78

 Dean's quilt blocks, laid out on a bed sheet in order to make final design decisions. I tried the blocks in a number of different layouts, and Dean chose this one (also my favorite). And then Ken said, "well why not make it queen-size because then it will be more useful for him for longer?" So today I'll make 7 more blocks so I can add a column, and I'll make the run to the fabric store to find a nice steely blue for the borders. Tomorrow it's back to the office, so I probably won't be ready for basting for another week or so. Momentum. It's a thing.

And lunch, that's a thing too. A mid-day break for our favorite kind of snacky- tapas-y lunch, enjoyed along with watching the Liverpool game (a draw against Man. City leaves us barely hanging on to 4th). I think this is why Sunday was invented -- at least, for us.

75

I've got a few days off now; finally, the busiest of busy times at work has past, and with an eye on our school year-end, I've got vacation days that I'm actually allowed to use before they expire. I'm using a portion of my time to finish up the top of a quilt that's been in the works for Dean for too long (that is, too long in planning, too slow in the sewing) so that I can get it basted and start quilting it. I'm going to have it finished for him before he goes back to school in September (there, I've said it).

15

And a bit more making. Our school's mascot is the gryphon, and a work friend is moving on this week to new adventures in life. I made her this little gryphon from this pattern; easy enough, although I didn't realize until after making it that the pattern and instructions don't *quite* match her sample photo. Kind of hate when that happens. But, I'll make some adjustments and make up a few more (Dean seemed pretty interested...).

8

 Woke up to about 6 inches of bright snow; the storm began yesterday afternoon and it's always an adventure to go to bed while it's still snowing, not knowing what you'll wake up to. This, now this is manageable.

 Ken assesses.

 

Dean tackled the back deck; we are both so, so grateful for his help.

 

 

And I've still been stitching, playing, wintering, Christmasing. We were *going* to take the tree down this weekend (always have to keep it up until Epiphany, at least) but a quick vote was unanimous -- one more week.

 I see I was a little too speedy in cutting the outer disk with the scalloping shears, but I'm not too terribly concerned. I'll remember all the tricks and systems, the more I keep making.



A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

1

 

 Jumping right back in again. Care to join me? A photo a day. I'll be happy to include a link here to your journey, if you'd like. I have some new ideas for my approach this year, new ways to make this creative project an opportunity for growth. So ready!

 And this is a little glimpse into another promise being made good -- making, making, making. The supply of handmade holiday gifts should be more than ample by the time December rolls around again. I've promised this, repeatedly, before -- that I'd carry my energy for making things that strikes, reliably, *just* before Christmas into the coming year so that I'd be ready next time. And just because I've failed before doesn't mean I can't make it happen this time. Watch this space.

And keep believing in what's important, stay focused on actions that spread goodness and that are a catalyst for positive change. There isn't anything we can do if we put our minds, and our hands, to it.

Sewing Sunday

The snow days, and the post-holidays-let's-make-stuff urge, have compelled me to do a bit of sewing. This jacket is my first experiment with pre-quilted fabric (which is a little stiff, so I hope it softens up over time). No buttons yet, although I'm not sure I want them.

And this one, which I'm calling my gingerbread jacket, made from a joyful polar fleece. I didn't have *quite* enough fabric for this pattern, so I used some aqua blue polar fleece for the facing, which you can just see peeking out at the top. I realize I've made each of these patterns three times (but with entirely different fabrics); I do like going with what works and getting my money's worth from a pattern.

Meanwhile, t's funny to me how sewing/crafting stores have all seemed to rally around Superbowl Sunday sales and events.....

Our mountains

Three tuxedo jackets, with tails, done, done, and done. Made for the upcoming school play (A Midsummer Night's Dream), although not to be worn by Dean. HIS costume, much to my sewing chagrin, will consist of clothes he already owns and a strip of upholstery fabric cut (not even hemmed!) into a long strip -- a rough scarf. I adapted a bathrobe pattern to make these jackets and hope to get pictures of the boys who WILL be wearing them, although the date of the play is now up in the air thanks to all the snow days we've had and apparently will still have....

