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.

one down, 39 to go . . .

So I have the half-triangle squares done for almost two blocks -- but all are done for this one. I think that I'm going to have to toss out some of my creams (the sweet pea one and the one with bright red), because they read as too bright, but other than that I'm pretty happy with it. I just have to decide which order (if any) I want the colours in the stars to go. I'm kind of inclined to make all the blocks in this colour scheme (I have several prints in each colour):

But then I could just mix them randomly, too. What do you think, Sharon? (the quilts are for her girls, after all) Because I'm doing the half-triangles by sewing across two squares and creating two blocks at once, I've decided to keep the orange with green and dark blue and the red with yellow and light blue. Things are just less confusing that way. Anyway, just finished ironing them flat, despite sick children and meltdowns due to Andrew waking up at 3 (yes, 3) am for the day, so I thought I would share.

Supper with Alexi Leonov

Yes, thats right. I had supper with the first man to walk in space today. And this morning I got some toast and tea for Neil Armstrong. Yesterday it was Yuri Gagarin who was drifting around our house, riding motorbikes (apparently a prerequisite for being an astronaut) and getting covered in playdough space ships. We are on a bit of a space kick here. It all started with the Backyardigans episode where they go to Mars. Which led to questions about astronauts and space. Then I found a volume of the Snoopy Science Encyclopedia in our basment (thank you library book sale - I got all 15 volumes for $10) and realized that a lot had happened since they were written in the 70's. So we trooped off to the library and found an Eyewitness - type book about the Lunar Landings. We don't actually read all the information on the pages (Andrew is only 3 and a half) but we look at the pictures and read all the little blurbs and talk about them.

I'm totally amazed by Andrew's memory for small details. He's going to be one of those kids who corrects the teacher during class lectures. This is what you get when you cross my imagination and curiosity with Dave's attention to details. Some people in our church are giving us their set of childrens' encyclopedias one letter at a time (their daughter is 31, and again they're from the 70's and pretty funny). I don't think we'll always be hearing "Andrew, brush your teeth so you can read your Encyclopedia" forever.

In other news, the Monkeys in a Barrell (Andrew's Easter present -- chocolate allergies do limit easter basket possibilities) also like toast. They have toasters attatched to the sides of their barrell house (so they don't fall out when we spill the monkeys) and they spend all day in there making and consuming toast. Sounds like our house some days.

Too Short, or Too Long?

I can't decide.

It either needs to be long enough to cover the whole window or I need to hem it up into a cafe curtain. I'm considering doing the latter right now, becuase this window really does make a difference in the amount of light we have in this part of our house, and it does illuminate the one yellow wall. But then I would be kicking myself becuase I already cut 5" off the bottom, and I would have rather had 10 or 12" straight cut than two 5" strips.

What do y'all think?

Dear Winter:

We all love you dearly, and we're glad that you visit yearly with a lovely blanket of snow. But overstaying your welcome can be the death of any relationship. Does "First Day of Spring" mean anything to you? How abour "Easter Weekend." Nothing? No?

Okay, maybe I should try a different tactic:

Dear Spring:
I am once again unimpressed with your attendance record. In the four years I have been in this province you have failed to arrive by "The First Day of Spring" even once. If this tardiness continues I will be forced to complain to your supervisor.

This is my car at 9:30 am on March 24.

Why I Should Have Been An Upper Class British Victorian

• ankles were all the rage during parts of the Victorian era, having been hidden under long skirts for a really long time. I have great ankles


• clutter was a good thing


• rather than trying to do 100 things at once, you could just demand that the butler do them all


• I could spend my winters in London being clever and witty and my summers in my house in the country making crazy quilts and harrassing my neighbours


• someone else would be responsible for hunting down my children and getting them dressed in the morning


• pre-Raphelite hair was in


• eccentricity was in


• the winters are not so damn long in England

Close to Home: Faithful

I totally agree with this .

Latest Little Odds and Ends

As usual, I've been using my spare moments to whip up a few little things. First, I finished Morwyn's Christmas / Birthday present. Um, yeah, so its 3 months late. I cut out MR-1 at the same time as I cut out the boys' robots, but then never got the time to sew and embroider her. She sat patiently in a drawer, pinned together, just needing me to sew the two sides of her body together and give her a face and control panel. I think she's quite sweet and charming, overall. Lisa said Morwyn (who is Aaron's age) would like it as long as there were "things to tug on", thus the little orange felt "switches". I love her face, I think if I do any more robots I will do the face like this -- the embroidered eyes are very charming. The embroidery is really gimpy and uneven, and I'm sure Lisa will make fun of me for it, but thats okay, becuase its done and its cute.

I also made these two little pincushions. The pattern is designed by Heather Bailey . The fabric for mine (the yellow and green one) just makes me happy. I am also happy to have a pincushion. Up until now I have been using the back of a magnetic business card to hold my pins as I sew. But I thought this would be more cheery and also easier to move around quickly when Aaron goes to grab for all my pins. It was eating my pins, though, so I had to open it up and put more stuffing in it. The pink and turqoise one is for Lisa (Christmas again). I made it second, so it should be good for stuffing thickness. Note to self after finishing this project: Buy a thimble.

Steps mini quilt

Steps mini quilt
Originally uploaded by stitchindye

Don't you wish your wall was that colour (and that you had that art quilt, while we're wishing)? I do. Seriously considering painting the two walls in my kitchen this colour. No, really, I am.

Status: March 18

What I've Been Doing: swimming and lifting weights, shovelling snow, playing with the boys, trying to figure out what is wrong with my laptop, actually keeping up with the housework (gasp), spring decluttering

What I've Been Reading: Who Let the Blogs Out (Biz Stone), Quilts and More (Spring 2008), Martha Stewart Living (sent to me in place of Blueprint), lots of crafty blogs, Scream Free Parenting, The Idiot's Guide to Being Organized, PC Magazines Guide to Vista, the Book of Ephesians

What I've Been Making: Pincusions, Morwyn's robot (last one for a while, I think), bags, multi-grain bread, fingerpaint, chicken stew

What I've Been Thinking About: the immanent decline of the North American Civilization, fabric, how Andrew's quirks irritate me because they're my quirks too, when winter will end, wether it is good or just ridiculous to try to make money from your hobbies, blogging, how fast the feedback loop is between designers and makers in the crafty part of the internet, and why all of a sudden everyone decides to like birds or the colour yellow.

What's Making Me Angry: molars peeking just above he surface of the gums but not coming in, pettiness, my own inability to keep track of everything, te immanent decline of the North American Civilization, endless winters, the sad demise of my double bike trailer / stroller, incessant whining and climbing and pestering and bossing, my inability to sew something that doesn't fall apart.

