Ladybug Wannabe

As you can see, the ladybug is underway. I'm very happy with the color. Her arms and legs will be painted black and she'll have little painted shoes with some sort of embellishment. I'm reconsidering the black tulle collar. Too much black I think. Maybe yellow. After I decide what to make the wings out of, I'll choose the collar fabric. So far, I'm pleased with how she's coming along.

Oh, her name is Loretta by the way. Once I finish Loretta, I'll probably put her up on eBay.....unless she experiences a mishap along the way. I've been known to let my scissors slip when I try to sew too far into the night. That would be most unfortunate, and ever-so-painful for poor Loretta! Then I'll take a break from the auction business, and move into the gift business. I'm going to make a cat for Olga.

Olga is one of my dad's neighbors in the nursing home. She and I have gotten friendly, and I often visit with her--but only after I've had my dad visit, because he gets jealous! She understands. I always wave or say hello on my way in, and tell her, "I'll be back." She loves to talk about the wonderful Greek cookies she used to make, and she's a very big USC football fan---so I never stop by when there's a big game on.

One day I took my laptop into the home so I could show my dad some family pictures, and when I was done I also showed them to Olga. In addition to family pictures, I had several pictures of my dolls. She loved the cat, and asked me if I would make her one and said she would make sure to tell her daughter to bring the money in ahead of time so she could pay me. But I have no intention of charging her for the cat. Sometimes it makes me feel good to give one away to special people. I only hope it's a cat that likes football!

So I ended up going to the Frank McCourt talk yesterday without Tech Guy. He got a better offer (a boat trip on the lake.) The program was very good, and I enjoyed hearing him talk about his writing process. He writes longhand in a marble composition book.....sometimes in bed with his morning coffee. And he talked about his 30+ years of experience teaching creative writing in NYC high schools. After finding that most of his students were unmotivated to write anything, he assigned them to write excuse notes (for a future child), restaurant reviews of the school cafeteria, and obituaries for themselves and the principal. The students were happy, but apparently a few others weren't smiling.

Work continues on the dust mop sweater. I've finished the back and am now working on the right front. The stitch pattern is challenging and I've had to rip and re-do many times. It turns out that what I've been doing is called tinking, not frogging. Frogging is when you take the work totally off the needles and unravel back to where you made the mistake. Tinking is when you actually unknit stitches one-at-a-time (tink is knit spelled backwards...heh..heh...) I guess tinking is better than frogging when you think about it. But no matter what, it's enough to make me croak....