bits of yarn and rutabaga

fine wool basketweave scarf

My projects are beginning to roll together for the beginning of my book. This is one of those things I would not have made except as an example right now (more of a winter thing), but it is pretty and coming along well. I have finished the teatowel set and also a small turtle pincushion that Esme has claimed as a toy and immediately introduced to her plastic turtle as a new baby. So, I might need to make another pincushion ;) We will see.

There was one rutabaga in my garden - and in the past few days something began to chew on the leaves. So, I pulled it up. It was about three to four inches of gnarled white root about twice as large as a carrot. When peeled and cut up into tiny bits the characteristic yellow flesh showed that it was indeed a rutabaga - and the scent. I know I'm weird.. but I love the smell of a rutabaga before it is cooked. We didn't have them often growing up, either - but it has just always been a 'good' thing. That is good for me :) Someone has to like them! I put the pitiful small amount of diced rutabaga (they are so much easier to cut when they are small like this, btw) into a pan with a small amount of water, salt, pepper and butter. I added some frozen zucchini and some green beans, summer squash and fresh shelly beans from the garden. Boiled and stewed for about an hour it was a very nice chowdery soup of greens, yellows and purples.

I am disappointed at the garden this year - even though it is providing food every day or so - everything is bugged and full of weeds and lackluster. The corn has fallen down, but is tasselling and silking all it can anyway... the squash bugs are on the squash, and they are fruiting as much as they can to survive. The beans are doing well but there are very few of most of the varieties. I know I will need to save seed off the Bosnian bean (absolutely a great variety I am so impressed) but feel shortchanged because it is also one of the few that is producing and leaving the pods to go to seed risks something damaging them and also not having that produce at the same time. But - I must try to get some seed off of it. Most of the things from last year that I have used seed from have done as expected. There is that one 'a squash' that is NOT what it should be. The seed was saved out of a pumpkin and is developing something that looks like a globular yellow summer squash with green stripes. All of the other pumpkins are fruiting green with green stripes like last year.

This may prove to be a hard week at work - shorthanded, early hours, no day off until Wednesday. Esme starts back to her school Tuesday and Thursday of this week, in the afternoon. I really should sit down tomorrow when I get home from work and make her at least one more pair of pants... she has shredded so much of her clothing in the past few weeks and there hasn't been anywhere 'presentable' she needed to be so I have just been patching it and sending it through the washing machine to be used again.

She is REALLY cute with the soccer games.. and the smurfs, and the red shirts and blue shirts and referees and everything else that comes up from her imagination during this.

Techie girl, garden pictures and a little garden friend

Our little tech girl using the trackball and listening on her headphones as she plays the Sims game. She is reading a few more of the commands correctly to me off the screen - she has known 'what they do' for a while, but now is reading the actual words for 'call' and 'taxi' and a few others. She is understanding more how not to make her people 'all red unhappy', how to get them around 'downtown' and why it isn't such a good idea to use all your money to buy balloons and teddy bears and paint your person into a corner so they can't get out. She puts the headphones in and guides herself into the game, pauses, saves and shuts down when she is done... it's pretty cool!

We have also been playing 'soccer' in the mornings the past few days - but it was interrupted by red shirts, blue shirts, referees and dragons and octopi this morning. She surprised me by turning our kicking practice into a 'run down the court and score a goal' practice.


Strawberry blonde sunflowers


tomatoes, black krim and lemon boy
they went into spaghetti!


Bees pollinating in our corn early this morning



I was pulling up grass and weeds in the garden and this little guy popped up! I ran inside to get the camera and took some pics of him before setting him off into our corn so he wouldn't be stepped on until I was finished weeding.

bit

Esme and I received her other Morris book (Morris Goes to school) last night and she enjoyed it very much. She has 'forgotten' how to read some words, mostly the little ones like 'the' and 'you' but was able to get others like 'boys' and 'girls' on the bathroom doors in the book with great gusto. There was lots of giggling, as the book is very funny. She has the other two books, as well, and it came reccommended by the group I belong to for where she is right now. I am working more on my outline for a craft book. There are several projects on my table - a long felted scarf and a set of teatowels. I want the book to have lots and lots of projects that are traditional and useful, and provide ways to build skills so even the beginners can begin to infuse their homes with handmade items bit by bit as their confidence grows. There are lots of books that do this - but I think mine can be expansive and inspiring in ideas while simple in technique and instruction. The book will take a lot of photography and writing and layout. I don't have a publisher - feel there needs to be lots of material and if a publisher does not accept it we will publish it ourselves at a later date.

Esme is watching Babar, which is so so so much better than Dora. Dora was annoying me because of the 'demanding' habits she has and the 'now quick faster do it' attitude. Esme was picking up on that and trying to apply it to us and everything around us. Babar has much better manners ;) and better language, as well, which she needs. Thank you Daddy :)

The garden is producing beans, zucchinis and herbs. The zinnias are beautiful! There are new colors from this years seeds mixed with the colors from last years volunteers. Soon, there will be tomatoes, but not quite yet. I need to do a lot of work out there - but no day off until Friday...

