Coffee at Naptime

Beds

2011-09-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

My children have their own beds. They have always had their own beds (although Little Dude's consisted of a Pack'n'play when his older sister refused to give up her crib for the new baby). But they have always found Mommy and Daddy's bed irresistible.

Granted, Mommy and Daddy have always had a lush bed. The original was a pillow-top that puffed up to almost as tall as I am, although it has shrunk a bit over the years, seeing as it is almost 10 years old. Nevertheless, it is still quite pillowy.

The little princess would look at her flat little Ikea mattress, that was all of 5 inches thick, and end up in our bed most nights.

Until Mommy and Daddy upgraded. Rather than get rid of the grand old queen, we transferred it to the Princess's room. It takes up the entire room, but she hasn't been in our bed since. Well, maybe once or twice for a bad dream, but that doesn't really count since she departed back to her own cozy bed after some reassuring cuddles.

Little Dude is another matter. He, too, has started to develop bed envy. He will lie on our new bed, cooing "So cozy!", and when prompted to sleep in his toddler bed, will declare "I am not sleepy for Isaac's bed!"

He is, in fact, sleepy for Mommy's bed, and will march into my bedroom with his Lightning McQueen pillow in tow, ready to nestle himself in the middle of our king-size bed.

And when Mommy and Daddy are sneaky enough - and awake enough - to transfer him to his little bed before we go to sleep, I can generally be assured to hear a little voice at the side of my bed at around 4 in the morning:

"Sleep in Mommy's bed?"

He is so polite that he always asks rather than just climbing in with us, but I know that he doesn't plan for rejection because he has started bringing that Lightning McQueen pillow along with him.

He's so cute, it's really not hard to resist.

Yucky Brown Chocolate

2011-09-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

As I was getting ready in the morning, Little Dude came in to my bedroom to inform me that he wanted milk. I usually offer him two options - chocolate or strawberry, which we call brown chocolate or pink chocolate.

Accuracy in descriptions does not hold high precedence in the life of a pre-schooler or his mommy.

So I asked him which kind he wanted.

"Not the yucky brown chocolate."

That was a different description. He'd never called it that before. I clarified with him, and determined that he did not in fact want the yucky brown chocolate but did want brown chocolate milk.

I finished what I was doing and went out to the kitchen to prepare his milk.

I always put his milk in a little cup with a lid and a straw. As I passed by the coffee table in the living room, I saw a discarded, nearly empty, milk cup, probably from the day before, sitting on the table.

Ah, the yucky brown chocolate milk. Oops.

Goon Squad

2011-09-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

Oddly, even though one little one is in school, we've been busier than we were during the summer. I think it must be that running around with one little one is less daunting than running around with two.

That and the weather has improved so we aren't hiding in the house fearing immediate combustion upon entrance to the 100+ degree weather.

Of course, interesting things happen inside:

When not playing with little dude, I'm reading Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. It has won all sorts of awards and Ms. Egan was listed as one of The New Yorker's top young writers under 40, so it's my type of book.

I tend to filter my reading material through a small, narrow field that usually centers around one of the following: Booker Prize winner or nominee (I just finished The Finkler Question, the most recent Booker Prize winner, and I was reading The Sea on my Kindle before I picked up Goon Squad. I first became aware of the Booker Prize in college with my infatuation of A. S. Byatt), a favorable review in The Times or The New Yorker, literary buzz, and that intangible "Oh, that sounds like an interesting story", which differs from person to person and from book to book.

The Goon Squad is a series of interconnected vignettes. In fact, each chapter comprises a near complete short story, so much that as I was reading the book, several chapters felt so familiar that it occurred to me that I had probably read them as short stories in The New Yorker. This also happened to me with Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. That creates quite a deja vu reading experience.

The interconnectedness - so far, since I haven't finished the book - doesn't recall experiences like the movie Crash, where everything is mysteriously connected to one greater end. Instead, it follows different periods of time of different people who were connected at one point: groupies of a garage band in their teens, the assistant of the grown-up band member, a family trip of the record producer who befriended the band members.

The short story aspect is really intriguing, and as the book progresses, the author starts to take a few more liberties with her style, including adding footnotes (this must be a modern thing, since I just encountered this for the first time in a novel in Junot Diaz's The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), and making the voice changes much more prominent.

But when my husband asked what the book was about, I couldn't quite say since there isn't necessarily a linear story. I'll follow up on that when I finish the book.

Ants, Ants everywhere

2011-09-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

We live on a somewhat recently reclaimed field. The neighborhood is around five years old, our lot was just a tangle of brush and weeds three years ago, and when we moved in we had to register as a rural address at the local post office.

Of course, we weren't here first. The bugs were.

We've had a variety of bug visitors, nothing ever too frightening. Earwigs, fruit flies, small black ants. You can't fault them since this used to be their land.

I made good friends with our bug control guy the first few months we lived here. After a while, we finally settled into a quarterly routine, and bug sightings became a lot less frequent.

Then this summer came, with its drought and its heat. The city set a record of 109 degrees a few days ago. The kids and I hid indoors most of the summer, and it turned out that's what the bugs wanted to do, too.

Not just any bugs, though. Crazy ants.

Crazy ants. Raspberry ants. Nylanderia species near pubens.

They are an invasive species of unknown provenance. They don't respond to pesticide, they have multiple queens so if one queen is killed (as in eradicating red ant colonies) they will simply move to the other queen. And they are known for their erratic movements and interest in electronics.

That, and they like food and water, hence their obsession with my kitchen.

Apparently this is such a big deal that even the Times of London featured an article about Houston's crazy ants. Three years ago.

I should be surprised not that they have taken over my house but that they took so long to get here.

So far, the advice that I've read (since my formerly trusty bug guy is not responding to my phone calls - possibly the crazy ant reference scared him away since he has already unsuccessfully sprayed them once for me) states simply to keep food and water away from them.

Okay, that isn't going to happen in a house with two small children.

Fortunately, they are small, and they stay away from most food except sugary foods. (They found some old honey several days ago, but once I discovered that, it disappeared fast). However, I am pleased to report that I now have the cleanest kitchen I have ever had since I wipe the counter down several times a day.

Maybe I was supposed to be doing that all along.

Bill has suggested that we intentionally leave a little food and water out for them and make them our pets.

First Day of School!

2011-08-23T10:08:00.001-07:00

Actually, the first day was yesterday, but who has time to post anything on the first day of school?

Here she is, excited and ready to be a 1st grader! No tears on Mommy's part this year. I have officially moved into the realm of parenting where I couldn't wait for the school year to start.

Hannah is going to a brand-new school this year. Brand-new as in at this time last year, it was just a field. It's a really pretty new school, and it is the same floor plan as her old school, which I think makes the transition a lot easier for the kids who had to change schools.

One of the biggest perks about living in the suburbs, particularly in new communities, is that there are usually schools nestled within the communities. Our new school is less than half a mile away, which means:

We can walk to school!

Lowering our carbon footprint in one small way. Doesn't negate the fact that Bill has to commute to work or that I have to drive at least three miles to get to the nearest grocery store, but at least we can walk somewhere in one aspect of our lives.

Hannah had a fantastic day. Her new teacher is young and perky - almost the stereotypical elementary school teacher. I think all of the little kids are already in love with her.

And because Hannah is irrepressibly spoiled, we had a First Day of School party, complete with princess cake.

This is obviously after the party, with one missing princess.

Mommy had the brilliant idea of scheduling swim lessons at 4 p.m. on Mondays. School gets out at 3:10. We made it in time, cake included, but after walking to school, pulling Isaac in a wagon in 100 degree heat, that swim lesson time might have to be changed.

Blue Period

2011-08-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

The kiddos were watching Olivia this morning. I much prefer the books by Ian Falconer, they are far wittier than the show, but it has its moments.

Such as:

Olivia painting row after row of self-portaits, all the same, all with a blue background. As she hangs the last one on the wall, she announces, "There, I think I'm done with my blue period."

Hannah pipes up, "Mommy, what is a blue period?"

"Well," I explain, "There is a famous artist named Picasso who went through a style of painting he called his 'Blue Period' because it included a lot of blue."

She thought about this for a while, as I was deciding whether or not I should elaborate into cubism.

"I'm working on my pink period," she responded

The 45-minute dress

2011-08-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

I'm obviously undergoing a dress-making craze at the moment. I've pretty much made myself a dress a week for the past few weeks. Not with the intention of achieving that Herculean feat, but it seems to take me about that long to cut, sew, adjust, and finish.

I've learned a variety of new techniques, I'm getting closer to figuring out my size and sewing to that size, which is still a work in progress, as well as the more abstract concept of how a piece of fabric will look with a particular style.

But all of these dresses have been pretty involved. I want to make something cute, but simple. I was trying to explain this to my husband - I just want to make a dress that you can seam up and be done.

"That would be a mumu," he replied.

Well, yes, and that is definitely not what I'm going for.

I've been looking for a nice simple sundress to make. You would think a pattern would be easy to find, but I think I possibly am suffering from too many options. It is hard to know where to look - the big pattern companies, the independent pattern companies, and then the morass that is the web, including vintage patterns on Ebay or Etsy.

As an aside, vintage patterns are all the rage right now among seamstresses online. Who knew?

I settled on this pattern:

Vogue 8723. I'd never made a Vogue pattern before. Ooh la la.

Note this:

Very Easy. The main reason for the selection.

After jumping in, I discovered that a Vogue Very Easy pattern involves:

Full Lining.

Understitching.

Convoluted instructions which resulted in what was probably a bit of a non-traditional construction.

Several days into the dress, I started to become concerned about what a regular Vogue pattern would involve.

The dress is very lovely (and I will give it the respect it deserves at a later time). While creating a fully-lined dress basically involves sewing two dresses at once, the final product is very polished.

But after hemming it up, I wanted something simple. Very simple. And truly easy.

So I dug through my fabric scraps and found this:

Just enough fabric to be modest. I seamed the sides to create a tube, folded over the top for an elastic casing, added straps, and I ended up with this:

(photography by resident four-year-old)

The 45-minute dress. Definitely not as refined or fitted as the Vogue dress, but light, and simple, and immediately available to wear.

"You're done already?" my six-year-old commented. "That was quick!"

Why, yes, it was.

Midnight Walker

2011-08-07T16:48:00.001-07:00

Bill and I were relaxing in bed the other night, catching up on The Daily Show, when the siren went off.

Being a mother with two young children asleep, which is an oddity, my first concern was 'turn it off before it wakes the kids!' rather than the probably more relevant possibility that there might have been an intruder.

Inspired by sleeping children, I bounded through the house, followed by the husband, reached the keypad and turned off the alarm. I noticed the door to the garage was open.

"You forgot to lock the garage door!" I accused my confused husband, who did, once, forget to lock the door to the garage, which happened to gently open at 3 in the morning one night, also tripping the alarm.

"No, I'm sure I closed it. I pushed it and locked it."

I closed the door and locked it, and it occurred to me that maybe we should begin investigating.

"It was wide open," I asserted as I walked down the hall to check out the house, since no children seemed to be up or disturbed by the siren.

"Someone had to have opened it," he decided, and opened the garage door to peer into the garage. As I was in the hallway starting to investigate the rest of the house, I heard him shout a loud, gruff "HEY!"

I ran to join him, and we both stared at our little, pink-clad six-year-old, trying to get into my car, in the dark, with no idea what she was doing. I guess she was sleep walking. I knew she talked in her sleep, but I had never seen her sleep walk before. Bill had seen movement in the garage and shouted, although I'm sure that wouldn't have done him any good had it been anyone other than her.

I scooped her up, hugged her, and put her back in her bed, relieved that Bill had checked the garage because we would have locked her out, since I had already locked that door after turning off the siren.

Yikes.

From now on any nighttime security alerts will be accompanied by a household head count. That, and I put an additional 'child-proof' door handle cover on the door leading to the garage door. She can figure it out, but maybe two in a row will deter her if it ever happens again.

Burping and Birthdays

2011-08-04T06:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after we were eating lunch, my little dude came up right next to me. He wanted me to bend my head over so he could whisper in my ear. I thought, 'Oh, how sweet! He wants to whisper a little secret into my ear!' So I leaned over.

