Let’s wallow in some handcrafted goodness, shall we? I need to show you some of the beautiful things my dear friends have been making for Minnow, and I thought you might like to know how the snail romper is coming along:

Since taking this photo yesterday evening, I’ve finished leg #1 and added half another leg. This project should be finished in just a few more days… dare I say by the end of the weekend? (This might depend how well fought the final World Cup matches prove to be. Paul says Germany is going to take the consolation match tomorrow and has picked Spain to win it all, in case you’re wondering. This is, at the very least, sound diplomacy on Paul’s part. After his semifinal predictions he was getting death threats from his angry countrymen and offers of asylum from the Spanish government.) Anyway, I kind of miscalculated where to place the snail, and as a result this romper is a bit longer in the body than it was meant to be and also the lower portion is slightly larger than the top portion. But I figure this might actually be a boon, since it has to fit over a cloth diaper.

Now I want to show you two quilts made by friends on the island who have watched me grow since I was not much bigger than Minnow is now.

Mary B. hand-quilted around every detail of the animal pictures on this sweet alphabet quilt. Mary made it sound like it ain’t no thang, but having practiced my hand quilting last summer, I know how much time all those tiny stitches require! In this picture you can just see how even her work is:

(Ideally, this kangaroo would be knitting, but I guess that might be confusing to small students of phonics who are only just learning their letters. At least the fabric designer didn’t try to add knitting but actually illustrate crochet, which really would have confused poor Minnow, who ought to be able to learn both of those skills by the time he or she is grown enough to be contemplating the alphabet.)

And this beauty was made by our friend Krispi. Krispi is a Really Good Quilter. See her perfect corners? Mine will never look this good.

It makes me feel all gooey inside to think about wrapping my baby in all this handmade love. And wait till I show you the handknits from my Portland posse! I’ll be taking pictures of those this weekend.

Discoveries that have delighted me this week thus far:

1. Miss Marple (or at least Julia McKenzie who’s playing her in the new Masterpiece series) is a lever knitter.

2. In Germany there is an octopus named Paul who has correctly predicted the outcome of each of his country’s World Cup matches by eating a mussel from a box labeled with the winning country’s flag. Paul is six for six, having foretold Germany’s shocking upset by Serbia earlier in the tournament and also their defeat by Spain in yesterday’s semifinal. (Keep in mind that Paul has eight tentacles and could probably open both boxes at once, but he is not greedy and apparently takes his oracular duties seriously.) I think that if America is ever to reach a World Cup semifinal we not only need to study the new German style of play but should also trade Punxsutawney Phil for a more sophisticated animal prognosticator.

3. You can make paper out of pond scum. The children who have confirmed this report that if you want to try it at home you should make sure you have good ventilation, as the paper smells rather fishy even when it’s dry. (They took this as inspiration to cut fish shapes out of it for a multi-sensory collage.) I must say the pond scum paper looks easier to work with than the thistle paper a friend and I made at a similar age.

4. Radishes are a good addition to homemade salsa. Use plenty of lime juice.

5. I don’t hate knitting cotton as much as I thought I did, at least not if it’s the right cotton. Mirasol Lachiwa is 60% cotton, 40% linen, and yet it is soft, gentle on the hands, doesn’t split at all, isn’t prone to rowing out in stockinet fabric…. I am forced to admit that knitting with it is downright PLEASING. (Occasionally there’s a little stray end of tough fiber poking out from the plies that’s rather scratchy, but these are easily pulled free.)

Never mind that it’s 59 degrees F and raining. The calendar says it’s July (and my husband has been wearing shorts out of sheer stubbornness), and if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know that means Tour de France fever! Yes, I’ve once again got a hand in organizing the international knitalong (we’re over on Ravelry and we’re happy to welcome latecomers for a few more days if you’d like to join us). My friends and relations find this somewhat hilarious and/or bemusing, I think. Maybe it’s the fact that there are nearly eighty other fruit bats out there from Australia to Holland who love to watch cycling and knit at the same time and then talk about it on the internet. In years past I’ve taken on a really big challenge for the 21 days of the Tour, most recently designing and knitting Footlights and Daisy Daisy.

This year’s going to be a bit different. With a baby due in five and a half weeks, there are some things that need to be accomplished. I’ll try to put some nearly finished projects to bed so they won’t be abandoned for months once I’ve got my hands full of squalling newborn. And this poor baby has very few handknits made by its own mother (happily several aunties-to-be have been filling the void — those gifts deserve their own post!), so I’ll try to remedy that, beginning with Carina Spencer’s Small Things Romper, to which I’ll be adding a special touch:

I shall call it the Lanterne Rouge romper. (The Lanterne Rouge is the guy who finishes dead last in the Tour. Now do you get it?) Cute snailie isn’t mine; I borrowed his chart from Adrian Bizilia’s wonderful Norwegian Snail Mittens (in Clara Parkes’s The Knitter’s Book of Yarn) and modified it just a touch since it doesn’t need to fit on a mitten. In addition to nodding to the Tour, this snail is a sort of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” tribute to the soggy summer we’re having. His less adorable and far more voracious brethren have left my hostas in tatters.

Tomorrow morning I get to cast on! Since the powers that organize world sports have seen fit to schedule the Tour prologue at the same time as the Argentina-Germany soccer match, there may be a bit of squabbling over the remote, and I’ll probably have to go back and watch both events in full later in the day. Good thing the weather outside isn’t tempting.