Knooking and Bear Feet

Something kind of major happened to me this past week. I finally learned to knit! I already "knew" how, technically, but I hated it. It just didn't work for me. Crochet has always felt good in my hands but I just never could get comfortable with knitting needles. Every few months for a couple years I'd pick up a project and try again, but I've never made more than a dish towel and I've never enjoyed it even for a second. I'd get tensed up instead of calmed. Then I discovered knooking! At the risk of sounding totally dorky, knooking is like a dream come true for me. I've actually day-dreamed that knitting could feel like crochet for me, and that I could make knitted patterns without dealing with knitting needles, and--ta da!--it has happened! Knooking is making knitted fabric (interlacing yarn in the way known as "knitting") but by using a crochet needle attached to a cord. It turns out the exact same product but feels like crocheting instead of knitting. Which, if you're me, is totally fantastic. I used this blog, this blog, and this Ravelry group as references and used a locker hook as my first knooking hook. I knooked this hat for Worth by reading the tips at those links and holding the new hat up to a hat he already had for sizing. I'm ridiculously pleased with it and don't you make fun of me, dangit, because it's not every day that dreams come true.

Today I put down my next knooking project long enough to have a great day at an outlet mall with an old friend. She lives in Indianapolis so we met in between her city and mine for a fun day of catching up and fall shopping. I purchased what I thought were matching pajamas for my kids, who spent the day with their grandparents. Back at home, Worth wanted to put on his new pajamas right away. We allowed him to change and he immediately started stomping around, acting like a Big Scary Bear (this is a favorite Worth game already, which inspired the purchase of these pajamas) and admiring the bear faces sewn onto the feet of his new pajamas. Dorothy decided to put her matching pajamas on as well and join the fun. Sadly, however, she returned crying, having discovered that Carters unwisely manufactured pajamas that were almost identical in both sizes, but which lacked the novelty of bear face feet in the larger size. Curse you, Carters!

So I rallied my inner good mother (though she was a bit tired!) and rounded up some felt and sewed my own version of bear faces onto the feet of Dorothy's pajamas.

Now all the Big Scary Bears in my "den" are happy again.

Feet, fathers, and a cold jar of something

I haven't had much to blog about this week. While recovering from a summer cold, I've been spending most of my down time backing up photos and burning our family movies to DVD. I don't even try to "keep up" with things like that--I just take care of it all in one big effort every six months or year or so and that seems to work well enough. It's fun when I do, because we have a great time reviewing Dorothy's progress and re-watching some favorite old family movies.

The picture above is Worth's feet this morning. I made these shoes (crocheted then wet-felted) during that last painful week of pregnancy, when I just kept churning out booties and hoping to go into labor. I watched the Olympics while I did these one night. I love them, but I don't know what they are supposed to be. Jester feet? I think they look a little like leaves, as if his chubby little legs just sprouted out of them. I've been waiting for him to grow into them, and now he has. Fun!

This project was actually from a couple weeks ago. I was tempted by a set of clear plastic iced tea tumblers at Costco, but felt like I didn't need any more drinking plastic in my life. So I assembled this instead. It's a wide-mouth canning jar with a stainless steel drinking straw. I used a metal punch to poke just the right sized hole in a heavy-duty plastic lid, so it's reasonably spill-proof, easily washable, not plastic (except the lid), and cheap! This week I've been guzzling juice out of it as I try to kick this cold. This size jar fits nicely in my car drink holder, but I can use any size wide-mouthed jar.

And last but not least, Father's Day! Dorothy and I put together a nice little gift bag for Rob with a Dorothy-decorated coffee mug, a picture for his office, a whole stack of Dorothy art, and an impish pair of cufflinks from Etsy with little treasure maps on them. I think he likes it all (although he unintentionally attempted to dissassemble some Dorothy art that was supposed to stay folded--oops!), and now we're off to spend the rest of the afternoon appreciating him however he wishes!