the new girl

This weekend we added a new hen to our backyard flock.

Michelle and Dolley can't stop staring at the new girl

(Yes we have chickens. Have I never mentioned them before? They're lovely).

The new girl's name is Abigail, named for Abigail Adams, the second first lady of the US (except that I keep calling her Abigail Van Buren because I mix up advice columnists and first ladies, apparently). All our hens are named after first ladies, thanks to our 5 year-old's interest in them. Michelle Obama, Jackie Kennedy and Dolley Madison have been keenly interested in the new arrival, snooping around her little quarantine coop and generally being very nosy.

Poor Abigail is a sight. Before we got her, she was penned up with five roosters (FIVE! ROOSTERS!) and a gaggle of little bantam pullets. She's awfully bedraggled, missing some large clumps of feathers, and appears to have a broken toe, the poor thing. But she's still a pretty hen, a Plymouth Rock with lovely black & white feathers, young and a good layer according to her erstwhile owner.

I hope she settles into our flock happily. Three plump nosy hens have got to be better roommates than FIVE! ROOSTERS!, right? She's going to live like poultry royalty at our house: free run of a big bug-filled backyard, organic feed, lots of yummy lunchbox leftovers, all the mealworm treats she can eat, and herbal tinctures in her water jug. Basically chicken paradise. Except for being chased by an overly-affectionate toddler who really wants a hug, because that's the price a chicken has to pay at our house in exchange for all the organic grub. Toddler love, and giving up her delicious eggs. Yay, more eggs!

P.S. Writing this post led me to find that people on Ravelry are knitting chicken clothing. Of course they are. Penguins shouldn't hog all the sweaters for themselves.

costumes by hand

My mom & her handiwork: The broccoli costume, circa 2010

Halloween is just over two weeks away, which means that every day my five year-old daughter runs down a new list of costume ideas.

Monarch butterfly! Goldilocks! Mouse! Mouse and cheese! Anna! Elsa! The mama cat from Aristocats! Scarlet macaw! Lemur! Firefighter! Each one with as much passion and enthusiasm as the last.

Every year I eventually just stop her in the middle of a list and say "That's it! You've decide to be a _____ and I'll get to work on your costume right away!" As the days tick down to Halloween, she keeps listing ideas and I pretend to listen while mentally figuring out how to make a scarlet macaw costume.

I don't believe in store-bought costumes. I know, I know, they're so much easier... but please. I was put on this earth to try to do too much, and making Halloween costumes is just one of the many tasks I gleefully burden myself with out of a vague commingling of duty, pride and guilt that I inherited from my own mother. She worked more than full-time, but would sooner clean the grout with a toothbrush than let us go out in store-bought Halloween costumes.

And so the tradition continues. Though I don't really clean the grout at all, let alone with a toothbrush.

As kids, my sister and I usually went in thematically-grouped costumes. One year we were the aforementioned Mouse and Cheese. I don't remember which of us was the mouse, but the other went as a big cardboard wedge of cheese. One year we were hockey players, complete with blacked-out teeth. One year my sister wanted to be a Care Bear, and my mom sewed an incredible big pink fuzzy bear suit for her. I remember a lion costume with a big yarn mane, and an adorable sunflower costume. Thank goodness I have my mom to help with our family's costumes - she is an amazing seamstress, and sadly I did not inherit her sewing skills at all.

This year I'm trying to force a group costume on my family. HWWLLB (my man) is not big into costumes, so he will be a gardener, something he's typically dressed for anyway when not at work. Little Bee is recycling a costume we made out of 100+ pompoms a few years ago, and will go as broccoli. I'll be a packet of broccoli seeds, and Little Pea will be a caterpillar, though she's been lobbying for home-made wings, so in the end she may wind up as a butterfly. Not as thematically rigorous, but still cute and somewhat cohesive.

I've been collecting kids' costume ideas on Pinterest, and hunting for ingenious ways to make caterpillar legs. Mostly I'm finding people's various takes on the Very Hungry Caterpillar, which (while very cute) is apparently the only caterpillar most people are familiar with. Tragic, because there are so many cool real caterpillars out there to honor via costumage. Monarchs and Black Swallowtails and Wooly Bears are so wonderful, and I've always thought a parasitized Tomato Hornworm would make an amazing Halloween costume (cool nature + vampire all in one!). But I digress.

