While there's still pepper in my salt

Hair, it grows on you!

When it comes to my hair, I'm neither a trend setter nor a stick-in-the-mud. While there have been moments when I chopped it all off and went from long to super short, typically I'm not too daring or out there, and definitely not a person to plunk down wads of cash to get a certain look. I've always thought the same about hair as I do nails, it's this dead stuff that comes out of our bodies, do I really want it to be the center of my universe?

Well, I can now admit that my hair has become the center of my universe. It's practically all I think about, Google about, Pinterest and YouTube about. And not just hair, but grey hair. Yes, I have decided to jump off the diving board of vanity and dive head first into the latest craze, going grey.

When I was 15 years old, a friend saw and yanked a half grey, half brown hair off my head. That wasn't the beginning of my ascent into a head full of grey, it was just a weird anomaly. I can't really say when I started to really notice the silver hairs peeking through the browns, probably in my mid-to-late-thirties? I started covering the nasty intruders with Natural Instincts, because it's perfectly instinctive to color up grey hair, isn't it? While it may be instinctive, it's not natural, and I was never good at all with the coloring process. Hair color on the walls, hair color on the floor, hair color on the toilet seat, it seemed the color went everywhere it wasn't supposed to. I'd have the best intentions of just covering the roots like the instructions recommend, but once I got that pair of cheap plastic gloves on my hands and the chemicals filled the bathroom, I would just say forget this and I'd empty all the contents all over my head. And the floor, and the walls and the toilet.

This has gone on for years, except for the times my friend and sometimes stylist, who is really good with color, would convince me to get my color done by someone who knows better than to get it all over the walls. This involved lots of time sitting in the salon, piles and piles of foil pieces, time under the dryer, more sitting, and after feeling like a drowned rat, emerging from the salon with lovely color. And a depleted budget. But what cute color!

Until it grew back.

And hair never grows faster than when you love the cut or you love the color. If you love both, don't blink because hair then goes into speed growing mode, and before you can say "Oh this color? It's just kissed by the sun" those grey roots start rearing their ugliness and ruining whatever social event you've got planned that involves showing your head.

So then comes the decision, do I go back and get more professionally done color, or do I slink into the aisle of the store and try to pick out the color that comes within hopefully ten shades of what my hair color was when I was five. Buy the box, hope it looks halfway OK, undo all the work done with foils by the expert, more drips on the floor, and walls and toilet. I probably went with the at-home process 95% of the time.

I had no intension of changing the status quo. In fact, when I picked out the color of my Baha hearing device that I wear attached my head, my choices were grey, blond, black, brown and reddish brown. I went with reddish brown, because that's my hair color, right? When I exchanged one of them for a smaller model, the audiologist chose black without asking me, and commented that black goes with everything. Little did I know how much I would appreciate her choice.

A few months ago a friend we had known in Tahoe posted on Instagram that she was "ditching the dye, going grey." I was shocked! Just like I was shocked that another friend from Tahoe had done the same thing the year before. My thought was, "More power to you sisters, but no way, not for me!"
I sort of put off the decision by saying "Maybe I'll go grey when I'm sixty."

After getting my hair colored at the salon in summer, and seeing how fast the grey came back, especially at my temples, and following it up with a bad box color that seemed to just look flat and blah, I started seriously rethinking my no-way-on-the-grey. I did one more box color which according to the receipt was November 9, 2018. About a month later I decided for sure to let my roots come in and see what happens.

What is happening is not what I expected. I assumed I was completely grey all over. I'm not, and the color of my roots in back is cracking me up. Dark brown, a color of hair I associate with my Mom as a young woman. Brunette, without a hint of warmth. It's totally neutral, and if it comes in like this I may have to rethink half of my wardrobe.

I had some highlights put in to help with the dreaded "line of demarcation." I sort of wish I had bitten the bullet and just gone without this step, but the lighter color is helping me get used to the bigger changes ahead. A friend of ours who is very daring with her tresses, whose hair may or may not have been pink just a few weeks ago, saw my hair and said she loved the "Ombre Look." I'm going to close my eyes and accept that as a compliment.

As much as I didn't want my hair to grow fast after a coloring, either from a box or the salon, it's the opposite now. I want my roots to grow, I want more grey, more natural color to see what I've been covering up all these years. If I believed it would help, I'd take hair growth supplements. But this is a time for good old fashioned patience, something I am in short supply of. If only I had as much patience as I have grey hair.

Summer convention, grey is peeking out!

