This misshapen thing, all 4'x3'ish of it, came from one huge ball of non-sex-specific turquoise acrylic (read: washable, read: the only sane material for anything designed to lay under the astounding mess that is baby), which I bought at scary JoAnn's to the tune of $6.99. Twenty hours of mind-numbingly easy back-and-forth later (while on the train, while watching CSI, while listening attentively to my mother's one-on-one "my dreams, what are they, and how to finance them?" seminar), I had this fuzzy, stretchy, slightly irregular thing:

It was a lot of turquoise. So much turquoise! I decided to offset it with a little decorative element. And because the one thing all infants dream of is having a full set of teeth to brush, I settled on the image of a toothbrush.

This was just another one of my "Sharpie on teeshirt" drawings, cut out and then stitched down with a lighter turquoise embroidery thread.

A little weird? But very warm. But maybe something that would have been cheaper and cuter at Ikea?