Lady Adventure

 You need:

• approx. 100g sock yarn (or a small stack of scraps)
• 3.50 mm (E) hook
• one button 

Note: this pattern uses American terms, the British terms are in [brackets].

This cozy snugly fits an iPad 2, the dimensions of which are 9.5 inches (24.12 cm) x 7.31 inches (18.57 cm). Sock yarn is stretchy and I wanted a snugly-fitting cover, so it's slightly smaller than the device itself.

A note about gauge
Gauge. Ugh. What an odious way to begin a pattern. Sadly, it's unavoidable at this point, so let's just get through it as quickly as we can.

This cozy is basically a 12" (30.5 cm) x 12" (30.5 cm) square, made of smaller squares that are 2 inches (5 cm) in diameter. Each square must be 2 in / 5 cm across: I manage this by doing seven rounds with a 3.50 mm hook. If your square is too small after seven rounds, you may have to use a bigger hook - or stick with the same hook and add another round. If your square is too big, you might have to switch to a smaller hook - or stick with the same hook and do one round less. The main thing is, you have a 2 in/5 cm square at the end.
Okey dokey? Off we go.

How many squares do I need?
Brace yourself:


SQUARE
Round 1: Chain two, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below (this counts as your first SC [DC] here and throughout), then do 3 SC (DC) into the circle made by the first chain. *Chain 2 (to form a corner), 3 SC [DC] in the circle*. Repeat from * to ** twice more. You now have a very tiny square, made up of three SC [DC] on each side and two chains in each corner. Join with a slip stitch to the top of the first SC [DC], but be careful not to join in the top of the starting chain.


Round 2: Chain one, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next two stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next three stitches.**
Repeat from * to ** twice more. Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row. Join with a slip stitch to the top of the first SC [DC], but be careful not to join in the top of the starting chain. Note: your square should now have 5 SC [DC] on each side between the 2 chain that form the corner.

Round 3: Chain one, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next three stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next five stitches.**
Repeat from * to ** twice more. Do 1 SC [DC] in next stitch. Join with a slip stitch to the top of the first SC [DC].  (7 SC [DC] on each side between the 2 chain that form the corner.)

Round 4: Chain one, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next five stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next seven stitches.**
Repeat from * to ** twice more. Do 1 SC [DC] in next 2 stitches. Join with a slip stitch to the top of the first SC [DC].  (9 SC [DC] on each side between the 2 chain that form the corner.)

Round 5: Chain one, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next six stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next nine stitches.**
Repeat from * to ** twice more. Do 1 SC [DC] in next three stitches. Join with a slip stitch to the top of the first SC [DC].  (11 SC [DC] on each side between the 2 chain that form the corner.)

Round 6: Chain one, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next seven stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next eleven stitches.**
Repeat from * to ** twice more. Do 1 SC [DC] in next four stitches. Join with a slip stitch to the top of the first SC [DC].  (13 SC [DC] on each side between the 2 chain that form the corner.) 

Round 7: Chain one, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next eight stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next thirteen stitches.**
Repeat from * to ** twice more. Do 1 SC [DC] in next five stitches. Join with a slip stitch to the top of the first SC [DC].  (15 SC [DC] on each side between the 2 chain that form the corner.)

Leave a tail twice as long as the square (can be used to sew the squares together.)

THE WEIRD SHAPE
This is basically a triangle, with another triangle added on to look like a square with a bite taken out of it.


Round 1: Chain two, then do a SC [DC] in the same stitch below (this counts as your first SC [DC] here and throughout), then do 3 SC (DC) into this circle made by the first chain. Chain 2 (to form a corner), 3 SC [DC] in the circle. Turn.

Round 2: Chain one, then do 2 SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next two stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next two stitches and then do 2 SC [DC] in the final stitch. Turn.

Round 3: Chain one, 2 SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next four stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next four stitches and then do 2 SC [DC] in the final stitch. Turn.

Round 4: Chain one, 2 SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next six stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next six stitches and then do 2 SC [DC] in the final stitch. Turn.

Round 5: Chain one, 2 SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next eight stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next eight stitches and then do 2 SC [DC] in the final stitch. Turn.

Round 6: Chain one, 2 SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next ten stitches. Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next ten stitches and then do 2 SC [DC] in the final stitch. Turn. 