What's Making Me Happy: watching Aaron discover the outside world for the first time, listening to Andrew's descriptions of sending his bear into space or being chased by the police, watching my boys play together happily, having patterns come out of my head and work in real life, orange Lotus fabric, Thai curry with cocanut milk and no tomatos, French vanilla yogurt, bright green everything, organic apples, longer stretches of sleep at night.

What I've Been Planning: painting my house (but then, I'm perpetually planning that), "big kid" quilts, night weaning, spring time fun, youth retreats, summer vacation, my parents'50th wedding anniversary (very minimally).

The Lappy is up and running again!

Yes, that's right. No need to go to the doctor. Unfortunately there was a need for me to reboot my entire computer and lose all my information. Since I've only had the computer for a little while, and all my photos were aither burned to cd or on the memory card, all I lost was my list of favortie websites, two articles and a couple of newsletters. No worries.

I must say I now know more about Vista and my laptop than I thought I ever would, and that I will now back things up more religiously.

Update: No, the Lappy's fan is broken, I think. We're going to have to send Lappy to Saskatoon for under-warranty (I hope) repairs. Sigh. I have to phone the place tomorrow to find out how to best go about shipping Lappy.

In other news, hey, look, HTML! I also just learned how to do this - hi kris , which makes me feel like a "real" blogger. Other "realish" blog features that I have thus far resisted to come, although possibly not until I get the Lappy back.

Pre-Spring

Right now we are in the season I like to call Pre-Spring. Depending on the weather and how fast everything melts, we may have a few days or up to a month of pre-spring. This is the time of year when the snow melts a little bit every day, the concrete and lawns become more visible and the mud starts to appear. But at night, it is cold enough that everything freezes over again, causing all kinds of fun variations on ice and puddles.

When I was little I remember this being one of my favorite seasons. When I was in kindergarten, my friend Colleen and I spent a whole week creating a small lake in her back lane by simply moving all the snow we could find in her neighbourhood into one puddle so that it melted and turned into one big sink hole. At the time it seemed enormous, although now I would guess it was maybe 8 or 10 feet across.

It is fun to introduce the boys to this season. Aaron is just excited to be outside for the first time he can remember. He points out pine cones, trees, rocks, cars, snow, fences, and houses to me. He squirms to get out of my arms and then stands there, dumbfounded by the sheer immensity of his surroundings. He demands that I come down to his level, then points at everything and says "eh" until I give it a name. Then he walks around for a little while, takes his mitts off and pokes at things, and tries to run away.

Andrew is having a lot of fun exploring all the different kinds of ice. We walk down our back lane and he kicks the snowbanks, stomps through patches of mud and smashes thin layers of ice, soaking his boots in the water below. He slips and slides over the thick, slick ice where the gutters usually are in front of our house. He cracks pieces of thin, icy-snow that melted to slush yesterday and then refroze and delights in the crunching sound his boots make. He trekks out the the sandbox and attempts to dig in the frozen sand, and examines the melting water in his plastic house. He is a scientist, examining and cataloging and experimenting with these variations on the theme of ice.

The Lappy is Sick!

Yesterday, I installed some updates on my Lappy. Then I went and typed the post before this one while leaning the computer on the futon while Aaron slept next to me (he's STILL getting / not getting molars -- they are all poking through now). And then suddenly, just as I was editing it, the screen went blank and the Lappy died. This morning I managed to boot it up in safe mode and found out that Word Perfect had been corrupted, so I reinstalled that and uninstalled the updates. Then it wouldn't shut down. I finally got it to shut down, and now it won't boot up. All I get is blank screen, baby. Just blank black screen with an arrow button. So I don't know if Vista is gone, taking all my programs and data with it, or if its just hiding somewhere . . . arg. I have a copy of everything on cd, but like I know how to reinstall it all. I will give myself a day to figure it out, then I will be off to the computer hospital for repairs. Sigh. I knew it was too good to be true that I had a laptop all of my very own.

Family Centered Parenting?

I've been thinking . . . I know these are famous last words for me (apparently second only to "I have a theory about that . . . "), but bear with me. I've been thinking and reading a lot about parenting since I've had children. This is not really a surprise, since I don't work and I must think about something all day. I am also the kind of person who likes to do things based on an underlying philosophy. So, as I was saying, I've been thinking and reading a lot about parenting.

One of the reasons I decided to have children, after many years of waiting (10 to be precise) was becuase I met some people who parented differently. The way they raised their children seemed to be humane and respectful and generally good. They wore their babies in slings. They breastfed for a long time. They took their kids outside to run when they got squirrely instead of trying to get them to calm down by yelling at them. Their households seemed to have a harmony and peace in them that I was not familliar with. Yes, they were people practicing attatchment parenting. Their kids were generally calm, self- assured and good humoured. Most of all, they seemed comfortable in their skin, and comfortable with the world around them, and comfortable in their family. Their parents valued and respected them, but also seemed to manage to discipline them.

When I was pregnant, my friend Pat suggested that I check out "The Baby Book" by Dr Sears. She said "Of course, its from the perspective of attachment parenting, but its also just a really helpful book". That was all she said.

When Andrew was born I had not read the book, but I had read about Attachment parenting, and I had a sling, and I was determined to breatfeed and sleep with my baby. But after two weeks of hell, I decided I needed to actually read the book, not just have some vague idea of what I was doing from what people on the internet were saying about it. So I bought the book, and I was sold. Andrew was the model high-needs baby, and is a very high-needs child. Aside from that, what I loved about the book was the whole premise that my parenting should be guided by a balance of the child's need and my own needs. Of course, when they were a tiny newborn, their needs would win out most of the time. But as they got older, I should consider when my needs (for sleep, for example) outweighed their peceived needs (to nurse all night, for example), and even further along, when they were out growing something and needed to be gently moved along to a more appropriate behavoir.

When I went online, however, I discovered that a lot of women were only hearing the message "listen to your baby's needs" and never hearing the message "take care of yourself so you can meet your baby's needs". I, too, went through stages where I allowed myself to become utterly exhausted, frustrated and tapped out because I was becoming a martyr; I was allowing my child's perceived need for my constant, undivided attention, to overcome my real need for things like sleep, showers and excersise. Even worse, as Andrew grew, I began to become guilty when I disciplined him. I would think, "Is this undermining his attachment to me? Is this going to harm his self-image later?".

I realized that I had fallen into child-centered parenting. The concept that your child should be the centre and guide of your parenting choices. If they say they need it, then they do. I spent a lot of time agonizing about how to meet my child's need to go out every day while still getting my house clean. I wondered how I could possibly have a shower when my child needed Richard Scaryy's Best Numbers Book Ever read to him for the tenth time in a row. How could I get supper made when he needed to go ouside and play? If I denied him these things, how could he possibly become a secure, confident individual?