Took this picture of Ken yesterday, with the snow pile at the end of our driveway. Ken is 6'2" (so admittedly my 9' to 10' pile estimates were a little high). Here's what that same spot looked like about 4 years ago after a big storm:

And we thought this was a lot of snow!

Back to now, and more of the pile. The thing curves around to the right (that picture of Ken and Dean just above is the view to the right, opposite the garage door opening) and the big challenge is keeping the area clear enough so we can get the car in and out of the garage.

Here was the view of the back garden after that snow fall back in 2007, and here's what it looks like now:
Forecast is calling for, yes, another 20" of snow for us this week.

One person is NOT complaining.

One person really and truly does know how to make use of this amazing natural resource! I'm looking forward to the possibility of some more time to sew, but only to make things OTHER than white tuxedo jackets.

Snow, squirrel, soup, science

Another snow day home from school yesterday (yippee!), and now about 3 feet of accumulated snow on the ground (uh, not so yippee!). It's funny to me how winters are either brutal -- storm after storm after storm -- or relatively snow-less; never a happy medium. Part of that whole jet stream business and all.
Mr. Christmas Squirrel kind of looks as though he's thinking, "sure, you can make me go to the party and wear the hat, but I'm NOT going to have fun." Sorry there's nothing to show scale; he's about 7 inches to the top of his hat. I'm going to have to figure out how to go into production mode with these Christmas crafts, or I can see that I'm going to end up with a lot of little things that we have to keep and nothing for the homemade gift supply.

Meanwhile, an absolute up-side to wintery days stuck indoors is the time to make soup! Lentils, collard greens, tomatoes, carrots. Yum. I adapted this recipe and encourage you to experiment with it, too!
And speaking of experiments! Dean needs to make a model of a human gallbladder this weekend and decided papier mache applied over a balloon was the way to go. I figured it would go most quickly if we suspended it and therefore could coat all sides on each pass. I always struggle to find the right level of support on these projects -- paving the way to make it possible, but then stepping back and letting Dean do all the actual work. He's doing a terrific job.

That whooshing sound

A week has gone by? A week!?!

While the beauty of snow days is obvious, the dark underbelly is that they make the remaining work days unbelievably frenetic; this is my busiest time of year and it's really, really hard to keep up even without losing days. I so dislike this constant feeling of so much to do, so little time.

Aside being waist-deep in snow, I'm also in the midst of a great deal of school play costume sewing, somehow having allowed myself to be suckered into making many kids' costumes. 3 white tuxedo-type jackets with tails? HOW did I get myself into this? Hoping to finish those up, get Dean's costume sorted, and get some photos up here.

Meanwhile, still plucking away at Christmas crafting; Jenny's elf shoe pattern is here.

Winter crafting

There's nothing like the combination of Christmas, and wintery weather, and new craft magazines to get my fingers itching to make stuff. This swan ornament is the first of what I hope will be many, made in the way-BEFORE-Christmas months so that I can at least get closer to my goal of a mostly handmade holiday. (I was going to give you, right here, the link to the Dec. 2010 Cotton Time magazine where this pattern appears, but I see that it's no longer in stock at Superbuzzy.com -- a great source regardless for Japanese craft magazines.)

Yesterday's little guy is supposed to be a lamb; thanks for the guesses and seeing those helps me think about how to make it more lamb-y and less dog (or calf) like.

This is a test

But it is a test of me, not of you. I am trying to figure out a pattern for a new little felt animal and am working at the moment on the profile. Finished product will be three dimensional with a head gusset and under-side piece so that it stands on 4 legs, etc.

BUT -- what kind of little animal is it looking like to you? I appreciate your candid responses, and I promise I will tell you what I'm trying to make.

