Change the Conversation

"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."  I've been somewhat obsessively watching Mad Men lately, catching up on this series after Sweet Hubby and I took a loooong break from watching (we don't get the channel and have to wait for it to come along on Netflix).  I find myself lying awake at night, unable to sleep, thinking about what's going on with the characters and what could happen next.  I can't blame Mad Men for my insomnia, I'd be awake anyway-- I just think it's funny that after I go through the catalog of my own worries, I turn to those of the fictional characters I'm most involved with at the moment.  Today I was trying to express to a friend what I find so interesting and escapist about this series-- and I realized (aside from the costumes) it's the relationship of the women in the show to motherhood- or rather their complete lack of interest in their children.  Even the stay-at-home trophy wives in the show (with one exception) have very little to do with their kids, more interested in their clothes, husbands and affairs.  It's not that there are no women on the show, or no mothers, or even no children-- there just aren't mothers who build their lives around their children, even while they are new mothers and the children are adorable babies.

It's little wonder I find this fascinating after a day that starts with waking to the sound of Snorzy's voice in the other room, followed by homeschooling and getting the big guys to their activities all while chasing a very active toddler, through dinnertime and shuffling everyone off to bed-- there isn't a moment of my day that doesn't have to do with my children.  And I love it, in fact I love it too much-- I can't seem to wrap my head around doing anything else with my time even though I know I'll probably be mad at myself ten or twenty years from now if I don't go back to school or find a creative outlet or a career now while I'm young(ish).


I haven't been keeping up with this blog because I haven't been keeping up with my self-imposed craft challenge-- as we started our new school year and spring turned warm and wonderful, I just couldn't get excited about making things.  The temptation is to start a new blog, the way I used to start a new journal periodically as I felt I was moving into a new phase of my life (starting college, starting a career, starting a family).  I've learned though, that what works best for me is to just turn the page and start fresh from where I am, unapologetically.  When Primo was small I bought a colorful composition book at the grocery store and started a hybrid journal/scrapbook, over the years I've continued through five of these books (every time I'm afraid I'll run out of colors and have to repeat, I'll find a new one in the stationary aisle), which veer wildly in content as I go through phases of interests-- from fashion and makeup to garden plans and children's parties, preschool play time activites, literature, career planning, homeschooling and travel.  I never worry what it's 'about' or whether it fits-- it's just a brain dump, a window into what's going on in my cranium.  Never anything very serious, I'm not out to impress anyone with my sophistication!


(the pink one on the left is the original-- started ~November 2002)

And so, this blog.  We'll see if I pick up my craft challenge again, maybe when it gets cool or something causes me to get inspired again around making things.  I'll never stop writing about homeschooling-- that is, unless I stop homeschooling.  Right now stopping is not in the cards, although theoretically I've always said that I'm only committed to homeschooling one year at a time.  So, what else will I write about?  Stay tuned and see.  For today, here is a look at my Fair Acre (um, actually just a fraction of an acre in the middle of a small city)...it seems Mr. Groundhog has moved on, so I'm cautiously planting some baby vegetables this weekend, and hoping he doesn't come back to munch them!


baby kale


my enemies-- I planted two tiny rhododendrons side by side the first spring we lived in the house, and ten years later I've threatened to tear them out nine times


and right next to my enemies, my oldest plant friend-- a Jackmanii Clematis that I planted that same first spring, ten years ago, as a little start ordered from the Kelly Nurseries catalog.  The other two varieties that I planted never grew.  Every time I think he's done and not coming back, up he pops again!


some happy hostas, my new best friends of the plant world.  I love how lush and lettuce-y they are in the spring, and how happy to grow and thrive without any fussing from me.


and, a frenemy-- the wild rose climbing rose in the middle of this shot was a tiny bush donated by a friend years ago.  I didn't realize it was a climber, or I wouldn't have put it in my precious sunny patch.  He choked out a prettier rose that grew next to him until last fall, and his tendrils catch me as I try to weed and plant in the patch.  The roses are tiny and cute and plentiful, but I think it's going to be moving day for this guy, one day soon.  For now, I have his longest branches trained up along the fence-- hope they stay that way until I figure out where to put him!