Round 7: Chain one, 2 SC [DC] in the same stitch below. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next twelve stitches. *Crochet 1 SC [DC] + 2 chain + 1 SC [DC] in the corner chains of the previous row.  Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next twelve stitches and then do 2 SC [DC] in the final stitch. Turn. 

Now the tricky bit. It involves maths. (My husband helped me with this, so it's probably correct.) Count the stitches you have on one side. If your gauge matches mine, you should have 15 stitches. Use this formula to calculate the number of stitches next needed:
number of stitches on one side multiplied by the square root of two divided by two equals number of stitches
15 x 1.4 (= square root of two) / 2 = 10.5 (-> 11 stitches)

Crochet 11 SC [DC]. Turn.
Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next 9 stitches, crochet 2 SCtog [DCtog] in final two stitches. Turn.
Crochet 2 SCtog [DCtog] in first two stitches, crochet 1 SC [DC] in next 7 stitches. Turn.
Crochet 1 SC [DC] in next 5 stitches, crochet 2 SCtog [DCtog] in final two stitches. Turn.
Crochet 2 SCtog [DCtog] in first two stitches, crochet 1 SC [DC] in next 3 stitches. Turn.
Crochet 1 SC [DC], crochet 2 SCtog [DCtog] in final two stitches. Turn.
Crochet 2 SCtog [DCtog] in final two stitches. Turn.
Crochet 1 SC [DC] in last stitch. Chain 1, leave a long tail of yarn to sew together.

Assembly
Sew the motifs together like this:
 

 

I was at home waiting for news from my sister, Eithne Gingerbread, who was supposed to deliver unto the world a new baby today. The child has Eithne's sense of punctuality and thus took a good fortnight to appear on the scene, but finally did so in a whirl of drama this afternoon. Mother and child are doing well, hurray.

While baby Hannah was adjusting to the world, I was trying to get some odds and ends finished. So I'm going to do a series of little blog postettes about my craft fair endeavours. Most of what I'll show you in these posts will end up being donated to a Christmas bazaar in aid of the local children's clinic - as a result, they're quick and economical to make and rely heavily on a certain cuteness factor as a sales technique. Brace yourselves, crafters. Here we go!

Soap Socks
The idea behind these is that, as the soap shrinks with use, the wool felts through rubbing and the use of hot and cold water. I had loads of these finished, but everyone who has seen them so far has bought one or two off me - which is a good sign, but honestly I have to stockpile a little before Advent starts. They look cute. They smell nice. They're cheap to make (I buy the soap at Aldi - no one sees it because it's sewn into the soap). And even a novice knitter like me can make them.

You need:
felting wool (I can make 4 or 5 socks from one 50g skein)
and a set of DPNs/straight knitting needles.
(I used a size 5 mm.)






Cast on 20 stitches. Divide over four needles, or knit flat.
Row 1: plain
Row 2: purl (If you're knitting flat)
Repeat in stockinette stitch till you have a little tube the length of a bar of soap. Sew up the bottom opening. (If knitted flat, sew up the bottom and side.)

Alternatively,
Cast on 10/11 stitches on your trusty DPNs.
Row 1: Plain
Row 2:  Kfb (knit front and back so you have double the amount of stitches that you started the row with)
Knit until the sock is *nearly* long enough to fit the soap, then
K2tog (knit two together) for one round, so you have 10 or 11 stitches again.
Cast off. Sew up the bottom opening.

 Squeeze the soap into its little sock. Weave the tail of the yarn around the top opening and pull to close the hole. Weave in your tail. Thread a piece of cotton yarn in and out around the top hole and pull tight (as a drawstring), tie it in a bow.
(Wowzers. Knitting patterns are so simple to write, eh?)


Add a label.
Be fancy.
Voilà - or as we say in cyberspace: Waalah!

Here's a copy of a sample label as a Microsoft Word document here.

But does it work, Gingerbread Lady?
 Well, here's the tricky part. Whether the soap sock actually works depends on a number of things. I've found that some soaps are too soft, they turn to mush straight away. Others are too hard to get up a good lather. In order to felt, the yarn needs friction, so the user has to be prepared to scrub hard to felt it! When I give these as gifts, I always say that they're best kept in a drawer among your underthings or linen: they make excellent scent sachets. The wool holds the scent for a long time and the soap normally has a very delicate scent.
 