So I need to get to work on the caterpillar costume. Are you making your own costume this year, or some costumes for kids? What are you going to be for Halloween??

build a backyard sand table

The Little Pea loves to dig in the sand. When we go to the playground, she often spends the whole time sprawled barefoot in the sandbox, happily building and destroying towns, castles and farms.

With a new baby on the way, we decided we needed to make our backyard more fun, since trips to the playground and the museum might slow down a bit this fall. So we built our own sand table. It was really easy and cost us less than $20 total. A retail sand table starts at $30 for a very small & chintzy model, and I've seen them sell for more than $100. I think the Pea especially loves hers because she helped us build it.   

Here's what you'll need:

- An under-the-bed storage box with a lid (about $7 at the store, or you might already have one).

- A wooden crate or small coffee table to mount it on (we had one sitting in the garage).

- Four large, flat screws with washers (about $1.50 from the hardware store).

- An electric drill with a small drill bit (we used a 1/16-inch bit).

- Two 50-lb bags of play sand ($5 each at the hardware store).

- Assorted sand toys (repurposed yogurt containers work great if you don't have beach toys).

Mount the storage box on the crate or table

First I positioned the storage box on the crate just the way I wanted it to go, and then drilled holes for each of the four screws. 

Then I screwed each one in place with a washer in between, which I thought might help the plastic last longer without cracking.

Drill some small drainage holes

I drilled lots of tiny drainage holes all over the bottom of the storage box so that if (when) the Pea dumped water into the sand table, it would have a way to drain out. I wanted the holes to be large enough to let water through, but not so large that sand would leak out. We used a 1/16-inch drill bit. If I had it to do over, I would probably go one size larger.

Fill the play table with sand

This part was fun for all of us! Two big bags of sand were plenty. The storage box was quite full, but that's okay because it wasn't long before sand started migrating all over our yard.

Keep it covered

We were sure to get a box with a tight-fitting lid to keep out the rain. Make sure to cover it up whenever your child is done playing - nothing worse than an unexpected thunderstorm to turn your sand table into a mud pit. If it does get very wet, just leaving the lid off on a couple of sunny days dries it out pretty well.

Have fun!

The Little Pea and her friends spend a lot of time at this table. It's fun to watch how they combine the sand play with other activities in the backyard, like garden digging, restaurant, and "beach" play with the wading pool. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they do with it, with the onset of lovely fall weather and more time outside.

greetings from the backyard

Hello from our backyard. This is where I've been spending most of my time these last few beautiful weeks. Now that it's getting quite hot, most of the time in the backyard involves a hose or wading pool.



I can't say that there's been much knitting going on. There's been small knitting. Lots of friends are having babies (including one you may know), and so I've been knitting away on bootees and caps and toys and such.

But I'm not feeling very inspired to design. I have lots of sketches piled up, but none of them are singing out to me at the moment, "knit me! knit me!" The squeaky knitting project gets the grease around here, to mix metaphors, so the sketchbook is going unnoticed right now.

The garden is going like gangbusters. We recently finished up a big spring harvest of peas and radishes and lettuce, and now the garden is in a little lull before the tomatoes and peppers and tomatillos and beets are ready. In the mean time, there is chard. Always chard. I love swiss chard, I love how reliable it is in all sorts of weather, and this year even the caterpillars seem to be leaving it alone, so we're enjoying quite a lot of it.



The chicks grew up quickly. In the foreground is Pepper, a refugee chicken that our neighbors passed along becuase she was being beaten up by her flock. She has risen to the top in our little flock, where she is the eldest and is teaching the others to scratch, peck and squawk effectively. She's a year old so already laying eggs and generally earning her keep (unlike some other freeloaders I could name).

The Little Pea is going to be 2 years old in less than two weeks. I can't believe it! Every moment passes at about three times the speed that moments used to, back in the halcyon days of my youth, before I knew all that I know now. But I do know some wonderful things now.

what i did on my winter vacation

Apparently I took a little blog vacation this winter. I think that perhaps the vacation is over and it's time to peek my nose out again.

Now that I'm emerging from my hibernation den, it seemed like I ought to report on what I've been doing since we last visited, when I was baking a large number of apple cakes. Here's the list:



Sprucing up the garden

I made these two lovely raised beds out of cedar. Aren't they nice? (Don't look too closely). I'm a horrible carpenter, and I don't have a saw, so I had to rely on the lumber place to cut the boards down for me, and then I did a rather amateur job of putting them together. The boards were all rather wildly off the 4-feet-zero-inches target, so the boxes are crooked and overlapping and look like they were built by second-graders in shop class. But hey, they're mine, they're full of dirt and now there are even little seedlings growing in them, so I'm satisfied. Perhaps we will finally be able to grow a carrot longer than 1.5 inches!



