Projects I Want To Do, Projects I Have Been Doing

Now that Ada is so fun to be around most of the time (WOW is 5 better than 4) we have been doing a lot of projects. You can pretty much get Ada to try anything if you call it a "project." (As in, "Hey, I have this project I want to try. Do you want to help?" She is crazy for projects.)

We engage in these projects during Ian and Mira's nap times. As the babies are mobile but not terribly easily controlled, it is easiest to get out the paint or glue while they are asleep.

This week we enjoyed corn syrup painting

The painting was fun for both of us, but it predictably led to Ada making potions by mixing all the paint colors and returning the mix to the corn syrup bottle. Good thing corn syrup paint flows REALLY SLOWLY.

A couple of weeks ago we made a paper contraption. Well, I made one while Ada used her paper triangles to build imaginary miniature tents and other constructions. Which was just as entertaining.

But. There is so much more I want to do. Where the hell are my crafty friends Ann and Mike when I need them?

I want to use this idea to fix up my nightstand, making it a wallpaper-embellished nightstand.

I also love this simple (and in retrospect, obvious) idea for using fabric markers to personalize napkins or other cloth items. I think Maggie may have done something like this last year.

I also need a laptop sleeve (if I am going to bring a computer to Blogher, I really should get on this). Then again, with my new phone (I gave and replaced my decrepit mobile with an iphone) I could avoid bringing the laptop entirely.

Oh, and I think I want to make this on the next cool day. Maybe in the fall? Maybe I could just make regular s'mores on the grill. 

Curses, Foiled Again!

A couple of weeks ago Ada was on "spring break." Why does a preschooler need spring break? (I have the sense that it is more a break for the teachers than for the kids.) To deal with the break, I set up play-dates 4 of the 5 days. (On Monday Ada went to work with Chris, which was a smashing success in no small part due to the CAKE Chris' department had in honor of Stephanie's birthday.)

We had a child-care swap with one of Ada's favorite friends. I gave in to the spring-break-y-ness of the week, and let the girls watch a movie (with popcorn!) in the afternoon. But in the morning we did a "project." I'd gotten my weekly kids craft email, and was inspired by a painted egg idea. If you follow the link you'll see that the idea is to cover cardboard ovals with tin foil, then paint on the foil. Before the paint dries, you scratch off patterns in the paint.

bet you can't guess which one is mine

The girls were very excited for this idea, but ended up not really caring about the scratching off part. They made tons of eggs, coloring them as fast as I could cut the cardboard. All went well until Mira woke up, and then Ian woke up. The girls were working at the kid table in the kitchen, which is now accessible to Mira and Ian (thanks to their newfound standing skills). It was pretty much inevitable that one of them would grab some paint and make a mess. Despite knowing this, I was still caught off-guard when Ian tried to comandeer the blue paint and ended up decorating himself, the floor and a cardboard box I had been dismantling to make more eggs. No permanent damage was done to any of the three, but it was touch and go for a while. (Sorry, no picture of that. Sadly.)

Q: When is a square not a square?

A: When I've sewn it.

As I mentioned the other day, all the child-related doing and re-doing has me wanting to do something that stays done. And, ta da! I acted on this urge by sewing a bunch of hand-drying squares.

Ada's school, like most places that deal with children, is concerned about germs. Ada often talks about how this or that "spreads germs" (though I have noticed this doesn't worry her when she wants a lick of my ice cream cone). The school is a typically Portland eco-friendly, so rather than replace a single cloth towel with lots of paper towels, the school bathroom features a basket of cotton squares on the counter. The kids wash their hands, then grab one or two squares to dry themselves.

Recovering from a cold as I am, the squares got me thinking. I realized that once we get into helping  Ian and Mira routinely wash their hands, we will have five people drying their hands on the same towel. Most of the time this is okay, but as I have direct experience with the lackadaisical hand-washing effort of the average child I thought it might be a good idea to give everyone their own squares. This will help avoid a germy towel spreading colds from one person to another in our house.

