Super butterfly and dragon for Halloween

The pink spiderman kitty butterfly just wasn't quite going well... so I opted for Super Butterfly (seen previously with different wings and no antennae) for Halloween.  We found a dress in some handmedowns from long ago that had butterfly sequined images on it - and it sealed the deal.  She is enjoying it and saying she is going to fight zombies in her Super Butterfly costume, and save the day.

Super Butterfly!

As I was putting the photograph together she said she just wanted one of those Esme's to come be her friend and they would be in the dark together and not be scared because they would be two friends  Poor kid - she did want to be twins, I think.  As her expressiveness continues to improve she has told me this story often about how we need to go have another Esme to play with her and have her live here in our house so she will not be sad. 

She has her party today at the school - the teachers were in costume and they had a table full of food in the inside gym.  It looks like it will be fun.  Still thinking about what we might do later... the weather is quite cold!

Having a thoughtful moment

Surreal life of dragons who sew 

 Little girl took a nap - and Daddy said I needed a costume, too. I built this out of a knit hat I already had and a baseball cap from work.

Other notes:  Yes - I bought the cake mix today.  I can stop mentioning it and reminding myself of it now  Oh, wait, now I will have to remind myself to make it with the decoration, the 'five' candle and the pink gel for writing her name on it :)

I woke her up from her nap and the hat was scary!

 

It wasn't all that scary...

And here we are posing together before we take off...

Note://  We went to a local trunk or treat on invitation from the daughter of one of the Trunkers.  I still felt guilty because no one knew us, felt like crashing  We did half the round and then went out for a milkshake and a french fry  Esme had a good time and she talked about it a lot.  She is really making headway with understandable sentence structure and was able to describe a lot of what we had done all day over the milkshake and french fry.

Butterfly costume preview

She is a super Butterfly that fights zombies.  I have her hair freshly washed but have to brush it out and braid it up tomorrow morning before school.  We've been given the '411' on an event later on tomorrow night but are not sure if we will attend... see what happens.  She has a velvet dress with sparkly butterfly rhinestones on it that I hope she will fit into - or her black dress with silver sequins... which may actually be more 'fitting' and I know it fits her as well. 

Other notes:  working on the quilt top... have wednesday thursday off.. Esme is playing Skyrim with Daddy and telling him to get his guy puddle power so he can splash in the water.  I still need to buy the cake mix for the party and the other groceries...

Booked

This was Mark's project yesterday when I was at work. He decided to take it up himself and did a great job. All of these were the hardcover fictions... the non-fiction and softcover fictions were already sorted when I came home. Esme met me at the door and said 'Daddy is making a new house!' I thought she meant on a game.. but she proudly showed me in the door and said 'See?' and lo and behold, it did look like a different place. 

One of the walls of the house. He put up more shelves because we were running out of space. This is also that six gored red skirt I made a while back - on me in the picture. 

We might need to build more walls to this house just to get more bookshelf space! 

These are the non-fiction lining the wall near our desks. He plans on sorting and organizing the rest of this fifteen foot wall up and down because he knows we will acquire more.

bit

Esme stayed up until almost one am last night playing Sims on my computer.  I almost feel she needs another thing to 'do' with the cold outside - but I am gone so much it is not possible.  We have not done much together except argue over computer time and play pirate tea parties lately.  The cold weather has made me crash so early and sleep so long... had bad dreams in the middle of the night with the dogs howling outside.  I guess that is the full moon taking hold.  I saw it bright and clear in the sky when they were outside in the yard.  I am off to work - that is feeling like a terrible chore lately as well, very little interesting and it is the time of year when sarcastic answers seem to be on the rise.  It is hard to be nice - and with a manager pulling their little creative button pushings it makes it even harder.  And I'm not an easy person to bring to seething... so she does get a chalk point for that... *growl*.  I did not work more on the quilt yet - 14 across one row only.  14x18 makes 252.  At this rate it will probably be 5-6 months before just the top is done, if I work at it once a week!  Esme's knit blanket is doing better - it is about three feet by four feet now, and will be six feet by four feet when it is finished.  Her birthday is next week - I have two days off before her birthday but not the two I expected.  Asking for her birthday off moved the scheduling matrix around.  And I still need to buy a cake mix and frosting, although the topper figure came in the mail. 