** 2011 Kit giveaway HERE! **

* Pictures of Socks 1-16 here *

These are especially suitable for people who start pairs of socks with great enthusiasm, which peters off when faced with the prospect of having to crochet the second. If you intend to use these for babies, I’d advise using a yarn with an elastic content to give the socks a bit of stretch – single crochet stitches are less stretchy than knitted stitches (boo!)


You need
3.00mm hook [Americans: use a D hook - 3.25mm!]
approx 14g sock yarn


Abbreviations:
ss – slip stitch
sc – single crochet [dc in British English]
2 sc tog – 2 single crochet together. Here's how you do it:
Insert hook into stitch of previous row, draw yarn through. Put hook into the next stitch, draw yarn through.

You now have three loops on the hook...

draw yarn through all three.



Okey-dokey! Let's get started:

Crochet three chain and join with a slip stitch.
Round 1: Crochet 10 sc into the round. Join with a slip stitch.
Round 2: Slip stitch, crochet 2 SC [DC] into the same stitch. Crochet 2 sc [DC] into each of the other 9 stitches (20 stitches)
Round 3: Slip stitch, 1 sc [DC] into the same stitch. 2 sc [DC] into next stitch. *1 sc [DC] in next stitch, 2 sc [DC] in next stitch. Repeat from * to end of the round (you’ll finish with 2 SC [DC] in the last stitch.) (30 stitches)

Continue to crochet in the round till the foot of the sock is about 8 cms long.


Heel

Row 1: Slip stitch, crochet 2 SC [DC] into same stitch and into the next 14 stitches. Turn. (30 stitches)


Row 2: Slip stitch, crochet 1 SC [DC] in the same stitch and 1 SC [DC] into each stitch after. (30 stitches)


Row 3: In this round you’ll decrease, till you have 15 stitches again. Slip stitch, crochet 2 sc tog. Continue across the row by crocheting two stitches from the previous row together, till at the end you have 15 stitches in total.



Row 4: Slip stitch, crochet 1 SC [DC] in the same stitch and 1 SC [DC] in each stitch in the row. (15 stitches)
Row 5: Slip stitch, crochet 2 sc tog. Continue across the row, till at the end you have 1 stitch left over in the previous row. Crochet 1 SC [DC] in the final stitch. (8 stitches)
Row 6: Slip stitch, crochet 1 SC [DC] in the same stitch and 1 SC [DC] in each stitch in the row. (8 stitches)
Row 7: Slip stitch, crochet 2 sc tog. Continue across the row, till you have 4 stitches in the row. (4 stitches)
Row 8: Slip stitch, crochet 2 sc tog twice – you’ll have 2 stitches.



Ankle
Row 1: Crochet 7 SC [DC] along the side of the previously crocheted rows. This should bring you up to the other 15 stitches that you left aside when you started the heel. 1 SC [DC] in each of these 15 stitches, bringing you back to the other side of the heel. Crochet 7 SC [DC] to the the first stitch in the round. Join with a slip stitch.


You now should have 29 stitches. You just crochet in the round till the ankle shaft has reached the length you want. Here's one I made earlier :-)


Advent Socks
You need
24 wooden clothes pegs (I brushed mine with some white paint)
24 cardboard circles


Stick the cardboard circle to the peg


and draw, paint or collage the number on the circle. I've used foam stickers that I bought at a local crafts store.


Add socks and peg to a long piece of ribbon or string. Tuck in a treat, sweet or small gift.


Two down, twenty-two to go. Thankfully we still have a few months till Christmas!



Bethany said:
These seem really simple and they are cute. What is the easiest way to adapt them to a larger size?


They are VERY simple! Really and truly - you might need to do a practice sock to get the heel down, then it's plain sailing. You could churn them out in your sleep.

Baby sock patterns seemed very complicated to me and I really wanted a pattern that could compete with a knitted pattern in terms of the 'look' of the sock. Single crochet is (IMO) best on a variegated sock yarn so you can see the yarn's stripes.

The simplest way to adapt them to a bigger size is to use a bigger hook and a thicker yarn - that's the cheater's version! Use a 3.75 (F) hook or a 4.25 (G) hook and a thicker yarn, and that will give you a slightly bigger sock without any pattern-fiddling.

Otherwise you will have to experiment a bit with the number of SC you crochet in the round at the beginning, e.g. instead of 30, do 40. Crochet till the sock is approx. 9.5 cm long and then start the heel by doubling the number of SC in 20 of the stitches (2 x SC in each stitch till you have 40, then a row with one SC in each of the 40, then gradually start to decrease by crocheting two together in every other row.) Then crochet around to form the ankle as above.