AWOL

What does it mean when I don't 'find any time' to write on the blog for over two weeks?  Well, for one thing it means that the month of 'break' is over and now half my day is taken up with overseeing the boys' lessons.  We had gotten into some bad habits of doing very short days of lessons, and I was determined as we started this new 'school year' to nip that in the bud and get back to doing a good, solid morning...and in Primo's case, right on into the early afternoon, of book work.  It's going better than I anticipated, I know eventually I'll get some foot-dragging and complaint over the increase in their work, but for now it must feel novel and interesting to them, because they aren't complaining a bit.
Somehow, I can't remember ever feeling so uninspired creatively-- not even in the cold, grey tail end of winter!  I've been knitting a little, a very little, just enough that I can tell myself I haven't fallen down on my craft challenge.  I don't know what it is-- in this blooming, burgeoning season I ought to be buzzing with ideas.  Instead, I'm just biding my time, reading a lot about food (more on that in a minute) and wishing I could start my garden but instead having to wait until we trap and relocate the groundhog living under our shed.
I'd been thinking more about food and health than usual anyway, as I count calories and keep a food log (on the LoseIt! app, which I love and highly recommend) trying to lose the last 15 pounds of baby weight.  Then a chance conversation with my dear friend Ariel about the Paleo diet had me hitting up the interlibrary loan for the books It Starts With Food and Eat Like a Dinosaur, the first of those is more radical in terms of what is considered 'good' food-- no grains of any kind, no sugar, nothing that even mimics grain or sugar, only certain oils and fats, no dairy, and lots of high-quality (not factory raised) meat, and (mostly) organic vegetables and fruits.  Next I picked up Year of No Sugar, a memoir of a woman who (along with her husband and young daughters) spent a year eating very little sugar. 
At first I was convinced, and warned the family that I might ask them to radically change what we eat for a little while.  As the days passed, though, I calmed down and realized that we would never be able to stick to any really radical plan, we're just not that kind of family and I in particular am not that kind of mom.  However, I've started thinking more about what we eat, and just how many of our meals consist of a grain and some dairy.  Without cutting anything out of our diets at all, I've started making little tweaks to our meals and snacks to reduce the amount of sugar and flour that we're eating (somehow I can't wrap my head around giving up dairy, though).



(artichoke & spinach sandwich spread for Snorzy-- without the cream cheese, parmesan, and regular (sugar-containing) mayo, this wouldn't be so delicious!)


So, that is what's been going on for the past couple of weeks since I last wrote-- not a whole lot.  I hope my inspiration comes back soon, I know there is nothing I can do to force it-- one day I'll just wake up brimming with plans.

Growing

Whipping up a grocery bag holder took me less than an hour.  I like the result, it's pretty and useful, but more importantly I can see in this craft a number of ways that I've grown as a crafter since beginning my challenge this year.  Unlike last year, I can now:

1. Read a mention of an object, with no picture to go on, and imagine that I could make it
2. Troll Pinterest and find a number of tutorials to make that object
3. Skim the tutorials just to find the average dimensions of fabric needed, and the general techniques used
4. Compare the techniques and materials used by different crafters in their tutorials and determine which best suit my vision, skills and taste
5. Come up with my own ideal measurements, and also realize that with anything other than tailored clothes, these measurements can be fudged a little to suit what I have on hand
6. Sew the object, start to finish, using my own common sense and what I remember from the tutorials, without having to go back and reference anything

Ways that I'm still trying to grow: 

• as a businesswoman, I want to be better at choosing what to sell for my possible, future 'home baking business'.  I'm kicking myself that I bought a bottle of anise just before deciding I don't want to make biscotti after all-- what a waste!  And I've spent years baking dozens of recipes each year, and somehow I still can't decide what would be easy & popular enough to make a good home business.
• as a homeschooling mom, I want to be better at finding 'teachable moments' and opportunities to learn together aside from our formal lessons.  I don't mean through online videos or websites, either-- we all spend plenty of time staring at screens.  This weekend Radish and I plan to plant some seeds in the garden, there's a start anyway.  Gardening is a hard sell to Primo, though, I'll have to think of something else to do with him.

Late April Updates

Last week turned out to be one of those 'work on Snorzy's sweater' weeks, since Sweet Hubby was on vacation from work and we were too busy having fun for me to want to plan or execute a new craft.  I'm totally okay with that because since I can knit only a few rows at a sitting, this sweater is going to take forever to complete!  For this week, I'm going to sew a plastic bag caddy as my project.  I found a bunch of tutorials on Pinterest, now I just have to narrow down which one I like best, and get to work.

This is our last full week of our April break from lessons, we'll get back to it next Thursday when May begins (can't believe it's already almost May!  This year is flying by!).  I've previewed most of the curricula that we're going to use, and I'm cautiously optimistic that the kids will like the new things.  Primo will be using History Odyssey, which references Henrik Van Loon's Story of Mankind as a textbook.  Last night I started reading reviews of SOM on Goodreads, and overall they were positive but some people criticized the book and said they would never use it with children.  I've started reading it myself, but I'm not enough of a history buff to know if the history is accurate and comprehensive (I guess I'll have to get Sweet Hubby, history teacher that he is, to read it too).