Hello Kitty!

Actual holiday gift-making is underway! Rather than wringing my hands about not having time to get through my entire list of gifts I'd like to make, I'm just jumping in, doing what I can, and enjoying the results.

Round-up

I am thinking this will be a round-up kind of a post -- collecting together some of my recent goings-on and meant-to-post-abouts.

First, this doll bed that we donated to our school's annual auction:

I had purchased the antique bed itself years ago on eBay. It was part of a set of two; the other I gave to my then-sister-in-law with a tiny handmade quilt on it. I'd always meant to do something similar for myself -- make a darling little quilt then use the whole thing for display. But, as it seems so often happens, I was confronted by the distinction between the life I imagine myself living and the life I actually live. This is the kind of thing the dog would find QUITE tasty, and we've got way more than enough *stuff on display* around our house, and what we really need is less stuff and more storage space for Legos. And I'm good with that. So this doll bed went to the school auction.

I did put together the quilt by (gasp) cutting up a very old quilt top and then hand-quilting it. The quilt top was also from eBay, and it also somehow belonged to some category of thing that seemed to make sense at the time.... It was (is) in wretchedly poor condition and so the best thing I could do was take out a useable chunk of it for this project. The end of the story is a good one, since the bed fetched $100 at the auction and made someone else happy.

In other sewing, I found myself making many of the costumes for Dean's school play (an original musical production of Alice in Wonderland). Dean made a trip to Salvation Army with me to thrift as much as we could, and we came away with a staggering number of *exactly* the right things. After a trip to the fabric store and lots of thinking, I created costumes for Dean, for Humpty Dumpty (see, it IS an original production...), the King of Hearts, two soldiers, and made/fixed parts for the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, the March Hare, the Queen of Hearts.... I may be forgetting one or two others. Dean hit the nail on the head when, after I explained the help I needed from him, he said, "how is it that I THOUGHT I had volunteered to do one thing but all of a sudden I'm volunteered to do ALL KINDS of things!?!"

(Dean, as The Caterpillar, with his legs as played by a group of classmates....)

It's the nature of volunteering, I told him; you always have to be prepared to asked to do more, once you show a willingness to do anything at all. I also explained my philosophy that we each of us have a responsibility to volunteer, to be willing to take on the things we are capable of doing with the understanding that there will likely be more to do than we initially imagine -- but that's part of being a good person.

I did catch myself up as I worked my way through the sewing: "Oh, I'll have to take photos of the kids in everything I made and send them to mom because she'll...." Oh. Right. Can't do that. Mom's gone. I was able to bring out a smile from this very sad moment when I realized that making costumes for the school play, and fussing over small details to make them just right, is exactly the way both to honor her spirit and to recognize how she lives on in me. She was costume-maker, set-painter extraordinaire. She also regularly took on mountains of volunteer work and had a way of making good things happen, especially for children.

So it's all good.

Dean, meanwhile, was triumphant in collecting $280 for Dog Orphans through his participation in their annual fundraising walk. Can't help but be proud of this boy.


And yesterday, he played in his first piano competition. Here he is in one of the practice rooms beforehand:

He did not place, but he practiced hard in preparation, he worked through his nerves of having to walk through a very large theater and climb the steps to play a grand piano in front of judges, and he's eager to give it a go again next year. This was exactly what we were hoping for and so in our eyes the experience was a huge success. I'll tell you honestly that it is one thing to say to your child, "it's not about winning, it's about participating, so just do your best and everything will be fine -- and we are very proud of you for being willing to try this" -- and another thing all together to really and truly mean it. Meaning it means not hovering over practices, not insisting on longer practices, and not believing that your skill as a parent is somehow on the line. It also means separating your child's experiences from yourself -- it's his piano playing, not mine. I had to keep reminding myself of these things to keep myself honest.

And now, happy mother's day to all those celebrating.

