all buttoned up.

Bounced

Ann scooped me on the party photos (as well she should have). The top one is hers, too,-- Sam opening a vintage KISS record from our friend, Beth. We are suckers for the drama.

And there it is, really: dramatics. There is the brooding four year-old, the sensitive five year-old, the emotionally tipsy nine year-old, and the baby (which is heart-on-your-sleeve kind of stuff). It is entertaining and funny and hard and most of all, exhausting. It is showing (the tiredness) and during the last few months it has, at times, taken over. I love Alicia's Habit from yesterday "Some days I wish everything could just stay done". Oh, I'm with you, A, a thousand times with you.

The First One

Truly turned one last week. I know.

Sam's first year took ten. I'm glad that I was blogging during Augie and Manny's because there was some good stuff in there that I've totally forgotten already. This child's first year has felt like small wonders all lined up. Starting with my pregnancy there were a thousand things that might have gone wrong. But mostly they didn't and the important stuff stayed intact. I try not to take any of that intact stuff for granted. She brings out the sweetest and the best in her brothers, with no signs of flagging. She smiles so much. And more than any of her brothers, she is at once thrilled and terrified by life. This probably just makes her more like her mother than anyone else.

I made her an Apple Cake (Smitten Kitchen) for a tiny party we had on Sunday. I'm trying to instill a love of fruit desserts in her early.

(polaroid by Ann McGarry, of course)

This New Year

We have begun the new year with sun. We also began the new year, as we do most years, with donuts (Portzelky). I asked for permission to skip last year as I was pretty close to delivering Tru, and had decided to repaint the interior of the house and remodel the basement. Donuts skipped. This year we got back on track with the friends and the deep fried dough.

I am hoping to spend this year learning a couple of new things and more importantly, getting better at stuff I already (sort of) know how to do. I am, thankfully, becoming more focused with age, even as there are more things (children mostly) to distract me. I wonder how much of that focus comes as I surrender to parts of my life that are mostly unchanging: the day-to-day things, the less sleep than I'd like, the near constant needs of small children.

It is not a bad place to be, really. Happy, Good, New Year, everyone.

Feather Bed

I have a long list of quilts I want to make-- some from patterns in books or online, and some that I have yet to realize on paper. When I saw Anna Maria Horner's free Feather Quilt pattern for Field Study I put it at the top of the list. I had a stack of fat quarters from the Japanese company Hokkoh purchased at Quilt Market in Salt Lake almost two years ago just sitting there waiting. That saved me a boatload of time, since I tend to think a little too hard when matching fabric to a pattern. I originally wanted to applique the feathers across the quilt, but decided that this one was 1. probably going to see the inside of washing machine a lot thanks to three little people, and 2. I had not left myself enough time.

I split the stack into three different colour stories and made up 23 feathers. If you are thinking of doing this one (and I would support that notion), be prepared for the cutting and pressing to be the most time consuming part. You're cutting from templates on the bias and any number of things can go pear shaped if you don't pay attention. Once I started laying out feathers, I realized that I also wanted/needed a little more negative space, so I threw in some blank half blocks for balance. I quilted it using my Bernina and its BSR free motion function. I will tell you that there are a few glaring mistakes visible on the backside, where the flannel puckered and folded under hundreds of tiny stitches. This is in part to my sketchy time management, carelessness, and utter disdain for making quilt sandwiches. No matter how many times I sandwich those buggers together, I end up with lumps and bumps. Normally, I start quilting and then readjust my basting pins as I go. I neglected that step and paid for it. Any tips welcome. I usually tape the back to the floor, lay the batting on top, smooth, and then repeat for the top.

This is 64" by 64" ish and was a gift for Sharalee, who is also one of my sisters. It's backed with flannel from my shelves (I've started buying large amounts of flannel on clearance in order to afford to back my quilts with them) and the only think I bought specifically for this project is the Kona cotton for the background. I'm a good way down the list of people in my family that have handmade quilts from me, although, I think I should start going by household until we all stop breeding.

So, what say you? Do you have patterns on your list? Or do you have swatches waiting for the right pattern? I just bought 5 half yards of the newish Liberty Lifestyle cotton on sale at Sew, Mama, Sew and I'm trying to match dot com them into a new relationship with a quilt.

