Musicality

February 18, 2001 my nephew was born and The Mr and I became a couple.

He was going to Utah State in Logan and I was going to Southern Utah University in Cedar City. That's a good five hour drive. I was headed home for the weekend. He was going to be in the Salt Lake area to attend a few missionary farewells on Sunday, so I offered to go with him. I was wearing a straight, just below the knee length black skirt, a charcoal gray ballerina wraparound sweater with a pink shirt underneath, black fishnet tights and these shoes My hair was platinum blonde, short, sassy and interspersed with locks of pink to match my shirt. My lipstick was also that shade. Probably, my underwear matched too because that's just how I rolled back in the day.

He was wearing a white dress shirt, yellow tie, black v-neck sweater, black slacks and black wingtip Skechers. He asked me to verify that his socks were black not navy. He's always had trouble with that. I finally threw out the navy socks so he wouldn't have to worry.

Also, by way of facial hair, he sported an impressive pair of big fat red mutton chops.

My brothers mocked him for it later.

He loves the chops though, he grows them every chance he gets. That's enough about our wardrobe choices that day, I'll get on with the point of this story.

He gave me a valentine while we were driving about. It was a mix CD.  A love mix CD, and a good one. I took it back to Cedar with me, and my roomie Annie and I played it on repeat in our room fairly constantly for the remainder of the semester.

From that time forth The Mr has carried the responsibility for my musical preferences and listening pleasure. I've always been a bit of a mooch when it comes to music choices. I listened to the radio as a teenager and had likes and dislikes but I would never even consider spending $15.00 of good shoe buying money on a CD. I stuck with the radio at home, enjoyed the CD's of friends when I was with them and bought myself pair after pair of brightly colored shoes (the pair count hovered right around 75 when I graduated from high school)

Then The Mr. came into my life. He is a music guy. His ears are always open for good music. He scribbles lyrics down on bits of paper so he can hunt down songs he hears while he's out and about, and he has excellent taste. I don't listen to the radio anymore. For the past eight years I have listened almost exclusively to mixes compiled my savvy husband.

That's not to say I don't have opinions or preferences of my own. During the first year of our marriage he went on a Sondheim bent ignited by my love of the same. Every so often I hear a song that he maybe hasn't noticed and request that he add it to our family soundtrack. I saw Norah Jones sing about her friend the letter Y on Sesame Street and soon she made her way into the mix.

A while back a friend asked me what kind of music I like. "Hey Mr," I called "What kind of music do I like?"

I decided I should learn to answer that question for myself. I am fine with his being in charge of the musical climate of our union, but I should at least know what that is. To help me with this, I am introducing a new blog feature. I related in this harangue of a post how I feel about blog play lists. (By the way, if you have a blog play list I don't actually hate you or your blog, but I do turn off your play list as soon as I land on your page, before it has a chance to load)

This new feature will be a monthly guest post by my Mr introducing the music we've been grooving to of late and providing a play list (which will not turn on automatically) for those interested. I'm hoping reading his posts will help me to learn the names of the songs and musicians I enjoy so I'll be able to identify them in terms more concrete than "that one song by that one dude."

By the way, this month's play list is a facsimile of the Valentine CD from so many years ago. There's a song or two that he couldn't track down the same version of, but all in all, this is it.

 

Mrs Cadaver

I read Walk Two Moons this week, isn't that a fantastic book?