Then we had a second child. All was well at first. I could read to Andrew while Aaron was nursing. I could carry Aaron in the sling while I got Andrew whatever he needed. I could play with both boys at the same time, mostly, becuase Aaron was pretty amused by his brother, and was mostly in my arms anyway. But as Aaron grew, he started to have more compliated needs. Needs that sometimes conflicted with Andrew's. What do I do when my 3 year old wants to be by my side reading a book but my baby needs to be walked in relative quiet to fall asleep? What do I do when my older child is having a tantrum and my younger child needs a diaper change? What do I do when I have finally got my baby to sleep and I really need 10 min. and a cup of coffee to be able to be sane all day, and my son wants to sit on my lap and read another book?

Around Christmas time, I realized things were not as they should be. Something had gone amiss. Aaron had started walking, and Andrew was a disaster. He screamed, whined and cajoled to get his own way. He was never happy, even when he did have my undivided attention. He knocked down his brother every chance he got. I felt like I was powerless, held in the tyranical grip of a three year old.

Some of the books I had read made things even worse. Books that said that I should just try to stay out of the way of sibling conflict, simply giving them negotion tools to put into action. I should allow them the unfettered right to express their feeling towards one another so that nothing was submerged or festering. I was setting up bad patterns and systems that would haunt my children throughout their adult life. I was terrified of raising children who would have to spend their entire adult hood in therapy, talking about how badly I had messed them up, and how they could have acheived so much more, if only their mother had played with them more . . . and then suddenly, I realized that this was getting ridiculous.

Essentially, it seemed to me that some more extreme child-centered, gentle discipline stuff was just manipulation. Learn how to manipulate your child rather than punishing them, and they will still make your life more peaceful and grown up to be an autonomous, self- assured adult. Teach them to express and fulfill their every desire and they will have the confidence to do whatever they want to. Will we really be peaceful if I allow my children to express their every desire? Is unfettered confidence and self-assurance really going to set them up to live life well?

Most of all, I started wondering if this was really a Christian way to raise my children. Where was the part where they learned self-control, gentleness, kindness, self-sacrifice, other-centeredness? Where did they learn to respect those around them, when they were always given waht they wanted to the expense of their parents' sanity or the family's wellbeing? Where did they learn self-control, where did they learn to put away anger, wrath, envy, jealousy, lust and the rest of the gang, when I was allowing them to freely express and act on any emotion and impulse they happened to have? How exactly did child-centered parenting fit with my most basice and underlying philosophy of all -- Christian virtue?

All of this was swirling around in my head as I approached the New year, with its dire call for change and resolution. All this mixed into my desire for a life full of joy and peace and hope. All of this recombined with my desire to pass on my faith, my concept of virtue to my children. All of this was shaken together with my other desired to raise my children in a way that promoted respect and love and honour for children and adults. All this gelled into my newly hatched thoughts on parenting.

I have decided that I am not committed to child-centered, nor strictly parent-centred parenting, but rather to family-centered parenting. We are still into the whole attachment thing -- listening to our children, valuing them as unique individuals, seeking to form andearly attachment and discpline them based on communication and natural consequences. But we are also more deeply into the whole Christian thing -- a philosophy of life that in its most basic, form is expressed in the idea of confession, repentance and regeneration. In this context, I think it is important to teach children that they are part of a family -- first and foremost their own family, but also other families, including their church, their community and their world.

A family has many people. In our daily lives, we must balance the needs of all these people. One child or adult can not be the focus of everything. All the family members must work together, grow together, and learn to love one another. There are responsibilities in a family as well as rights and privildeges. We need to balance our desire for fun times with the reality that we are responsible for caring for our house and our selves. We must balance our desire to keep everything to ourselves with the responsitility to respect the other and share.

A Christian family is also one that encourages virtuous action. We must teach our sons what is right and wrong. We must let them know when they have overstepped the boundaries and help them make things right. This includes not just asking forgiveness, but also taking on the responsibility of the consequences for their behavior. This means gradually learning to control our rage or replace our laziness with action. This means being given the grace to fail and be forgiven, and the means to act better in the future.

The most amazing thing about this shift, for me, has been the freedom from the guilt of setting and enforcing limits, and from the fear of damaging my children by simply asking them to respect those around them. I have been able to parent from a more centered, authentic place, because I am parenting out of my beileifs rather than my fears and guilt. I am still a gentle disicplinarian. I beleive in teaching and guiding my children more than punishing them. Of course there are time-outs for pushing and defiance and natural consequences applied where possible. But I no longer feel afraid to tell my son, "You can not do that becuase it is wrong. That is not how we act in our family".

I hope that as our family grows and matures we will learn to do things becuase they are loving, respectful and honoring to one another and to God. Not just becuase there is a punishment waiting at the other end. Not becuase "I" said so. Also, not becuase it feels right to you. Not becuase you need to express your selfhood. But because it is to the benefit of the individual, to the betterment of the society as a whole, and to the glory of God.

What AM I going to do with all that Freshcut fabric, you ask?

Well, Dana from Old Red Barn Co. did. Check out her blog and the contest she's running tomorrow for a lovely quilt here: http://oldredbarnco.blogspot.com/.

I think I will probably do this:

Only mine will be more lovely because it will not have such terrible fabrics. I'll use the cream flowers for the outside squares, and the peach and brown mums for the cetre four squares, and maybe . . . the lotus for the cetre square. Then use one of the bright greens or yellows for the "stars" and the jellybean brown for the small purple print. I might cut out the yellow zig-zag frames all together. I'm still trying to decide wether they're integral to the design of the quilt or not . . . but yeah, its pretty quick, and will show off the big flowers nicely.

Or I might just do 8" squares of all the freshcut and lotus prints I have surrounded 4" creamy sashing. I really do hate chooseing what to do with this fabric. Its so pretty I am afraid to ruin it by cutting into it. But its not doing it any favours to leave it in my bin to be brought out, admired and put back, now is it? Hmm . . .

In Case You Thought I've Been Slacking . . .

I am just about to start a big project -- two matching twin bed quilts for my god-dauther and her sister. I am super excited to work with the fabric and to make the quilts, but sort of dreading the first few stages. The pattern I'm working with suggests making half-triangle squares in a way that wastes a LOT of fabric (I am sure I could find something to do with 600 little triangles, but I digress). So I have to re-figure out the cutting requirements to do a less wasteful form of half-triangle piece, then do all the cutting and then draw centre lines on about 200 little squares. After that it will be all good. I really love piecing things, its just getting past doing all the math and drawing all those little lines . . .

