I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I updated to the newest Wordpress and saw that I could choose monster avatars! MONSTERS!! So I played around some more with my site. Now my hands hurt.

But anyways, back to the monsters. Each person has their own avatar generated for them. It’s always the same I guess. If you have a Gravatar, like I do, then that shows up instead.

Since I don’t know what my monster would look like, I drew one. You know, as if my hands weren’t hurting.

And if you want to look at what your monster looks like, comment and it’ll show up.

Oh I should add: I don’t know how long they’ll be up. Usually I find stuff like this fun for a while then I remove them. But for now there are monsters.

I’ve been scarce around the internet, reading and writing.

On Thursday night my friend, Olinda, noticed my website was down. It happens sometimes. It’s the second time, that I know of, this year. It happened a handful of times last year. And a handful of times before that. It’s sort of frustrating. So I changed web hosts. Everything moved over without a glitch (I think).

Then on the weekends we’re usually out and about so posting is rare.

But the big monkey wrench in posting came when I was reading Mary at Confessions of a Craft Addict. She was saying her site had issues on Internet Explorer. So I opened up IE to take a look. And then being curious, I checked my site. CRAP. I knew my site wasn’t “up to code”. I just never fixed it before . But for some reason, now, I was determined to get it right. So that’s what I’ve been doing for days. DAYS! I’ve been looking at code so much, my head hurts. But I was determined to have it fixed. I couldn’t stop. Not even for a silly old thing like my head exploding.

But now it’s all fixed and it even validates! Well everything except the galleries. But I’ll fix that some other time.

So what’s that have to do with the picture of the shirt? That shirt is a prime example of how stubborn I can get when I’m determined to do something.

It was supposed to be a gift for my nephew. I bought organic fabric specifically for him. And I bought fabric paint. I had grand ideas for trying out freezer paper stenciling. But right away I knew I was on the wrong track and I should have stopped. But I didn’t, even with the obstacles in my way, I just barreled on through.

First of all the fabric is too stiff. I should have used a knit because the pattern is basically a t-shirt, except for where the snaps at the shoulder should be. But knowing this, I didn’t stop. I just kept going along.

And then I noticed I cut two fronts out instead of a front and a back. But…I kept going.

Then I thought the size seemed awfully small. But march, march, march. Must not stop now. I just figured, it was all screwed up, so why not just see how it comes out.

But I stopped at the snaps. I didn’t want to waste snaps on a hopeless shirt.

I then washed it a couple of times hoping that would soften it up and I don’t know…magically make the front piece into a back piece? I don’t know what I was thinking.

Project Notes
Pattern: shirt 5 from Japanese craft book ISBN 4418051244
Fabric: stiff as a board organic cotton
Size: 100cm

Oh and let me end with a random video of Isabelle because I know Olinda is missing Isabelle.

Enjoying Live Music from Kuky Ideas on Vimeo.

The video is from a couple of weekends ago. My friend, Lorraine, came down from Oregon and we went out to dinner. A whole bunch of us girls and Alan. There was live music and Isabelle was dancing and clapping. I couldn’t get any of the clapping on video but I did get a little dancing.

Which reminds me. I want to get a small teeny camera that does video as well (for when I always forget my big heavy camera). I’ve been looking at some super inexpensive ones that are 6 and 7 MP. Does anyone have any experience on how good the quality of the video looks like on those things?

I’m going to be cleaning up my website and moving things around. I don’t know how it’ll be working and what will be kicked up. So keep your fingers crossed and hope to see you on the other side.

Oh and I’ve turned off comments on this post. I don’t want to lose any comments when I pick up and move. And I’d turn it off everywhere if I could but I don’t know how. Yikes I’m scared. Seriously. Fingers crossed and toes too. Don’t want to lose four years of this sucker.

*UPDATE* I think I’ve got it figured out!!

I’m pooped. And Isabelle pooped! No more duckie to worry about. She actually did the deed yesterday, about 12 hours after she had swallowed it. It was soon after I posted. I was planning to illustrate this post with me wearing sandwich bags on my hands. You know, poopy related drawing. But I’m pooped! Pooped, I say! Wonder how many times I can say POOP in this post. Poop, poop, poop! Bwa ha ha! Ok, I’ll stop now because…I’m pooped.

She was quite excited to see her duckie after he was all washed up. She was chattering on about him again. But I hid him. I don’t want him taking another ride in Isabelle.

So why am I so worn out? I’ve been busy writing and rewriting my newest post for label-free. It sure is hard to explain how I fumble around trying to sew Japanese patterns. I meant to post it last night but then Isabelle happened. Miss Trouble got her elbow stuck in her little red Ikea mammut chair. You can just make it out behind her.