Knitting (a little bit)

I'm not sure how it's happening, but I seem to become a slower knitter by the day. I've always been on the slow side, but now I can't seem to find more than 15 minutes at a time to knit anything. Half a row is about all I can seem to generate in one sitting, which makes for a pretty pokey pace. I made the mittens above for my sister's birthday in January, and after that made the pretty sweater being modeled by the Little Pea at the start of this post. Now I'm working on a spring cardi for her, which has not progressed much despite an enthusiastic start. I have tons of design sketches just waiting for someone (me??) to put yarn and needles together and make them real. Did I really used to crank out a design every month or two? Who was that masked woman?



reading (a lot)

Since having a child, I seem to have become a super-reader. I can kill a 1,000-page novel in the time it takes most people to read the Sunday newspaper. I don't just read one book. If I like a book, I go out and get everything that writer has ever published and read them all, in chronological order. I'm currently working my way through A.S. Byatt's back catalog, to my great satisfaction. What a joy her prose is. And I am in love with all of her characters (except the ones I hate, but I really really hate them, in a deeply joyful way, like hating Duke's basketball team or Sarah Palin).



Chasing a rambunctious toddler.

I can't believe the Little Pea is going to be 2 in just a couple of months. She is a lot of fun, and a little bundle of energy.



There are chickens in my house.

This picture was taken about three weeks ago, when the chicks were sweet, cuddly, adorable little fluffballs who hardly knew how to scratch yet. Now they are ungainly adolescents who are overcrowding their dog crate, eating copious amounts of chicken chow and pooping nonstop. All this in my back room. The room where our kitchen table and my desk are. We have a small house. I'm not sure how much longer I can handle the indoor chicken arrangement. Soon they will have enough feathers, and it will be warm enough, for them to go live outside in the chicken coop. Will that happen before HWWLLB and I run out of patience and roast them for dinner? Only time will tell.

And finally... I made a Facebook page for f.pea. Please go Like it! I'm thinking that I might send the first 50 likers a nice surprise. But I have no idea what it is yet. Maybe it will be an adolescent chicken.

camping with babies

Well, I can't say that our camping trip was entirely successful.

It was not entirely unsuccessful either; in fact it was hardly unsuccessful at all.

The main unsuccessful part was the sleeping part. Or should I say, the not-sleeping part. The Little Pea wanted no parts of sleeping in a sleeping bag, but it was so cold. Thirty degrees overnight! There was ice in everyone's water bottles in the morning. She had to be in the sleeping bag. Was it the feeling of constraint, the slippery nylon fabric, the cold air hitting her face...? Who knows what exactly the problem was, but it was problem enough to have her wake up and howl with all her 16-month-old might, about every hour or so, all night long.

In the end, HWWLLB had to wrap her in a fleece blanket and then build a human/sleeping bag cave around her (not touching her in any way!) to keep her warm and get her to sleep more than 30 minutes at a stretch. I think she actually went for over an hour at one point.

You'd think that all this baby howling would scare away wildlife, but in fact, around 3 a.m. an owl answered her calls. Seriously. At the height of our misery came the most awesome moment of the whole camping trip.

Other than the all-night-howling, the trip was great. Beautiful crisp sunny fall weather, peak fall foliage, and good company with family and friends. The Pea had a great time getting to know lots of uncles and aunties and cousins. This was HWWLLB's annual family camping trip - four generations go camping together every October. Every family should do this! (But few dare...)

So anyhow, my advice to any would-be-family-campers, is this: test out the sleeping bag and the tent first. I cannot overstate the importance of the dry run. Oh, how I wish we had known.

On the bright side, the long car trip to and from camping was enough time to knit a pair of warm toddler socks. And soon, the pattern for the Little Pea's new doll will be making an appearance here. So stay tuned. Now to go make sure my supply of beer and salty snacks is in order for tomorrow night's Phillies game.

meet my new assistant

What she lacks in experience, she makes up for in enthusiasm.