So, in the noble spirit of procrastination, I decided to do a few little projects before I start. Firstly, I decided the cushions I had in my living room were too dull. So I ripped them open, made plain muslin covered pillows out of the fibrefil, and then made these very bright and cheery slipcovers. They are washable, in colours I love and, best of all, based on a design by William Morris. Dave loves all things Arts and Crafts, so this is actually a very good thing. The other thing I've been working on are a set of these. This is my trial one, and there are four more to come. They are simple unlined canvas with a 2" band of quilting cotton around the top to make them pretty. These are for my friend Sharon's entry way which is very small and crowded. She painted it red, and wanted to put up pegs like the ones I have to add some white. That didn't end up happening, though, so these are sort of a way to add a bit of cream to the space. Also they only really have five hooks for hanging jackets and no shelves or anything for odds and ends. These give her some space to store extra mits and winter stuff in the winter and sunscreen, sunglasses and hats in the summer. I was all excited becuase I thought they were an original thought and I might be able to sell them on etsy, but then I realized they had been seeded by something similar I had seen around Christmas, so no such luck. I will have to make myself a set, though. And, um, take my hand stitching stuff out of this one and give it to Sharon . . .
I'm also working on one more robot and a curtain and a couple of pincushions. I might intersperse these with parts of quilt-making, though, for when I need a break from piecing half-triangles.

Blocks

For Christmas we got the boys a set of wooden building blocks. Andrew loves to be a builder, and was really frustrated trying to use ABC blocks to build with. His solution to this was to tear apart wood things in our house, like the shoe rack and the top of the toy box and use these for building. But once disassembled they became simply random pieces of wood, and wouldn't really build anything, so he would complain, "I don't have enough wood, Mommy! I need more wood!"

The set we got is really nice. Just the perfect size for him to hold in his hands and to build things that are really tall and big quite easily. What has amazed me is how he leapt from not really knowing what to do with them to building these fanciful, multi-layered castles and towers. He uses them in ways that I, as an adult, never would have thought of. For instance, the "archway" blocks are rarely ever used to make an arch. Instead he loves to set the cut out half-triangle on top of tall column, then carefully balance the archway on top of the half-circle, then build more levels onto this precarious structure. It really is wonderful to watch him work. They have really been a fantastic and rewarding toy for him.

Yesterday the late afternoon light was perfect. The sun is just starting to come back (yay spring light, if not spring thaw) and we had this cool, lovely winter afternoon sun yesterday. It made me so happy to get these cute portraits of the boys.

Do you think Aaron might be getting some teeth? Check out that baby drool.

Ridiculous Fish and Cat Quilt or Why you shouldn't try to sew while a 13 month old is attacking your machine"

I had a lot of fun in Feb. following along with the Sew, Mama, Sew quilting month found here ( http://www.sewmamasew.com/blog2/ ).

It even inspired me to add one more thing to my ginormous list of sewing projects I would like to get to. I wanted to try one of the blocks I hadn't seen before, the shoo fly. I was really interested in the idea that the secondary pattern of the blocks made a set of rectangles on each side of the centre square and a diamond in the middle, and I wanted to try playing with this by using three fabrics instead of the traditional two.

I knew I was pretty desperately busy, especially since Aaron has been walking off table tops a la Wile E Coyote lately, but I thought I could probably finish a simple 4 block doll quilt for Andrew's baby bear in short order. So I picked out some fabrics I loved and made four of these:

At least I thought that is what I made. I actually put one together, then photographed it, then went back and made the other three. But because Andrew kept insisting I stop to "heal" him from his motorcycle acciden

ts, and Aaron kept climbing up and trying to steal my thread and get his fingers sewn off, and then at night (when I can often get an hour or so of sewing in) Aaron kept waking up all congested and teething and miserable, I was sewing in short bits and pieces with much distraction and interruption. So apparently, without noticing until I had the whole thing together and sandwiched with some flannel backing, I had done this:

Yes, indeed. Not only are two of the top rows put on the wrong blocks so that one block has fish on two sides (instead of one) and one block has cats on all four sides (instead of three), but I had sewn one of the triangle-squares on upside down. And then trimmed the block without noticing it. Arg, arg, arg.

So, in ALL my spare time, and with many other better things to do, I decided that I could not leave this like this. Andrew, at 3, doesn't really care, but it would irritate me every time I saw it, so I had to pull it all apart and stitch it back together again. Because I had already squared all the blocks up, they were all wonky when I put them together again, so none of the points match now. And that is what I get for trying to prove my quilting prowess to the amazingly talented people of the crafty blogosphere. My worst, most disastrous project since Sam's monkey quilt turned pink a year and a half ago. Ah well. The finished quilt looks all bright and sparkly and lovely from a distance.

And Soxul Furry likes it all the same.

I found a pattern for my Freshcut wall hanging! Its not anything really complicated, and it doesn't have the "Modern" look I was originally thinking of, but it is quick, it will highlight the large scale florals really nicely and it will add colour to my very blank wall. Hooray for impulse buying of quilt magazines!

Finally -- Fun in the Snow!

Last week the temperatures finally rose to a livable temperature. At the first opportunity I, and everyone else in town, donned their lightest winter gear and headed outside. Andrew and I had shovelled off part of the deck the day before, so Aaron could finally go out an enjoy the winter. We put on our solar fleeces and snow pants and other cold weather gear and headed out. Andrew had a great time digging pathways through the snow. He made it all the way to the sandbox and dug down to the sand.

Then he continued along the fence, down the slide and over to the little climbing / slide house that I had just dug out for Aaron.

We took Aaron down the laneway and off to see a bulldozer moving snow around, and to watch some people skating. Andrew climbed a "giant" mountain of snow. On the way back to our yard Andrew was running way ahead down the laneway. It was lovely to see him so happy to be out, and finally comfortable enough in his neighbourhood and himself to run to our yard by himself. I let Aaron walk for a little bit, but he was tenative. You could see him thinking, "This is all so big. Those . . . tall things. That . . .big wide thing above us. All the stuff on the ground . . . " I decided I had to fill in a few words for him as we went.

Its hard to remember, sometimes, that Aaron doesn't remember the outside, since for the last few months he's just been rushed from house to car to store or house. He loves going out and just staring at the sheer size of everything. It is all so beautiful and new for him. I love that gift that children give us -- the gift to see the world anew.

I Hate Facebook

Really. I used to get emails from people, where they actually told me how they were doing and what was going on in their lives. Sometimes I would get comments on my blog, or go and find out what other people were doing by looking at their pictures and reading their charming stories on their blogs. Now people send me digital eggs and ask me to be a vampire. Facebook is nice for sending quick messages about things back and forth, or for getting in touch with people you haven't seen in a while, but in general, it sucks.

