Quilter's Guild

I decided to try out our local quilter's guild. They meet the first Thurs. of the month, and so I phoned up the president to find out what they were up to this month. It ends up they usually run a different "class" every month and learn a new skill. I don't know if I'm up for that -- I would rather get together and work on stuff I'm already doing, but we shall see what happens in the fall. This month, however, they were going out for supper and then having dessert and some project sharing at one woman's house. I was game for that, and Dave was willing to babysit, so off I went.

We went to the next town over where they have the closest to exotic food you can get in these parts -- Chineese Food. I carpooled with four other women, all quilters and all really nice and friendly. We got to the resteraunt and met up with another 12 or so women. It was really quite a fun time. Because I was new they made everyone go around and give their name and a fact about themselves (mostly that they quilted, or their chineese horoscope, that kind of thing) and then they started chatting and, eventually, eating. It was fun to be asked about what kind of quilting I did and what projects I was working on, instead of being asked what age my children were and wether they were in playschool or not. It was fun to hear about what the other women were up to, and to laugh and joke and hear about their varried lives and experiences. I was the youngest by a good 20 years, and many of these women had children, or grandchildren, my age.

After the meal we went to one of the women's lovely home. She had just remodelled this house, and it was really lovely. Lots of china, vintage furniture and stuff from estate sales, and of course quilts everywhere. First we had a guild meeting, where I was doled out my 20 raffle tickets to sell and informed of the way things worked at the guild. I had my phone number and email added to their list. Most amusing, I volunteered to take a photo of the quilt they were raffling and print some pictures of it, since many of the women had digital cameras but none of them actually knew how to print the photos off.

After this there was a really cool quilt show and tell. Everyone had brought two of three projects (I had been told small projects, so I brought the test run of my miniquilt, soxul furry's blanket and Aaron's quilt. There are some amazing quilters in this group. Some of the women have these beautiful, queen sized, intricately pieced projects. One woman hand quilts all her quilts and for one sampler she had done she made these sashing blocks and borders with rows of four squares set on point. Another woman showed a quilt she had been gathering fabrics for for about four years before she started making it. Some were the sort of quilters who shipped everything off to be machine quilted. Another woman had five wonderful quilt tops, none finished, because she was determined to hand quilt them herself. Another woman had made a small photo-based art quit that was really exquisite. Some of the others were more beginners and showed the projects they were working on, of the sample from the latest class they had taken.

When my turns came, the women stared at me as if I was from another world as I talked about on line sew alongs and Flikr swap groups. When I told them there was a resurgence of young quilters, they asked me where they were. When I told them they were all on the internet, I was greeted with silent disbeleif. Some of these women don't even own a computer. I was introducing them to a whole new world.

At the same time as I was dazzled by their intricate piecing skills and meticulous hand quilting, they seemed amazed at my new, modern take on quilting. It was a really fun exchange of ideas.

One of the things I loved about getting together with older women was their stories. Some of them are first generation Canadian, and remember when there was no running water or electricity in Saskatchewan. They would make off-handed comments like, "When my mother would finish a quilt top, all the women from the surrounding farms would come over and baste it together in a morning". A "younger" woman who loves to hand quilt mentioned that her grandmother refused to take quilting classes with her becuase she had worked on a farm where they had to take all the quilts apart in the summer, take out and wash the wool batting, and then put all the quilts back together again. There is such a wealth of knowledge and life experience in this group -- I'm excited about tapping into that.

The other thing that I loved was all the personalities. These women are old enough that they are set in their ways and don't really care what anyone thinks of them. Also they live in a small community, where they are known and have been known for years and years, so they have no reason to change. They are a small group who has obviously been together, on and off, for a long time. It was really fun to watch them interacting and joking and grumbling and doing all the things people do when they know each other well.

The meetings start up again in the fall, and if they are doing anything I'm interested in (maybe even if they're not) I might just have to show up and join them.

Hey, how did that happen?

I just noticed that someone has adjusted the banner on my blog so that it, um, is gone. I suspect my toddler has been doing some push-button publishing behind my back. I'll get right on that.

Hand Sewng

I joined a mini quilt swap a couple of weeks ago. The idea is that you are matched up with a partner, and you each make a 6 - 12 inch big quilt and mail it to the other person. This is a lot of fun, because you can try things you wouldn't necesarily do on a big quilt.

For my first quilt, I tried a bunch of things I saw in the Quilt Sensations book that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. They all worked, with a bit of tinkering and fiddling. I also hand sewed most of the top. This actually made the project go a lot faster. I stitched while watching "I love Dinosoars"with the boys. I sewed while they ate the hundreth snack of the day. I sewed while they played in the sandbox. And then once they were asleep I could just sneak down to the basement to do the parts that I wanted to do on machine. It was really satisfying to accomplish something so quickly. I also snacked less because my hands were busy, and I've realized the main reason I eat mindlessly is because I'm bored and fidgety.

One of the things I made involved sewing through two layers of fabric and a layer of cotton batting. I still don't have a thimble, because the shop in town only has small thimbles in stock right now, and so in the best Canadian fashion I improvised

with duct tape. I remembered my best friend Lisa telling me about how, when she was tree planting, they would duct tape their hands to prevent blisters and wear on their hands. So I thought a few layers might also work as a stand in thimble. It wasn't bad, but I think I would need one more layer -- I still poked my finger one time.

Anyway, this little project was really fun. Í'll show off my photos of it when it gets to my swap partner in Australia.

I think I should always have a hand sewing project on the go. It really brightened my day. However, I think I need to make a little bag to hold needles, thread, scissors and stitch ripper so I can carry all my supplies with me to the park. Hmm . .. sewing leading to more sewing? How can that be?

And the winner is . . .

my lovely niece-in-law Beck! Email me your address, Beck, I actually don't have it.

Thanks for all your fun comments. I love finding out random things about people, it really does make me happy. And it was nice to hear some "voices" I haven't heard in a while. And Katy, if I ever happen to be in England I shall drop in for coffee.

Andrew is still recovering, and Aaron is not sick yet but has been cranky all evening, so I had best get some rest before someone is sick and large quantities of laundrying are required once more.

I've had a few adventures pre-flu that I will hopefully get a chance to update you on in the next few days. Night, night all.

I have realized something important

while Andrew has had the stomach flu. When you have small children, two sets of sheets is just not enough.

Extra time

We've all got the flu, and you are apparently all gone for the weekend. I will accept mug comments for my coaster giveaway until Monday night. Hopefully this is just a 24 or 48 hr bug.

The Fateful (and much over-blown) Post 325

FINALLY! Here is my celebration of my own verbosity. I would like to thank you, my readers new and old, for actually being willing to read my absurd, wordy, scatterbrained little blog. I really do enjoy writing it, and think of it as being able to go out for "coffee"with you all (since I am sadly lacking in coffee friends around here). Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to make some coasters.

So, here is what I have lovingly constructed out of an old pair of jeans and some of my favorite scraps:

This is a better view of the colours (no flash, but still under flourecents -- these babies are hot off the sewing machine):

I shall not regale you with the Tale of Four Coasters right now. Suffice it to say that I am keeping my first batch of coasters due to the sheer atrociousness of the workmanship. This set is much nicer and sturdier.

If you would like to receive these coasters in the mail, this is your task. Yes, I will make it simple. Leave a comment on this post and tell me about your favorite coffee or tea mug. I love mugs, and generally don't have any that match because I pick up one or two here and there. My friend Kym and I have a whole philosophy of mugs. At my friend Sharon's house I always get in trouble for using her and Rich's mugs (not just using a mug, but for using THE mug). So describe your favorite mug (or take a photo and post it somewhere and link to it, if you're feeling fancy) and tell me why you love it.

Just a note for those lurkers (hi, Bev and Sharon. Are you still out there, Pete?). If you don't have a blog, write a comment anyway and post it as "annonymous", but leave your name.