I have a ton of cloth scraps left over from various projects, several of which I grabbed for this effort. I looked briefly for a tutorial before realizing making these squares is so straightforward that instructions were probably unnecessary. Just in case you are interested in making this and are a novice sewer, here is what I did:

• I wanted large-ish squares, so I cut out rectangles that were 7 by 14 inches. This gave me a half inch seam on three sides (so I would have a 6x6.5 "square" when I was done). I could have measured 7 by 13, but I am lazy and it was easiest to have the long side be double the short one. 
• I folded the cut rectangle in half with the outsides touching. I then ironed the squares (okay, most of them) because the fabric had gotten wrinkly sitting in my fabric stash. 
• Next I sewed along the three open sides, but left a gap on the third side so that I could turn the squares right side out. I even clipped the corners so that they would lay flat, although this is a little fussy for something that is for hand-drying. (Stephanie would be proud of me, I am sure.)
• Finally I sewed a zig-zag stitch around the whole square. This closes the hole left in the previous step and makes the little squares look so snazzy. Using contrasting thread is nice. I used orange for some of these, and a yellow that is a minor color in the cloth once the orange ran out. 

Oh yeah. I cross-posted this over at Did You Buy That New? because Debbie sweetly asked me to start posting there again, and I can not resist a curly-haired girl.

One Little Thing

"I. Just. Can't."

I said these words in response to a request for cups with lids. It sounds so silly to me now but I just could not transfer the orange juice to other cups, could not argue about why putting orange juice in a water bottle is a bad idea, could not do another single thing.

The whole day had been either a series of frustrating and annoying events or perfectly nice, depending on your perspective. Ian and Mira were sick, they were and crabby in a completely understandable but nevertheless fairly trying way. Ada had a friend over, which is less work than Ada not having a friend over, but still not effortless. The girls made a wreck of the playroom (to be expected) and shredded paper which lay all over the rug (infuriating). They also played in Ada's closet and drew on the walls with a highlighter from my desk (completely annoying, especially because Ada knows that is not acceptable behavior). The weather was great, and the girls finally went outside for a while. I saw them digging in the garden, which is fine with me. Then I went outside and learned that they were planting peas. As in, planting them willy nilly all over the garden. I know this is really no big deal and we are talking about maybe $2 worth of peas, but for some reason this had me on the verge of tears. I managed to contain myself when I reminded Ada that the peas need support to grow and that planting them all around the yard was unlikely to get us many pods. (Luckily we'd already planted peas by the trellis, so some of the seeds will hopefully grow.)

I can't even type this little scene without wanting to erase the whole thing out of embarrassment about what a non-issue this is. Even hours later I see how uninmportant the loss of a half package of peas is, but in the moment it felt like part of some death-by-a-thousand-cuts torture. It isn't the peas, or any of the other little annoyances really. It isn't the babies' crankiness and general sickness-induced neediness. And by now I should be used to the all consuming boredom of feeding, changing, soothing and entertaining that is life with young children. It is all of those things together. There is no end to the work, and though none of it is very onerous, taken together it sometimes feels crushing.

This week I have felt a strong urge to make something again. The return of good weather has me considering a skirt for myself (I have some great octopus fabric I bought when I was pregnant) and this has me suddenly dying to make mustaches for myself and my family. I remember this feeling from when Ada was a baby. I was so tired of doing things only to have to do everything again. With babies there is no "done." You feed them, only to have to feed them again in a few hours. Clean diapers get soiled, noses continue to run after being wiped, naps begin and end, necks become food encrusted even though you just wiped them. You get the idea. I started sewing when Ada was a baby because once I finished a project, it stayed finished. The skirts did not have to be remade and stuffed toys stayed stuffed (for the most part, at least).

So here we go again. I am going to find myself a project and carve out a piece of the dining room table to make it happen. It may happen slowly, but it will happen, and once done, will stay done. Until the next project, that is.

 ** * ** * **

As I sat down to write this, I saw a woman walk up the path. My heart sank as she knocked, knowing that I would have to interact, that she would want something from me. I opened the door to a well-dressed woman introducing herself as a financial adviser who just opened an office nearby. "Are you familiar with Edward Jones?" No, I said, but I just put babies down and I have just 20 minutes to myself."

"No problem," she said. "I have three myself. Have a good day." And she waved and walked back down the path. That little thing might be enough to salvage the day. And it might be enough to go see this woman for the financial planning help Chris and I sorely need.

Craft Update (Lost and Found Edition)

Digging through old unused posts I found this from April 2009:

Despite being fairly well a slug these days (oh how I love being out of breath after a walk up the stairs!) I have managed to get a few things done. While Chris and his mother painted the babies' room, I painted a dresser to match, and made hooded towels.

