When Scraps Take Over

 

Sometimes, the blanket you make to use up your scraps (thrifty crafter here) takes on a life of its own, and it's no longer a little side project but starts to grow out of proportion.

So here's the blanket that created the scraps:

And here's the scrap blanket.

 And here's the scrap on the scrap blanket.

Gauge Rage

Whaaaat? And now I have to block it as well?

Gauge.
For a start, it's a word that I always want to write guage. I don't know why, but gauge always looks wrong.

That should be a sign that gauge is not my forte. Or, to put it in a way that looks nicer to my eye: guage is not my forté.

As a crocheter, I laughed at gauge a lot. I mostly crochet household stuff, so a centimetre or inch off here or there doesn't make that much of a difference. But knitting is a whole 'nother ballgame and knitting things that are actually supposed to fit people is an entirely different kettle of fish. But I decided, in my usual gung-ho fashion, to just knit a sweater for my niece (again, this word looks better written neice) and started on one that was for a child six months older than she will be this winter (she'll be two this year).

I ended up with a jumper that would fit my ten-month-old son. And I'd make him wear it, gender stereotypes be damned, except ... well, it is a tad too girly. It's my first time doing colour-work - fair isle or intarsia, I believe it's called - and the fact that I can knit English-style and continental has been very helpful. Indeed, I thought stranded knitting would be an immense pain in the posterior, but it actual livens up a rather slow and painstaking process (as a crocheter, you get used to quicker gratification - bigger stitches, faster work.) Now I want to knit one of those Scandinavian-style sweaters with reindeer and snowflakes. I figure that if I make one for my husband, it might end up fitting my poor two-year-old niece.

Or I might just try a gauge swatch.
Sigh.

In which she talks about poopoo

Baby poopoo, but still. You have been warned.

My 9-month-old son was standing over me, singing: "Lalalalalala rarararaa dadadaadadaaa!"
I was lying on my side, he was standing by my stomach, gripping my shoulder, singing with gusto. As I watched him (proudly, of course) a glob of drool formed at his lip and abseiled downwards, hitting my eyelid.
I did what any mother would do: wiped it off and applauded his rendition of the Lala song.

Before having a baby, I was a bit more - how shall we say it - reticent about the sharing of bodily fluids and functions. As one would be. Mother Nature, however, has a way of shutting this reticence off when it comes to your own offspring. Perhaps it's because they sprang from your loins or perhaps it's because your natural feeling of boundaries and privacy get trampled on within a fortnight of being splattered with newborn poo, wee, spit up and slobber. You realise that the term 'baby shower' no longer involves nice gifts and fun games, but a wad of wet wipes and sometimes even a bucket.

My son is learning to share, which in itself is an immensely touching and rewarding thing to witness. Sadly, at the moment, he most loves to share soggy rusks and slurped-upon apples. He proffers them magnanimously and we, gulp, lean in and nibble them with suppressed reluctance: "Mmmmmm! Delicious! Thank you very much, John! Mmmm!" If we don't take up his generous offer fast enough, he sticks the foodstuff in our eye or nose - whichever orifice is closest.

See - a year ago there is no way I would've touched anything previously licked or slobbered on (yes, I am aware that that sounds somewhat dodgy; move on, please), now - because small babies don't actually realise that their mothers are independent beings and not an extension of themselves - anything I put in my mouth is likely to be pre-tasted when a fat hand, lightning fast, reaches out and grabs it out of my grasp. And it's not only food - anything I possess is fair game. If I take my mobile phone out of my bag, he drops whatever-it-is-he's-holding and swipes it off me. My earrings are always poke-worthy and my wallet and handbag have teeth-marks. If he could sleep with a hunk of my hair in one hand and his father's beard in the other - why, that would just be baby heaven.

And that's not all. He can't quite walk yet, so I have to walk behind him, holding his hands, as he marches around the park or the botanical garden, trying to kick the flowers (he doesn't have a hand free, you see, so he wants to kick them to see them move. No, I don't allow him to. My child will not abuse The Nature) or other children's footballs. It's back-breaking work. A couple of days ago I lumbered past an elderly lady sitting on a park bench. She made sympathetic noises as I passed, bent like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. "Enjoy it!" she called out. "It won't be long before he won't want to hold your hand!"