The little guy burped in my ear.

"Did you ask me to lean over just so you could burp in my ear?" I asked, trying not to laugh.

"Yeah."

In other little dude news, I wanted to share the fun idea I had for his birthday party:

What is that, you say? Why, it is Lightning McQueen! Made out of a box, a bunch of construction paper, and strips of fleece for the straps. Duct tape also played a large role. Sure, it doesn't quite look like the original, but Little Dude was satisfied.

Of course, you can't have Lightning McQueen without a race.

That blur in the front is Finn McMissile. Made by my sister's boyfriend. And, no, I don't think he knew who that was either, but he made it anyway.

By the time I started on my idea, we only had time to make two cars, but the kids were happy to race with just two cars. I also added black paper plates for tires, but the kids pulled those off immediately. Apparently, since they were running, they had no need for tires. Or something like that.

Little Dude never won a race, but he didn't seem to mind, or notice. In his Lightning McQueen, he was invincible!

Little Dude had some very specific ideas for his party: it had to have a Cars 2 cake, a lightning McQueen pinata, and Cars 2 balloons.

Check

Check

and Check.

Birthday party to his specifications. And he loved it.

The Hot Dress

2011-07-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

It's always nice when my husband compliments my outfit. That doesn't happen a lot around here, largely because there really isn't much to say about shorts and a t-shirt on a regular basis.

So it is nice when my husband declares I look hot in something. This is doubly satisfying when this something happens to be a dress I made.

Can you feel the hotness? I think that he was just impressed that I was in a dress, because that really wasn't the response I expected, but I'll take it.

The glamour shot shows off the princess seams a little more.

These were my first princess seams, and while they aren't perfect, I think they came out well.

This is Simplicity 2588:

I am pleased to say that I got the sizing close to correct, always learning from my mistakes. This pattern had a lot of new techniques for me, including princess seams and attaching a yoke. It's a very well-constructed garment, but it requires a lot of attention to detail in order to get the alignment just right - such as darts on the bodice lining up with pleats in the skirt, or having the yoke actually line up properly.

Ask me how I know this.

I'm not a huge stickler for details, but, then again, if I want my projects to look nice, I'm going to have to pay a bit more attention because I certainly don't want my garments to turn out like Denise's shirt for Theo from The Cosby Show.

I actually think about that shirt a lot while I'm sewing. I watched a lot of The Cosby Show when I was a kid, I guess it is imprinted.

So I find myself focusing in the same way I do when practicing Warrior III, or any other balancing poses. The yoga of sewing.

I just plunged in on the princess seams, but after I finished the dress, I did find a great tutorial online (is there anything that isn't online?) and came up with these quick pointers for next time:

stay stitch the straighter piece and clip the seams, then spread the clipped piece to match the curved piece and pin.

More on this next time.

Detail of the stitching on the yoke:

I'm not sure that I like the stitching, but I wasn't sure how else to attach the yoke, since it has a facing and there was no other way to close the front and the facing over the armholes. The instructions for the yoke attachment were the only confusing part of the instructions. This will probably call for more research.

My version it a bit looser and longer than the version on the photo, making for a more relaxed dress. But I think that a different fabric would totally change the feel of the dress, so it could either be casual or dressy. Even though it was a challenge, and I really wanted to find another more simpler pattern, I've already started another one.

Breakfast

2011-07-28T07:22:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, we woke up to find his and hers signs on our respective nightstands. Usually, the little princess serenades us with her morning desires, but apparently we were sleeping so heavily that she felt the need to add signage.

Her spelling skills at the moment provide an interesting view of how we say words. I took a look at that, and then sounded out how we say 'breakfast' and realized it sounds closer to how she spelled it than how we say it.

A few days later we were reading a Max and Ruby book. Max didn't want cereal for breakfast, so he went to Grandma's house. Grandma had too much ice cream, so she and Max had ice cream. He took a scoop back for Ruby. When Ruby asked what it was, he replied "Breakfast!"

Hannah, reading along with us, looked at that and said sadly, "That's how you spell breakfast? I did it wrong!"

I told her that's how we learn, and reading helps us learn how to spell.

The next morning we received this note on our nightstands:

Greatly improved.

Balance of the Warrior

2011-07-27T18:46:00.001-07:00

Virabhadrasana III - or Warrior Pose III - is the third of the classic yoga warrior poses. The trilogy of poses finds its name from a particularly gruesome tale involving a warrior named Virabhadra who materialized from the torn hair of the god Siva. Turns out that Siva's wife, angry that she had been excluded from a ritual sacrifice by her father, chose to throw herself into the sacrificial fire in protest rather than try to work the situation out with her father. In his grief, Siva tore at his hair (that common ancient custom) and the warrior Virabhadra appeared to avenge her death, ultimately beheading the father and destroying the offending sacrifice.

Happy in his vengeance, Siva was able to retreat to meditation.

Okay, so maybe at first glance it seems best not to know the stories behind the poses. Even so, it is a fitting tale. Warrior III is a challenging pose: balancing on one leg, bent at the waist, arms forward like an arrow, with the other leg stretched straight in the opposite direction. Iyengar recommends staying in this pose for up to 30 seconds. I usually time this by breathing through six long inhales and exhales. Staying balanced is certainly a challenge, and the only way to remain balanced is to keep your eyes and mind focused on one spot.

Like a dancer focusing on one spot to retain her balance in a series of pirouettes, keeping the eyes focused is an obvious part of the balancing act. Shifting the gaze usually results in an immediate and predictable wavering.

But I've also noticed that I lose my balance when I let my mind wander. A quick flit to the crises of daily news or daily life, or even just planning ahead to what I need to do after I finish my practice - big or small, it causes me to waver and wiggle, to lose that serenity of balance.

Warrior III doesn't require the full intensity of meditation, but it does require the full attention of the moment. This focus, this clearing of the mind, helps flush the detritus from my brain, creating a practice that is refreshing on many levels, regardless of the news, the laundry, or the children than inevitably materialize at just the moment of balance. Clearing my mind, if only for balancing, but ideally for the whole practice, gives me the opportunity to start anew to deal with the rest of life's challenges, whether they come in the form of an obstinate six-year-old, a destructive four-year-old, or anything else.

The Dress That Was Finally Made: Conclusion

2011-07-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

Photo a'la six-year-old.

You will note that this looks nothing like the original pattern. The top of the bodice is the same, but I added extra darts to avoid the tent, then further added a waistband to add more definition to the tent waist, which resulted in a skirt gathered even more than the smaller sizes in the original pattern. The bottom band was added to lengthen the skirt.

I actually finished this several days ago, but it still needs a minor adjustment.

The neckline gapes because even though I managed to get the bust to fit with darts I neglected the width of the top of the bodice. I'm thinking I might just pin the neckline to one side and add a fabric flower, but I haven't decided yet.

So I learned a lot, but I also think that the original dress itself is not what I imagined. From the photo, it looked to be a fitted dress, which it was not at all. It was an empire waist with gathers, made to look like a fitted dress with ties that were supposed to wrap around the waist to add definition (and which I omitted completely since I inserted a fitted waistband).

This was my first test in adjusting the construction of a dress, so I'm now starting to look a lot closer at the line-drawn schematics on the backs of patterns. It turns out that this pattern for some reason didn't have a schematic on the pattern envelope, oddly enough, so that wouldn't have been a help in this case.

But despite that, it did have some fun dressmaking details, including facing, which was both fun (look at this sewing from the inside of the armhole action!):

And terrifying (clipping seams always makes me nervous, but it truly made a difference in finishing the armholes!):

And had another chance to insert an invisible zipper. Those things are so cool.

Remember the skirt from the original ill-fated fabric combination? I added my newfound friend, the dart, drafted a new bodice with a v-neck based on the original pattern, and ended up with this:

Still a bit tent-like, so I will probably add the ties shown in the original pattern, but the darts create a cleaner look than the gathers from the original pattern.

I'll leave you with my continued obsession with the invisible zipper.

Now you see it:

Now you don't:

(Photos are facing opposite directions, pardon any confusion).

Still fascinates me.

Keeping it Wired

2011-07-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

I am not a coffee snob, but I do appreciate a nice cup of coffee. At home, I use a french press. I suppose this in itself constitutes a mild form of coffee snobbery, because when I share this information with true coffee snobs, I always receive a nod of approval, accompanied by the assertion that using a french press is the 'best' way to make coffee.

Yes, well, that and I didn't want to mess with a drip coffee maker.

I have been trying out different types of coffee. I buy my coffee - gasp - at the grocery store, but fortunately the local grocery stores offer something beyond Folgers. They also offer exotic bulk coffees, but those are so rarely bought that the beans are always dried out.

So I've been rotating through various brands, from Starbucks and beyond. I discovered a fair trade coffee that I like during a half price sale in the natural section of Kroger. Being half price, I took a leap and bought several packages. It is a medium roast, which turns out to be just right for my tastes.

After staring at the package on our counter for several weeks, my husband finally piped up, "I've been wondering what was going through your head when you bought that. Did you just think, yes, that sounds good, that's what I need to wake myself up."

The name of the flavor?

Screaming Monkey.

The Dress That Did Not Want To Be Made, Part 2

2011-07-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

Yoga pose of the day: Tree Pose. According to Iyengar, tree pose restores balance and poise. Which I certainly need after the dress that turned into dresses, both of which seem to be cursed.

Skirts, skirts, skirts. When I left you, I had cut a new skirt out of coordinating fabric, of which I had just enough to make a nice, appropriate skirt. Crisis averted, dress could be salvaged, moving along.

Then I opened up the front of the skirt and found this:

It's some sort of factory defect - two button-hole size cuts right next to each other, right in the middle of what was going to be the front of the new skirt.

I actually noticed it when I was first cutting out pieces for the original dress, but obviously put it aside in my mind because surely I would not be cutting a brand new skirt out of that fabric, and I would of course cut around in with any other pattern.

Of course.

The slits were about nine inches down from the top of the would-be skirt. If I cut right below them, I would still have a skirt, but it would no longer be anywhere near appropriate. But I couldn't have two slits in the front of my skirt, so they had to go.

Now, I could have just left it here, moved along, and decided to turn this into a tunic. But I wanted a dress, darn it.

Enter coordinating polka-dot fabric.

Time to go do some yoga.

The Dress That Did Not Want To Be Made: Part 1

2011-07-17T08:59:00.000-07:00

Fresh from the success of my Jamie dress, I immediately embarked upon another project, McCalls 5882:

I bought the pattern a while ago and had the fabric neatly folded in my fabric bin. I planned to make something akin to the dress in the bottom left-hand corner, so I had bought three contrasting black and white patterned fabrics. I was anxious to make something fun and summery, and to test out my newfound invisible zipper installation skills.

I had even made a test top some time ago to make sure I had the right size. Which I sort of had, but I hadn't taken the entire dress sizing into account.

In case it is not clear from the photo, the dress is a tent. That fitted dress in the pattern photo did not translate. Another thing that did not translate was the fabric coordination. Somehow the fabric worked better together when it was just folded up. So, two strikes against it: tent and fabric pairing.

So, bye bye black and white floral dress skirt.

Whew, that was a lot of seams to rip. (Double rips, too, since I had initially sewn the skirt on the wrong sides of the back. But we won't dwell on that.)

You may notice, even from the inside, there there is now a waistband on the dress top. Yes, I decided to go in a completely different direction with the dress and we are going rogue from the initial McCalls pattern. I added the waistband from the Jamie dress, since it fit so well. The problem was that the McCalls bodice was too large to fit the waistband.

Enter the lowly, beautiful bust dart. Those side darts were written into the original bodice. I added the bottom darts, measured to fit the Jamie Dress waistband perfectly.

Now, what to do about the skirt. As always, during the initial fabric purchase I bought more fabric than the pattern called for (I always round way up for some reason), which meant that I probably had enough for another skirt, this time one that would match the bodice.

I shortened the skirt just a little bit, went down a few sizes (which I should have done to start off with) and I managed to have just enough to make a short, flirty skirt to add to my newly reconstructed bodice.

But this dress had some other ideas. More on that later.