I got the knobs from a local salvage hardware store. They are all the same type of knob, but obviously differ in color. Ada helped me pick them out from a box of dozens of these knobs. And speaking of Ada, she picked the blue and purple paints. In order to involve her in the baby planning, we let her choose colors, but then added the green so that we could have a stripe around the room. Ada routinely lets us know that she doesn't like the green.

The towels, as worn by my semi-willing models. 

Ada has used the hooded towel someone gave us since pretty much week one. As her towel has ducks on the hood, she declared that the babies need duck hooded towels too. Ever compliant with this kind of request, I added duck ribbon trim to the hoods.

When I undertake a new project, especially one I find online, I tend to search the web for the best (by which I mean "easiest to follow") directions. Here I followed two different patterns, so the hoods ended up slightly different on the two towels.

**
Back to the present: 
The towels are working well, as is the room. We aren't actually using the dresser much, since I figured out that to make their clothes accessible we needed to store a bunch of them downstairs. Otherwise, when one kid is sleeping you can't change the other one.

Ala Peanut Butter Sandwiches*

Along with "twirly" dresses and tiaras, Ada is currently really into wands. She has a wand with a pink star at the end, but at some point decided that she needed more wands. In a burst of crafty enthusiasm that is rare in these life-with-twins days, I immediately hopped up and got a project going. Using a few items readily available around our house, we made a whole wizarding academy full of wands. This project was so easy that it does not really need a tutorial, but since the baby on my lap is sleeping, I am providing one anyway:

WAND-MAKING: ANOTHER HALF-ASSED TUTORIAL

STEP 1: Get some cardboard (the thinner type works best). Cut out a shape - we made star, moon, diamond, duck and octopus shapes. (Don't ask why she wanted an octopus. She's 4, that's why.) Cut out a matching shape so that the brown sides match up.

STEP 2: Color the cut-out shape (preferrably on the brown side of your cardboard, but if your preschooler disagrees, so be it).

STEP 3: Get a stick, dowel or skewer. Glue it to the cut out. You can see that Ada decided that the brown side should be on the inside. Be sure to put the glue on the side you want on the inside.

STEP 4: Glue the other cut-out on the other side of the stick so that they match up. Let the wand dry (and keep your preschooler from grabbing the wands while the glue is drying).

STEP 5: Tie a ribbon on the stick, up close to the top of the wand. We used the shiny ribbons normally used for wrapping presents.

The handmade star wand, and its purchased cousin/inspiration.

STEP 6: There is no step 6, other than to take your wand out for a spin. If you turn your little sister and brother into pumpkins, be sure to turn them back before your parents notice.

*If this title doesn't ring a bell, click here.

How NOT to make a Duvet Cover (a tutorial and cautionary tale)

(1) When your sister suggests that as a joint birthday gift for herself and her husband, agree readily. Assure your sister that it will be no problem, just a few straight seams, easy really.

(2) Work out a deal with your mother in which you will do the labor and she will pay for the fabric, allowing you both to give your sister and her husband a gift in a nice Marxist way (each according her her ability...)

(3) Send your sister some fabric web sites. Suggest that she and her husband pick out a fabric. Make a few suggestions of your own.

(4) Receive email from your sister with several options, including a lovely but obscenely expensive Marimekko print and a much less expensive Moda fabric. Discuss and agree up the idea of incorporating your sister and brother-in-law's chuppah in the design.

(5) Engage in several more rounds of fabric discussion, finally settling on the Moda print. Fail to consider that, as this is a Moda print, it will go out of stock quickly and not be re-produced by the manufacturer. Allow months to go by while you are busy at the beach, with friends, and in the garden.

(6) Finally get around to purchasing the fabric, only to realize that it is out of stock at your local mega fabric store and at most online shops. Find one online shop that carries it, and order 7 yards.

(7) Wait another month and then purchase two 600 thread count sheet, one to go under the delicate chuppah fabric, the other for the bottom of the comforter cover, to accommodate your brother-in-law's preference for a very soft comforter. Feel glad that the sheet is on sale. Feel even gladder that you have been carting around that 15% off coupon in your wallet for 3 months.

(8) Get the sheets home and realize that the white chuppah will look horrible with the main fabric's purple and cream print and the dark cream sheet. Decide not to use the chuppah. Return the second sheet.

