Congrats on not keeling over yet, Dad!

My father turns 70 today. He's been awesome for at least 36 of those years (I can't vouch for the ones before I showed up, although based on the photographic evidence, he was pretty cool back then, too).

In no particular order, here are 70 things my father has made over the years - some he made just for me, some he made just for the fun of it and I've absconded with them when he wasn't looking, and many I'm sure he's forgotten about completely:

1. A toy shelf with my portrait painted on the back in white enamel
2. Another bookshelf for my toy room
3. Bookshelves for my bedroom
4. Loft for my dorm in college
5. CD cabinet
6. Art supply cabinet
7. Shelf for my stereo
8. Sawhorses to use at our first house
9. "That's one" plaque to remind me of a traffic accident
10. Name plaque that declares me to be a boatbuilder
11. Head sculpted from clay he dug from the beach near our old house
12. Yard sale signs
13. Silk-screened t-shirts for the entire low brass section in my high school band
14. Garden tote
15. Toolbox
16. Plant labels for garden
17. Golfer crossing sign for Jason
18. Wooden toy truck
19. Dollhouse
20. Dollhouse furniture
21. Wooden ladder to help me climb trees at our old house
22. Splinter the Wonder Horse
23. Stilts
24. Rope swing with wooden seat
25. Tire swing
26. Bench to sit on in my hiding spot behind the lilac bushes at the old house
27. Swing set at the old house
28. Basketball hoop
29. Balance beam
30. Manger for the hideous salt dough nativity scene I made in elementary school
31. For Liza: Toy fairy house with furniture
32. For Liza: Balance beam
33. For Liza: Rocking balance board
34. Ultralight kayak
35. Yarn swift
36. Partridge carving
37. Beaver carving
38. Whale carving
39. Fox carving
40. Goose carving
41. Wooden spoons
42. Wooden butter spreaders
43. PPG Man carving
44. Santa with a Cat carving
45. Santa with a Goose carving
46. Pumpkinhead Man carving
47. Red Christmas sleigh
48. Reindeer carving
49. Cardinal carving
50. Balancing bird carving
51. Big Ralph carving
52. Medium Ralph carving
53. Spirit of St. Louis Christmas ornament
54. Wright Brothers airplane Christmas ornament
55. Santa face Christmas ornament
56. Peeking mouse carving
57. Hand carving to hold yarn
58. Scarf pins
59. Name sign for my office with a carved wooden plane on the top
60. Santa gargoyle carving
61. S-W Man carving
62. Goat carving
63. Penguin carving
64. Snowman face Christmas ornament
65. Ball in cage on a chain carving
66. Skunk carving
67. Winnie-the-Pooh carving
68. Caroling mouse carving
69. Angel with trumpet carving
70. Carved wooden flour scoop

Since he's made me all these things over the years, I thought it was only fair that I make him something impressive for his birthday. Behold, the Liberty Blanket:

That sucker used up 13 skeins of yarn (that's more than 1.5 miles), is about 7 feet long, weighs a ton, and is guaranteed to keep you warm in sub-zero temperatures. More importantly, the chart for the pattern was 70 rows long (get it? 70th birthday, 70-row chart? Yes, I'm geeky like that), and I worked on the blanket intermittently from October 2008 until the end of January 2010. The size of the project translates out to me knitting on it for 2 hours every night for more than 70 total nights at the top speed I managed once I was good at the colorwork ... but in real life it took much longer than that because I was really, really slow at the beginning. It was my first serious colorwork project, my first steek, my first hemmed project, my first full-sized knit afghan. And it was all worth it, because he seemed to really like it, and he used it twice while I was there (and found an old pillowcase to keep it in so their cats don't shred it right away).

Happy birthday, dad. Eat some cake, then go finish up that ginormous dragon head so I can add it as #71 to the list for next year, okay?

A multitude of Ralphs

Remember my snide comments about the original Ralph the Christmas angel? Dad did. Big Ralph lives with us now!

Dad also brought Micro Ralph, on the right below, next to the Mini Ralph from my tree. That's either a 50-cent piece or a silver dollar, I forget which - it's not a dime, Micro Ralph isn't THAT small. He's made to the scale of the dollhouse my father started when I was a kid, the dollhouse that's still not finished, yet my parents keep trying to dump it at my house so the two-year-old can wreck it. Not so fast, there, buckos. Let's let her trash the $2 plastic one you found at the yardsale first, and then we'll give her access to the expensive handmade one.

Tree-riffic

Every year we put up a Christmas tree, and every year Jason complains that even the plastic ones make him break out when he handles them, and every year I complain that Jason has a tendency to try to arrange the ornaments in humorous tableaus, such as Boba Fett trying to blast the baby Jesus out of the manger.

Every year there are ornaments that he doesn't want to put on the tree because they look too junky and homemade, but he won't throw them out because somebody made them for him when he was a kid, or he made them, or he's not sure who made them but somebody obviously put a lot of effort into gluing six beads onto a piece of felt, so we'd better keep it in case they come looking for it one day.

Personally, I'm proud of what another blogger calls the "funky junky" ornaments. I mean, if I'm not going to let my freak flag fly proudly, why even bother to keep the four-pound disco-ball-apple ornament?

And what says "child of the '80s" better than homemade satin-thread-covered styrofoam ball ornaments covered in beads held on with straight pins ... unless it's the same thing, with a giant gold tassel at the bottom?

See that? Even the camera is scared of that puppy.

Know what I'm scared of? Dwarfs with axes.

That little papier mache nightmare is lurking on the "window" side of the tree, ready to scare off would-be intruders. I try not to look at it, especially late at night.

Our recent ornament purchases have been a lot more subdued (thank god). I'm particularly proud of this year's additions, two glass ornaments I picked up while we were in Cape May. Not only can we say we have a bouncing pecker on our tree ...

... but we've also got one Plump and Perky Turkey, as Liza keeps calling it, thanks to the book of the same name we read to her at Thanksgiving.
According to the literature included with the turkey, this bird is a symbol for generosity and altruism - not, as Jason suggested, garish paint and glitter. And, as we all know, it's the symbol of The Best University In The World (go, Hokies!).

And, when asked the small talk question, "Which ornament would you save if the tree was on fire," Jason and I both agreed that we'd be singed for the sake of the handprints, plus Ralph the Christmas Angel:

This is the Mini Me version of the real Ralph, who is over a foot tall and resides at my parents house. Both Ralphs were carved by my father, and I'm looking forward to the day when my parents admit that they haven't actually put up any Christmas decorations since about 2002, so Big Ralph should come live with me. I'll have to reinforce the wall in order to hang that dude up, but I can't wait.

In the meantime, though, I have little Ralph, and Jason knows that he's likely to cause bloodshed if he tries to hang it up for me. He can hang the disco apple, he can hang the giant purple ball, he can even hang the beaded angels I got from Great-Aunt Emma that fall apart if you look at them sideways ... but he'd better step aside when it comes to Ralph.

Unless we get a really tall tree and I can't reach the top, in which case, be my guest.