Norberta

I've started knitting a baby dragon for my baby nephew. In Italian the same word, nipote, is used for nephew, niece, grandson and granddaughter. The gender of the person is given in the article before the word, e.g., il nipote for grandson or nephew, and la nipote for granddaughter or niece. Basically if you want to know more information you have to ask questions, this suits the Italian's love of talking.

Anyway, back to the dragon. I'm following a pattern called Norberta, using blue and red wool. I've pretty much finished the knitting and have been on the hunt for something to stuff her with. I found the translation for polyester stuffing, imbottitura in poliestere, and went looking in town. I went into one shop and asked for imbottitura in poliestere and the lady seemed to be ask me if it was for me, pointing at my jacket. I'm not sure why someone would want to stuff their jacket but anyway, I found the word for toy and showed her that. All became clear...she didn't have any, but she wrote down the name of a shop and what I wanted on a card "capok imbottiture - giocattolo" and told me to give it to the shop lady there. She then tried to sell me a "lovely" jacket with sequined writing on the front...not really my thing.

Not knowing what "capok" was I wandered off to find the shop. The lady there pulled out a gianormous bag of stuffing, I asked if I could buy half the bag, but no it was all or nothing. Not really having the need for so much stuffing (unless I did sucumb to the urge to stuff my own clothes) I declined. So Norberta is likely to stay unstuffed until I get back home, or find another source of stuffing. In the meantime, she does make a pretty amusing hand puppet. Here she is modelling a hat I just finished knitting (Urchin). I used Lion Brand organic cotton, it's ridously lovely and soft. The pattern is pretty easy to knit and is knit in wedges so if, like me, you don't measure your gauge you can easily add more wedges if it comes out too small.

Oh, I just looked up capok, and found entries for kapok which is a natural fibre, apparently much better than poly for stuffing toys.