(9) Call the online fabric merchant and experience the most amazing customer service. (Although the seller did not have any more of the pattern, the owner of this one woman shop called Moda to see if they still make the print. When she called me back to say that Moda doesn't make this print any more, she suggested I check several of her competitors' web sites to see if they might have any. She even suggested specific competitor sites that were likely to have it.)

(10) Take the nice quilt lady's advice and find another vendor that carries the fabric. Order 3 more yards.

(11) Once the fabric arrives, wash the sheet and all 10 yards of the purchased fabric Press all 10 yards. Press the sheet, cursing the whole time.

(12) Wait another few weeks while you nightly feel crappy and first-trimester nauseous.

(13) Finally get off your butt and start calculating measurements. Recalculate all measurements after talking to husband about said calculations. Re-recalculate, and then go to bed.

(14) Months after you agreed to start the project, start sewing. Quickly realize that the hard part of the project is handling 94 inch long pieces of fabric. 

(15) Sew all four pieces of the comforter top together, and fiddle around while deciding how best to attach the back.

(16) Sew the front piece to the sheet and realize you have slightly miscalculated the measurements. Decide to ignore the problem, figuring most of the error will be hidden by the seams.

(17) Practice making button holes. Panic that they will look crappy.

(18) Measure fabric and decide how many buttons you need to keep the comforter from poking out of the cover.

(19) Go to the crazy button store and spend way too much time picking out buttons that will match the fabric and are sturdy enough to survive the washer and drier without breaking. Cleverly purchase two more buttons than you plan to use, just in case.

(20) Get over panic and start sewing button holes. Decide that although they look a little wonky, no one will really notice because the buttons will cover the holes.

(21) Realize that your want four more buttons than you originally thought you wanted. Return to the crazy button store for two more buttons.

Note chalk marks, which I carefully rubbed off before finishing the cover.

(22) Hand sew buttons all evening in order to be sure the project will be done in time to mail it on Monday before you leave town for Thanksgiving.

(23) Iron the entire duvet cover so it will look nice. Ignore nagging voice telling you that once you fold it to put it in the box it will get all wrinkly again.

(24) Carefully insert folded duvet cover into a plastic bag, then put the bag and a note into the mailing box. Address the box at the post office. Call your sister to confirm zip code. Wake up said sister in the process.

(25) Fail to confirm street address with sleepy sister, and incorrectly address box.

(26) Buy delivery confirmation and insurance for package which you have just mis-addressed.  Mail package.

(27) Wait 4 days.

(28) Call sister and ask if she has gotten your package. When she says she has not, consider what could have gone wrong. Realize you have mis-addressed package.

(29) Dream about the package on two consecutive nights.

(30) Nine days after you mail the ill-fated package, talk to your local postal worker, who cheerfully tries to convince you that it will all work out all right - either your sister's postal worker will figure out the problem and get the package to her anyway, or it will be returned to you after what he figures should be a few days. Feel impressed by the extent to which your mail carrier takes pride in his work.


(31) Two days later, still see no evidence of the package and hear nothing from your sister that suggests she's gotten it.

(32) Sigh heavily. Regret that you did not take more pictures of the duvet cover. Realize the amount of insurance purchased will not cover the cost of materials, much less the time the project took. Sigh again.

(33) Twelve days after you mailed the package, return to the house to find it on the front porch. Do a quick happy dance and drag the box inside. Open the box, add a second item to make up for the tardiness, reseal and re-label with the correct address. Slather with tape.

(34) Rush to the post office to mail the package.  Wait for your sister to call and tell you she's received the package and that the duvet cover is the best one you'd ever made. Fire up the computer to write a tutorial.

Costume? Check. Picture? Eh, not so much.

A month ago I asked Ada what she wanted to be for Halloween. She immediately replied: "a bat!"  This thrilled me, because a year after I saw this costume idea I was still excited to try it out. I happened to have an old purple umbrella. Luckily Ada is a big fan of purple, so the suggestion that she be a purple bat went over swimmingly (flappingly? what would be the right bat metaphor?)

Chris and Ada found a purple hoodie in her size, and I dismembered the umbrella. I had to make a few adjustments to the original instructions, as Ada's arms and torso are a bit smaller than the woman's pictured in the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories pictures. Still, it turned out pretty well and Ada was even willing to wear the costume (a change from last year).