Summer Guests

2011-07-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

We have guests in our backyard! This is a sweet little dove egg nestled in the top of our playset. We might need to keep the kids off it for a little while, although that won't be too hard since we have mainly been hiding inside to stay away from the heat. The egg is only about an inch long.

In other news, Isaac has discovered knock-knock jokes. His favorite:

Isaac: Knock-knock
Me: Who's there?
Isaac: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Isaac: Banana poop.

He came up with that all by himself. He thinks it is the funniest thing.

And on the Princess front, yet another girly development:

Earrings! Freshly installed today. Becoming more of a big girl every day.

A Summer Dress

2011-07-12T15:57:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a while. But, in the meantime, school ended, we now have a kindergarten graduate, the heat of summer has descended, and, in the chaos of two children home all day again, I decided to start sewing again.

Strangely enough, the kids don't seem to mind when I immerse myself in a sewing project. They will happily play by themselves and not really cause too much of a fuss if I'm working on a project. They truly abhor when I work on the computer or - tsk, tsk - surf the web. Seeing Mommy staring at a screen or typing on a keyboard toggles a switch in them that calls for full parental attention, but they are happy as clams if I'm doing something 'analog'. Housework also falls in this category: laundry, sweeping, dishes.

Already they know that computers suck our attention!

Which is why I returned to sewing, to allow myself a lot of non-screen time.

After I had Hannah, I returned to my formerly full-time job in a part-time capacity, in a slightly different role. I mostly worked from home and ventured into the office only occasionally, possibly once every few weeks. One of the times I happened to go into the office, the costume department sent out an email offering up free fabric.

I had just started to sew, so I rushed to the costume department and chose a stack of fabric. For the most part, it still sits in my closet.

Since that infant just turned six years old, that fabric has been lying fallow for quite some time now. I decided it was high time to jump feet first into a project.

None of my big-name patterns excite me (McCalls, Simplicity, Butterick, etc.), which is probably why they also just sit in my closet. I searched around the internet (web surfing with a purpose!) and focused on small, independent pattern makers. I decided to try out a small company called Sis Boom but there are a lot of small independent pattern makers that I want to try, including Hot Patterns and Collette Patterns, to name a couple.

I chose the Jamie Dress because it is girly and can be dressy or casual. Most importantly, it seemed to look good on a variety of body types. Added bonus, it was available as a PDF download, which meant instant gratification.

The pattern arrived in my inbox at 5:21 p.m. on a Wednesday. Miraculously enough, I finished the dress in time for date night that Saturday:

The most challenging part was inserting the invisible zipper. This was my first time working with an invisible zipper, and I think it was only my second time working with any sort of zipper at all.

After reading at least three tutorials, and examining one of my store-bought dresses with an invisible zipper, I finally figured out the orientation. It went so well I already started another dress, also with an invisible zipper!

Mommy fails

2011-02-24T10:30:00.000-08:00

I have a mommy-fail nearly every day. After five years, one would think I would have learned, but new things keep popping up.

Hannah is a popular kid on our block. She's five, and ten-year-olds come asking to play with her. Part of it is that we have a mammoth playset in our backyard. But I think most of it is that she is fun, and the older kids like to play with her. It's that simple.

So when she asks to play at their houses, I usually say yes. A couple of the neighbors have trampolines, and the main rule is that she is not allowed to go on any trampolines if I'm not there. Other than that, all the neighbor moms know who I am, so they know who to call if there's a problem, which there hasn't been yet.

However, a couple of weeks ago, Hannah came home after playing at a friend's house, and mentioned, in passing, that the friend's mommy and daddy weren't home. So we started a conversation about not playing at friends' houses if there is no adult. Since we hadn't made this clear before - it honestly hadn't occurred to me - I also let her know that this was our fault and she wasn't in trouble. Mommy fail.

The other day, after playing outside with friends, she came inside and asked if she could go to a friend's house. I said yes. After a few of minutes, I remembered that this was the same friend whose parents were not home the last time Hannah went over. So I ran out the door to catch Hannah before she made it to the house. I called to her as she marched down the street with a gaggle of kids, and she slowly made her way back to me as I went to meet her. I asked her to come straight home if the mommy and daddy weren't home. She agreed, and she went on her way. Mommy fail averted.

Then I turned around to see my three-year-old running down the driveway into the street. In my haste to catch Hannah, and my expectation that she would come back to the house instead of my needing to walk halfway down the street, I had forgotten to close the front door. So, yes, I averted one Mommy fail only to create another one. Dang.

Photography

2011-02-12T13:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I download photos from my camera, I find images such as this:

Or this:

Or, more often, this:

That last one I can understand, because I have photo albums that testify to my own craving for having photographic remembrance of my toys.

In fact, that little thing in the front row with the pink hair was actually one of my dolls - Rose Petal - who has seen much better days but is obviously living happily in retirement. I'm sure the photo albums living in a chest in my room have photos of her from 25 years ago.

The Culprit?

Oh, yes, she is pleased with herself.

Little Blue Robot

2011-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

I discovered the healing powers of duct tape a while ago. I imagine it is a requirement for mothers - pre-kids, clear packing tape was always good enough for any project I had.

But duct tape. I have fixed a rocket, a maimed Wall-E toy, a plastic Olivia dress (although that didn't last long), and a few other things. Bill fixed Buzz Lightyear's helmet in the biggest toy fix of the year, seeing as Buzz had been helmet-less since shortly after his arrival in June.

So when Isaac broke the leg and arm off this cute little robot, he stared at it for a while, declaring "Robot broke" before running off to the find the duct tape.

This is a pretty cool little robot. It is made of wood, and its arms, legs and head are attached to each other by an elastic similar to girls' hair ties. This made the robot pose-able. It also meant that if the elastic broke, there wasn't really a way for duct tape to rectify the problem.

So, in line with my earlier admission of being unable to resist a disappointed child, I decided to go to the toy store to find a replacement. I had to go out anyways, the toy store was on the way to the grocery store, and as the robot was only $3.99, I didn't mind finding an immediate replacement.

The toy store was sold out, with no plans to re-order.

So, after an unnaturally long trip to the grocery store, hindered by the scores of people emerging from their homes after a day of ice, I returned home and immediately began to search on google.

Turns out little $3.99 robot is out of production and a pricey commodity now, having risen to the price of $25 on one website.

Geez.

Bolstered by a new resolve, I took another look at the robot, since Isaac was still wandering around the house lamenting the loss of its leg and arm. A piece of elastic connected the severed leg and arm through a small tunnel in the body. While I couldn't replace the elastic, I used something that I have an abundance of - yarn.

I tied a piece of yarn around the leg, threaded it through the body, and then tied the other end of the yarn to a piece of elastic still attached to the arm. While he was about as pose-able as anyone else who has had limbs surgically reattached, he was 'fixed', if a bit droopy on one side.

Of course, this morning while I was in the shower, Isaac managed to rip that off and now I have no idea where the amputated leg and arm are now. I think little blue robot may have to stay this way.

Hats

2011-02-04T17:34:00.000-08:00

"Isaac cuts hair!" he squealed as he ran through the house, carrying Hannah's new scissors and gleefully ushering me to the kitchen, where I discovered a five inch chunk of hair lying on the floor.

Mommy fail. Again. (sigh)

I removed the scissors from his hand and inspected his head. His hair is so shaggy that I couldn't tell where he had chopped. However, as he stood patiently there, I realized that now was the time to do a bit of trimming.

All those curls by his ears? Gone.

After days of threats from the weathermen that the sky would grace us with snow today, we awoke to a smattering of ice. The weathermen had been so certain, we had been telling Hannah about it for several days now, and I even picked her up from school early yesterday, trying to miss the bad weather.

"Mommy, I want to make a snowman, and snow angels! I didn't get to make snow angels last year."

I have to say that bare backyard was quite disappointing when I peeked out the window after jumping out of bed first thing this morning. Hannah evidently did the same thing, since she told me that she saw from her window that there was no snow.

Little kid disappointments just make me sad.

Most of them. Usually not the ones that involve candy or that new toy that they just realized they had to have.

But she got over it pretty quickly, especially once she realized that cancelled school meant she could have an extended tv viewing this morning.

However, the weather gods did leave a nice coating of ice overnight. By midday, as the temperature crept above freezing and the ice began to melt, it was time to get our cabin-fever crazy bodies outside.

See that hat? I made it for Isaac, but this was the first time he wore it. I actually gave up on his wearing it, for several reasons.

1. He usually doesn't wear hats
2. It is rarely cold enough to warrant wearing a wool hat.
3. He doesn't spend a lot of time outdoors when it is cold.

and

4. Daddy does spend time outdoors when it gets cold and his head gets cold.

So Daddy stole Isaac's hat. He got a bit of ribbing at work about it, but wore it proudly, warmly, and tightly the last few days.

Daddy, having taking one for the team by returning aforementioned hat to its original owner.

Guess what Mommy's new project is?

Cake and Pink Dolls

2011-01-28T13:50:00.000-08:00

I felt very industrious today. Particularly home-makerly. I actually made dinner, which simmered throughout the day, made a chocolate cake, and made a little surprise for Hannah.

She likes the little skirts and dresses I've been making her, but one day I finished one during the day, and when I picked her up from school, I told her I had a surprise. She got home, and while she was excited about the skirt, she told me that she thought it would be a toy.

Spoiled child, yes, I know.

Today marks the end of two 'super star' weeks in a row at school. Each child comes home with a daily report, and a super star is the best of the best. For wiggly little talkative Hannah to have two weeks of super stars in a row is something to celebrate.

Usually, on Fridays, we go to the coffee shop after school to have brownies, but I need to cut back on my coffee shop habit, particularly since the coffee shop is also next to the toy store, which often means that Hannah gets a toy or a book out of the excursion as well. This week I decided to go the homemade route.

This is a pattern from Bit of Whimsy dolls. I made two of the dolls several years ago, but hadn't touched the pattern since. I pulled it out again around noon today, and discovered that I had two dolls half finished. I had all of the pieces cut out for the head, as well as body pieces that were already sewn together. Since the body pieces were in my ill-chosen green-themed fabric, I decided to use different fabric for the body, taking into account Hannah's penchant for pink.

Even so, the doll only took me a couple of hours to put together. Isaac helped me stuff it and he was really excited about 'doll for Hannah'. He was so excited about the legs that he kept squeezing the stuffing out of them. We finished just before I needed to pick up the little princess from school.

I'm pleased to report that Hannah was thrilled to see her new doll when she opened the door to climb in at the car rider line. I was just happy that she was appropriately thankful after several hours of work. I think I'm finally figuring out what she likes, and what is worth my time. It only took me five years.

30-minute skirt

2011-01-19T15:47:00.000-08:00

I have an 88-quart 'wheeled latch box' full of fabric. Stuffed full. That's a lot of fabric. Yards and yards of it. So, now that I am inspired again, it is not time to buy new fabric, but time to use up all of that old fabric.

Like all things (including the unopened broken frame in my closet right next to the 88-quart box), I buy things for a purpose intending to use them, but the moment often gets away from me. So it's time to reclaim that moment. Actually, those moments. Those many moments.

Luckily, about half of the fabric is pink, which means that fabric has an easy home - my five-year-old's closet. She loves skirts and dresses, and fortunately she is momentarily willing to wear my creations, having overcome her phase of refusing to wear anything I made. Possibly that had to do with the fact that I disregarded her color preferences and kept buying cute green fabric for some reason.

According to my wheeled latch box, I evidently came to my senses and started buying pink fabric, but I neglected to use it.

Neglect no more. I present the 30-minute skirt. A strip of fabric twice as wide as her waist, hemmed on the bottom with an elastic waist.

I think she is pleased.

I also made her a dress out of the same fabric, although that was a little more involved.

Now, to figure out what to do with the rest of the 88-quart's worth. I'm thinking of taking up quilting....

A Space of Her Own

2011-01-16T13:23:00.000-08:00

When we were looking at new houses three years ago, one of our main requirements was that it have a study at the front of the house that my husband could use for his video studio. That wasn't a difficult demand to fulfill; a study is common in new home construction.

However, when we started looking around, I realized that all of the studies were very masculine - solid wood furniture, dark decorations. The study was decidedly for a man.