Hesitantly Holiday, The Folk Star Throw

Last year I ditched (gave away, mostly) a lot of winter/Christmas/holiday stuff that we didn't use or that I wasn't really feeling. It seemed strange and ruthless to get rid of things like these, but I really felt like I wanted to replace them with things we would all really look forward to see every year. I had it in my head that I wanted to make a holiday quilt, something that came out in November and could stick around through January. I had a small pile of dala horse/My Folklore Japanese fabric that I had been saving in a stack for a project like this, and then the clever bunch over at Purl Bee published instructions for a Striped Star Mini Quilt. Done.

I followed the instructions for the first star to the letter and was dismayed to realize how much pieced waste it created. For every arm of the star I was cutting away large triangles of strip piecing, and in the end I was left with a colourful pile of work going unused. And since last year this time I was in the beginnings of a wicked third trimester, and was running low on time/patience/ability to fit myself under my sewing machine, I put my piles away until I could figure out an easier way of putting them together.

A month ago I pulled them out, determined to get that Christmas Quilt done BEFORE Christmas, and decided that paper piecing was going to be much quicker and leave me with much less waste. I am a mess when it comes to math, but this one was pretty straight forward. I only used the paper for the striped arms of the stars, and then cut triangles out to piece the block together, following the original directions. I ran out of steam after four stars, and being determined to use only fabric I had on my shelves, I decided to put together some over-sized pinwheels to get it to throw-sized. In a perfect world, those blocks would have been some complicated variation on flying geese or something equally as folky, but time is not on my side this year either.

Again, in a perfect world full of money trees, I would have liked to find the some sort of neutral linen or soft wool to back it with. Instead, I pulled out yardage of yarn-dyed stripe left over from pj pants, and a warm grey, Japanese Snowmen print Mariko had de-stashed to me. The kids will like it better and I'm sure that in a few years I will look at its quirkiness with fondness. The quilting is mostly echo/straight-line, but I did use the free-motion foot to quilt all of our names into one of the stars. There are a few small open blocks that I think I might go back and embroider in: exponentially upping the quirk factor (if I'm going with it, I'm going to really go with it).

For now, though, it's done and ready for the couch (or who am I kidding? The floor.) and the next few months. It's also off the list and that is really the best gift. For the first time ever I'm only sharing my sewing space with my deep freeze and washer and dryer and it is AMAZING AND WONDERFUL, not to put too fine a point on it. I also have a space heater down there, so there is really no stopping that list from getting super long.

Stop Gap

 

(Manny took the top one, August took the bottom one)

Somehow, in the next few weeks, I will have both a new four year-old and a new five year-old. By "somehow", I mean that I will have no control over the sun and these two boys are going to grow, and Augie will lose a tooth this week, and Manny will learn all the letters in his name. While I say "don't get big! be little!" to them, I silently wish them to be bigger, smarter and wiser. I don't know. I'm having a hard time putting all this stuff down in a meaningful way. I feel it coming, though.

Six Months and On (Some Baby)

(Pola by Ann McGarry. Of course.)

We are closer to Truly's seventh month, than her sixth, but you know-- six months is sort of a deal in babyland. She's scooting a little bit. She's drooling almost constantly. Her imaginary teeth are causing a great deal of consternation for both of us. Compared to her brothers she is a near constant smiler, unless you touch her. (Don't touch her.)

Manny likes to sing to her. I could die.

The rest of us are hobbling along, trying to negotiate the chasm of summer. I know that adults tend to romanticize that blissful feeling of nothing to do, but it is my experience that there is really nothing harder for the under 10 set (and their caregivers). We should all be so lucky, right? I know. School starts here the day after labour day, and this year August will be going, too. We are deep into backpack negotiations and end of summer trip planning. We also made the decision to list the bakfiets for sale. We still family bike, but it's looking a bit different these days, with all three boys riding two-wheelers. By the time Truly is happy on the bike, she'll be ready for a seat of her own.

But for now: I'm working my way through a short list of canning, some small sewing, and being the arbiter in the near constant small people conflicts. Truly squirms above it all. She is the only neutral party these days.

Under Advisement

I have been taking your photo storage/printing tips to heart and am going to try several different processing methods. I recently made a Blurb book of Instagram photos for grandparents (as per Molly's suggestion) and I loved how low fuss and quick the whole process was. These are not technically superior photographs, but they are often the most candid and downright hilarious photos that I take. The nice thing about doing it through the IG to Blurb format is that you don't need to download the Blurb book software to get it all done. I'm going to make a longer, hard cover version for our family.

