greenclogs

words

There are so many words in my head these days. They're on half scribbled notes shoved in my purse. They swirl around while I'm in the shower and then go down the drain with the water, or they keep me up in the wee hours of the morning. They're in small journals stuffed in desk drawers. It's all scattered and not cohesive. There are barely formed sentences and fragments of verses. Half a concept here and the other half somewhere over there. Some are about parenting, some on the act of blogging and writing itself. Many are about craft and making and what it all means. There are thoughts on food, and education, and home. I'm sure that if they're all gathered together, I can mold and stitch them together into something meaningful. But I'm not. I sit to write here and I come up blank most of the time.

This has been a long time coming, but I'm going to officially step away from this blog. I think it has served its purpose in my life and brought me amazing people and ideas and community that I treasure. But at this point, I need to know that it's not waiting for me to sit and write my words here, nagging at me to be in a place that doesn't fit anymore. Right now, my words are elsewhere - in this concrete real life I have. They're on paper and in stitches. They are in the time Kit and I spend at the kitchen table, drawing and writing and in the work Gunnar and Annika are doing. They're in the walks we take to run errands and in the evenings that Jeff and I wander around the corner for a beer or two. They're being written every day with everything we do together. For some reason, they don't come when I sit to type here - they no longer belong in this place. It's time for moving on. 

I'm sure the words (and the pictures) will find another home. They always do when they need to be said. Thank you for being here with me in this place for the last 5+ years. I loved every minute of it. 

nourish

I used to not be a New Year resolution person. I scoffed at the idea of needing the new year to start new habits. I thought it was setting myself up for failure. But then I read this post last year, and I changed my mind. Lori is right. Meaningful change won't happen if we don't make that decision and take that first step. It may work. It may not. It may turn out to be the wrong path and I may find new ways to reach my goals or even find entirely new goals. All of that is okay. It's even okay to quit. The key is to take that first step and then the next one. 

Last year I worked on some things. I tackled achieving more balance in my life. I concentrated on finishing things (and I even did reasonably well at that one). I added some income to our family, although not in the ways I anticipated. We moved closer in to work and school so that there could be more family time and more time for doing what we love. We bought new bikes for everyone so we can get out of the car most of the time. We rode them and now we'll be riding them way more. Some years seem to be about real change and others are about laying groundwork for the future. I think 2012 was a groundwork year - finishing getting our house in order, so to speak, with the move to Portland no longer being new. We're settled in and where we want to be. Things are good. We're ready to open our hearts and minds to more. 

Enter 2013. I've done a lot of thinking about new beginnings for this year, since we just moved into our new home 3 weeks ago (and are even nearly all the way unpacked!). Right before Christmas break started, we got a call from a charter school that we had applied to for Annika and they had a space for her. She has been homeschooling happily, but had a hankering to go to *this* school. So, she did a shadow day and decided that it was a go. She starts her new school on Monday. With all of that, 2013 is bringing some new rhythms to our family and some new opportunities to better define our family culture. 

I have several concrete goals that I won't detail here on the blog, but they all fall under one guiding principle. I want the choices I make to nourish me and my family. This isn't anything new - we have worked hard over the years to provide nourishing food and to care for ourselves well. But, it's easy to have things slip. To spend too much time at the computer or walk up the street for sweet potato tots rather than making healthy food at home. To hop in the car for a quick trip to the store instead of gettin on the bike. I want to take a moment, when faced with those choices, and have a quick gut check about whether what I'm doing nourishes our life. Sometimes it's okay to head down to get those tots - we need a break from the house, or we just *need* tots. But usually, if I take myself out of autopilot for a minute, I can find a better way that will feed who I am trying to be and will build the family life that we want. 

Sometimes using this principle will mean saying no. No to another TV show. No to eating out. No to more stuff we don't need. But often, it will mean saying yes. Yes to stepping away from the computer and going to OMSI. Yes to making messes (and then cleaning them up). Yes to family movies and game night. Yes to taking her scooter to the park even though I carry it most of the way. Yes to sewing kitties instead of curtains. Yes to finding ways to make big things happen for our kids and for us. Yes to nourishing ourselves, body, mind, and soul.