When my braces came off I was planning on whitening my newly straight teeth. At my dental appointment the day after my mouth's liberation I asked about the cost of such treatment.
$250.00
Uhg, my teeth had already over stepped their yearly budget with the braces. I couldn't do $250 more.
The next day I went back to the orthodontist to get my retainers and after admiring his handiwork with my teeth and sentencing me to two weeks full time retainer wear, he gave me some fantastic news. My retainers could easily serve as whitening trays. All I'd need from the dentist would be the bleaching gel.
Eventually, I fought off my phone anxiety long enough to call the dentist's office and ask how much the gel alone would set me back. $45.00 was the answer. Totally doable, so I did it.
Then I saved it and put it in my stocking because Santa has a hard time thinking of things to stuff in there and I wanted to help him out.
The first time I used it, it stung so bad I thought my gums were being dissolved. I blamed this on the vigorous flossing I'd done before applying the gel and swore to be more cautious in the future.
When the time was finally up, I rinsed that cursed fire out of my mouth and eagerly grimaced into the mirror to examine the result.
A corpse.
I had the gums of a corpse.
They were white and thick looking, pulling away from my teeth in a very unpleasant manner.
I told myself it was just residue and eagerly (but gently too because OW!) tried to rub it off. Deep inside though, were memories of white crispy skin on my fingers in my platinum blonde days right after I'd touched up my roots, and the way Cute Kenny (Who we all wished would just start liking girls already, because DANG! He was Cute!) used to give himself peroxide tattoos with the excess bleach when he helped my reach the back of my head, and I was frightened.
When the white awfulness refused to wipe away, I wondered mournfully, how long it takes gums to regenerate, and vowed to keep my lips severely fastened until that time. No smiling allowed, it might frighten people to see the gums of a corpse in the mouth of an otherwise living woman.
Three to four days it took. I examined my poor injured mouth every time I passed a mirror. At first I thought I'd have to discontinue my teeth whitening objective all together, but I learned that what I experienced was fairly normal. I just needed to use less gel so it wouldn't ooze onto my gums and wreak havoc.
After a full recovery from that unfortunate incident I applied the gel successfully with no ill effects...
Until last night.
I had apparently grown complacent and overfilled the trays
AGAIN!
Corpse gums.
AGAIN!
It's not as bad this time. I did the deed right before bed, so as soon as I rinsed the acid out of my mouth, I poped my retainers right back in for the night, and somehow, color was restored to my ill treated tooth pockets. So, while my mouth is every bit as tender as it was after the last incident, I am not afraid of frightening others with my corpse gums, and that's a blessing.

Tackled

When faced with a huge task I often find it difficult to get started. I put it off and put it off until it becomes unavoidable and by that time I have to rush, skimp on sleep, trust my children to the tender loving care of the television, and the task fulfills all of the nightmares that lead me to procrastinate it in the first place.
So how do I work around this tendency when there are say, 13 dresses waiting to be made for a fast approaching wedding?
I break it down.
Into
bite sized
pieces
For the last wedding I did I was sewing for a lot of little girls I didn't know, so that time I worked systematically through the sizes setting daily goals like, "Today I will cut all of the size 5 bodices"
This time I'm sewing for my very own nieces so it's easier to keep track of them by name/family relationship than by size.
Today's goal was to cut and sub-assemble the skirts for my oldest sister's 4 girls. This started out as yesterday's goal but I didn't so much as look at the fabric yesterday, so it got bumped to today.
Do you know how much easier it is to start working on a goal like that than it is to dig in to a project called "make an undefined half of 13 elaborate gowns which range in size from a ladies 6 to 0-3 months"?
I'd say it's about 90% easier. So much easier that I even surpassed today's goal. That's right I went above and beyond cutting the 3/4 of Zizza's skirt.
I still have 4 1/4 skirts to cut and 5 to sub assemble. Then comes the finishing work, I'll need to buy the green woolly nylon thread to use in the rolled hem feature on my serger. I generally stick with my trusty single needle machine using this method but I've got 9 multi-layered organza circle skirts to hem so I'm going with the serger this time.
Why do I have only 9 skirts to hem when there are 13 dresses to me made? Well, my second oldest sister who designed the dresses is making the organza skirts for her 3 girls. Plus, my newest tiny niece (not yet a week old) will not be wearing voluminous organza as we'd all like for her mother to be able to keep hold of her and voluminous organza skirts are really not conducive to that.
With all 9 of the organza underskirts made, I'll be ready to head to Utah for the wedding. Once I get there, my second oldest sister and I will ship our children off to their aunties, combine the skirts I've made with the bodices and over skirts she's made and proceed to sew like the wind (name that movie) until all 13 gowns are complete.
Sounds fun huh?

It's an honor being nominated.

