Tutorial: Braided/Woven Rag Rug

I'm not sure why I was playing Monopoly without any money or properties, so it's a good thing I'm not blogging about that.

Obviously I've put this picture up because this is a tutorial on how to make the rug my brother-in-law is hovering over. Obviously.

I asked my grandma how she made these rugs. I assumed they were braided, but she explained and then showed me that they were actually woven. They take a while to make, but I love the results! Braided rugs in my experience tend to come apart when the seams burst. Enter woven rug, no seams!

I've made a couple in my day. The Sunflower one:

I started with two dark gold strips and one yellow, and then I switched to three yellows, three blues, three reds, then finally three greens. It's a little more confusing to work with all one color, which is why this wasn't my first one.

This lovely semi-round one is my first one. It's actually made from a couple U of U T-shirts. I remember that as I wipe my feet. :)

I used black and red throughout, then switched between tan, black, brown, tan, and then black again for the third strip of material.

It works best to use stretchy material for at least one of your strips. I've used old T-shirts in the rugs above (5 extra-large shirts for each one). Another one I made and gave to my sister used random scraps, both stretchy and not, and it worked just fine. I just made sure that at least one of the strips at all times was stretchy. The rug is a bit more forgiving this way.

Shall we begin?

Cut strips of fabric about 2" wide. I cut the shirts in strips vertically.

I also found that if I leave the shoulder seams intact (see below), a couple strips can be extra-long without more work on my part.

So you should have a pile of fabric strips.

Start by taking three strips and lining them up like so:

It helps if they're not all exactly the same length, so they don't all run out at the same time. (We'll get there later.)

Fold them in half, and then sew across the end:

Then you're going to start braiding the strips. The seam kind of gets turned inside-out like in the following picture. That's a good thing, because then it doesn't show as much.

I braided about 9 or 10 inches. This will give you an oval-shaped rug. If you want a circle, then a shorter braid would do that for you. Likewise, if you want a longer-shaped rug, make a longer braid.

The braid should be loose enough that you can easily put your finger through it, but not so loose that it gets misshapen when you do. My braid started out loose and then got tighter as I went. I did go back and fix that, making it all even.

So you start with your braid looking like this. The black piece on the right is coming out from under the middle piece, and the black piece will become the warp. On a loom, the warp is the string strung on the loom, while the weft is what goes back and forth, fyi.

See, the black piece goes down along the length of the braid:

Now, this is the only complicated part: transferring from braiding to weaving. If you remember the pattern of over-under-under, it might help. The far left piece (in my case a lovely ballet-pink) crosses over the middle piece (this is the over part):

Then it goes under the black and the green (under, under):

Pull the pink piece taut:

And put the pink piece out to the side. (This picture is possessed and won't load except sideways. Sorry.)

Now you take the green one over-under-under (over the pink one, under the black, and under one part of the braid-- green this time):

The black piece should still (and always) be pointing itself downwards in the direction you're going. The two other pieces should be out to the side. Now you take the pink one over-under-under.

Like so:

Pull it out and to the side:

Now take the green one over-under-under:

And out to the side:

Let's fast-forward to where I'm almost to the end of the braid. Now just like when you're crocheting, if you want to make a curve, you sometimes have to go through the same hole twice. So you can see where the green piece is coming out.

You send the pink one over-under-and then under the same piece as last time.

(I'm pretty sure you can't see what's going on in the above picture.... I sure can't.)

But in this next one, you can see that I'm pulling the green piece through a green loop of braid:

And in this one, I'm pulling the pink one through the same green loop of braid:

Double up on stitches until you round the corner. On this corner, there were about 4 stitches where I doubled up. I prefer to put two stitches in each hole for a while, rather than putting 4 or 5 stitches through one hole. I'm not sure that would work so well.

Anyway... continue down the other side of the braid. The black piece is still pointing downwards while the pink and green pieces do all the in-and-out weaving.

When one piece runs out, I just sew another piece on and keep going. In this case, I used my machine, but I've sewn it by hand when working in the car. If you want to change colors, you would just sew on a new colored strip and keep going.