Friday day off

It was nice to have a day off to work on a project, wear handmade clothes and drink coffee with no where to go.  Esme played Minecraft on my computer most of the day.  I decided against a dress for her - which I know I will get to anyway another day - and began a more ambitious project  I hope I have the mental wherewithal to keep up with it.  Because of that, I chose a pattern simple to accomplish, but intriguing enough not to be swept away for more interesting things.

Quilt work

I guess I would call it a variation on a log cabin block
There is a similar (but larger) block at this page here/

The pattern that I saw in a magazine was a square with small strips sewn on one side larger and larger, then repeated as patches in a quilt.  But, that seemed to difficult to keep the sizing up with.  I sat down at my sewing machine to see what would come out, and this pattern seemed more natural for me.  I am deciding if it will be 14x18 or 16x24...  neither one is part of the Fibonacci sequence so Mark says it is up to me.  Ha.  I tried, but I am limited by the practical knowledge that it has to fit our bed - and I need an even ratio as well.  The lighter grey is an old shirt of Mark's, the darker grey leftover from a jacket of mine, and several of the other bits are either old clothes of Esme's or plain color fabrics I have used in her projects before.  The white muslin ties it all together.

In other news: I pulled the Shackamaxon beans in from the garden to dry  The Kenearlys are still out there hopefully they might develop a bit more  I will need to make Esme a few more long sleeved dresses.  I won a yekciM esuoM pirate ship for her birthday - hopefully it will arrive by then! 

bits

Esme ran up to me asking if the mail was toys for her.  I told her it was - but they were for her birthday party.  She then asked me if I had any toys for now.  Ha.  No.  So she tried to weasel the other ones out saying I could have a pretend birthday party so she could see the toys now.  No dice kid.  They went on the shelf when she wasn't looking - still in their manila envelopes.  One is actually a cake topper for the cake I have yet to get materials for.  The other is a k-oo-b by Syd Hoff that she does not yet own but I did have when I was a kid.  Mark was listening to the debate, Esme was watching My Little Pony and trying furiously for me to have a tea party with her.. but I fell asleep soon after dinner.  Esme was nice and tucked a kangaroo in with me before she went to my computer to play Minecraft until her bedtime.

I still have things to finish before the real winter gets here - but it is coming.  I likely need to make several long sleeved dresses to replace a few that are gone.. and pants.  But I have not sewed since the sponge bob doll (which was a hit... it has no face and just brown pants, but Esme loves it and sleeps with it as a pillow).  I am still working on Esme's blanket and am hanging up more beans to dry in the storage room.  I need to sort out the storage room and put things in closed containers now that they have dried..... Mark thinks something has been in there knocking things over.

Work now until Friday off... feels like there isn't much of me to go around even when I'm at work I need to split "myself" among two or three problems simultaneously just to help everyone and that isn't working very well!  I have received a few high praises to the manager for it - but my brain feels drained afterwards and rarely after a customer interaction I feel like just falling into a million pieces on the floor and saying 'pick me up in five minutes, okay?' but gravity keeps it from happening, so... I turn and run after the next problem that comes in front of me without really centering.

Garden Sunday

basil, mint, yellow pear tomatoes, banana peppers, eggplant, okra, lots of beans 

Shackamaxon beans, Whipporwill cowpeas, Mayflower beans, TN greasy beans 

Poofball kitten, Minion's baby, 'Poof' for short

showing off her mixed up orange stripes under a charcoal smudge overlayer.

 

Yellow zinnias, all from the same plant in the garden.

About to bring Esme's blanket out to sit in the sun and knit while she plays in her water bucket and mud.

It is 70 degrees outside, some of the last warm weather perhaps we will see in a while...