The Little Pea has discovered yarn, and she is hooked. Winding, unwinding, sweater modeling, great conversation... what more could you ask for in a Junior Knitting Assistant?

happily unproductive

Hello! Happy spring! I have missed this space.

The last few weeks, it seems like every time I sit down in front of the computer at home, I have work to do. I'm loving this part-time work arrangement, but at the same time when I can't cram everything in at the office (which seems to be happening a lot lately), I wind up working in all my spare moments at home.

Hence, not much knitting or blogging going on around here, and not one little bit of designing new things. I do have lots of ideas - lots of fleeting ideas. None of them seem to make it to paper or needles lately. I've got fun exciting things peeping at me out of the yarn stash, singing their wooly siren songs, but I keep putting them off - later, later, just as soon as I get this last thing done...

It's also garden time, and there are also one thousand little green shoots singing their come-hither songs.

But most importantly, walks to be taken and snuggles in the grass with my Little Pea, who is almost ten months old already and quite the excellent little companion for all kinds of wonderfully unproductive activities.

I'm starting to realize that snuggling, going for walks, tickling, laughing, playing aimlessly with things that catch your eye - activities I once thought of as "unproductive" and pure leisure - are in fact quite productive if you're small with new hands and brain cells to test out. How nice for me! I can believe that I'm doing Something Important while doing something that feels relaxing and undirected. Joy!

But truth be told, I sure do miss production. We have a car ride to the mountains and back this weekend, and I'm hoping to put some yarn and needles together and see what happens.

Enjoy your spring weekend!

where did the time go?

Oh dear, it's March already!

It's been such a cold, gray, wet winter that I must have been fooling myself that it was still January or something. Today it's bright and sunny, and I ventured out into the garden for the first time this year (I can't even believe I'm saying this). There is so much to do! We haven't even set up the greenhouse yet! What will we eat this spring?

Of course, cold wet weather is perfect for both knitting and reading, which I've been doing plenty of. I'm working my way through a stack of Elizabeth Zimmerman's books, and they have me itching to knit big wooly things for me and HWWLLB.

I'm also knitting a Baby Surprise Jacket for the Little Pea (who else?). It's a totally addictive little knit, and I find myself unable to put it down. Unfortunately, I may be unable to finish it...



With at least 2/3 of the knitting done, I'm running out of yarn. This was supposed to be one of those fabulous projects where I use up a bunch of stash yarn - in this case some Cascade Siera left over from a long-ago project. I keep having to get up and rifle through the stash to find just one more little scrappy ball hiding in a corner... but I fear I am out of scrappy balls, and this sweater is not done. Now I must do the unthinkable, and buy a skein of yarn to finish the last few inches of a scrap yarn project.

HWWLLB does not understand what an utter defeat this is, and keeps saying, "Just go over to the yarn store!" Go to the yarn store??? Now I'll wind up spending $50 and coming home with a big bag of yarn I don't really need, to finish this one little scrap yarn project. Ah, well - there are worse problems to have. Like no lettuce this spring. The garden to-do list is calls!

veggie painting: fail

Over the weekend, the Little Pea tried her hand at arts and crafts. I had this great idea that she could try veggie painting and make valentines for her papa and her grandparents. To me, Valentine's Day is just another excuse for an art project.

At work we do veggie painting with bigger kids (by "bigger" I mean probably 3 and up). You lay a piece of unbleached muslin over top of some colorful veggies (carrots, kale, chard and beets are great choices), and then you use a blunt (safe) tool to smash and smash, and "paint" on the fabric. It's a lesson about veggie color - the more colorful the veggie, the better it is for you to eat. The paintings are very abstract, but kids always like them.

Anyhow, since we have plenty of ice-cube-sized lumps of pureed vegetables in the freezer, I thought we could try a variation on the smashing, and let the Little Pea try out finger-painting instead.


carrots and spinach

I can't say that this project was a success. The veggies didn't stain paper the way that they do with fabric. And even though I added some corn starch to try to make the "paints" goopier, they were much too liquidey, and the paper got mushy and tore.

Of course, torn paper was the best part of this project for the Little Pea, who didn't really understand why she was strapped into her high chair with food but nobody feeding her anything. At least she could tear paper and shove it into her mouth! Now that's fun.

She did get to try another art project the next day, when she was sitting on my lap while I colored a Valentine for HWWLLB. She grabbed the colored pencils and bashed them artistically on some paper. I added a heart, and presto! Baby's first valentine.

tips for great knitted baby gifts

So you've got a friend with a new baby on the way, and you want to knit the little bundle something adorable, something beautiful, something practical enough to wear a lot, something to make the new parents squeal with delight? Right?

