A "Welcome to the World" Gift

On my birthday in August 2021, when my parents and sister came to my house for a birthday lunch, my favourite gift of any that I received was the news that my nephew Luke and his wife were expecting their first child in February 2022. Of course, my immediate response was to start planning what I was going to make for my impending grandniece or grandnephew. By the end of that day I had decided I would make the baby a baby blanket, a pair of booties, and a framed counted cross stitch motif with the baby's name on it out of a kit I had on hand. I selected suitable patterns for both a baby boy and a baby girl, and messaged Luke with my congratulations and a request that he let me know if he and his wife were having a grandniece or grandnephew in advance, as I'd be making something for the baby and would need some lead time. In due course, he dutifully let me know that they were expecting a boy. 

The pattern you see above is the one I'd selected for a boy, the ABC Baby Blanket, designed by Jenny Williams. It's an attractive, easy, quick knit. It could even be an excellent stash buster if one knitted the squares in different colours, but I wanted a solid colour for my version. 

The yarn I chose was Lion Brand's Wool Ease in the Stillwater shade, which is what I would describe a light sea green. It's 20% wool, 80% acrylic, which gives it both the nice feel of wool and makes it easy care and (I hope!) durable, which is just what one wants in a baby blanket, especially if this particular baby has inherited his father's trick stomach. 

This project knitted up quickly and without issue. As I worked, I thought back to the baby blanket I had made for Luke when he was born in September 1987, just a month after my fourteenth birthday. In those days I didn't have much access to patterns or yarn. I never even knew Vogue Knitting magazine existed at that point -- that revelation would come when I saw it on the newsstand in a convenience store when my mother and I stopped to get milk one evening the following spring. The baby blanket that I made for Luke wasn't made according to a pattern at all. I knitted a number of garter stitch squares in pastel blue and white baby yarn, and sewed them together. I'd never make something so basic now. I don't think I even wove in the ends, and I know the squares weren't properly seamed together. I was, after all, only thirteen. But that hackwork baby blanket became Luke's blankie and he was very, very attached to it. Over the next several years Blankie became very much the worse for the wear. It was no longer the fresh blue and white it had been when new, but rather grayish, with a number of "you don't even want to know what made that" stains and discolourations, and was fraying and raveling in a number of places. It got to the point that it was such a repulsive object that I could never see it without wanting to scream, "KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!" and stuff it in the wood stove at my brother's farmhouse. 

Then one mid-winter day when Lukie was four, he took his blanket outdoors with him when he went out to play, left it outside, and didn't realize it was missing until bedtime. Luke became agitated and wanted a search to be made, but trying to find a grayish blanket after nightfall on a farm in mid-winter in Southwestern Ontario is an exercise in futility if I ever heard of one. The blanket could have been anywhere in quite a large, unlit area, there were piles of snow everywhere, and it had snowed that afternoon. My brother tried to take the tough love approach, saying to him firmly at eight o'clock, "No Luke, you took your blanket outside when you shouldn't have and you lost it, and you're just going to have to go to bed without it and we'll have a look for it tomorrow." This stern parental reasoning was apparently lost on Luke, as when ten o'clock arrived he was still screaming. Sympathy, substitutes, bribes, and threats were also of no avail. My brother and his wife were, as my sister-in-law has put it, "out there like a pair of fools with flashlights and shovels until well past eleven" in a desperate effort to find the blanket, while Luke stood at the storm door, alternately and repeatedly screaming, "FIND IT!!!!! FIND IT!!!!!" and sobbing loudly. They couldn't find it. Luke ultimately passed out from sheer exhaustion at about midnight, after he'd been carrying on non-stop for four hours straight.  

I have thought of that first baby blanket I ever made and of that incident every time I have knitted a baby blanket since, and hoped I wasn't kickstarting a similar chain of events for the new baby's poor parents. And now I've come full circle, and have knit a baby blanket for Luke's son. I wouldn't wish an evening like that on any parent, but I suppose if it should happen my brother and his wife's reaction will be something along the lines of, "PAYBACK SOMETHING SOMETHING, LUKIE."   

The finished blanket. It's much nicer than the one I made for Luke, with a better design, better yarn, and better workmanship, and I am pleased with it, but I can't help feeling that perhaps it should have been scarlet or some other eye-catching colour, lest it get left outside at night. 

