Grandma's Hat

Back in January, when I heard my grandma was not doing well with her chemo, I decided to make her a hat. Something soft and fuzzy and WARM.

I was still working on the Torture Tomten (which remains unfinished and is so horribly screwed up that I think it will have to be frogged) so I had all this fuzzy pink acrylic stuff sitting around.

I used the Felicity pattern (also seen here), some slightly bigger needles to accomodate the bulky yarn, and after a few days I had a fuzzy pink hat.

Hello, welcome to my dimly-lit bathroom. 

Fuzzy and pink is not normally my thing, but it turned out pretty cute.

I sent it to her with a nice little letter and some of Piper's artwork from school.

My grandma passed away about five weeks after I sent this, but as far as I know she did get it. I hope it brought her at least a little comfort.

4!

Yesterday was her birthday, my baby girl is now a whopping FOUR years old.

Unlike last year, where almost everything was handmade (including that quilt sewed entirely the night before her birthday), I did not make any gifts this year. I also did not make her cake or cupcakes, because she told me she didn't want me to.

(sniff, sniff - cue one mama's heart cracking just a bit)

She told me, "No, I don't want you to make the cake. I don't want cupcakes." She wanted "a pink and blue Hello Kitty cake from the bakery at the store," a sugar-laden mountain of frosting she had seen at our local mega-mart. So, rather than bust my ass making the totally-from-scratch, blueberry-filled, topped-with-homemade-blueberry-whipped-cream cupcakes I'd planned, I ordered the cake.

It was pretty good, actually.

We also did not do the party at our house this year, because it was just too HOT. She has many more friends this year, 11 classmates plus a few others, and even if each kid only brings one parent, that's still 20 extra people to cram into my house. Last year it was about 100 degrees the day of her party and this year promised much the same thing, so we just invited some school friends to the Monkey Joe's closest to where they all live. It was totally easy, all I had to do was show up with the cake, and absolutely worth the money. The kids got to run around in air conditioning and have a blast, she got to have her best birthday yet, and I did not have to cram 20-30 people into my house. Which turned out to be a good thing, since we have gotten a couple calls to show the place, including one yesterday which only gave us 20 minutes' notice. I am so happy people are finally looking at the house that I can't say no, but I also cannot imagine trying to evacuate over a dozen party guests and clean the place with 20 minutes' notice. Yesterday we were gone when they called, out having family birthday fun, so we'd left the place not exactly pristine, and my husband worried that nobody was ever going to show the house again because the beds weren't made and there was wrapping paper on the floor, but I assured him that a crock-pot soaking in the sink and a few scattered birthday cards were hardly the worst things a real estate agent could've seen.

First Day of School/Last Day of School

One of my friends saw this and said "She went from having baby arms & legs to having big-kid arms & legs!" It's true. She's all limbs now.

Fingers to the Bone, I Tell You

Where have I been?

Oh, my friends. I have been knitting. And knitting. And KNITTING. Trying so hard to catch up with my "2011 = 2 Finished Projects Per Month" goal I set for myself.

I finished the dress that was supposed to be done in time for Easter (eight or so days late, which for me is like finishing it on time) AND the matching scarf. I screwed up the scarf bind-off so one side curves oddly and I tell myself 'that's just to keep it from sliding off her neck' but the more I think about it the more it bugs me, plus I know there's a couple mistakes in the lace pattern and it's only a 20-row scarf so I will probably just rip it out and make a new one. So if I finished two parts of what is technically the same project but one will have to be re-done, does that mean it's a draw?

I'd show you pictures, but they are still on the memory card which is in my camera in the cupboard, and the only reason I'm getting to type this right now is that my husband has a rare afternoon at home and is currently entertaining our almost-four-year-old (less than two weeks until her birthday!) in the other room and I got out MY NEW NETBOOK which was a Mother's Day gift from aforementioned husband and I am now frantically trying to bang out this blog entry before they get tired of playing hide & seek and realize that it's past lunchtime and I have nothing to feed them.

Ahem.