The weather - which earlier this week turned from the amazing, glorious beautiful fall warmth we'd enjoyed for a month to more seasonably rainy and cool - cooperated and no little ghouls, gobblins or bats were rained on.

After the work I put into Ada's costume, I failed to document the success appropriately, taken as I was with our thundering horde of costumed children as they rampaged down the street in search of ever more sugar. I snapped a few pictures, but in the twilight I got mostly fuzzy images.  Here is one look at Ada's battyness.

You don't get a good view of the wings in this picture, but maybe later this week I can get Ada to put on the costume again so I can document the impressive flapping.

All in all, it was a great Halloween. This was the first time Ada got the idea that she could knock on people's doors and receive candy. The collection was almost as fun as the eating. Almost. We had a great time trick-or-treating with friends, including Monkey Boy (who went as a yellow Shrek ghost with muffins - his idea). Actualy, he only wore the costume for a few minutes, because he quickly realized that it impeded his candy intake.  After that he wore it around his waist and went as a kid who really needed some more candy. To be fair, all the kids went as that.

A House Dweller Can Still Use Apartment Therapy

Last week Apartment Therapy's Re-Nest site put out a call for creative-reuse ideas. Looking up from my computer, I saw the canning jars I turned into photo frames.  Some photographs and an email later, and voila, Re-Nest is sharing this idea with its readers. Check it out.

One of my favorite pictures: Baby Ada with Adam

Oh Sew Crazy

While I compose my thoughts about the fantastic weekend I had with Mother-Woman and her family, I will distract you with fabric:

A while back I posted on Did You Buy That New about my sewing. I am proud enough of this Lotus Dress that I wanted to paste the photos up here. Other than the usual caveats of a novice sewer, I am very happy with the result.

Shake It Like A...

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from an Oregonian reporter who wanted to talk Polaroid. He was writing a story about how Portlanders are dealing with the loss of Polaroid, now that the company is giving up production of its flagship product. I talked with him and sent him a copy of this picture:

It is one of my favorite Polaroids, taken in Chicago on a trip after I'd moved away. Al's, and his sign, are on a busy street just outside the neighborhood where I lived for several years. I drove by this spot regularly, but it wasn't until I left town that I got around to snapping this picture.

I loved this picture so much that it led me on a Polaroid journey of sorts. I started to take pictures of other food signs. New England is packed with fun signs, for red hots, Del's lemonade and roadside diners admonishing guests to "eat heavy."* Armed with my trusty (purchased on a Brooklyn street for $5) Polaroid, I snapped my way through several years and many signs. Once that camera kicked it, I turned to my Holga and cell phone camera for the immediacy and snap-shot quality I'd loved in my Polaroid.

I think the reporter was a little disappointed when I told him that I now own a Fuji instant camera. In talking to Polaroid fanatics, he'd met people who were vastly more committed to the form than I could ever be. He talked to one guy who said he'd keep shooting Polaroids until the film rain out, then he'd abandon his camera forever. I like Polaroids, but I like a lot of media. If I can get film from Fuji, I will. Once I saw the guy's article - which focused exclusively on Portland-based "artists' " response to losing Polaroid - I felt less bad about not living up to whatever idea he had about how Polaroid fans were taking the news.

In any case, to see some more Polaroids, and read some stories from fans of the camera, check out the online companion to the story, which was published on Friday.

*The reporter got the facts wrong in his story, and assumed my "eat heavy" picture was taken in Chicago.

One last thing or two about the holidays

Jammed into one photo-filled post, here's my holiday wrap-up:

Crafty Holiday

Now that I have given my gifts out to friends and family, I am free to share what I made.

I got really inspired by all the ideas posted on Sew, Mama, Sew! during November. In addition to the apron I made for Ellen, I made a bunch of zippered wristlets:

I also made a bunch of heat therapy bags (muslin bags filled with orange-oil splashed rice). They can be tossed in the microwave and then used as heating pads for sore muscles. For each one I made a linen and cotton bag to go over the "ugly" bag. I had a lot of fun making these, but then completely forgot to take pictures. Luckily I realized that I actually made one more than I gave away. I made four in linen and cotton, and one in all cotton. The last one I didn't give away, because I thought the linen version made a better gift. After literally sniffing around the house for the orange-scented bag, I found it and snapped this picture:



I also made a couple of eye bags filled with lentils and lavender. No photos, because other than the nice fabric, these rectangles aren't much to look at. (Mike, if you are reading, know that I have one in my dining room with your name written all over it.) Here is a small photo of one of the trapesoid bags I made for a couple of women at work. I found a quick and easy "one yard, one hour" pattern for a lined bag, but it was so boring I ended up using velcro to adjust the shape a bit. I also made a great little bird shaped sachet for Ada (who had requested a smelly pillow after seeing me make the eye bags and rice bags). Sadly, I forgot to take a picture, and the thing is upstairs with her now while she sleeps. I got the idea from this tutorial.


