they are to adults.

My favorite, though, was during “Do Re Mi” when Maria and the children begin to sing at their picnic and then all get up and dance away across the hills. He asked, “Why are they leaving all their stuff there?”

“Well, kiddo, they’re just having fun and singing. Why do you ask?”

“Because a thief might come and take all their stuff!” cried my little city kid.

I’m so delighted that my child can watch the first, non-scary half of the Sound of Music and still find a way to find danger lurking in every scene.  I wonder how the second half is going to go when the actual bad guys appear.

New Year and Holiday Wrap Up

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Happy New Year!

Holidays were so, so fun this year.  We did our usual tradition of pierogies and started a new tradition: skiing on Christmas day.  There was no one on the mountain, the weather was beautiful, and we came home to open presents in the evening.  The boy had his first day on the mountain ever!  At the end of the day, he said, “I couldn’t stop or turn but I loved going down the mountain really fast!”  Sapana, as always, flew out for the holiday and it was so wonderful to have her here.  While she has no current plans to leave New York, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that Denver is a fabulous place to live.

I love that the kids are old enough now to really enjoy things.  I know there’s some of you out there that are real baby people, but I’m a bigger fan of the walking/talking set.  It’s just so great to see both of them excited to decorate the tree, open presents and participate in the marathon pierogie making.

Oh! The doll! The knitted doll went over very well, and, as I suspected, was promptly named, “Baby.”  The girl received a set of baby accessories from her other aunt and was pushing her around in the stroller and putting her to sleep in the pack and play.

We also watched a few movies over Christmas, with varying reviews.  First up, “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”–I loved it, Eric hated it, Sapana just thought it was weird.  “Get Him to the Greek”–we were expecting a “Hangover”-like comedy, and instead just got awful awful awfulness.  Three thumbs down.  “Black Swan”–creepy and scary.  Three trembling thumbs up.  And finally, an old favorite, “The Big Lebowski.”  Sapana and I were so tired we fell asleep halfway into our white russians and were only awakened by Eric’s guffaws throughout the film.  One thumb up, two lame movie snoozers.

And to finish, a wrap up of the year’s knitting and a slideshow of the holidays.  I hope everyone had a great month, and here’s looking forward to 2011!