When you're done with the rug, just tuck in the ends and hand-stitch them in place. This is the ugly side:

And this is the prettier front:

In the finished rug, it's hard to see where you started. I found the start of my braid in this rug, and I'm pointing to it. The braid continues downward. See, told you you can't see it.

This is a close-up of where I changed colors. I'm not sure why I decided to put this on here.

As a finishing touch, I took a strip of green material and wove it through the rug, kind of tying it all together. Otherwise the green border looked pretty random.

A few words of warning: as you go, make sure you're making a flat rug. This is done by making double stitches only when you need to (like when it would be a stretch to weave through the next hole). If you add too few, you end up with a bowl, rather than a rug. If you add too many, you get some weird warping that keeps your rug from laying right.

Example A:

You can still use it, but should you put it in front of a door, your family and guests might kind of hate the stupid thing. It works just fine for a mid-floor rug, though. Sort of.

Something to ponder

What do toothbrushes, umbrellas, and little Chinese children peeing have in common?

Discuss.

(More on this later)

Benchmarks

We've been encountering a lot of benchmarks in our house lately, and I don't mean the kind Penny's been leaving on our sofa.

Naomi is 3 1/2 months old, and she is fantastically amazing. (I hope every parent says that about their child.) The other day I was playing the piano while she lay on the couch cooing. She was happy for quite a while, but then her coos turned to cries. "Just let me get to the end of this song," I thought in my concerned-parent mode. I kept playing, and when I finally went over to see what was wrong, this is what I found:

That's right, Naomi is making benchmarks of her own, both in the puddle of drool on the couch and in the fact that she rolled over, from back to front, at 3 1/2 months! Penny rolled from front to back once at about 5 months, and I don't think she EVER rolled from back to front. At least, not until she could already walk and stuff.

So now I put her down on the rug when I play the piano. I can see her out of the corner of my eye, which is helpful when Penny goes over and says, "Squish Meimei," prodding her with a foot.

And that's a new couch, by the way.

We felt like we'd gotten too comfortable in our apartment. I mean, I'd finally figured out where all the light switches were and which ones turned on which lights. Kevin had arranged his speakers and whatnot into a fantastic surround-sound system. I remember looking at one of my cupboards and panicking a little bit, seeing that it was rather full and would be a lot to get rid of when we moved again. (It's been a while since we've lived in a place more than 5 months.)

So we moved.

It's a long and not terribly interesting story involving Kevin's job and some office stuff, but we moved to a new apartment in our same building. Its main selling points are that it has a study right by the master bedroom, which is now Naomi's nursery. Our other place had a room for Naomi, but it was the last one down the hall, furthest from the master bedroom. We couldn't hear her if she cried, and the baby monitor we got doesn't work with all the reinforced concrete walls.

Our new apartment also has a breakfast bar, which I didn't realize I loved so much until our other place didn't have one. It's just a tiny annoyance, but I pretty much hate moving everything for dinner down the hall to the dining room and then moving everything back afterwards, especially since evening is the time when one of the girls is usually crying and needing their Mommy.

We have a better view, more sunlight, a guest bedroom, a walk-in closet, a shower that doesn't leak onto the bedroom carpet (don't ask), and a better TV entertainment center.

You're probably wondering, what about the piano? Well, we did have to hire a piano company. They packed it up, moved it, and then even tuned it afterwards-- all for about $120!! Sure, it's not pocket change, and I'm not planning on moving it again until we're done in Shenyang, but that's a steal!

I do feel bad about our other couch, with its many benchmarks. I should probably remind them to have it cleaned.

And speaking of Penny peeing all over stuff, the other day while I was stuck nursing Naomi, Penny announced that she had to pee. She wandered off, and I heard her banging around in the bathroom. She toddled back carrying her little potty chair, and she proceeded to do her business right there in the hallway, putting her potty chair where I could see her. That's the first time she's initiated using the potty!

We've been in our new apartment for almost a week now, and so far, the couch is spot-free. I think part of it is that we've stopped giving her pints of fruit juice to guzzle, switching instead to water. Another part is that it seems to finally have clicked. We sent her to her room a couple times after she peed in her pants, and I think the light finally came on that, "Hmm, maybe I'm not supposed to do this after all." The things we think are obvious aren't always so to a toddler.