That's true, of course. And, if we're lucky, he won't want to share pee, poo and soggy rusks with us, either.
Grubby fingers crossed.

No Sleep Till Brooklyn. I mean, Gingerbreadtown

We - that is, my husband - decided to "sleep train" our son. Now, I apparently agreed to this but I can't remember doing so (which is what happens when you're sleep deprived), so my husband read all of the Expert Literature on getting babies to sleep and decided we would do the "gentle method" (as it's called in German.) This involves putting baby down to sleep with some nice cuddles and soothing words, then leaving the room, only to return at regular, short intervals to soothe him and reassure him you're there. It works, I was promised. Even my friend Sandra reported her sister's success - it worked for her son and sometimes he even screamed for an hour and a half.

Oh, I laughed bitterly.

My son can scream in pure rage and fury for FOUR hours. FOUR HOURS, people. If we leave him alone for more than three minutes, there's an ominous silence, followed by more Screams of Rage: that's the point when we have to go in an extricate him from the bars of the cot or from underneath the mattress where, bizarrely, he has managed to jam a hand or leg. After ten days of intense battles, we have reduced the screaming to 90 minutes on a bad night and he hasn't lost a finger on a bed spring yet, despite his best efforts.

Now, let me just remind you of the facts: we are two adults in our late thirties. My husband hit 6' (180cm) and kept going for a bit. I'm not a small girl, not by anyone's standards. Yet our nine-month-old demonstrates a strength and stamina that leaves us speechless (and sleepless). If he wants to get down off our knees, he's getting down. If he wants to climb into the washing machine, well, darnit, he's going to climb in. And if he thinks there's a chance to get out of the cot, he will do his utmost, by hook or by crook, to escape Baby Alcatraz.

Anyway ... let's move on to more exciting things. My latest pattern is being tested by two sets of nice ladies, with eagle eyes and sharpened hooks. It's called Stars & Flowers because ... well, maybe you might see why:

It's close to finished and I hope it'll be ready to download just as the weather turns cool in the northern hemisphere (i.e. by September, at the latest!)

My Parenting Fails

Yesterday, my 8-month-old bit me. This is the toothmark:

He looked up at me with his toothy smile, proud as punch - "I have teeth! Just in case you hadn't noticed!" I shrieked in surprise, then turned him away from me so I could laugh into my sleeve. Just another example of what a bad parent I am: I'm sure there's some Theory out there that would enlighten me as to how I could use this as a Teaching Moment. The friend who was with me at the time reappeared from behind the door where she'd hidden herself to laugh and said: "Bite him back!"
The next time I will.

See, I feel a little remiss about my son's non-appearance on this blog, because everyone else who blogs with children spends a lot more time talking about them than I do. They frequently share their birth stories and outline the various Theories they ascribe to. So I think it's time for me to do the same.

My birth story
"Do you have a birth plan?" asked the midwife.
"Yes," I said. " 'Get him out!'"
"Okay," she said.
Eighteen hours later, I got him out. It was a bit weird: more people saw my nethers in that one day than had in my entire life hithertofore. The pain was unpleasant but it was finite, so I dealt with it.
That was it, really. No biggie, thank goodness. Hope the next one - if there's ever a next one - will be as straightforward.

My Parenting Skillz

Sleeping
So we took the baby home and put him in the nursing bed. The first night he mewled in the darkness and waved his little fists about and he looked so lost that I pulled him into bed with us. I figured that people had been doing it for millenia, so it couldn't be too bad. I made him his own space, with his own little blanket, and he slept there till he was happy to sleep in his cot by himself, five months later.