Styling

Esme styling wearing my blanket and sunglasses in the house, at night.  I am off work for Sunday - which is good... been working straight all week long.  I've been knitting on Esme's blanket (pink, blue and purple version of same) and wonder if it will be done by her birthday.  I'm thinking about more birthday things - have to ask Grandma some things about using the office up there for her guest(s)?  I told Mark the blanket colors (which started out as scraps and I bought some items today to extend it) remind me of Esme's unicorn we bought for her birthday... and I asked if it then was unicorn puke with all the yarn stretched out...

cool fact: cowpeas have 2.5 to 3 percent pressable oil, which is expressed mostly as trigylcerides containing unsaturated fatty acids, mostly phytosterols and  tocopherols - the first being studied as a blocker for cholesterol and the second an antioxidant component of vitamin E similar to olive oil.  (percentage cite from pdf: Pak.J.Bot 42(2) 1333-1341, 2010 found through Wikipedia, other chem knowledge from wikipedia)  The other night when I was peeling and shelling cowpeas Mark was drawn from the upstairs and said he thought he has smelled olive oil.  I find that a very cool connection.  I am very glad the Whipporwill cowpeas that I bought through Etsy - from a farm in Waverly, TN- have taken so well to our soil and given me so much food and seed in return.  They want to be 'late season' crops, though... last year as well the late season ones did the very best of all.

Other notes:  Esme's speech is taking off - she has so much more to say now... and boy does she say it!  It is still strangely worded/structured at times, but she accepts corrections well and has such a large imagination, creativity to her play and her building and her stories... still demanding Napoleon attitude, though.. .have to work on that part probably for the next thirteen years!

I can hardly recall exactly the streams she goes off on now - she is 'imaginative' and sometimes downright facetious, as well...  She wanted a third glass of juice last night after dinner and we told her she would have to wait until one of us went back downstairs.  So - she said she would go get water *cough cough* because she was feeling sick.  She came back upstairs and said she felt all better now, let's play.  She also told me during dinner she did not need to eat because her teacher told her she was done.  *roll eyes*  Really now.  When, last week?  She is very very interested in decorating for a party (she can say 'decorating' now, too!) and pretends she is doing it, talks about doing it - makes tea parties for her toys ...  I think of the difference since last January and ... it blows me away.

Esme's birthday list so far...

Little things - and I hope you are not reading this Esme!  Because she may recognize some of these words I have spelled them backwards;  I have collected a few items for her - skcos, a mraeDeitL nrocinu, a tiny pihs etarip for her Lego people and a koob I know she will like.  The nrocinu was the expensive one she has been asking for so long...  I have a bid on some Lego setarip figures which will go with the pihs.  I might buy some cheap tnaip set or hgoudylap set for her.  I want to buy some very pretty striped gift wrap to put it in and still need to do the cake and frosting.

Mayflower Beans and more in October

Went out into the garden this afternoon to pull in handfuls of dry and fresh shelling whipporwill peas and came back with much more.  I had forgotten about planting another round of Mayflower pole beans - and they were not being pole beans at all, so it took me all the way to the house and opening up pod after pod of these pink dappled beans to realize : 'Hey, I know what these are!'.  *facepalm*.  It is like realizing that funny sounding dog with the group is really a cat.  There were also purple 'Blue Shackamaxon' beans that were ready to hang up to dry, some more Tennessee greasy beans and a few other assorted beans.  The pimento peppers and banana peppers gave up another bag each to the freezer.  I saved a set of pimentos to dry but hung them up - when they really should be cored, cut and laid out to dry on a dehydrator.

The first plants I had put out this year were killed in the drought.  I planted more beans in August?  I have only a faint memory of grabbing a few of the saddest smallest beans out of the collection to throw in the ground to 'see'... and they definitely decided to take.

This became dinner tonight and a packet for lunch tomorrow, with peppers, onions and broccoli 

and some of Mark's barbeque pork.

These beans are wrapped and tied on cotton string to hang in the drying room.  They have developed to 'nearly bursting' but do not have any insect damage or breaks in the outer pod.  This is the perfect time to tie them for drying - if the humidity where they will dry is low enough they will dry and not mold.  Otherwise, you might better take your chances outside in the garden to let them dry,although mold and insects can get them there, too.  The Shackamaxons (purple tones shown) will not develop their deep blue-black colored outer shells unless they stay in their pod until dry.  They keep better with that hard shell, as well.  In a few weeks I should have small bowls of pretty 'pink' Mayflower beans and 'blue' Shackamaxons for seed for next year.  There are already two Starbucks coffee bottles full of black eyed peas and Whipporwills, and mixed Florida Speckled Limas and Dixie Butterpea Limas in with those.  Slowly, I am finding what 'likes' my soil here and is hardy enough to withstand the weather.

Can I have another weekend?

