Making, behind the scenes

I have been in recovery lately from a lot of holidays,the trip to see my family, and just keeping up with the start of school and our rough snow storm start to cold weather.  It felt like I was not doing much “work” in the writing department but actually, a lot of making was happening,  I have knitted on additions to two kids’ beloved sweaters (they got taller!) and you can see one of them here. I also decided almost immediately after finishing the black jumper to use the same 100 acts of sewing pattern dress no.1 to make a vest.  I did my own “hack” of the pattern, I cannot seem to follow pattern instructions the exact same way twice in a row!  This was all “free” fabric from theArtsJunktion. (A place in Winnipeg where you can donate arts and crafts supplies and also get them for free..It keeps us reusing and recycling and keeps good stuff for art out of the landfill.) I always make a donation and pay for parking, but the fabric did not cost me anything.  This made up for the fact that this vest took me a while!  I cut too low a neckline by accident, so had to teach myself how to make a dart in the back of the vest to raise the neckline.  I think it worked and am excited about wearing this with black dress pants and my new Strippy McStrippit design.

While all this was happening upstairs at my sewing machine, our washer broke.  Yes, this is something no twin mom ever wants to hear from her husband on a Saturday night.  However, I did a search for appliance repair people online, emailed three different ones-and kept sewing.

Imagine my surprise when one wrote back and said he could come diagnose the problem on a Sunday!  (Hallelujah!) We were able to have the broken part replaced and were back in the laundry business by Monday afternoon.  Whew!

Also happening—we received our second Black Sheep Mattress. (We were long overdue here for new mattresses.)  I have now slept on it, and wow, it was a good sleep.  It is made of wool, cotton, pocket coils, and an organic cotton cover.  Of course, five minutes after I made the bed with the brand new mattress, Sadie the dog was trying it out!

Then? There was a sale at my friendly, not so local Manitoba fabric store, ThreadCount fabrics.  I may have placed an order...this sewing thing is very satisfying just now.  I mean, I get new clothes when I finish a project!  Who could dislike that?  (Bottom fabric is a bat print for a friend’s teenager.  It is October—doesn’t every fabric order need bats in it?!).  Actually, the professor really does not like bats, and I am not world’s biggest fan myself...so I covered that up to give to my friend later!

Meanwhile, little boys in grade three play very hard.  The “brand new” start of school size 7 jeans are already getting holes in the knees.  However, I discovered that the size 7 jean legs are now almost big enough to mend using the machine.  This drastically reduces the amount of time spent on each hole, and I am all for it.  I even ironed on a patch today and then tacked it using the machine, but the kid with the size 7 slims better stop making holes by crawling on the playground, as they are too small to be easily darned on the machine. (And now that I have used the machine to do it, I do not want to go back to doing it by hand!!)

Last but not least, when kids play in wet, dirty, sloppy snow, they need a lot of mitts.  And my twins grew a lot this past summer.  I knit quickly, but do not work miracles.  So, I took some old felted sweaters and made two pairs of felted wool mitts, one pair for each boy.  These are not works of art but they are warm!  Now that the snow has melted and the mitts and boots are finally dry, I am hoping I have a few days off before we need to do quick mitten production and wet mitten and boot rotation again...

So, if you were wondering, what am I writing these days?  Well, not as much as usual, but things are still getting done over here in the meanwhile! (And this did not even mention how many meals and loaves of bread I turned out this week, did it?!)

Spring break happenings

Kids are back to school today after a long break!  We did a lot--we went to the zoo, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Artsjunktion, and more.  We watched our pitas being baked to order at a new Middle Eastern grocery store, we ran errands, and both my twins played for hours, and spent lots of time reading and listening to audio books. One of my twins took on a big cleaning task and re-organized and sorted all their books and tidied the playroom, too... It was busy.

For some reason, I chose this time to try out mitts from the fabulous, new (and fast selling) Saltwater Mittens.
 This was challenging like asking me to serve snacks while doing a handstand and singing the ABCs backward.  I had a hard time following the pattern the first time round while also helping a kid with his knitting, or reading a hard word for him, or taking care of dogs and kids all at once.  Given our household chaos, I was maybe overestimating my multi-tasking skills.  These are gorgeous mittens though, and the book is well-worth checking out.