Back to the knitting: I am working as fast as I can on a bright pink version of this poncho, which my daughter has asked me to make for her school friend. She's been begging me to do it for at least six months, and when do I get around to it? Oh, a couple of weeks before school ends. I knit 13.5 inches of that feather & fan pattern in just two days, and then my arms hurt so bad I had to take a two-day break. Using my sucky super-long metal needles, which were all I could find when I started the thing, is really slowing me down. I am now only halfway done with the knitting, and I have to finish the thing this weekend because this upcoming week is the last week of school.

Assuming I finish it in time, I'll have to remember to take pictures of it before I give it away.

I also am working on: a sweater for P that needs sleeves and its approximately one billion dangling yarn ends woven in; more tiny bunnies like the ones I made P and her friend for Easter; a hat for my brother; a hat for my sister; six things for crafting debts; a shawl for my mom; a hat for me, a hat for P; and a hat for somebody else that's turning out so cute I want to keep it for myself.

I don't have any pictures of those projects, either. I'm just a tease today. A big knitting tease.

Whew!

So, it's May.

Summer is sneaking up on me again. And, as of today, my beautiful little girl has only one month left to be three years old! I have not planned a party. I have not planned a gift. I have neither designed nor started work on this year's birthday shirt. We haven't decided what we're going to do this year - usually on the day of, we take her out for breakfast (pancakes) and a day of fun. She's much better in the car now, so we have been thinking about daytripping out to one of the NC aquariums.

Piper and I spent most of her spring break with friends in Nashville. It's about a 7-hour drive, and she did very well. On the way there, she was a bit squirrely for the last hour, but here's the thing: she didn't sleep during the drive. At all. So I am perfectly willing to give her a hour of boredom and seat-kicking. We went to visit some friends who moved in the fall, friends who have a little boy about a year younger than Piper. The two kids were buddies before the move, and picked up right where they left off. There were a few squabbles over toys and cranky hours after missed naps, but on the whole they did very well together.

For my part, I tried to be as good a houseguest as possible. My friend has only made a few new friends since moving, and I know only too well how lonely it can be when you're alone with a kid all day in a strange place. So we talked. And talked. And talked. We played with the kids, she took me out to see the hipster district of Nashville (where we went shopping for vintage books and vintage clothes, eee!), we ate some kick-ass food from Cafe Rakka, and we talked some more. It was so nice to have company all day long, and her son is such a sweet little guy that I didn't have to worry about him whacking Piper over the head with things, or playing games involving guns and killing. Piper's sharing skills were not always up to par, and that is something we need to work on, but I think both kids had fun. She is already asking when we're going to visit again.

She's out of school in a few weeks, and after her birthday we will probably go visit relatives in Michigan for a while. We have to be back before the end of June because I've signed her up for some dance lessons this summer, which I am pretty excited about.

I am also excited about my almost-finished knitting projects. I am thisclose to finishing the dress I'd planned for Easter - only a week late, that's basically "on time" for me - and most of the way done on her sweater as well. The sweater was supposed to be a surprise, but she came out into the living room one night long after she was supposed to be asleep, saw me knitting away on it and asked "Mom! Is that for ME?" So much for the surprise. But she loves it anyway, and keeps asking if it's done yet. Soon, kiddo...I hope.

Chaos Can Be Redeeming

This is what our living room looked like a couple weeks ago. There was much sorting and boxing and throwing away. The carpets were cleaned and closets organized. I worked my ass off on that front yard.

Now it is done, the sign is in the yard, papers are signed, and I am checking my email every hour for news from our real estate agent. It's been over a week and we've only had one person call, no showings yet. I am trying to keep a positive attitude while I pick up every stray sock or toy and mop the kitchen floor ten times a day.

Now that it's done and clean, I just have to maintain it all, which is not bad (so far, anyhow). Come evening, after the kid is in bed, I find myself fully justified in plopping down on the couch with a homemade latte and a pile of knitting. I did not get the sweater or the dress I had planned as Easter gifts completed, but I did manage to make a couple Bunny Nuggets (one for P and one for her friend). I have so many projects that are almost done. I am forcing myself to complete all the tedious finishing work - picking up stitches for button bands, sewing seams, blocking and straightening.

