We took some pictures after midnight. It’s so freaking cute, Alan and Isabelle’s matching smiles.

I said yesterday that I would talk about knitting. And here it is, KNITTING!

I was pretty much successful with handmade for Christmas. Well mostly. Sure my snow globes didn’t turn out as expected and I really didn’t have time to make more. But I did manage to make gingerbread cookies for all the kids.

But not only that, I knit matching hats for Alan and Isabelle!

Well truthfully it was a mistake. I hadn’t planned on making two hats. I was only going to knit a hat for Alan. The problem was, not picking up knitting in a year has made me rusty. So the first hat turned out a mess. Halfway through knitting it, I noticed there was a hole. I must have done a yarn over or something which meant the decreasing part didn’t work out correctly. I should have just gone backwards and fixed it but I didn’t. And my knitting tension was a little wacky, you can tell in the pictures. So I HAD to knit another one.

And with time running out, because you know that’s how I do things, I had to knit when Alan was home. I told him I was knitting a hat for Isabelle. So when I was done, I had two hats.

On Christmas morning, Alan opened a present that wasn’t any surprise at all, two matching hats, one for baby and one for daddy.

But now that Christmas is past, I can frog the first one and reknit it. I can’t decide if I want to make the child size instead this time. I sort of like how it’s too big and sticks up. It makes me think of a little acorn. Or maybe I shouldn’t pull it at all and keep it as a memory.

Project Notes
Pattern: His Hat, a great easy pattern by Marnie Maclean
Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride bulky? worsted? I don’t know, I lost the label ages ago
Size: Adult

Oh and speaking of Christmas gifts, look at what Isabelle got from her Auntie Jo and Uncle Dennis.

Isabelle says this is a drawing of me. And here’s a drawing of me and her. Isn’t a drawing by Isabelle a great handmade Christmas present?

And this is a great present too, a little dance on Christmas:

I got on my computer all set to write something about knitting. Yes, KNITTING. The last time I mentioned knitting was last year.

But then I got lost. I started going through pictures taken at the beginning of this month. During our crazy planting things phase.

Remember these?

Well I forgot to mention that we planted them, me and Isabelle. I finally used that little jar.

But we went a little overboard with everything. Too much dirt and too many pebbles. But what can I say? It’s hard to do things carefully with Isabelle trying to pour shovelfuls of dirt on top of everything. I rushed through and this is the result.

The little jar terrarium is busting out. The lid barely encloses it all. I need to replant it. Yes. Replant it. That’s what I’ve been saying for weeks. Maybe after the new year.

We’ve been busy here. I’m trying to get through all our pictures. And I need to start somewhere so how about some from Christmas Eve.

Isabelle has been asking to “make a bear” and I just didn’t have the energy to make one by hand. Not with all the blizzards in snow globes and baking going on. So we bundled up and headed out to Build a Bear. Build a Bear in a shopping area the day before Christmas, what was I thinking?

No, actually it wasn’t too bad. We did have to circle several times for a parking space but it wasn’t hyperventilating inducing like the mall.

Of all the bears she could have chosen, Isabelle chose a blue bear. I think it’s her favorite color now. She quite frequently asks to wear her blue shirt or her blue pants so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when she INSISTED on a blue bear.

She chose the fireman outfit for him too but wouldn’t agree to some dressy girly shoes.

And then of course there was the naming. The fireman bear has been christened: Bear.

That night, after hours and hours of baking, we went to a party, me and Isabelle dressed in pajamas. It was a family party and after spending all day in the kitchen I really didn’t want to be in real clothes.

Isabelle and I made gingerbread cookies for all the kids. We also made two batches of cupcakes and three batches of frosting. Three because I didn’t read the part of the ganache frosting recipe where it said to refrigerate for an hour. So I went and made another vanilla buttercream frosting.

We made everything from scratch. That’s why it took so long. When I finally stepped out of the kitchen I thought I might have broke something, like my cooking joy. I was very sure I’d be cooking from a box from that point on. But nope, it’s not broken.

I don’t think anyone ate the cupcakes except for Isabelle. Well eating isn’t really accurate. She didn’t really eat them. More like touched them enough where no one else could eat them. She licked off the frosting and then left them laying around. That’s how I knew she “ate” four or five of them.

The sugar high coupled with Isabelle getting to play with her cousins all night meant Isabelle having a spectacular time. Not to mention presents. Isabelle is now old enough to enjoy present opening. She ripped off wrapping paper from clothing boxes then move onto the next one without even opening the box. I think she liked the ripping more than the finding out what was in the boxes.

We had so much fun. We played games and ate lots of food and stayed until almost eight in the morning. And Isabelle DID NOT sleep at all until we left.

The pajamas was a very good choice.

Today me and Isabelle went to the craft store to try to find toys or tiny ornaments for snow globe soap. Well look what we found! A soap making kit with these very snow globish molds.

It’s large enough to fit larger size toys.

And the kit came with glycerine so I thought, great, I can return my 10 pounds of glycerine.

So me and Isabelle happily went at it. I used half of the glycerine that came in the kit, 1 pound. I thought we’d wait for the first batch to finish and then we’d make the second batch. I popped the glycerine in the microwave but it didn’t really seem to be melting. Isabelle didn’t mind. Mix, mix, mix over and over. She loves mixing.

When it finally all melted I added one drop of blue soap dye. When I poured it into the mold I thought, hmmm that’s looking a little opaque. But the original glycerine was translucent so I figured it had something to do with it being liquid form and still hot. I let Isabelle push four little penguins in, all the while she was saying, “no mama! They’re upside down.”