I don’t know how she managed it. We were just sitting there and then she started crying and falling down. It took me a couple of seconds to realize she was stuck in the chair. It was so hard to pry her out and heartbreaking to hear her crying while I was doing it. I didn’t want to just force her elbow out so I struggled taking the thing apart and then fought to widen the slats just a wee bit to get her out. It just would not give. I actually wondered how come it was so hard, like where was that, lift a car from my child, superhuman strength?

Then this afternoon she was in the kitchen pulling out loads of paper towels from the rack. And just a few hours ago she was pouring water everywhere. So, no drawing. I have no energy for it. Instead I’m sharing these pictures of Isabelle FINALLY giving the homemade popsicle a chance.

Ok off to take a nap now. Poop.

Yesterday, I had planned on writing another Japanese crafting post for Label-Free but life got in the way. My little monkey gave me quite a scare. That’s being mild. To be more accurate, she scared the shit out of me. No, even that’s too tame a description. Imagine me: crazy, wild, angry, worried, imagining the worst.

What did Isabelle do that caused this? She swallowed a little duck pendant.

It happened when I was trying to get Isabelle to sleep. Right before I was about to put her down, she saw her pendant. It was a gift from my mom. We had put it on a necklace on her on the weekend but removed it because her hair was getting caught in it.

Well when she found it, she happily chattered on about her duck and I let her hold onto it because sometimes she likes falling asleep with a toy in her hand. I put her in bed, turned off the lights, lay down next to her, and gave her milk. Then all of a sudden I heard it in her mouth! I picked her up and went for the light and she made little gagging noises. Once the lights were on, I looked in her mouth, and it wasn’t there. I looked on the floor, on the bed, it wasn’t ANYWHERE. I asked Isabelle, “where’s the duckie?” And she pointed to her open mouth!

I freaked out and called Alan at work. He immediately headed home. This has never happened to us before. So yeah. We were frantic.

I then immediately called Kaiser’s advice line, you know, where you’re supposed to get help from a nurse. They have a recording that says to help you decide if you need to be seen in the emergency room or give you advice until you can make an appointment or something to that effect.

Let me reiterate, this has never happened to us before. We didn’t know what to do. I was imagining the worst. I didn’t know what this pendant was doing to Isabelle’s little insides. And since it was a gift I don’t even know what it’s made of. And the nurse I spoke to, I didn’t catch her name I was so frantic, didn’t make the situation better. She actually made it worse. She was AWFUL. Making comments like, well she’s 2, 3 years old, you better get used to her swallowing stuff. How did that comment help?!?

And, did you want to go the the emergency room or call at 6:15 for an appointment to see your doctor? That’s why I was calling. I DON’T KNOW. Is she going to be ok until she can see a doctor? Me imagining Isabelle not waking up and just all sorts of scary stuff.

And, well you need to be calm, you’re not helping the situation. I knew that. But she wasn’t helping the situation either! Where was her nice helpful manner?!

The call finally ended with me frantically asking, “I just want to know if she’ll be ok for now. CAN YOU TELL ME THAT?!?!”

When Alan got home, I told him about the call. Repeating how it went just drove home how terrible the nurse was. I realized I didn’t feel any better. In fact, I didn’t trust the nurse’s advice, that’s how bad the call was. So, I called again. I got a different nurse and explained I had just called and asked if the computer showed the name of the nurse I spoke to. She was hesitant and said it didn’t say. I then asked if it showed I called. She replied yes. And then I asked what the computer says was the reason for my first call. The nurse said, “a sore throat?” WTF? A sore throat?! Yeah. Imagine then how pissed off I was at that first nurse.

Well the second call did turn out better. The first nurse didn’t give bad advice. She just had an awful bedside manner I guess you’d say. So after maybe a couple of hours of sleep for me we went to the hospital where Isabelle saw her doctor and got an x-ray. (Pictures thanks to Alan having his cell phone because you know, in my state I wouldn’t have my camera) See the pendant I outlined in red:

And I could say so much more at this point but I’ll stop now because my 3 hour nap obviously wasn’t long enough. I’m running on empty again. So I’ll end with this:

Isabelle will be fine. Basically we’ll just have to look for the pendant to pass. Mmmm yum. Digging through poo. And I think I’ll end the post here, on poo. Goodnight all!

A few weeks ago, I casually mentioned popsicles. As soon as the word left my lips, Isabelle was all over it, “pop! pop! pop!” She hadn’t had a popsicle before that, so, I don’t know how she even knew what they were.

I told Alan about it and the next morning…there were popsicles in the freezer. He loves us.

Store bought popsicle:

Since they were such a hit with her, that following weekend I got a popsicle maker.

Homemade popsicle:

Har har har! I do think her reaction was a bit extreme.

We had a long day yesterday. We managed to wake up early to catch a parade, barely. Isabelle wasn’t much interested though.

She thought the bookstore was more fun.

And the park.

Where she got a popsicle.

Then we ended the night with fireworks, her first ever. “Oooooh” is what she was saying.