So Penny reached a benchmark and has been doing really well at preventing other benchmarks on our new sofa. When you come to visit, please feel free to sit anywhere you'd like.

3 1/2 months

I have this cute little 1950's book of poems for children, which includes this little poem:

I am the sister of him,

And he is my brother.

He is too little for us

To talk to each other.

So every day I show him

My doll and my book,

But every day he still

Is too little too look.

I love it, because it describes exactly how Penny and Meimei are with each other. Penny is excited to have a little sister to play with, but Meimei is just "too little to look." This doesn't really bother Penny at this point, though, because it's fun to have your own personal living doll who doesn't take your toys, doesn't tell you "No," and doesn't care if she sits in the front or back of the stroller. This won't last for long, though, I can tell.

Naomi is 3 1/2 months old, and she's starting to be more and more fun. She smiles a lot, and she has started to laugh. She usually laughs when I take her clothes off over her head or wipe the drool off her chin. Glamorous, I know.

Naomi's hair is still softer than silk. It's all getting longer, but she has these random super-long Charlie Brown hairs on top of her head. I'm not sure where they came from. I don't think my hair has ever grown that much in 3 1/2 months! She's doing her best to rub a bald spot into the back. When she moves, her whole body moves more than Penny's ever did, so her bald spot might not be as polished as Penny's was.

Naomi's already quite a bit more mobile than Penny was. Sometimes I'll put her down in her crib facing one direction, and when I come back, she'll have rotated 90 degrees. Penny never did this. Ever. Not even when she was old enough to sit up and crawl. Penny had a lot more mass to heft around, though.

Her eyes are still bluish-brown. They're brown in the centers and blue on the edges. I'm not sure which way they'll go or if they'll stay this way, but we had to pick one or the other on her passport application. I forgot which color we chose, but they didn't have a box for "blue and brown."

Naomi has started to like sitting in her Bumbo, or "Bumbo-bee," as Penny calls it. Every time we get it out and ready for Meimei to sit in, Penny rushes over and parks her behind in it.

Naomi likes her hands. She chews on them and sucks on her thumb sometimes. She's started grabbing her blanket and sucking on it as well. Chinese people really don't like her to munch on her hands. They'll take them out of her mouth and tell her, "Yucky, dirty." And I've heard many parents tell their kids to keep their hands out of their mouths. It's a good idea... but it's also pretty cute when Naomi does it.

I read somewhere that kids cry more in the first 3 months of their lives than at any other time. We're certainly seeing the truth in that. She's still pretty grumpy and needy in the evenings, but otherwise, she sometimes doesn't even cry when she wakes up. She just talks and coos to herself in bed. Right now, I happen to know that neither of my girls is sleeping, but they're both lying happily in bed and will soon nod off.

I'm going to go do the same.

Sketch

A little while ago, we had dinner with some Chinese friends, one of whom is a retired art professor. While we were there and Penny was running around, he managed to sketch this little drawing of her. A few days later, Kevin brought this home from work, framed and beautiful.

I love the little butterfly drawn below her (since she was wearing a shirt with butterflies all over it), and I love the inscription that lends such a Chinese look to a simple drawing. It says, Penny little angel/ Shenyang, China/ Mr. Liu/ and then the date.

Tomorrow is another day... and a new week, thankfully.

I usually write for my blog when I'm in a good mood. But you'll notice that I haven't posted a blog entry for over a week. You can guess what it's been like around here.

If you ever come to our house, be sure not to sit on the couch. Penny has peed on it more times than I care to count. Same goes for our dining room chairs. And the kitchen rugs, her bed, our carpet, and one time even the electrical transformer that Kevin plugs his computer into-- not that you'd try to sit on it. Consider yourself warned.

The weather has turned to fall, and my girls have no warm clothes. I went shopping the other day and returned with a bag full of winter clothes. Most of them were too large, but I purchased them anyway. Kids grow. However, this left me with about 4 items that kind of fit now. When I dug through them to see what I'd bought, there were so many flowers, stripes, polka dots, sparkles, lace, ribbons, and bows on them that I could hardly see straight. Would it kill someone to make some plain, single-colored, basic clothes in this country?

