My Second Published Knitting Pattern!

I designed a new Button-top Ribbed Hand Towel in monkey-color stripes for my Godson's monkey themed bathroom (his birthday is coming up).  Not only does this one have 4 different colored stripes, but I tweeked the first ribbed hand towel pattern I tried again!

Button-top Ribbed Monkey Hand Towel

I used
4 balls Lily Sugar'n Cream cotton
     Country blue, warm brown, sunshine & country green
*I did not use all of the 4 balls and you can choose any color(s)
Size 7 needles
yarn needle
button

For the full pattern, please go to...

Monkey Stripes Button-top Hand Towel


Please feel free to let me know what you think...and Enjoy!

Sharing with other crafters on 9/3/11.

Boobs

Update: Edited and shared with Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop for the prompt "bra" on 6/13/13.

I have come to the conclusion that I prefer to wear some sort of bra at all times.

Regular support, separate and shape bra.  Sports bra. Sleep bra. Camisole with a bra-like insert.  Something!  Often even while sleeping because I'd just have to take off my shirt and put one on when I got up.

Not wearing one is more uncomfortable than wearing one for me.  I don't know if it's my breast size or shape or what.  I feel like they're pretty heavy and I NEED something to hold them up at least a little at all times.  I try to go to bed au natural.  Sure, sleeping without a bra on is not a problem.  It's the moment I get up and my "lovely lady lumps" are just hangin' out!

I know I'm not needing to impress anyone first thing in the morning, but I feel a little like an old trailer trash lady in a house dress without a bra on.  That's not an attractive image!

When other women talk about how relieved they are to get home and remove their bra, I totally can't relate, as I do not take mine off until I'm going to bed. And sometimes, I just change to sleep bra.

I truly do not understand how men can ever wear boxer shorts and not have their junk supported!

"Lovely female shapes are terrible complicators of the difficulties and dangers

of this earthly life, especially for their owners."

~George du Maurier

"I'm 5 Years Old Now"

My little boy is so.....I don't even know what word to use.  He kills me!

All the way back to babyhood AJ has had this habit of sucking his thumb and playing with my hair.  Say what you want about thumb-sucking, but let me tell you, I have been so grateful he had a way to self-soothe after my daughter who didn't.  AJ has been much easier to put down to sleep and just didn't cry as much in general.  The hair thing started sometime while nursing and it just became his thing to suck his left thumb and touch my hair with his right hand while cuddling, tired or sad.

He has never been an incessant thumb-sucker, only did it when appropriate.  He never sucked his thumb in the middle of playing nor did he try to eat around it (yes, I've seen a kid do this).  Therefore, I've always been completely fine with it and knew that he would grow out of it and stop when he was ready.  Mark, on the other hand, has not been as OK with it as I have and has said things to AJ like, "you're getting too big to keep sucking your thumb", in spite of my insistence in my confidence that it wouldn't last forever.  But that's my husband for you, has to express his opinion no matter what!

Last night as I was sitting with AJ at bedtime he showed me what a big, smart and thoughtful boy he is.  He reached out for my hair but then stopped.  I thought maybe it was because I had it tied in a bun so I asked him if he wanted to play with my hair.  He said no and I asked if he was sure.  He said, "no, I have to try not to."  I said, "you do? why?"  He said, "because I'm 5 years old now".

I said, "oh sweetie, you're such a big boy!"

And then my heart broke a little.

I have loved my cuddly little boy who would sit in my lap, suck his thumb and play with my hair.  He's been the BEST cuddler!  He had already been doing the hair thing less with me since I cut mine short last spring.  He's been playing with his sister's hair a lot since then.  Not only did he not touch my hair last night, but he also didn't suck his thumb.  I knew he would grow out of it when he was ready and until then there was nothing wrong with something that helped him feel safe and secure.

I honestly don't know whether to be sad or proud.  I guess it's both.  Aah, what's a mommy to do?

Oh, when I came downstairs and told Mark about AJ's little epiphany, he said he feels bad for saying anything to him, that he didn't really know if he should be stopping.  I of course said I told ya so.  Don't argue with maternal instinct, man!

"In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores,

child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything.

You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage."

~Bill Cosby, Fatherhood, 1986

My First Published Knitting Pattern!

Knitting has become a big part of my life, and as I continue to make and learn things I'm finding that I just might be able to impart some of my own little bits of design ideas here and there.