A l-o-n-g time ago Brenda gave me a blog award.
I didn't ever write the acceptance post because it was November and November means everyday posts. Every day posts mean less time per post in order to avoid complete consumption of myself by the blog.
So, by the time November was over and I was ready to put a little more time into a single post I'd kind of sort of forgotten about it.
Fast forward to today when Lauraine granted me a "Beautiful Blogger Award"
The two awards in question here, have the same rules/requirements so I'm going to accept them both in this single post. (cheating?)
First, I thank the person who gave the award and say something nice about them.
Brenda has a talent for showing love to to others and giving service. Here's an example:
When Zizza was a baby The Mr. and I were on the activities committee at church. We were putting on the big kahuna of activities for the year- The Ward Rodeo.
We were to report the the arena at something like 7:00 am to set up. (One of the Mr's jobs was greasing the pig, washing all of that piggy crisco off his hands took some time) Toting an 8 month old along through all of that was less than appealing so I called Brenda and asked her to take my little dumpling for the morning.
She told me she was going to have the "YCL's" at her house the night before but she'd could take my baby too. I did not know that "YCL" stood for "Youth Camp Leader" or that there would be 30 or more of them all camped out on her back lawn waiting while she cooked their breakfast. Imagine my surprise and horror when I walked into her kitchen and found her making French Toast for that crowd, knowing that I'd asked her to babysit while she had this going on! I was more than a little embarrassed, but I didn't know what else to do so I left Zizza there and went to set up the pie bake off!
Brenda was on top of it all though, a few hours later she and little Zizz were at the rodeo both smiling. To top it all off, when the rodeoing was finished Brenda took Zizza back to her house so I could stay and clean up. I feel both exhausted and grateful just thinking about that day.
Thanks again Brenda for the award and the all day babysitting with a yard full of hungry teen-aged girls!

Lauraine is a fairly recent blog friend, and a chatty one! Not only does she leave comments, she responds to my responses. I love that! I've never been great at responding to comments. I get the notification in my email when they're left and each one makes me feel warm and happy inside, but if the commenter doesn't have their account set up to sync their comments with their e-mail I have a hard time getting responses written.
You don't know how many times I've gotten a sweet comment, written a response and sent it to "Noreply-comment@blogger.com" I don't know how many time's Ive done it either on account of it took quite a while for me to realize this was happening.
Anyway, happily, Lauraine has her account situated so I can reply to her comments via email, because she is fun to chat with. Plus, she churns out high volumes of cute stuff, and that's always fun to see.
Thanks Lauraine, for encouraging me not only to be better at replying to comments, but better at leaving them for others as well.

Ok, Next I'm supposed to list 7 little known facts about myself. I think it's cheating if I just link to a similar meme I did a few years ago. Darn it, here goes from scratch.

1- I can wrap both my ankles behind my head. I maybe should have pursed a career as a contortionist.

2- I don't like to be touched while I'm sleeping. If the tips of my fingers are touching The Mr while I'm trying to drift off, I will lie there feeling off-balanced and irritable until one of us moves.

3- Every night I brush, floss, and then brush again.

4- I'm kind of a know-it-all sometimes.

5- When I was around 10 I decided that when I grew up I was going to have twin girls and name them "Spring Rain and Summer Breeze,"

6- I thank my lucky stars that I grew out of that notion before I actually grew up and had any babies twins or otherwise.

7- I've got to wrap this up because I had pizza for dinner and I'm just itching to go in and brush floss brush.

Ok, now to grant my own awards. I'm going to select friends who I haven't heard from in a while in the hopes that they'll get ta postin'


Amelia
Boy
Katie
Lezlie
Melisue (start a blog will ya?)
Paula
Stacey

Now, I'm off to answer the siren song of my toothbrush, good night!

Wohoo!

I've been in the market for a double jogger for a good three years now.
Three years ago, that's when I found a great deal on Craig's list but didn't act on it because it was hard to imagine actually jogging, jogging while pushing 2 kids, when I was pushing my current stroller forward with nudges from my belly since I couldn't reach around it to push with my hands.
In the past three years I've been waiting for another deal like that to come along. Meanwhile, Enzo holds Moo on his lap in the stroller meant for one child. This works well enough for a stroll to the park but running that way would be less than effective. Not to mention that the stroller in question here is not a jogger. I've used it that way in the past, but it's rough.
In all this time, another craigslist deal never has come along, so...

I gave in a bought one new.
Sadly, the view out my front door confirms that I won't be taking the new beauty out for her inaugural run today.

Hoping the rain will stop long enough for a quick mile, and wishing I'd sprung for the full stroller splash guard.