Christmas Eve White Elephant, or was that Dusty Duck?

Chris's family always spends Christmas eve with his aunt's family. We catch up on family news over egg nogs, eat dinner (ham and turkey), and retire to the living room for a white elephant gift exchange. This is not one of those exchanges where everyone brings something nice and bland and cheap (movie tickets or bon bons). This white elephant is an attempt to out-weird one another. I was sure I had a winner with my Home Face-Lift Kit (picked up at a white elephant exchange last January), but then I was met with several really impressive entries, including a Ukranian sunflower plate, a set of cat-butt magnets, old-lady doilies, a sexual board game, and this:



As you can see from the finger-prints, this one had been in the garage for a while. My 12 year old nephew had three separate gifts stolen from him (part of the game, but really, he's twelve!), but one of them was some card games that my mother-in-law and I got back to him. All in all, a nice evening.

(My brother-in-law ended up with the duck, which he intended to take home as a "treat" for his family's cats. Ten days after Christmas, my sister-in-law reported that the duck was still intact. Apparently the cats are more frightened than delighted by the stuffed bird. Funny, so was I.)


Christmas was a success

This first year of Ada understanding that Christmas involved lots of food and presents went over well. Exhibit A:


She only ended up icing two cookies, because she could not understand why you would ice a cookie if you weren't going to immediately eat it.

Exhibit B:
My in-laws saved this Fisher Price town from when Chris was a kid. I had one too but mine went to a goodwill somewhere in LA the moment my interest in it flagged. Not only does it have the police car and fire engine, but a bunch of "little people", furniture and playground equipment. Plus, my mother-in-law made a felt park and, because she could not find the original letters that came with the set, made new letters. Each laminated letter is addressed to one of Ada's friends or family members. She loves delivering the mail, and the process has solidified her sight knowledge of her own name and that of a couple of other people named on the envelopes.




New Year, New Projects

Mostly because I have no idea what to get her, I am making my mom a farmers market bag. I stopped by my favorite fabric store today to pick up material for the handles, and found they were having a sale. I ended up buying a bunch of material for several planned projects.



Traci - the fabrics on the left are for the bag you hoped I'd make you. We can take it out in trade or blood, whatever works for you.

Karen - do you like either of the two middle fabrics on the right for a skirt? Depending on which one you like I will make myself a skirt with the other fabric.

The orange fabric will become a shirt from a pattern my essentially-sister-in-law gave me, and the bottom one will become a table runner for my mother-in-law. I will give it to her for Christmas next year, so I think I have a little time. (Yes, I can not resist a bargain.)

Somehow writing that all up was more exhausting than actually living it. I hope everyone is recovering nicely from their holidays.

(Chris - can you help me fix this dang blog so that everything I post doesn't end up like this, with edges trimmed in a messy and unwanted way?)

I Handmade It

So that you don't think that all I do is sit around complaining about bland holiday celebrations and the state of my uterus, I present: what I have been doing when not in front of the computer. (Part 1)

Due to a desire to not feed the consumer machine this holiday season large hole in my checking account (and ok, a desire to fire up the sewing machine on these long nights), I decided to make things for as many people as I could.

I was assisted by an uncharacteristically helpful Ada, seen here watching her beloved Sesame Street dvd while eating roasted chestnuts on Thanksgiving weekend. Ada let me work on one project for a whole hour, when I let her sit in front of an hour's worth of "classic" Sesame Street.

Actually, that day I was sewing pants for her.
Some of the projects I can't show you right now, since Karen hasn't received her package yet (by which I mean, I haven't sent her package to her yet). I can show you one of the things I made for Ellen. In recent years, Ellen has gotten into wearing aprons while she cooks. She got this from her sister-in-law, along with some actual aprons. Here is the apron I made Ellen for Hanukah:


The apron is double sided, this is the fabric on the other side:



Not sure why I see this side as the second side, since I decided to make an apron when I found it, and then later paired it with the orange and yellow fabrics. This was my first apron. I liked it enough that I will try another, when I can find someone who needs a gift and wears aprons.

