The sleepy sweaters

Time is short...the boys have summer camp in the mornings in July, but it's all me and twin three year olds every afternoon.  In August, our mother's helper will be back to help  a bit(she's away this month), but there's no camp and no preschool in August...just me, filling up the play time as best I can.  That means there's very little time for blog posts, no time for, say, complicated cooking or vacuuming up the copious amounts of dog fluff (honestly, it could be a new breed of dog!) on the floors. 

When I do have spare moments, I am mostly trying to fill them up with things that keep the household afloat, are enjoyable for someone or give us pleasure in the long run.  More on that in another post, I think...but in this one, I present:

the sleepy sweaters

Yes.  Even in summer here, we wear sweaters to bed with some frequency.  With the windows open, it can get chilly at night, and both boys throw off their covers with some frequency.  In an effort to get more sleep by helping them sleep through the night occasionally, I came up with these. 

This starts with either felted wool sweaters (from the thrift store) or cashmere ones that I bought to make into wool soakers or longies.  (Wool is very absorbent and ideal for cloth diaper covers; it is what my boys have been wearing at night for most of their lives.)  My mom helped out by making the first soakers and wool pants when the boys were born.  Some of the soakers are handknits but most are made from felted, repurposed sweaters.  The wool pants, (also called longies) worn over their clothes, were great for winter time warmth when going outside and a lot easier than getting a couple of infants into snow suits.

Over time, I got a stock pile of beautiful sweaters felted or washed and ready to go.  The professor really likes the thrift store sweater hunt!  The sleepy sweaters in my house come in two styles:

1) a long sleeveless one, sort of like a sleeveless tunic.  This goes over a short or long sleeved tee-shirt and a pair of pajama pants at bedtime.  (and underneath those pjs, we are still wearing cloth diapers and wool soakers at night.)

2) When it is really cold, in the winter, we wear long sleeve sleepy sweaters.  I repurpose felted adult sweaters or cashmere ones by hemming up the bottoms and sleeves so they fit my (still pretty small) three year olds. 

Recently, the purple cashmere sleeveless sleepy sweater was deemed the "ballet sweater."  Leo, the older twin, is a great fan of dancing.  He particularly enjoys twirling and stomping in his sleepy sweater before bed.

I began to get worried because this particular sleepy sweater was looking a bit ragged. When would I fix it and where would I find another perfect purple (CASHMERE!|) sleepy sweater?

I had a very lucky helper.  My friend Rachel, who owns Wolseley Wardrobe, a local consignment shop, kept her eye out for the perfect sweater.  The stars aligned and we just landed a second, long sleeved cashmere purple BALLET sleepy sweater.  Hurray! 

I get enormous pleasure out of seeing my guys cozy and ready for sleep, outfitted in woollies made or repurposed just for them.  It is time well-spent because sometimes, just sometimes, I get to sleep 5-6 hours in a row when they both are warm and comfy enough to sleep through the night at the same time.

I took advantage of a sunny morning to air these out and I wanted to share it with you.  Hope you can imagine the twin ballet dancers twirling here. 

PS: I am wondering if the blog is something I should keep doing? If you are reading, why do you read?  Are you a longtime reader?  Would you like me to post something different?  I just read this article and wonder if I've missed the boat on blogging.  Should I have made mine into something money making?  Is it time to let it go completely, as I cannot update it weekly anymore?

Baby Want Ads

I'm cute, available, and 9 lbs.

Pick me up.

(Pick up line courtesy of the professor and his 9 lb date, Sam. Here, Sam is two timing with his brother and me...yes, slings are a lifesaver with twins.)

Active twins seek well-rested playmates. Parents need not apply.

Want to save the earth? Do more laundry. Cloth diapers are a great choice for us--economical, ecologically friendly AND?

(Joanne adds: incredibly time intensive with twins...this is the closest I've gotten to fiber arts or textile creativity of any kind since the babies were born June 1. I hope this changes some day...)

humbility

My dad is a great fan of made up words. I didn't realize for quite a while that they were made up...but his whimsy certainly prepared me for reading students' papers when I taught writing, or for becoming a writer one day. Anyhow, when I was a kid, instead of saying "having humility" he would say something humbilified me or one had gotten humble or"humbility" after a particularly embarrassing mistake.

This weekend, the professor was out of town at a conference. I was on my own with the dogs and spent a lot of time working on my new mitten project. I was cruising along, feeling very good about myself. Really good about how GREAT it was coming out. Then, I looked down and realized something.

I was knitting the chart upside down. Now, this was because I'd turned the book upside down. On purpose. I realized this while speaking with the professor on the phone late at night. He urged me not to rip it out immediately, but to sleep on it. (It's usually my habit to rip out a big mistake right away, as it's hard to live with once I know it's there.) If it's a little mistake, I live with it. I move on. As the Persian carpet makers concluded, only the Almighty is perfect. Leaving a small mistake is ok with me.