This first one isn't all my idea.  I first tried this pattern but discovered a few things I wanted to change about it, hence my pattern for a Button-top Ribbed Hand Towel:

I used:
2 balls Lily Sugar'n Cream cotton, color "temari balls"
*I did not use all of 2 balls and you can choose any color(s)
Size 7 needles
yarn needle
button

HOW I DID IT

Body of towel:
~ CO 60 stitches
*I slipped the first stitch of every row (until I got to the strap at the top) just like the original pattern I tried.
~ Knit across 3 rows to create a bottom edge and to help maintain some of the width.
~ Row 4: sl 1, *K3, P2, repeat from * to last 4, K4
~ Row 5: sl 1, *P3, K2, repeat from * to last 4, P4
~ Repeat rows 4 & 5 until your piece measures 12 inches.

Decrease:
~ Row 1: sl 1, *K2tog, K1, rpt from * to end of row (40 sts remain)
~ Row 2: sl 1, Knit across
~ Row 3: sl 1, *K2tog, K1, rpt from * to end of row (27 sts remain)
~ Row 4: sl 1, Knit across
~ Row 5: sl 1, *K2tog, K1, rpt from * to end of row (18 sts remain)
~ Row 6: sl 1, Knit across
~ Row 7: sl 1, *K2tog, K1, rpt from * to end of row (12 sts remain)
~ Row 8: sl 1, Knit across
~ Row 9: sl 1, K2tog, K3, K2tog, K2, K2tog (9 sts remain)

Strap:
~ Knit across 22 rows
~ Buttonhole: K4, yo, K2tog, K3
~Knit across 5 rows
~ BO

Weave in yarn ends.  Attach button on the front of the towel under the strap.  Done!

I made this towel for my kids' bathroom.  I liked the idea of having an attached towel that my son couldn't easily take down and throw on the floor!

And, I plan on making more......

PS: Linked up with the above on 8/29/11
to share my love of knitting!

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~ by Robert Frost

This is MY poem.  Mr. Frost wrote it for me.  OK, maybe not only for me, but it is surely about my life.  This poem comes to mind so often.  My BFF Jen printed it up and framed it and gave it to me as a gift once.  It hangs on my bedroom wall, above my nightstand.  It is profound and true and inspiring to me, even though it's pretty simple.  I first read it in high school for English class and liked it even as a dumb kid, before I had any idea the different roads that lay ahead of me.  But it spoke to me even then, as if I knew my life wouldn't be typical.  Maybe I did know.  What is "typical", anyway?  Perhaps that's a subject for another post!

Anyway....while out with my other BFF Jessica this week we got to talking about the pivotal events in our lives, the ones where if you had made another choice than the one you did, had chosen the other road, how different might your life be today?  I can easily point to 4 - so far.

The first was when I was 12 and gearing up to move from my home with my dad here in Washington state to live with my mom in Lake Tahoe, California.  Per their divorce agreement my dad was to relinquish custody of me to my mother at age 12, whom I would live with for the remainder of my childhood.  In the waning days of my 6th grade school year, however, my father came to me and asked if I wanted to stay with him, that if I did, he would contact a lawyer and see if we could make that happen.  Hence, my very first big decision, the fist "fork in the road" of my life!

My father's concern was that I already had a good and stable life with him and my mom had been struggling to establish a good and stable life for herself for years, let alone for me.  But I knew that she was ready now.  She was renting a little house with a bedroom for me and she was in school.  My strong sense of fairness told me that it was her turn.  She had been waiting patiently, doing everything she was supposed to do, even from a distance, and I had to go.  Telling my dad that I still wanted to move was hard.  I know it disappointed him, and looking back on it now (as a parent myself), I think putting me on the plane to leave him, not live with him anymore, when I was only 12 years old, broke his heart.  But in turn, I knew not going to live with my mother would've broken her heart.  So I moved to Lake Tahoe and I know how things went.  But I often wonder what might have happened to me if I had stayed.

My second "fork" came when I was 16 years old and got pregnant.  Yes, I became a teen pregnancy statistic.  I'm not proud.  It is what it is.  So there I was, 16 and knocked-up.  I had to decide if I was going to have and keep the baby, have and give up the baby or terminate the pregnancy.  I had one friend telling me abortion is wrong and one telling me it was the only logical thing to do.  I had my boyfriend and his mother romanticising the whole thing.  My mother was utterly appalled that I had made the same mistake she had and swore if I carried to term the baby and I would not be living with her.  I didn't tell my father out of fear of his reaction, even though my mother threatened to ship me back to him.  I also didn't tell another good friend of mine who had moved away, because I was afraid she'd be terribly disappointed in me.

