Together Again
Sadie ruffles the child’s copper curls before stooping to mop up the pool of milk splattered on the kitchen floor.
“I’m sorry, mama,” the timid voice pipes from overhead. Sadie sighs and her brow relaxes at the sight of the small feet dangling above the floor.
“It’s ok, Timmy. It was just a little accident. Finish up your dinner now.” As she wrings out the towel above the sink, her eyes dart toward the clock.
“Oh, God, he’s gonna be home soon,” she moans under her breath, spinning quickly to clean up the remaining mess. She has almost finished when she hears the front door slam. Her head snaps up and her heart flutters wildly at the thunder of boots against gleaming linoleum.
“Well, well. What’ve we here?” The low, lazy drawl slithers across her scalp, around her neck, along her spine, like something dank and reptilian. She scrambles to finish, sopping up the last of the milk, then tilts her chin upward. She blows at a few tendrils of hair that have fallen over her eye and smiles at the bear of a man towering above her.
“Oh, this? It’s nothing. I just knocked over Timmy’s milk by mistake. But we’re all good now.”
She jumps up quickly and on trembling legs, swivels to rinse the dripping towel at the sink. Attuned to the silence, she runs a dry tongue over her lips.
“So, Pete… did you have a good day?”
The blow to her head is sudden. It sends her stumbling sideways across the room, the wet towel sailing in the opposite direction to land with a thud by the baseboard. Her hip slams into the floor and the stunning surge of pain steals her breath and makes her curl into herself like a centipede.
The drawl becomes a snarl. “Yeah. I had a good day. Till now. Till I came home to my slob of a wife.”
Lucidity returns to Sadie in a great gush, at the sounds of the frightened whimpering that’s building in intensity from behind the kitchen table.
His roar is a clap of thunder sent down from the heavens, if there is such a place. “You are your mother’s child. Quit your whining, you little wimp. Either shut up or get the hell outta here.”
Fear leaches into every pore and parches her throat until she hears the fading patter of Timmy’s Sponge Bob slippers as he dashes down the hall and out the front door. The pool of relief that blankets her is deep and cool and soothing. And it revives her.
Swallowing against her nausea, her fingers inch up and over the face of the cupboard door to grip the lip of the counter top as she slowly pulls herself to her feet.
“You promised,” she cries softly, dabbing at the warm trickle under her nose with her wrist. “When we got back together, you promised you’d never do this to me again. I believed you.”
He weaves toward her, pitching forward until their noses are almost touching. The lingering scent of the woman he was with fills her sinuses and makes her gorge rise. Swaying slightly, he regards her through whiskey eyes that simmer with rage.
“You promised!” he apes in a high-pitched squeal. His upper lip curls into a familiar sneer that flushes her veins with ice water.
“You’re pathetic,” he spits, and twists away from her.
Closing her eyes, she begins to release the breath she’s been holding, as his arm strikes out and a meaty hand grasps her throat. With a mighty shove, he sends her slight body spiraling backward to slam against the kitchen wall. When she finally comes to and can open her left eye enough to clear a narrow path of sight, she sees him hunched at the kitchen table, slack-jawed and snoring. A smoldering cigarette butt burns a brown patch into the linoleum where Timmy’s milk had pooled earlier.
Willing herself not to howl with the pain that jackhammers every inch of her body, she pushes and squirms across the floor until, finally, she is resting at her husband’s feet. Slowly, cautiously, she inches her bloodied fingers up beneath his pant-leg to seek out the weapon she knows he has strapped there. He snorts in his drunken slumber but she is certain that he won’t awaken.
She releases the safety catch with trembling fingers and strains to pull herself up, leaning against the kitchen table for support. Her lungs are on fire and she takes a few good, rasping breaths before she touches the barrel to his forehead. Gives it a nudge.
No games. She pulls the trigger before he’s had half a chance to focus on the blackness in her eyes.
She sets the pistol down gently on the table, then crumples to the floor to wait for the help that she knows will eventually come.
As she fades into the welcome embrace of the cool, grey shadows, she is laughing inside; laughing and dancing and singing.
They will never be together again.
Discovered a fabulous shawl pattern at the wonderful crochet site, Jenny and Teddy. It was one of the easiest shawl patterns I’ve made and it turned out wonderful!
I discovered the loveliest crocheted square design called Victorian Lattice Square, designed by Destany Wymor and offered free on her Ravelry page at: 
(1) These 6 pictures demonstrate attaching motifs corner to corner.
(2) Attaching a new motif to a row. First, attach the corners.
(3) Then, attach the two ch-3 loops.
Then proceed with finishing off the last round of the motif.