New Thought on Wall Hanging

Okay, forget the big rectange idea. It seemed like a good idea in my head, but I think instead I"m either going to do some 10" pinwheels out of some of the fabrics or some smaller (6") or so squares surrounded by cream, or a combination of square-in-square blocks and one layer log cabin blocks (like a big square in the middle with one layer of colour / pattern) with five or six of the fabrics.

Ooh, Aaron is standing on his little kitchen and eating dried kidney beans Andrew left in the top of the "coffemaker". Better go.

Help Me Crafty Bloggosphere. You're my only Hope.

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know that I am plagued with blank white walls. I know, you may find this hard to beleive considering how colourful my quilts and my prose (hem hem) are, but my walls are virtually blank. This is what happens when you spend years of your life spending all your money on education and gas ( to drive to work and assorted educational institutions) and have never actually spent time in your house before. Why stay at home and look at your blank walls when there is that little sushi resteraunt down the road, or Chapters just a 10 min. drive away?

Well, times have changed and we're not in BC anymore. There is no chapters. There are no sushi resteraunts. The local coffee shop closes at 6pm most nights. And though we have been here for 3 years we still have relatively blank walls.

Since this winter will not end, and I am tired of looking at a platte of blank white snow outside and blank beige walls inside, I have decided it is time to put something on the walls. Since I don't have three or four hundred dollars to unload on a large piece of art, I decided I should do something in fabric. Incidentally this justifies buying more fabric, which is a side bonus.

I am thinking of just making 9 squares (but then I was thinking rectangles -- about 13"x17") sashed with cream fabric and bound in something green or pink, and these were the fabrics I thought I would use at first:

But then when I arranged them in a square, I found the yellow one too busy, so I was left with this:
I was thinking of either putting another piece of fabric in it, or some sort of pieced block or applique (a picture made out of cut out and sewn on fabric, for you non-sewers out there). The whole I idea was that it should be quick, though, since I have a lot of other things on the go, and Aaron keeps climbing up and trying to get his fingers sewn over when I try to sew during the day, so my sewing time is now confined to the evening, since I'm trying really hard not to stay up into the wee hours of the night anymore.

I tried a few different things for the centre fabric. I think this one is too light. I'm kicking myself for not getting the one with the orange birds and brown flowers. I really don' want to wait to order that online, though, and I can't get this kind of stuff locally.
Option number two is to put a swatch of the decor fabric I'm making pillows out of. But, well, its home decor fabric and its hard to do it justice in a 13 x 17 rectange, as much as I love love love this fabric:
This is actually the one I liked the best. I am hesitating, however, becuase I actually bought this fabric to make a curtain for my entry way (the only area of my house that is decorated), and I wouldn't have enough to do that if I cut a big square out of it. Which means ordering one metre of fabric online. This is not very cost effective because the shipping is usually about $6, but ordering many metres is, well, also not very cost effective.
I could suck it up and order more, I guess. Or I could change my plan and do something with smaller pieces of fabric and use the yellow paisley at the top. I don't know. So, help me through my dilemma, dear readers. What do you think?

Every Time I Turn Around Lately I See . . .

This.
Or this. Aaron has apparently decided that he loves to climb. Unfortunately he does not yet love to get down by himself. He always starts with this look of amazement and delight that he actually made it up to his planned location. Then after walking around for a bit, he generally gets a bit nervous and starts fussing to get down. I was pulling him down immediately at first. But now I'm getting to the point where I figure that maybe if I don't instantly rescue him, he will realize that its not such a smart idea to climb onto things you can't get off of. Or he'll fall a lot.

In any case, we are now officially in a "clean table" mode again. This means that every surface except the kitchen counters (so far -- but he's pulling out chairs so it won't be long before he figures out he can move them up to the counter top) must be clear of all dangerous / sharp / breakable / interesting objects. As you can see above, he's just about to reach for my coffee.

Judith -- if you're out there, don't read this!

Odd for Nate and blanket for Jon
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

Meet Odd. He's presently sitting on the very soft, cute blanket I made as well. They are on their way to Fort McMurray to meet their new owners, Jon and Nate.
Jon is about 2 months old, and will appreciate the softness of his new blankie -- the yellow side is flannel and the blue nursery rhymes side is quilter's cotton. Its made as per the instructions in "Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts" (I do love that book).
Nate is 3 years old, and I thought it might be nice to send him something as well, since he is Dave's godson. So he gets Odd, one of my first recent attempts at a self-designed softie. You can read more about him below (above? I'm not sure).

Meet Odd.

This little guy is my first attempt at a completely original softie made from shrunk, recycled sweaters (commonly known as felted wool. But as I discovered while trying to find instructions for shrinking sweaters properly so they don't frey, this is a misnomer. Felted wool properly refers to fabric made from previously un-knit wool. So now you know).

One of the things I'm really interested in doing is finding a way to make various fun things out of recycled fabric. So in my quest to do this, I bought a few sweaters and inexpertly shrunk them. Three out of my four selected sweaters worked beautifully. The fourth one had this great snowflake pattern on it. I had great plans for the snowflake pattern, but the snowflakes came out as matted messes. The three that worked, however, produced this really soft, snuggly fabric that doesn't fray, is easy to embroider on and keeps its shape quite well. It is thicker than the felt available in Saskatoon, but considering that he quilt shop charged me $4 for a 6"x12" square of fabric and the sweaters were $6 each and will produce a lot more fabric than that, I think it was a bargain.

Odd is the second softie I have designed recently (the first is a little doll I made for a doll swap last year), and the third softie I've desined that has a head. In highschool and early university I made a number of Absurd dolls -- stuffed birds, dragons and monkeys that were perfect in every way except they were lacking heads. But in recent times I have been following some of the fantastic patterns I've found online to make my dolls and toys. So, I designed the pattern loosely based on my doll pattern.

Odd was supposed to be a bear, but the felt is really thick and so when I flipped him right side out afte sewing him together I discovered tha this ears were all wonky. Andrew and I breifly considered making him into a kangaroo, but that would have required finding a way to stitch a tail onto him. Thus, since he was a bit odd looking, he became the first of hopefully a small troop of Odds. I considered stitching a contrasting face and tummy onto him, but decided I liked the charm and simplicity of the embroidered face. I felt he needed a bit more decoration, so I added the star on a whim, and, later, this little curly tail as well.

Why Microsoft Drives Me Mad ( or alternately why I should have bought a Mac)

I have been trying to network my two computers for a month now. My old reliable is running Windows XP, and this one is running Windows Vista, and for some reason they can not seem to recognize each other. Despite the fact that they are both connected through the same router, it seems to be impossible to get them to actually talk to one another.