If you wish to adapt them to a bigger foot - say that of a small child - you might have problems with the heel. This heel pattern works well at smaller sizes because you can decrease quickly to form a "hemisphere" that makes up the ball of a heel. If you have a bigger sock, you will have more stitches in the round and it will take more rows to decrease to the point where you have only 2-4 stitches in the row (the point where you can fashion the ankle.) It's possible that the heel might be too long... I haven't tried it yet! (My biggest problem is that I have no babies or children about to test these sockies on. That's why I'm making an Advent calendar out of them :-)

PS: I find this size chart (it's a PDF) quite helpful as it shows the length of baby feet. There's a small mistake, though: the size of a 1-month baby's foot is not 9 cm it's 8 cm (otherwise, according to this chart, the baby's foot would shrink, not grow, in month 2!)

Today, Sunday - Mothers' Day -  I tried to clean the bathroom.
The point I gave up at was when I was leaning over the bath with my trousers around my ankles, my nearly-one-year-old clutching my knees and joyfully wiping his snotty nose into the cellulitey cushions on the back of my thighs, while the 2.5 year old squirted my knickers with water, joyfully singing "The WHEELS on the BUS go ROUND and ROUND, ROUND and ROUND!"
It was a beautiful moment.
Not.

Ginger of hair and gappy of tooth, he is half-child, half-goblin

I put down the Mr Muscle, pulled up my trousers and gave it up as a hopeless case. That was my Mothers' Day present to myself.

We've had a busy week and that's why the bathroom is filthy and the laundry train got derailed somewhere last Monday. The result of this was that I'd had to root around the depths of my wardrobe to find myself something (reasonably) clean and pounced upon a pair of  pregnancy jeans in desperation. Turns out, pregnancy jeans worn when not pregnant can be yanked down very quickly by thigh-high children and - it turns out - this is a hilarious exercise, especially when accompanied by 72 verses of The Wheels on the Bus. This, dear readers, is life with a one-year-old and a two-year-old.

That's right - you can hop back through the sparse entries of my blog in the last twelve months and establish that a full year has passed since I was waddling around, ready to pop. My younger son Robert is about to turn one! And Mr Gingerbread and I are at a loss as to what he should get for his birthday. The house is full of toys - he has a dozen aunts and uncles, after all - and more clothes than my poor laundry skills can cope with. And, to be honest, we tend to think babies and toddlers want this kind of thing


when in actual fact, my son would really like something like this for his birthday.

A compromise must be found.


I decided to radically attack scraps and half-skeins, and this has been my on-the-side project for the last few weeks.


 Because it's May and the magnolia is blooming and the balcony is beckoning! Hurray!

At the tender age of nineteen, my mother fell pregnant. 'Fell' being the operative word: she kind of tripped over and by the end of that same year, was married and had a child (me). You might think she and my father had learned their lesson, vis à vis important, life-changing decisions regarding family planning, mightn't you? Well, no, they didn't. She fell pregnant again, then she slipped into pregnancy, careened into pregnancy, stumbled into pregnancy - okay, no need to get the thesaurus out to tell you she had eight more children after me. Why didn't she stop, I often wondered? Life as an only child often seemed like a beautiful dream, one where I had a bedroom of my own and a Barbie doll's house, instead of sharing a room with younger sisters, while Barbie lived in a shoebox. My mother maintains that, having attained perfection with their first child, she and my father felt compelled to try to recreate this miracle eight subsequent times. And failed.

Of course, she was cackling with laughter when she said that, so take it with a pinch of salt.

My mother turns A Certain Age today, a round birthday. I can't tell you her age, that would be rude, but you might be able to guess it. She's a tour de force, my mother. She's involved in various committees and boards and groups in our small town, and she claims she's giving them all up ... but I've long suspected that she just likes being in the middle of it all, bossing people around and chairing meetings. I wanted to write a moving tribute to her, but found it difficult to sum up her essence in a few paragraphs. Thus, I decided to tell you about her using some key words.