(soft cover blurb book)

One thing that is also helping me feel less overwhelmed in the photo department is the liberal use of the delete button. I don't need doubles, triples or a dozen of essentially the same photo. Realizing that *no* photo is the same, I'm still trying to be a bit brutal with my editing process. I'm trying to take to heart what Beth said in her comment about too much documentation/scrapbooking being burdensome to her offspring one day. I've also been using flickr more and more (yahoo has totally dropped the ball on flickr, but I still love it for connecting with people and as a backup tool), making more of my photos private and using it for a personal 365 project. If I'm going to pay for it, I want to really get the most out of it.

So yes. Summer. It has been a lengthy transition into tolerable (weather and behavior). We had a visit from the bugs, the grandparents, and we are expecting some more great company in the next few weeks. We are far from having an *easy* summer, but that's what I'm working towards.

I can't help but wonder if it would automatically get easier if I decided to drink a lot more.

Habit and Conquering Digital Clutter

I'm back at Habit for June. I love it there. It's so quiet in a way that my life is not.Thanks for having me, ladies.

I've been mucking through our back up hard drive full of photos trying to edit things down and do something with the images we (I) have amassed the last few years. This sort of clutter stresses me out almost as much as physical clutter does. What if something happens to me? Will they have these pictures? Just another way in which to express my neurosis. I'm making blurb books, getting things printed, and looking at blank albums I can stick and go. The couple of times I took a disc of photos to get printed at our photo place, they sort of looked at me with disdain (I usually only take film there), but maybe they've changed? Any thoughts on photo printing? I've used adorama quite a bit in the past, but it's all the way in NYC and their uploader was pretty tedious. The matte photos were pretty beautiful, though.

The Laws of Physics and Other Lessons I'm Learning

The other day I happened to be in the car by myself for a short drive with the radio on. This was a luxury for many reasons, most immediately was the silence that it offered me. Anyway, I got in the car, turned on All Things Considered just as they were introducing my friend, Molly. As she started talking salad I started shouting into the radio, "MOLLY! MOLLY, IT'S ME!! I'M IN THE CAR BY MYSELF! I CAN HEAR YOU!! MOLLY, YOU'RE DOING GREAT!!"

This is telling on several fronts, most glaringly that I seem to have forgotten how to behave when I am by myself. Also, the radio is not a walkie talkie.

I am here! So is this baby. She is the same sleepy baby who has become quite needy and wakeful in her old age. She hates being in the car. We press on.

***

I've been thinking so much about your comments from the last month-- thank you for putting yourselves out there. Thank you for talking about this stuff with your children. Thank you for not settling with the line of but it's so much better than it used to be and instead striving for how it really should be.

We all notice colour. I'm frequently frustrated by the notion that we shouldn't talk about it, especially with our children, because maybe they won't notice and why would we want to burden them with this world as an imperfect place? You know what? Kids are going to reach their own conclusions about the worth of themselves and others with or without the guidance of adults. I know that I struggle with knowing how to preserve innocence while still preparing my boys to be kind, compassionate, AWARE, little people. If a three year old is having an intense discussion about whether or not that chicken on TV is a "real muppet" or "just a puppet", you better believe that same three year old realizes that people look different from each other. It's my job to help him learn that differences do not equal value. It's a much bigger job than I realized.

***

I've missed out on a bunch of stuff this month and I wanted to make sure I got some of it down:

• Truly is three months and a bit and still fits into clothes designated as such. I never thought I would have a baby that followed monthly sizing! Newborn clothes are finally worth the money paid for them. We drove to Canada. She is a fan.
• Sam turned 8 and we rented a bouncy house again. REALLY, I cannot stress to you what a good decision getting a bouncy house is.
• Sam's front teeth are finally all the way in. They are substantial, as far as front teeth go. He has also formed a band with some classmates. They've named themselves Killer Vomit, and he's been assigned the drums. There has already been some infighting.
• I have horrendous postpartum acne. Really. Someone told me that my skin looked angry with me, and I was not offended because she was totally right. I've been struggling with not feeling like total crap between the extra weight and blotchy skin and nursing struggles... And I know that this is all very temporary and that next year this time (but hopefully much sooner) I'm going to read this like a funny dream I once had.