How Did I Do It?

I have two children only 16 months apart. I had them when I was 21 and 23 years old. (Yes I was a child bride.) I am now a lot older than that. (Hint: those kids are in their 30’s.) How on earth did I manage two little ones with no car and a husband who was working long hours? I’ve obviously forgotten how difficult it was and only remember the fun bits because yesterday afternoon was exhausting! But also a lot of fun. And the husband was home at the time so he could help babysit our two-year-old and one-month-old grandkids. I’d do it again in an instant. But not today please!

Good thing my Stargazer grandson is willing to take the bottle. His sister Sprout was definitely Not Interested as a baby and so it was difficult for anyone else to feed her until she was willing and able to take other things besides mommy. It was so neat to bottle-feed a baby again — it’s been a very long time since we’ve had the chance. Kept him from yelling so loud my hearing aids just about blew up too. That kid has lungs! It was also really fun to play two-year-old games of hide-and-seek and building tunnels with Mega-Bloks for the toy cars to run through. I love how little kids’ minds work. You can almost hear the gears going as they figure things out. So cute.

Meanwhile, their mom & dad had a great time at the movie (Letters from Iwo Jima). She fell asleep during the bombing! Guess feeding the ducks the day before was exhausting. Or maybe it’s being a new mom of two little ones and being woken up for middle-of-the-night feeds? Makes me tired just thinking about it. Been there; done that. That’s why we have grandchildren so we can have all the fun and then give them back to their parents. Works for me.

Speaking of that Ninja guy, I’m up to nearly the toe on one of his socks and just past the gusset on the other. They’re coming along. I also managed to use my new Knit Visualizer software to chart the decreases for the top of my Penelope Beret. I want the pattern (diagonal lace lines studded with beads) to flow into the decreases at the crown. If I decrease every row it will interfere with the lines so I’m going to try decreasing twice as often every other row. It should come out to the same shape. I hope. I’m dividing the crown into 12 wedges instead of 6 and leaving out one of the yarn-overs instead of doing an actual decrease stitch. Looks good on the chart. At least I hope this will work. Wish me luck. The worst that can happen is that I’ll have to frog the crown and start over. No biggie.

Every part of a beret or tam works with every other part to make the blocked size. So it’s really hard to judge how big to make any of those parts. Of course the part that goes around your head has to fit on not too tight or too loose but snugly comfortable. Then you increase in one row for the main part which actually gets folded in half when blocked. However it’s really a straight piece of knitting. How long is the question. Too long and the tam is floppy. Too short and it becomes a beanie instead of a tam. Lastly there’s the crown or “wheel” as Mary Rowe calls it in her helpful book “Knitted Tams”. That’s where you decrease to form the flat part. If this part is wider, then the straight section needs to be shorter to compensate or again you get a large tam. I don’t like huge floppy tams. I have very little hair so they look totally silly on me. Smaller is better but I still want it to look like a tam. Sorry, beret. Whatever. We used the terms interchangeably when I had to wear a felted woolen one for the first 9 years of school. This is Canada. We’re bilingual. Heh. Wonder what they call it in Cantonese?