Plunked down some money to get it colored right.
But it grew. Stupid roots, stop growing!

So I box colored it again. Cheaper, but blah.

The day I decided to ditch the dye.

Faded and dark auburn/brown, blond highlights, grey roots, dark roots
I can't wait to find out who I am.
To Pixie or Not to Pixie, That is the Question.

Feeling pretty good about the future.

A bear hat for Ernst and a bear hat for Ernest

Using patterns from Repeat Crafter Me, I've crocheted my fair share of animal hats over the past few years. Bears, pigs, foxes, puppy dogs and monkeys, in the end they are fun to make, even if the feature placement causes me to tear my hair out. Where to put that nose? Are the eyes crooked? Will the ears flop down or stand upright, or worse yet, will one ear be stubborn and make the whole thing look whacky? A lot of worries over a hat, I"ll admit, but they seem to stare at me wanting to be perfect.

When my husband requested a hat he could wear to Sacramento Republic FC soccer games, a bear hat to be exact, I figured I wouldn't stress too much. This hat would be all in the family, super easy! We went to the yarn aisle at our local Joann Fabrics together, and he decided on a brown multi-colored yarn I'd used before. It's always nice to use up yarn that's lying around. He chose the accent color (didn't have that color lying around) and we talked about the general look. Cute but not silly. Got it.

I used the basic pattern from the dog hat on Repeat Crafter Me, but decided to finally branch out and make my own design for the face of the bear hat. I wanted a big white area on the face so the black nose would stand out, plus it would give me a place to sew on a smile with the burgundy yarn And then I got the grand idea, because the ears always give me such stress, to make some pom pom ears. They would be so cute, and would tie in all the colors of the hat, the brown and white and burgundy, all in a happy little pair of puff balls right on the top. You know, just like real California Brown Bears have.

I made the hat while working my night shift job, taking care to do my work first and foremost of course. But since the goal of this job is first and foremost to not fall asleep, crocheting is allowed. The puff balls, or rather pom poms, turned out so cute fierce and menacing looking, ready to strike fear into the opposing team's fan base. I took a picture of what the finished hat was going to look like, for approval from the guy who is willing to wear a crocheted bear hat in public.

POM! POM!

The reaction? Tepid, most certainly tepid. "What's with the ears? Those don't look like real bear ears." Hate to tell you this, but that's not a real bear, Buster. I was crushed. My Pom Poms got a big No No from the Big Bear, and that's unbearable. But I pushed through the pain, and made him some boring old true-to-life bear ears fit for a Grizzly.

But I had those pom poms left. What's an animal hat maker to do?

Enter Ernest. Not Ernst, that's my husband's name. We now had an Ernest with two E's on his way, and I saw my perfect opportunity to palm my pom poms off on the new kid!

Ernest was the expected baby of a new couple in our congregation. Without giving any details, I'll just say they just moved here, were very brave in the country they just emigrated from and put themselves at risk under a regime that has made life miserable for many in the last few years. There, that's all I'm saying, besides that they are cute and she was so hardly showing when I first met her I kept accidentally touching her pregnant tummy as I tried to not botch her language too much. She didn't make me feel dumb about either the tummy bumping or the language botching. I loved her right away. When my husband heard of their bravery and then when he heard they were planning on naming their baby Ernest, he was positively smitten. It doesn't matter to him the baby's name was chosen before they arrived here, or that there is an extra E in the name, Ernst was very excited to meet baby Ernest.

He told the couple he would come to the hospital when the baby was coming if they wanted, and they said yes. Don't know if they were aware of this man's fear of birth, small detail. The plan was the baby's two aunts would be there for most of the interpreting, and Ernst for if anything major went wrong.

We got the text on New Year's Day that mom was in labor since 4:30 am and that they were now at the hospital. Wow, this was amazing, a baby coming on the first day of the year, a gorgeous blue sky day when we both had nothing going on whatsoever.

It was a pretty amazing experience! I kept wondering what my role there was, it turned out to be chief photographer of a lovely and beautiful birth. The peace and love and calmness and serenity between mommy and daddy was almost more of a miracle than the birth itself. Ernest was here, he was healthy, everything was beautiful. What a way to start 2019.

A hat for Ernest.

Welcome to California, little guy!

You are in good hands.

No worries.

Yep, smile away!

Your mommy was amazing before, during and after.
Daddy too.

Ernest :) Boy

Ernest and Ernst.
Ernst and Ernest.

Should I crochet some bear booties?