Then we added our snow. We didn’t have enough glycerine to cover the snow so we melted one more cube and used that. So easy.

We waited 40 minutes and the soap was pretty much hardened. BUT it was still opaque.

And then I had to pop them out. I tried pushing them out. Nothing. They wouldn’t budge. I pushed and pushed and aaaaahhhhh!!! I called my sister for help. She said stick them in the freezer. After half an hour in the freezer and pushing so hard I thought my thumbs would snap back they FINALLY came out.

If I had read the directions thoroughly it says put them in the freezer. It even mentions soap glitter. I’m a goober.

Ok so what did we do wrong? Why are our snow globe soaps opaque? Too much mixing? Too much dye? But how can I put half a drop in? Maybe I should have melted the entire two pounds for the one drop of dye. Because the one cube I melted is translucent! See…you can sort of see his feet.

And now what? How do I get the penguins out to redo them? Or are they a lost cause and we’ll just use them?

Guess I’ll need that ten pounds of glycerine after all.

I was going to post Saturday night but I was too tired. So instead I threw up the shirt post which I meant to post Friday night but didn’t because I was too tired. I thought I’d write Sunday night but again I was too tired. So finally, here I am writing on Monday.

Why was this weekend so rough? Well on Saturday we woke up early, well, early for us, and went to the dentist. Isabelle has a cavity. They filled it. It was so traumatic. Maybe not for Isabelle. More for us I think. She did fine with the x-ray. She did great with the shot, just a little whimper. And she even did ok with the drilling.

But she’s only three and having a three year old sit still for any length of time with their mouth pried open is just asking too much. After 10 minutes Isabelle was done. She started crying and and…it was basically just AWFUL. I could have stood there bawling because it was so hard not being able to do anything but listen to her cry. But that wouldn’t have helped the situation so I stood there with my ears covered while they worked on her.

When it was done, Isabelle got two balloons and she was pretty much fine. Me, on the other hand, never wants to experience that again. But waaaaah!!! The dentist saw ANOTHER cavity while they were putting in her filling.

But did our rough weekend end there? Nooo. We went out to visit my sister in San Francisco and to bring out some clothes for the baby.

Isabelle had a great time playing with her cousin Ebow. But she slipped, fell, broke her glasses and cut her face a little. Then that night I didn’t want to give her milk to sleep because of her cavities. Poor Isabelle. What a bad day. I’ve since changed my mind after doing some online reading or as Alan calls it, “looking for any excuse to keep nursing her to sleep.”

And that was just Saturday. On Sunday we had to wake up early again. We had a vet appointment. Waldo was getting his sutures removed and Nestle was getting her leg looked at. They removed Waldo’s sutures. His incision healed fine however he has an infection and he’ll be taking antibiotics.

Nestle was visiting the doctor because her swollen leg was weeping. As soon as she walked into the vet’s office she had a seizure. They gave her a shot to calm her down and she was fine. Next time, we’re going to bring her in the back way to see if that helps with the seizures. They looked at her leg and we don’t really have any new information but she’s on antibiotics too.

It would have been nice to spend the rest of the day at home after that but we wanted to get our Christmas ornament and Isabelle’s glasses fixed. Our optometrist’s office wasn’t open so we ended up going to a lens place at the mall. Aaaaahhh no!! It was so crowded. It was a nightmare.

My hopes of getting in and out quickly didn’t materialize. The lens place couldn’t fix her glasses but a fix it place upstairs could. It took an hour though and Isabelle was hungry so we walked all the way to the other end of the mall to eat. I wouldn’t have minded if it wasn’t so jam packed full of people.

And then for some reason we decided to get some new shoes for Isabelle. Well I know the reason. Her feet are getting big. She needs new shoes. And we WERE at the mall. But the shoe store was hell. Too many people in my personal space bumping into me.

So today I’m tired. I don’t have any energy to make soap with Isabelle. Because yes we bought glycerine. A LOT of glycerin, the last and only glycerine left on the shelves, ten pounds of glycerine! Yikes! But we couldn’t find any toys small enough. So I have a whole bunch of glycerine and no toys. We’ll try to make Christmas shaped soap instead. So I guess I’ll be one of those crazy weird aunts who constantly makes soap for people. I mean, I DO have to get through ten ponds of glycerine.

Ok off for a nap. Maybe with some more sleep, I’ll have energy to wrestle with glycerine.

Me and Alan aren’t seeing eye to eye on something, namely Christmas presents for the nephews and nieces. If you’ve been reading along you know that this year I was determined to make handmade. But Alan thinks my ideas aren’t fun. He thinks Christmas is a wonderful magical holiday for kids. They get toys and fun things and it’s great. So my ideas of handmade clothes or gingerbread cookies made by me and Isabelle isn’t really on his excitement scale.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t really finished sewing clothes. After my practice shirt I made another one in a smaller size, 104cm. And nothing went smoothly. It’s still too large.

And I screwed up the cutting. I had to make the front piece out of two separate pieces. And since I was low on fabric, the knit stretches the wrong way, length-wise instead of width-wise. Then on top of that I decided: all the fabric I chose was wrong, maybe too young?

So yeah…that’s as far as I got. I’m not giving up on the handmade idea though. I’m thinking snow-globe soaps. How many days do I have left?

Project Notes
Pattern: 27 from Ottobre Spring 1/2008
Fabric: knit interlock
Size: 104cm