These are the things she loves:
1. Tea
Ma drinks a lot of tea. Like, a lot of tea. As in: somewhere around ten litres daily (three or four cups an hour ... yup, that's about right). I think her blood is a dun shade of brown, her liver pickled in tannins. When she enters the house, she shouts "That kettle had better be on!" before the door has a chance to fall shut behind her. If someone suffers a trauma, my mother alleviates the situation by shoving a mug under their nose, along with homoeopathic remedies. (But more about them anon.)

2. Tissues
Mother to so many children, a multitude of tissue paper was always needed to keep her and her offspring reasonably clean. She stashes them everywhere: in her pockets, up her sleeves, down her bra. When she removes her jumper due to The Heat (coming to that later as well), a shower of crumpled tissues is released into the atmosphere like snow. If you want to track her down through the house, just look for the tissues.

3. Cigarettes
She's fond of a cig, my mother. Yes, she's tried to give up but 'giving up' just meant that she smoked in the chicken coop instead of the sitting room. Watching my mother puffing under the pear tree in torrential rain throwing desultory scraps at bewildered hens became too much for the family to bear, so she gave up the pretence and smoked inside again.

4. Downton Abbey
I don't quite get this one. I know Downton has a massive appeal that transcends cultural borders, but it's not quite my cup of tea. It's just a soap opera, but with nicer frocks. My mother likes to watch it because of the nice frocks, of course, but also because everyone is jolly nice to each other in a sexless (sorry: s-e-x-less) way and difficult issues are resolved quickly and to everyone's satisfaction, usually by topping one of the characters. When a lead met his doom a couple of seasons ago, my mother - like millions of viewers all over the globe - was aghast. But why? I wondered. Downton Abbey is cursed: pose any kind of difficulty to Mrs and Mrs Downton and their lockjawed offspring, and you'll be killed off! Unwanted girlfriends, wayward daughters, drunken exes, unhappy sons-in-law: the Doomton Abbey will strike you a fatal blow and everyone's grief will be dealt with by the time the village fete takes place, two episodes on.

5. Homeopathy
My mother practises homoeopathy from the cupboard over the deep fat fryer. If anything ails you, she'll produce a small bottle and try to foist pills upon you. You might wave them away, you might point out that the expiry date was 2009, you might not know whether you feel better in hot or cold weather (upon which the success of the remedy hinges), it's often easier to take the pills and pretend they work, regardless of whether or not they do.

Some of the things she dislikes:
1. The Heat
My parents' house is freezing. It's an old stone farmhouse and it's draughty and cold. When you tell my parents this, they are deeply offended.
"This house is perfectly warm!" thunders my father. Not that he's bad-tempered or anything, but he has to thunder so you can hear him through his thermal vest, three t-shirts, woolly jumper and fleece-lined waistcoat. If - God forbid!!!!! - the temperatures in a room should creep towards 17°C or 18°C, panic sets in and my mother goes about flinging windows open
"We'll die of The Heat!" she says, wiping her brow with a tissue she's dug out of her bra.
She has a morbid fear of The Heat. One of her worst nightmares is being at someone's home where they might have - clutch your pearls, readers - central heating on and double-glazed windows. The Heat! Think of The Heat!

Luckily, though, there is something that combats The Heat, namely A Healthy Draught. This is the icy wind that blows down the stair case and whistles under the door, ensuring that the sitting room never gets properly warm. This, my dears, is The Healthy Draught that stops us all from ending up with all kinds of Fevers, Agues, the Humours and all kinds of other Dickensian illnesses that could only be cured by a trip to the cupboard over the deep fat fryer.

2. Strange Food
Strange Food is any kind of food that was not available in Ireland in the 1950s. This covers about 90% of the foodstuff available in Ireland in the 2010s. But this is not just my mother - all of her sisters are the same. When forced to eat anything Foreign - say, pizza or curry - they smile their rigid smiles and raise the fork to their face ... but don't actually put it in. At the last moment, disgust causes them to reflexively turn their faces away. And I'm not joking: I've actually sat at tables and watched my mother and my aunts jab their faces with the silverware, rather than put a spoon of chilli con carne in their mouths.
Oh, go on, then: I'll admit it. It's a funny sight. It's worth dishing up a chicken korma at a family occasion, just to see them struggle with their compulsive politeness and genteel repulsion. Basically my mother would never survive any kind of torture: if someone wanted to get some state secrets out of her, all they'd need to do is force-feed her spaghetti alla carbonara.