Eating
Having been given a bombastic set of chesticles, I decided to make them pay their way. I breastfed the baby whenever he felt hungry because I thought the poor little bugger was too young to fake hunger. At five months, he started grabbing our food and regularly enjoyed a stolen croissant for breakfast, so we gave him some solids. Which he pegged into himself at lightning speed. One day, at six months, he unlatched himself from my bosom, fake-gagged, and refused to ever breastfeed again. I closed the doors of the dairy, happily consigned my ugly maternity bras to the back of the closet and returned to underwear that held all my bits in place.

Entertaining
From the beginning onwards, he wanted to be in the middle of everything, and this desire was somewhat handicapped by my not having more than two hands. So I bought an excellent baby carrier from a German company called Storchenwiege and plopped him in there. I could go around doing stuff and he could be on board interfering in the stuff I was doing.

All good so far, right? Not a single parenting book or forum did I read. I just did what had to be done when it had to be done and if it didn't work, we tried something else. However, I've been reliably informed that I wasn't just being sensible or pragmatic, I was actually practising Co-Sleeping, Breastfeeding On Demand, Baby-Led Weaning, Baby Carrying and maybe even Attachment Parenting! Yay, me!

 And, even more exciting: were I looking for confirmation about the above, reams of paper have been sacrificed in the writing of tomes on each of them. Entire forums (fora?) are dedicated to mothers talking to each other about all the Capitalised Things they are doing to benefit their offspring. From remarks made by other mothers on the subject of the above, I am led to believe that you are entitled to be a little bit smug about how well you are parenting if there's an academic paper online somewhere to back up your decisions.

Who needs expensive toys when you can sit your child
in a laundry basket in front of the washing machine?

Best of all, one should read it and quote it to other mothers ("You stopped breastfeeding when the baby was six months old? Umm, well, I breastfed till Ivor was nearly 25 months. After all, the World Health Organisation's paper on breastfeeding recommends you do it till the baby is at least two. Would you like me to send you the link to the paper?")

But here's the thing, readers - and brace yourselves for some salty language:
I am frikken knackered.
Like, exhausted.
I have very little time for myself and the time I do have, I don't want to spend it online with a bunch of wimmin going on about how well they're parenting their children, when they probably actually should be offline doing it in real life instead. I don't have time to read books about how to develop my child's creative urges or how women in Borneo have been carrying their babies in shawls for 60,000 years and no Bornean child ends up in teenage therapy. I'm happy if some of the food that enters his facial airspace actually goes into his mouth. I'm ecstatic about a poop. As long as he's laughing, and I'm laughing, and we both get a few hours' sleep every night - well, I'm delighted.

My Parenting Goal is to raise a decent human being. And not mess him up too much. And still be talking to him when he's 30. That's about it. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to achieve that yet - or, if indeed, I will at all - but I hope I can manage it with a bit of common sense and good humour. If I ever have free time in the next eighteen years - which looks unlikely - I'll borrow a few books or go online and be informed about what I'm doing wrong.

In the meantime, I'll muddle on. And if the little stinker bites me again, so help me, I'll bite him back.

This Is Not Funny

I'm writing this in a puddle of perspiration. My elbows are sticking to my tablecloth, making a nasty sucking noisy when I lift them up. Two weeks ago, I was wearing my winter coat; Germany was under floods of water - we had the wettest May on record. Now we have this: 37°C (99°F) at 5 p.m.

No, no, no. Gingerbread Ladies are not made for this kind of weather.

Proof: I kid you not!

Faced with being hot and sticky at home or hot and sticky in the park, the Gingerbread Cookie and I chose the park. I even kicked off my well-worn Birkenstocks (how German I have become!) and exposed my troll-feet to the elements. My son turned his face away to hide his horror:

The yellow building in the background - in case you don't have one at home - is an Orangerie. This is where one puts one's citrus trees during the winter season, dears. The prince that built the park had this built because, well, God forbid you would not have your freshly-pressed orange juice for breakfast. (Nowadays it's used by the university's music department and for formal functions.)

We are awaiting - not so much eagerly as with some trepidation - a huge thunderstorm this evening. I hope it cools a little because I have some crocheting I want to finish and share with you all. Sticky fingers crossed!