I'll put all the names in the hat and allow Andrew to pull one out on Saturday evening, after the dust has settled from the youth group car wash.

Our Lovely Blossoms

The blossoms typically only last a few days before a strong wind comes a blows them away.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night's Sleep

Aside from not being finished my giveaway items (thus not wanting to get to post #325 too quickly), I have also been getting really lousy sleeps right now. Apparently, although Aaron is not as expressive as Andrew, he is much more stubborn. If I remember correctly, Andrew protested night weaning for about a week, then gave in and went to sleep. We are now on day . . . ten of night weaning with Aaron. He was awake from 10pm until 1:30 am. He just would not settle without being nursed, and I would not give in and nurse him. Finally, Dave drove him around in the car, and even still he grumbled until I got back up with him and slept on the couch. He has not been that bad every night, but I have been up walking the floor with him every night, sometimes for up to an hour or so.

I was considering relenting and trying again in a month or so. But I really need to be able to think logically again. And having possesion of my short term memory, and what little good sense I am naturally gifted with would be good too. I'll hopefully be able to post more later tonight, if I don't fall asleep over my sewing machine.

Oh, you want to know what happened?

Sorry to keep you all hanging, my devoted readers (I think I'm up to somewhere around 5 now). Well. Things seemed to be hanging by a thread -- we weren't sure if anyone was coming to our BBQ. Ironically, one of the other families appeared at church, but then didn't mention the BBQ at all to Dave and left right after church. So we were still in the dark on Sunday after church as to how many people were actually coming to our house.

But we told the one family, who lives on a farm (ie- 20 min out of town) to come on over, and I finished chopping and icing and doing all those last minute things, and then the phone rang. One of the other women called asking, "So, is watermelon okay to bring? Anything else we have to bring?"With a big sigh of releif I told her watermelon was fine. So the two South African doctor's families did show up, fruit in tow, and join our meal.

Dave scorched the burgers (there was no e coli anywhere in sight, let me tell you) and cooked all forty patties that were in the box, despite there only being about 12 people there (we are still eating hambergers). But the toppings covered it over well. My birthday cake for Dave -- my favorite chocolate cake recipie -- was excellent and well received, and everyone happily sang Happy Birthday to Dave. The meeting went well, with our busy families deciding it is realistic to meet for quarterly get togethers.

It was pretty fun. The conversation was light for the most part, but interesting -- about accents and how you get / keep / lose them, and weather and farming (I told you so) and why South Africa exports so many doctors, and how nice it is to have fresh fruit that is not oranges availiable again. But the atmosphere was relaxed and everyone had fun. The kids, for the most part, amused themselves. Andrew, miraculously didn't get in a single fight with any of the kids, despite there being a 2 yr old, another 3 year old, a 5 yr old and a 7 yr old present ( I attribute this to death's sandbox and about a million shovels). Aaron slept almost the whole event, as did the other baby, and all was good. Very encouraging and fun. We may even be able to invite some of the families over one on one and enjoy ourselves sometime.

So now, do I post this under social mishaps or not? That is the question.

animal log cabin full

animal log cabin full
Originally uploaded by brit

Hey, Lisa. I think I might do something like this with the fat quarters you sent me. I could put little bits of the animal print in the centre and use the others (plus a couple more) for the logs. Cute, eh?

The Kenmore will be ok.

It probably only needs a new needle. Silly me, thinking I could sew through denim with a dull needle. What am I sewing through denim for, you ask? Wouldn't you like to know. I plan to show you on the impending post 325.

We are hosting a BBQ tomorrow. Those of you who knew me in my former lives might not find this that surprising, since I used to be quite a socialite (I had 10 or 12 friends in my attic bachelor suite appartment for Thanksgiving dinner the year I was married in Thunder Bay, and one year I fed all Jeremy Smyth's hungry eccentric bachelor friends Thanksgiving dinner, plus two other families). But since we have moved here, we have not really entertained very much. This is partially because Andrew was not the sort of baby or toddler who really made it easy to have people over, partially because I've been remiss in keeping the house in any semblance of order and so Dave doesn't like people to see the mess, and partially because we've just been too worn out from having to do pastoral and pastoral family type visits all the time, and I do eccentric meal nights with the youth group once every month or two, so I get my mass scale cooking bug satiated. I think the last party we had was having the Hetkes for Christmas, and before that it was Andrew's birthday in September.

The rules of entertaining are really different here than they are in B.C. Out on the West Coast, if someone tells you to come at 6, you show up around 6:15 and expect to be given an appetizer and wine and chat with them while they finish cooking, then eat around 6:45 or 7ish. Food was often experimental or ethnic (well, my friends were all from elsewhere, so my apple pie was ethnic to them). Since most of my friends were still childless or in the small house or condo - no furniture stage, seating tended to be of the informal food balanced on your lap with your drink on the window sill behind you variety. There would be one dessert that was consumed with strong coffee, but often followed with more wine. These gatherings would go late into the night, with rousing or mellow discussions of ideas, music, literature or just talking about our lives now and in the past.

In this part of Saskatchewan, I have found that if someone tells you to be there at 6, you had better show up at 5:50 because dinner will be on the table at 6 and cold at 6:15. You wait until you are formally seated, and generally eat your roast meat, potatoes, salad and two veg meal. This is followed by a dessert and dainties (squares and cookies and the like) and coffee. The main topics of conversation (since most people have known one another for their whole life) is the weather, the crops, and your family. Or the good joke so and so told you last week or last year or a decade ago. Given, most of the people I've visited who are from here are older, or have never really lived anywhere else, so their expectations and life experience are different than that of my friends on the coast. But it really is a different mindset, even with younger folk. You just don't talk about religion, politics or anything controversial. Its not really done.

In any case, the apple blossoms are coming out and Dave's birthday is coming up and we want to start building in to some of the young famililies in our church, so tomorrow is the day. The house is tidy, the lawn is mowed and I've baked a cake so we can sing happy birthday to Dave, and the groceries are all bought. We've only had one ÿes" out of the six families we invited, but we've had three non-responses. So we shall see how it goes. I will probably make a mess of it again, but perhaps I will get it sort of right this time. Wish me luck.

Thanks, Carla

For reminding me (see comments on a Complaint) of activities. We have had a much better, if messier, last few days. I just find that because I came from one of those "You're three and a half now. You can get up and get your own breakfast, can't you? Why should we wake up with you?"houses, Í can forget to be age-appropriate in my expectations. I fail to remember that you can't leave a 17 month old and a three year old alone for 10 min. and expect them both to be happy and safe when you return. I forget that they're still at the age where they need some help entertaining themselves, and that it is actually my job to keep them busy. Especially Aaron.

I did get him busy on Thursday, and in one hour he threw playdoh all over the kitchen, "washed"his plastic dishes (and discovered that he could get at anything on the counter with the help of my cooking spatula -- hello big sharp knives), went "shopping"in his cupboard of recyclables and raced cars. But he failed to damage himself or pester his brother, which is what counts.

So thanks, Carla, for the reminder. I bow to your years of child-rearing wisdom.

Disappearing one and four patch . . .

This is the little quilt top I was working on the other day. Remember how I said I needed a new brain? Well, I made this out of my head, and I was super tired and preoccupied whenever I was working on it. So first, its super small, becuase I forgot to add a half inch to the four patch squares. So they were smaller than my big patches. Then, my iron would not get hot, so all the seams were really fat and aukward and it just wouldn't go together nicely. Dave was kind enough to get me a new T-fal iron when he was in the city this week, so that should be fixed now. Then, I was piecing the final few bigger sections and not pinning. The baby woke up after I had put the squares together, but before I started sewing. So I guess I picked up the wrong side, becuase I sewed it together so that the entire pattern of the quilts (one patch, four patch, one patch, four patch) was obliterated. And I had the choice of a big pink square in the middle or a completely unbalanced quilt top. So big pink square it was. (I guess I could have ripped the seam, but I just didn't have the extra energy).