I listened to his advice. I slept on it. In the AM, I looked at it again. Doh! Stupid! After feeling completely humbilified and embarrassed again, I ripped it out. I put the book and the chart right side up. I moved on. With considerable knitting time this afternoon, I'm now further along on my first mitten then when I ripped it out the first time--and this time, the pattern is right side up. While knitting, I listened to The Uncommon Reader, a novella, read by the author, which I am heartily enjoying and can recommend.

I also succeeded, this weekend, in finally figuring out how to dry all my laundry outside. This is part of my effort to avoid using the clothes dryer, which uses tons of energy. You'd think, (at least, I thought) that drying one's clothes out on a clothes line wouldn't be difficult, since all our foremothers did it. Hah. I've been able to manage a couple of loads, but the whole week's wash? Getting all of one's clothes washed and dried in one day in the South of the U.S.A. can be a trial. If it's a nice day, above freezing, and you hang your wash out? It's still probably very humid. It makes it take longer to get everything dry. Today, I managed to get 4 loads of wash out and drying before about 11:30 AM. It turns out that early wash helps...along with a low humidity day, some sunshine, and a small breeze. Yet again, I prove through hard research that our foremothers got up early and were smart cookies. It's no wonder that they didn't wash clothes all that often...it's a lot of work.

Note: Since this was a lesson in my own humbility (humility), I cropped this photo so as not to include any embarrassing underthings that might mortify my shy professor. After all, this was my weekend to get in touch with my inner upside-down embarrassment. Not his. :)

PS: Willow is another smart cookie. Note the blog tour information on my sidebar... I hope this is helpful! I hope you'll take the tour with me!

I'm learning every day...

This week has reminded me that life is about learning, just in case I'd forgotten! Here are some of my new insights...

1) I'm just not in touch with mainstream media. I don't watch TV much or at all. I listen to my news on the radio or I read it online or in print. We have basic cable (it comes with our internet service as a package) and it's the most TV channels we've ever had. So, when I say I don't watch TV much, it means: our TV is on for 2 hours or less a day, usually between 7-9pm. When the professor is out of town, there are multiple days in a row that the TV is never turned on. If we watch, we watch PBS, or DVDs from the library. We've gone wild in the last few weeks and we're trying out Netflix so we can watch our favorite BBC shows. I learned from your comments that most other people know more about Comedy Central than I do, that you apparently stay up late enough to watch it, and that you have those channels! You also have opinions about it -- and see the video clips online faster than I do! (OK, so I'm not mainstream here. I'm fine with that. I just forget how the rest of the U.S. works...)

2) a. Starting this summer, we began hanging out our clothing consistently on a clothes line. It saves lots of energy, reduces wrinkles, and saves wear and tear on clothing. (clothes last much longer, according to all sorts of research, when not dried in a dryer.) Every Sunday, the professor and I wash our clothes. We hang it out. At night, the professor folds the laundry while I knit. Sometimes, we watch Masterpiece Mystery on PBS.

2) b. Last Sunday, the temperature never made it above freezing, so this is what happened. This might be where "stiff as a board" or "frozen stiff" came from! We resorted to using the clothes rack and dryer in the basement to resolve the issue. The professor urged me to get out my camera. We thought it was pretty fun to play with stiff flannel in this way! We now understand, first hand, why our ancestors didn't manage clean clothes as often in the winter time. It's hard to put on anything this stiff. Guess we need a wood stove next so we can dry things inside on a clothesline strung above the stove. :) (maybe not here, but in Winnipeg?!)

3) I'm still learning the ins and outs of my new great wheel. It is amazing how subtle and sophisticated the adjustments are for a well-made great wheel...I'd thought that the antique ones needed to be babied because of their age and adjustment quirks, but actually, even new great wheels have the same subtle adjustments in drive band alignment, tension, and other details. As the weather changes, the wheel changes too. I've spun up some gray to oatmeal Shetland wool. The two larger skeins here (Haven't set the twist yet on them) were done on the great wheel from carded rolags. The little skein is from my spindle, done with teased locks. The fleece itself is very soft; my goal was to keep the yarn just as soft. So far, I've managed that softness, but may try some other wools to keep practicing. I visit the wheel for about 15 minutes a day and have my "lesson." Soon, I'll get this--and by that, I mean I'll be able to spin the yarn I want with this wheel rather than letting it dictate to me how things will come out. In the meanwhile, it's nice to know that after 23 years of spinning, I can still be a beginner all over again!

In other details, my nephew is still in the hospital but definitely improving (hurray!) and we're still having jackhammering and other construction noises here. I dream of a quiet neighborhood with no "improvements!"

Are you still learning something new every day? (I hope so, it's fun.) What's your latest discovery?