My poor little boy

When I got up this morning no one else was out of their little burrows yet. I took a few minutes to check blogs and enjoy my solitude before it was time to go wake the girl so she would be ready for her ride to pre-school.
When I got upstairs Enzo was on the potty. In the hallway outside the bathroom were his pants and a blob of something ickish. "I sick Mama," he said "My tummy feels icky"
I'd heard him go in and climb on the potty a few minutes previous, there was no heaving or hacking involved so I figured the ick must be poop.
Until I found some in the sink.
I left him there on the potty while I jostled his sister out of sleep. Then I returned to the bathroom to attack the mess and figure out how he either A)vomited silently, or B) pooped in the sink.
I was asking him "Did this come out of your mouth or your bum?" (something you never expect to hear yourself say) when Zizza came out of her room and told me she'd heard him throwing up. After a few baffled moments, wondering how I'd missed that, she told me it happened last night. The silent vomiting mystery was solved.
I asked Zizza to please, if she ever hears him vomiting again to come and fetch me. She said "Ok" but she really couldn't do that last night because she'd been asleep at the time of the incident it was only her ears that were awake.
I feel so bad for my poor little boy puking all alone, and then tucking himself back in bed.
Later, as I was snuggling him before his nap he held tight around my neck and told me all about it. "I cough in the hallway, I cough in the sink, and then I cough in the potty." He told me over and over.
poor darling

Highlights

The Mr had outside commitments nearly every evening this past week. That is not a highlight, that is a lowlight. However, he bought me flowers to express his regret at not having more time at home, and flowers nearly always constitute a highlight.
They were exceptionally pretty flowers, who opened into ruffled splendor. Roses have such comely buds, they rarely get the chance to really open. It's too bad, they're so lovely that way.

I took some time on Friday to make up this little suitcase so Agatha Polly Yeagerson would have somewhere to pack her things for her trip across the neighborhood to her new home.

It's a little bit lopsided, and the corners are not what you'd call square, but I was satisfied with it as a first attempt, and it felt good just to make something. Started, finished, done. That's a highlight.

Crazyness

Today I went to Sas Fabrics by the pound. The trip was wildly successful.
Another of my little brothers is getting married next month and there are 13 flower girls to sew for. My sister and I are tag teaming the project. She's got half the fabric, I've (now) got half the fabric and we're attempting to collaborate across state lines to outfit all 13 girls in three weeks time. Crazy? I think so.
Here's a question, is the seventeen year old niece of the groom still considered a flower girl? Something to think about.
Anyway, I selected the 60 yards of organza I needed and was standing there waiting for it all to me measured out and found myself right next to the silk bolts.
Heaven help me.
Heaven help my pocket book.
I did make it out of there without doing over-much damage, but not without a few yards of the canary silk that called to me in just such a way that I was unable to resist.
Just now as I did the dishes I planned my design for it and eventually, when all sixty yards of organza is sewn into lovely swirling skirts of variegated green, I will execute the design and then LOOK OUT! That canary silk is a lot to take in.
For hours after making the purchase I found myself repeating "Canary Silk" to myself. It's really that thrilling.
I know just the shoes I'll need. Beige and creme wingtip heels...sigh. I love clothes...and shoes.

Agatha Polly Yeagerson it is!

I used Random.org to come up with a number. With just 17 possibilities I certainly could have come up with a more interesting way to chose. Like printing out the comments, trapping a fly and keeping track of the most landed on entry, but I'm feeling a little lazy so the simplicity of typing in the number 18 and clicking the "generate" button won out.
The result? 2 Melissa is the winner.
Thanks all, for your entries.

