rainy day crafting

Things have been a dark and low and overcast here - so gloomy and cool they're even selling ranunculus at Lowes. It's like torture for me, of course, since I desperately want a little English cottage garden, and I manage to resist temptation most of the year because that kind of flower can't get within 100 miles of central Texas with a bloom still intact. Except in February, apparently. When it looks so adorable and delicate and perfect and not like a single beam of mid June sunshine would kill it dead. 

Anyway, since I can't have my cute little cool weather flowers, I've decided I need some thrummed mittens. Bizarrely I've grown up to be the kind of person who 1. - wakes up wanting something like that? and 2. - has everything in the house to make them. What's that? Some raw wool roving? Yeah I think I saw some in the back of the hall closet. 16 year old Kate doesn't know whether to be impressed or disgusted. Mostly disgusted I guess. With everything. Except Goldeneye and Kid A. And cheetos. We both still love cheetos.

Also consoling me for the lack of a delicate cutting garden in my future is my flannel quilt. I finished this a week or so ago, and it's 1000 times warmer and cozier than your average blanket. I backed it in an old worn-soft flannel sheet, and tied it with wool (which fuzzed down to little blue pom-poms in the wash). The fabric is Anna Maria Horner, from my birthday two years ago, and I can see a line of gray Februaries stretching out before me, when I grab my gorgeous bright warm quilt off the stack of blankets and feel somewhat better.

So. Mittens and blankets are my current strategy. Also paying the library $40 (FORTY DOLLARS) for the missing read-a-long CD from Sheep in a Jeep and being able to check out hip high stacks of books again. How are you coping? I've heard good things about meth- anyone trying that? My teeth are already pretty bad.

tunnel vision

I am full of great big hard things to write about and empty of blog-sized topics.

When I get energy to make something, I find it's -just- to make something, not to document it or share it.

And my parenting days. It seems like I'm holding them to close to me right now. Challenges, sleepless nights, a garage that looks like The Room of Requirement and is in desperate need of some Fiendfyre (and yes, Thank God, I had to look up how to spell that.)

We have all of that going on, we are still here. Making chore charts, doing spelling homework, changing diapers, gardening, feeding chickens, making pies and socks. Watching Sherlock and Downton Abbey.

I am just narrowing down these days. I have exactly -so- much energy for social engagement, and I can't spend it all in one place.

irresolute

My resolutions this year.... let's see..

Last year I resolved to make socks AND I DID! Two pair! I gave one to my dad for Christmas and he could probably write a book on "Proper Reception of Knitwear Gifts" so great was his appreciation. He exclaimed at their beauty, immediately put them on, repeatedly commented on their fit, warmth and comfort, and took his shoes off at random intervals to make strangers look at his socks.

As a general rule, this is absolutely the way to make sure you get more socks. I'm yarn shopping for him right now.

It's also the way my dad does anything- full of gratitude and appreciation. Poor Chase is always caught off guard by how MUCH I need that. Like I want a fucking parade when I wash the dishes and take the kids to the park and fold laundry. But it's because my dad is SO APPRECIATIVE of everything anyone does for him. It's an amazing feeling to be loved by someone like that.

Chase's resolution loosely coincides with the new year, but he actually started exercising and calorie counting in December (seriously?! December?), and he's lost a lot of weight at this point. I guess I should try to sort of slow down the gain? So he doesn't leave me for some tattooed and be-Ugged undergrad? But these are my winter stores! Little House on the Prairie taught me that if I'm stuck in a blizzard and I can't find a haystack to burrow into, then I need to just keep walking as long as I can, and hope that my body can fuel itself with built up nutrients. How can I do that if I'm all thin and shit? Nope. This is self preservation.

Chase commented last week that he thought the BMI index needed to ask - "Do you get winded while making a quilt?"

His guess was that it would take my score up a point. What can I say? Haters gonna hate.

This years crafting resolutions - Finish my flannel tied quilt. Finish my white work whole cloth quilt. Make a map quilt. Make myself some mittens (like Laura Ingalls, however unlike Laura, when the Christmas train gets snowbound, I will not give my mittens to stupid blind Mary). I... um.. also resolve to go check some new books out of the library, so I'll stop rereading Little House. I might be getting too involved.

ALSO - I am going to try Fair Isle knitting this year. I will no longer let fear govern my knitting! FAIR ISLE OR BUST.

Let's see. What else? Probably work out a better system for monitoring baby play than "Loud or Not Loud," those being my current determining factors in acceptability.