Did I tell you I set myself a knitting goal for 2011? I told myself I was going to finish two projects per month. So far January is the only month where I actually managed to do that (another Milo for a little friend and a hat for my grandma). Hopefully I can complete all my works-in-progress and make May a real show-stopper.

While people in my home state wait anxiously for spring, we are in near-summer here. It's 80 AGAIN today, and I am irritated. Partly because warm weather brings out the hordes of asshole teenagers in my neighborhood, but also because I want my seasons. I don't like to skip. I don't want to go straight from 35 to 85, which is exactly what happens down here, and every year I forget and every year I get annoyed.

I would happily swap my northern comrades; I could use a few more days of cold and moisture. My yard needs it, my handknits crave it, and more than that, my soul needs it.

There is an ease and a joy to warm days after cold ones; a feeling of renewal and promise that is lacking in warmer climates. After so many dark days, the tiniest sunbeam brings a smile. 55 degrees is now shorts-and-no-coat weather, even though in September 55 degrees made you break out the parka. The air is fresher, washed clean with chilly rains. When summer comes, it means fireflies, lounging on porches, lemonade, slowing down to savor every warm moment. Sitting in the warm dark holding hands and enjoying the feel of your skin against the air. Flowers bloom and you have time to appreciate them before they're gone.   The warm days are so fleeting, so welcome, that you want to suck every drop of fun out of them before winter returns.

Here - and to a lesser extent, also in California - I feel like summer is something to dread. It's not a time for open windows and running through sprinklers, it's a time when you race from one air-conditioned environment to another, because between ozone alerts and sky-high temperatures playing outside means health risks. Southern summer means you damn well better get up and be at the park by 9:00 am, or you're going to pass out on the monkey bars by noon. It means you swim in the morning and spend the afternoon laying on the living-room floor with a popsicle because it's too hot and still to play. Summer here lasts so long, and it's so hot and fierce, that you wonder why the first settlers to this area ever dragged themselves out here in the first place. The baked clay earth hardens and the grass dies. Everything wilts and melts. It's not a lot of fun, honestly.

I miss that transition, each day a little warmer and brighter than the last. I miss smiling as I watch the weather report and see the numbers creep just a little higher each week. I miss rush of gratitude for the return of warm days and checking each patch of grass for tiny flowers. I miss looking forward to summers, to planning treats and trips and I miss lounging on porches with my lemonade.

Busting Some Butt

We are frantically working around here, trying to get this place show-ready...oh, yesterday. The deadline I personally set for myself was April 1st, and we are long past that. Another few days of de-cluttering and picking up, I think, and then we need to have the carpets cleaned. I just cannot BELIEVE how hard it is to transform our house from the slightly-cluttered-but-livable space it is into the picture-perfect model home I have in my head. I want it to be perfect, not "good enough," and I am making myself completely nuts.

Fortunately, we have a Realtor that we trust completely, so I know that once I am done mentally and physically exhausting myself working on the place, all I have to do is keep it clean and water the grass, because he will take care of the rest. If there are buyers out there, he will find them. If we need to change something, he will tell us. If we're being unrealistic on price, he will gently talk us down. So I have that to look forward to.

It wasn't that we had a lot of hard things on our list, just lots of little, piddly, time-consuming stuff. We have no garage, no shed, and very little attic space, so anything we needed to store (bicycles, yard tools, baby stuff, off-season clothing, etc) was stacked up either in our bedroom or the office. This meant I had a towering canyon of boxes, bags, and hampers to go through. I'm probably keeping more than I should, but I just don't have the mental energy to give myself a tough-love talk for each and every box I go through. A friend who lives nearby has an extra room and he is letting us store things there, so I can at least have a little elbow room to attack the rest.

We had the house power-washed and the yard aerated & overseeded; we replaced the mailbox and painted the post. We're patching up the interior paint, taking care of spots that were left by the people before us and which we have been looking at and going "Oh, yeah, probably should fix that" for three years. I dug out last year's failed attempt at landscaping and planted nice colorful flowers instead. I still have a little work to do out there, but right now I am so busy inside I can't figure out what else to do outside.