Warmer

This Friday we welcome the vernal equinox. With open arms. I am completely awed by the miracle of spring that's unfolding all around me; I think I am especially reveling in it because I especially need it this year. Rebirth. A fresh start.

It's in the quality of the light, the return of the birds, the bits of green coming through all around.

And it is in the absence of snow. There is still a bit of snow around the edges of our driveway, where the drifts were once as tall as me. But it's disappearing steadily.


Christmas Club members, I will be giving you a reminder and admitting that I wasn't up to it last month. I've been sewing quite a bit lately -- 2 pairs of fleece pants for Dean (yes! just in time for warmer weather.... Oh well!), a jacket for me (the wrong-season thing doesn't matter as much since I won't outgrow it, and I'm not talking about the silly one from my previous post), some small bags, a little quilt and bedding for a doll bed that's going to the school auction. Although none are for Christmas, they've got my sewing/crafting energies flowing and the Christmas stuff WILL follow. I'm going to attempt to learn to make ties -- one for Ken, one for Dean, and more if they work out all right. I've been saving up tins to decoupage for use as gift containers.


Dean's birthday is coming up in a few weeks; I've never been so far behind in getting ready for that. It's fortunate for me that planning a birthday party for a 12-year-old is a lot less complicated than those pony parties I used to give for him when he was younger, but I still feel bad about not being as on top of things as usual. His birthday is the same day as Easter this year, which also has to be prepared for and celebrated.


We were supposed to be heading to Chicago next month as well, to visit my brother and his family and to carry out a memorial service for my mom. For many complicated reasons, it's not going to happen -- my brother and I came to terms with the reality that the service we were envisioning wasn't going to happen (disheartening beyond words that the church in the parish where we lived for 20 years, where the 4 of us went to school, where my mom taught and worked tirelessly on behalf of the church just isn't interested in having us hold her service there -- one of several roadblocks). Also some very complicated family issues in play. I had been so focused on the service as the means for processing my grief, for celebrating her life and moving ahead, that I'm struggling now to figure out what to do with all of this instead.

The thing about me is that I am an intensely private person. I process the big stuff internally. Not even Ken has a clue as to what I've been going through for the past 5 weeks. The benefit of an open, public service to me would have been a way to bring it out and put it someplace in a healing way. We didn't have a service for my dad (also a complicated family issue, revolving around the same person who's made it so difficult this time) and I know that's left a piece unfinished for me all these years. So once again, I'll be dealing with this in a private way for my mom, not working it past my own head and out into the light. I was the one to scatter my dad's ashes and perhaps it will come down to that again this time. One of my brothers was with me when I fulfilled my dad's wish to have his ashes scattered in the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps the other brother will be with me when we figure out the right thing to do for my mom (unlike my dad, she hadn't said that part).


Well. I am back to the beginning, so entirely grateful for the miracle of spring -- for the arrival of it just when I need it most.

Yes

People keep asking me how I'm doing. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the concern and the care. I just don't know what to say. I'm all right -- I get out of bed every day and I get showered and dressed in clean clothes. I go to work and I actually accomplish things -- I do my job. I've been doing better at making dinners. I'm eating. Sleeping isn't great, but that's not news.

The thing I can tell you about the pain of losing a parent is the acute sense of grief does ease with time. It gets to the point where you can acknowledge out loud, even to people you hardly know, that your mom passed away, and that, yes, your dad died a few years ago. But the fundamental hole in your heart does not go away, and it's another level of depth, of sadness, once you're an orphan.

Even there, I know I have been fortunate. I know people who lost both their parents when they were much, much younger than I am -- people for whom "orphan" was really true in a more fundamental way.

So here I am. I get through the days and sometimes I smile and Dean makes me laugh pretty regularly. Just figuring out what comes next, and how I get there.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to catch up on all the things I've let slip. I started falling behind in December, to be honest, and am not quite out of that hole yet. I'm trying also to clean up and clean out stuff in the house.

