martha-stewart-on-crack-flu (or, just WHEN did I become my mother?)

last tuesday (valentines no less) i took a sicky off work. stomach stuff. say no more. anyway, i decided that in this rare opportunity to be at home all alone i would for the very first time(drumroll please) try sewing something with an honest-to-god sewing machine. so i did. it was so fucking easy, i was stupified. in the space of an afternoon, i had completely assembled six new pillows for the living room. you might also remember, that on that particular day i also blogged about spidey valentines. these accomplishment (and the gurgling stomach) had me looking around feverishly thinking "what the hell can i knit/sew/blog next??"

i know--a hat for Boyo! out come the circular needles, and i knit what will become a the first of five prototypes. blue and red stripes. version 1.0 is fucking enormous. i make him wear it anyway, before knitting another smaller (but not small enough) version and coopting the big one for myself.

what is funkier that a 30-something mom in a knitted striped hat and bootcut jeans, after all? this was my thinking on saturday when i made it my personal goal to wear the stripey/hipster mom hat as much as humanly possible. to the Y, to the store, to a friend's house. look at me with my funny hipster hat--i made it myself. i am so radically cool.

then sunday comes. the day of unfulfilled weekend-promise. homework, get-the-fricking-laundry-done-because-we-start-up-all-over-again, day. i take the dog for the walk. naturally, i wear the hat. and then i see myself reflected in a car window...

...30 something lady in a fricking huge, brightly colored homemade hat. schlepping along with a nice baggy of dog poo. stringy hair, and a bit of a hunch. and suddenly, i thought of all those girls at my school whose mums insisted on knitting their navy blue, school issue sweaters, instead of buying a nice acrylic blend one from the school uniform shop. how we derided those girls. on my part, the derision especially vehement--countered as an act of pure self defense. while (mercifully) my mother did not make me wear navy blue knits under my blazer, i was the proud (horrified) owner of the only homemade summer uniform dress. *none* of the other girls had one of those.

as i send Boyo off to preschool in his red-and-white hat--version 5.0, nearly perfected ("hey honey, let's call this the Cat in the Hat hat, huh, huh??") i realize i am perilously near to becoming one of those mothers. i *am* that mother.

so, anyway, here's what i need to know. has anyone got a knitting/sewing pattern for a spongebob sweater, because i am just dying to make one for him.