The nice thing about all this is that I can finally justify all those home-decorating purchases I would never allow myself to indulge in normally. Plenty of bookshelves, decorative baskets, a nice laundry hamper, all the stuff I normally tell myself I can do without. And since I am going through and doing everything thoroughly and completely, it should make unpacking & setting up in our new place a snap. I've already worked out the kinks here, so when we move I'll have my perfectly-organized work space or craft storage system or quiet sanctuary of a bedroom all figured out. All I have to do is take it out of the boxes.

5 April 2011: Self-Made Brunch

 Today I dropped the kid off at school, then realized I'd left my phone at home. I went back to get it and puttered around the house pretending to clean for a couple hours. When I got hungry, I decided to do more than just microwave some leftovers and made myself a solo brunch: extra-large hazelnut latte and a strawberry waffle. Tiny treats make a day brighter, right?

Easiest Vegetable Soup Ever.

11 March 2011: I made a pot of this for the kid, and she ate three bowls a day until it was gone.

Recipe:

Chop up whatever vegetables you have on hand - I used 1 carrot, 1 stalk of celery, and a handful of frozen green beans - and toss into a pot with 1 cup (more or less depending on how much your kids love carbs) veggie pasta. Cover with water (vegetable stock is much more tasty, if you have it), sprinkle in a little thyme and some garlic powder. Cook it all together until the pasta is done and veggies are tender but not mushy. That's it.

This only takes about 15 minutes to make, and it's become my go-to lunch for her. My favorite local health-food store sells bulk colored bowtie pasta, and it's colored with natural stuff like beet juice. It's WAY cheap, quite tasty, and she loves it. It's also become a good way to use up vegetables that are a little past their prime but not quite ready for the stock-pot.

One More Rule

I remembered one more of my "rules for packing":

5. Pack it Tightly
I don't mean make the boxes heavy, or crush things. I do mean use every single bit of space. The less room things have to shift, the less likely something's going to get broken or damaged. No space at the top of the box means when they're stacked they won't cave in and crush the contents. So when you pack your books and there's little nooks and crannies left, stuff socks and underwear in there. Put a towel or clothes on top of everything before you tape it shut. Slip paperbacks into small spaces in other boxes; top off large boxes with lightweight stuff like pillows and stuffed animals; add kitchen linens around the inside of boxes of plates and cups. Any time you can cram something into a box, do it. You'll cut down on the amount of boxes you have to move, and your stuff will be much more secure. It will also add some amusement to your unpacking process, like when you really need a cup of coffee the first morning in your new place and you have to pull four pairs of lacy Victoria's Secret underwear out of a box to get to your favorite mug.

*Boxes: A friend tipped me off to a good source for moving boxes - egg boxes. She said:

"Go to the grocery stores and ask what day the eggs come in and if you can get boxes. Go every time they get a shipment and grab as many as you can. Free and very sturdy. They even have handles and they are a good size. Note: this tip does not apply to produce boxes."

24 March 2011

We stayed late at the park because I didn't want to go home, and wound up assembling an impromptu dinner from the snacks in the car.

23 March 2011

83 degrees, dry as a bone and ultra-windy. I spent part of my childhood in Southern California; this weather spooks me worse than tornado sirens.

Rules for Packing

My friend Rae is moving, and we are de-cluttering and pre-packing as much as possible, and all of it reminds me of how many times I have moved. It's a big number. I have grown pretty good at packing, and developed the following set of rules:

1. Don't use paper. 
        Don't wrap things in newspaper. Don't buy packing paper. Don't use styrofoam peanuts, or bubble wrap, or any of that extra stuff. Use your clothes. Use your sheets. Wrap tiny breakables in socks and roll them into a comforter and put that in a box. Put washcloths and dish towels between your plates, wrap glasses in table linens. You get the idea. Anything you would use paper for, use something you already have. Not only does this save you a lot of money in packing materials, it will reduce the amount of boxes you have to lug by at least one-third.