I'm still in the 'product testing' phase of looking into starting a home baking business.  I tried out biscotti but found them too fussy to make, with too much waste (added to that, I noticed that there is another small business that makes biscotti just a few towns over, and I think that not having an Italian name or heritage might be a drawback).  Now I'm planning to bake some chocolate oatmeal cookies, costing out the recipe and giving it to testers to see if it would be a tempting enough product to sell in local shops.  Lovely Mother suggested I make something pretty, but I'm not sure I want to sell quantities of things that have to be carefully crafted and fussed over.

 

Shirring, and April Musings

As I mentioned in my last post, this week's craft was the Shirt Skirt from the blog Sew Like My Mom...an opportunity for me to try out elastic thread and shirring.  I read a few tutorials first, so luckily I knew this was going to be a bit of a pain-- from winding the elastic thread on a bobbin by hand, to holding the material flat as I sewed so that it would come out right and not too bunched up.  It worked ok, but this was the first of the things that I've made this year that I've been unhappy about-- I don't know if I'll use this skirt.  Here are some mistakes I made, that made this a little unlikely to make it into the wardrobe rotation:
1.  the T-shirt I chose at Goodwill was new (leftovers from Target), soft, and a good color of grey...but not very thick, or well made.  I ripped a tiny hole in it when I started sewing and had to stop, cut off half an inch, and start again.  I should have been as much concerned with the quality of the T-shirt as the color.
2.  there is a ruffley bit at the top because I left a good 1/4 inch edge when I began, fearful of going any closer to the top.  The directions said 1/8 inch, but I forgot that until I sewed all the way around and saw the ruffle appear.
3.  the directions said to do 12-15 rows of shirring but I got bored/worried about running out of elastic thread and having to wind another bobbin (I was already on my second one, that was all I prepped ahead of time) and stopped at 11.  After steaming the elastic it shrunk down and got a little stretchy, but it doesn't grip me tightly and I'd be worried this skirt would fall down if I wore it in public.  Maybe it would have been more grippy if I had gone for a few more rows of shirring.






This one I *won't* be modeling for the blog!  Above you can barely see the dots of green and purple on this light heathered grey skirt, it's hard to see from this picture why the material of the t-shirt tempted me in the first place.




This close-up gives a better idea of the material and the shirring-- I'm glad I tried it anyway, and I would try another one with a better t-shirt (maybe extra long, but not men's XL?) and maybe better quality elastic thread too.  I had to buy Dritz as that was all they had at my local store, and only afterward read in the comments of a tutorial on shirring that Dritz is the worst for this use.  Oh well.

In other news, we're almost halfway through our month-long 'break' from homeschooling-- although it's not a complete break, as things like Debate class and piano lessons are still going on, as well as physics experiments with the 4-H club which the boys just joined and some lessons with our 'tiny co-op' on Fridays with our good friends. This month off has gotten me thinking again (this crops up every couple of years) about doing a home-based baking business, selling cookies through local stores.  I'm not sure if I can really manage it on top of the homeschooling (not just the lessons, but the driving all over for activities) and keeping up with a toddler.  This month I feel like it would be possible, but I might just be thinking so because right now we're on break and my days are not over-full.  Then again, I recently read an article in a magazine (maybe Redbook? I can't remember) about having a bunch of mini jobs, less than part time, instead of a full time job or even two part-time jobs.  It felt like a revelation when I read that, because I tend to do things "all or nothing' in some ways, and it never occurred to me before that I could work a little of this and a little of that, and make money and keep myself occupied without having to compromise what I'm doing with the boys.  So, instead of imagining that I could either have a huge, busy, thriving home-based business, or not do it at all-- what if I only sold to one or two outlets, and didn't have to spend too many hours a week on the business?  The big boys are five years older than they were when I started looking into having a food business (I took a class about it in 2009)...they could be genuinely helpful (not in the cooking, but advertising, delivering, accounting) rather than just cute little sidekicks.  They're actually really excited about me starting a baking business, it motivates me to try because I don't want to disappoint them.  My family is so touchingly invested in seeing me do something besides just be the mom, it's nice.  Or insulting, wait-- are they trying to get rid of me?

April Update

We are on our 'April Break' from lessons right now, and I think I agree with Radish that this is the best of our three annual breaks, because it falls in the spring.  The idea of taking a break in changeable April is that we can pick up and run out the door whenever the sun comes out, instead of having to finish math or some such.


So, you might think that since we're on break, my craft challenge projects must be humming along.  Um, no.  Last week I did *nothing*-- just couldn't get inspired to make anything.  This week was in danger of being more of the same, and derailing my challenge, until I had a conversation with Lovely Mother about crafting and inspiration, and remembered that 'when in doubt', I can always work on Snorzy's rainbow sweater.  I was stuck on that one, once again, this time just because it was time to switch from the trim color to the main color.



