"You're too cute to crochet."

I just finished watching "The Buddy Holly Story" for the first time.  I knew there must have been a reason I liked Gary Busey so much besides that the fact that he is vulgar and querky, like moi.  I thought it was neat that Holly's wife Maria came up with the phrase "true love ways."  Or at least that's what Hollywood wants us to believe.  I've been sitting on this "redneck roll" idea for years but my boyfriend has yet to make it.  They say behind every great man...

My daughter is being an absolute angel.  I just can't get over how stinking cute she is today.  She will be six months old soon and I see her growing into a kid.  Or maybe a pre-kid.  Nevertheless, I must say of myself that looking at her I know we are doing a great job as parents.  She rocks.

We gave her a bath yesterday.  I've heard tell of parents who are offended if you don't bathe your kid every day and I know parents who swear they don't give their kids daily baths but every time I see them they smell like sweet soap.  That's not my daughter. I love my baby sweet cheese too much to scrub off her essence and cover her in fragrance.  So let's just say that the last time we bathed her she was smaller and her hair was a lot shorter.  What a monster 'hawk on that child.  Of course, she gets spot cleaning as needed.  I never would have thought baby pits get stinky but they have.  Nothing a little Kissaluvs diaper lotion potion can't be done with in a swipe.  On that note, I have to rave about using cloth wipes, it really is like washing her bum instead of smearing wet wipes around.  I'm sure my daughter will be mortified if she reads this as a teen.  She won't talk to me for days until she tries to sweet-talk me into something she wants.

Last night I finished a scarf for a dear friend of ours.  A very belated birthday gift but I had every intention of making it particularly for that occasion; I did buy the yarn before the birthday.  I made a fluffy pink one for her daughter using the puff stitch and I had a hard time thinking of a stitch to use for hers that would be as warm and as fluffy as the puff stitch as well as suit multicolor yarn.  The galaxy stitch turned out to be the perfect stitch for the multicolor yarn.  It turned out beautiful.  Another project under my belt.

When I told my dear hairstylist that I had taken up crochet to attempt to fill the void in my life she told me, "You're too cute to crochet."  Perhaps I am now, thanks to her amazing revamp of the hair that had not been cut for a month before my daughter was born, sheesh.  I hope not to be one of those lame crochet ladies who gift you things that you would never want to wear or even display around your house.  I hope to make things that are good quality like you would buy in a store so nobody look at you and asks, "What lady with eight cats made that for you?"  If I can't accomplish that I'll just make useful things.  I'm back to testing out dishcloths right now.  After six dishcloths I decided what I really wanted was a dish scrubber and I found an easy pattern.

Pattern courtesy of Charlotte's Tangled Yarns

The flip side of this is cream cotton yarn.  I did this side darker because I like to have a dark color for scrubbing things like tomato sauce that might not rinse off.  The original design uses one side cotton and one side acrylic yarn but I only used cotton.  See below.

While I was checking out dish scrubbers, I came across tawashi, the Japanese word for scrubbers.  This can mean dish, body, or household scrubber.  Eco tawashi are eco-friendly crocheted discrubbers that you can wash and re-use instead of trashing one every week.  I originally wanted to make my own cotton dishcloths because I learned that dishsponges are sprayed with a chemical to keep them from getting funky that is classified as a pesticide.  I was so pissed!  All that work trying to keep pesticides out of our food and it's all over our dishes!  Many people make their eco tawashi with acrylic, but that's synthetic, exactly what I was trying to get away from.  Acrylic is more scratchy so that's why it's touted as a good yarn for tawashi.  It's made from petroleum and that's just what we need- one more way to suck the earth dry of her nonrenewable resources.  I don't mind the cotton and the extra elbow grease or aluminum-free baking soda to get the tough jobs done but in the future I will experiment with wool and hemp.  Experiment with hemp, haha.  There's also yarn made from recycled plastic bottles but as a new mom I'm supposed to be terrified of BPA.

So while I was looking up the origin of, use of, and ridiculously cute patterns for tawashi, I learned this extremely interesting tidbit of information: some people use tawashi and cold water alone to wash their dishes!   Chew on that.  I'm not going to go into specifics, look it up if you're interested.  And don't look too closely at my dishes the next time you're over for dinner.

My daughter just crawled using one leg.  How awesome is that?  I'm really in love with her right now.  We've got plenty of time to bond.  She is spending so much time at my breast, chugging and comfort nursey.  The rest of the time she's sitting and playing, falling over onto her belly and scooting forward a few inches.  She smiles so much.  She gives me these big wide smiles, sometimes with squinchy eyes like me.  She also just said, "Huh Da Da Da Da Da."  Her daddy will be thrilled.  She's dying to use the laptop keyboard; she lunges at it and whacks it every chance she gets.  Perhaps we will get a new one and she can play with this one, ha!  Today. she dunked her hand into some salsa and grabbed some corn chips out of the bowl and stuck them in her mouth.  I had to take them away since DSS will pick me up if my child's first food is chips and salsa.  I wanted to exclusively breastfeed her for a year but we are doing baby-led solids so the next time she sticks a suitable food in her mouth it's hers.  So much happens in a week.