A Dirty Floor and the Creative Urge

Up till yesterday morning, my kitchen floor was filthy. Really, really dirty. When my sister and her family left, they also left behind a floor that suffered for a week beneath ten pairs of mucky feet, fresh in the door from rainy playgrounds and damp sandboxes. And I meant to clean it, honest I did. It's just so ... tiresome. I hate housework, I really do. The advent of mobile devices has assuaged my hatred somewhat, as I now can watch documentaries about the Vikings on my iPad while scrubbing the bathtub, but given the choice, I'd rather not scrub anything, ever.

While here, Emily and I talked about her now-hibernating project to co-write (with other people, not me) about being a creative mother (or maybe that should be: Creative Mother). We came to the conclusion that it's very hard to teach someone how to be creative - and probably the last thing you ought to write a book about. If you're creative, you spend every single spare minute doing things and making things and thinking about ways to do and make things. You don't need to make the conscious decision to do this, you do it because not doing it is like not scratching an itch, not removing an eyelash from your eyeball or a stone from your shoe. You do it because you have to. If you're like me, your Amazon shopping basket is possibly full of soap-making supplies, your living room is full of bags of yarn, you have pens and notebooks stashed everywhere and a crochet hook in your nightstand. You also have a dirty kitchen floor, an over-flowing hamper of unwashed laundry (and, on that subject, you probably can't remember where you put your iron, it's been so long since you used it.) You occasionally shovel a spoon of apple purée in your infant son's ear, because you're daydreaming about your next project and don't notice him bend down to fetch a fallen toy.

See? Not the kind of thing you write about, not something whose virtues you extol in connection with mothering, as much of my creative urge results in neglected household duties and an apple-eared child.

But what's creativity anyway? One of my friends is adamantly uncreative in the traditional sense. She can't draw for toffee, she says. She mangled a scarf in knitting class forty years ago and has not picked up a needle since. But she's tidy, oh my goodness, she's tidy. She cleans and tidies for fun. Her house is beautiful, her cupboards are a joy. She puts things in order - by shape, size, colour, age. She expresses herself through order and organisation and I am every bit as much in awe and envy of her skills as she is of mine. I could no sooner teach her to be spontaneously creative than she could teach me to spontaneously clean. While my kitchen floor would make her itch, I can blithely ignore it till I have done more important (to me) things, like sew together a stack of motifs, testing my latest pattern:

When the last treads were woven in, photos taken and uploaded, then I got out the mop and did the kitchen floor. I now have a clean kitchen and a new blanket - happiness all round!

Tea, Cake and Rain

Never apologise!
That's the advice given on one of those "How to blog" blogs. But I feel I should apologise. My blogposts have been irregular, to say the least, this year. That being said, I'd just like to thank anyone who takes the time to comment, I really appreciate and enjoy reading them. One of the things I love to do in my (now rare and precious) free time is to look at your blogs, going back through your posts and photos - it really is a treat.

In any case, what have we been up to over here? Well, my sister, her husband and their five - count them: five - children came to visit. When they left Ireland, the weather was miserable there and wonderful here; as soon as they arrived here, their meteorological fortunes were reversed. Germany saw the wettest May on record, while the sun split the heavens in Ireland. Over here, in Bavaria, dams burst and rivers flooded:

So we had no choice but to hunker down and get cosy.

 We did daily trips to the playground, where we I mean, the children built sandcastles and ate ice-cream. Often in the rain - but we're Irish, so most things we do outdoors are in the rain anyway. We are fearless! (Or foolhardy - take your pick.)

 

My sister Emily and I went shopping, finding a shop that we both put on our "Things to Buy When We Win The Lottery" list - no, not a cup or two or twenty. The ENTIRE shop. All of it.

Inspired by these visions of fine dining and (more to the point) commissioned by a local yarn shop ("Y'know those donuts you made? Can you make some more?") I started making crocheted baked goods. And just in case you feel like a virtual snack, here's the pattern for the cupcakes and here's the pattern for the donuts!