I purchased all new yarn for this blanket, and had 55 grams leftover, so that's a stash increase of 55 grams. 

When I first began searching Ravelry for patterns for a baby blanket and booties for my nephew's child, I thought something hockey-related would be a fun idea. Luke loves hockey as much as most Canadian men do, which is to say to an extent that is beyond all reason. During a hockey game in late 2007, when Luke was 20 years old, he got hit in the face with a puck, and it smashed four of his teeth. Luke proceeded to remain on the ice, playing and spitting out fragments of teeth, until the game was over. Surely my needlework skills could produce a softer, gentler tribute to his love of hockey than his dental work. I initially even toyed with the idea of making a Maple Leafs baby blanket in tribute to Luke's favourite team, but I would have had to design one myself, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing, and besides, this baby is an Albertan. I don't want him to be a social outcast or a laughingstock among all his baby friends. 

Among the hockey-related patterns to be found on Ravelry were a few designs for hockey skate booties. There were both knitted and crocheted examples of that design concept, but though I don't enjoy crocheting, there was no denying that the crocheted version was much cuter. Generally speaking, crocheting is stiffer than knitting, but while knitting tends to be the better choice for clothing because it drapes better, crocheting often takes the lead when it comes to shaped objects like toys, and one wants the object to hold its shape. The sample knitted hockey skate booties looked so limp and floppy compared to the crocheted ones. I set my teeth, resigned myself to crocheting my grandnephew's booties, and went with the Newborn Hockey Skate Booties, designed by Jamie Louise. When I checked my yarn stash, I was pleased to discover that I had black, gray, and white worsted yarns on hand that were suitable for this project. I no longer have the ball bands for any of the three yarns I used, but they were run-of-the-mill acrylic worsteds. I did have to buy a 3.75mm crochet hook, but now I'll have that size hook in my crochet hook collection for the next time I need one. You can see the resulting booties above, and I think they turned out well, and that Luke will get a kick out of them. 

These booties, which were made entirely out of stash yarn, weighed in at 50 grams when finished, so that's a stash decrease of -50 grams. 

    

 

Several years back, I happened to come across some counted cross stitch kits in Dollarama for $3.50 each, which is a very good deal for that sort of kit -- one could easily pay ten times as much for a comparable kit from a regular retail outlet. With money so tight, I try very hard not to buy things for the indefinite future, as I need to focus on fulfilling my many immediate needs, and I didn't even know of any impending babies at the time. However, these kits (which were all the same pattern) were so very cute and the price was such a great bargain that I made an exception and bought three kits. After all, I was very likely to use them all eventually. Then, when I got to cash register, the kits rang in at $3 a kit, which put the total expense after tax at $10.17. 

On the day I heard that there was a new baby on the way, I thought almost immediately of those three gifts, and went to the attic to get one of them out of the chest of drawers where they were stored, pleased that my investment had been justified, or at least 33.33333% justified. I started the kit that very night. I think it took me about two months' of needlework time to finish it, although I worked at it in fits and starts between August and January. By the end of January, I'd finished all of the cross stitch but the little section that was to contain the baby's name, and I'd also bought a thrift shop frame for it, and researched how to frame needlework. 

Sawyer was born in mid-February, and I got right to work on the name section, finishing it in a matter of days. Then it was time to frame it. I'd never done any framing to speak of before. Professional framing used to be one of my few extravagances, but I can no longer afford such a thing, and it was time to learn to do it myself. I paged through a book on framing that I'd bought at a thrift shop some years back, and looked at online tutorials and videos until I felt I had some idea of what I was doing. 

The simple wooden frame I bought at Value Village for this cross-stitch piece was the right width but something like 2.75" too wide, so I removed the bottom edge, cut down the sides using my handsaw and mitre box, and glued and nailed the frame back together. I then cut a piece of foam core board to fit the frame, and mounted the cross stitch on that using sequin pins. Then it was pop the foam core board into the frame, turn down the little metal tabs at the back, stick on a backing of brown craft paper, and add a hanging wire to the back. It turned out pretty well for a first attempt at framing. The needlework isn't perfectly straight, but it's straighter than either of the two professionally framed pieces of needlework I have in my house. And I like the way the tone of the wood accords with the colours in the cross stitch. It should make a nice addition to Sawyer's room for the first three or four years of his life.