I've knitted a lot of baby gifts in my time, and now that I've got such a little bundle of my own, I look back with a twinge of regret at some of the well-meaning baby gifts I've knitted over the years. I know that a few were well-received and worn quite a lot (I just saw a friend's three-year-old dragging around a sweater I made for her when she was just over a year!), but I could name a dozen that may have been cute on the needles, but probably didn't make it out of the dresser drawer very often.

So without further ado, here are a few suggested guidelines for knitting fabulous baby gifts, courtesy of me. Please do leave your further suggestions in the comments!

- Washability: My baby spits up about once every ten minutes (on a good day). We do a LOT of baby laundry, and I don't think we're unusual. Choose fibers that can be machine washed. I don't think you need to choose something that can go through the dryer, because frankly, not much quality yarn can. Personally, I hate the dryer and air dry as much as I can, but you really want to make life easy on the new parents. Whatever fiber you choose, do include washing instructions with your gift. Your friends will feel truly terrible if they destroy your gift with a trip through the laundry.

- Another word on fiber: make sure it's soft enough for very delicate skin. One good way to check is to stick the skein inside your collar and walk around the yarn store for a few minutes with the yarn smooshed against your neck. Feel even the slightest twinge of an itch? That yarn is probably too itchy for a wee one. My favorite yarn, for softness on skin and on the planet, is Blue Sky Alpacas line of organic cottons. Heavenly soft!

- Nap-ability: No buttons or snaps up the back. Babies spend a lot of time sleeping on their backs, and a big ridge of bumpy buttons is not very comfortable. Keep your buttonage to the sides or front. If you need a back-neck closure, go for a tiny tie-up instead.

- Button safety: While we're on the subject of buttons, you should know that buttons are generally a choking hazard for babies. You can make a cardigan with buttons, but you need to sew those things on for dear life. Sew as you've never sewn before, and then sew some more for good measure. Better yet, use a zipper, velcro tab or tie-up instead.

- Practicality: The more wearable your gift is, the more it will be appreciated (and worn). I love baby booties, but I'm still searching for the pair that won't fall off. Besides which, a big pack of baby socks costs less than many fancy coffee drinks. The Little Pea will wear hats, but many babies yank them right off. The most practical baby knits I've tried are hoodies, cardis (especially those that zip), throw-sized blankets, bonnets (hats that stay on!), pullover sweaters with a nice roomy neck, and those wonderful, insane full-body hoodie things with the hand and foot covers (though ours is a fleece one from L.L. Bean).

- Neck room: Babies have big giant pumpkin heads. If you're knitting a pullover, make sure that you're knitting a nice big neck opening. Look for an envelope neckline or a collar that opens along the front or shoulder to accommodate the noggin.

- Bulk: I find shoulder and sleeve seams get very bulky on a tiny little baby sweater, especially if your yarn is any heavier than fingering weight. They are working so hard to learn how to use those little arms and hands, and being able to put a thumb or finger into the mouth is often the difference between a happy baby in the carseat and one who is making themselves and everyone else very, very cranky. You might be surprised at how little bulk it takes to keep that hand from making it to the mouth. To that end, I really love seamless baby sweaters, whether bottom-up or top-down.

- Colors: You know your friends' tastes better than I do, but I just want to caution that pink and light blue are totally played out. Babies look so good in neutral colors, and they can also wear bright colors that you only wish you could pull off. Pastel colors don't look good on many people, and babies are people, too.

- Fun: The most important thing in any knitting project is that you enjoy making it. If it's a bear to knit, that doesn't make it a better gift. Have a good time doing it!

slowing down

The past year has been a wonderful one for me, but at the same time, the last three months since I went back to work have been incredibly stressful. I have spent most of the days exhausted, constantly apologizing to the people I love the most for being so grouchy, so irrational, so irritable all the time.

I know that this is all normal. This is life for a working mother. I know that it's supposed to get better with time. But throughout the fall as I got deeper and deeper into it, my heart began screaming at me that this is not the life I want. We didn't have a child so that we could turn her over to someone else to raise for us. I missed her so desperately, and I especially missed something I am just beginning to understand: mothering. So in 2010 that won't be my life anymore. I am going to slow down - way down.