I need my own space. I didn't - and still don't - understand why the concept of the study must be of the male persuasion.

So I decided to make my own demand. I wanted my own space. After my husband kept offering up large closets (in one model we looked at the master closet was almost as large as the master bedroom - "This would a great place for your sewing room!" my husband helpfully offered) I decided that I wanted an official room, a nice room, not just a left over bedroom and definitely not a closet.

We ended up with a house that has two studies - a video studio in the front of the house, and a sun room with lovely french doors in the back of the house that I claimed as my sewing room.

So I had my sewing room. But it began to fill up with toys, and when I started working part-time from home, it became more of an office with papers stacked high on my desk and the sewing machines and yarn were eventually packed away in a closet because those tiny little people who live with me needed more space.

As I started getting back into sewing and knitting about a year's respite, I realized I didn't want to pull everything back out into what has now become the office/playroom (although nearly every room in the house could be followed by '/playroom').

I decided to set up shop in our bedroom. I always use the bed to cut fabric, I set up the ironing board in our closet anyway, so this actually works out better. I even have a whole wall to myself, thanks to my previous lack of decorating and for some reason I have more incentive to tidy up after myself when it is in my bedroom than when it was in a 'sewing room'. So win-win all around.

Time to decorate now.

Amazing what you can find

2011-01-14T11:10:00.001-08:00

Another day, another hat, because it is still cold outside and I'm going to hold onto the winter feeling for as long as possible.

I'm following a simple pattern I found at a site called Petite Purls, and it is the same pattern I used for Hannah's hat. Since I'm using variegated yarn, I won't add any fair isle, so this hat should knit up very quickly.

I'm not sure who this one will be for, I'll have to see how large it turns out. I'm using different yarn, Wool of the Andes, which is just slightly thinner than whatever worsted wool I used for the other hat. Thinner yarn means I will probably end up with a smaller hat, which probably means that Isaac's gigantic noggin is out of the question.

Hannah took her hat to school today, and, she informed me when we joined her for lunch, that she proudly wore it to recess. I, of course, added the 'proudly', but the fact that she wore it at all shows some pride, because she is very particular about what she puts on her head.

I realized today that cleaning a child's room is much easier if that child happens to be at school, so I decided to tackle Hannah's room. Among other things, I found a swatch I made that had been missing for about a year.

It was in preparation for making a top for myself, which I also had not touched for more than a year until I picked it up again a few weeks ago. As you can tell, the swatch is a little bit different from the work in progress, due to having been washed. I remembered that it was different, and I believe that I wrote down the measurements, but I don't remember where I put those. I think I'm going to have to start being a little bit more organized.

Even so, I remember it being different enough that I decided to stop working on the top until I figured out what else to do, which would probably involve making another swatch, doing more measurements, or just hoping that it turns out okay and probably ending up with an oddly sized top.

Crisis averted.

"Take a picture of Isaac!" he called when he saw the camera out.

So I did.

Who could resist?

Hats

2011-01-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

It's been cold here for the last few days, so it actually feels like winter (although the temperature is supposed to return to the 70's by Monday).

Southeast Texas is not a wool-wearing climate. I made myself a wool sweater two years ago, and it is too warm to wear even in the short chill we have had recently. However, I have balls and balls of wool yarn dating back to my diaper cover making days - the wool is naturally water-repellant and absorbent, and so on.

I decided to make a hat for the little girl of a friend of mine who lives in a much cooler climate.

I started off with a really basic hat pattern, and added a bit of simple fair isle to it. The ribbing you can see is a very long brim that can be folded up.

As I mentioned, it has been quite cold recently, with highs in the low 40's. That's chilly around here, particularly for little girls who refuse to wear their big coats and have to wait outside in the cold while Mommy sits in the car rider line after school. Today, Hannah insisted on wearing only a light coat to school. As I sat in the car rider line, I noticed that the temperature was 41 degrees. Unlike the previous two days, which had been sunny despite the low temperature, today it was gray and overcast. When I finally got to Hannah, she insisted she wasn't cold. About an hour later, she noticed that I had finished up the hat.

"I don't want you to give it away. I want it." She insisted.

"Why?" I asked. She doesn't wear hats.

"So I can wear it when it is cold."

Hopefully she will start wearing her warm coat when I tell her to, as well.

Back at it

2011-01-12T14:20:00.001-08:00

It's been a while. My life became insanely crazy - of my own doing - as I decided to take a graduate class, expand my quarter-time job to a part-time job at an organization that I really didn't believe in, and plan a fundraising gala for yet another organization that I actually do believe in. All of that and raise two young children while taking a little time to pay even a marginal bit of attention to my husband.

Something had to give, so I quit the job I didn't believe in and decided graduate school can wait until my little guy is in elementary school. That leaves me with the kids, the husband, and working part-time for the organization I do believe in (Mosaic Theatre Company - check it out).

It also means I have more time for sanity, and, oddly enough, more time for crafting. There is no more naptime around here, but there is still coffee (and tea), and time taken for myself to practice some of the hobbies I love.

I have a lot of unfinished projects, and piles and piles of yarn and fabric. So I got to work. I finished a top (for the second time) that lay festering because it ended up too large. I had unraveled half of it, probably more than a year ago, but never knit it back together. Once I figured out where I was in the pattern, I finished it pretty quickly. It fits perfectly now, but it's a summer top and the weather is actually chilly, so I won't wear it for a while. I knit a stack of washcloths and towels from scrap cotton yarn.

Then I decided I should actually make something useful. Well, something cute that I knew someone special would really like.

Didn't she pose so nicely in her new skirt? She's worn it three or four days in a row now, so I think she likes it. She's outgrown all of her other skirts, so I'll make a few more for her as well. The pattern is from a 2006 issue of Ottobre. I'm glad I'm a somewhat experience novice seamstress because the instructions, while in English (this is a Finnish magazine), are sparse!

Time to go be a mommy!

Goals

2010-01-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

My new goal - get back into literature. I was an English major, worked in a theatre for several years because I love plays and language, and then something happened that sidetracked my brain cells for quite some time......hmmm.....

I love a good challenging book. I read "Ulysses" aloud to Hannah while she was in utero, and for a while after, until my husband started giving me really strange looks. "You're reading what to a newborn?"

I've had several exciting developments over the past few months. I'm revising a novel I wrote in November, I've been doing a lot of writing as I've eased back into grant writing, and the lovely hubbie bought me a Kindle for Christmas, and I'm busy reading away on that. I'm discovering that the Kindle is a great way to keep up with current literature. If I read a review of a book, or see the New York Times list of notable books, I can go through the list and add the books to my Kindle and have them download in seconds. It's so easy!

I finished my first Kindle book a few days ago, the Booker Prize winning "Wolf Hall," and I'm part-way through the new Margaret Atwood novel, "The Year of the Flood." More about those later.

And I've started buying my clothes rather than making them. So there might not be much of that on here anymore. There's only so much time in the day!

Still working

2009-09-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

I ended up having problems with the hemming, so I wasn't able to finish the dress in time (fortunately the old frump clothes weren't as bad I thought they were). I got close, but my coverstitch decided to go bonkers, so the sleeve hems were completely unpresentable. I think it might be due to the fabric, it's a kind of slinky knit. I'm probably going to hand sew them.

Anyways, the dress turned out great up until that point.

The waist is supposed to be ruched, which it is, but the fabric is a bit slippery, so it falls a bit. It doesn't fall as badly when I'm wearing it, so I think it will look fine.

I like the fabric. It's a fun mod print.

I've also discovered one of the unexpected hazards of letting little ones into my office/sewing room. The obvious hazards are scissors, pins, and the machines themselves. I try to keep those pushed back and out of the way as best I can, and we haven't had any problems so far. I wasn't expecting this:

Those would be crumpled up pattern pieces. I don't even know when they did that, although I'm pretty sure it was the little guy. Oh well. At least he didn't tear them up, although one did have a little hole in it.

Namaste, ya'll

2009-09-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

I have lots of things I should be doing right now, but I wanted to belatedly share some of my spoils from my yoga weekend.

I just couldn't resists, it's so ridiculous. Our instructor wore it the last day and none of us could resist.

Also, I started a completely different dress last night. I realized that I have to go to a board meeting for work on Thursday. A sane person would think, 'oh, why don't I just look in my closet'. That sane person, after realizing that there is nothing in her closet because it either needs to be dry cleaned because she hasn't had to dress for work for four years or it is just plain dumpy, would probably work with what she had, dumpy or not. Obviously, I'm quite far from sane because my first thougth was "I can make myself a new dress that I had been meaning to make!"

I think I'm about 1/3 finished. I started last night. Here's a little teaser:

Let's hope for the best, otherwise I'll be wearing some frumpy four or five year old work clothes that just might fit differently after two kids.

Yoga and dresses

2009-09-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

I needed a break, so I went on a vacation over the weekend. I left my husband home with the kids (with his blessing), and went on a yoga retreat. I decided I wanted to do something about a month ago, so I got online and started searching for retreats in Texas. Lots of personal retreats popped up, which basically involved going someplace all by myself, staying in a cabin, and spending the weekend meditating all by myself. Not exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to get away, but I didn't want to necessarily be by myself.

The next option I found was a spa retreat. Lots of those out there, but I really didn't want to spend the weekend getting massages and facials. Besides, most of those were way out of my price range, for some reason ($1,000 for a weekend and the like).

But then I found this little yoga retreat in East Texas near Tyler called Yoga in the Pines. It seemed focused more on fitness than the spirituality of yoga, which is my main interest in yoga. I don't want to sit around and say 'om' while meditating, but I do appreciate the physical strength that goes into certain yoga poses.

It seemed pretty small, and I didn't know anything about it except what was on the website, but I decided to give it a chance. This past weekend was my yoga retreat, and it was fantastic. It was only ten women, not including the instructor, and we met at her personal studio in the forest in the outskirts of a small town near Tyler. I don't go to yoga classes here in town - I don't really have the opportunity with two little ones - so I was a bit concerned that I would be completely out of my league surrounded by yoga bodies and expensive yoga gear, but all of the other women, while having varying levels of fitness, were very nice and friendly and down to earth. I had a great time. We stayed in a little cabin nestled in the pines, and had homecooked meals the entire weekend. We had sessions every day, and three on Saturday, so I'm a bit sore today, but very motivated to keep it up.

I highly recommend it.

In other news, I finished my knit dress before I left and I even wore it to a work event last week.

This is actually a pattern for a shirt that I transformed into a dress. I added an inch (I'm short and there was a tunic option, I added the inch to the tunic option). The shirt has a little wrap flap in the front, so I had to sew that together. It's not a big deal on a top because there are pants underneath, but it didn't work on a dress.

It has a twist in the front, which is a fun addition.

I think it turned out really well, although if I make it again, I need to remember to make it one size smaller, it's just a tad baggy.

I already started working on another dress, McCall's 5882. This one is a bit more complicated as it involved darts and a zipper.

Sewing again

2009-09-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

When we were looking fora new house, my husband's main factor was finding a place where he could have an office/studio. After we started looking at house after house, I realized that I wanted a place for myself, too, since I was pulling out my laptop anywhere I could and sewing on the dining table. I rejected one option that would involved my sewing room being in a closet (albeit the largest closet I'd ever seen in a 2500 sq. ft. house) So he got an office and I got a sewing room. However, his office is now also a media room and my sewing room as turned into more of an office but at least we both have out own spaces that we can close off from prying little hands.

After nine months I finally created a little sewing set-up. I've made several things since we moved, but only with my regular sewing machine. I also have a coverstitch machine and a serger, both for working with knits. I hadn't used either of them since the move, for a couple of reasons. I changed a plate in the serger and have to change the plate back and rethread it to work on something different. And I remember having some issues with the coverstitch machine the last time I used it, before the move. That's been more than nine months, and it's not going to fix itself, so I pulled it out.

So here is my little set-up.

The coverstitch is the white machine on the right, a Janome 1000CP. My regular sewing machine is the silver one on the left, a really simple but heavy-duty Singer CG500.

The Janome is having some tension issues, mainly due to user error since I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Here's an example.