The abseloute saving grace of this little baby is the Freshcut fabric. It is so beautiful that no matter what you do to it, your end result still looks stunning.

Anyway, there's no batting, just a plush blanket on the back. At first I just topstiched the sides, but the cotton was shifting, so I put a few ties in it to hold it together. Of course, since my sewing machine isn't working, it will probably fall apart anyway, so i needn't have bothered.

This quilt was one of the many goofy things I've done lately that has made me realize it is time to night wean Aaron. 18 months without a solid night's sleep is catching up on me.

First spring rains.

Poor Little Kenmore.

It seems my 15 yr old Kenmore sewing machine is on its last legs, unless I can find a repair man somewhere. It is skipping stitches like crazy. I thought I was just sewing everything too fast lately, because I'd had a lot of things falling apart. Like the piecing on my quilts, the Olives I made for Christmas, the edges of some of my robots . . . I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner, actually, since almost everything I've made in the last year has fallen apart somewhere. I just thought I was overtired and harried from generally sewing while defending the machine from little hands. But here the machine has been skipping stitches all this time. So I'm not as bad of a stitcher as I had thought . . . I would guess this problem is about a year old, becuase the first thing that showed real signs of falling apart on the first washing was this quilt here . Lisa and Kris, you need to let me know if your quilts have fallen apart signifigantly since you've got them. I know Aaron's quilt was mostly okay, but it did need a few patches. But the bags I made myself and Andrew have been awesome, so I don't know if its maybe a tension problem, or a cotton vs heavier fabric problem .. . ug. Of course, I have made and gifted about four or five quilts during that time, so probably all the quilts I"ve made and blithely given to my friends have fallen to pieces . . . sigh. Sorry, guys.

Anyway, I'll have to do some research and find out what's wrong, and maybe see if I can borrow my friend Allison's machine until I sort the trouble out.

A Complaint.

Things are pretty lonely around here lately. I had been seeing less and less of the group of ladies that I used to do coffee with every week and various other things throughout the week and month. I kind of suspected that maybe they were cutting me out, because whenever I would phone anyone to try to set up a playdate, I would get the öh, we're kind of busy, I have this or that to do"routine, but I found out about a week and a half ago that they actually changed the day they were doing coffee and didn't tell me about it. So I'm pretty hurt about that, becuase it means I have maybe one or two friends left in town, and one of them is really busy, and the other is part of that group and usually keeps herself really busy. So I am an extrovert with no way to recharge myself except harassing my husband, the introvert who works with people all day.

Also Aaron is in that really evil toddler stage where he's hitting and throwing and having tantrums all day long about everything. I really find this stage draining becuase they just test and test and test all day and you just feel so negative at the end of the day becuase all you did was say "no. no. no. no. no."all day and pull them off of things / take things away / relocate / distract them. He's not very distractable, so the old diverting of attention ploy doesn't really work, its usually just got to be a direct no and remove the child with much screaming and flailing. But every time I get too tired and decide to let him be and not shadow his every move, there he is breaking a plate or smashing a mug into his brother's head or falling off the table, or standing in the middle of the street with a car honking at him.

And after his weekend being the centre of daddy's attention, Andrew has decided he doesn't actually like having a brother that much most days. He's all into playing by himself and not sharing anything. If Aaron tries to join in, he usually grabs the most precious item and the result is perilous screams of outrage. I let Andrew have a few "precious"items that Aaron isn't allowed to touch. These days he wants everything, especially anything Aaron decides to play with, is a precious item. Of course, the fact that his brother is mainly interested in taking the toys so he can smash them into Andrew's head doesn't help.

And I have a major BBQ, a fund raiser car wash, and a camping trip to plan and execute in the next three weeks. But I promise I will get those giveaway items done soon. Really.

Card Making

So, I am not a card maker. Despite being a relatively accurate quilter, I am not great at cutting straight lines. Or drawing straight lines. Or putting together things that are not fabric in a way that is pleasing to anyone buy myself. One of my friends sells Stampin'Up and I went to a card making workshop a while ago, and I got one of the two projects done, and it didn't actually work properly.

I was quite proud of myself, then, when I decided to make these invitations:

Since I'm no a paper person, I don't have one of those little paper guillotines, so I had to actually draw the lines and cut with scissors. This was all good, however, since it gave me a chance to play with the new 6 1/2 inch square plastic ruler I got at %25 off yesterday at my local quilt shop.

While I was doing this, Andrew happily cut apart all the ladies in this Sears catalogue. He can't really cut yet, but he sure has fun trying. He just doesn't beleive me that cutting is supposed to be done with ONE hand.

Sine I've Been so Text Heavy Recently:

There's been a lot of construction around here recently. This has been great for walks with the boys. We actually brought our afternoon snack to watch these guys for half an hour.

This is Andrew saying "cheese". Not sure where he got that from, since we never say it.

But Andrew obviously says it all the time, because when Dave was trying to take these pictures of Aaron and the 'do he gave himself with macaronni salad dressing, he kept saying "cheeeeisah". It cracked me up every time.

Idle parenting at its best. I did make sure they stopped at street corners.

See the big ditch they're playing in? That was one of the tracks from that giant excavator. We had many days excitement watching that thing. Sadly today there was just one small roller, which was cool, but not nearly as good as this guy.

Really Good Quote:

Children do best when they are allowed to unfold at their own speed rather than being forced to adapt to their parents'expecations for achivement. Following this principle will help a child's true self flourish and greatly reduce the risks of a "false self"outcome. Holding back the excessive applause is equally important, as the perpetual cheerleading only highlights for the child the need to adapt to the parents' hopes and expecations for outstanding behavior, as children typically do want to please their parents and see that reflected in their parents' joy. If we can come to see more clearly our children's genuine need for a less pressured trajectory through childhoold, then children will be relased from the syndrome of worry that their parents will not respect them if they do not make it to the top and the constant pressure that they must always be the best, never having a failure, never being out of sorts. . . .
. . . We need to push our children less, allow them to play more, applaud them less, and allow them to do more on their own while at the same contributing in more to others.
-- Spoiling Childhood: How Well-Meaning Parents are Giving Children Too Much -- But Not What they Need by Diane Ehrensaft

So How Did that Weekend Go, Anyway, Jill?

I'm so glad you asked. After a harried day of packing, shopping (note to self: never try buying food for 13 teenagers while toting two children under 4 on the Friday before a long weekend again. Not. Good. 'Nuff said.), and saying 'I'm sorry, Andrew but I can't play with you right now. Mommy has LOTS of things to do today. Yes, I know I"m leaving without you, but I have to get all kinds of things done before I go"about a million times, I finally got everything ready. Except the house was a disaster, since the boys had essentially been left to their own devices all day. Seriously, to their own devices. As in, I was saying, "Now, get the banana out of the fruit bowl. Yep. And get a butter knife out of the drawer. Okay, now cut little pieces for Aaron becuase he can't chew very well yet . . . then some for you too if you want . . ." and "NO, no, Aaron! Remember, we only throw soft things . . ". As you can imagine, this works well for a three and a half year old, but less well for a 16 month old.

So, the house was turned upside down, the youth kids decided to start showing up after school, around 3:45 instead of at 4:30, so I was trying to entertain them while printing final things up on the computer and calling the Laser tag place in Regina to change our booking so that I could get the schedule to work out okay and basically doing all the crazy last minute things you need to do while letting other people amuse my children and pack the vans and wouldn't you know it, I forgot to add flour to the stew I was leaving for Dave and Andrew. Now, I realize that this is not the worst thing possible, but it is a fact that while Dave considers soup to be thin and unfilling, he considers stew to be a hearty meal. The only difference, of course, if 1/3 c of flour, but none the less, he was caring for Andrew for the weekend so I thought I would humour him. So I run inside and go to pull down the flour bin and discover that the lid was not on quite right and that there is now flour all over the counter and the floor and me, and the teenagers are starting to pack the vans and I can't find the dustpan, and well, finally I get the mess half-cleaned up and get all my stuff and Aaron into the van and deal with Andrew's inevitable last minitue bout of ïts not fair"wails and get in the van and start driving.