You may think I am not trying. But really, I have followed Help prompts, I have pushed all the buttons that say things like "Options" and "Preferences" that should lead to me being allowed to network the two computers. I have renamed my network, renamed my computers, reassigned the security features on both machines, downloaded stuff from Microsoft that was supposed tfix the problem, and actually read through the online menus on both computers and went through their lists of troubleshooting ideas. And still, no talkie.

I really am beginning to think that this process is set up to deliberately frustrate me so that I will either: a) buy Vista for my pc or b) call a computer specialist to come and click the secret box that the uninitiated can not find and charge me $50.

Seriously, you would think it would be possible to create programs that communicate with the former generations of the same program. No one bothers, but you must be able to do it.

In the meantime, in order to get my photos off my hard drive on my pc and burn them onto cds on my laptop so that my pc can once more perform a simple function in less than a month, I am going to have to upload them to somewhere online and then download them to my laptop and then burn them to cd.

And don't get me started on the fact that my laptop came with obnoxious programs with overlapping features that fight over who gets to operate my firewall and download photos off my memory card. And then won't do simple things like only download the 6 new photos on my memory card when I check "only download new photos" and instead re-downloads all 400 pictures on my memory card, thus taking up all the memory on my laptop by storing redundant information.

Arg!

I was actually going to introduce you to Odd, my first non-patterned fully recycled wool creature, but I couldn't pull him off my memory card without also downloading all 400 of my photos for a third time (in a week) so you can meet him later.

Thanks for all the nifty comments, by the way. I'll try to respond to some of them sometimes soon.

Testing, Testing . . .

I knew the moment it happened. I could tell by the feeling of overwhelming panic and frustration welling up inside me. It wasn't the moment Aaron decided to climb onto the chest. It was the moment he decided to jump off. I had run over to show him the safe way to get down, and he had jumped into my arms. Thinking that this was a great game, and merited mom's full attention, Andrew joined the game. He climbed up and declared, "Look, Aaron. I can jump off like this!" And despite my protests for Andrew to stop, he would not stop jumping over and over. And Aaron was trying to step off of the 2 ft high chest right onto the floor, and I couldn't chase Andrew into his time out chair while also keeping Aaron away from the chest . . . and I really wanted to get the laundry done. So I did what any self-respecting mother would do when her husband is sick and she has woken up at 4:30 in the morning for the second day in the row and she just wants to have a clean shirt to put on . . . I put pillows around the chest so they couldn't hurt themselves, and went back to folding laundry.
And that was the beginning of the end. No one got hurt -- we have a lot of very big couch cushions which sufficently broke everyone's falls until the jumping fiasco came to an end. But that was the moment when I didn't act, and should have. I failed the 3 year old will-mommy-really-stop-me test. And we all know (at least those of us with 3 year olds) what happens when we fail the three year old test. The whining and hitting and knocking over and demanding and general obnoxious behavior begins. "Are you going to stop me mommy? Are you going to stop me?" seems to be the question that glows in the eyes of my child. "I won't stop myself. Will you stop me? When? How many times?"
So the test begins. And so the test continued all weekend long. And all week long, until I was numb from the pinches and the screams and my back was sore from lifting a heavy three year old into the little white chair and going to set the timer, and my baby started insisting to be carried becuase being down on the floor with big brother raging was just not safe anymore. . . . and I gave up with time out and gave up taking things away and just started giving warnings. Insipid, foolish warnings that do nothing. "If you do that again . . . " my voice rings hollowly. Until my clever 3 year old starts saying "I won't do it again, mommy." as I go to take away the shovel he has just tried to plow his brother with. I am struck with the foolishness of my warnings and I take the shovel away.
And so the test culminated today with a bite. Yes, a bite from my 3 year old son. I had finally sat down with him, and was tring to have a moment of peace while he played before bed. But really he needed to go to bed, and I just wanted him to stay up later to forestall another pre-5am waking tomorrow. So he sat down next to me. And when his brother decided to climb up as well, he bit me. Hard. And I got up and just walked away. And he cried "I need you, mommy!" and in a moment he came and apologized and curled up on my lap, and we went to have a bath. And in the bath he gently smoothed bubbles over the top of his brother's head to wash his baby soft hair. And they smiled at each other and in the way of small children, all was well between them.
After he is in bed, I am left to wonder what this test is all about. Is it because I'm trying not to yell? Is it abou power? Indepenence? Attention? Maturity? I'm not sure. And then I wonder why I need to know.
On my end, it is about consistency -- my lack of it. It is why I am chronically 10 lbs overweight, 10 min. late, 1 week overdue . . . you get the picture. I decide to do it now, and then I decide to do it later, and then tomorrow, and then the tomorrows become a week, two weeks, a month until it is too late to do it at all. With a library book, all this means is that you owe the library a few dollars. But what do you owe a child who grows up with no consistent structure and discipline because you were going to do it later and later and later and then they were gone.
Generally speaking I've always been good at tests. Teachers have usually asked questions I knew the answers to. Friends have usually been disarmed by a clever quip and a quick smile and a peace offering, if needed. But my son shows me what I still need to learn. Where I need to grow, and who I need to become so I can be his best parent, and my best self.

dad's 70th quilt

dad's 70th quilt
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

So, I thought my dad was 70 this year. I did the math wrong, and have since realized that he's actually 70 next year. But that's okay, becuase that means this quilt will be 10 1/2 months early instead of 2 months late. And I wanted to make him a quilt anyway becuase he's often in and out of hospital, and while some of my other siblings can rush to his side in an emergency, I have small children and no money. So I thought at least he could bring something of me with him so he would know I was thinking of him.

The result was this quilt. It started out with a fat quarter club I joined (that didn't work out, but that is another post all together), which resulted in me having 12 fat quarters of "Aunt Purdy's Parlour", a collection I would never choose to buy -- all burgandy, navy and deep forest greens. I did realize that these are all colour my dad really loves, however, so I started collecting a few homespuns to go with them. When I had about 20 or so fat quarters I was planning to do a turning 20 type quilt with lots of big blocks.

For christmas I bought myself the "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilting Gifts" book, and I loved so many of the quilts in it (damn Martha Steward inspired photography) that I had to try some of the techniques highlighted. I thought of making a coin quilt (basically several smaller rows of coloured strips with smaller solid strips between them) but it was now the middle of December, and my dad's birthday is Dec. 31. So I opted for the big strips of homespun and the two strips of bright quilters cotton and homespun.

This quilt was really fun tomake. It was my fist time using free hand rotary cutting, which is really fun and relaxing (frankly all my rotary cutting ends up being a tiny bit freehand becuase I suck at holding a ruler straight, so it was a bit of a releif) and my first time tying a quilt. I tied it partially because its quicker, and partially because then I could do that part in Winnipeg. It was also my first time using cotton batting, which I love. It has such a nicer weight than the cheap polyester yuk I've used so far, and I can tell that it will not disappear nearly as quickly. I was initially going to bind it in the neutral plaid, but I think that would have been too dull.