Those are skipped stitches, which are dropped on the back side and will eventually unravel. Ask me how I know this.

I'm not a fiddler. I don't particularly like fiddling with machines to get them to work. My computer is a mac, and I live with my own personal IT guy, although I rarely solicit him for technical help. My sewing machines are the same way. If they don't work, I really don't want to mess with them to get them to work. But letting a machine sit there for months without use is just ridiculous.

I messed with the tension, played around with the fabric, adjusted the differential feed (which is how fast the fabric is moved under the needle) and I think I got something to work. Even so, I really don't like pulling out a bunch of coverstitching. Regular stitching is much easier to pull out. So I did a little hand sewing and caught the loose loops on the underside, since those slipped stitches were actually on the new project I'm working on. Seems pretty solid now.

I'll let you see the project soon, all I have to do now is sew up one more seam. I'm making Butterick 5185, with my own surprise twist. See you soon!

Nap Mat

2009-09-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

The kiddos started preschool this week. The princess goes four days a week and little prince goes two days a week. Oddly, sometimes that doesn'tseem like enough, but they'll be in full-time school soon enough.

The two-year-old class still takes naps, so I had to get a nap mat for the little man. The school recommended something called a KinderMat, which I couldn't find anywhere (although they did say you can get it at Wal-Mart. I don't go to Wal-Mart).

I knew it was covered in some sort of plastic, probably vinyl, so I decided that I wanted something much more cozy for little guy and decided to make something myself. I bought several yards of flannel, a small pillow, and three squarish 1" washable foam inserts. He was supposed to take a mat, a pillow, and a blanket. I initially thought I would make a mat with a pillow and blanket attached (you can actually find those online), but I didn't buy quite enough fabric to easily make a blanket. I could have probably quilted something together, but I only had a day, I didn't really have any matching fabric, and I've never quilted before.

So I decided to make a mat with a pillow attached.

You can see how the foam fits a bit better here:

All folded up:

I remembered that my grandmother (little guy's great-grandmother) made him a cozy pooh-bear blanket, so rather than try to figure out how to add my own blanket, he took that one to school. That's the blanket folded up inside the mat.

Here's the inside of the attached pillowcase:

I'm pretty pleased how that turned out, particularly since I thought to add extra fabric to allow the pillow case to fold over and lie flat on the mat.

His teacher said he slept more than an hour, so it must have been cozy.

Rainbow

2009-08-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

As we drove home from dinner last night, during a short rain shower, I looked up and saw the largest rainbow I had ever seen.

It filled the whole sky, completely from one side to the other, so that I couldn't even get it in one shot.

I'm so glad we got to enjoy it.

Updates

2009-08-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting for a while, and there have been several reasons for that:

1. My garden has gone to pot. The zucchini were never fertilized, someone stole my red tomatoes, the carrots grew but they taste gross, and, on top of all of that, we've had the worst drought in recent history. So, the black thumb reared its ugly head. I think I will probably plant a flower garden next year.

2. While it fit perfectly when completed, my hemp top stretched in the wash. A lot. It looked more like a tunic. A very saggy tunic. So I took a deep breath and unraveled half of it to make it smaller. I'm at the armholes and I've been there for more than a month now. The other top I started is similarly stalled.

and, probably most importantly,

3. I've started working again. It's only part-time, but I'm serving as a fundraising consultant for a small arts organization. It's pretty exciting to reclaim some of my life from before kids, especially since I willingly and enthusiastically left my non-profit job three years ago. I've already submitted two proposals for funding and I think I have a full schedule ahead this fall. I am so glad to be doing something that is not kid-related.

I'll probably take a new direction in my postings. Less crafty stuff, more real world stuff. At least that's how it feels to me.

Health Care

2009-08-09T07:10:00.001-07:00

I'm going to take a bit of a detour from my usual light-hearted fare and share some of my thoughts about a really sticky issue. Health Care.

I value health care. I think everyone should have easy, affordable access to it. I've experienced European style 'socialist' health care and I don't think it's an evil thing. I have two small children, and if we didn't have employer subsidized health care, we would have multiple tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt, even though they are both healthy. That's just the cost of health care these days. I think I can safely say that health care prices are out of control.

I don't know all of the details of the bill. I agree that it is massive, complicated, and expensive. However, regardless of where I or you stand, I am absolutely amazed at the level of anger, the surprising violence, and the scare tactics that have emerged regarding this issue. Our Congressional Representatives have had to endure not just heckling but even violence at town meetings. People are talking about how the government wants to kill the elderly and the disabled, prominent pundits have compared the program to Nazism, and the list can go on and on.

Our country is so very obviously splintered that it is painful. I am amazed at the level of hate that has arisen over this subject. I don't know what impact I can have, but I did send a letter to all of my congressional representatives: Senators Hutchison and Cornyn and Reprentative Olson. All are Republicans, and all oppose the bill in its current form. That is fine, although I would prefer that they take a more bi-partisan stance. However, I did ask them to take a stand to denounce the lies and violence that has erupted.

I won't make much of a difference by myself, but it's a start. I'd love to live in a country where we can respectfully address our differences.

Boat-neck

2009-06-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

I started knitting something new already, the project based on the swatch I made quite some time ago.

It's a boat-neck tank top. I feel relatively confident about this one, particularly since the sewing pattern I created for myself out of the old t-shirts is a boat neck pattern, so I think I'll be able to make sure I have accurate measurements.

I think I'm going to try to set a goal for myself so this doesn't languish for months and months, even though I don't think we'll have any respite for the heat for months and months either. Regardless, I would like to finish it in a timely manner. I'm going to try to set a goal of a certain number of inches a day. I'm working in the round, so if I say an inch a day, I should be finished in about three weeks. I'll start off with that as my goal. I've never had a project goal, but this whole running thing has inspired me so set goals. (And I actually haven't met too many of the running goals lately since I was sick this last week, but I had a nice run yesterday, the first in a week).

Finally!

2009-06-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

I have *finally* finished the lacy little hemp tee!

I am actually still working on an I-cord for the waist tie, but that's minor. I-cords are pretty tedious, so that's going to take a day or two. I'll get an action shot later, I think I want to wash it first.

It seems to fit wonderfully, the ribbing at the waist gives it some nice definition. I added the ribbing, it's not in the original pattern. The original pattern, by LanaKnits, is pretty simple, which is why I should have finished it a month ago. Oh well, it's done now.

Lentils

2009-06-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

Tired of sandwiches, I made myself an easy and relatively quick lunch today - lentil stew. It's summer-time, but I think we can still eat stew, as long as we let it cool enough. Lentils are an amazing food, and now that I'm trying to exercise more, I want to pay even more attention to eating very nutritious foods.

Here is a very simple recipe I made up this morning, and I think it tastes delicious. I couldn't get my little girl to eat it, but she was eating a muffin at the time, so there wasn't a lot of incentive for her.

Hearty Lentil Stew

1 cup presoaked lentils
2 cups vegetable broth
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, sliced
2 tbsp soy sauce
Salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer for about 30 minutes. I'd say this makes 4 to 6 servings, depending on how much you eat.

I don’t like runny soup, so this makes more of a thick stew, and it thickens the more you let it simmer. I’ll eat it by itself, but I also think I’m going to try it over brown rice, which will also make it a complete protein.

UPDATE: Both kids ate it and loved it.

Updates

2009-06-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

Five miles today, and, so far, I feel great. I wasn't a puddle at the end, so I must be building up endurance.

Here is the hemp top:

This has taken a lot longer than I initially anticipated, probably because I'm not terribly good at gauging how long a knitting project will take me. I also stopped for several weeks because the hemp was rubbing my fingers raw for a while. Now I'm back on track, and I think I have only a few more inches to go. Hopefully that means I'll be finished in about a week or less, we'll see.

2009-06-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has a health/wellness blog, and a few weeks ago, the blogger announced that she was going to start training for the New York Marathon. Now, I'm not particularly interested in running a marathon, but I recently started running again, and the blogger's intentions to go from couch potato to marathon runner sounded pretty interesting. I followed along sinc ethis happened to coincide with my return to running a few times a week.

A fews days ago, the blog debuted a customizable training blog to help readers train for the marathon, and that, I thought, was pretty cool. As I said, I don't want to run a marathon. Never say never, but for the moment, it seems like pure, and completely avoidable, torture. However, the idea of pushing myself a little bit more and following a rigorous training schedule created by pros is pretty appealing.

So I signed up and started logging my runs. I don't know if my particular "training page" is accessible to anyone else, but here it is, just in case. Yesterday I ran 4 miles, and it killed me, but now I've done it. That's the farthest I've run since college, so even though I was a puddle on the floor when I finished, I was pretty proud of myself. I almost got to 3 miles today, I didn't want to push it too much after yesterday.

I feel great. I always feel better when I'm able to go running. Even though it's summer time, I'm going pretty early in the morning, so I don't get terribly hot. I'm looking forward to eventually completing some of the longer runs, so this will be a neat challenge for me.

In other news, we have a handful of little green tomatoes growing in the backyard and I'm at the shoulders in my hemp top. More on those later.

What to do with a nasty old shirt

2009-05-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

Before:

After:

Collateral damage:

I made up the pattern myself. My husband said, "Yeah, but you could cheat by using the armholes that were already there." Well, no, I told him. Since the shirt was an extra large, and I'm not, I cut it open, cut out two big rectangles, and pretty much just used it like regular fabric.

The shirt is pretty much just two rectangles. I wanted a boat neck, and tried to sew up the easiest way to make that work. I cut two rectangles, sewed the sides together up to where I thought the armholes should go, and tried it on. I adjusted the armhole measurements, and shaped them from there. I sewed very narrow shoulders, and then hemmed the straight neckline and the armholes (When I make this again, I will sew and hem the neckline first. Since it is just a straight hem, it will be easier to hem if the sides are still open).

Because I don't wear gray, and the boatneck prototype turned out so well that I actually want to wear it, I wanted to add a little color to it. I had an old pink tee that had a hole in an unfortunate place, so I cut it up to make a bright border. I cut two long strips from the pink tee, sewed them together, and added them to the bottom of the gray top to add a border with a side tie.

Here's another one. I don't have a before of this one, but it was just a simple women's tee.

(photo courtesy of our resident little princess)

I chopped off the arms, cut out the ribbed neckline, and shortened the armholes. Then I hemmed everything up, and added little bows at the shoulders with the scraps for a little decorative touch.

It's a good thing my husband doesn't like colorful t-shirts, or I would probably cut them all up.

Fruit of our Labor

2009-05-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

As we were playing outside yesterday, and I was weeding the garden, the Little Princess suddenly started screeching. "Mommy! There is a baby tomato!"

And there was.

It was one lonely cherry tomato. I noticed a flower recently, but didn't think anything would come from it. I'm not sure how long it was out there, although I don't think it was for long.

I don't think it was fully ripe, but it was close enough. Once she found it, all she wanted to do was pick it and eat it. So we did.

As you can see, it was quite tiny. I quartered it, so all we got was a taste, but it was very tasty. I certainly wish there were more!

Gauge, again

2009-05-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

I never used to pay much attention to gauge. I know that every single knitting book you can find stresses the importance of gauge, but for the longest time, the projects I worked on really didn't require an exact gauge. I learned to crochet as a child by making doilies (scary, right?), which don't particularly require gauge, and when I took it back up as an adult, I was making baby blankets and other various projects that didn't really require anything more than an approximate size. Even when I started making garments for my kids, I was pretty much making projects with the recommended yarn, so even then, I just plowed straight ahead and things fit well enough.

It was when I started making things for myself that things started turning out really wonky. Particularly since I haphazardly made yarn substitutions that utterly disregarded any concept of gauge.

That's how I ended up with this:

This a piece from SNB Happy Hooker. I must have started it a couple of years ago. I didn't model it because it's just embarrassing. While I could put it on, the sizing was truly and pitifully off.

So it became this:

Do you like the ghetto yarn swift? I do. It works really well.

And that pink yarn on the right? It's bamboo yarn (6 skeins of Classic Elite Yarns Bam Boo, to be precise) that was another unfinished crochet top. That one was pretty, but I couldn't get my arms through the armholes.