Can you blame me, really, for culling a bunch of scraps to make this jacket? Do you dare me, actually, to wear it out in public?

Yes, we still have that much snow. No, it's not too cold today -- about 40 degrees f. Yes, I'm smiling. (Photography by Dean)

Finally figured it out

Dean (who was kind enough to take this photo for me out of the car window as we drove home from school last week) is relieved, as am I, that all the wild turkeys in the neighborhood finally seem to have gotten the memo about Thanksgiving and are laying low. They'd been prancing around without care, right in broad daylight, right on front lawns. "Maybe we need to put out a little dish of gravy to wise 'em up," I said, but luckily it didn't come to that.

And, I, too, seem to have gotten with the program. "Hey, maybe if I stop complaining about the fact that I'm so far behind in the holiday department and use that energy instead to start doing things then I'll feel better!" And what do you know? It's working!

Tote bags that fold up and can be tucked into your regular bag so that you're never without your own reusable shopping bag have been high on my to-do list for a while now, and I finally got out fabric and sewing machine and got to work.

I even went so far as to modestly decoupage a nice tin and have placed one of these bags inside, and tied it with a ribbon -- all ready for the staff gift exchange at work. Gosh that feels good. I wish I'd thought about the tin option earlier in the year, only because I know we recycled a few of these. I'm liking the idea, though, of converting them as I go so that I have alternative wrapping solutions ready at hand.

So even though Thanksgiving will be here before I know it, and I'm not quite in the place I'd like to be yet (no ironing done, no silver polished, no butter pats made, no rolls nor appetizers made and in the freezer yet), I'll get there one way or another and I'll simplify as necessary to make it happen. Feels better just being able to say that.

OH -- and I keep forgetting: Ken told me last week that on a radio news report he heard that sales at Joann Fabrics are up 18% over this time last year, and that the company attributes it to more people making Christmas presents! I attribute it to blogland -- truly I do! How wonderful is that?

And I just now remembered one more thing I wanted to share. Dean needed a plain, flat bedsheet to bring to school for a project (it will get made, by him, into a costume suitable for depicting a person who lived in the Middle East during the middle ages -- back when the Arab world was thoughtfully, purposefully holding onto great ideas and recorded history, after Rome burned and the darkness took over Europe). There was no such thing as an extra plain sheet in the closet to give him but I had the brilliant idea of stopping at Salvation Army on the way home from his Saturday morning soccer game. Brilliant for me, anyway, because I don't usually have reasons to thrift but I could just picture unused sheets, in packages, waiting for us there. Yup! Not only did I score the sheet for him, but I also found a never-used, vintage muslin sheet and it's gorgeous -- great hand, so ready to be made into...something. All for $5.

Loot

I'm delighted that Kym received the swap package I sent her: a family of three very different bears. (It happens sometimes in families.) Anne set up the swap as a tribute to handmade toys, and I felt it had been too long since I'd had toes in the swap-y waters. Aside from the delight of putting a package together, I enjoyed traveling to some new blogs and meeting new friends of handmade things. Some of my regular blogs are temporarily illegible; there's a corrupted font somewhere in my Mac and we haven't been able to ferret it out. This comes of having billions and billions of fonts, loaded in several places. THIS drives poor Ken crazy. Oops.

As far as loot flowing into my own mailbox, this very wonderful and tiny little monkey arrived today; a birthday gift to me from my sister. Thank you, Paula! (No, I don't think this counts and yes, I will write a real thank-you note.) I also had a lovely birthday card from one brother today and my other brother called me for a nice long chat on the morning of my birthday. I do love when birthdays last and linger.

Today is one of those days when Dean looks very grown up to me; no question that childhood is NOT lasting nor lingering as long as I'd wish. The brilliant sun on the snow made us both a little blind, but not so much that it prevented me from seeing that he is changing. Growing.