Friday night was fine. We got to the hostel, which was great -- this old, big rambling historical house a block away from Wascana park and two blocks from downtown. It was clean, the staff and visitors were friendly, the youth kids were respectful, Aaron stayed asleep while I got the youth organized and gave them a snack and etc etc. Then, because I was feeling sick, I went to bed. I was sharing a room with 4 of the girls, and semi-slept as they went in and out getting this and that and going to bed, then not going to bed, then going outside, then getting locked on the balcony, and doing all the other sorts of things teenagers do when in a group in a new environment. Then they all decided to come to bed and were very loud while getting ready which of course woke up Aaron. He sat up and started pointing and declaiming about everything. There were bars above his head, "car? car?", a mysterious door öut!out!", his backpack "pack!pack", and strangest of all, a girl sleeping on the floor öh-oh. oh-oh. cat. oh-oh". It took me about 20 min. to get him to settle down and another 20 to get him back to sleep. So in the end, Aaron and I didn't get to sleep until midnight or so.

Which did not stop him from waking at 5:30 and attempting to feed me an endless stream of Fishermen's Friend cough drops. I got up with him at around 6ish, and the teens started waking a few moments later, giving me no chance to lie on the couch and half-watch Aaron play with Jenga blocks for half and hour.

Anway, I was tired, but the morning went well. The boys made us bacon and eggs, we all went and wandered around Wascana park (which is very lovely -- if you've ever taken the Trans-Canada through Regina you've seen it. It is on either side of the bridge with the cool carved columns that you cross in the middle of town, just after the two "skyscapers"that make up the tall buildings in downtown.) and did our little talk and reflection time, and the teens played on the swings and teetertotters and got all the upper-middle class OCD parents all grumpy for disrupting their precious progenies' perfect mornings with some noise and rowdy behavior. Aaron loved the park, especially when the girls showed him how to feed the geese. Unfortunately he wanted to climb into the water to get closer to the geese and I spent the rest of the time in the park chasing him away from the waterfront. He was also fascinated by the leaves, because Regina is 3 hrs due south, so they actually had leaves on the trees (green haze, Lisa). He was so cute in his little red windbreaker and blue track pants and blue and red shoes. Aaron is really too little to run, but he does it anyway, simply by pushing off on the balls of his feet, so he has this really funny little jog that he does when he's excited. It was very cute.

After this, things started getting a little blurry for me as I got sicker and sicker. We went to the Cathedral district, a kind of funky area of town with little specialty shops and resteraunts and stuff. I guess I must have looked pretty retched becuase the staff kept coming over to ask if I was doing all right. I had been carrying Aaron on my back on the walk there (about 5 or 6 city blocks), and he is probably close to 25 lbs, plus the 5 lbs of the hard frame backpack, so I was pretty tired. I did get to have a really tasty Jerk Chicken wrap and a good latte and get to Groovy Mama and get myself some underwear that fit (yay) and get back in time for our meeting time, and Aaron fell asleep in the backpack, which was perfect. He also slept all the way on our walk another 5 or 6 blocks to the mall.

The funny thing about the mall that is downtown Regina (I don't remember its name) is that it has all the shops that you would expect at the main mall in the city: Gap, American Eagle, the Bay, Roots, etc, all those things that make you think "big mall", but it doesn't have any of the big box stores so its not actually that big. And it has the pillars of the old bank in the centre of it, which is pretty funny. Our time at the mall was fine. The kids had mostly been on band tour all week and already been at malls all week, so they were kind of bored, but that was okay, becuase I had given them a big lecure on the fleeting nature of material things that morning anyway, so they all would have felt bad if they'd bought tons of stuff. I did get a new pair of shorts and another pair of my favoirte jeans (for $20 no less), and then I decided to sit down and wait for our mall time to be over.

I found a couch and set the still-sleeping Aaron down next to me. Then I sat and watched people go down the escalator for a while. I love doing this kind of thing, becuase its one of those circumstances where people aren't really doing anything, so they tend to let a bit of their character and relationship with the people around them peek through. Watching strangers body language fascinates me, especially the writer /actor part of me. Anyway, this kept me busy for a good half and hour or so. Then I started to get tired, so I decided to take a nap. No sooner do I get really settled into my nap when I hear a voice say, Ëxcuse me, mam". It was the security guard.
me: yes?
guard: um, what are you doing, mam?
me: I am chaperoning some teenagers and they are wandering around the mall. Since I'm waiting for them and I'm sick I was taking a nap.
guard: I can't let you do that. Sorry.
me: what?
guard: you're not allowed to sleep in the mall.
me: but I'm sick.
guard: sorry, mam. If we let you sleep in the mall, we have to let everyone sleep in the mall. No sleeping in the mall.
me: okay.
Does this sort of thing happen to anyone else, or just to me? Seriously.
Well, I guess I was getting pretty sick by this point, so maybe I did look a bit dishevelled. But I was obviously not drunk, I had a small child and a bag of purchases from one of the stores in the mall . . . it was a bit ridiculous.

The rest of the night was just a continuing story of Jill being really sick with one of those colds that only I get and continue to go about my day as if nothing is wrong. Everyone else sensibly cancels out of things and goes to bed for the day. I, on the other hand, galivant around Regina with 11 teenagers and one other chaperone while carrying a toddler on my back. So I don't actually remember much about dinner because I was too sick to concentrate on anything but breathing by then. After that we took the kids to a movie, but I didn't go in because I thought the big screens would be a bit much for Aaron. Instead I went and got some expectorant from the drugstore and sat in a half-daze, watching Aaron overturn chairs in the vacant food court. All I will say about this part of the trip is a) I'm glad one of the teens decided to come out of the movie and play with my son for a while and b) never guestimate how much 2 tsp of extra-strength Robitussen expectorat is. Under any circumstances. Really not a good idea at all. Effective, yes. Pleasant? No. Eventually, after a rather unpleasant clearing out of the mucous in my lungs and the food in my stomach, I took Aaron out to the van and nursed him to sleep, then fell asleep for the rest of the movie. I drove the kids to laser tag (crazy day, eh?) and the other chaperone went in and got them set up and they played while I slept in the van. Then we went back to our hostel and I crashed right away with only a "breakfast is at 8:30, don't be late".

The next morning I was feeling significantly better, and only had my normal barking cough and prolific mucous (If you have never seen me with a cold, you really should sometime. I'm very gifted at being outragously ill). It was still a kind of surreal morning for me. Here I was, supposedly leading this reatreat, and all the kids are by now doing everything for me becuase I'm so sick -- taking care of Aaron, reminding me of things, doing dishes, etc, etc. And then two of the girls pull out a pack of Tarot cards they had bought the day before, which of course I had to veto. Then we met this older Sri Lankan man who was a buddist and was in Regina to go somewhere else in Saskatchewan and meditate at the tomb of some famous Indian spiritualist. Then we went to the Catholic Cathedral in Regina, which is a really beautiful building with a huge pipe organ and the great ancient catholic choral music, sung from behind in the balcony and all the pomp and ceremony of the cathoic church. It was really quite a strange, spiritually intense morning, all said, especially when one is sick.

After that we went to McDonalds, where Aaron had the time of his life getting all the teenagers to feed him fries and take him into the playplace and feed him MORE fries. Then we drove the 3 hrs home. Everyone was really grumpy with each other by then, and I was in the sleepy van, so it was pretty mellow. We finally got home, everything was sorted out, and I was left to put the boys to bed, have a bath and go to sleep.