Penny is at this stage where every other time she opens her mouth, she's whining about something. Yes, she is two. (And if she's anything like her Aunt Sarah.... it may be a long decade ahead of us.) I just hate the feeling of wanting to smack her every time she opens her mouth. I've been good at resisting so far, mostly because smacking her doesn't exactly cure the whining problem at all.

Naomi kind of reshuffled her sleeping schedule this week. I don't remember what she was doing before, but suddenly she started sleeping all day. She'd sleep for 2 hours in the morning, and then about 5 hours in the afternoon. On the one hand, it was pretty awesome to be able to do whatever I wanted, but on the other hand, after a while, I hadn't left the house for days, and hadn't talked to anyone but our housekeeper or Kevin. Our housekeeper is super nice, and I like her a lot. But she doesn't speak standard Mandarin. I only understand about 25% of what she says, and that's after I've asked her to repeat herself 2 or 3 times. Imagine having a basic understanding of English, and then working with someone from Tennessee or Georgia. Yes, it's English, but it's nothing like the stuff you learned in your textbooks. I talk to Kevin in the evenings, but he's usually pretty tired from work. This leaves me with talking to Penny, and as we've already discussed, she just whines all the time. I need to get out more.

After church today, there were several hungry, tired, cranky girls in the house. In one particularly beautiful moment, I threw my arms in the air, loudly finished my conversation with Kevin, and ran to my room crying. I was ready to wallow and fume for a while.

About a minute later, before I was ready to be civil to anyone mind you, Kevin poked his head in the door. "I know you're not ready to talk to me or Penny yet," he said, "but Penny just told me, 'Sad,' and now she's in her room with the door shut saying, 'Sad, sad, sad.'"

Fine! Just go ahead and make me smile. There goes my wallowing and fuming.

The anticlimactic egg post

"So eggs, huh?"*

Buying eggs at the grocery store is very important in our family.

In China, you don't just go over to the refrigerator, open a carton to check for broken eggs, and plop it in your cart. For some reason, I thought the whole world bought eggs that way.

Here, they don't believe in refrigerating eggs. I guess you don't really have to, but it keeps the bacteria count down. I try to remember this as I eat my cookie dough (just kidding, Mommy!)(sort of...). You can buy eggs in boxes or cartons, and they're stored on the shelf-- also not in the fridge. But most people don't buy them in cartons anyway.

The grocery stores here open at 9 or 9:30. There's always a small horde of old people ready to bang down the doors when they open. (I've never seen anyone under 60 buy eggs-- except for me.) They all shuffle directly to the egg department and stand in line for their eggs.

See, eggs are only sold twice a day: once in the morning (usually) and once in the afternoon (usually). If you get there after the eggs have sold out, then tough luck and wait for the afternoon eggs. One morning I went, and the line extended all the way past the milk and yogurt department to the meat counter. There were easily 60 people in line. If you go first thing in the morning, you can easily wait 45 minutes or an hour in line.

Once your turn is up, you get to wait while the egg lady packs your eggs into a bag-- yes, a bag like you'd buy fruit or veggies in. And yes, a lady stands there packing eggs one by one as people wait on her. When you have 1.3 billion people needing jobs, efficiency isn't always your first priority. She stands by some crates full of farm-fresh eggs, still occasionally decorated with chicken poo. She puts 20 eggs in each bag, weighs it, and then slaps a barcode sticker on it. You put it in your cart and hope to only break a couple as you shop, take them through check-out, load them in your grocery bag, jostle them through crowds, and finally get them home.

Some eggs inevitably break as she packs them, and the egg lady usually sets them aside. Some people cut to the front of the line, pick through the broken eggs, and buy them for a discount. At the end of the egg sale, the lady cracks all the broken eggs into bags, and you can buy them like that-- sloshing around in a clear plastic bag.

At first it kind of bothered me that the eggs weren't sold in dozens. I mean, wouldn't it be just as easy to put 24 in a bag as 20? But it didn't take me long to realize that 10 or 20 eggs makes a lot more sense than a dozen or two dozen. Who invented dozens, anyway?

So that's how you buy eggs.

*And I know you were wondering about the quote at the beginning. That was my brother-in-law's famously successful pick-up line to my sister. They met buying eggs at the grocery store.

Why not?!

Today I got yelled at by a bunch of old people at the grocery store.