This is my Fancy China. It normally resides in a cupboard, while I use bucket-like mugs from the
99c shop, which sadly don't photograph quite as well. While here, Emily and I discussed our nefarious Blogging Lies,
wherein we take nice photos that belie the fact that we are both extraordinarily untidy people,
coming to the conclusion that no one wants to see the mountain of clutter that constitutes
our real lives. Instead, we will show you our pretty porcelain and relatively uncluttered
work surfaces and we shall all pretend that this is our general reality, as opposed to our
(Op)Posed Reality. Please play along.

TUTORIAL: Klimtchen Baby Blankets

I love making crazy patchwork blankets. Which is a good thing, because every time somebody gets pregnant - and I seem to know a lot of remarkably fecund people - they want one of these. You know, "the blankets that look like modern art. Like a Klimt painting!" So I call these blankets Klimtchen (little Klimts in German). If you'd like to make one, I recommend checking out the tutorial for the adult-sized blanket first (blog link here and a link directly to the PDF download here) because it contains a lot of advice about the general process of planning these blankets.

The link to the tutorial PDF is here.

The Mambag

Once upon a time, I used to have loads of handbags. As in, a heap of them. A veritable plethora. Big ones, small ones, gorgeously impractical ones. I didn't want to end up like one of those women that carted around a massive handbag full of rubbish (like my mother, if truth be told.) And why would I? Because all I needed to carry around in my bag was a notepad and pen, mobile phone and wallet - easily transferable between multiple bags.

Then I became a mother and my bag collection got whittled down to one - the bag that's big enough to fill with a bunch of random items but small enough to stuff into a stroller or sling around a neck while wrestling with a baby intent on escape. As to the contents of my handbag? Well, this happened:

Tipped out on to the coffee table, the contents of my handbag look like this:



There are many surprises, even for me - a lonely shoe. A sock. A rattle. Sophie, the hipster giraffe (it was a present, honest. I wasn't aware of how chic my child was, till someone informed me of the coolness of the toy then rammed into the chubby jaws of my drooling infant. Well, hello hipster me!). Wipes, nappies, coupons, a note from my Auntie Attracta with precise instructions about the type of yarn I have to buy for her. A lip gloss. Receipts.
And tissues.
Oh, my goodness, the tissues. There are tissues stuffed in my pockets, up my sleeve, down my bra - and not in the saucy way, but in the you-stay-down-there-till-I-need-to-spit-on-you-and-wipe-a-sticky-face way. When I undress at night, there's a snowfall of balled-up paper handkerchiefs. And the startling thing is, my mother is the exact same. Just like Hänsel and Gretel left a trail of breadcrumbs, she leaves a trail of ... tissues.

Which is why yesterday's Mothers' Day realisation was much less a realisation and more of a mental smack in the head, affixing a truism to my forehead that I know, but would rather forget: the older we get, the more inclined we are to become like our mothers. Because I now no longer have a handbag, I have - shudder! - a mambag.

Aaaaannnnd ... she's back!

 

I've had a tough month. We went home to Ireland again and once again came back with a bronchial infection (baby) and the 'flu (me). It has taken us a good month to get over it. Today Baby Gingerbread and I went out for a walk and had a look at the botanical garden:

Then we dropped by to our favourite bakery for some goodies:

Then we went home to share our loot with Papa.

And despite everything - maybe because of everything - I've been crocheting. Quite frankly, it's what has kept me sane.

Nearly finished! Then I just need to write up the pattern, have it tested, review and adjust it --- and publish it! Easy-peasy!

Detours and U-Turns

Happy Easter to all who celebrated it. We did, primarily with large amounts of cake:

"You know what?" my husband said thoughtfully. "They kind of remind me of Easter egg nests..."
Aw, man. So I won't be taking up a job as a professional cake decorator any time soon, then.