Anyway, this was a pretty fast quilt for something measuring 50" x 56", and I'm sure my dad will love it.

Curses, Foiled Again!

So aside from wrangling cranky teething 13 month olds and amusing bored snowed in 3 year olds, I've been trying to finish my dad's 70th birthday quilt. I had the top done before I went to Winnipeg, and decided to tie it so I could do that part on my holiday. I did finish it while I was there, so all week long I've been trying to bind it. It took me two days of breaking up fights over swords and who gets to drive / push the motorcycle toy and chasing Aaron away from unplugging the cords and tearing his hands away from the sewing machine's moving parts, etc, etc to get the binding strips even put together. Then I started sewing them on the quilt. And apparently there was too much action going on and I was in too much of a hurry becuase until last night, when I went to hand sew it in place, I didn't even notice it was all INSIDE OUT. Arg, arg, arg! So instead of spending my entire phone conversation with my long lost friend Medea stitching the binding on the quilt and getting to feel my only sense of accomplishment for the week, I spent it ripping the entire binding off the quilt. So now that I had trimmed all the edges, I have to try to re-sew the binding on while keeping all the layers together. Sigh.

On the bright side, during conversations with my siblings in Winnipeg I realized that I did my math wrong. My dad is 69 right now and doesn't turn 70 until next January. So the quilt is now going to be 11 months early instead of one month late.

I just looked at my thermometer, and it is reading -38. That is not including the windchill. Just thought all you people in British Columbia and places like Texas and the Carolinas might like to laugh at me now. Needless to say, we are not going anywhere. And Dave is installing a block heater. Today. No more car-not-starting silliness.

I have a ridiculous Chapman adventure to post, but not right now, as Aaron just ran out of noodles and is going to start trying to climb out of his highchair any second now.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Jeremy's Storybook Quilt

Finally, I finished this quilt and then after gazing at it for a few weeks and saying to myself "well, there's no use sending it BEFORE Chistmas, because Kris won't get it in time anyway so I'll just keep it and admire it", and then "Well, now they're in BC, so there's no use sending it until they're home", I finally mailed this quilt off and today Kris received it.

Kris and I's friendship started as many of my best friendships do -- as a complete disaster. We were working together on a play, along with my good friend Jonathan, and we would all go out after the play. We were the same age, only 14 days apart. She was totally hip with everything that was going on in popular culture, while I have always been a bit of an anti-establishment, anti-whatever-is-cool-at-the-moment kind of girl. So we would be out for after-rehearsal snacks and Ricky Martin would come on. I would grumble "oh my goodness. what is WITH Ricky Martin. I am so tired of this song. I don't understand why anyone would listen to this!" and Kris would say "Really? I just caught his concert in Seattle two weeks ago." We would be talking about tatoos and I would say, "What I don't understand is women who get tatoos on their abdomens. Like, hello, ever heard of stretch marks?" and she would say, "Actually, Jill, I have a tatoo on my abdomen." And so it continued with me chronically annoying her and her chronically tripping me up.

Eventually, though, she started showing up everywhere and dating my friend Jonathan, and we discovered that we actually did like each other. In particular, we both really liked movies. I discovered that she loved old movies. And I asked a fateful question: "Have you ever seen Fred and Ginger movies?" She said no, and I said, "But you have to!" and so we decided to watch the movies together -- all of them.

From the moment we saw Ginger swank into a railway station in a cute, '30s pencil-skirt-suit and promptly get her skirt stuck in her heavy suitcase and chirp, "Porter! Porter!" we were hooked. Thus began our journey into the silly world of the 1930's dance musical extravaganza. My personal favorite is the one where Fred is a sailor, and there are several silly numbers where the crew, having nothing better to do, brushes up their large group tap dancing number skills. How can you not love that?

It is in honour of this obsession (and Kris' second son, Jeremy) that this quilt was born. All the fabrics are 1930's reproduction prints. The moment I saw the sailor print and the abc block print (Kris taught Kindergarden) featured in the same series, I knew it was going to be for her baby's quilt. I chose the pattern becuse the diamond is such an iconic art decco motif, and Kris loves art decco (and its also from the 20s and 30s).

The backing fabric was going to be just red flannel, but I thought that might be a bit overwhelming, so I found the monkey print to go with it, which is also kind of retro and cute. Kris says she loves it and that its very snuggly, so it all good. Happy birth / almost birthday Jeremy!

Gone South

Dave and I decided last winter that we would need to take a week off in January or February and go somewhere south so that we could recharge our sun and warmth batteries in the middle of the winter. We were thinking about Mexico our South America somewhere. Then we finished our summer vacation, and realized that was not realistic. So a month or so ago we were thinking of going to stay with our friend Scott's parents in LA . . .but then we looked at the price of flights. So we went south to Winnipeg.

Its pretty sad when Winnipeg is south. I must say its not any warmer, but there might be more light, and there's definitely more civilization. I've mostly just been visiting family so far, but I have already indulged in ethnic food, Starbucks lattes and a wander through Chapters. Ahh, civilization.

I think I need to start collecting Calvin and Hobbes books. Not just for entertainment, but for tips from Calvin's mom. Andrew has been on a vegetable strike all week and you know how I broke it? I disovered that if you cut the bulbous bottom parts of a red pepper just right, they look like snakes.

In other parenting news this week, Andrew is now obsessed with knights. I don't really mind this, beign a medeival / fantasy junkie myself, but I do get tired of confiscating "swords". I bought a little "How to be a Knight" book from the older kids section of our bookstore, and he found it and started getting us to read it to him. Now he will spout things like, "Oh mommy, you need to get me dressed so I have some proper padding under my armour" or "First Aaron has to be a page or groom before he can be a knight, mommy".

Aaron, on the other hand, is obsessed with dangerous and prohibited things and also telephones. One of his favorite activities is to be carried around the kitchen and talk about which things are dangerous and which are not. We point to the knife "knife, sharp". "ouch" and the oranges "oranges, they're okay" "o-anj", then the pots "ouch?" "only when they are on the stove top. Over here, not hot. Over here, ouch, hot" "ot". I was holding him in one hand while putting rice and water in a pot to cook today, and he kept pointing to the rice and saying "ouch". So I said, Nope you can put your hand in it." and as a joke he kept just touching it with the tip of one finger (like I do to show a cup is hot) and sa ying "ouch" and looking alarmed. I just hope my worse fear is not realized -- a child with Dave's taste for danger and my lack of common sense. We shall just have to watch and pray.