I would have loved to have a baby and become a mommy.  I already knew I wanted that for my life - like big time!  But the uber practical side of me won over the romantic side.  I knew it wasn't a good idea.  I also knew that I didn't have it in me to go the adoption route.  I consider myself to be a pretty strong person, but giving my very own baby away to be raised by someone else....?  No.  There's no way.  It would've broken me.  So it was all or nothing.  Not something I often feel; I'm really not an all or nothing kind of gal.  But in this case I was, and I decided to terminate.

Contrary to popular opinion, having an abortion is not taking the easy way out.  Yes, you get out of having a child to take care of, but it scars and haunts you.  It becomes a part of your soul.  You will forever wonder...boy or girl?...what wouild it look like?...what would I have named it?...would we have been OK or would it have completely sucked?  I think I would've had the baby in September and once in a while, in September, I count and think about how old the child would be.  I wonder if the little soul that would've been born to me understood my choice.  I wonder if God understands.  And I can't imagine how differently the roads of my life would have sprawled out before me if I had made a different choice!

The third fork in the road didn't feel like a huge decision at the time, but hindsight being 20/20 (Ha!), I now see that it ended up being the thing that brought about the rest of my life as I know it.  I became legally blind in the year after graduating high school and I needed help with adapting to it.  There is a wonderful thing (mostly) called the Department of Rehabilitation.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), there weren't many services available to me where I lived (still Lake Tahoe), namely mobility training with a white cane, braille and daily living skills.  There was, however, a school called the Orientation Center for the Blind down in the Bay Area.  It is a live-in facility where you spend several months focused on learning how to do everything without the use of your eyes, and my rehab counselor suggested I go there.  I don't even remember the process I went through in making a decision, but I decided to go for it!

OCB afforded me the opportunity to leave home.  It was where I met my future husband and 2 of the best friends I've ever had, who are like family to Mark and I.  We started our life together in a little apartment just blocks away from OCB and ended up staying in the Bay Area for a total of 9 years.  We went to school, Mark got a transplant and regained good sight, we worked, got married and had our first baby all while living there.

The fourth big choice we made (not just I anymore) was to relocate to Washington state.  We knew we wanted out of the rat race of the Bay Area, and actually, out of California entirely, mostly because of the cost of living.  We had no hope that we'd ever be able to buy a house anywhere in the state.  I mean, we're talking about 2 disabled individuals who were probably not ever going to make big bucks.  We also had a little girl who would be going to school soon and we never heard very good things about the public schools.  California is an amazing state, but it's too big for its britches and just...overwhelming, I guess.  Leaving it, though, meant leaving a lot of family we love and this was not an easy decision to make.

We settled on coming (back for me) to Western Washington.  This area has everything we figured we needed, such as good medical care, some family, lower cost of living, very family-friendly and not too terribly far away from California.  It was a little difficult at first because Mark ended up not working for the first 3 years and that was disappointing for him.  Also, the family thing didn't go very well for awhile.  But we soon learned that there are a lot of good people here and we have been fortunate to become friends with several of them.  We had not managed to make any friends in the Bay Area after leaving OCB, so this is huge.  There it was just the 3 of us, and here it is much more.  Not only that, but we had another child, something I absolutely needed to do because I don't believe in only children...and we bought a house!  Also, Mark got to have his heart taken care of at a hospital which is considered one of the very best for cardiac care in the nation.  I am so very grateful for that!

The rest is still unfolding of course.  We can't know beforehand what roads and their forks lie ahead of us.  I seem to choose the ones "less traveled by" and that has indeed "made all the difference".  I can't imagine my life any other way than it is.  Well, that's not true.  Of course I can imagine other circumstances, definitely easier ones!  But I am who I am because of my circumstances and I think who I am is alright.  I often feel held back by these circumstances (sorry I keep using the same word, I do hate being redundant), but at the end of the day I'm proud of this little life I and we have forged.  Only God and the whole of the universe knows what choices still lie ahead of us.

The blogger I've quoted before (and probably will again so get used to it), Edenland, recently put this video in one of her posts and I think it apropos to include it here too (in lieu of the customary quote):