We have spent the last two days in recovery mode. I spent all day Monday cleaning the house up (this is always my pennance for leaving it a mess -I come back to it in exactly the same condition I left it in ) and all day today convincing our boys that they really did like it better having one parent split their attention between two children rather than each having a parent (plus whoever else happened to be around) at their beck and call. Aaron spent all day today disrupting all Andrew's games and nursing (he was on a sitting-down-to-eat strike) and Aaron spent all day screaming at Aaron for wanting to play with any of the toys in the house. Tonight I put them both to bed and they had a good pat and tickle and snuggle time before falling asleep, so they should be okay again tomorrow, I hope.

So thats how the weekend went. I was once more reminded of my need to ask for help rather than assuming that I"ll be able to handle everything on my own. And the kids learned how to be sensitive to the needs of others (well, of me anyway) and had fun playing laser tag and seeing Iron man, even if I wasn't with them. And both my children survived and will soon be back on their regular un-even keels.

I don't have the stamina for this.

Colds. Round number two in the last two months. Dave is still getting over his first cold, and now the boys and I all have another (or maybe the same one still hanging on?) cold again. We're all sick at once this time, which is no fun because I'm sick too. There is nothing quite like trying to break up fights and give instructions when you can hardly croak. Croaking "sit at the table and eat"is just not as authroitative.

Off to Regina

Well, off I go a galivanting tomorrow. Not really gallivanting, because I'm taking 11 teenagers and a toddler, but none the less, I won't be around for a few days. Its kind of frustrating, though, because I never get to either of "the cities"in Saskatchewan (Saskatoon or Regina) and now I'm finally going and I won't have time to go to any of the places I want to go. This is especially unfortunate since I really need some new nursing gear and there's a great crunchy mom store in Regina and I probably won't get a chance to drop by, nor will I get to the awesome quilt shop in town. Thank goodness for online shopping.
I know what I'm going to make for the giveaway now. I was nursing the baby and I looked over and found something Dave had dumped in the garbage and went, "aha". No, its not made of re-used kleenex or baby wipes, don't worry, its much cooler than that. So I should get around to actually making it early next week, and let ya'll know whats what after that.

Have a lovely weekend, all. Hope its as nice where you are as it was here today.

Bedside odd stumpish thing

Bedside odd stumpish thing
Originally uploaded by mypurplecrayon

How much do I want to make one of these? Isn't that the cutest thing ever? All recycled wool sweaters. Want one, Kris (yeah, I'm sure you do . . .um, does Jonathan want one? Elijah?)? Send me your sweaters and its yours. Or mine if you don't want one.

Great Quilting Book

I just got this out of the library, and I am loving it. I was just browsing for some information on applique, since I have this crazy floor mat project I'm thinking of doing for the boys, and inbetween distracting Aaron from his favorite library activity (tearing books off the shelves) and trying to tune out Andrew's blow-by-blow monologue about the robot book he had just found, I happened upon this. I didn't get much of a chance to look at it, but I noticed that one of the authours has a shaved head and a tatoo and I thought she might be interesting, and the cover quilt is a riff on my favorite Thom Thomson painting, so I took it out.

Wow. John Streicker and Jan Thompson are really cool. Their quilts are totally innovative and fun. This is their "cabin fever"quilt.

Not only backgammon and checkers / chess, but the flying geese on one side are for keeping track of crib and the cicle on the other side is a "generic game board". And there are pockets for checkers, chess, game pieces and cards on the side panel / borders.

You can't see it from this photo, but the comments on the swatches are awesome too. They say things like, "Scraps from a dress that never got hemmed"and "Leftovers from a 1970 polyester project".
Then, ironically, since I'm thinking of making a travel / playmat quilt for the boys, there was this (sorry its sideways):

The tunnel? You can put a train right through it. And its not really clear in my picture of the picture, but that is a hill that the tunnel goes through, and there are bridges in the road and railway for the river to go under, and they work. LIke, you can put a boat under them. Not only that, but they have instructions to attatch a duffel bag to it so it folds up into this neat little package. I want something that also has some "buildings"on it, but I was totally trying to think of ways to make bridges, and the tunnel is way beyond my wildest dreams.

They also have placemats with fortune - cookie type pull tabs, a puppet theatre quilt, a random word / poetry quilt where you can move all the blocks around, and thats only about half the projects. These are the kinds of interesting, innovative quilts I dream of making.

Not only that, but they are Canadian, and since they are published by raincoast, I am assuming they are on the west coast.

Two hours of free time equals . ..

a fixed curtain (woo hoo, there is light in my hallway again)

a quick quilt top (more on this when its finished -- lets just say I need a new iron, and a new brain would help, too)


plus a pillow for soxul furry and a chain of half-square triangles!
Apparently no decent photography, unforunately.
Imagine if I actually got a whole day to sew. I would have some serious home updates and wardrobe renewal finished.

Woefully Unprepared for Adulthood

I sometimes wonder if the reason my generation (by which I mean people I know in their late 20's and their 30's -- are we gen X? Or are we in one of those no-mans lands of generational mish-mash? Not sure) has such a high rate of depression and general frustration with life is just because we were not well prepared to become adults.
First, let me explain to you what I mean by adulthood. I am now in that stage of my life where I have to do a lot of routine, mundane things. I have to wake up with my children at 6 am. I have to sweep the floor about a hundred times a day. I have to remind my 3 year old to go to the bathroom, take his shoes off at the door and wear his hat about a thousand times a day. I have to remove my one year old from the kitchen table about a million times a day. Every night I must pick up the days detrius -- toy cars, cast off socks, and tiny O-shaped cereal. Every morning I know that I will be arguing with my son about his juice intake. Every single morning at about 9 am after he finished his second cup of juice for the day (and thus fulfills his juice quota). If I want to maintain good health at my age I need to eat right, excersise and get to bed at a decent hour. I have to accept and enjoy the small things in life, and fit in fun time in the small corners of my day and week. I have to let go of some of my dreams, for now, for the sake of my small children and my sanity. All these things are what I need to do for my life to run smoothly and my household to prosper and flourish.
But this has little relation to the things I was told and taught in my education or entertainment as a child and teenager. I was taught that I could do anything I wanted to. I was told I would be one of the first generations of women who could work and have children and have no apron strings attatched. I was given interesting projects and entertaining videos to help me learn, rather than doing rote memorization and practice assignments. I was innundated with television and movies -- where there was novelty all the time. The images I saw of women were young, glamourous, fun loving. They never had to clean floors and fold laundry. They spent all their time dancing with princes in glass slippers. If they were mothers they were either desperate single moms or overly conrolling Stepford wives. I was taught that I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to, that I had rights, and that I could do what I wanted, when I wanted.
Very little in my early experience (especially since I was the very much youngest of five) taught me responsibility, duty, and the necessity of giving up my individual rights to benefit the collective. Very little told me that maybe I wouldn't be a rock star or a star lawyer -- maybe I would just be a mechanic or a housewife. Nothing at all told me that it is not only noble but actually quite satisfying to do the tasks that are set before you to the best of your ability and to be content with the limitations of the time and place in your life where you find yourself.

Yet that is what I am finding to be true about motherhood. It is a completely unglamourous pursuit. I am lucky to get in a shower or get more than lip gloss on. I spend a lot of time down on the (stained) carpet playing with or picking up metal cars, wooden blocks and puzzle pieces. I spend most of my evenings just getting ready for the next day and then maybe, if the boys went to bed early enough, squeezing in a little sewing,a little blogging, a little reading. But I am finding that if I accept that this is where I am right now (and not where I will get stuck forever), and make the best of every moment, then I am content. I can allow myself to be transformed into this new creature: an adult woman. A mother.

Idle Parenting

Check out this article . Then go to the main Telegraph site and read all the other ones. They are a really great antidote to our culture's over-anxious parenting. And really funny, too.