The experiment starts next week. I am going to be a part-time worker. And I'll have four wonderful days a week at home with the Little Pea. We have found an amazing nanny for the other days, and my mom is also going to take on some child care.

I don't kid myself that starting next week, I'll get back all the time I miss so much for knitting yoga, meditation, reading, writing, designing and having lots of grown-up time alone with HWWLLB. But maybe I'll get just a little of that back, and boy will I be grateful for whatever moments I do get.

Mostly what I'll get is to be with our little girl more than I'm at work. She'll get to be with me more than with child care providers. Maybe I'll be the one who hears her say "mama" for the first time.

The challenge is going to be staying slowed down. Resisting the urge to cram twice as many chores, projects and commitments into my life since I'm technically working less.

I know that a lot of you have been through all this, and made lots of different decisions for yourself and your families, and I respect all of you and your choices very much. I am so curious about how other moms and dads have been able to resist the busy-ness in order to just be with your children and be their mom (or dad). Do you take them along and integrate them into your work or projects? Do you carve out sacred time with them when nothing else is allowed to interrupt? Do you just wing it and hope for the best?

In the end, I guess what I need to slow down for the most is to find out who I am now. I know that I'm not the same person I was a year ago at this time. I can see that there are lots of things I have taken on - but what I really wonder about is what do I have to just let go of, and leave behind?

early morning

It's early. Sunrise is still a little ways off, and I am sipping a cup of tea at the kitchen table, enjoying some quiet.

I have lost a lot of free time: time for yoga, time for knitting, time for reading long beautiful novels. But this is one kind of time that I have gained: very quiet time, alone, with a warm cup of tea and a cat beside me. There is a little warm spot on my neck where a baby was recently curled, and I am looking forward to sunrise, when she really wakes up, and I will pick her up and bring her to look again at the Christmas tree, and she will be delighted, all over again.

It is very peaceful.

If I had worries, they would fill this space.

Instead, I look at my list of to-do's, and notice that one of them says, "relax." I decide to do that one.

I sip my tea, poke about in my knitting basket a bit, and hear a little voice waking up down the hallway. Another morning, just beginning.

starting fresh

Time to cultivate this feeling again.

It always feels so good to put a tough time behind me and start anew.

October is usually my favorite month, because of the wonderful weather, the colors, the crisp air and the chance to wear sweaters and scarves again. Our anniversary is in October, and the annual family camping trip.

But I've been anticipating October all year with some trepidation, because this year it was the month that I went back to work.

And it went pretty well, it really did. The Little Pea seems to be adjusting well, and HWWLLB is doing great as a stay-at-home-dad. Everything was in great shape at work when I got back there, and I seem to be getting back into the swing of things fairly well. But oh my goodness, the time.

I'll always think of this October as the month that I ran to get everywhere. Once I started back at work I didn't cook a meal, do a load of laundry that wasn't baby clothes, write a blog post (as you may have noticed) or go anywhere other than work and our house (and the family camping trip - I've almost recovered from that). I did eat three meals a day, sleep decently, enjoy time with the Little Pea and meet the deadlines I had to hit at work (just barely). HWWLLB and I even spent a little quality time together on our anniversary. But I have never tried so hard to keep it together - and I did keep it together - at such an incredibly bare-bones level. Holy moly. Is this the rest of my life?

I hope not.

Keeping it together is better than not, for sure, and I know that there are going to be times when I just can't keep it together anymore and just fall apart. But I need some free time back. This weekend I decided to help that along by clearing away some mental clutter and finishing a few projects that have been lying around.

Saturday I pulled out a stack of almost-finished knitted things that had been languishing for months. I sewed on buttons, sewed in tags, blocked and finished and put them away in the drawers (or gift bags) where they belong. Now Little Pea has a couple of spanky new sweaters to wear - just in time for some cool damp weather - and believe it or not, the sloth is almost done! I've finally finished all the knitting, and this weekend I pieced it together and felted it. I still have some finishing work to do, including some fancy needle-felting, but it's almost there! I can't wait to show it to you.

That was Saturday. Sunday is going to be the day for tidying. Our house is definitely showing the battle scars of the past month, and in particular my little areas are just atrocious. There isn't one more bare surface available for piling things on, and it's gnawing at my sanity. So today is the day to deconstruct piles, pay bills, recycle junk, do laundry, take things to the dry cleaner, and tie up all the other itty-bitty loose ends that have turned into such a snarl in my space. The perfect activity for a gray, rainy November Sunday (particularly if some knitting works its way into all that).