See, I've been meaning to do a blog entry for a while now about buying eggs. It's very different than anything I've done in the States, and it is definitely blog-worthy. And if something's blog-worthy, it deserves a picture.

So today I went and took a picture. There were a few people lined up for eggs, and the lady was packing them into bags like she usually does. I snapped a quick picture, but a man stepped right in front of the egg counter right as I took it. So I waited for him to move so I could take another one.

"Hey," the egg lady said, waiving me away, "What are you doing taking pictures?"

"I just think it's really interesting, because this is totally different than how they do it back in my home country."

"Well, you can't take pictures here."
"Why not?" I asked.

This was apparently the wrong question to ask.

The old people standing in line (it's always old people buying eggs in the grocery store) heard this, and their shock audibly rippled down the line.

"Why not?!"

"She needs a reason why not!"

"I can't believe she would ask why not!"

"You don't take pictures, ESPECIALLY not in the marketplace!"

Um.... I was pretty dumbfounded, and I left as they all shooed me away.

I've lived here about 4 or 5 months, and in a city of 8 million people, I think about 4 million must have Penny's picture saved on their cell phone. Whenever I stop pushing the stroller, people huddle around to take pictures of my kids, whether they have my permission or not.

But then again, this is a different generation. And considering they've lived through the rise of Communism, Chairman Mao's whims and policies, culminating with the crazy Cultural Revolution, I can see that it's definitely a generation where you do not ask why or why not.

Zoology

Here are the translations of several animal names in Chinese. Let's see if you can figure out what they mean:


A striped horse (please tell me you can guess this one)
B white bear (this one too)
C river horse
D cat-headed eagle
E bear-cat
F sea elephant
G dragon shrimp
H scary dragon
I pocket mouse
J heavenly goose



I'm putting the names backwards, to prevent any inadvertant cheating.
A arbez
B raeb ralop (If you missed the first two, please just stop here)
C oppih
D lwo
E adnap
F surlaw
G retsbol
H ruasonid
I ooragnak
J naws

Okay, other Chinese speakers, which ones did I forget?

So funny

The other night, I was getting ready to read Penny some stories before bed. She was playing in her blankets repeating, "Eat... soap. Eat... soap. Eat... soap."
I wasn't sure I heard her right, so I asked her, "Penny, eat soap?"

She grinned at me. "I funny."

I laughed and laughed and laughed. In fact, I laughed so hard that Penny asked me, "Mommy tickle?"

Yes, Mommy was tickled, all right.

Another Pennyism:

I was pouring ingredients into the breadmaker this morning while Penny was standing by me. She was saying, "Monkey, mickey, kickee, minkee." I have never heard so many variations on those sounds.

Then I figured out what she was trying to say. "Making cookies?"

"Making cookies," she repeated.

Pools

We ventured out on our first day-trip since coming to China 4 1/2 months ago. To be fair, I was hugely pregnant, and then the mother of a newborn. I'm still the mother of a newborn, but since she's almost 3 months old now, we decided to try it.

Plus, Kevin gets Labor Day off while the rest of China does not. This made it ideal to go visit the aquarium just outside of Shenyang.

As far as aquariums go, Monterrey Bay and Sea World obviously top the list. Seattle is near the bottom, right there above my mom's dining room fish tank. This one here in Shenyang, China, is probably third on the list, right below those in California. It was pretty awesome.

Penny's favorite animals were the walruses. They were pretty impressive so close up. Did you know that they have little claws on their flippers? Cool, huh!

There was a dolphin and whale show at (what we thought was) the end of the aquarium. They jumped, counted, carried people, did flips, and waved goodbye at the end of the show.

The other half of the aquarium grounds is a giant indoor water park, which we will have to visit now we know it's there.

I was very impressed with Penny. She hasn't worn a diaper for 2 weeks now, but we put her in one for the day. She kept it dry the entire time! This tells me two things: I need to give her more to drink; she's probably super dehydrated. But also, I think she's finally potty trained!

This has been an epic struggle. It started back when Libya started its revolution in February, but like that conflict (and really, the only similarity), I'm not really sure when to call it a victory. Um... Gaddafi's pretty much ousted and people are celebrating in many parts of the country, but there are still dangerous areas, from what I gather. Penny is pretty much trained, but she still refuses to use anything but the potties in our house. But I'm going to call it a victory today and keep working on the pockets of resistance.