 

Once I worked a little on the sweater (and I mean a *little*, I picked it up near the end of nap time so I had about 5 minutes before I heard Snorzy crying), I got out of my rut and the next thing I knew, I had two ideas for sewing projects.  I can thank my friend Jen F. for the first one: she repinned one of my Pinterest pins, from my Sewing board, and I realized this is what I want to make, next week!  It's a 'shirt skirt', made from a men's XL t-shirt, from the blog Sew Like My Mom (I feel like I've made something from her blog before, but I can't think of what).  This skirt involves shirring and elastic thread, two things I've never done/used.  Here's my sweet spot for sewing projects: things from tutorials that don't require paper patterns, about which the writer of the tutorial says something along the lines of "this can be made in an hour!", yet which also involve techniques or materials that I've never used.  This project hits that spot.

 

Also, I was reading the free magazine from Hannaford supermarket, Fresh, this morning while on hold with the phone company about our lack of dial tone, and found inspiration there, too (it comes from the weirdest places, and at the unlikeliest times)!  I haven't looked up a tutorial yet, but I know I've seen them-- for a cloth bag to hold plastic bags from the store until we can take them to be recycled.  Dull, tiny, simple, yet useful and will reduce the clutter in the house rather than adding to it-- fits the bill for my craft challenge.

 

In other news, the Big Homeschool Buy is done and delivered-- I had to move books around to different bookshelves to clear out a shelf in the dining room for all of this coming year's homeschooling materials.  I'm excited about some, intimidated by others, and realizing I need to take some time this month while we're on break to read, and write some lesson plans.  The best part was that the boys spontaneously picked up a few of the books each, read a little, and declared them good.  The one I'm currently the most intimidated by/excited about (yes, both) is a unit study called Microscope Adventure.  It's like nothing we've used before.

 

Happy Spring Chef's Apron

For my craft project this week, I made a chef's apron with the happy spring fabric that was included in the box of fabric my mom sent recently.  I had thought about using this piece for the oven mitt, but concluded at the last minute before cutting it out that it would be a waste because a) this piece was too big for such a little project and b) the charming print would have been obscured by the quilting.




After wracking my brains for an outdoor use for this (somehow that would have seemed more spring-y to me, to actually use the 'sunshine and blue skies' fabric while outdoors), I gave up and decided to make the simplest big, wearable thing I could come up with-- an apron.

One of these days I'd like to make a pretty little frou-frou apron, or one of those tricky ones that looks kind of like a dress.  But for my first one, I went simple-- a chef's apron.  I consulted some blogs, but couldn't find an example of one that was adjustable using jump rings, like the one I had hanging in my kitchen-- a nice manly apron that my lovely mother had sewn for Sweet Hubby.  So, after gleaning as much info as I could from these tutorials: Once Apron A Time and Kathy's Cottage Easy Apron , I went ahead and got started, and when I got to the bit about the top I just reverse-engineered Sweet Hubby's apron and figured out how Lovely Mother made it with the rings for adjusting.

The whole project, start to finish, took only three nap times: one for cutting the big pieces and the pockets, one for cutting the strips for the ties, making the ties and sewing on the pockets, and one more for sewing together the two sides, pressing and topstitching.  (I love topstitching-- I didn't even know what it was, before the Bunny Lovey project, and now it's my favorite part of sewing)  Several parts of this project were new and adventuresome for me: cutting out the pieces using my rotary cutter (even the big bits, even the curves), making pockets (I was trying for rounded ones on the yellow 'B side', but they looked funny once I sewed them on so I folded down the tops and pressed them, making them look like envelopes rather than half circles), the aforementioned reverse-engineering (so proud of myself for figuring something out without explicit instructions! and I didn't even break down and call Lovely Mother or Ariel for advice, like I usually do!).

I wish I had taken more photos while this was in progress, but I every time I work on a craft project I feel like I'm racing the clock, one ear cocked to hear if baby is done with his nap.

Here are the pockets and ties:



Look what came in handy, as I sewed around the whole edge of the two layers!





Here is the 'A side', just before pressing and topstitching:



And here I am, modeling the 'A side', then 'B side', then the ties in the back (which were not as long as I wanted them, but I ran out of fabric and couldn't make them longer)





I had thought I would like a big pocket on the chest (not down lower, I don't want to look like a kangaroo), but now I wish I had made it smaller, or made little hip pockets like the ones on the 'B side' instead.  Oh well!  I was completely improvising all the pockets, I'm lucky they didn't come out even more wildly wrong than this.  Also, if you look closely you can see where I had to fold up a little bit of the fabric before tying, to make this fit.  I used my Sweet Hubby's big apron as a pattern, and I was afraid if I tried to guess how to make it smaller, I would make it too small.  That's okay, I'd rather a big, voluminous apron that needs a little fold to fit, than a titchy apron that I'd never use.

One last photo: here's my new pretty apron hung up on the kitchen coat rack, next to Sweet Hubby's old manly apron.  Aw, aprons in love!



What next?  I have no idea!