The thing is, bringing me back to my previous musings on denial, I *knew* in both cases that the sizing was off, but I persisted. The Lacy Leaf Cocoon crochet top was almost finished, except for the arms. I kept looking at it, thinking it might end up too small, but persisted anyways. Same thing with the Happy Hooker lace baroque cardigan (which is was the orange thing was supposed to be). So, in true form, I packed both projects away in boxes and ignored them for probably two years. I pulled them out last week because I knew that they used nice yarn and I decided, now that I'm a much more proficient knitter (and I've pretty much dropped crochet), I would re-use the yarn for something else.

I do, however, think I've learned my lesson. See this?

I swatched. And then:

I washed it. What a concept. See the difference? I think I have the right gauge for this particular project (although it uses a completely different yarn than I showcased earlier....). But first I should finish the Lacy Tee, which is going well for the moment.

Oh, frog

2009-04-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

Denial. I've read about it. I've experienced it. And yet I still proceed when face to face with it.

I'd worked several inches of my lace top when I realized that something was off. At first, I just thought it was my imagination, or that I just hadn't given that particular round time to incorporate itself. However, at that point, I was already a couple of rounds above a potential mistake, so this was just delusional thinking. I looked at it, and figured, "it's small, and I won't even notice it when I'm finished." I continued working, until I had this:

I think it was about six inches by then. And my little mistake, while not terribly obvious in the photo, was making the piece pucker in really obvious, odd ways.

You can see it better here:

The weird thing is that even though I obviously mixed up a couple of rounds, I very clearly got right back on track, because the pillar of lace continues right where it is supposed to be on top of the jag, which is the whole reason I thought that I could hide it.

So I took a deep breath, and pulled out the needles. Then I walked away from the piece for a while. Then I returned, and proceeded to rip out several inches, probably more than half of what I'd already worked. Then I put it down and walked away again, wondering if there was something else I could start that would get my mind off it.

After perusing through some of my knitting books, and deciding that while I had the yarn to start a new project, I didn't have the size needle I wanted, I returned. Getting the lace back on the needles was a little bit tricky, but with a bit of trial and error, I got everything back in place without any dropped stitches.

Fortunately, despite my goof-up, the lace isn't terribly difficult, so I've already worked back to almost where I was a couple of days ago.

Hippie Chocolate Cake

2009-04-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

I am just about solely responsible for the dietary habits of our family, particularly those of my two children. My little girl, in particular, has a sweet tooth, and if I let her eat cookies and cupcakes all day, she probably would. I don't think this is particularly unusual for a child, but I do like to make sure that she, and rest of us, eats healthy most of the time. I don't intend for us to only eat celery (we do often have Ben and Jerry's ice cream around the house), but I don't like to have junky treats and snacks around the house, either.

I don't think this is a surprise to anyone.

I recently bought a cookbook called Deceptively Delicious. I heard about it shortly after it came out, but resisted buying it because it's a 'celebrity' cookbook (authored by Jessica Seinfeld, wife of Jerry Seinfeld). I've had a tough time getting the little princess to eat anything healthy recently, and I saw it on clearance at the bookstore, so I decided to try it.

I've already made a handful of the recipes with success, and incorporated some of the pureed vegetable ideas to some of our regular staple recipes. The kids have gobbled everything up, and the only complaint was from my husband. He didn't like that the beef hamburger tasted more like a garden burger. I didn't mind the flavor, but duly adjusted it the next time.

Time to try one of the desserts. I decided to make chocolate cake.

I quote my husband: "Why do you always have to make hippie desserts? Why can't you just make regular chocolate cake?"

I refer you to the above paragraphs.

True to form, I made a few adjustments to the recipe, hippifying it, I suppose (I wouldn't consider "Deceptively Delicious" a hippie cookbook at all. Apart from the beets, the original recipe was pretty straightforward. And for the record, in our household, hippie pretty much stands for anything weird.)

Without further ado, I present my hippie chocolate cake.

Ingredients:

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, melted
1/2 cup beet puree
1/2 cup lowfat milk (or buttermilk)
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 tbsp ground flaxseed
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Mix the sugar, oil, and eggs together with a mixer. Slowly beat in the melted chocolate, beet puree, milk, and vanilla. Add the flour, flaxseed, baking soda, salt and chocolate chips and beat until smooth.

3. Pour batter into 9-inch cake pan and bake for 35-45 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean when inserted.

4. Let cool and enjoy.

Despite the ingredients, everyone in the house happily partook.

2009-04-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Spring is here, and it's time to do some warm weather knitting.

Living in Texas, figuring out useful things to knit can be a bit of a challenge, since we don't really need too many scarves, warm hats, or sweaters. Even socks. It is possible to have too many socks, especially when sandals weather arrives.

So I've decided to make this. It looks like it's a nice, light lacy knit t-shirt. I like the lace aspect of it because if I knit something to wear, I want it to have aspects of it that I can't find in other places. I can just sew myself a t-shirt out of fabric, so I want to make sure that a top that is knitted includes a part that can only be created by knitting.

I started it a few days ago, and it's going really well.

Those are the first few bottom inches. It is knit entirely in the round, and the lace pattern is a very very easy repetitive pattern. I'm really enjoying it so far, and I think I got the sizing right. That is always my biggest concern in knitting a garment (at least the few I've knitted so far). If I sew a top and it is too big (I tend to err on too big), I can always take it in. That isn't all that easy with knit garments, so I have to pay much more attention to sizing and measurements. Fortunately, in a piece knit in the round, I can always take it off the needles to try it on occasionally. I've already done that once (Even though I've only worked a few inches, I figured I should check the sizing before I get to much further) and I plan to do that pretty regularly as I continue working on the piece.

I'm using 100% hemp yarn, allhemp3. I was expecting it to be really rough and twine like, because it almost feels that way wound in a ball, but it's actually very comfortable to use.

So far, this is a very easy project, and I'm hoping to have it completed in the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted.

2009-04-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

The outdoor garden is growing quite nicely. The tomato plants are getting a bit yellow, so I added some compost that I bought yesterday, and hopefully that will provide them with some nutrients. If not, I'll have to figure out what else they need.

I added a few more seeds today, including carrots, beets, and beans. We'll see how those go. One of my little helpers picked out the seeds when we were at the garden store yesterday. The squash I planted a couple of weeks ago is already a few inches tall, and the only casualty I think we've had is chives. They just didn't seem to take.

I've also got a few plants inside:

Peppers on the left, parsley in the middle, and oregano on the right. This was taken a couple of days ago and they are already about twice this size.

Watching the whole process as been amazing. I had never seen plants grown from seed before, and I love watching how the seed sprouts a root first, and then seems to grow up from the root to open up into the leaves.

You can see the outer part of some of the seeds still attached to the leaves on the parsley. Absolutely amazing.

Growth!

2009-03-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

We've had some growth!

I could hardly tell they were there in person, so I've added some arrows. You can see three tiny little plantlings on the top right, as well as a blurry little one in the bottom left corner. There are a few more in the area, I think nine total.

I'm so pleased that some of the seeds have sprouted.

The tomatoes seem to be doing well, too.

I'm sure it hasn't hurt that we had a huge rainstorm come through over the past two days. I'll hopefully be able to make it to the garden store this weekend to get some compost or organic fertilizer for those tomatoes.

My basil in the front didn't do so well. I think I rushed the transplanting, since it was the first sprout from the seed and I forgot to give it time to acclimate from indoors to outdoors.

The garden

2009-03-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

It's finally begun. After reading and reading, I finally decided to just jump in. We went to the garden center, bought some seeds, some plants, and some planting soil, dug up a space in the back yard, and here is what we have:

It's not impressive by any means, and I'm not even sure anything will survive, but it's a start.

The selections are a bit random. That's kohlrabi in the foreground, and small tomato plants in the background. We planted some seeds, squash and some chives, in the middle. I don't have a lot of hope for those, but I can always put some small plants there if nothing happens over the next few weeks.

I've also got some basil in the front in a pot.

The whole process was a lot of fun. The entire family got involved, with the little ones wandering around digging in the dirt we turned up. I'll expand it eventually, but this will be a good, small start.

A Trio of Trousers

2009-03-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

I've been a pants making fiend.

These are all cozy flannel pj bottoms. They're really easy to make, just sew up some seams, hem, and add elastic. Finished.

And even though the kids are two years apart, I used pretty much the same size. I added extra room in the behind for the little guy, so his diaper can fit, but other than that, they are almost the same size. Wow.

They are from what is probably the most useful pattern I have ever bought.

I could probably completely clothe my children for the next four years with this one pattern collection.

Here's the completed cupcake ensemble I mentioned the other day. The top is from this same pattern.

So cute.

Sewing tricks

2009-03-13T14:35:00.001-07:00

I finished a pair of pants (actually, they are probably more like capris) today, not for me, though. Little kid pants are so quick to make, it's almost hard to resist.

One of my favorite parts of making simple pants is sewing the legs together. I like to turn one leg right side out and stick it inside the other leg.

For some reason, this just seems so incredibly ingenious.

I also discovered a little trick for sewing narrow leg pant hems if you don't have a free arm on your sewing machine. Sew on the inside of the hem, circling the hem around the outside.

This is probably an old trick, but it's relatively new to me.

No model today, she's napping. I also have a matching top I made a while ago, so we'll share the complete ensemble later.

Parmesan Cream Crackers

2009-03-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Always trying to make more food from scratch, I made crackers today. I started off from a recipe found in the New York Times and tweaked it a little bit, Parmesan Cream Crackers.

Here's the recipe as I made it:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup finely grated fresh Parmesan cheese ( I will actually use more next time)
1/2 cup whipping cream

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly dust baking sheet with flour.
2. Pulse flour, salt, cheese and butter in food processor. Add cream slowly until mixture holds together but is not sticky.
3. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface until at least 1/4 inch thin, preferably thinner. Transfer to cooking sheet.
4. Lightly score with a knife into squares. Bake 10-12 minutes.

These were a big hit in our house. The little guy almost climbed up on the table to get more.

To hippie or not to hippie

2009-03-09T10:14:00.001-07:00

In my quest to start a garden (which still hasn't become reality) I took part in a workshop on Saturday morning about propagation. I don't know anything about gardening, so I figured starting somewhere would be a good start.

It was very helpful. The workshop was held by Urban Harvest, a local non-profit that, among other things, organizes community gardens, runs a farmer's market, holds gardening classes, and much more.

The propagation class discussed growing from seed and growing from clippings of other plants. We had some hands-on time and I brought home three little transplanted rosemary clippings as well as six newly planted basil seeds. The idea is to wait until the seedlings take root, or the clippings to show new growth, then to transplant the new plants.

The class was great, but one of the strangest things about it was one of the participants. I was sitting at a table, waiting for class to begin, when I heard someone set near me, and then I smelled her. Oh dear, I thought she was a homeless person (after all, the class took place near downtown). A woman next to me had her 11-year-old daughter with her, and while the adults were trying to pretend the smell didn't exist, I could tell that the little girl, while still being incredibly tactful, noticed it as well.

So, it's a downtown community organization, works with community gardens, maybe some less-fortunate people were in attendance to learn gardening skills as well. That's what the organization is for, after all.

Then she pulled out a laptop and proceeded to get online and take notes when the instructor began speaking. This was not a person down on her luck.

As I was explaining the situation to my husband later, he burst out laughing. "You met a hippie! You were out-hippied!"

Ha ha ha. I was wearing my grungy clothes, too, perceptively noticed by my daughter later in the day. I guess I have to rethink this whole hippie thing.

Making progress

2009-02-22T10:17:00.001-08:00

My first finished prject in the new house!

I have to say, it is wonderful having my own space for my sewing. I don't have to put my machine away in order to eat dinner, I can spread out the fabric and leave it there if I still need to work on it several hours later, and while I'm not fully organized yet, at least I have the space to get organized. It's great.

Here are the first fruits of the new room.

Just a simple little dress for a cute little girl. She seems pretty pleased with it.

In other news, I'm on my way to starting a compost pile for the currently theoretical garden that we will someday have. I've been collecting our kitchen scraps. I started looking around at compost bins and they are really pricey if you want to buy an official one. I found lots of instances of people making their own out of various things, including trash cans, so I think that is the route we are going to take for now.