2. Get boxes that are all the same size.*
       Copy-paper boxes are perfect, if you have a ready supply. They're solid and sturdy, big enough for most things but small enough that you have to work reeeeaallly hard to make 'em too heavy to carry. For our move from Michigan to California, I spent the year before our move swiping boxes from work and storing them in our attic. When it was time to pack, I brought them all downstairs, filled them, and re-stacked them in the attic for a couple weeks until the truck arrived. If you can't get copy-paper boxes, use file boxes from an office-supply store. This size works well. Of course, some things will have to go in bigger boxes, and that's fine, but having everything in same-size boxes will make loading the truck really easy. Heavy ones on the bottom, lighter & breakable stuff on the top, load around the furniture. Taa-daa.

3. Start early. Like, super early.
        Start packing as soon as you know when you need to be out. Keep out your 10 favorite cd's (or none, since, like many others, you probably download a lot of music these days) and pack the rest. Pack your books (pretty soon you probably won't have the time or brain power to do a lot of heavy reading anyway) . Pack your off-season clothes. Go through the Christmas decorations and re-pack them so nothing gets broken. The serving platters you only use on holidays, the breadmaker, the waffle iron. Pack up 2/3 of your kids' toys. Do a few boxes every night and stack them somewhere you won't trip over them. When crunch time rolls around, you should only have a few things left to pack. If you have to go a few days earlier than planned, pre-packing means that when your truck shows up, you actually have stuff to start with, instead of all your "helpers" standing around snatching away every box as soon as you tape it shut. 

4. Weed, weed, weed. 
        Starting early means you will also have ample time to go through your stuff and ask yourself "Do I honestly want to pack this and lug it into the truck and take it out and put it in the new place and unpack it and find somewhere to put it?" Even if you're lucky enough to be able to hire someone to do your packing or lugging, you still have to unpack it and find room for it and shuffle it around a few times before it gets to its eventual resting place in your new abode. When in doubt, throw it out.


That's it, I think...happy moving!


*Of course, if you don't want to buy boxes, try my favorite source for super-sturdy, mostly-the-same-size boxes: the dumpsters behind bookstores. There will be a specific one for cardboard. Word to the wise: it's always better to do this on a dry day, during daylight hours, preferably with the store's permission.

Home is Where the Hurt Is.

Sunday I spent about  nine hours in the yard, tearing out the front flower bed we put in last year, moving all the rock somewhere else, straightening the stone border, putting in new dirt and planting flowers. I removed the ghosts of last year's hostas and dug down into the clay soil to put in some flowers that Piper had picked out. Things much more sun-loving than my pretty but doomed hostas - violas, pansies, some pink thing that starts with a d. 

I used all the huge chunks of clay soil I dug out to make room for the flowers to fill in some low spots in the front yard, which involved lots of hacking at damp chunks of brick-red (and brick-like) clay with a broken shovel in order to break them up. I put some garden soil over the fills, and grass-patch stuff over that. Between the orangey-red clay and the bright-green grass patch, my yard looks like a faded vintage Christmas card. 

Now I am watering the ever-loving crap out of everything, hoping that the 80-degree-plus weather and super-dry winds we've been having don't kill everything before it gets started. In order not to bust our budget (plus, we live in drought country), I've become the Water Marshall of the house, collecting every spare drop and dumping it on the yard. I put buckets in all the bathrooms to catch the water that we inevitably run before it gets hot enough to shower in; I dip out dishwater that's not too grimy and truck it out to the yard. It's pretty labor-intensive, but I desperately want a nice yard this year. If we were staying in this house, I'd love to install some fancy Dwell-approved graywater system, but something like that would cost more than our entire house is currently worth.

I am also nursing full-body muscle aches from my afternoon of toil. Ye Gods, I ache. And it's worse today than yesterday. My legs, my back, my arms - everything I could possibly pull or strain or max out, I did. I could go soak in a nice, hot bath, but I'd probably guilt myself into dumping the water on the yard after.