Here we go, 2013. I'm ready. 

that was amazing

So said Kit as we drove home from dinner on Friday night. There was a (very inappropriate) song on the radio that Lindsay used to play when she was in high school and we were all dancing and singing along. It was Lindsay's last night of a two week visit, and while the whole visit was wonderful, those few minutes in the car with the singing and laughing and dancing made for a perfect family moment. I realize, in those moments, how much we miss her. And I miss her something fierce today. I want to hold her close and tight but I know that now is my time to let go and watch her find her way. I'll just cross my fingers that she'll find her way back this way someday. 

It's that time when we all, whether we admit it or not, take stock. We look back. We think about the year to come. And my goal is to be able to look back each year and say "that was amazing." It doesn't have to be perfect. It could have been hard and full of challenges. But amazing comes from within - from our ability to deal with adversity, rejoice in the moment, and be our best selves. When I look at it that way, 2012 was pretty amazing in a quiet and unassuming year. It was uneventful, which is just what we needed, with a big push of excitement at the end with a move to our little home right in the city, a big 90th birthday party for my grandma, and Christmas festivities. 

Right now there are tiny snowflakes drifting down from the sky. Not enough to stick to the ground, but enough to quiet things. 

I'm still ruminating on 2013 and what it will bring. For now, I'm going to make tea, watch the snow fall, and sooth some hurt feelings between sisters. We're going to start 2013 being our best selves. 

Happy new year, friends. I hope it treats you well. 

 

 

simplify

We had a lovely Thanksgiving - I hope you did too. We headed to the coast and had dinner with my dad. It was a beautiful sunny day, the food was delicious, and the quiet was just what we needed. Yesterday, the rain poured down. Jeff and I saw these toadstools while we were walking the dogs. Gunnar and I went back to take photos (he took them while I stayed warm in the car). It felt like a magical, rainy wonderland. The tide was so high that we couldn't even get to the beach on that walk, which was fine due to the toadstool discovery. We came home early due to the downpour. 

We found a lovely new home that is so close to everything we do and we move next month (not so good timing on my part). This house has been such a gift to us with its loveliness and ample space, but it's simply too far away from the center of our life. We knew it was a good place to re-enter Portland and start a new life here, but lately it has felt like too much. Too much space. Too much stuff. Too much time driving places. Our new home is much smaller, so there's a lot of stuff leaving the house. It's hard, but really good to ask the questions "do I need it? Do I love it? Will I use it?" even of the things that we've had for a long time and keep out of habit. I'm looking forward to a pared down household and a neighborhood that enables us to walk or bike to nearly everything. Sometimes I think that I'd love to live somewhere forever, but I don't know if that's in my nature. Maybe I need the opportunity to make that clean break, to purge what we don't need, and to reset our life a little bit. Besides, living within blocks of macarons and art supplies and chicken & waffles and the river will be beautiful. That new bike of mine will be getting a workout. And my car won't be. I'm grateful that we found what we need. 

I've been thinking a lot about how my time is spent - especially now while we're prepping for that move and there's so much to do. My work life (the paid by the hour kind, not the making kind) is entirely on the computer. I'm tapped out on the interwebs by the time I'm done each day. I still want this space, but I have to figure out how, when I want my non-work hours to be spent being and doing. I may finally cut those facebook, twitter, and pinterest cords and be all old school by just being here for my personal internet time. There are too many balls to keep in the air and I need to simplify. 

Tomorrow there is turkey soup. I need a plan for the rest of the week that does not include turkey. 

I hope your holiday weekend has been lovely. I hope you're rested and ready for the holiday season ahead. I hope I am too. Be well. 

a tale of two sweaters (and a haircut)

I wrote this long, lovely post on Friday about a sweater lost and a sweater finished. And then I navigated away from the page before clicking the green publish button. And then I cried.

But the post still lives in my head (probably in a more abbreviated form) so here we go again.