I totally want this Olive Rose stuff

This is amazing fabric.
There was an add for it in Quilt magazine that showed it in the greatest quilt ever. I love the brown with the red and pink big roses, and the triangle-grid like flowers, especially the red and blue, and the tiny rose toss one, especially the pink and brown. Oh the things I could do with this fabric . . . quilts, bag linings, pin cushions . . . I really want to pick up a whole bunch of this, but first I must see what Heather Bailey has been cooking up to see if it compares. I may be forced to choose one of the other . . .

Spring time fun

We have been spending all our time lately galivanting around in our yard and at the park. This has been extremely cute becuase Aaron is so interested in everything, and so aware of the world around him (Andrew was constantly overstimulated and dealing with hidden food allergies at this age). He notices every little detail, and has really funny ideas.

For example, apparently what you really need when its cold is a mitten. Two days in a row, when Andrew has thrown on his boots and coat in the early morning and gone outside, I have found Aaron outside in a t-shirt, a diaper and a mitten. After all, if your hand is warm, everything else should be too.

He is also certain that he can and should do everything Andrew does. Andrew has this little red wagon that he pulls Soxul Furry (the purple bear) around in. So sometimes, when its his turn to use the wagon, Aaron pulls his bear around in the wagon, too. The other day he pulled it all the way to the park, all around the park and all the way home. It took us FOREVER, but he insisted he was going to tow that wagon the whole way. He also likes to dress up in half the knight's armour and run around chasing Andrew.

Andrew is intensely into his own imaginative world. He loves his knights from the castle set. They are presently named Rupert and Jonathan. They still go everywhere with him, and he even made them their own plates. This morning he was going on about how they should eat their plates, which i couldn't figure out until we were reading the "C" children's encyclopedia this morning and it talked about the medieval people using bread for plates. Aha.

He has also cleared all the sand toys into one corner of the sandbox becuase he is building a road. Aaron and I are not allowed to step on the road, dig sand out of the road or otherwise be near the road because we will make it uneven. Do you think I might have a perfectionist on my hands? Perhaps.

Anyway, as spring comes and the boys get outside more, their energy is focused more on playing and exploring and less on fighting with each other and clinging onto mom. This has been great and really allowed me to relax and enjoy watching them grow and have fun. The fact that I can strap them in the wagon and tow them around when I get tired of them has something to do with that, too, I think.

Here's to green grass, warm sun, lots of barbeques and no pots and pans after supper.

Oops!

So it appears to be Tuesday and my last post was actually myt 300th post . . . but this is my hobby, so i will do a giveaway when I get around to making something. The thing is, I'm trying to think of something that many of the people who read this blog would want. So not something for someone with kids, but necessarily for someone who is crafty, but not necessarily something for someone who is my age . . . but something that might get people to come out of lurkdom for at least one comment. Hmm. I'm thinking about it. I will do something. Just give me a few more days to plan.

Still, since this is one of my main forms of entertainment, we'll pretend this is post . . . 295 or so, okay? I'm not going to stop blogging until I get something made to give away, but I'm doubting I'll get something made tonight. So I'll get back to y'all in a bit.

okay, NOW try looking at the photos

I fixed the link to the photos of the boys. Scroll down and you can see them now. What I want to know is how many people tried the link and found that it didn't work and DID NOT COMMENT. Come on people! Tell me these things! The other option is that other than Jen (who just found me on flikr), Kris is the only person who actually wanted to see them. In which case I'm totally fine with that.

I picked this up off of one of my favorite long time blog reads, spacebeer . She is a libarian in the states somewhere who reads and reviews really ineresting books and cheesy sci-fi. She is also very cool -- I wish I knew her in real life.
Before I was a mom, when I could actually think in complete sentences, I used to read a lot. I was also an English major, so I thought this would be fun. Incidentally, I'm surprised The Worm Oroborous isn't on there, or Gormengaust. I guess they're too genre-specific.

Anyway, someone compiled a list of the top 106 books tagged "unread" on Librarything, and started a nifty little meme. Here is the plan:
Bold = I've read it for fun (I'll do these ones in orange)
Underline = I read it for school (these will be blue)
Italics = I started it but didn't finish (how about green)
Asterisk = I own it, but haven't read it (we'll keep the asterix)

Jonathan Strangelove and Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

The funny thing about this list is that there's so many books on it that I think, öh, I should read that!. Also, some of the ones I have read I took out of the libary three or four times before I actually finished it. I read the Three Muskateers when I was about 12, and I think I have about $5 of overdue fines before I finished it. Jonathan Strangelove and Mr Norrell I renewed twice and took out twice and had overdue fines on. Its brilliant, but not really a pick-up-put-down novel, which is what happens when you have little kids.

Immanent giveaway . . .

Well, it looks like I've almost reached 300 posts. Should I celebrate? Indeed I should. I think I will do a giveaway. On post 300, I will tell you the deal and show you your possible fantastic reward for being a loyal reader to Life and Times of Jill. Or a disloyal reader. Your pick. Check back later this week and I'll have it all worked out. Or maybe next week . . .

One rarely mentioned advantage of extended breastfeeding

is its ability to get you out of jury duty. Just tell them you have small children at home and that you are still breastfeeding one of them. You are instantly crossed off the list. You don't need to mention that your baby is 15 months.

Finally caught on film . . .

the bookworm that's been wreacking havoc around here.

He's been tearing apart all the pop up books.Catch him quick, he's getting away . . . Curses, foiled again.

Seriously, though. Andrew and I made this today for our storytime librarian. Made with a piece of craft wire, a scrap of fabric, two balls of polyfil, the arm of a sweater and some embroidery floss. Super easy and fun. Andrew stuffed it, put the "skelleton"in and helped me thread the sewing machine.

Photos of Boys

Whew! Its been a while since I've sorted / organized any photos, mostly because I was waiting for the Lappy's return. I did say I would post some on my blog, but since there's 50 or so, I just made a set in Flikr, which you can see here . I'm thinking of blowing up 4 or 9 of them to put on our wall, both so we have something on our wall, and becuase I think it might remind the boys of how much fun they can have together (Andrew is really visual like this). Let me know which ones you like.

Finally got a wagon!

I have been trying to figure out how to transport the boys this spring and summer. I can still put Andrew in the jogging stroller and Aaron in the hiking backpack, but Andrew is almost 40 lbs, and Aaron is over 20 lbs, so it is quite gruelling to walk the twenty or thirty minutes it takes to get to the mail or the mall and back again. It was either a wagon or a double stroller, but the double jogging stroller / bike trailer things are a bit ungainly for my liking (plus last year when we had that old one Andrew was constantly screaming about Aaron leaning on him) and the regular doubles are not really for kids over 40 lbs. So I think this is the best option.

Its pretty light and slim, which I like. It fits through the doors of the post office, and I can strap the boys in so there are no Aaron's diving out of the wagon and into traffic. Also, I figure we will be able to haul ourselves to the grocery store, then haul Aaron and the groceries back and make Andrew walk, which will be easier to manage than trying to convince Andrew he really wants to carry milk and cantelopes on his lap in the stroller . . . So all in all I'm pretty happy with it. The boys also love it, and had fun helping put it together last night. I did a test run with it today, and it was great. It will mean that I can walk around town this summer, and only use the car for big grocery shops and out of town adventures.

On the other hand, I did also finish this . . .

See that? That is the sweet sight of six hundred and forty squares ready for piecing. Now I just have to draw my diagonal lines on all the cream squares and I can start feeding them through my machine. This is great, because I can piece a few squares while the boys are awake, but I can't use the rotary cutter around Aaron becuase he's so fast that he's up on the table the second he sees me get it out.

I'm Afraid I've Been Bad . . .

But seriously, look at this fabric goodness. I was surfing on equilter, looking for something to make a big Amy Butler hat out of (um, which I still haven't found) and I saw a category "new florals". I thought, "Aha, florals -- thats what I need". It led me to that lovely little butterfly print, and also the brown floral on the end (the flowers have creamy yellow highlights in real life). Then I found all the co-ordinates for the butterfly print, and the two scroll work ones (which were by Tina Givens -- found them from the brown floral) and they were on sale . . . and that was it. I'm not sure if the pink coral scrolls are staying with these or going with my Freshcut quilt, but since both are five or six quilts away, I have some time to decide. I'm seeing big log cabin blocks or those log cabin-type squares, with owls and butterflies in the centre and the others around it. It is super soft and lucious.