Sew all the bears Mom

Esme saw me looking through craft book ideas last night and she pointed out a (very different looking) teddy bear as something we should make. "Sew all the bears Mom. Make them FAT, stuff them all full of fat in their bellies like this, and fat toes, and hands, too!." She chose purple. She helped hand me tools, get stuffing and on a few of the embroidery parts I let her help me get the thread and pull the needle out where I had started each stitch. She thought she was doing big work - and really enjoyed it. This morning she already wants me to make another one - or 'all of them'... a set. We will see what happens. I do have to go to work today, too.

mental stretch

I needed a little mental stretch lately. I began to read Attanasio again, for maybe the tenth time since I was a teenager - Last Legends of Earth. I love that book. It is one of the few I can reread. It is described as a 'science fiction fairytale that spans spacetime'. And the author uses such beautiful language and prose. I always find a word I have to think hard to remember the definition of. I always forget exactly what happens to this character in the huge number of ones he has woven together through different changing levels of space and time - and then sometimes, just before it is once again revealed, the depths of my memory release the details and I am sad to remember before it can once again be a surprise. But, joyfully, there are still surprises that are not kept, as well - and they are sweet. He has a 'new' book, new to me - Centuries released in 2010. You can tell I have not been keeping up, eh? I have put it on an order we may get for my birthday this month. But, I have to finish this reading of LLE. I think it is almost a part of my personal mythology now.. the way I see the Universe, although I don't mean as a religion. I love the way he interconnects all things in it though - which does tie in somewhere along the number line of what I believe. All things react to all else - are always somewhere and albeit separated by thousands of lightyears and time years - some of it still manages to reach out and connect with that which it seemed it never could. That is a deep thought. It is a beautiful thought.


simple chair pad


Anyway, enough philosophizing, for now. Besides the book I was cleaning up my worktable - Mark got me a new rubbermaid to put the overflow of fabric in to keep it in prime shape... I was looking through a lot of Japanese books which I have not done in at least six months. The influx of ideas for elegant homemade items has inspired me some again. After that last night I sat down and made a simple sewing chair cover and it was nice to see it come together almost as planned. I woke up this morning from under our handmade quilt and pillowcases, to put on a handmade sweater, pajama pants and slippers... feeling a little Japanese in the fact that all of these are items similar to what I had seen in the books. I love that it is all possible in tiny stitches over time, and last for so long after the moment of 'finish' to become a part of our daily lifestyle. It is almost as if, at times, every flash of memory, music, movie snippets, conversation, it all gets tied up inside the item I am making and some of it can be accessed at a later date - not all of it, but just a feeling, a tinge, a window back in time. I can still remember 'what I was doing' with many of the things I have made, although the memories sometimes fade over time to one specific thought or window instead of many. There is a little bit of that 'spacetime' feel of the book to that for me... and where those thoughts lay across each other, melding and coagulating, I feel the most at home. Something I have made, that will last, and be a joy, and 'contain' all of the memories created during the making and the using of it. Then, I feel I have done well.

Things I love lately: Esme, when faced with something she didn't want, says 'Wait wait wait I need to think about this!' ie: Daddy put on a different movie than the one she was asking me about last night and she said that again. The first time I recall it was when I mixed iced tea with her watered-down juice one day because I thought it tasted good in my glass (and we were low on juice). She saw me mixing the two things and said 'wait wait' because she knew that was her glass and she was unsure if that was a good idea for her. She did like it, though. She is trying more new things like that.

Last night she asked Daddy for a 'bologna and pork sandwich.' And Daddy made it for her - a slice of bologna and ketchup sprinkled over with barbequed shredded pork on two pieces of bread. We giggled at the idea, which she has brought up before and was at that time dismissed (we had just made the pork and did not think she was serious). She ate the entire sandwich and was happy about it. OK then, our weird child...what should we expect? And last night after I made the chair pad Esme wanted to try it out. She sat down on it and then asked me for my glasses. She wanted to try it out 'in full' and pretend to be Mama the way I was doing it. No dice kid, I keep the glasses, but nice try!

bit

Esme redefined 'tuck myself in' last night as coming across the house to kiss Daddy goodnight since she was bawling about having to go to bed a minute before when he had offered to kiss her goodnight and tuck her in. He had told her that her attitude had gotten in the way of her rituals and gave up - and after she finished crying she marched determinedly to complete it herself. We would have been more firm with her for staying in bed if her scowl expression and pure intent was not just so funny. We both had to keep ourselves from laughing as she charged across the hall saying 'OK I tuck myself in', offered a kiss, tucked Daddy's blanket in and then went back to her own bed and put herself under the covers again. ?? She calls out 'I see you in the morning!' to us, and lays down to sleep with no more fit. We giggle - trying not to let her hear us, because it is just so ... Esme, and she is so serious about 'then this is the way it should be done!'

She has been doing a lot this past week that shows she is maturing just a tiny bit emotionally. More humor - more bargaining, more arguing again. She throws a fit and then has an analysis several minutes later about what she is mad about and why Mom and Dad didn't fix the problem/react as expected. It can be hard though, for us, to keep a straight face when her seriousness borders on the absurd.