Wean, My Love

We've been seeing a different side of Moo lately. It all started at her 15 month well baby visit. I told the Dr that I was still giving her daily bottles. If not in the morning, then surely after her nap. He recommended that I quit the practice entirely and I had to admit that he was probably right.
The truth is I agreed with him with every clear thinking, responsible thought in my head. I had agreed when he told me the same thing at her 12 month visit to his office. I'd never needed the recommendation before. My first two babies were irrefutably weaned at their respective 12 month appointments. Granted, bottles didn't enter into the equation either of those times, but still.
I ignored the advice in spite of agreeing with it because with bottles on my side, I wasn't automatically on duty once I heard her wake up. Hand that babe 10 ounces of vitamin D milk and you've got your self fifteen minutes to get your head back in the game.
I was lazy, and I was hiding behind the bottle. I liked the 15 minute warning and I wanted to keep it, but all good things must come to an end.
Bottle free, the aftereffects of nap time are not the pleasant rested baby you'd expect. She put up with the new bottle-less tomfoolery for a while but she wasn't liking it and she showed her displeasure with increasing violence.
The cuddly good-natured baby I once knew didn't equate with the fledgling banshee I found in my charge, yet some how I knew them to be one.
Wednesday afternoon, finding myself rather fatigued I decided to try for a quick nap before quiet time collapsed around my ears. Just then she woke up.
In a desperate play for time and hoping she'd fall miraculously back to sleep, I gave in and granted her the bottle.
She didn't go back to sleep, but when I fetched her from her bed there was no wailing. It was as if she were saying to me "You see Mama? When you cooperate there's no need for any unpleasantness. You keep giving me bottles and I'll have no reason to continue fine tuning deaths' wail for use against you,"
There were no bottles Thursday. I feared the worst. After Wednesday's reunion with her beloved, a refusal to grant the same could have been devastating.
Cautiously, I offered the sippy cup. I'm not a fan of the sippy, but the little banshee tends to throw things she does not want and cups full of milk are not things I want thrown around my house so we've been sticking with sippys of late.
She refused the milk with a vigorous shake of her head. I gritted my teeth waiting...the head shake is a warning, if demands are not met when the head shakes, screaming will follow.
With trepidation I offered a cracker.
Ritz?
No.
Gram?
...And she took it! She took the cracker! Then she allowed herself to be placed in the highchair with no fuss, and before long was drinking her milk.
No bottles and no screaming. A miracle.
Later on she voluntarily left my arms to play on the floor with toys.
Would wonders never cease?
They would indeed. It is Friday, she is napping now and there have been wails already. Nap time will soon end and the bottle question is sure to be raised.
Who will be today's winner?
Will we end the day in another grueling stale mate, me refusing to grant the bottle and her screaming my punishment until bed time? Will she back down, peacefully accepting a less preferred mode of drink? Or will her banshee's cry reach full strength and kill me dead, the refused milk dripping slowly from the spout of the sippy cup clutched in my cold, stiffening hand?

A zower in my shower

We had a round of ick over the weekend. Part of this included multiple pants poopings by Enzo. Fun times.
After one such incident I found it necessary to shower the poor lad. The tub needed scrubbing before I could bathe him in it, yet there he stood shivering in the buff.
He wasn't super impressed by the shower, but Zizza sure was. She hasn't bathed since.
She stands in the warm spray giggling, delighted with her grown-upness and hygiene.
Before every shower she reminds me "I want you to stand right there, like you did the time Enzo had a shower," So, I dutifully stand at the end of the tub, peeking in to see that her hair is thoroughly wet, dolling out shampoo and seeing that it's rinsed properly.
Getting that child clean has never been so quick, or so fun.

Giveaway! Closed

Guess what.
That last post?
It was my 500th.
True story.
In honor of my 500 post commitment to blogging I am giving away this little dear

Just leave a comment and you're entered!

This little dolly is entirely hand made by me with soft cotton skin, warm wool stuffing, and mohair hair. She is 11 inches tall.

Good luck!

Ok, time's up. I'm picking the winner, I'll be with you shortly

Zizza wrote a letter to Santa

She'd been talking and talking about a sewing machine that was her size, and I'd been looking and looking for one that would actually, you know, sew.
Zizza has used my machine before, so she knows what a sewing machine is actually supposed to do. I knew she wouldn't be satisfied with a thing that looked like a sewing machine but didn't so much sew as create really messy knots with some fabric in the middle.
I looked at vintage machines but she specifically wanted one her size and they were mostly my size. I thought about a Singer Featherweight, and if my repair guy hadn't retired a while back leaving me repair guy-less, I would've snapped up a "needs repairs" one from ebay. Sadly, the refurbished Featherweights, beautiful though as they may have been, were out of my price range. (Plus I'd have wanted it more for me than for her)
I found an antique Singer toy machine that would have been a dream on a little table in my sewing room (Once I get it cleaned up) but some communication with the dealer taught me that the "not actually working" aspect of toy sewing machines is nothing new. I still really wanted that little machine for her (or me) it was such a pretty shade of aqua...sigh.
Anyway, she wrote her letter and here's what she ended up asking for.