I don't feel like I've had this one.  My dad stopped in Saturday and talked over dinner - Esme played some with him but was very focused on her computer as well.  At one point she told me was actually trying to be quiet so he could talk with Daddy, and I should go downstairs with her and let them talk and we could play quietly.  Really now.  She fell asleep before he left, and asked where he was today. She played outside in the rain tonight just at sunset - and there was a rainbow.  It was quite pretty and the light coming through on the trees turning fall colors was as well.  I have work early tomorrow and it does not seem like I had this weekend at all yet.  I've been very tired but trying not to sleep during the day, it has rained both days and that really makes me tired.. and Esme does not really agree with the idea of daytime naps for her or us either....it is possible to catch a nap but I have not managed to.  I have sewn a little - some scraps, some mending, a sponge character toy that has yet to get a face, and some knitting on the blanket.  But mostly I feel like I've been a lump this weekend!

A Toy turtle and a bucket and minecraft creations

Esme playing outside with her toy turtle, a balloon and a bucket full of water.   She was filling the balloon with water and having the turtle use it as a cup of magic that turned into a money bag then back into water..??  I'm not sure where it comes from half the time, now as much as before even though I hear more of the contents of her imagination now than ever before.

She had told me she was a boy, with a message (a leaf) that said she missed her house and her family was in the woods and she had escaped the bears that were attacking and they needed help!  But, she quickly said they were alright, they were alive - and she was here to play.  It is a little cold out for this playing in the water she is doing, had to bring her in and change shoes out once already.  And now I am about to drag her in for a bath before a warm dinner and hopefully she will comply.  Daddy has porkchops in the oven and I have a butternut type squash in there, as well.   Esme  has been absolutely full of energy today since going to town with Mom and Grandma earlier... she needs to work a little bit of it off for Mom's sanity, perhaps?

And also - this is what she spends most of her time doing when she is not outside playing in the mud and water. It is her latest edition of Minecraft - we make her a new world every few days to a week because she fills them up so much with cows and chickens it is hard to keep the processing speed up.  Mom and Dad have their own separate worlds to play in, and she is not allowed to spawn millions of chickens in them.

The tall blue spires are water that can be swum up and 'rode' down.
I did help her make a railway that went to this 'jungle' from the village, but cows and chickens keep getting in the way when we ride it.

She spent a lot of time making this garden today before we went to town. 

 

She is fond of pink wool, and for some reason she finds it very funny to replace blocks in the village houses (which are prebuilt in this game) with pumpkins. She fills the houses up with water as well and makes 'pools' serving them cake blocks and having 'parties'. There is a row of beds outside one of the houses so they can all take a nap when they are done with the party. There are a few signs all over the place that say 'dog' and 'egg' on them and other words she has attempted to spell but needed help with.

nouveau shirt

This was made with some fabrics on hand - started back a few weeks ago when I had made a skirt for myself. I finished the sleeves and facings today - but did not put on the buttons it is planned for.  I want to wear it and let it 'relax' a bit before I decide where the buttons should fall.  The front flaps are very stiff still as they are lined with a thick green Kona cotton and the lighter cream fabric is a Japanese rabbit pattern fabric leftover from way back when I made Esme's rabbit pants.  The Japanese fabrics are a very fine thread count and it can be felt when it is worn and in how it sews.  The 'nouveau' fabric is something slightly lighter in weight that was on the clearance rack nearly a year ago... it helped stretch the rabbit fabric into something useable as it was a scant yard to begin with.

It fits fairly well - slightly shorter sleeves and there is a bit of a shoulder-to-neck gap that would be nice to fix in an upcoming version. You can see the gap in the first picture where it sort of 'rises' right at the top of the arm.  I'm a bit wider in the shoulders than most people - so I would need to widen the pattern there and taper it back towards the front differently.  The body pattern was made from an old sleeveless shirt I cut apart - and the sleeves were added on and approximated out of a shirt pattern I had in my stash this morning.

bits with knitting

Day off, went to Camden to buy groceries.. the dynamic at that store is very different - it is mostly older people in that city so their store does not have some things and has quite a bit of selection in other things.  We also stopped at the quilt shop Quilting Bee while we paid our insurance, Esme saw a spider ball with lots of little legs and asked for it... we bought a piece of fabric to make one.  We are planning on buying her birthday present today - while she stays with Grandma?  We'll see how that works.  I still don't know if we are going to have more than a family thing this year ... we invited the other little girl for ice cream last year and they want to go to a park this year -- feel it will be too cold.

