I finally finished Princess Zelda last night.  Actually, I had finished her a few weeks ago, figured out what I did wrong, re-wrote my pattern, and completed my second attempt last night.

She's still not perfect, but she's a far cry from attempt #1:

Not only was I making it the wrong size to begin with, I was trying to include way too many details.  The more I do this the more I learn, and I'm finding that too many details really don't translate very well into crochet.  Simpler is better.  She's a little creepy looking yet, I think I'm going to put some points of light in her eyes and probably make a mouth (my son is insisting that she has a mouth, even though I'm pretty sure the Zelda I was basing this on didn't have one pictured).  Just for comparison,

See?  No mouth.

I am just a bit sad - there's no way this is going to be done in time for my husband's 30th birthday in a few weeks.  Or even by his birthday party a month later.  I have 4 panels done now, and I don't even know how many more to go.  2 of the panels I have left I still haven't written out the patterns for, and the ones that I have written I'm going to have to re-do, based on what I discovered while crocheting Zelda here.  Plus, I'm trying really, really hard not to rip out a few of the panels that I DID complete, because I see another way to do them.   But, my husband knows me pretty well by now - the first blanket I ever made for him still needs half of its fringe applied.  He's waiting, very patiently, hoping that I will have it done by the time he's 40.  I think I can do that.

A Moment in Time

After my daughter was born, I discovered something very exciting.  More exciting than the fact that she slept through the night within the first week (babies do that??)  More exciting than her rolling over when she was just 4 days old - twice.  I have it on video.  More exciting than seeing how much her big brother loved her, immediately and completely.

Well, OK, maybe it wasn't more exciting than all that . . . but my inner geek insists that nothing could be better than this:

My daughter was born in the very same hours that Brandon Sanderson finished writing A Memory of Light.

Whaaaat?!?  I know, crazy, right?!  I was thrilled when I read this on Brandon Sanderson's blog. Unfortunately, no one else really seemed to appreciate just how amazing this was.  Even my husband, who is a Wheel of Time fan as well, just admitted that it was "kinda cool."  And when I blurted it on Facebook, unable to contain my excitement . . .well, it was the online equivalent of everyone smiling-and-nodding.  For those of you who don't know, the Wheel of time is a series that Robert Jordan began writing in 1984, with the first novel, The Eye of the World, being published in 1990. It is an amazing, epic series, and the 14th and final book in the series was completed by Brandon Sanderson on July 30th, 2012.  My daughter's birthday.  Oh.  Yeah.

The funny part is I had sort of wanted to name her Aviendha all along.  I knew I couldn't really do that to her, but part of me wanted to anyway.  Luckily my husband is the voice of reason.  But she was Aviendha to me in my heart - my little Aiel warrior.  I thought we needed to pay homage to this amazing connection she shared with such an important landmark in history, so we did the following photo shoot.

Of course, A Memory of Light wasn't actually published yet when I did this.  I just couldn't wait though, I needed her to be sweet and sleepy for it.  I do have a vague idea of a shoot with the proper book, and once I work out the details will share that as well.  Hopefully someone out there will appreciate it as much as I do.