However, I have produced one mitt (here is a bad photo, before making the thumb) and I'm well on my way to making a second.  This particular pattern, Little Corner Boy, seems to work out well for our size at the moment, and I'm hoping to produce another three mitts so we can start next fall with some new mittens in the mix.  (Our old mitts are still in use every single day, but getting sort of ragged looking.)

While all this was happening, my article came out in the Vancouver Jewish Independent:
Dig more deeply into identity

Otherwise, publications have been a bit thin on the ground lately.  I write stuff, sure, but finding time to submit and getting things accepted seems slow these days.  I hope this post-spring break time is productive, because I also have to start getting ready for Passover, which starts in less than three weeks.  (Whew!  Where did the time go!?)

Taking a risk

I've been thinking about this post for a while but no matter what I did, the photos don't seem to represent the ideas well. I'm trying hard, bear with me!

Several folks mentioned that my last post was a good one. For those nice comments, I thank you! My dad particularly wanted to point out though that the first photo of Sally the dog looks like a black swan. I only saw a black dog in my snowy backyard, but heck, we always need other people to point out new ways of seeing things, whether it is the value of relationships or our photographs!

That leads me to this post. The professor and I are remarkably dependable "first" children. We are very duty bound. If family or friends ask us to do something (teach, help, whatever), we do what we say we are going to, with few exceptions. That said, both of us also seem willing to do more risk taking than many people I know. We take big trips overseas, move to other countries, experiment in weird ways in our work lives, and we try to reach out to new people--friends that are perhaps unlikely choices.

One reason I feel confident in experimenting in fiber arts is because I know the dependable parts of things...what is the worst thing that could happen? (Not much, actually, because it is just wool! Far worse things have happened to us during big moves or our travels!) Last summer, in the midst of teaching, entertaining, and running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I started a project. I used polar weight wool rug yarn I got for free on a challenging day. Using enormous needles, I doubled the yarn and knit it into a long flat rectangle. I planned to make it into a cushion, but when I got "done" (tired of it), it didn't look cushion-like.

Using an enormous tapestry needle, I stitched up one short side of the rectangle and pulled the stitches tight like a draw string. I stitched up the "open" end of the rectangle, and I made something that looked like a very floppy and deep bowl or hat. It still didn't look like anything.

I threw it aside and ruminated on the situation. One day, the professor was doing laundry...and I asked him to throw this "thingee" into the washing machine with a hot water wash. I imagined a hard felted bowl shaped thing would emerge. What came out surprised us both.

The washing fulled the wool (but hadn't quite felted it) and the bottom of the tube folded up on itself. It emerged all on its own as a rather sturdy looking hat. The shape reminds me of a Russian style hat, or the sheepskin trooper hat I bought for the professor. (He hardly wears it and says it is "too warm" to wear it most of the time. Note, it is -4F or-20C outdoors at the moment.)

The new "hat" is a bit too large for my head, but I think it might fit our resident student, who is coming back for a week or two this January to experience winter in Manitoba. She might just need a warm hat.

If that doesn't work out, it's not a bad felted bowl, either. Full of balls of yarn or a knitting project, I imagine there will always be another use for another yarn containment basket!

While I was getting ready to post about this experiment (a good metaphor for the much bigger risks we all should consider taking in 2011...), the phone rang. A local friend called, asking for coaching in replacing a zipper. It wasn't just any zipper though, it was a tallit (prayer shawl) bag used by his father. So, it was an old textile and a sentimentally meaningful one--this was something his father used for prayer, and now he uses, on a daily basis.

I could not believe the serendipity. I guess maybe I became known for taking risks in 2010.

That said, I coached our friend on the phone rather than in person, because the professor has a bad cold. I don't want our friend to get sick--and there is such a thing as too much risk taking for people like us (dutiful eldest children who worry about others)!

May you take risks in whatever makes you happy--safe risks only, please--in 2011, to discover new and wonderful things! Happy New Year!