We have a big outdoor trash can that we bought right after we moved in. We aren't using it, so I asked my darling hubbie if we could use it as a compost bin. Considering he wasn't too pleased to see the pile of scraps underneath the kitchen sink, he was understandably relieved to discover I didn't intend to create compost inside the house.

So, hopefully later today, he will drill some holes in the trash can, several in the bottom and several on the lid, for air circulation. I don't have too many scraps, so I'll try to make it to the garden center down the road to see what they have to help my pile along.

After that, the next step will be to create some gardening beds. I think we will do raised beds, so we will need to add lots of soil. Our soil is composed of a lot of sand and clay, so a raised bed seems like the best option. We'll need to get some wood, cut it to size, and build the beds. Once again, my sweet hubbie will be a large part of all of this.

Hopefully we'll have some progress over the next week. I need to decide what to plant, too!

2009-02-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention that we were able to go out for a romantic dinner, just the two of us, not on Valentine's Day, but the day before. I wore my tunic, I think for the first time out. I'd just worn it around the house before. The only problem with it is that it's a pretty stretchy fabric, and it started to sag a bit towards the end of the evening. I'll have to keep that in mind as I work on other knits. But other than that, it was fun to wear it out to get a little bit dressed up, but still be casual.

I have finally started working on some projects again. I cut out fabric to make a dress (not for me, though) and I may start sewing that together today. I've decided on the fabric for one window. It's some fabric I already had, so I need to measure the window to decide what kind of curtain I want to make. The window is really tall, so I either need to pull a chair into that room and tell the kids not to emulate me as I climb up on the chair, or ask someone taller than me to help measure, please.

After that, there are only 20 other windows in the house.

Lastly, I'm going to pull out my knitting as soon as I'm finished here and start working on a spring top. I think I need to make some measurements and work on some swatches, so I may not actually start today.

I'll post some pictures as oon as I have something to show!

Something new

2009-02-14T15:13:00.000-08:00

I don't have a paid job. I haven't worked in a full-time office job for nearly four years now, and I've been a full-time mom for more than two years now, since I worked from home part-time for a while after the first little one arrived. At times it is shocking that it has been that long because I feel like it was just yesterday that I was getting dressed and going to work. Paradoxically, it seems like a lifetime ago since my life now is so incredibly different.

I've toyed with the idea of going back to work. In a moment of desperation last spring, brought about through the need to interact with adults, challenge myself, and be away from any and all things baby for a least a short while, I even put together my resume. I almost sent it off to two very positive job prospects, including my former job, where I probably would have been a shoo-in. I changed my mind, because, as crazy as I was going with an infant and a two year old, they were still babies, they still need their mommy, and the crisis did go away.

Even so, I've been itching to do something truly beneficial. Crafts do provide a bit of non-baby self-fulfillment, but I've been longing to do something more.

I looked into volunteering. I discovered a call for volunteers at a farmer's market, but a.) I've only been to a farmer's market once and I didn't buy anything and b.) I'd have to get up really early on Saturdays. So that didn't happen. I want to change the world, but only if it is after 9 a.m. I looked around for other organizations that would be in need of help. Studies have shown that a wealth of selection actually makes the decision process more difficult, and I found that to be true living in a big city teeming with organization after organization.

I set my sights on our new, small town.

It turns out there is a small environmental organization in town that focuses on litter clean-up, recycling, and beautification of the town, among other things. I've been trying to recycle as best we can. Houston offers recycyling pick-up, but only for single family homes, so we weren't able to take advantage of that while living in the condo. I tried to keep our recycleables to take them to a drop-off station, but we ended up with piles and piles of trash, literally an entire closet full. That effort wasn't fully successful, but we tried.

Moving to a small town, I was concerned that recycling would be non-existent. I was thrilled to discover there is a big recycling program as a part of this organization. So I joined. Then I asked if I could join a committee. They said yes and now I'm volunteering.

I've been trying to live a more environmentally conscious life for several years now, and I'm excited to take part in a more community-wide effort. From the meeting I went to several days ago, it turns out there are some really awesome things going on in town, and it seems like there are some great ways for me to help out. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm Back

2009-01-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a long time! First the holidays, then we moved. New house, new neighborhood, new city - there has been a lot going on over here.

There are many exciting things about the new house, but one of the great things about it is that I now have my own office. Which means that I no longer will have to take over the dining table to sew, I have someplace to keep my yarn, fabric, books, and photography equipment, and I can close the door (actually, doors, since I have lovely French doors on my room) and just enjoy myself in there.

I still need to do a bit of organizing, though.

Anyways, with everything going on, I haven't worked on any project, and the next few ones I plan to start will likely be home related, such as curtains and chair covers.

I have been doing lots of reading, since we didn't have internet for about a month. It's amazing what one can get done without the internet. I've been working through several books at once, mainly because they are all related. And I say 'working' because these are some heavy duty books, which is actually what I usually read.

I'm a big fan of Karen Armstrong. She a former nun who decided to leave the orders, went to Oxford, and according to her bio, is "one of the foremost commentators on religious affairs." I'm not sure what her current beliefs are, but she has written major works on the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, among other things. She has a fascinating way of placing religion in its historical context, explaining how such things as science, philosophy, nations, and wars formed the religions that we know today.

I picked up The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism more than a year ago. The cover has a picture of a Star of David, a cross, and a crescent, and the book details how modern fundamentalism in the three major monotheistic religions developed over the course of many centuries. The book is literally about battles between and within the religions over the ages and how nation-building, power, and subjection created various segments of each religion. It's amazing to follow an almost linear line between conflicts from over a thousand years ago and conflicts from today. Actually, it's somewhat shocking to me that those hatreds and rivalries still exist.

I haven't gotten very far in the book, it's rather dense, so I will give an update once I read more. So far, it's absolutely fascinating.

Duty calls, so I'll share my other readings another day.

Lotus Lace Tunic

2008-12-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

Here it is, my completed hemp project:

I call it my Lotus Lace Tunic (the lace detail at the bottom and at the neck is called a lotus design). I'm quite pleased with it because it's the first project I have designed myself.

Here is the back:

This actually started off as a tank top from another pattern. The lace at the bottom was supposed to be the bottom of the tank top. I mis-measured (actually, I didn't measure at all) and created lace that was far too wide for my waist. I didn't want to completely lose all the work I'd put into the lace, so I thought about what I could do with it instead.

I decided to push it down below my hips and create a tunic instead. I measured properly this time, did some calculations, and figured out how many stitches I needed to work around the body in specific places. It looks like a tube, but I actually did lots of waist and bust shaping to get a perfect fit.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to add sleeves, and then my yarn went missing and that decided that. When I decided to make a tunic, instead, I wasn't sure if I would have enough yarn, since my original project was a tank top. I was going to use the extra yarn to add sleeves, so when it didn't arrive, I decided to use my last skein to turn it into an apron-like top. (The company did kindly send a replacement package, so I did eventually get the yarn, but by then I'd already made my decision.)

I'm incredibly pleased with myself, and I learned a lot, too, primarily about the necessity of proper measurements.

Vegetables

2008-12-15T09:48:00.001-08:00

I'm thinking about starting a vegetable garden when we move into our new house. This is a major endeavor for me, as I have somehow attained the status of black thumb. I have, on more than one occasion, cruelly, and unintentionally, killed various plants - herbs, ferns, a six foot tall hibiscus (Although that one wasn't really my fault and I did valiantly try to save it because I loved the flowers it produced. It was attacked by web worms of some sort.). My darling husband even eventually put a rock garden in over the little soil we had in our patio at the condo.

We did have a ficus that I didn't fully kill, though. We named it Ben and even talked to it, but then we had a baby and we put it outside so she wouldn't be tempted to eat it. It never did get as green and lush, but it didn't necessarily die either. Unless I'm blocking that little fact out of my memory, too.

Anyways, something about vegetables intrigues me. I'm fascinated by the idea of growing my own food, even though it would only constitute at most a fraction of my diet. And while I love the way a beautifully landscaped flower garden looks, I'm not a fan of actually tending to the garden. For some reason, I feel like I would take care of a vegetable garden.

The practicality of it calls to me. At the same time, I am such a city girl that the fact that food does actually grow in the ground still foolishly boggles my mind. Buying food in the grocery store creates such a vast disconnect between what we eat and where it originated, whether it's a carrot in the produce section or a pound of beef in the meat aisle. As part of my attempt to eat whole foods, I want to erase a little bit of my disconnect and become even more aware of how I'm nourishing myself and my family.

But what about those herbs I mentioned earlier, you say? I wasn't much of a cook at the time I created my little herb garden, so I never actually used any of the herbs in it. As a result, it didn't get much attention. I also did absolutely no research into how to actually care for an herb garden. I'm planning to be much more prepared this time.

I've been researching here and there for a while, and now that we will probably move in the next few weeks, it seems much more relevant. Tremendously overwhelming, though. From what I'm reading, winter seems to be a good time to prepare and plan, so I think I'm accidentally on course. I have no idea what to plant; I need to find something simple and climate appropriate.

And then there is the compost. Ah, compost. Did you know that you can put coffee grounds in compost? Cool. I may never have to throw anything away again.

Little Man's New Sweater

2008-12-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

I think he looks pleased. I know I am.

I finished all the knitting several weeks ago, I just hadn't sewn the arms onto the body. Turns out seaming knits together is quite easy so I don't know why I waited so long.

The weather is nasty outside, so I was inspired to finish something warm.

Here is the back:

And because he is so cute:

(oh my gosh, did I really produce such a cute little person?)

Anyways, it's cold here, we've all got a cold and we've been hiding in the house all day. I do, however, wish to rant to the cyberworld and wonder "WHO STOLE MY YARN???"

There is a yarn thief amongst us.

I put my lovely hemp lace piece on hold so I could order a few more skeins of yarn to finish an idea I had for the shoulders. It was supposed to arrive right after Thanksgiving. We came back the day after Thanksgiving, and there was no package. For a week, I watched the mail, and no package. Finally, I contacted the company and they told me that their tracking showed the package delivered here the day after Thanksgiving.

So I've spent the last few days calling the post office, talking to the mail man, in contact with the company, and feeling like a moron because everything says the package was delivered, but it's not here. (The mail man always leaves packages on the front porch, inside the storm door).

I can't imagine that someone would steal a box of yarn, but I guess they thought it was something much more lucrative. That idea in itself is creepy, too, since it possibly means that someone was on our front porch with foul intentions.

Well. Pooey on them.

My hemp top is going to look nice regardless.

Surprise ingredient

2008-12-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

Whole food tastes better than processed food. Period. End stop.

I'm not talking about the store, Whole Foods, or organic foods, or any particularly fancy. I just mean that food made from fresh ingredients processed to the minimal amount tastes better than foods that have been processed. This can be as simple as fresh vegetables vs. canned vegetables, whole wheat flour vs. enriched white flour, or raw honey vs. sugar. The list can go on and on, as processed foods have taken over every aspect of our diets, in obvious and not so obvious ways.

On particularly ornery ingredient is High Fructose Corn Syrup. We've all heard about it, and, based on the desperation of this ad, I think more and more people are realizing that it is problematic that this ingredient is included in so many of our foods. Yes, it comes from corn, which is natural, but it is so extensively processed that it hardly resembles corn anymore. I don't buy the ad, but, then again, I rarely buy juice, even 100% juice, much less that red liquid in the ad.

It's hard to escape HFCS. It's in our cereal, our breads, everything. Just about the only thing you can do it make things from scratch. This is not always possible, and I do buy processed foods, but those are becoming fewer and fewer.

Which leads me to this:

Cookies.

I like to bake. But I like to bake unconventional recipes, or create my own unconventional recipes, that often incorporate whole grain flours, honey (or other natural sweeteners) as opposed to sugar, and the like. We eat sweets, but I want them to include the healthiest ingredients possible, while still satisfying that sweet tooth. I think they taste better, although the real taste test occurs if my sweet husband eats them.