There was originally glass in this frame, but I elected not to cut that glass down for the new frame size. This present had to be shipped to Alberta, and I was concerned that the glass might break on the way, and worse, damage the needlework. Not including the glass would also help keep the shipping cost of this gift down. 

I haven't gotten to meet Sawyer in person yet, and don't know when I will. My nephew and his wife and their son live in Alberta, and I can't afford to travel there. They will be visiting Ontario every few years, pandemic conditions allowing, but they'll mainly be visiting Luke's immediate family, who live two hours from me in a region where public transit doesn't go (I don't own a car), and they will have so many people to see during their time in Ontario that they won't be coming to Toronto just to see me. It isn't likely I'll ever see Sawyer more often than once every two or three years. But if I can make things for Sawyer's birthday or Christmas gifts that he routinely uses and enjoys, I can hope to have a little place in his life, and perhaps even help instill the kind of lifelong appreciation for handmade things in him that people who grow up having things made especially for them by loving family members tend to have.   

Anyway, this gift has been wrapped and packaged and posted and is currently on its way to Alberta, where I hope it will prove a suitable welcome to the world gift for what, judging from his pictures, looks to be a cuddly, happy little guy.  

A Bevy of Swans

People sometimes ask me what my internet pseudonym "Orange Swan" means, and the answer is that it doesn't mean anything. Back in 2002 I selected it in five minutes because I wanted to join Metafilter.com and needed a username. I'd seen other usernames that consisted of a colour and an animal that I thought sounded catchy, so I picked one of each and went with it. Orange is not actually my favourite colour, though I am fond of it. I would have preferred to go with turquoise, but Turquoise Swan doesn't sound as well. I posted for years under the Orange Swan username and a whole community of people came to know me by it, so when I launched my book review blog in 2006, I named it The Orange Swan Review in order to capitalize on the name recognition. Then when I bought my house late in 2006, I named it Swan's End and began to collect swans. The swan had become my personal symbol.

A friend of mine warned me when I first named my home not to tell too many people the name because they'd all start giving me lots of swan stuff, and most swan stuff is tacky. She was quite right. Most of the swan stuff I come across is atrocious. And I definitely don't want to get too carried away with swan decor items because theme decorations can soon get overdone. But I do occasionally find or make interesting and beautiful swan items.

I thought I'd step a little outside the scope of this blog and do a post about the 30 items in my swan collection in this post. Only one item in this collection is handmade, but I can't resist showing off my little bevy of swans.

Above is a photo of the one handmade item in the collection, a counted cross-stitch cushion. The pattern, which is based on Walter Crane's famous Art Nouveau wallpaper design, is from Cross Stitch Art Nouveau by Barbara Hammet. I love both swans and Art Nouveau, so this was a find for me. It took me a year to do the cross-stitching, and then about six months to find a piece of fabric for the backing -- it's an odd shade of green. I finally found some raw silk for the back that was reasonably close to the green of the aida cloth. It cost a little more than I had hoped to pay, but it seemed to me that if anything justifies the use and expense of a luxury fabric backing, it's a piece of needlework which took a year to embroider. I found the task of assembling the cushion to be a bit frustrating and remember working on it for three or four hours stratight (the addition of the gold cord and a zipper made it challenging), but it turned out fairly well. I was even able to make the zipper I put in along the bottom very unobtrusive.

When I was renovating and decorating my attic workroom five years ago, I decided I wanted to compile a collection of swan postcards, have them framed, and hang them in a collection on one wall. This is one of those cards. It's a carte de visite dates from the 1860s and is a black and white photograph of Venus in her swan-drawn Chariot in Raphael's frescos which decorate the ceiling of the Villa Farnese in Rome.

This postcard is from 1910. I liked that it was period appropriate for my 1912-built house.

This is a vintage postcard of swans swimming on Lac Léman -- better known as Lake Geneva -- in Switzerland.

This one is not a postcard and isn't vintage, but is a small, contemporary art card. I don't normally care for fantasy/horror artwork, but the one fantasy archetype that does fascinate me is the witch, and this image was so amazingly freaky I just had to get it.

Another contemporary art card. You can see the framed collection of swan cards here (and the attic renovation post it's in here).

This postcard features an illustration from a Russian fairy tale. This was the very first postcard I bought for my attic wall grouping, and then I ended up not using it for that purpose after all because it didn't go with the rest. I suppose I'll think of a use for it eventually.