But I am getting somewhere crochet-wise and very soon I'll have something exciting to show and tell:

I will - 'scuse the pun - keep you posted ;-)

Nut Magnets and Handicrafts

I'm a nut magnet. Nutty people love me.
It's not - as we say in Ireland - off the ground that I licked it. My mother is a nut magnet par excellence, she's the Pied Piper of the Needy, Insane and Broken-hearted. My father will grumble that she gives off eejit vibes, attracting every nutcase in the county with her compulsive politeness, kind-heartedness and inability to just say No. And her children all have it, to a certain extent. Some more than others: as her blog will attest, my little sister Emily is brimming with bonhomie and she exudes good-natured eejitry. My sister Eithne has the ability to create a tow-tide of madness in her wake, managing to attract The Crazy without even trying.

It's a curse, I tell you, a curse.

'Course, I have it, too. But I tend slightly more towards my father's side - and he prefers people in small doses, as do I (which is ironic, because I have a very social job. I'm an introvert trapped in an extrovert's career) but despite my anti-social tendencies, I still attract my share of very strange people.

Let's look at exhibit A.
This was posted through my letterbox on Sunday. It reads - and I quote verbatim -

Hello!
I am in search of my identical twin-sister "Gail". She have darkbrown haircolour and have 3 childrens. Iam in search of her since 1986 already, through the german trial/court! We are halfblood's of native americans! We have a noble title! We are "sharemen-daughters". We work with the power of the nature! My twin sister "Gail" is making her own native americans jewellery! I saw her 2 time's in the USA/America. In 1992 and 1995! Why Germany and the USA/America didn't helped us? We are not allow to know the real truth? Did they killed her already? Only because they like to get our money and heritage? Is Germany and the USA - are they guilty?

Mr Gingerbread and I were - and still are - perplexed. The top of the page boasts two photos of the same woman, one is marked Princess Hope (darkbrown) and Princess New Hope (darkblond). Aha! It's not the exact same photo, oh no. They're identical twins!!! The note is handwritten in English (we're in Germany) and if one were not already questioning the sanity of the writer, the plethora of exclamation marks and underlining of random words seems to push you to a certain conclusion. At first we thought it was some sort of elaborate swindle, to be followed up by Princess New Hope looking for money to find the long-lost "Gail", but no such appeal came. She didn't drop by to heal us with the power of the nature and her shareman (presumably shaman) abilities.

More's the pity. My plants could do with a wee raindance.

Sadly, I think that Princess New Hope is simply a person suffering from a persecution complex, with a sprinkling of paranoia thrown in, to boot. This saddens me, actually, to think about what kind of mental torture this poor soul is going through - to feel the need to plaster the neighbourhood (we later found more of them in the neighbourhood) with flyers whose message is almost incomprehensible in its madness.

On a more positive note: we started feeding Baby Gingerbread some solids. He loves it - so much so, that he will lean forward and eat the bowl if the food is not shovelled into him fast enough. See the fear in his eyes? He thinks this might be his last meal. Ever.

We'll work on the table manners next.

And when I'm not brandishing a spoon, trying to get some puréed carrots into my child's greedy mouth, I'm crocheting. I need lots and lots of hexagons before I can figure out how to put them together. There is yarn everywhere. Ever.Y.where. It's a testament to the love of my husband that he doesn't complain when he removes a skein of brown yarn from the baby's cot before he puts him down. This is a man who has made his peace with life with an addict.

The slipper on the left represents the fact that I am taking a step in the right direction.
It was not a mistake, it was an artistic choice.
Of course.

Stained Glass Flowers

I've always loved the Cathedral Rose pattern, published by Annie's Attic. So much so, that I even bought a copy of it... but although the end result is always beautiful (and there are dozens to be seen on Google Images), the pattern is a bit daunting: lots of text, no photos or diagrams. For a visual learner like me, it's a little off-putting.

So I started thinking about my own stained glass pattern. It's what the Réalta pattern was supposed to be but didn't quite become. Creating a nice motif isn't hard, what is tricky is lining up the colours:

 I want to have the effect of light shining through the window, so the centre has to be the lightest, brightest point, with the colour graduating in shade towards the black frame of the window pane.
A little bit like this:

I'm pleased with the result so far. The first hexagons are lush with colour and I can't wait to add more. I've dug out every scrap of coloured yarn I have to line up shades and tones, just to find a nice colour sequence. Oooh, I like this!