Socks and Rugs And Edible Petals

It’s been a while since there has been a picture of a work in progress artfully draped over a keyboard. HEY LOOK, IT’S A SOCK!


This is your basic plain-vanilla stockinette sock, made with JoAnn ‘Sensations’ Bamboo & Ewe (55% wool, 15% rayon from bamboo, 30% nylon) – the perfect knitting project for trains, planes, automobiles, doctor’s offices, and other places that combine endless tedious waiting with a sudden need to scurry-scurry-scurry.

I haven’t actually been knitting much lately, because, well, I was cleaning out a cupboard? And there was this enormous box in there? And in the box, there was this latch hook rug kit that a friend gave me approximately 300 years ago, because she did about four rows on it and said to herself, Yeah, um, I choose LIFE?! and had then herself put it in a cupboard and ignored it for approximately 300 years before it suddenly dawned on her that “Tama” and “Tedious Craft Projects” obviously go together like peanut butter and jelly and thus it became mine.

This is also why I own about six thousand crochet hooks in sizes ranging from “are you sure that isn’t a bobby pin?” to “huh, didn’t know you could crochet with an oar!” even though I can’t crochet to save my life, and a vast amount of coned cobweb-weight yarn designed for knitting machines I don’t actually own. (Well. This is actually a combination of people immediately thinking of me whenever they find themselves confronted by large boxes of hand-crafting supplies from Great Aunt Maribelle’s estate, and my pack-rat tendencies on such matters. I have tried to make myself let go of some of that yarn, but every time I go through it I end up putting it right back in the cupboard because upon reflection, it would make a rather nice [shawl, baby set, t-shirt if I had a knitting machine capable of using cobweb-weight yarn with breaking it every half-inch, etc.].) (But I digress.)

So…guess what I’ve been working on in my “sitting on my rump” time lately?



It’s hard to tell how big it is, huh…tell you what. Here’s an eight year old boy for scale.



And this is an eight year old boy about to claim the rug as his own and run off with it to his room, giggling madly all the way:



For some reason, Captain Adventure was positively captivated by watching me make this rug. While he had absolutely zero interest in actually trying his hand at latch hooking himself, he was fascinated by the latch hook tool, keenly interested in my progress, would nag me about it whenever I was caught doing something else, and would brighten like a freshly-lit candle when he walked into the room and found that I was attending to business.

“Oh! You’re finally doing it!” he would announce, as if it had been years and years and YEARS since I had last put first things first.

Ahem, yes. Always good to have managerial input…and it’s always fun when our Captain gets it into his head that you need managing on something. I tell you what, if you take the normal eight-year-old bossy (which is plenty bossy all on its own, thank-you-very-much), spread a layer of is a Leo over it and then dip the whole thing in a vat of autism, you end up with Mr. Bossy McBosser-Pants TellUWhatToDo on your hands.

Very early on, he informed me that it would be for his room because he liked it. He’s got a thing for plants in general, and he’s always rather liked flowers.

Because they are colorful. And also not vegetables, which, you know…being neither French fries nor cookies…are pretty much useless as far as he’s concerned.

Little does he know…I planted some nasturtiums.

Which are edible flowers.

So I’m planning to start sprinkling them over salads once they’re blooming.

Bwa-hahaha.