3. Alcohol
She doesn't drink. And never has. My mother never touches a drop. She's occasionally been put in a position where taking a sip might be required of her (handed a champagne flute at someone's wedding, for example) but she simply jabs her cheek with it or jams it into her forehead, before hiding it on a table and shedding a layer of outer clothing to combat The Heat.

4. Books with s-e-x
My ma is an avid reader, but a choosy one. Nothing ruins A Nice Book like a steamy scene. Given a choice, she'd like a nice historical novel, where bosoms are encased firmly behind a corset and throbbing members never see the light of day. She has never quite understood the appeal of Fifty Shades of Grey: reading a book about people prancing around in the nip, spanking each other and having s-e-x would be enough to have her go through several tissues at once.

5. Marilyn Monroe
We're going to leave aside the scurrilous rumour that The Blond One had shenanigans with John F. Kennedy - no, we're not even going to go there - and focus on the fact that she is, in the words of my mother, a terrible twit. She can't understand how any man with a screed of sense could possibly fancy her.
(My father thinks she's gorgeous.)

Is that my mother? I think that might give you a sense of her essence. But in actual fact, I can't sum up what she means to me or to my family.
She's the heart that beats at our centre, that's all.
And that's all there is to say.

Let me start by saying that I have never drunk a cup of Starbucks coffee. I "took agin" Starbucks at some point and I can't even remember why any more. I think I was offended at the price of their coffee and their vulgarly large mugs. In addition, I had a college friend who was convinced that Starbucks was secretly plotting to take over the world: they're not a hip and indie little company from Seattle, oh no - the profits from Starbucks go towards some mega-mogul's gold-plated yacht. In my head, this mysterious mogul calls himself Daddy Starbucks and he lies on a sun-lounger on the deck of his yacht smoking Cuban cigars, while silicone-implanted ladies in tiny bikinis do the Macarena on the bow of the ship. I don't know why I have this image, but it's hard to fork out fistfuls of euros for a cup of coffee that I can make in my own house (three minutes away) when Daddy Starbucks is cackling wildly in the back of my mind and making the bikini girls do the hokey cokey.

Anyway, while my brother John and Father Gingerbread see Steve Jobs of Apple as a Visionary of Our Time, Mr Jobs is my husband's Daddy Starbucks. I have not taken agin Mr Jobs - I don't feel threatened by a man in turtleneck sweaters - but Mr Gingerbread was unusually tight-lipped at my decision to line the coffers of the Apple Inc by buying an iPad. And let me add that I am possibly the only person in the world who has only bought the iPad for work: I've no interest in playing games on it and the only apps (see how I bandy the techno jargon about already!) I've downloaded (for free!) so far are e-readers to peruse the extensive and free collection of literary classics ... and a calculator.

Having said that, though, I must admit (whisper it) that I love it. I love it. Since I bought it four days ago, I've been going in and out to my husband telling him all the stuff it can do:
"... And then, see, there's this programme here, see, and you can take a picture of a leaf and then the iPad tells you what kind of tree it comes from. And look at this, look, this is the solar system. You can look at the stars and it'll tell you what you're looking at and, look - you're not looking! - this is an encyclopaedia of animals. Look, that's a muskrat. Cool, eh? And, look here's a - "
He steers me back to my desk: "That's nice, dear. Have fun."
"But, no, wait, look - here's a collection of historical maps of the world. Look, you can see Germany in 1752, look - "

So I decided to risk the Sweater Curse and make my iPad a jumper out of some of the tiny scraps of colourful sockyarn I had left over from my scrap yarn projects:

Like most Europeans, I grew up familiar with a whole host of American cultural references that I both knew intimately and, at the same time, knew nothing about. As a result, a kind of cultural wistfulness ensues - a yearning for the 4th of July picnic you never had (= and I really don't like picnics). A longing for Twinkies and Hershey's Peanutbutter Cups (= anything with a 20-year shelf-life scares me and I hate peanuts). You end up with a mishmash knowlege of unknown and unknowable events. For example:

THE PROM
A big dance that means A Lot to American teenagers. Usually full of mean, bitchy girls who try to become Homecoming Queen (???) but this role inevitably falls to the Ugly Duckling nerdy girl who looks like the long-lost female member of The Proclaimers (for those of you who don't know The Proclaimers: Shame On You. They're the Scottish duo that brought the world the infamous ear-worm '500 Miles'. Anyway.) Girl turns up at dance transformed into a vision of beauty by kindly fairy-godmother-like friends, glasses discarded, braces dumped (orthodontists US-wide shudder at the thought) and the dumpy saddlebags we thought she sported beneath her baggy jeans turn out to be slender, race-horse-like thighs. She ends up with the most popular chap in the school, who is a Jock (no idea what that is. I think it might be good. It sounds a bit rude, though.) This is what always happens at a prom.