I was craving some avocado and mashed it up with some black beans and red pepper in a wrap - very good.  Every time I do something spontaneous like this I find that combination is a 'normal' and there are ten to twenty recipes with the same foods featured, but that could just be the nature of the internet.  I choose foods by what my nose tells me, and some other chemical 'A goes with B' that my brain uses to add other vitamins on. So, it is also likely I am just keyed into what 'goes together' in the same way many other humans with noses are.  *ha*

 

This is the knit blanket I am making for Esme - on top of the one I made for myself and have been using.  So far it is all scraps from other projects put to use but I bought a little more purple today to add onto it.  It almost looks like the colors in the unicorn we were going to buy her for her birthday ;)  I doubt it will be done by then, though.

As the cold weather sets in I have been digging out other things, too - slippers (Esme is finally wearing hers from last year), scarf, the blue gloves, hats.. It is nice to be warm and have useful things.

note

The weekend was long, I work today and am off tomorrow and Wednesday.  Esme has no school this week...  I am making progress on her knitted blanket out of my yarn scraps, bringing it to work with me.  I am also listening to chem lectures again and looking things up as and when they interest me... keeping busy to keep the Minnesota family issues from taking up my free brain space.  It is a nice stretch to have curiosity come up in the moments between at work instead of worry.  I am also starting to think about Esme's birthday and if we will do a meetup with the other girl again this year... she asked if it would be at the park but it will likely be cold.  I need to buy Esme's big present and a few other things, and get a cake mix etc etc... The day will be here quicker than we assume...

bits here and there

Esme may have her picture in the paper from the PTA meeting.. she was the only kid there, although it was open house for everyone.  There was no earthshattering news - she will likely go on to regular Kindergarten next year and everything is improving.  We see it at home, too.  They see some of what we see - the 'do we really gotta do this?' and the 'just a kid' she has been trying on them, too.  'Excuse me, when can we go outside?' is another one she says to them.  She was sent to her room for monopolizing Daddy's computer tonight when and only when he came back to use it... before that she was much more interested in SpongeBob after begging for minutes to get on that computer...  Then I go down there to deliver her a glass of milk (she ate sparesely after breakfast, Mark had said - and I've been trying to make sure she gets something when I get home from work) and she gives me this sidelong look and says 'What?' when I enter her room and she is playing the UPWORDS game in her usual way...  I tell her I am delivering her a kiss (as she had 'sent' one up with him when she was told to go to bed earlier) back and she gets all starry-eyed and says 'oh, yea, okay - so sweet, I'm just playing this game here, with the letters, I'm not sleeping.'  I tell her she can do that and I am going upstairs to my bed and she calls after me 'Goodnight Mom, I'll see you in the morning.  I love you, too!'  Then five minutes after that is upstairs to tell us that she has drunk the milk and either tell me she ate earlier or halfheartedly ask for more?  In any bit, she turns back around and says 'haha - I'll see you in the morning' and scurries back to her room saying 'Goodnight Mom, Goodnight Dad, Goodnight Dogs'... the logic of being nearly five years old... it still escapes me.

Yellow pants, red zinnia, purple beans

Cosmos are finally blooming prettily.

Almost purple Minion cat (and baby) 

The kitten looks so much like her she is hard to see!

A harvest from the garden today. I haven't been out there in over a week 

but the rain really helped everything perk back up.  There was twice this 

amount of nearly everything when I got done...

A proud hopper that was sitting on a bean plant.

Pretty red zinnia. 

Esme clowning around on the tires. 

She looks so tall and leggy...

The Tennessee Greasy Bean, planted back in May? It is finally coming into it's own and producing like mad. These are huge green and purple variegated beans that turn green when cooked. 

These are the yellow 'stardust' pants she picked the fabric for. They are 26.5 inches long from waistband to bottom cuff and a size 5 sewing pattern.  They take a yard and a half to make - which costs about 4 to 6 dollars and an hours worth of time to sew.  Pretty good budgetwise... just have to kick myself over there to the machine to make them once I've bought the fabric, as such a 'quick and easy' project doesn't always have the allure that a dress pattern would, even though replacements are so necessary when she runs through the woods, plays chase with the dogs or sits in mud for three hours and the stains don't come out!

