The only thing worse than when your children ignore you is when they don’t.

Such was the position I found myself in recently. I have three children; the older two are finding their respective ways in the world and live on the west coast, each pursuing his dreams. My youngest still lives in my home, and, for the most part, he ignores my crochet.

That is, until recently.

My youngest is a technophile and open source acolyte, and as such is given a lot of used gadgetry. He has a Palm Pre, a first generation Kindle, and aging Mac, and a netbook of unknown vintage that was given to him because it was not working. Of late he has begun to come to me with requests for carryalls and/or cozies for his various hand-me-down gadgets.

It was the netbook of unknown vintage that led my soon-to-be 13-year-old on a quest for an operating system that would run on what he described to me as an “old piece of junk computer.”

To that end, he scoured the ubuntu site (“It’s only the most popular version of Linux”) and stumbled upon Barry Kauler’s creation, Puppy Linux.

I have learned that not only is Puppy Linux “light and full of features” it also has a totally cute logo that I was asked to recreate. After some discussion, he agreed that a Puppy Linux amigurumi based on a pattern I created as a result of his desire for an amigurumi tiger two year ago, would be acceptable.

So today, in order to honor my commitment to my youngest son, I set aside my work on my 2010 state fair project for a couple of hours to work on the amigurumi. The first effort is mostly complete, but I was unable to get the arms attached before sunset, so here is Barry, sans arms:

Now that I can look at the amigurumi instead of rushing to get it done, I think that in addition to adding the arms, I will, most likely look to create a floppier ear, but I think this effort did manage to capture at least some of the the joi my son experiences when he uses Puppy Linux.

Update: High Noon, August 30, 2010. New photo of Barry with arms: