New Eyes

Exhibit A: Much-loved glasses, worn for 6+ years

Exhibit B: Much-loved glasses destroyed by Jasper.  Is it because he loves me so much?

Exhibit C: New glasses, about which I’m feeling ambivalent at this point except that the lenses are SO CLEAN.

Sweet Little Package

Upon returning home from our trip this weekend, I had a sweet little package from Julia waiting for me. Inside was the bag o’ buttons I had won in her give-away, as well as a note from her and some note-cards for me.

L4 was eager to tear into the bag, so I had to convince her that we needed to wait until daylight to get a picture of the lovely buttons.  Meanwhile, she turned the bag this way and that, staking her claim.  And when it was time, she dove right into the button bonanza

and extracted these:

Since then she’s been sorting them out, examining the different shapes and claiming more for her own.  We’ve decided together that we’ll make a bag and decorate it with some of the buttons.  It will be a project for after I finish fulfilling a shop order.

What would you do with a pile of lovely, new-to-you buttons?

Thank you, Julia!

The Last Time These Feet Were Together. . .

We took a whirlwind trip to NH this past weekend, and the gathered feet (minus the children, whose can’t keep still) looked like this:

The last time they were together, the weather allowed for this:

Instead of playing badminton in the sun, toasting marshmallows by the fire and having “refreshing” drinks in the heat of the afternoon, we went apple picking:

Have I mentioned how much we’re missing the apples from our tree this year?  However, the apples we picked are crisp and tasty.  And Tracey made us all (with help, I know, Al!) a wonderful apple crisp for dessert on Saturday night:

No matter the weather we play UNO, our own special kind.  We also have fermented beverages (the only time I usually drink any!), dream a bit about our future commune and discuss all manner of topics.  We left later than we should have on Sunday for the drive home.  It’s always hard to leave, but especially when our visit was so short.

It was the weirdest day for weather.  It started out overcast and drizzly as we left seacoast NH.  By the time we reached Worcester, MA, it was snowing a little, and when we reached the Mass Turnpike, this is what surrounded us:

A little west of Albany the sky cleared, the sun came out, and the temperature was about 20 degrees higher.  Upon arriving home we found our house was only 51 degrees.  Guess it was cold here while we were gone, too.  We were forced to turn the heat on (missed that November 1st goal of mine again this year!).

Whenever our visits with far-away friends end I’m struck with the poignancy of the seemingly mundane: chatting while making meals, pointing out the scenery to one another, a yoga practice, a walk, swaying to favorite tunes together–all of these activities bring contentment.  Though from an outside perspective our mini-vacations might seem a bit ho-hum, I wouldn’t change them (except for the distance!).

What about you–what contentment are you finding in your everyday?

“A Matter of Damage Control”

So said Dr. Eric Post in an interview for NPR’s “Science Friday” in September of 2009 (and I thought it worked for Blog Action Day 2009). I was listening to this as I drove home from work. Not only did I find his research fascinating (you can find the interview here), but his take on action:

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And I imagine, as people will ask, is there anything we can do to reverse this or slow it down?

Dr. POST: Reversing it is a tricky issue. I mean, that would require removing carbon from the atmosphere. I think slowing it down is more the approach we have to take. And, you know, what I tell students in my classes and what I tell my own kids is this is a matter of personal decision that we can make independently of policy changes. Sure, it’s nice to try to affect policy if that’s an interest to you, but you don’t have to wait for policy to make personal decisions to reduce carbon emissions for example. I think at this point with the Arctic responding as dramatically and as quickly as it is, it’s a matter of damage control.

You don’t have to wait for policy to make personal decisions. . .  It’s so true.  You don’t have to wait for our government to think long term instead of bottom-line.  You can do that right now.  Your contribution to damage control doesn’t have to be an expensive new hybrid car or solar panels or bamboo flooring in your home.  You could simply choose to make fewer trips in the vehicle you already have, take public transportation, walk, or ride a bike.  You can turn light switches and other power off when not in use, find old treasures to make the place you live a home, or make things yourself.  Grow your own food, try to get local and organic, plant a tree, eat less meat, use less paper products–the list could go on and on and on.  And I’ve talked about all of these actions before on this blog.  For me what it comes down to is what are you willing to do, to open your mind to, to recognize.  “Be the change you want to see in the world,” (Mahatma Gandhi) is a quote that resonates with with me for the topic of climate change.  Not only that, but share what you can and help others with it. Be a model to those in your life–maybe without the preaching in which I’m engaging in this post.  I’ll leave you with one more Gandhi quote:

You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.

Or, in this case, a result so profound that its reverberations will be felt by us all.

Bento Box Bliss

In August I began another quilt, this time for our living room. We enjoyed using the picnic quilt so much that I was excited to have one in the living room. I’ve been holding onto some of the fabrics for about two years now, while some were from a recent Fat Quarter Swap in which I was involved. Regardless, they all have little bits that I love and look forward to seeing in my living room.

I loved the Modified Bento Box Quilt from Film in the Fridge and decided to go with that pattern. (One day soon I really need to update my blog links!)

As the pieces all come together I find the alchemy of it so interesting. To see how each fabric design is transformed when we see only a slice of it, how they become something different when pieced together–it’s very Gestalt. (For the non-psychologists out there, Gestalt psychologists discussed how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, in particular in related to perception.) What’s fun is that the pieces aren’t done yet. Much as I love all of those big boxes of color upon color, the next step is to cut them up! Then they all get sewn together again in a different configuration, following by piecing the top.  I haven’t decided what I’ll do for the back yet, I’m going to wait until I see the top come together, first.  When all of this is done I’ll be ready to hunker down for another season of “Freezing my Buns off” though hopefully we won’t be quite so freezing between quilted and knitted goodness and the heat of the wood burner.  I love how my various passions converge into a blissful whole.

Signs of the Season: Leaf Raking

It was a perfect autumn day on Sunday.

While I snuck a few minutes for sewing the kids burst into the crisp morning air ready for adventure. Without any prompting from me they found it with rakes and laundry bucket.

As time went on I slipped hats, hand covers and long sleeves onto their bodies and watched their energetic activities (they were all about doing this themselves!). Back and forth they traversed between the front and the back yard, building up their leaf pile.

While they played I made them hot chocolate and tea for myself, then sat back and watched them jump into the pile over and over again, taking turns, raking it back into a pile, making up new jumps, and jumping together.

Then they noticed their large mugs sitting on the patio table and came running to lap up the hot chocolate.

With warm bellies they returned to their play, and me my grading and knitting.

It was one of the most idyllic days we’ve had together in awhile. What did you do with your weekend?

Outside the Nest

My babes, right before school began this fall.

The first time I ever sent my boy on the bus all by himself I felt a tremor of trepidation. Every time he or his sister have gone off into the world, into social situations which I couldn’t monitor in me there was an undercurrent of tension and elation. They both are so much more social than I, so I was happy for them to have that need and desire for companionship fulfilled. At the same time, I was tense with concern about how they would behave with others and in turn, how they would be treated.  I’m sure many of us had less-than-pleasant experiences in our childhood interactions with our peers.  Oh, how I wish I could shield my babes from this! 

Don’t Get Cocky, Kid

I take my knitting everywhere and not just my plain stockinette stitch projects–cables, lace, projects on DPNs. . . you get the picture.  One of the projects I’m currently working on is Pembroke by Kirsten Kapur for L3.  Cable goodness for my boy, I thought it would be appropriate to work on it during his karate class.  I happily knitted along, watching all the younglings work on basic form and their kata, admiring the concentration so many were demonstrating (it was a “test” day).  I should have been paying attention to my cabling.  I finished one last row and as I looked down, I gasped inwardly (didn’t want to disturb the testing) to see this:

Half the cables twisted the wrong way–four rows down!!  Now there are some knitting mistakes that can be overlooked, that aren’t noticeable.  This one wasn’t one of them.  Arg–I did NOT want to rip out four rows, including cables.  Then I remembered Patti having a similar cabling mishap and describing how she ripped out only the section that needed to be fixed.  (The final product, btw, was beautiful.)  And so, after all the evening running around and dinner I sat down to rip out the four cables that were twisted the wrong way.  Here is what it looked like:

After watching me L1 said he would have just ripped the rows back.  But it was really satisfying to do and now that it is all done, I can sigh with relief and hope that I still might have this finished for school pictures on October 13th.  I’m sure I’ll let you all know!

Yogic Inspiration

Bringing my yoga practice into my life, beyond my mat, is important to me.  It’s been almost two years since I started practicing the Anusara-style of hatha yoga and I love it each time my body meets my mat. (Thank you, Amy, for being such a wonderful teacher!)  But what I love even more are the lessons I learn on my mat become reminders for living.  For awhile now I’ve been writing and sketching about them in my sketch/idea/inspiration book.  As summer ended I finally worked up the courage to take those sketches beyond my trust-worthy book.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the process.  I’ve never thought of myself as artist in any way.  My brother is the artist, not me.  But somehow, when I had the paints and papers and brushes and other mediums surrounding me, it didn’t matter.  I wasn’t in an art class where I had always been worried about getting a good grade with my less-than-stellar work.  This was for me and I was able to experiment and learn and be happy–and be present.

It’s also taken me another burst of courage to share the pieces here.  Any time we put anything out into the world that we have created and loved, its scary.  It’s unknown.  But as this turn of the Wheel draws toward an end and a new beginning, sharing felt right.

The last one is probably my favorite. I love balance poses, but I have also loved learning to play in them and to enjoy them and to be fine with falling. It’s been a hard lesson for me because I don’t play so much and feel such a stigma from my self-perceived failure in my “professional life.”  Learning that falling does not mean failure, well, it’s still a work in progress.  I must be patient. . . and present.

My Bliss: Japanese Pattern Books

And when I get to make things for that little face, how could I not? Really and truly, I love the patterns/clothes in these books.  I’ve learned so much from following patterns where I couldn’t read the directions.  I feel much more comfortable in my knowledge of how garments are constructed and how to make things without a pattern (though I don’t do that often) because of using these books. I’m sad I wasn’t sewing when L3 was younger so that I could have made so many of his garments, too. Alas, there’s not so much in the bigger boy (but not so much bigger) category for patterns.  So L4 gets the lion’s share of the sewing these days as sewing for L3 consists of making things like parachutes for lego creatures.

The most recent creation comes from this book.  I’ve made two other patterns from this book, which isn’t even mine (Kerry, when are you going to want this back to make something for LAB?!?).  And then there are all the other patterns from other books. . .  they have been a bit addicting for me.  Or maybe it’s how happy she is to have what I’ve made, or how much I love to see her wearing the things I’ve made.  Whatever it is, there’s bliss to be had and I’m happy to follow it.