FO - Pillow for Sasha

When Ira was over the other night with her little man, Sasha, I remembered once again that he loves pillows. I made Ira a little pillow a few years ago, the size of a dinner plate (I used a dinner plate to make a true circle), pink spring tulips cloth with lace around the edge - Sasha has decided it's his. :) When I was over there a couple weeks ago, he brought it out and wallowed on it awhile, It's not all that much bigger than his head! The day she was here with him, he sat on and then wallowed on the stuffed toy tutle I was given years ago on my birthday here by a family in the church. It's just his size to play 'ride 'em, cowboy!' on. And then, just before they left, he layed down on the bench and put his head on the pillow Melinda gave me for my birthday this year and grinned up at us charmingly, as only tired little boys can do. So, being the grandmother that I am, I thought to myself, "Self, you have a latch hook kit back there in the bedroom that would make a perfect pillow for Sasha to wallow around on. Find it. Make it." So, I did. Took me just over a full day to do the latch hook. Mel was gone, so I just worked on it to my hearts' content, until the wee hours of the morning. Finished it on Monday afternoon, though, since the weekend was busy for both of us. The sewing machine that I bought here the first year we arrived is a pain in the rear end to use. I have never understood sewing machines to start with. My mother loved to sew until a couple years ago, arthritis and then her stroke did in her love of sewing. She tried to teach me, really she did. She came to the conclusion that some people cook and some people sew. She sews(ed) and I cook. :-)

Now I could go and get out that machine that I bought, set it up on the table, thread it, plug it in across the room (sigh - that's where the plug is of course - across the room, so we have to have an extension cord), fight with the bobbin, fight with the thread, sew some stuff together, rip it out, resew it - - for a couple hours or even a couple days. And I probably would not be happy with the end result. I very seldom am. I do not like machine sewing and machine sewing apparently does not like me, either!

So, while I worked on the latch hooking part (actually I used a crochet hook because I did not want to take the time to figure out where in the world I stashed away my latch hook hook - by the time I found it, the latch hook muse may have faded away into thin air and I'd have had all the supplies and absolutely no desire to do it any more), er, back to the subject at hand: So, while I worked on the latch hooking part, I also thought through how I was going to finish the pillow. I decided to go with some material I already had to form a black border and then make the back out of the legs of an old pair of jeans. (side note - it's late and I'm getting a bit freaked out. I'm alone and there are all sorts of weird noises outside and inside the flat tonight. Like: what just made that loud rattling noise on the balcony bars? And what is tocking behind me? It's just about got to be the light above me cooling off after I turned it off - but it's never made this sound before. And what in the world was that horrible loud banging outside about 20 minutes ago??? Sounded like someone took a hammer to one of the metal security doors nearby. Even Nina Upstairs and Galena Downstairs went to check from their balconies - I could hear them both! Plus, how did the fortichka window in our bedroom come open earlier today? There was no wind and it was shut, yet suddenly it was wide open. ei yi yi. I really am tired of Mel being gone - he's been gone a lot since we came back to Ukraine. Sigh.)

Well, I decided to make the whole pillow by hand. I wasn't sure my hands were up to doing it all by hand, but I took it slow and my hands did fine. My right hand fingers are a bit sore from pushing the needle through the jean cloth, and especially through the two sections that had 4 layers of denim. But all in all, I took it step by step, worked section by section, trying to think through each step completely before I actually did anything - and it worked! :-)

It's finished except for the opening across the back. I'll sew that together tomorrow. I'm not sure how I want to do that yet. I made an inner pillow and the latch hook part is just a covering, so I want to make it easy for Ira to take it off and wash it if she needs to (believe me, after seeing the tulip pillow, I'm sure this one will need to be washed!). Maybe some ties? That actually might be best, come to think of it. 3 narrow ties that can be knotted. That should be fairly simple to make tomorrow. So, my FO is almost a Finished Object. I'm posting it tonight, because I'll have company again tomorrow evening, and then Mel will be home and I'll probably not get a chance to write tomorrow night.

At least the weird noises have stopped, although that dog out there sure does bark a lot!!