Muscat – Page 2 – robinchartier

“traditional” stockings

The sewing project that I’ve been working on for the last few days is almost completed. All that’s needed is a little ironing, a little hand sewing and some loops to hang the stockings.

Yep, I made “Omani” Christmas stockings. I was at a fabric and notions store where they sell all the beading and trimming for the abayas that the women wear here when inspiration struck. I decided to make abaya styled stockings for Camille and me and dishdasha stockings for the boys.

I taped a few pieces of printer paper together and cut a stocking shape out to use as my pattern. Then I cut out and sewed up the black fabric, applied the trims and embellishments by hand and then created a second plain stocking to use as a lining (the abaya fabric is lightweight so it would droop without a lining to help hold its shape).

For the boys I used little boy sized dishdashas. I turned them inside out, pinned the pattern to the front, sewed around the edge of the pattern, and cut away the excess. The toe of the pattern hung over the edge of the dishdasha so I used the side seam as the edge (that’s why they have a blunt edge at the toe). I was going to add fabric to create a toe, but I like how it looks.

Camille’s finished stocking. I’ll snap a photo of them once I get them all hanging, but couldn’t wait to share them.

Phase 3: Paper Chains

First we had the naked tree. Then the musical lights with the store bought, “unusual” ornaments. Then came the homemade construction paper glitter ornaments, followed by another wave of lights — this time flashing LEDs and an “interesting” lighted tube of lights (the blue glowing thing on the tree). We have a power strip tucked up inside the tree to hold all the plugs since none of the strands here plug into each other. Since we have 5 different types of lights on our tree, the non-connecting part didn’t matter anyway.

The final phase of tree decorating this year is the paper chain. I went out and bought a pack of colored construction paper and Carter, Caleb, and I put together a long paper chain tonight to wrap around 2/3s of our tree. The bottom third we’re leaving pretty bare, since Camille already ate several candy canes that turned out to be within her reach. We had to readjust and shuffle everything a few feet up.

Look at this little girl — she holds a pencil correctly. No one ever showed her, she just does it that way naturally. I would wonder if this is one of those “girl things,” but she didn’t get it from me . . . I can barely hold a pencil correctly as an adult.

She is dangerous with the scissors — trying to open and close the blades as fast as she can before mom steps in to ruin her fun.

The finished labor of love.

A friend crocheted this cute little santa for me when she heard we didn’t have any ornaments. Isn’t he awesome?

I’m not big on Christmas decorations (really, holiday decorations in general), but this turned out to be really fun. I didn’t think that putting up a tree would be worth the time and energy and I knew we didn’t need a tree to celebrate Christmas, so I thought this year we would go for the “minimalist” approach. I’m a fan of minimalism because it’s a fancy label to throw out when I don’t feel like trying to impress anyone or when I’m feeling too lazy to drag a 7 foot tree out of the closet under the stairs.

But this minimalist turned out a tree that made all the kids happy and we even got a little crafty in the process. I’m actually considering making stockings this coming week, just for fun. I was going to try and whip some knitted ones out, but I only have sock weight yarn (for those non-knitters that means I have very thin yarn that would take a million stitches to make a stocking-size sock and that would take months, not days) so my alternate plan involves black fabric and something sparkly. Stay tuned for “minimalist Christmas,” part 2.

want some yogurt?

I end up going to the grocery store almost every day here. In America I tried to go to the store as infrequently as possible, but in Oman I love walking up to Al Fair. I usually take the stroller and buy what we can comfortably carry home, but sometimes I get a little ambitious in my shopping and Camille ends up surrounded by piles of food that I then pack into our reusable bags and wedge them in around her — and usually I have to sling a few over my shoulder too. Good thing the walk home isn’t too far.

Today was a mountain of food day and my little eater managed to bite a hole in the bag of carrots and start gnawing on one while I was busy picking out onions. So I gave it to her. Then, while I was getting (very expensive) turkey for the boys’ lunches, she snaked one of the small yogurts and poked a small hole in the foil lid. When I saw that she was sucking the yogurt out through the top I thought, “How clever! My girly is a genius!” and I let her continue. Since I am not a genius, I failed to anticipate the small hole would eventually become a giant crevasse as curious fingers explored the foil and the yogurt. By the time I saw the mess, it was too late to salvage it.

I got a few curious looks as I walked home, but people look at us everywhere we go, so I’m pretty used to it. It was hard to tell if the one group of ladies we passed was horrified by the toddler with a carrot (choking hazard), the huge mess down her face and front, or the fact that she was squished in between bags of potatoes and eggs.

Right before we got out the hose to wash everything down. Cheers!

Kargeens

One of Art and Barbara’s last nights here we went to Kargeen’s, a local restaurant with great outdoor seating Since it’s in the 70s at night it’s the perfect place to eat this time of year.

It’s not the greatest place to take pictures though, since it’s lit by twinkle lights.

I took 3 or 4 photos of Caleb and he had his eyes closed (or the photo came out blurry) in each one. This is the best of them.

There are several cats that roam around under the tables and Camille was fascinated by “our” cat as long as she was looking down on him. When they were eye to eye she couldn’t get away fast enough.

Startled by the cat = banged head on the corner of the table.

We finally got to try their chicken byriani. Last time we were here I ordered the byriani and the waiter said I couldn’t have rice “because of the shisha.” There are two sides of the restaurant and you can smoke shisha in one section of the restaurant. We were in the shisha section, but not smoking it ourselves so we couldn’t figure out why shisha and rice were a “no-no.” We asked him to explain and all he said was, “you know, the rice and the shisha,” and waved his hand around like swirling smoke.

I even went home and googled “smoking shisha no rice” and couldn’t come up with any explanation, but more than one friend has been met with the same rice ban in that part of the restaurant, so this time we sat across the way and had our fill of rice. The best part of the meal was the bread — huge, hot, puffy pieces of flatbread that we dipped in hummus and moutabel (which is like hummus, but made with eggplant instead of garbanzo beans). I also had a really fantastic salad with avocado and pomegranate seeds.

Making friends everywhere she goes.

coffee please

Girly has a strange love of coffee. Not so strange when you’re a grownup, but since when do babies like black coffee with just a splash of cream? This one does. I guess it goes along with her love of salsa, spicy curries, lemons, and salad dressing that is heavy on the vinegar.

*** A heads-up: she does the same thing over and over again, so unless you’re family, you probably won’t want to stick it out for the entire 2 1/2 minutes.

*** no need to call CPS, it’s decaf