Once upon a time there was a sweater that I wanted to be mine. I loved everything about it - the shape, the lovely details, the color. The only thing I didn't love was the cost of the suggested yarn, despite my passion for the yarn itself. So, the idea sat for a long time. I surfed Ravelry looking at other people's version of the sweater in different yarns. I decided to knit it out of Cascade EcoWool, which I bought on sale (and which I also love). I did the math for a different gauge. I cast on. I wasn't totally in love with the hem with the thicker yarn, but it was fine. I kept going. I knit and I knit and I knit off and on over the summer. By early August, I had knit the body to the underams and was working on sleeves.

It was idyllic, really. The ocean, the pink wine, the sleeve knitting. I took my completed sleeves home. After the busyness of the late August/early September life rush, I joined the body and the sleeves and started knitting the underarm decreases, while expanding the bobble pattern on the fronts. As I reached the end of the decreases, I realized that the pattern was approaching the edge faster on one side than on the other. (the knitters are gasping).

Here's where I make the long story short. I ripped the whole thing out. All of it. By the time I got back to where my mistakes were located, I would have had to knit most of the body of the sweater again. And I didn't want to. I agonized for a bit over finishing what I start and setting a good example, but the truth of the matter was that the yarn wasn't the best fit for the pattern. So out it went. I have found a better pattern for the yarn and a better yarn for the pattern. The end.

But not really the end - because there's another sweater (actually two). A sweet, tiny, adorable sweater that was just the right thing for getting back on the horse.

I love this sweater. Love. And so does she. It's the ever popular Milo pattern knit in 1.5 skeins of Brooklyn Tweed Shelter. The gauge is different, so I knit the 9 month size to get a 3T. I also knit it long so that there could be 3 owls in the cable and to make it more of a long tunic for over leggings.

I can't believe it took me this long to jump on the Milo bandwagon (well, other than those years in Phoenix). It's the perfect thing for a toddler - warm but not confining. Easy to layer. And in the Shelter it's so light that I think she forgets that it's on until she has to show it to someone and say "my mama knit it for me. See my owls?" *love*

There's another one on the needles. Because she asked for a blue one. But in between, I knit her a different sweater that will be the subject of another post (soon).

In my last post, we were talking about how totally cute her pigtails were. And I went and cut them off. Now she's even more cute. The piggies were a very rare occurrance - most of the time her hair just swung wildly off of her head. One day I said casually "hey, want a haircut?" And she said yes! So we hightailed it right to the haircut lady.

I can't believe how different she looks - it's like she matured overnight. But she's still my baby girl.

Lastly (and this deserves its own post) Melissa and I have a little collaboration going. You can see our gift sets here in her shop. I love what we've done, and I hope you love it too.

Writing that all over again wasn't as hard as I thought. Whew!

3 October

It's windy today. Really windy. As in, we didn't ride our bikes to co-op for fear of being blown over windy. I think we're due for a fire tonight - even though it's fairly warm outside, it's getting mighty chilly in the house these days. I'm hoping to avoid turning on the furnace for as long as possible. I'll bring in more firewood, load the beds with quilts, and we should be able to hold out until the rain starts up. That rain can hold off for as long as possible.

But I'm here to talk about yesterday. We had a lovely day. After returning all of the grape juice extraction equipment, we stopped for lunch and played with dinosaurs.

I deeply apologize for the Instagram photos (I hate using them) but the phone is all I had with me. Kit turned out to be a rather bloodthirsty little dinosaur girl. Her dino kept trying to eat mine. I wish she had attacked her food as happily - that girl is one picky and birdlike little eater. 

We moved on from Laughing Planet to the central library - one of the girls' favorite places to spend an afternoon. We found stacks of books to bring home. 

I can't wait to dig into that screenprinting book, as well as a few quilting books - redwork quilts and Kaffe Fasset's Swedish quilts. There's also a bunch of poetry in there, as well as some softie books for Miss A. 

Also, those little piggies in her hair? I die. 

Tomorrow, we read and we make. Can't wait. 

1 October

Some Monday musings with totally unrelated photos from our trip to the beach 2 weeks ago. 

1. I think this photo totally sums up the people in my household right now. All that's missing are the dogs cavorting around the children. 

