Yo La Tejo

You like me! You really like me!

I went home last weekend for my friend Sarah's bridal shower. While I was there, I found a Valentine's Day card I made for my parents in the second grade. My mom actually dug it out and set it aside for me so that I could see it on my visit. (And I wonder where I get my pack-rat tendencies.)



The cupids aren't freehand, alas. But look at that spelling! Not a single mistake.



The penmanship's not bad either, eh? I'll bet it's better than that of a lot of 30 year olds who've just been through med school.

The photo's a little hard to see, so this is what it says:

Dear Mom and Dad:

I like you very much. I like you because you are very sweet, you are nice, and you like me. Thanks (sic) you very much. Happy Valentine's Day!

From [insert picture here]

Yeah, my parents liked me OK. They hardly ever forgot to pick me up after school. But! Just in case they couldn't remember who Olga was, I included this little visual reminder:



Heh.

Looking at this card, I was also reminded of how much I hated the second grade. I pretty much woke up every morning for eight years of grade school with dread in the pit of my stomach, but I remember second grade being particularly awful.

Ms. Pokorna was my teacher. Ms. Pokorna, whose fame as a scary disciplinarian you learned about the minute you entered kindergarten. She was a bohemian artist with a Polish accent and colorful scarves wrapped around her curly hair, and under any other circumstances, I'm sure she was a lovely person.

As her second grader, however, all you knew or really needed to care about was that she did not hesitate to spank. For all of us, this was a serious proposition, but for the girls, it involved lifting our plaid Catholic school uniform skirts for an extra dollop of humiliation. Even though I was the mousiest, shyest little 8 year old you might ever run across, the least likely to even drop a crayon by mistake, I spent nine months in abject fear of landing on her bad side.

Not much knitting news this week, except that everything I've been working on has been frogged, some of it never to return. In short:

* Trellis stole: frogged because it had just a few too many mistakes. I chalked it up to practice for the Amazing Lace, and started over.

* Jennifer's shrug: frogged because when I took it off the needles to fix a mistake, I realized that it was so enormous that she could wrap it around her body twice and wear it as a straitjacket. And y'all, Jennifer doesn't need one. Her medication works just fine, when she remembers to take it. (Kidding!)

* Vogue Knitting bikini: frogged because although I liked the concept of knitting a bikini, and thought it looked cute in the magazine, I just couldn't handle the crazy decreases on both sides of the cup. Decrease two stitches every third and fifth row twice and then six times while AT THE SAME TIME bind off on the other side every time your nose itches. Repeat until thoroughly confused, frustrated, and angry.

Bah. I can get a cute bikini at Target and turn this perfectly good yarn into a baby sweater.

I made a new friend while at home:



Isn't he a ham? This was right before he almost pecked my eye out. His name is Chirpy, but when I asked my mom what his name was, I thought she said Sharpie, so that's what I'm calling him. I think it'd be cool to name a pet after a permanent marker. Especially now that they're available in all those fun colors!

Hopefully I'll have my first Amazing Lace entry for next time (the deadline is June 4!)

posted by Olga @ 2:45 PM