Curly Hair Tie

I was playing around with a hair tie, a bit of yarn, and a crochet hook today, and this is what came out.

This is the first honest-to-goodness pattern that I have ever designed, created, and written down, so I cannot promise that the pattern will be flawless or the easiest thing to follow. If you notice any issues or would like anything clarified just let me know and I will do my best to fix whatever you find. Thanks!


Curly Hair Tie

MATERIALS

Crochet hook size H/8 – 5.00mm

A small amount of Worsted Weight yarn

One average-size hair-tie

sc = single crochet

ch = chain

INSTRUCTIONS

40 sc around hair-tie. Join with a slip stitch to first sc.

*sc, Ch 6.  2 sc in each ch (10 sc) back down until you reach the sc again. sc in next sc around. sc 3* Repeat around band. Join to first sc in round with a slip stitch.

Bind off and weave in ends.

---The tighter the chain and sc stitches into that chain, the tighter the curl will be on the “curlies”.---

---More or fewer curlies can be made as preferred, and their length is entirely a matter of preference.---

***Please do not sell this pattern, and credit me as the designer if you use it online or link to it. Pattern is for personal use only.***

The Kids' Table

Today, for no great reason, I feel like ruminating on “The Kids’ Table”. This of course is the table that is designated for all the younger generation during meals involving extended family or friends.

The Adults’ Table is generally the largest and longest table used for group gatherings, and sometimes made of several smaller tables, such as folding tables, fitted end to end to create one long table as if in a Great Hall. This table has the best tablecloths and furnishings, and is where all the best dishes reside once the food is served. All the chairs for the dinner table, and any appropriate good chairs from around the house proper are brought to encircle this table.

The Kids’ Table is a smaller affair, often with a picnic-style tablecloth that can be wiped (or hosed) off when necessary as the meal progresses, or no tablecloth at all, just the bare top making it all the easier to wipe up drops, spills, and such. It may have chairs of any type, most often not matching and generally including the folding chairs from the closet or attic as the good chairs that would normally go with the table have been commandeered by the adults. Benches are also a possibility at this table, as you can fit more wriggling giggling kids on a bench than on individual chairs around the table.

The Kids’ Table belongs to all those who count themselves children, or who are still deemed to be children by the adults, who send a child to the aforementioned table when he attempts to sneak a seat at the larger table. This sneaking, while bold, is not terribly well thought out, since a child in most respects does not at all resemble an adult, and the parents of the child are almost sure to among the adult company and will call out the little truant from where he sits and send them back to the company of his own generation. Also, at the Adults’ Table there is rather defined seating, with couples paired up side by side or across from each other. This makes it difficult for a child to sneak in as the seats have most likely already been claimed by the time a child thinks of sitting down to eat. More often, the kids are herded to their table when the adults have decided it is time to do so, and they were happily ignorant of the time or the necessity of having dinner be more than the appetizers set about on trays and in little dishes around the house. There is no distinction of seating at the Kids’ Table, such as all from one direct family sitting together. Sisters, brothers, cousins, friends, and the neighbor kid from down the street all pile around this table in a general disorder, with seating going on a catch-as-catch-can arrangement and frequently changing throughout the meal.

The Kids’ Table has always been my preference, as adult conversation rarely proves to be as enjoyable as the giggling and play of the Kids’ Table. We overgrown kids had held that table for quite a while too, well into our twenties, and the eldest of us into our early thirties, as there was not another generation below us yet to push us up into the Adult status. It was easy to justify staying at the Kids’ Table, since the family has been lucky enough to retain almost all of its adult members. Those few who were lost to separation, distance, or the march of mortality were replaced by adult guests or adult additions to the family by way of marriage. Allowing guests and newcomers to sit with the adults was only proper and polite of course, and quite agreeable still to all the over-age “children” who preferred to stay and giggle with their childhood table comrades.

It is finally time for my generation to begin moving out of the Kids’ Table for earnest though. Several of the “kids” now have children of their own. A few of these children are even of an age to be able to sit at a table by themselves and be trusted with food and utensils, and the rest seem to be racing Time and each other to see who can grow up the fastest and obtain a treasured place at the Kids’ Table. There is nothing more sobering to a generation of once-children than seeing another generation of their own creation usurp the long-held place they had come to know. Ah well, Time marches on, and every generation must take its place in the line of Adults sooner or later. The only trouble now is that the Adult table will need another leaf or two added to hold all of our newly displaced members.  

Treasure Banks

I know it has been quite a while since my last post, but I am still getting used to this whole blogging idea. It is unnerving from time to time to be sending my thoughts out onto the web for all to see. But I am back now, so we shall see if I can get a steadier run of posts this time.