Slippers with elephants on the toes.
Becky, is the elephant on her left foot, and that's Holly on her right.
I haven't heard mention of a her-size sewing machine since.
Santa must have found polka dot slippers at Wal*Mart, made some elephants out of fantastic wool felt from the stash and then stitched them all together.
When she opened them she said "They're just like I asked for! Only, I didn't actually want polka dots," She made peace with the dots very quickly and preferred her slippers to any other foot wear available.
That is how she came to be wearing them when we stopped to use the potty in the small Northern Arizona town where she vomited on the floor of the service station.
Holly's toe got a little mussed in the ordeal, but I'm pleased to report that she's safe and clean again.

Lot's a food

This is a photo of my belly at seventeen weeks preggers. That's Enzo in there.

When this photo was taken I strongly suspected that the resident of my bump was a baby boy named Milo. I was right about the baby boy part, wrong about the Milo part.

Tonight, after gorging on warm biscuits and pear butter my non pregnant belly was quite possibly larger than the belly you see above. I probably should have taken photos to compare...but I didn't.
The joy that's found in a belly distended with good food cannot be captured by photographing the belly in question. It's true.
I could tell you how the pear butter was sweet and rich, smooth and cold, the perfect accompaniment to the flaky warmth and the slight bite of salt in the biscuits. I could tell you how I savored every bite and reveled in the yumminess I had created.
That might convey the joy. A photo though, would not.
For that reason, I'll stick with the photo of the baby belly, because photos of baby bellys do convey joy.
When I look at that photo I remember the little jabs I felt against the waist band of my pants when I sat down. Some of the first movement I detected from that boy was in protest to the waistband of those jeans. I also remember how ecstatic I was to still be wearing the jeans.
I remember how good it felt to not puke, and not feel like I was going to. The non-puking is a blessing that week sixteen brings along, allowing week seventeen to fully enjoy the rapture that is consistently keeping one's food down.
When I look at that photo I remember sitting in this very spot, grumpy and thinking about the lack of connection I felt with that baby, even as I felt him(her?) punching the waistband of my pants. Nearly half way through the ordeal of bringing him(her?) into the world I just didn't feel a connection.
Mid way through the pity party I was throwing myself a light clicked on.
Don't feel a connection? What was this garbage I'd been telling myself? That baby was a Boy, from that minute on I knew he was, and his name was Milo (or so I thought).
That is one of my happiest minutes of life and it's what I think about when I look at that picture.

A photo of tonight's belly, if I were to run across it in three and a half years time would not usher forth cherished memories. It would just make me wonder what on earth I was thinking allowing my overstuffed gut to be photographed and vow to do a little more ab work.
But those bicuits sure were tasty.

For my Brotha

My husband and my brother share a love. This love is known the world over and is called by many names,(where many=two) the name we use, is Ping Pong.
We didn't leave town the day I wrote this. The delay gave me the time to take on this long put-off project.

A case for the beloved paddle of my little brother.
If he'd owned such a thing (the paddle, not the case) back in the days when we lived under the same roof and I was called upon to occasionally babysit him, I surely would have taken possession of the item and used it to smack him.
And he would have deserved it.

These days our relationship operates at a much more mature level. A level that allowed me to craft a cozy zippered home for a well loved ping pong paddle.

(you'll have to excuse the blurry photo, it's the only one I got of that pocket before giving it away.)

I made the case out of an old hoodie of the Mr's. The accent plaid was also a shirt of the Mr's in it's former life. The zippers were in my stash, and I used regular old yarn in place of cotton cord to make the piping. That makes for one inexpensive Christmas gift. More thoughtful though, than the i-tunes gift card he would have received in it's place had we made it out of the house that day.

p.s. The movie "Ping Pong Playa" comes highly recommended by The Mr.

From the deep blue sea

Sunday the twentieth of December found me in a bit of a fix.
We were thinking of maybe embarking on our holiday travels the following day, and though I had some waffle weave knit waiting to be made into a softie of some kind for my little Moo, the knowledge of what kind of softie it should be was eluding me.
The question weighed heavy on my mind as we traveled the neighborhood delivering bottles of home made hot fudge.
I continued to ponder as we gathered around our advent wreath to enjoy the week's installment of the Christmas story.
I tucked my babies into their beds, no closer to a solution.
Then, when all was quiet, I pulled my trusted lappy to it's place upon my knees and submitted a query to Google. "Free down loadable softie pattern" I asked, and Google lead me here.
I hit a bit of a hiccup in that this pattern is intended for wovens and I was working with a knit. I overcame the problem by adhering the knit fabric of my choice to a scrap of woven cotton for stabilization before cutting.
I was well pleased with the result. What say you?