Now on to the child-assisted craft:


Ada helped me make new years cards. I like sending cards, but (a) don't feel comfortable sending Christmas cards and (b) even if I did want to, no matter my good intentions I never get my cards out before the week before new year's anyway. I made potato stamps for Ada, and she had a great time smacking them all over some blank cards I had stashed for just such an opportunity.

It was fun working with Ada and it had me excited for the things we can make and do as she gets older and more interested in slightly more complicated projects. For now I am limited to projects that can be completed during nap times and at night. I have an elephant and a stenciled onesie for the soon-to-be baby sibling of Ada's pal Lila. Plus a few more things to make. I hear that one of the admin staff in my office made Ada a hat. To maintain my crafty honor, I must retaliate with something hand-made.

feeling very self-satisfied, or is that tired?

Oughta be Committed

The past couple of weeks I have been putting together a holiday gift list. I'm a bit hampered by the fact that I have twice misplaced the physical piece of paper on which the list was written. But now I have a new and improved third version of the list, and having figured out what I am giving people, I am ready to commit:



Wow, way to jump on the bandwagon. Only 8581 people pledged before me.

I had been thinking about this for a while, but once I decided I could take this pledge and make as well as buy things for people, I got on board. Then I started regularly reading the blog Sew, Mama, Sew!. How I missed this one before I am not sure, but for anyone who likes to make stuff for themselves or others, wow, what a treasure trove.

Each day through November they posted a category of gifts, with links to tutorials and free patterns. I have already made four different things mentioned on Sew, Mama, Sew! and I am making a few more before Chanukah and Christmas are upon us. Speaking of which, I need to get my butt in gear - Chanukah is only a couple of days away! I will share the photos of my projects once I have given them to people. (A few of my friends and family check in here and I don't want to ruin the surprise.)

In other news that doesn't seem like a whole post:

(1) This past week marked a milestone in Ada's verbal development. Ada is already a pretty verbal toddler, and has been talking in sentences for a long time. How long exactly I can't remember, which is why I wanted to write down that last week is when she went from speaking a single sentence at a time to talking almost non-stop. Now instead of telling me that she played with Claire at school, she lets loose with "Claire had the corn. I played with the corn. Claire gave me the corn. Claire had the orange. I waited for the tricycle. Other kids rode the tricycles, I waited." and on and on and on and, well, you get the idea. Add this to the non-stop singing she's been engaged in for a couple of months, and we are pretty much the loudest house on the block.

(2) Since we moved her squirmy, wiggly baby self out of our room a couple of years ago, Ada has slept in a crib. Until today. Well, technically she's still in the crib, but we took one of the sides off to see what she'd think about a "big girl bed". Chris's parents still have the cedar frame he used as a kid, and we'll be bringing that up for Ada in a week or two. We thought we'd put the crib side back on, but she did not want us to, so she's up there right now, snoozing away in a three sided crib. Happy as a (sleeping) clam. No loud child-falling-on-the-floor noises (yet).

Ok, wait. I wrote that on Saturday. At bedtime Ada requested the return of the fourth wall. She was very proud of herself for sleeping in the three sided crib at nap time, but I guess the prospect of doing it all night was a bit much. The big girl bed is still coming, but for now we'll follow Ada's lead on this.

(3) No movement on the potty front. (N.B., any word I could use in the prior sentence feels overly evocative - movement, change, action...) In order to more specifically encourage Ada to use the potty, I have added daily potty time to our routine. This is in addition to me asking her if she'd like to use the potty multiple times a day (she always says no) and allowing her to run around pants-free for hours at a time. She never has accidents, and will ask for a diaper if I haven't forced her to put on clothes before the need arises. Now what? I have a little container of "potty treats" but have not yet sunk to bribing her for peeing in the potty, but I am getting there. I am pretty sure that she'll be excited to get chocolate covered raisins, but I wonder if using food as a motivator is such a great idea. I feel really torn about the whole process, as I know that the moment she's done with diapers I will have to be a lot more vigilant about making sure she goes before we leave the house, when we get where we are going, etc.

Any thoughts? Advice? Should I just not worry? Please advise.

Will work for hot chocolate.