Make 2 front panels: Connect a row of 3 motifs, then connect another row of 3 beside them to make the left front panel. Repeat for the right front panel.
Connect each front panel to the back panel at the shoulders. Seam together on the wrong sides by slip stitching with your crochet hook. (If you’d prefer, you can also sew the seam using your yarn needle.)
Make 2 sleeves: Connect 3 rows of 2 motifs for each sleeve.
Then do the same on the other side of the sweater with your second sleeve.
Below is a shot of the wrong side with everything seamed together.
Next, with right sides still together, fold in half at the shoulder seems and bring the sleeves together. You are now going to sew the sweater together to close the sleeves and sides. Again, I used slip stitching, but you can also sew everything together with your yarn needle, if you prefer.
After everything was seamed, I used plain pink Baby Luv yarn to crochet a border around the sleeve edges, as well as the entire sweater, using two rows of single crochet on the sleeves, and three rows of single crochet around the bottom, front and collar.
Next, I dampened the sweater and blocked it overnight so it would be nice and straight.
Since the style of it is double-breasted, I chose six ¾” buttons and sewed them on as shown below.
I also made a little matching hat embellished with a butterfly!
Ah, the joys of aging! With each birthday that passes, you climb one more rung on the ladder to old-fartdom.
This is one of the easiest ways to make a hat without working in the round. You basically just make a rectangle that fits around the circumference of your head, seam the ends together to make a tube, then gather the top to close it, add a border, and you’ve got a cute winter hat that you can make in a night or two. I worked in back and front loops only to add texture that would define the stripes on this hat.
Row 6: Repeat Row 4. Fasten off Lilac. Attach Dark Purple in Back Loop of hdc just completed. Turn.
Border (brim) of hat: Starting from where you’ve ended your seam without fastening off (on the wrong side), single crochet around the edge of the hat as evenly spaced as possible. Use a marker for continuous rounds. Continue single crocheting around until you’ve finished 4 rows. Fasten off and weave in end.
Top of hat: Cut a piece of yarn about 8” long. At the open end of the hat, on the right side, and using your yarn needle, start about an inch down from the top, and thread the piece of yarn in and out of each hdc around, then pull tight to gather closed and tie a secure knot several times. Cut yarn and weave in ends.
I had some colorful, chunky yarn in my stash that I wanted to experiment with, so I decided to make a couple of little baby hoodies. I’ll guess that they would fit a child about 12 months. They are SO warm, soft and cuddly!
It should look like this from the back when you’re finished:
Turn right side out to make your border. Attaching contrasting color at the bottom of your seam, hdc in each st right around entire hoodie. I made it so that it looks like it’s fastened with buttons, but in reality, it just needs to be pulled over the baby’s head. I did this by overlapping one bottom edge over top of the other, stitching them together, and then sewing two buttons on the front just as decoration. You can see what I mean in the photos below. In the blue and green version at the top, I just attached some yarn strings that I’ve tied into bows. You can finish yours however you prefer.
I really liked the look of Bernat’s brown tweed yarn, so I picked up 2 skeins and decided they would look good crocheted into a poncho. The yarn was really nice to work with, and it did indeed make a nice-looking finished project!
Construction
Neckline
Bottom Border
On one of my many trips to Michael’s, I discovered Lion Brand’s Shawl in a Ball yarn and absolutely fell in love with the metallic versions, particularly “Prism.” The blend of colors immediately brought back visions of exploring undersea reefs during some of my snorkeling adventures in the Caribbean.
I knew right away that I wanted to use Prism to make a shawl that I could throw around my shoulders in the evening on my next cruise or beach vacation and—lo and behold!—a perfect mesh-style crocheted shawl pattern was featured on the label, so I just looked it up at Lionbrand.com. It was probably one of the easiest patterns I’ve ever worked on and is perfect for a beginner.
If you Google “sparkle shawl,” the pattern comes up in several places, as well as in a PDF that you can just immediately download, but I’ve also provided the instructions for you below, since I used a 6 mm hook instead of the recommended 5 mm hook because I wanted a more substantial shawl.
In looking for something that was the right size to wind my yarn around, I discovered that using the cardboard cover of a pack of Dentyne Ice gum is a perfect tool for making tassels! (Don’t you just love discovering unconventional uses for household items?)
To make my tassels, I wound my Prism yarn around the Dentyne cover (lengthwise) 20 times. Then I followed the exact process in the video example.
Then, just to take it a little further, I chose four glass beads that I wanted to incorporate; and threaded each bead to the top of each tassel, then fastened each beaded tassel to each corner of my shawl. It was a bit fiddly, but I like the extra glitter. I tied a lot of knots to make sure each was securely fastened.