I found the recipe for these quite some time ago while I was searching for something else. They come from the chef Alton Brown, who has a show on the Food Network called Good Eats. We don't watch cable very often (we don't even have cable right now) because we don't watch tv very often, but his show is quite interesting because he spends a lot of time discussing how ingredients interact with each other to create the foods that we eat.

Anyways, this recipe caught my eye because of one particular, quite unusual, ingredient. I saved it for a long time, and, for some reason (probably my little princess's incessant request for 'treats' that developed after Halloween) I decided to make them yesterday. The princess couldn't have been more pleased, as she loves cookies. Fortunately, she loves any kind of cookies, so I'm usually able to pass off unusual, but tasty, concoctions with much success with her.

We made our cookies yesterday morning. My wonderful husband came home from work early, and I offered him a cookie, which he gladly ate. He took a bite, nodded, and asked what spices I had included in it. Then he said that it was really good, and ate it all. Success!

I did relent and shared our secret ingredient with him later that evening. He responded incredulously, saying he knew there was something special in them, but didn't know what it was.

Here is the recipe. The only thing I omitted was the coconut, since I don't regularly keep that around the house. I'm going to play around with them some more, substituting honey for the sugar, and I want to see how they taste without the oats.

It's an unconventional cookie recipe, but it's quite tasty. Really.

That Pesky Plant

2008-12-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, due to a family filled Thanksgiving trip, among other things, but I'm back to add some updates. A few of you asked how I plan to use my previous fair isle design that I shared with you. It actually is part of a sweater I designed for my little man and it was already in the last throes of completion by the time I took that picture. I need to sew on the sleeves, and the weather has been warm, so I haven't been motivated to do that yet. A cold front is supposed to roll in tonight, so I imagine that will be motivation enough.

But on to bigger and better things.

This is a lace pattern known as Lotus Lace, but for me, the most interesting this about this is not particularly the lace (although that definitely makes it fun) but the fiber used to make it. Do you want to take a guess?

Here is a shot of just plain knitting. The stitches aren't terribly even in places, due not to user error but the stiffer nature of the fiber.

This is hemp. Remember hemp? That rough fabric mainly associated with twine or hippies has resurfaced once again, but this time it has been made into softer fabrics, and yarns (I don't have pictures of them, but I made several newborn tops out of hemp jersey for my little man that were very very soft. He only wore them for about a week, but I digress). Often confused with it's more potent, illegal cousin, industrial hemp is actually a completely benign plant that has little, if any, mind-altering properties.

However, hemp is a sustainable crop (one of the reasons hippies like it), requiring few, if any, pesticides, and less water than many other crops. It is also antibacterial (it won't mold) and creates quite a sturdy fiber. From what I understand, it can only be grown in the US under very stringent government supervision, so the vast majority of hemp products in this country come from beyond our borders.

I'm designing my first hemp garment for myself right now. I'm almost finished, and I'll share it with you when I'm finished.

Fair Isle

2008-11-24T08:02:00.001-08:00

This isn't necessarily for me, but I'm quite pleased with a new technique I've learned.

This is called fair isle knitting. It's related to the Scandinavian style sweater I made, but it uses smaller patterns and more color changes. This is a pretty common technique used for sweaters, so I'm sure you've seen it before. This is just the first time I've used this technique to make anything myself.

You can see here that the yarns end up a bit woven on the back side.

This style is fascinating to me because it is a traditional style of knitting that still looks modern today. It also represents the merging of cultures and techniques that developed to create this look. It takes its name from the island of Fair Isle off the north side of Scotland, which is near the Shetland Islands and the Hebrides. These islands have long been trading hubs, even from the days of the Vikings, so many different cultures and peoples have passed through them for centuries.

The romantic history of this style of knitting involves a shipwreck from the Spanish Armada. Around the time of the Armada's defeat by the English at the end of the 16th century, one of the galleons sailed up the coast, only to sink off Fair Isle. Spain has a long history of intricate textiles (many further influenced by textiles from the Middle East), so the lore is that those Spanish textiles made their way from the shipwreck onto the island to influence the styles there.

I love this story as it makes a connection across a variety of countries and continents. There are other conflicting originations, most involving sweaters and designs that came through as a part of trades from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, but this is one is my favorite.

Regardless of how it came about, it produces a wonderful design, and there are many, many designs out there, and the process of creating it is fun as well.

I'm still working on The Gravedigger's Daughter, and hopefully I'll finish that soon so I can have a non-knitting update.

Finished!

2008-11-17T11:59:00.000-08:00

Here it is, my first completed sweater!

With a little guest.

I'm quite pleased with it. It's made of 100% wool, so it will be nice and warm, but not too warm, since I was comfortable wearing in in the sunshine in 60-ish degree weather and in windy 50-ish degree weather as well.

Well, it's actually not completely finished. I haven't 'blocked' it, which involves getting it damp and smoothing it into shape. This will help with some of the lumps that come with the color changes at the top of the sweater.

Other than that, it was a great project and I'm so glad that I finally finished a sweater, both for the finished object as well as for all I learned about putting a sweater together, sizing, working with more than one color, and improvising.

Out Stealing Horses

2008-11-13T11:08:00.001-08:00

I rarely read just one book at a time. The other fiction book I'm reading right now came to me from an article in The New Yorker. Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist I'd never heard of, although I'm always curious to read any Scandinavian fiction I find. Part of this is due to the time I spent in Denmark, and part of it is in my blood, thanks to my grandmother who is always happy to share about her Swedish heritage.

It turns out my small local library had several of Petterson's books on the shelf, although not the main one reviewed in the article. Nevermind, I brought home "Out Stealing Horses." The title reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses," and for some reason that made me choose it.

"Out Stealing Horses" is a very quiet, straightforward novel. It feels like a kindred spirit to much of the work of Hemingway in its sparseness. It is the story of an old man who, as he slowly goes through the mundane routines of daily life, reflects upon a series of tragic events that occurred when he was a teenager, and how those events follow and revisit him into his old age. It is a coming of age novel, filled with the revelations, disappointments, and reflections that generally accompany such a work.

What I found fascinating about this book is that the majority of the book takes place outdoors. The main character, Trond, lives in the city, Oslo, for most of his life, but the transformative moments in his life take place outdoors, both as a young man and an old man. As a result, the bulk of the story takes place outdoors. The indoor scenes usually occur mainly in preparation of returning back outdoors. By being an almost constant element in the novel, nature is one of the main characters, directly affecting the characters in several places. I imagine Norway has stunning countryside, so with that in mind, it isn't hard to conceive the outdoors holding a firm grasp on any story in Norway. Most of Trond's experiences in the book take place in solitude, which is probably why nature looms so largely. There are few other characters to compete, nor could they compete against the outdoor settings that, even in their rustic simplicity, still carry a power.

I plan on reading more of Petterson's work, but first, I need to finish up the other various books I have scattered around.

Ribbing

2008-11-09T14:22:00.000-08:00

It's not quite finished, but I did come up with a solution that I think solves the two tone problem and still creates a nice sweater.

I added ribbing. The entire sweater was supposed to be worked in a completely flat stitch (in what is called stockinette stitch). Here is the original pattern, with a picture.

Here is my version:

The ribbing masks the shift in hues. You can see it in this close- up with flash:

But I bet you couldn't tell in the sunshine picture, could you? I also added the colorwork on the sleeves, since the new cream color began there as well. The break up of the new cream with the pink helps hide the slight difference.

As an added bonus, the original cream color ended just below the bustline, and starting the ribbing there actually creates a very flattering silhouette.

I'm quite pleased with the result, and I'm not at all upset that the colors didn't match, because it forced me to use my creativity. Now I'm itching to design even more sweaters!

Lessons Learned

2008-11-04T12:56:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a sweater. It's not my first attempt at knitting a sweater, but I'm planning for it to be the first sweater that I actually finish for myself.

I picked a Nordic design I found on a Scandinavian website called Garnstudio. Compared to some of the other designs on the website, it looked relatively easy. I made a few adjustments to the pattern, picked out some yarn I had lying around from a previous project, and started.

It didn't take me long to come to a point where I needed to get additional yarn for the extra colors. I went to the store with my entourage, hurriedly grabbed a couple of balls from the same yarn maker, and continued on my merry way.

This is one of my first attempts at using multiple colors, so I was quite pleased with myself.

I continued down the sweater (this is what is called a 'top-down sweater in the round' which means that I knit is starting at the neck, work around in a circle, and then occasionally can try it on for fit. When the pattern ended, which you can almost see in the picture at the tip of the pink points, it continues in straight cream. I worked the single color with ease, then changed balls of yarn when I ran out. I worked that ball for several inches and put it down for the night.

When I picked the sweater up today, something didn't look right. There was a line across the middle of it, a clear demarcation of color. A subtle shade of difference. And it continued for several inches.

The new ball was obviously, but barely, a different shade of cream.

Argh.

Now, each ball of yarn comes in a dye lot. The yarn is dyed in a big group, and the same dye lot should be the exact same shade. A different dye lot of the same color will seem to be the same color, but it might not be the exact same shade. Every knitting book, every knitter you will meet who knows anything, will tell you that you need to pay attention to the dye lot when putting together a project.

Since I've mainly knitted small projects (such as children's items), I'd never really paid attention to dye lots. And the times that I had paid attention, the dye lot was always the same, especially if I bought several balls of yarn at the same time. This is exactly what I did the other day, but, with my entourage, and in my excitement to continue my sweater, I just forged ahead with my sweater, paying little attention to dye lot or color.

Alas, I am surmising all of this as I THREW AWAY the wrapper to the first, original ball of cream colored yarn. So I'm just assuming that the dye lots were different, since the other balls of cream, which still have their wrappers, have the same dye lot. But I will never know. And since that first, fateful, unknown ball of cream yarn is the one that I used to do the lovely pattern, I really don't want to unto the entire sweater and start all over again.

That, or the color consistency of the yarn that I bought from the local big box craft store is just lousy. That could be it too, although I've never had problems with it before.

So the lessons, for today, are:

1.) Try not to buy yarn with your entourage.

2.) Always check your dye lot.

3.) Don't buy yarn from big box craft stores.

I'm currently reworking the sweater to accommodate this variance in hues, so look forward to seeing some self-designing!

Nighttime Reading

2008-11-03T10:17:00.000-08:00

I read a lot, but I haven't really had the brainpower to tackle any substantial reading for a while. In an attempt to return to my literary roots, I picked up Joyce Carol Oates' The Gravedigger's Daughter. I hadn't read any of her books, but I've always read phenomenal things about her work.

The book isn't a difficult read, but it is depressing. I haven't quite finished it, but three-quarters of the way through, I have to say that it is a heartbreaking tale of immigration gone wrong, and the repercussions that has through the generations. The back of the book describes it as "distinctly 'American'". Filled with disappointment, death, and abuse, I really didn't want to admit that this represented a story about America. But then I thought about how the majority of us are children of immigrants. While we may not all have experienced the extent of despair that this family did, at some point or another, our families, whether as immigrants in the recent past or many decades ago, experienced a difficulty adjusting to this new land. Being a second generation American on one side of my family and third generation on the other side of my family, I can relate.

Rebecca, the only person in her German family to be born an American (just barely, by virtue of her mother giving birth on the ship as they arrived), does not experience that "All-American" life that we envision from a nostalgic view of mid-century America. Instead, she endures her hardships and slogs on. She pushes her life forward, not necessarily heroically. As a legacy fro her self-loathing father, for a large portion of the book, she completely denies the immigrant part of herself. Consequently, she continues onward not for herself, but to create a better life for her son.

That seems to be the classic story of immigration, done not just for the initial generation, but for the betterment of future generations. However, personally, as a child of the merging of various immigrants, I sincerely hope that by the end of the book, Rebecca is able to reconcile her immigrant past with her birth country. I'll let you know what I discover.

Starting Out

2008-11-03T10:06:00.000-08:00

This is going to be my blog for me-time, which usually occurs with a cup of coffee while the kids nap.

I hope to share the things that I do that are just for me. A somewhat kid-free zone, although as the mommy of two little ones, we'll see how far that takes me. You'll get to find out the books I'm reading, the photos I'm taking, the projects I'm making, all just for me. Enjoy. I know I will.