My Father Studied Ordinary Differential Equations And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

My husband, the mathematician, has a lot of books with cool graphs and other neat pictures. Ada has formed a special attachment to several of his paperback books, and will grab them from wherever they've been stashed, declaring "these are MY math books!" Ok kid, go crazy with the math books. (Actually, a couple of them are actually books of logic puzzles, but given that she can't read yet, I haven't had the heart to tell her.)

Here's one of her favorites:

To amuse Chris and to decorate another of Ada's plain shirts, I copied the design from a book on Ordinary Differential Equations onto a shirt.



I made two stencils, one for the axes and another for the, um, swirl. (I know that Chris and Stephanie are competing to the be the first to tell me what the right term is.) I was paying attention to centering the whole design, which made me blind to the fact that the swirl does not lay on the axes exactly as they do on the book's image. I still think it turned out alright, even if it makes Ada look like a junior climatologist. Ada likes it, but is so far impervious to my attempts to have her refer to it as "MY math shirt!". I am still working on her.

All's well that ends well

Or, Why I should not be allowed to screw with a pattern

I have the sense that the blog is getting a big heavy these days, what with thoughts on parenting, breast cancer and the like. Here's a quick change of pace. For the majority of you not interested in the details of my (un)crafty life, forgive me. This may be just a post for Stephanie, in lieu of calling her up at 2 on a Saturday afternoon and blah-blah-blahing at her.

I started with this pattern from Amy Butler. I'd previously made the a-line skirt and apron from this pattern. Finding some great orange silk I'd gotten on deep discount, I decided to experiment a little with the layered skirt. First, I wanted the skirt to be a little less wide of an a-line. Not quite an H, but you know. Then I thought, with such a fun fabric, why make such a long skirt? So I started to measure, and scheme. I bought pattern paper and fiddled a bunch with the original pattern to make a 3 tier skirt with less flare out than the original (a four tier). All was going well until I sewed the three tiers together into the outside of the skirt. I tried it on and decided that, although in its unhemmed length it made a nice sexy little skirt, once I hemmed it I'd have a skirt that left sexy and moved into embarrassing. Maybe not Britney embarrassing, but close.

Having bought way too much fabric (my one saving grace here), I cut out pieces for a fourth tier. Great, but I didn't notice until I'd done the cutting that I didn't leave enough for the seam allowance. So I cut out new pieces again, making sure to leave extra room for big seams. Great. I sewed the back two pieces on, then tested it against the main part of the skirt. Everything works, so I proceed to sew the front and back of the tier together. Done with that, I notice that I have managed to sew the seams on the opposite side of the fabric from the side on which the back pieces are joined. (This means that either the side seams are inside out, or the back one is.) I grab my seam ripper and start to tear out one of the side seams, before realizing I'm doing twice the work by not just ripping out the (one) back seam. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I wonder why my eye keeps twitching.

The layers are supposed to be fray-y like that, really.
the skirt, the whole skirt, and nothing but the skirt
We'll see how this whole raw edge layered thing wears
Oh, and while we're on the subject, I also recently made this purse:


It was from a lazy girl pattern. I never would have made the purse if I had only seen the pattern, which used an ugly fabric for the example shown on the cover. I was done in by a cute version on display at the fabric store.

The inside looks like this:
The green is a lazy but effective way to make pockets.

And I made a skirt this weekend, but no photo because I didn't plan ahead, it is upstairs and I'm pooped.

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As long as we are talking crafty, there is an article in the Willamette Week about Portland's crafty women.

A kind of house

My parents decided they wanted to give Ada a playhouse for her birthday. My big fear was a plastic house, so I quickly did some research on wooden house kits. Chris said he'd be interested in building the house (which is good, have you seen how expensive a pre-built wooden house is? Not that we wouldn't love to spend several thousand dollars on a PLAYhouse, but it wasn't in the cards.)

So build it we did. Er, the family did, since I pretty much had nothing to do with this bit of backyard construction. Chris got the plans and wood. He found some great used cedar siding at the ReBuilding Center here in town (for an extravagant 13 cents/yard). Chris's brother and father helped build the house, and we'll be painting it barn red (made from reclaimed paint, 'cause what kind of Portlanders would we be if we didn't get the greenest red?).

Over a couple of weekend days last month the house came together. Ada even helped, hauling out her tools to make some adjustments here and there.




Ada says, "It's a kind of house. It's Ada's house."