Another shot.. she was being 'rockstar' and also 'careful not to step plants in the tires'. That is one of the few storebought T-shirts she has and it is already too small (a size 4) and showing her belly when she puts her arms up.  The long sleeved shirt is a gift from her grandparents for last birthday and is a size 5 - still fits and she likes it.

We have the parent teacher conference today...

Post field trip long Wednesday

Esme went on her field trip with nothing out of the ordinary... her teachers weren't even about to drop from exhaustion when I picked her up.  I worried a bit - as they have not realized yet that YES - she keeps moving like that all day long, from sun up to long after sun down... It is like living with the Energizer Bunny that talks and has an attitude, agitates at 200% speed when it needs to pee and always wants a toy.  We have the Parent Teacher meeting tomorrow afternoon, bring the kids with and feed them hot dogs and let them play with the toys etc..  Today was a long day - getting up at 7 to get her to the early field trip, then we were desk potatoes (sans couch) and played Minecraft for hours until it was time to get her... I planned on doing other things but couldn't commit to something that might not be done by the time she came back... bad excuse, but I went with it.  I noticed our commode had a leak happening where the floor flange is uneven.. and when we picked up Esme I picked up a few materials to fix the problem.  I put vinyl composite tile under it instead of the shims that were not working - then finished with plumbers putty around the edge.  Mark and Esme watched a cartoon upstairs and Mark came downstairs just in time to help me with setting it back over the bolts - which is much harder than taking it off because it requires steady hands and sometimes a third hand as well.  Esme had some to say about the trip - she sat next to a 'tiny girl with black hair' who was 'sleeping but not' and they played and had blue paint like giraffes on their hands (I did not see anything - it could have been a pretend or washed off already), had juice and cookie bears in a bag for snack on the bus and she saw a man with a hat - a cowboy - tie up a horse who was nice but was sick and had to go back in the gate.  She played my Minecraft for hours and I knitted and watched a movie... then kicked myself over to the sewing machine to make the pair of yellow 'stardust' pants.  She copped a bad attitude that she didn't like dogs and didn't like shadows and didn't like anything...on the way to bed.  But 11 pm is finally here....

Quotes:  (about pajamas) This is at night.  It is morningtime, this is no?  (about me yelling after her to come get her hair brushed while she is slamming the bathroom door) You wash the hair this night, yes or no?  (she meant last night)  Is my bus here? (while looking at the dog yard and being obviously silly)  I will do the upside and you will do the down side, do you understand me? (about her straps in the car)

Rodeo field trip tomorrow

Getting Esme ready for going to her field trip tomorrow.  The class is going to watch a farming college rodeo and goat tying exposition.  I feel more confident for her going with her teachers than I was with the idea of her going with a coworker and their kids...- as in contrast to my coworkers they come 'loaded for bear' when it comes to handling odd situations with the kids... those are the words I used to Mark the other day when he told me about the permission slip.

Right now our surreal life is full of Care Bears, due to a new video set that was bought when we replaced our DVD player today.  I need to get her to sleep soon... so she can get to the bus early to go on the trip.  Mark and Esme picked me up from work and Esme did her charm on quite a few people.  They said she looked just like me when she was trying to think if she knew when her birthday was.  Several people laughed at once and all agreed she was like a 'Mini me' at that moment.

She was crying and upset that she wanted a toy - but then finally she came with me and picked out a yellow fabric to make pants out of.  I had to print out photographs for her school project for the PTA meeting Thursday as well.  While we were in the store the children from an Amish family were wandering around the electronics section.  A teenage girl was sitting quietly on a seat at a computer and looked over Esme's clothing without saying anything - but was giving second and third looks as Esme turned around -- I think she was seeing the buttons and overstitched button bands across the back of that particular dress and verifying that yes - those were handmade clothes the other little girl had on - just very different than the clothes she had.  That was a neat moment.

letting Smurfs in from the rain

I'm still here.. slowly getting better.  Esme is busy letting Smurfs in from the rain and inviting them to watch her cartoons.  But, our DVD player is on the fritz.  I have to run to work - too many midshifts this week mean get up, get ready, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed.  *sigh*