This is a silver-plated swan picture frame I got at a Salvation Army store circa 2010 for $2.

Mid-century brass swan music box I bought online. It used to play a song I haven't been able to identify. Then one day when I was flipping the mattress of my bed (an awkward task given the small size of my room), one side of the mattress knocked the swan music box off my dresser and broke the plastic bottom of it. I fitted the pieces back together, but now the music box no longer works. Sigh.

Solid brass bookends, purchased on Etsy. These bookends went on a shelf in my guest room.

This swan candelabra was my very first swan purchase. I found it in a thrift shop, priced at $5. I couldn't decide whether it was cheesy or awesome but had to have it regardless.

Brass swan candlestick. This was another Etsy purchase and it sits in my guest room.

Swan cake plate I bought at Value Village for $14.68.

A glass swan bowl I picked up at Savation Army thrift shop for $4. It goes very well with the cake plate and could be used to hold a garnish for the cake, such as berries or whipped cream.

Swan jar. There were a few chips out of this jar so I wavered about buying it via Etsy, but it was still too lovely to pass up.

A pair of glass swan candlesticks I bought at Value Village for $7.90.

An Orange Swan mug I saw in a shop window while strolling down Roncesvalles one day in May 2014 and just had to buy, because how could I not?

Back in 2007, I found four of these napkin rings at Value Village priced at $2. I almost didn't buy them because there were only four and my custom is to buy tableware in sets of eight. But I thought, oh well, I do usually have just one or two or three guests to dinner, not seven, and I got them. Then not a month later I found another set of four swan napkin rings at a Salvation Army. I hate to think how I would have felt if I hadn't bought that first set of four!

A tin box featuring the 1900 painting "The Swans", by French artist Joseph-Marius Avy. This was $2 at Value Village.

This swan teapot was a Christmas 2011 gift from a friend, who claimed it was a "no-brainer" gift that she bought the second she saw it.

When I needed a mousepad some years ago, I did an image search on "swan mousepad". This came up, and I wasn't long in deciding to order it. Given that it also has text on it, it's the perfect mousepad for a swan-loving editor and writer.

A swan bookmark my sister gave me for my 40th birthday in August 2013. It was a decorative item attached to a box of chocolates.

Carved agate swan pendant. I bought a ribbon necklace to wear this on.

Rhinestone and pearl swan earrings. I often see swan earrings on Etsy and elsewhere, and usually I pass them by without hesitation. I've never liked "object earrings". They're cheesy, and having little animals or telephone receivers or Christmas trees dangling from the ears always makes one look silly, even though those same objects might look fine as a brooch or pendant necklace. Anything whimsical placed on the head always looks sillier and more comical than it does anywhere else on the body, perhaps because it's so close to what the person says or thinks.

But I made an exception for these earrings. They are abstract enough to be barely recognizable as swans, and they are rather elegantly rendered. I could wear these with a suit or with a cocktail dress.

Celtic swan ring. This is one of the few swan items in my collection that is neither secondhand nor handmade, and at more then double the cost of the next most expensive item, it is by far the most expensive. It's meant to be a wedding band, but I just wear it as a regular ring. Swans are symbols of love and beauty in Celtic mythology. Swans mate for life.

A cloisonné swan pendant, purchased on Etsy.

A Monet swan pin. I love Monet brand jewelry, so to find this Monet swan pin was doubly exciting. I think it dates from the 1980s.

This is a Soviet-made pin. Apparently little pins like this sold for a few kopeks back in the day. I bought this pin from a Latvian seller on Etsy, and it probably references an old Russian Baba Yaga tale, "Swan-Geeze". I love Baba Yaga, so that was a bonus. I saw this pin on Etsy back in the spring of 2010, and wanted it, but waited too long to buy it and someone else beat me to it. I spent about eight months kicking myself before finding another on Etsy in December 2010.

This bracelet was an Etsy find. I saw a matching necklace on there not long after but didn't get it. This piece works better as bracelet for some reason, perhaps because the swan, being curved, looks better when it spans the top of one's wrist then when it's just hanging in the middle of one's neck.

The swan on this headband is just like the one on a bracelet just above. I doubt I'll wear them together.

Nice simple brooch that I got on Etsy. It's marked DFA for DuBarry Fifth Avenue. It was gold tone, but I don't like bright faux gold effects, so painted it silver. The gold tone shows through a little, but I rather like the effect.