Double up meals and freeze them, at least twice a week. This has been so helpful in the past and I don't know why I don't do it more often anyway.

Lobby to get my egalitarian church small group to read Mark Driscoll's new book. Come on guys. You know it would be a blast. For real though, try reading Pynchon again. Maybe if I stick with it, I'll get it eventually?

And that's all I've got at the moment. Other than the general- take better more loving and present care of the people (and animals) in my life. And let people take care of me.

state of the garden

It was so so hot this summer, and so dry, that we basically gave up on the garden after about mid-June. When July 4th rolled around, (pumpkin planting day, if you want them by Halloween) I thought about how many gallons of water I'd have to pour on a tiny pumpkin plant to keep it alive through August, and said, maybe next year. 

But then once it was semi-bearable outside again, we planted them anyway. And now we have pumpkins in December, even if I do have to run outside with an armful of sheets to tuck them in a couple nights a week.

I don't tuck the kale in, and it doesn't really seem to mind. Neither does the chard. These guys are just the eternal givers of the garden. Total workhorses. I haven't watered them in a month, I go out and break half of the plant off and then next time I go outside it's ready to be harvested again.

And oh how much the children will rejoice when there's finally no more left. But not today! sauteed chard for everyone! MWAHAHA!

These ladies will also rejoice if I call the garden done and let them clean up the leftovers.  Early dark means we get fewer eggs, and the cold seems to make them a bit broodier than usual. The last hard freeze finished off the birdhouse gourds (which is good, because they were covering up the wiring on the outside of the house... they got... kind of aggressive there at the end). But there's still lots of bug-eaten salad greens and flattened squash leaves and little green bean shoots from various spilled seed packets. 

My garden helpers, always there to insure that I'll never know what will come up where. They take their banished-outside microphones to the top of the playscape and give the neighborhood Christmas concerts, whether the neighbors want them or not. Coats over pajamas seems to be how we roll around here, on weekend days.  

Anyway, that's the state of the garden, mid December. There are lots of things I'd like to do differently next time- I definitely learned stuff this year. I still don't quite feel like I get out of it what I put into it. I know that I'll keep learning, and every year I work in this garden, my soil will get better and easier to work with. I just want to be better at this! All at once! (One of the many things montage-to-upbeat-music-in-80's-movies has to answer for - I feel like I should just be able to put on some ABBA and BE GREAT AT THIS). 

We're renters here, and so I don't want to make these big infrastructure investments with cedar raised beds and stuff... and I don't have the money to do that anyway. I just... work with what we've got. And that means we've got a lot of kale. 

Good thing I like kale. 

holding the adventmass line

I am trying to walk a line this season -- 

I am trying to be present (which feels hilarious to write, here on my MOM BLOG, while my family is running around asking for dinner and I am ignoring them). I am trying to be present and engaged and not always asking the girls to please for the love of God take those damn "Merry-okie" microphone toys OUTSIDE.

I want ridiculous mom blog things - all our gifts to each other to be handmade, with love. I want to help each child make a gift for the others- the gift that they dream up for their sibling. I want to make pajamas! For Christmas Eve! For everyone! I want to KNIT ALL THE THINGS. 

I want to give two dozen cookies and a quart of bourbon to everyone who has dealt with my kids in any capacity all year. I want the dogs to have little sweaters on. And to stop digging through the recycling bin in the garage. 

I want to have the perfect little containers for homemade vanilla extract, and to have... you know... made it. And also to make all the cookies that have over the years become Christmas Necessities, including the refrigerator cookies you roll in a tube that only my mom likes.

BUT. I also want to be sane in January, and to have spoken to my children in something other than a yell during the most wonderful time of the year. 

So... There's a line. The line means watching the Grinch and eating popcorn for dinner. It means picking my battles and trying hard to believe that when Jane says she doesn't need a coat because she's not cold, she might actually not be cold. It means going to HEB for a tree, not driving out to Elgin and slogging through a field full of anthills, so I can have a file in iphoto that matches last years'...  Instead of some of those handcrafted gifts over on pinterest... There might be an EZbake oven and some My Little Ponies under the tree. And it's not going to bother me. Because I'm holding the line. I'm not going to go nuts making my kids hold still so I can get good shots for grandma's silhouette collection (07). I'm not going to throw a roll of butcher paper across a room when I drop stitches on a hat the night before Christmas (09). It means I am never setting foot in a post office in December with my kids again, even if it means no one who doesn't live in Austin gets their gifts on time (11). 

Hold The Line.