Tuesday, January 13, 2015

a little critter

I did knit a couple toys over break. (I started on the pangolin, but doing the scales is pretty tedious, so I didn't get terribly far.)

I bought a Mochimochiland pattern (the tiny woodland creatures) specifically so I could get her "free" pattern (which, if it's like her other holiday patterns, will be available for sale at some point soon).

This one is called Deck the Walruses (Deck, as in the sense of "deck the halls," not the sense of "punch so hard they fall down")

It's a tiny walrus pattern plus three hat patterns. I knew immediately which hat I wanted to do: the watchcap, because then the walrus would sort-of resemble a famous ocean explorer.

I didn't buy yarn for this, I just used bits that were on hand (leftover from other things) up at my parents' house when I was there. it only takes tiny amounts of each yarn.

This is "Jacques." (I think the name is self-explanatory....at least to people of my generation and a bit earlier):

Jacques front view

The hat isn't sewn down but at some point I might tack it on so it's less likely to get lost. (The pattern also comes with a chullo style hat and a Santa hat - so you can do one, some, or all of them)

Here's a side view:

jacques side view

One of the clever things is that tiny lengths of i-cord are used for the tusks. This is a VERY small toy, it will sit in the palm of your hand comfortably. If you had a large-ish Christmas tree, you could probably put loops on these and use them as decorations. (Especially if you did the old traditional thing that some did, of having small toys on the tree that were then destined to be gifts for the children...)


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In other news, I got a hive on my lower lip. It started last night as just a small one and it spread overnight. (This is typically how the big hives go: they start small, then get huge for a little while, then start to go down). I admit I was a bit alarmed when I woke up at 2 am to go to the loo and decided to look at it in the mirror. But I figured: I'm not having breathing problems (I never do with hives), and if it was going to kill me, it probably already would have.

The problem was I looked awful. Either like a kid who was playing with the vacuum cleaner hose and stuck it on their lip, or like a starlet (or other "beauty" obsessed person) who went and got collagen injections in her lips but overdid it a little.

But I went back to bed. I debated getting up to work out but then decided that encouraging blood flow might help reduce the swelling so I got up at 4:30 like usual. I did take my meds (the anti-allergy ones) first, which may have been a good idea.

It started going down a bit during the workout. Now, it's almost back to normal. I can still feel a bit of swelling and my lip still feels weird if I purse it, but I don't look frightening any more. (I guess this tells you how blase I've become about these things: what amounts to angioedema on my lip and my main concern is "I don't want people stopping me in the hall and going, 'oh, no, your lip! Are you all right?'")

But as I said: I've been to this rodeo before, and it's never gone bad, I just have to wait for the swelling to go down.

I did put on the air filter in my office; I hadn't run it yesterday and I suspect - as the HVAC seems kind of dead in the water as far as moving air around goes - that molds are probably bad right now. (Also, we've had a lot of rain/damp days lately.)

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