Nothing like a fresh start to another month - let this one be just a little less hectic than the last. Just a little?

twilight

Twilight is so beautiful. The light and fading golden color make it my favorite time of day.



Last night I was trying to capture the way these flowers were glowing, reflecting the last of the waning light in our front yard as the day turned to evening.

This is also the twilight of my maternity leave - the last few days at home with Little Pea, with nothing to do but play and take care of her. As with the end of the day, this seems to be the sweetest time I have ever known. Everything seems golden, more beautiful and poignant than I have ever seen it.

Of course, nothing is changing. I will still be her mama, and we'll still take walks together and play with toys and nurse quietly (and sometimes noisily) in the rocking chair. I'll still squeeze in a row or two of knitting here and there whenever I can. But of course, I'll be shoe-horning all this wonder and beauty into the fragmented bits of time before and after work. And I have a feeling that these too-fast golden hours are going to fly by all the more quickly now.

This week Little Pea and I took our last trip together to the Wednesday afternoon farmer's market. We bought veggies and bread, and visited with our downtown friends and farmers. I found myself really strolling, walking slower than normal to just soak up as much of it as I could. I pushed the idea of time from my mind altogether and just enjoyed the moments as we had them. It felt so good to take things in more completely - the smiles of the people there, the thoughts and ideas shared in conversations with friends, the simple colors and shapes of the vegetables.

Being in the moment, letting go of a hurry to a goal or destination, is a lesson that the Little Pea teaches me over and over. I am so grateful for the chance to practice, every day, that this time at home with her has given me. I hope I can cultivate it in my hurry-hurry work life as well - even when I want to hurry home to her.

a long weekend

Over the weekend my dad turned sixty.



We celebrated with a long weekend in the Outer Banks. It was the Little Pea's first trip (except for a night at her grandparents' house when she was very small), and her first time visiting the ocean. We were happy to discover that she is a very good traveler.

Traveling with a little baby turned out to be fairly relaxing. We took things slowly, and spent a good amount of time relaxing while she napped or nursed. And goodness, did we eat. My goal was to totally overdo it on seafood -- I definitely succeeded. But I wouldn't mind another plate of flounder for lunch today.

We saw lots of birds, and a pond full of turtles at Pea Island Wildlife Refuge. We counted 18 painted turtles and two big snappers. Among birds, we saw cormorants, osprey, ibis, lots of egrets, and a Roseate Spoonbill! They really don't belong this far north, so it was quite a treat.



It felt so good to be washed by the ocean. Salt water is so rejeuvenating.

fleeting naptime

my accomplishment for the week: a Hansigurumi seahorse, with a tube of beads inside to make a rattle

Thursday morning I found myself sitting in the bathroom with the door cracked open, trying to simultaneously listen for baby sounds and muffle my own sounds because She Who Will Not Nap was taking a nap, and while I love the open floor plan of our tiny house, every sound in the house can be heard from every other part of the house. I was on hold in customer-service hell, waiting to talk to someone at the IRS about the hideous letter they sent me.

As the cat came in to join me and, what they hey, stop into his litterbox while he's in the neighborhood, I realized that crouching in the bathroom with the phone was no way to spend the precious few moments of naptime that I have been granted. After hearing the polite-yet-threatening recorded message one more time, I hung up. Take that, IRS! (I will call you later).

Instead I got up, fixed myself lunch, listened to the news, visited a couple of friends' blogs, and started to write this blog pos-- uh-oh. She's up again.

[many hours later]

Naptime is sanity time, time to eat, perform personal hygeine related tasks and maybe, just maybe, get something done. As my to-do list stretches into the horizon, the naptimes seem to be dwindling to ever-tinier proportions. Why won't this baby take her nap?? Lately daytime naps are just a fantasy, and the ones that do happen don't last much longer than it takes me to fix my lunch (but not eat it).

[uh... two days later]

Ugh! I'm not getting anything done, productive or otherwise. Two rows of knitting. Five minutes of listening to the news. A few more minutes on hold with the IRS. Nothing is getting completed anymore. Help!! I've tried every trick in the book. How do you bribe a 3-month-old baby into taking a nap?


seahorse rattles do not work as bribes

better all the time

i promised i'd post a picture that wasn't of her feet for a change

I've had that Beatles song stuck in my head all week since I heard it on the radio the other day. It does describe our crazy new lives pretty well.

