Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts August 17, 2009

So I was born in Guam and lived there up until I was two, when we moved to Long Beach.  Stories from then tend to revolve around the family friends.  When Mom and Dad got engaged my dad got transferred to Hawaii about a week after (he was there for like 1 1/2 years), and Mom had to fly by herself to Guam and wait for him.  The friends my Dad had in Guam took her in without any questions and treated her like one of their own.  That’s just how it was on the island, either because it’s such a small island, or if its just the laid back feeling, the people tend to be very open and friendly.  In fact Dad used to say that every weekend someone held a party, and practically everyone on the island is invited.  Anyway, with my dad and mom being so far away from their homes, Guam became their home, and their friends became their family.  In a lot of ways Guam is more of home to them then the mainland is, and in many ways those friends are closer to them then their actual family is.  When they lived in Guam it was just open arms and friendships that were closer to family then family was.

In fact most of my godparents are Chamoru (yes, multiple godparents :p), except for my (official) godmother.  Which brings me to why I started writing this, aside from my thoughts, thoughts, thoughts (of course).  I was bored one day and started reading this guys blog (and tweets) and saw that their new video was filmed in Hawaii.  Then he posted this and tweeted this.  All of those things remind me of my godmother, why you ask (and what the hell does that have to do with Guam, you ask?).  I mentioned before that my godmother isn’t Chamoru, her husband (my official godfather) is though, my godmother is actually ethnically Hawaiian.  They moved to Hawaii soon after we moved to Long Beach, so whenever anyone, anywhere, mentions Hawaii I automatically think of them.

My parents lost touch with them (and a lot of other friends) while they started over in Cali, settling in a new home and repairing damaged family ties.  They lost touch with my godparents, I’ve seen my godfather in pictures, and I still have the baby clothes my godmother crocheted for me when they brought me home from the hospital as a newborn.  In fact the requisite baby blankie every child has, and makes threadbare, is a baby blankie I now use as a throw (as in blanket, not “Here, catch this ball of cotton!”).  It’s just a simple quilt blanket, the perfect size for a baby born on a  little South Pacific Island, but it’s special enough that my mother put it in storage before I got so attached to it to the point where I would have made it threadbare.  She knew what it would have meant for me to have it when I was older, because she knew what it meant to the person who made it, see my godmother hand stitched every single square.  Something, in a society where we tend to take things like blankets for granted, most people don’t really understand what it means to make something like that by hand.

Knitters, crocheters, and sewers have a saying that “I knit/crochet/sew every single stitch with love”, as someone who does all three, and as corny as that that saying is, I understand what it means.  So even though I never grew up knowing what she looked like, or knowing the sound of her voice, I still know who my godmother is.  Because I have her hand stitched baby blanket she made, her hand crocheted baby clothes she made, her hand crocheted “baby’s first x-mas ornament” she made, and because of all those stories my father tells me about Guam and my ‘Aunts and Uncles’.  All those things tell me what kind of people my godparents are, and why they became my godparents in the first place.

About two years ago, a couple months after my abuela died, I started wanting to contact them.  A couple months after that my dad found a number and he called to find out if they were the same person, and they were.  Unfortunately we never really could find the right time to call or answer and we kept missing each other.  This was around the same time when we moved, a hectic time in and of itself, and some other stuff happened causing us to lose the number in the chaos.  Reading that guys stuff, and watching the video, reminded me that I had someone who celebrated my birth, someone who was probably waiting to know what kind of adult that little baby became.

I think I’ll start searching for their address and/or phone number again :3

tl;dr Waaaah, its that “overly emotional” time of the month for meh and I wanna find out where teh godparents are~ … also that guy

Btw “that guy” is Geo from Blue Scholars, and here’s the video I was talking about…

Random Facts:

1. I updated my Crafty Chango blog, and it has teh pancit foodage!!!
2. I has a twitter!!!
3. I’m currently listening to:  Mediodía by Café Tacuba (I want un helado now…)
4. I’m currently in love with:  El Cocodrilo by Maldita Vecindad
5. I crave teh orxata ;_;
6. WP wasn’t loving teh vimeo embed x_x srly…

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Work in Progress October 11, 2008

So I started another hat a while back :3  I got the pattern from creativeyarn so cute~  And a lot of her other stuff is nice, the cowl neck capelet is on my to-do-NOW list.

I of course have to modify things a bit, considering my head size, and the shear amount of hair I have (I swear its about the size of my entire head right now x_x).  I’m making it bigger my using a larger weight yarn and a larger hook, that seems to work for me, in fact while I’m working on it it kind of looks a little larger then it should be >_> if that’s the case I’ll just make it an oversized beret ^^;;

Pretty color yarn~  It’s Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Rose Heather.  Easy yarn to considering this is my second hat and I have to modify hat patterns, its 80% Acrylic and 20% wool.  I had the hat partway done when I saw Lei last month, only I had to unravel everything since I had started with one hook and then at some point I switched hooks.  Why you ask?  The hell if I know @_@ I just noticed it was looking a little too huge and I knew my head wasn’t THAT big.  So I had to unravel and start all over XD

On a side note, nice fabric?  I guess you can call it vintage it has that 70’s look to it keke.  It’s actually the underside of my baby blanket my godmother made me when I was born.  My mom hid it away so I wouldn’t become overly attached to it and make it threadbare lol, so now I use it as a throw.

Malaise de L’Orange and crochet? September 25, 2008

Technorati Tags: ip2much,craft,crafty,crochet,hat,beret,tam,rasta,stitches,pattern,Malaise de L’Orange,orange,DeviantArt,DA

So a while back (last year?) I found this photograph (rather a vignette) of an orange, Malaise de L’Orange by ~weem.  Anyway, at the time I thought it was cute ^_^ it was a project for the artists multimedia class and they put up a video of the completed project on youtube XD so cute and funny~

Malaise de L’Orange

and since were on the subject of citrus o_O urm, I’ve been on a bit of a softie/plushie binge and found Tangerine and Sons by ~FrealaF on DA.  Its so cute, she did each individual tangerine segment and they all go into the tangerine :3 it has a little zipper in the back where they all fit.

Now onto crochet~  Lei wanted pics of my hat (rasta, tam, beret or whatever the hell it is x_x) so I decided just to post it here lol eheh, which reminds me I still haven’t sent them to Lei.  I wanted to try sewing a cloche, only if I make it I’d want to wear it, and my head’s just too big and my hair is just too unruly for me to be wearing something like a cloche TT_TT  I think I’ll opt for a newsboy if I’m gonna sew a hat.

I started from the top/center and worked my way around, the top/back (?) of it is just double crochet then the puff stiches then the weave (woven?  a.k.a. front and back post) stitches then single and you’re done :3.  Here’s the pattern if you wanna try.  Mine’s just modified a little with the woven stitched and enlarged a bit to accommodate my big head lol.  Mine’s also in acrylic since its my first hat and I wanted to just check out how it would turn out :3  Hrmm, I’ve been meaning to get a foam head to put my hats on (and for sewing a mask, mmm foamy usefulness)  but I haven’t been able to find a place that sells them around here, and I don’t really want to buy online, so my lamp will just have to do.

And as long as were along the lines of crochet and softies~ Nelly and her wiener (right) by *ip2much on deviantART is probably one of my favorite amigurumi’s on DA done by an incredible artist whose name is just a little disturbing .  She also did Mary had a little beaver… (left), the story is urm interesting LOL.