What I've Been Making Lately

I have been busy switching back and forth between projects and not really getting any completed. But I'll show you what I've been up to anyway. First, I made a couple of these blankets. They're very basic -- green dotty minkee on the top and white flat minkee on the bottom. I basically bought a metre of 54' minkee in each colour and divided it in half. Then I stitched them together, flipped them inside out and topstitched around the edges to make a little soft baby blankie. I THOUGH this was going to be a quick, easy way to make a blanket for my friend who just had a baby and a friend who is due in March. But I underestimated how fussy minkee is to work with. The outside is super soft and fuzzy, but the inside is this slippery synthetic stuff, so you have to cross pin every inch along the entire blanket edges so it doesn't bunch up while you're sewing it (that means you put pins both vertically and horizontally instead of just perpindicular to the edge of the fabric). Then you have to pull all those pins out as you go . . . . Then, just to make things more fussy, my cat decided to jump up and sleep on the second one when I was in the middle of pinning it. So I didn't realize that she had caused the bottom fabric to shift until AFTER I pinned and stitched it all together. Then when I flipped it inside out, I noticed that the white fabric was really awful and bunchy. So I had to pull the whole thing apart, re-pin and sew it. So: In theory, two little minkee blankets should be a quick one to two hour project. In reality they took me about five or six hours. Bu they are really really soft and snuggly. This is the roll of layers that will be a little baby quilt for Arden and Judith's new little one, Jon. It is a really sweet, simple pattern from the book "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilting Gifts" and I found some nice, snuggly flannel for one side and a cute nursery rhyme print for the other side. I did all the pinning for it, but then I decided to do the minkee blankets first, becuase my friend Taryn was having her baby any day . . . so there it sits, forlorn and unfinished.
But before I finish that, I have to turn this stack of fabric into a quilt for my dad. He turned 70 on January 1, and I decided that he should get an old man lap quilt in honour of that prodigious event. So I have been gathering these fabrics for a while, and perusing the internet and the book mentioned above for a nice, fairly quick pattern. I decided that I'm basically going to take the fabric you see at the bottom and cut it into three 10 inch strips. Then I'm going to cut freehand strips of the fat quarters and make two long "coin" type strips to be sandwiched in between those strips. Sounds confusing, but really its not. Again, I was waiting to finish the minkee blankets, and now this is next on my list of things to do. Especially since we are going to Winnipeg on Sunday, and I would like to have this finished so I can tie and bind it while we're there.
I was also very excited because I got these in the mail the other day. One of my favorite fabric shops, Keepsake Quilting brought in some Freshcut fabrics as a web exclusive. But I guess they're shop is mostly only visited by old ladies, because they were selling off the fat quarter packs for $11 each. Since you can hardly find this fabric anywhere becuase it is in such huge demand, I decided I had to buy some. In fact, I loved it so much when I got it that I then proceeded to get the farics on your right in half yard cuts as well. The ones on my left are really pretty, but not really in "my" colours, so I'm going to have to find someone who likes pretty pints and magentas and greeny-blues (what would you call that colour, Lisa?). I also got another yard of the brown - pink - green flecks, which finishes off the fabrics I need for my almost all paisley quilt that I'm going to make for myself someday.
Oh yeah, and I've been waiting until I finished these to post them, but I don't seem to be getting around to doing the embroidery on them (Andrew wants to "help" me sew and Aaron wants to try pull all the bits of felt off as I try to embroider them on), so I will post them anyway and then post the control panels later. This is ARC-1 (Andrew's Robot for Christmas -1) and BJ-1 (Beefy Jim 1 -- the grey robot actually has less stuffing thatn the multi-coloured one, but he just looks big and beefy, so I decided that his name should reflect that). These are some of my favorite fabrics in my super-bright and funky fabic stash (as opposed to my funky yet sophisticated fabric stash). Apparently I have to make a lounge suit for Rich out of the rest of the lime green.
Well, speaking of craftiness, I should be off doing some sewing intead of sitting here typing. I want to finish my dad's quilt top and make a laptop cover before I leave for Winnipeg on Sunday. Probably wishful thinking, but a girl can dream, can't she?

Sock Puppet

This is Sock Puppet. Anna Irish made him for Andrew, as one of her first knitting projects. For about six months, it sat in my hats and mits organizer, becuse Andrew was really scared of it. But now he's getting to that stage where scary is good. So when we found Sock Puppet while organizing my laundry room, Andrew took to him instantly and gave him a terrible personality.

Sock puppet is mean. He eats everything. He's not allowed to go to church becuse he's too bad for church. He makes annoying sounds that Andrew is not allowed to make ("It wasn't me, mommy, it was Sock Puppet"). He grabs Aaron by the back of the shirt and drags him out of the way. Sock puppet is a big bully.

Now we get to the nearly theological question Sock Puppet presents: Would Anna still have made Sock Puppet if she had known he would turn out to be such a disreputable character?

New Years' Resolutions

I always try to have time to take stock of my life two or three times a year. The two minimums are new years and just before September (which I still consider to be the "unofficial" start of the year), and if I can, right around Pentecost (Lent usually brings some new insight with it).


This year, as I was taking stock of my life, I had a flash of insight. This is how my brain works -- it just accumulates bits and pieces of information until it has enough to culminate and recombine into some sort of intuitive brilliance. It happened while I was having a miserable day and had tossed the boys into the sled and was dragging them downtown. I was trying to pick up a few odds and ends to finish off my Christmas present crafts. I was really grumpy because I hadn't done everything I needed to do for Christmas, and my children were driving me mad (thus the sled ride) and all seemed to be in complete disrepair. I realized that what I needed in my life was more joy.


Even the things I was supposed to enjoy -- my children, my little sewing projects, my youth group job -- had become chores. I had set such high expectations for myself and chosen such complicated ways of doing things that I couldn't keep up with my own ambition. I was exhausted because I was staying up late making complex presents for people. I was worn out from trying to entertain my three and a half year old, when I could be teaching him how to play with his brother or with his toys. I was getting frustrated with my housekeeping, but I was expending so much energy worrying and being frustrated that I wasn't actually doing anything about it. So instead of filling my life with joy and peace, I was filling my own life with frustration and anxiety.


So, my new years' resolution is to live my life more joyfully. To make less complex gifts (I always want to make sure that my gifts are interpreted as handmade = thoughtful instead of handmade = cheap, but I don't need to go to quite the lengths that I do), to keep my house clean and organized enough that we can find things when we need them (this means putting things away right away, instead of procrastinating), to get enough sleep so I'm not crabby with the kids, and to take a few moments each night to pray, stretch and write in my journal so that I feel like my spirit is organized and ready to go the next morning. I know these things don't SOUND like most people's definition of joy, but I think they are the pre-conditions that will lead to joy. If I am not carrying around the mental and emotional weight that comes from all this confusion and clutter, I will have room left inside me to be joyful.