2. I'm struggling with balance and productivity right now. I'm working 25 hours a week, but I'm still pretty sure I can accomplish everything else I want to do. This is probably crazy. So, each day this month I'm going to sit down here at ye olde blog and document the prior day. I think this will both help me see that I *do* get a lot done and clarify where I need to be spending more and/or less time. As a side benefit, you will get to watch me slowly realize that I have unreasonable expectations of myself. And you will probably not be surprised by that at all. 

3. We made freegan grape juice yesterday. This involved dragging a grumpy 14 year old to a friends house to pick grapes (it was super awesome of her to offer them to us) on Saturday morning, borrowing her fancy 3 stage juicing pot, riding our bikes to the neighborhood hardware store for more jars (and strapping said jars onto the back deck of my bike. Very Portland), assuring ourselves that it wouldn't take that long, and then spending all day yesterday making about 18 quarts of juice. Which is amazing, btw. Props to Jeff for taking over the bulk of the process while I escaped the children ran to the Hanna Andersson outlet for winter jammies. He is the juice master. Also, we are going to hide all the jars of juice somewhere secret so the children don't slurp it all up by this weekend. That stuff is like gold, people. There's nothing like making it yourself to help you understand that you don't just mindlessly consume food. As a side note, I really want to go mushroom hunting. 

4. I'm going to sit down and reread this book even though I just read it a month ago. Even if you're not a homeschooling family (and we are only for the younger kids), this book has so much to offer in terms of developing family culture. I love how she talks about family and being a doer and empowering your children to take charge of their education and their lives. I wish Lori was my neighbor so I could walk down the lane to hear her words of wisdom, but since I can't, I talk to her in the forum on her website. Her wisdom sustains me when I start to feel weary and she fills me back up again. I'm not sure how I'd do this without her. 

5. I'm going to go finish some long overdue projects in the studio this afternoon and then rearrange everything. And make chili. And finish the laundry. There's my afternoon agenda. I'm sure it'll all get done. 

6. I need to work on a new webside/Etsy shop tonight for a collaboration with Melissa. I am super duper excited about working with her and I hope it's well received. 

I think that's enough. Time to stop talking and start doing. 

 

big things

I need to get over my need to post about Big Things. Since not many Big Things are happening around here, but tons of little things are, I forget to stop in here. Or I don't make the time to. 

However, a big thing happened 2 weeks ago. My big girl turned 22! (I doubt she'll want me doing this for much longer). 

Something about 22, and that whole graduating from college, having a job, moving into a real apartment thing tells me that she's really a grown up now. Although she might disagree. It's hard to embrace one's grown-up-ness. 

There's another reason that 22 seems like a really big deal to me. She is now older than I was when I had her. Which means I have been a mother for over half my life. I look at her and realize that I had a 7 month old baby when I was her age and then I marvel at how she managed to turn out so great despite my youth and inexperience. 

So, thank you, Linz. Thank you for helping me grow up. For showing me the way through this whole motherhood thing. For the love and the laughter and the tears. For discovering the deep wells of strength and patience that I had inside of me (that I didn't know were there). You'll always be my first true love. 

Oh, and thank you for not following my lead. I'm perfectly happy to wait a few years for grandchildren. No rush. 

 

he sells seashells by the seashore

I thought I'd take a minute to share what Gunnar has been up to. 

When we were at the beach in June, Gunnar started fooling around with drawing and painting sand dollars. There's quite a collection of them in the cabin, so he would take each one and make a painting of it. The first one went to some friends for their baby's nursery, and a friend of ours loved them so much that she offered to sell them in her shop. 

Found is a treasure trove of vintage goodies, furniture, and local art/jewelry. She's in the middle of remodeling, and asked Gunnar to paint a huge sand dollar for the ramp between the rooms. This one is about 3'x5' in size. It's done with floor paint, and has about 8 coats of polyurethane over it. We went down for a day trip in July so he could paint it, and then we went home. She did the polyurethane and installation herself. We didn't get a chance to go back to see it installed until this week. 