If it was just that, it wouldn't be so bad, but there's also this, which I picked up when I was in the city (I was actually looking for baby cord, which is a silly thing to do in April):

Not much to look at, but the bottom three are this lovely, heavy drapey cotton that is going to make me some great summer skirts. The brown is just a solid to go with the above fabrics (or one of my other many brown projects) and I was thinking of using the grey with this:
To make the skirt on the right with the contrast band. But it doesn't really match -- the grey leaves are more of a yellow-grey and the grey solid is more of a blue-grey. Arg. So I may make the little swooshy skirt on the left out of the lotus flowers, or I might make a ridiculously loud tunic or I might buy some Lotus dots to go with it (which would mean I'd have to buy more fabric, but of course I do still have to buy some hat fabric)
The blue cotton is for the short bias skirt (the short swooshy one on the left) and I might make the one on the right with the contrast band out of the green cotton with the beige for contrast. Or I might do something else with it. I love the swirly, retro-y ness of this skirt, but I'm not sure I could pull it off.

You know the Meyers - Briggs? Well, if you don't its a four-section personality test. You get typed in four different areas that make up your personality. I am an ENFP (which is a totally silly personality, which shocks you all, I am sure). Well, I am at my most "Perceiving" when it comes to fabric. The "P"means you like to leave your options open. I can hardly bear to cut and use my fabric, becuase it limits the possibilites for using it. Even though if I don't use it, it just sits there. But I love fabric in potentia as much or more as I do finished products. Silly, isn't it?

Rummage Sale Season

Today is the unofficial start of what spring is really all about in Saskatchewan -- garage sales. This weekend the Anglican church, the Catholic church and the Preschool all have their annual rummage sales. I generally hit all three. I try to be at the preschool one early or right on time becuase it has lots of toys, and I try to get to the other two earlyish on the first day (they last two days each). This year it was totally worth it on all fronts. Here's a gander at my scores:
The red is a very big, old ladies'pants suit. But it is 100% red silk, which I'm sure I can find a use for. The brown cords are probably to wear (those of you who knew me in BC will remember my other brown cords) but might be to make a bag out of. The purple cords are becuase I"m planning to make a crazy courdoroy / driving mat quilt. The sweater is 100% wool, so it will be felted and turned into a bookworm for our children's librarian to say thanks for a great year of story time.

I got this chalk board, plus a new badly damaged barn (to replace the other one I bought full of plastic animals that finally fell apart) at the preschool sale. How can anyone not want a five foot long black board to hand in their basement? Seriously. I am going to get so much more sewing done with this thing down there. It does need some touching up, however, so I may need to find some chalk board paint and the frame definitely needs sanding and repainting. Still, I was super excited to find it.At the catholic sale I scored these three lovely pieces of fabric. The two that are the same are about a third of a metre, which is great. I think I'll use on to trim a linen blouse I'm thinking o fmaking and the other will be used in something lovely when I or one of my friends has another girl (I think my long-distance-keep-in-touch friends and I are collectively 7:1 on the boys:girls front).This was my best score, though. This whole castle set, which can be completely taken apart and re-built when Andrew is older and up to that, plus four knights, a throne, two beds, a table (no chairs, oddly), a treasure chest, a cannon (anacronistic unless we are in Turkey or China), a crossbow, a catapult with chunks of logs that go together and then come apart to be shot out of said cannon, axes, swords, sheilds, armour, flags, a drawbridge . . . and some other odds and ends I haven't even checked out yet . . . wait for it . . . was $10. Yes, $10. Andrew, being an intense sort, was so excited about this castle. I bought it while he was in story time, since the Catholic church is right next to the library. Since we had walked, we had to walk back balancing it on the stroller. He wailed all the way home because he couldn't play with it immediately. But then he refused to take the short cut through the field in case the castle should be knocked over and broken. Then he played with it non-stop until Aaron woke up (I don't think this castle can handle 15 month old love, and at this point I don't think Andrew could bear to let his brother steal pieces and trail them all over the house -- there would be some serious altercations), then I let him keep out the knights. The knights stayed with him all afternoon. They ate lunch and supper with us (they are very shareful and all ate out of one bowl -- yes, their own bowl -- and gave Andrew their black olives, which are his favorite), took a bath with Andrew and are now happily sleeping next to him in bed. Apparently the three knights (the fourth one was given to Aaron so as to avoid world war three) are named Jacob, Jon and Noah. Jacob is the best fighter, Jon is the biggest and Noah is the smallest. I think the castle is a hit.

The only downside to the day was that I bought a bag of chocolate chocolate chip cookies at the preschool sale and ate almost all of them before I got home. But then, Andrew was in such a state that I had to carry him while pushing a sleeping Aaron in the stroller for 4 blocks, so I think I deserved them.

We Flew All That Way For THIS?

The Lappy has returned!

I got the Lappy back last week! I am glad to say that it has a new fan and is now up and running. Unforutnately it looks like they had a bit of trouble getting into the case to get at the fan, because there's a bit of a pucker in the frame on the left side, and the keyboard is not quite a nice as it once was -- some of the keys on the right hand side (oddly enough) are slow and a bit sticky. It may have also got bumped and bruised in transit, I'm not sure. Ah well, the lovely new sheen was bound to wear off eventually. It may also be that Aaron smashed something into the right hand side of the keyboard while I wasn't looking. Sigh. The joys of a fearless 15 month old.

I do still have a ton of photos of spring to post. But since its snowing outside I don't particularly feel like posting them right now. Also I should get to bed, since the boys rise early and its 10:30.

You know you've seen "Wake Up Jeff"too many times when . . .

you are going around humming Wiggles songs all day long. Someone please put a new bug in my ear . . .I am so very tired of the Wiggles.

The funny thing is that this is not the slick, HIT entertainment version of Wake Up Jeff, but the 1999 version that, I think, must be their first video. It is super low budget, and they don't even have the iconic long sleeved t-shirts with the matching "Wiggles"insignias, they just have coloured short sleeved t-shirts. Basically they have translated their stage show plus a few little extras onto a video put together on a relatively empty sound stage. And it makes for really strange viewing. They were obviously a performing group first, because they don't really do anything to translate their act to television. The thing about film is that you can be more subtle than you are on stage. You don't need to have a ginormous smile the whole time and be quite as expressive as these guys are. When they show clips of their live show you can see that they are much more comfortable in front of an audience than in front of a camera.

This also got me thinking . . . how do people actually become children's entertainers. Like, under what circumstances do four adult men decide they are going to put together a stage show where they play intruments and sing and dance and act goofy for five year olds. And how many pints were drunk when they decided it should include a giant dog, a pirate, a dinosoar and an octopus? Or were those just the costumes they could find / make? Are they childhood friends? Did they meet during a theatre degree where they happened to find out they all played instuments and liked being goofy? Were they doing their ed degrees to become elementary teachers and decided to give this a go on the side? . . .

Definitely time to get a new video from the library. I am Wiggled right out.

My first tutorial - elasticizing snap up pants.

I think this makes me an official sewing nerd. I was thinking of doing this anyway, but I did it now because of this contest .
Here's the back story (there is always a back story or a theory for everything around here). Andrew is not the most independent of children. At three and a half he has been using the potty for almost a year now. Unfortunately I can not convince him that he could actually do this without my presence. If Andrew pees in the potty and no one sees it, did he actually get relief? Apparently not.
Part of the deal with this, I think, is that I can't seem to find nice pants without snap waists. Little girls get all sorts of cute little yoga pants and skirts that just pull on, but little boys, with their slower fine motor skills development, are somehow stuck with zippers and snaps. I decided that it was time to figure out how to alleviate this situation and make things quicker and easier when summer comes and we're outside a lot, so I don't have to leave Aaron to play in traffic (which he most definitely would do) while I take Andrew to the bathroom.
I did the tutorial in Flikr because its kind of image heavy, so it just seemed easier. You can find it right here .