Senior seminar

For my senior seminar project in college, two of us Chinese majors worked on a project analyzing the Chinese used in chatrooms. Since it was right when Napoleon Dynamite had come out, the catchphrase for our project was, "Napoleon, don't be jealous because I've been chatting online with babes all day."

That has nothing to do with what follows, but I just thought it necessary to tell you.

So anyway, in English, when you type messages to people, you use stupid abbreviations like lol, brb, btw, omg, and my personal least-favorite, wtf. But in Chinese, it takes just as long to type one character as it does another character, so abbreviations don't really work like this.

But what really speeds things up (especially while texting) is using numbers instead of characters. So sometimes you use numbers to sound like phrases.

For example, 88 sounds like "ba ba," so people use 88 to sign off. Bye bye!

Another one I remember is that 520 sounds like "wu er ling," and with the tones and everything, it sounds remarkably like "wo ai ni," or I love you.

One time I sat on a train by an 8th grade Chinese kid, and he laughed pretty hard at his seat number, which was 478 "si qi ba." To him, it sounded like "si qu ba" or "Just go die."

Pretty cool, huh!

So I smiled and felt pretty smart when I saw that the delivery number for ordering McDonald's (the king of advertisement) ended in 517 517 "wu yao qi, wu yao qi." Sounds like "I want to eat, I want to eat."

Chinese 495 Senior Seminar finally paid off.

Random pictures

Yes, I just downloaded pictures for the first time in several weeks. Hence the blogging triple-play.

I took a decent picture of myself. I've noticed that I only ever take pictures of my kids, and while they're incredibly cute, many of my friends have never met them and might want to know what I am up to these days. Or at least what I look like. So I will lie and say that I look like this every day:

Penny has been progressing in her potty training, mostly due to this handy little device:

Yes, that is our 2-year-old using an iPad. It's ridiculous, but she loves to play it. It makes a good bribe for using the potty.

I'm very glad I bought the stroller I did. It's so convenient to take our two little girls out in it. Sometimes Penny likes riding in the front, and other times she likes riding in the back. She has fewer people come pinch her arms and cheeks when she's riding in back, so it surprises me that she chooses the front so often. When we walk by, people will do a double-take and say, "Woah, there's ANOTHER one in the back!"

Naomi is super cute. We found these shoes that my mom gave us, and it merited a picture or two.

I made Penny a riding cape for her dress-up box (a work in progress... more on this later). I thought it turned out cute, and I'm extremely proud of it. Here we have Daddy Panda modeling it for the camera. Penny refuses to wear it. I try not to be offended.

But Daddy Panda loves it, and so do I.

Penny Sings

Up until a week ago, Penny didn't know that when we sang to her, she was supposed to sing along. She would do the hand motions, but nary a sound escaped her lips. Then in nursery at church, one of her older friends sang along with the teachers in class. That must have been eye-opening for Penny, because ever since then, she has been doing her darndest to sing along with me.

We had to trick Penny into singing for this video. We sang one of her songs super-fast, and while she was distracted by that, Kevin started the camera. Otherwise, I would be presenting one of our usual videos, which has about .4 seconds of something cute, then several more of Penny trying to get behind the camera to see what we're doing. Yay for sneakiness!

Happy Birthday!

Penny was very happy to celebrate my birthday.

We got a group of her friends together and went to a nearby toddler play-place to spend the morning. I know it would have been more traditional to do something I liked for my birthday, but you know, sometimes it's just nice to have happy kids. Penny ran and played with her friends. I got to chat with some of mine while Naomi would let me sit down. And we had a cake. (Note to self: a Jell-O cake only needs one box of Jell-O. I did it with two, and it just felt and tasted like soggy cake, which is not my favorite.)

When we went home, we had our afternoon naps. Then when Kevin got home, we went for a walk. The girls like to look around while they're in the stroller, and it was great to have a stress-free evening with nobody crying.

If I entered a competition for awesome birthdays, I would lose so bad the judges would laugh and give me a sucker prize. But I enjoyed it, and maybe I'll do something awesome next year.