Here in Portland we had dire warning of a huge snowstorm that would dump 6 inches of snow in one day, which is pretty much unheard-of in Portland. We did get a few inches, but it came in classic Portland fashion: look outside, wait 5 minutes, look again, and you will see completely different weather. In my area of town, it snowed hard in the morning, got sunny and melted everything away midday, then snowed again in the afternoon, but was not really serious about it at that point, and the roads stayed clear. Today all that is left of the not-so-huge snowstorm are a few patches of snow in shady spots, but even those are fading as the sun climbs higher.

During the sunny break, my husband and I went out to lunch and to get birdseed for the poor little yard birds that hang around our deck. While getting said birdseed, I found 4 adorable little coin banks that I decided needed to come home with me. They are each about the size of my palm, and can only hold about a fistful of change, but they have so much promise to them.

Coin banks have always held a certain magic to me. They hold treasure, not just leftover coins from larger bills. In your pocket the coins are just loose change jingling about an being not good for much of anything, especially if they are pennies. Anymore, change is mostly for vending machines, and some of those take a card now and don't need change at all. But put that loose change into a coin bank, and it becomes treasure. It takes on a wonderful, magical quality full of potential and a touch of the unknown. Who knows how much is inside, or what denominations of coins are in there. It is secret hidden in a treasure chest with only a single slot to allow the addition of more treasure but it does not reveal the secrets of what is locked inside. In their own quiet way humble little coin banks stir up the mystery and adventure of pirate chests and dragon hoards; buried treasure and sunken gold just waiting to be found.

With each "chink" of a dropped coin being added to the stash, the potential held inside a coin bank grows. There is so much that could be done with those coins that it is almost overwhelming at times, adding a sort of awe to the idea of uncorking that treasure trove and counting out the contents. Like uncorking a Genie's bottle, you never quite know what is going to come out. It is a wonderful mystery and a surprise, the clink and chank and jangle of coins pouring out, then the rattling scramble as you fish out the last few coins that staunchly refuse to emerge from their lair. Finally the shining pile of silver and copper, maybe even gold from the odd dollar coin, lays in a pile, your own hoarded treasure set out before you.

From here it can be counted, sorted, taken to the bank to be turned into bills or digital money. But really, I like best to shake it out, see it all, smell that acrid tang of gathered change, then put it back into the coin bank and cork it back up. Only when the bank becomes so full that it can hold no more change, cannot accept a single dime more, does the change get put into a bag, it own portable treasure trove like Robin Hood took from rich travelers, and taken to the bank to be turned into a more mundane form like dollar bills and debit card amounts.

Sure bills and bank cards are more useful, but all the wonderful unknown of a coin bank makes it so much more than the sum of its captured coins.

A note regarding the title

Before I get very far into this blogging adventure, I ought to explain the title of my blog. "Thought Yarn" is a term I came up with to describe all the bits and pieces of stories and characters and ideas I come up with and have no plans for how to use them. They are bouncing around in my head, stuffed away in drawers and folders and binders, and saved into the archives of my computer to potentially see the light of day again  at some later date.

I am the same way with yarn as I am with these thoughts and ideas that I discover and have no clue what to do with but cannot discard. When I go into a craft store I always have to browse through the yarn before I can leave. More often than not this browsing leads to buying, and a ball or two of yarn follows me home. I usually have no immediate plans for this newly acquired yarn, but someday I will come up with something to do with it. Until then, it goes to live in the laundry hamper that holds my stash of soft and squishy rainbows.

So this blog will become my idea-stash, just like the laundry hamper is my yarn-stash. Day by day I will toss in new ideas that I simply have to keep for no particular reason other than the fact I want them for later, just in case. Thus, the thoughts and ideas that will build up over time in this blog are my balls of though yarn, just waiting for the perfect project to come along and use them.

Away we go!

Here I am at my very first blog, sending my thoughts and randomness out into the nothing and everything of the internet. If you were to ask me right now why I decided to write a blog, I could honestly not tell you. "It sounded like a good idea" is really no reason at all, since it has no justification behind it. I could say I read in magazines that it would be good to increase my online presence and make myself more noticeable, but I have nothing written or published as yet to be noticed. 

I suppose the best reason I can come up with to keep a blog right now is for the deadline. This is a place I have to come to submit my work. If I were still in school I would have to be handing in homework and finishing assignments on schedule. If I was writing for a contract I would have a deadline to meet. But I am no longer an enrolled student and I do not have a writing contract with an agent or publisher. Instead I will have a contract with this blog, and with you my reader, whoever and wherever you are. 

What I write will more often than not be completely random. My topics will be dictated by whim, interest of the moment, thought of the day, caffeine levels, or if all else fails a writing prompt from one of my many helpful handbooks for getting words on (virtual) paper. I make no promises as to content. The only goal I have for this blog is to get myself to sit down and actually write on a regular basis. I need to make time in my life for writing if I am ever going to become the author I want to be, and nothing I have tried as yet has kept me honest to myself and my goals. Hopefully this blog will be what I need to get myself motivated and regulated. 

With no further ado, off we go into a new writing adventure!