You know you're an attatchment mama when. .

your three year old carries his baby everywhere. Like to the grocery store, the bathroom, the park, on the motorcycle, to the library . . . everywhere we go, Soxul Furry comes with us. She doesn't just go TO the park, she is carried all around the park. Andrew does everything one handed while holding his baby. He will very rarely let me put Soxul Furry in my bag so he can play two-handed, but usually he insists that she has to be carried with him.

Also, at supper, Andrew was talking about how he was going to have a baby soon. Dave gently broke it to him that he couldn't have a baby in his tummy because he was a boy, and Andrew broke down into tears. Not just his usual fake wail, but real, heart-broken, gasping for air sobs and tears. Poor boy. Dave tried to explain to him that he could still HAVE a baby, he just couldn't carry the baby inside his tummy, but that didn't help.

You know you are a sewing mama when . . .

you stop by the fabric store to pick up some elastic for a tutorial you want to make to enter a contest over at sew, mama, sew, and your son insists on coming in to pick up some fabric to buy a pillow for his baby (the purple bear Soxul Furry). Then when you are in the store your baby watches you pick out fabric and then pick out matching thread, so after declaring "fbrc!" he grabs the first thing he can find (a roll of on-sale ribbon) and brings it around the corner to line it up with the spools of thread so he can get some too.

Finally!

In case you're wondering where I've been, I've been outside! The snow has finally almost melted, and we have had a fun week in the mud. I think Andrew went through three pairs of pants yesterday and two or three plus his splash pants the day before. I have been so tired after all the fresh air and running around after little boys and walking to the park and digging in the sandbox and rescuing Aaron from everything that I have fallen into bed, usually with the boys, all week. I have lots of wonderful photos to show off our exploits, but since the Lappy is being FedExed back to me today (should arrive tomorrow) I shall wait to download my photos.

I should have plenty of time to do that this weekend, since its supposed to snow.

I had to laugh . .

when I read this quote from fabric designer Tina Givens, in response to the question, "Do you have a personal style?":

"Ecclectic. Crazy. I've been told that I dress like a homeless woman by one of the "Stepford Wives" in town. (Let's just say that I don't do well at soccer games.) "Who says that to someone?" I asked her back. "I hope a stylish one?" I was astounded.
"So here I am looking at her in her Halloween-inspired sweater, with a big pumpkin on the front, and I'm thinking that I would rather dress like a homless person that that!"

A kindred spirit. No wonder I love her fabric so much.

The interview is in the back of Quilter's Home May/June 2008, which I thought I would try, but shan't buy again. It is very silly and slightly annoying. Apparently it is "For the new generation of quilters", but that seems to be the generation that is in their 40's and 50's, so I guess I'm part of the NEW new generation of quilters? Anyway, any magazine that is written almost entirely by one guy and who likes to call me his little chicken and insist that I become an art quilter and suggest that someone wrap their chairs in batiks (eww -- I hope he was joking) is not selling any magazines to me, boyfriend. And also he doesn't include Denise Schmidt on his list of "Most Influential People in Quilting". Silly magazine. Perhaps I should subscribe . . .

Whew!

I found my keys!

Which I lost in December. Yes, you did read right. Sometime in December, when I was packing small children and groceries into the house at the same time I dropped my keys on the driveway. Then I got distracted with dirty diapers and putting away groceries and seperating meat out into meal-sized portions and breaking up fights. Then I forgot that I had dropped them at all, and went to sleep for the night (most likely while putting the boys to bed, so without any of my night time tidying routine completed). Then it snowed. Then my neighbours kindly decided to clear both our driveways with their ATV with a snow scoop on the front. Then I realized my keys were missing.

This was not just my car keys. This was the mail key, my bike key, the key to the United Church (a precious and much coveted commodity), and the house key. The full set. I scoured the house from top to bottom looking for them. I rummaged through all the reusable grocery bags about a hundred times looking for them. I feared that I had used disposable plastic garbage bags, then thrown out the garbage bag with the keys in it when I seperated out the meat. Then I sort of assumed they were somewhere on the lawn and didn't worry too much. Until I locked the keys in the car with it running one night in February. At which point I did the whole search again, but Dave was merciful and called a tow truck to unlock the car.

Since things started to thaw a little bit in March, I have been vigilatly looking for the glimmer of a purple clip hook every time I went outside. I have been searching for the black edge of a plastic car door unlocker. And this morning, as I hurried the boys out to the car for church, there it was. Half of a car door opener peeking out of the snow, tantalizing me. I yanked on it, and out of the snow came . . . my keys!

I am so glad to have my own keys again. Dave is also glad I have my own keys again becuase this means that a) we can start locking the door again, b) I will check the mail more regularly and c) he doesn't have to constantly ask where his keys are when I forget to put them up on the key hook I installed so I wouldn't lose my keys.

My latest attempt at convincing myself that I really do need to keep the house tidy and clean ( I know I do, but after a grinding day with the boys it seems like such a chore to then spend an hour doing, well, chores) is to re-name the event. I no longer clean up after the boys' bedtime. I make the house happy again. Really, who wants to relax when the couch is pulled apart and spread all over the floor, you can't walk without stepping on something small and metal and every view contains at least one piece of crumpled laundry (usually all Aaron's -- he's at that age where everything he encounters during the course of the day finds its way on his shirt and inevitably makes him cold, wet and cranky).

Off I go to make the house happy again.

Sick, sick, sick

Well, the yukky snot fairy (jingle, jingle, jingle -- oops, sorry) has been making the rounds at our house these days. Last week I spent three days carrying Aaron in the mei tai almost all day and nursing him about thousand times a day. I thought this was making life complicated, but forutnately Andrew was on a big space kick, and he and Leonov managed to take many playdoh -covered trips to the moon and space walks while I tended the baby and let the house get turned upside down. Then I started to get sick, so I decided to just let everything roll into complete chaos mode and relax with the boys. At which point Aaron started feeling better, but Andrew got sick. Fortunately this was right when Dave finished his work week, so I got a bit of help, and now I am feeling better and the floors are no longer sticky (that is my new definition of a "cleanish" house -- you can find your gloves, you have clean clothes to wear, you can find a clean spoon and bowl, the garbage has not yet overflowed and the floors are not sticky. If the clean clothes are in your drawer, that is bonus points). Andrew however, is still sick.

As many of you are already aware, Andrew has a tiny dramatic streak. Yes, he has been feverish for three days, but one does tend to lose their patience when every time anything puts pressure on any part of his body it is greeted with a wail of "ow! ow! ow!". Yesterday he was really sick -- like, lay around all day and slept and didn't eat kind of sick. Today he is slightly better -- just better enough to be extremely demanding but not better enough that I can get upset with him for it.

I have discovered that it is easier to have a sick toddler and healthy preschooler than it is to have a healthy toddler and a sick preschooler. Here is why: you can carry a sick toddler around the house with you and still manage to preapre meals and entertain your three year old. But when your toddler is healthy, he wants to get into everything and go everywhere (outside, into the basement, in the bath, up on the table, etc) while your preschooler just wants to lie in one place, preferably in front of a television with you beside him.

The one upside to this is naptime. Both boys have been napping late morning, giving me a bit of breathing room. And Andrew has been waking up at 7 or 8 am instead of his usual 5 or 6, which is blissful (left to his own devices, Aaron will "sleep in" until 6 or so). Ironically, I haven't felt this well rested in quite a while.

Maybe one day . . .

Mukwonago 1022
Originally uploaded by Piece of Me

I could make something this amazing.