So there you go.
Every now and again, though, something exciting happens in the form of something mundane: you get something that you've grown up hearing about and, although it's very boring and everyday in the other culture, it's desperately exciting in your grubby paws. Hence my excitement when I first encountered - tada! -
Kool Aid!


Let me backtrack a bit:
I saw pictures on the Interwebz of other people's hand-dyed yarns. And every other dyer used Kool-Aid. Sure, I'd heard of the stuff - it aids you become kool - but wasn't sure what it was, exactly. I did some research and discovered that it's kind of a powdery stuff that you add to water to create a flavoured drink. Reading up on other people's sites, I also discovered that it is to be treated like a dangerous substance: people recommended wearing latex gloves. Latex gloves! Covering countertops with plastic! Wearing an apron or old clothes! It seemed quite exciting: I mean, the little packets look innocuous enough - they're in vibrant, primary colours and feature a little cartoon jug, full to the brim with toxically bright liquid, smiling reassuringly ("Drink me! Drink me!") but they seem to have the potential to Wreak Havoc on your kitchen. Frankly, dear readers, I was intrigued. It is not often that one can hope for an element of danger whilst crocheting, so the opportunity to dabble in what was very obviously a foolhardy and reckless undertaking with a clearly dangerous substance was just too much to resist.

So I obtained Kool-Aid. I was sent some by Nicole (hi, Nicole!), my swap partner, and found a handful of packets in a Chinese-American shop. Let me get that clear: it's run by a Chinese family who stock Asian and American food, as opposed to a Chinese-American family.
"Is this stuff nice?" I asked the two hip and happening young Asian men at the counter.
"Eeeuugggh, God, no - " said one of them. "The only one you can drink is grape. The rest are - " and he finished the sentence with a series of graphic sound effects.
Cautiously, I sniffed a packet of mango-flavoured powder. Bleeurgh. I don't know in which universe mangoes smell like this, but hey - the things I do for my readers.

Home I went.
I set up two chairs in the living room and started winding my yarn. I wound it into skanks (as Mr G insists on calling them. His English is v. v. good but he has occasional vocabulary flights of fancy - he seems to be mixing up hanks and skeins with unfortunate results).











The yarn is from the 99c store: apparently no one except me wants undyed sock yarn. (And, mind you, I not only want it, I want it all. But I just bought 4 for starters.) We watched a couple of YouTube tutorials and marched into the kitchen.

Let me just tell you that we're not usually a let's-share-our-hobbies kind of couple, but Mr G is a chemist, so I thought he'd be handy to have on hand. I thought he'd enjoy spending time with his wife, pottering about, mixing stuff, but he declined:
"It stinks," he said, "It just stinks. I can't be in the same room as this stuff" - said the man who spends the day in a lab juggling beakers of nitric acid and ammonia. I wasn't as sensitive to the smell, it was very sweet and somewhat ... chemical. Not that they're trying to hide it: the packet is clearly marked with the words ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR (but, please note, they are also caffeine free and a source of vitamin C!)

Intrepid is my middle name (actually, it's not, it's Brigid) so I proceeded to dye. And it was fabulous. Fabulous. It was messy and unpredictable (the browny skein was supposed to be more of a blue/purple combo but I threw in a packet of the stinky mango at the end and it all came out kind of ruddy-coloured) and let me add that I did not use latex gloves. I did not cover anything. No aprons were donned during the dyeing of this yarn - in fact, I actually dyed my yarn wearing one of the few white tops that I possess. I didn't have 'proper' equipment: I used Nutella jars, my spaghetti pot and an old chopstick as a pokey device. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing, so I just did what I felt was right. It was nerve-wracking from start to finish - but you know me, readers, I like to sail close to the wind. And this is the result:


Not great, eh? But I got better:


Today I am going back to the 99c shop to stock up on white yarn. I'm going to wrestle the last packets of Kool-Aid from the hip Asian boy's hands and I'm going to dye my little heart out.
Huzzah, readers! I have found a new passion!