Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday!  I was thinking a lot about her today, of course, and even got to Skype with her for a few minutes, which was awesome and much needed.  She was 28 when I was born, which means by the time she was my age she was dealing with 13 year old me (and brother and sister were 17 and 20).  I can't really imagine have a 13 year old, let along a 17 and 20 year olds.  I was also thinking about all of the stress I must have put her through even before I got to be a moody, angsty, annoying 13 year old.  For instance, before I was 5 or 6 I had: a giant sliver in my foot that had to be removed by a doctor. A pencil lead in my knee that had to be removed by a doctor and required stitches. I split my chin open on the side of the pool and had to get stitches. Then when that was barely heeled I jumped up at the pharmacy counter to try and see and split my chin open again (no stitches that time!).  I laid my arm on the wood stove (still have the scar). Fell on the sidewalk at school and tore a giant chunk out of my knee (same knee as the pencil lead!). My forehead had an encounter with a nail and I freaked her out completely when I came in with my hand over my eye and blood everywhere and she thought I'd poked my eye out. I somehow got my ankle bone caught in the spokes of my brother's bike while we were riding it (there was much blood and a very nice lady who came out to sit with me). I cracked my collar bone somersaulting over someone's foot  (I went through a phase where I preferred to somersault rather than walk).  I got glasses around 2nd grade, which is fairly normal, but then started needing a new prescription every 6 months, so ended up on daily atropine drops and had to have bifocals in 5th grade. My freshman year I broke my wrist during volleyball practice.  My Junior year I ended up in the ER with a bruised sternum.  My senior year I somehow managed to dump boiling water on my wrist (same one I broke [still have that scar, too]). I was an expensive and stressful kid and my mom was my primary care giver.  Can I just take the opportunity to say I'm terribly sorry?  It's not nearly enough, not even a tiny percentage of a fraction of enough, but here are some shoes to say thank you (they all have hearts on them for love):

Look at these fun colors!  I wouldn't generally wear heart-themed shoes, but these are cute.  And Zazzle, not surprisingly.

I just now noticed the broken hearts on this.  Probably appropriate as I'm sure I broke my mom's heart on more than one occasion.

I love baby shoes.  And conversation hearts.  True story.

Yay for some green, which is Mom's favorite color!

Adorable.  The PB needs a pair.  AND my mom can knit, unlike me, so she could totally make these.  Not that I will ask her because it's her birthday and she's done enough for me already.

Love you, Mom!

This post brought to you by parentheses.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

Kanit

Remember how Friday's calendar picture was such a nice surprise?  Well, then yesterday I flipped to the weekend picture and found 

this.  What are these?  WHY are these?  And more importantly, why do the weird ones have to be on the weekend so I have to look at them for 2 days?

So.  I'm only showing you this, but not doing the rest of the post around it.  Instead, I'm going off of inspiration from the Pinterest Friend.

It's a clock that knits one scarf per year.  A knitting clock!  I don't know how it works, and frankly I don't care because I'm just going to pretend it's magic, like Molly Weasley's knitting needles.

 

Of course we're now going to look at knit shoes.  Knitting and crocheting are similar in some ways, but I feel like you can do a lot more intricate patterns with knitting vs. crocheting.  And that sucks.  It sucks because I can't knit.  OK, I technically CAN knit because my awesome mother (who can both knit and crochet) taught me.  But I've been crocheting for around 30 years, and she tried teaching me about 10 years ago.  At 20 years in my muscle memory was pretty well in place, and while I could do it I was super slow at it.  Which was frustrating because I'm fast with crocheting.  Clearly I have no patience.  At any rate, I think these are interesting.  I like the purple ones best, then gray, then blue.  Blue will probably never forgive me.

 

See?  Green and black plaid sneakers.  You could maybe do something similar with crochet, but it wouldn't look as seamless and it would be bulkier.

 

Baby shoes are one place where I feel like crochet isn't the red headed step child.

Patterns!  I always want to be able to do intricate patterns.

Adorableness!

Bright adorableness!

And that's my post on knitting.  (which if you are around my father, you always pronounce the k.  He also calls people who crochet "hookers."  Eye roll)