It looked fabulous. It fits right into the shop and its vibe. However, when Gunnar walked in, she put her head in her hands and said "I'm so sorry! I ruined it!" She had been moving a sleeper sofa by herself and dropped it right on the piece, which broke through all of her layers of protection. She was mortified. Gunnar's response? "I think it looks even better this way. It belongs." 

So, those chipped edges will be sanded, and new poly applied. It will gradually be worn down, and someday he'll paint her another one. He's learning to put himself out there as an artist and figure out what works and what doesn't. He regroups and does it again. He explores new idea, new media, new techniques. He hones his aesthetic and his skills. 

As for me, I'm loving watching where this all goes. He has big dreams, that boy. I, for one, will put my money on him making them come true. 

perfect is the enemy of done

I made a quilt. It's not perfect. But it is done. I was intending to do a lovely outdoor photo shoot and make a fancy blog post. After 10 days of busy life and of it living on my couch, it became clear that a real photo shoot wasn't happening. I took photos of the quilt in its natural habitat so I can talk to you about it. Perfect is the enemy of done. 

It's the kind of quilt that probaby ought to be perfect, seeing that it's full of precision points and all. But, I was using the quilt piecing to hone my abilities at sewing a scant 1/4" seam on the bias of the fabric and to really get to know the ins and outs of my new(ish) sewing machine. So, they're not all perfect. I could have ripped them out and sewn them again, but then it would be sitting on my work table in hundreds of small pieces. Not finished on my couch. 

The quilt is pieced entirely from the Denyse Schmidt Flea Market Fancy line. Most of it is the re-released prints, but some of it is from my original hoarded fabric. I don't typically make a quilt from one line of fabric - I like the magic of finding combinations that work and the beauty of accidental pairings. However, this fabric line was the first one that I fell in love with back when I was newly sewing again and just discovering the miraculous new world of fabric. That original release was my first online fabric purchase - I was smart enough to buy a full fat quarter set that I have used in bits and pieces over the last few years. When the re-release came out, I bought yard cuts of all of my favorites, knowing that I wanted a cohesive quilt of them. I started without a plan beyond sewing half square triangles. After fiddling around with it for a while, I decided that I just wanted a simple, flying geese pattern. I probably should have spent more time laying out all of the fabric before sewing it all together, but I just made sure that no triangles from the same print/color were next to each other, and that it was pleasing to the eye. Perfect is the enemy of done. 

The plan was to have this quilt cover my white couch, since Luna the dog considers that couch to be her fluffy white dog bed. Gunnar took one look at it and pronounced it "too white" for the couch. I was a little crushed, but regrouped and chose a medium grey for the back with random strips of the FMF fabric throughout. It turned into side A and side B instead of the front and the back. White is the "company" side and grey is the "pet" side. As you can see, at least one pet approves. 

My original intention was to free motion quilt it (seeing that this was my put-the-machine-through-its-paces project). I even began to free motion quilt it, in a bubbles pattern. I hated it. I had chosen white thread for the top and a light grey for the back - I didn't want the threads to be too far off so that if any was visible, it wouldn't be a big deal. On the front my bubbles looked fine. On the back, with the quilting thread standing out more, it was Not Good. I had quilted over one triangle strip and had quilted it really densely. I sat down with the seam ripper and started picking out the quilting. Soon, I realized that it was going to take forever and that it would end up in a pile on my work table for weeks, just because I was frustrated. I pulled out my rotary cutter and cut off the top 5" of the quilt (much to Grace's and Laura's chagrin), knowing that it was plenty long and that I just wanted it done. Perfect is the enemy of done. 

Instead, I quilted it in randomly placed zig zags (which take a LONG time, btw) that reflected the randomly sized and placed stripes of fabric from the back on the front, and brought the geometric patterning from the front to the back. I love how the quilting unites both sides, which wouldnt have happened if I had stuck with my original quilting plan. 

Don't get me wrong. I love it when something comes out perfect. I strive for it. However, one thing I have learned about myself is that I can let perfection paralyze me, or more accurately, let the frustration over something being not perfect paralyze me. Sometimes I have to let go and embrace imperfection in the name of learning and growing and finishing. It's not perfect. But it's done and living on my couch. That in itself is pretty perfect, indeed.