Some days are hectic and insane and by the time she goes to bed I don't know whether to laugh, cry or get drunk (fortunately breastfeeding generally rules out #3). Other days are peaceful, hilarious and beautiful and I feel on top of the world. The truly wonderful thing is that the ratio of good to bad days has always been tilted to the positive side, and it is getting better all the time. I can't quite say I'm well rested, but sleep is one of the things helping move the needle more often to the happy side, slowly but surely.

But you know, even on the worst days, when all she can manage is a 20-minute nap and I can't seem to find enough time to make a cup of tea and actually drink it before it gets cold, knitting always gets me through. When I need to collapse on the couch and veg out, and I'm jittery with nervous energy from being cooped up in the house all day with a very demanding companion, knitting is always there for me. Sometimes you don't know whether that quiet moment will last five minutes or fifty, and I'm finding that these unpredictable moments are bringing me back the knitterly world of the productive again. It feels very good.



Here are the booties I just finished with the Grandmother Owl pattern. Somehow I managed to knit them inside-out, but they came out well all the same. Bev scared me out of making pom-poms due to their apparent mortal hazards, but the little ties finish with tassles, which I sewed on so tightly that they could probably be relied upon as a lifeline if I fell over a cliff, so I think they will be safe for the baby. This is a great little bootie pattern, and I like the flexible 'one size,' which unlike most of her other clothes will probably actually fit for a while. What a great way to use up some sock yarn leftovers!

Little Pea is very interested in knitting as well. Sometimes while she plays on her play mat, I sit next to her and do some knitting, and she is fascinated with the color and movement. I wonder how old a kid has to be before it's safe to hand them some nice blunt knitting needles?

bootie love

I just discovered that I love goofy Gramma booties!

Check these out! They came in a box of hand-me-downs, so I have no idea who made them, but they are awesome. I hadn't realized that I loved funky pom-pom booties until on a whim I put them on my kid. Dear God! Why had no one warned me of the cuteness??? And how lucky were we to score them in a hand-me-down box??

The overwhelming wave of cute-induced excitement got me wondering about where to find some good Gramma-bootie patterns on the internets. A year or two ago I knitted a bunch of sophisticated, classy, non-pom-pommed booties and posted my reviews of the free patterns here. Alas, those were the days before I had nummy little baby feet in the house in need of such garments. I believed that the simple, clean lines of a Mary-Jane style bootie were what one would want to see on one's well-dressed child. Ha! Bring on the pom-poms!

Actually, the main qualification for a good bootie is that they actually stay on. This automatically disqualifies Mary-Jane style booties, ballet slipper booties, and many other classy booties from consideration, and renders whatever I said in that previous review post basically worthless. It also explains why so many bootie patterns have names like "Stay-On Baby Booties," "Won't Slip Baby Booties," and "Guaranteed to Never Fall Off Or Your Money Back Baby Booties." Now I understand.

I think the booties above were made with Grandmother Owl's Really Good Booties pattern, (which is free on the webs), with pom-poms added. Friends with new babies, be forewarned: I will hereby be adding pom-poms or other such nonsense to every bootie I knit from now on! And to anyone who I ever knitted a classy Mary-Jane bootie for, my apologies. I didn't know.

Also, will I ever post a picture of any part of my child other than her feet? What's up with that? OK, next time - hands!

diaper ado

One of the few things I managed to finish knitting before the Little Pea came along was a set of 6 wrap-style knitted diaper covers (the purpley-pink one above is one of my favorites).

Unfortunately, put into practice I discovered that this particular design is not particularly, uh, reliable in the poop containment arena. Oh well. The things you learn when the fantasy baby actually becomes reality...

However, I do plan to knit some pull-up style soakers and give those a try, and if (when!) her daytime naps ever stretch out sufficiently I might also try sewing some from felted sweaters á la the Artful Parent (I am so in love with all Jean's fun projects).

Anyhow, this post was really just to say that over on Sew Green I have a post up today as part of a continuing discussion on cloth v. disposable diapers. Here is Lisa's earlier post on the subject.

Once I've had a chance to test-drive a few different hand-made soakers, I hope to post a review here. In the mean time though, it's factory-made diaper covers for us. *sigh* Can't make everything yourself, I guess.