Reflections on the comments section

 A few weeks ago, I submitted a piece on provincial outsourcing policies to an editor.  She responded in a way that made it unclear if she was going to buy that piece.  Instead, she asked something like, 

"Honestly, I'd be more interested in hearing from you in terms of your observations on COVID-19 and anecdotes from the world you are living right now."  

I responded with this piece which an editor bought quickly. It went live over the weekend.  I received multiple private notes and thank you comments from women. Meanwhile, the comments sections of the CBC article (and its facebook repost) were roughly the equivalent of dumpster fires, in another friend's words.

 Multiple surveys and media reports have shown the employment/career issues with the pandemic when it comes to inequality in women's lives. I saw no reason to rehash that. Instead, I provided anecdoctal evidence of the pandemic's effects on women's careers--anecdotes from my life and 5 or so other women's lives (I described them vaguely and with composite vignettes, to preserve their anonymity).  These stories "from the front lines" weren't good enough for individuals who wanted to comment on all aspects of women's personal lives, bodies, marital and reproductive choices.

Nobody commented on my professional work credentials or education -nothing about book publications or degrees, but rather on my reproductive choices and personal blog posts! There were questions on why I'd bothered with graduate education (My undergrad advisors at Cornell thought I should?! It helped me teach at community colleges and universities in the past?) and rude comments about the rug I wove for Sadie's water bowl. It's sort of amazing what people feel emboldened to say online.

This is one reason why I like to write more on ideas/policy...but until then, I need to write what sells, and what I know.  It's not always the most intellectual stuff.  My articles on knitting, canning, baking, etc. sometimes sell faster than more academic or political critiques. People ask more about my children  than about my work...and all this is a sign of how women's work is valued in our society. (This isn't really a measure of my skills, it's about society's priorities for women.)

I'm going to keep posting here about my writing life as well as my 'home/making/creative life.' For me, they aren't really separate professional/personal spheres right now.  (I loved getting comments on the blog when folks used to leave notes!  It was a great way to build bridges.)

Many writers don't ever read the comments on their articles. I hold out hope that the feedback would be on topic and relevant so I read them. (...Although it often feels like self-flagellation.) Then I take a moment to remember something.  If these folks wrote opinion pieces and submitted them rather than filling up the comments section, they could also share their experiences and ideas.  Better yet, I think about the rug I made, or more generally, the work of my hands. I wonder if they are all capable of making rugs by hand when they need them. If not, there's no room to belittle others for their labours.

We can all talk about ideas and agree to disagree in a civil way.  Commenting negatively on people's bodies and choices doesn't push your views, ideas or agenda forward. It casts a shadow--but it's not a reflection of my work.  It reflects on the commenter's character..not mine. 

Since we last spoke...

I've been busy over here, making things.  The knitting's gone slowly but the sewing has been, for the most part, very positive.  I've had a success--I made this second jumper from the 100 acts of sewing dress no. 1 pattern, and it has already been worn quite a bit!  (It just requires woolly tights, a long sleeve shirt and a sweater as it is brisk outside these days.)

I then made a set of linen/cotton dish cloths and this too went very quickly!

Filled with confidence over the success of my efforts, I dove into making my first pair of pants...with a pattern.  They are 100 acts of sewing pants no.1.  I lengthened them, I lined up the pinstripes from this wool/blend suiting from Economy Textile.  I finished the pants completely, and then put them on.  Sewing fail!  The fabric does not drape.  The pants look sort of like I instantly gained 40 lbs.  I will either be taking these in or washing them to see if I can get them drape or....something.  Somebody may get a new pair of handmade pants?

Ahh, well.  The bigger picture is easy to see.  I am learning many new skills at once.  I'm also happy that it goes quicker than when I try out a new knitting design.  I sometimes spend months on a project that never becomes a fully realized design or goes on sale for knitters.  That's ok. It happens.  Part of making (and learning) is also failing and trying again.  Very important life lesson--sadly true no matter what we're working on.

In other big news, Three Ply: 3 Stories + Patterns, has been written up in the latest Vogue Knitting Magazine!  I am pleased as punch about it and my household was so excited to see the big article.  This ebook is also available from Ravelry as a pdf or you can just download individual stories and patterns from Ravelry or Lovecrafts.com.

Also, I received a lovely note inviting me to try out a gorgeous handmade ceramic bowl from yarncanada.ca.   When I checked them out, I discovered that they were done by Madeline Coomey, an artist from BC who does beautiful work.  However, alas and alack, my household is too chaotic with dogs and kids to keep a ceramic yarn bowl in one piece...and I do most of my knitting on the run these days.  If you do use yarn bowls though?  This one is a good one! Please check out the link!

Last, but not least...
Today, a column appeared online and was published --on my sewing journey...From the beginning again. 

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?!)

Make & Hue's Tradition issue

My article, Made by Anonymous, has gone live in Sweet Georgia's Make & Hue Tradition issue!

Do you sign everything you make?  Put your initials in one corner?  Sew in a label?  Here's an exploration of the pros and cons....why we do what we do.  It's a quick survey of how women have historically labelled their needlework (or not) and how.

It's finally sunny and warmer here in Winnipeg today, so I'm off to walk dogs and bask in the sunshine's rays without a hat.  If you'd like to knit one of these mitts (it's never too early to get ready for winter in Canada...), here's a link to many of the mitten patterns featured in this photo.

Article spoiler: ...while I don't tend to label my knitwear, I am really proud of all the effort that goes into my design work/writing/intellectual property.  I'm a "sometimes anonymous, sometimes not" kinda person!

Sunshine, Sales, and Charitable Give-aways

There's one last chance to take advantage of the "Making, Not Buying" Sale!  The sale ends at midnight, Central Time (US&Canada) tonight, November 30th.
Get 25% off all my Ravelry knitting patterns with the coupon code:
Making

If you'd prefer to buy your patterns right along with the yarn, Loveknitting.com is having all sorts of great sales. Nearly all my patterns are available for sale there, and most are linked right up with the right yarns for knitting the patterns.  Instant, easy gratification!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!
If you're a knitter who donates her/his work to charity, Yarncanada.ca is having a special yarn giveaway.  Enter your information here to be eligible to win a huge amount of yarn for your good deeds!
The home front:
We've had a challenging week.  One twin decided it would be fun to hide and disconnect all the landline phones, for instance.  (Things got fixed after Mommy freaked out and pointed out that no one could call out in case of emergency this way...)  And yes, I have a cell phone, but you're also inferring that it would be on my body, turned on, and I'd be able to focus to speak on the phone...none of which were the case at the time!
I wanted to snap a photo of my homemade cast-iron skillet cornbread.  True, we ate some slices for snack...but I could have still posted a photo as it continued to cool, on top of the back of the stovetop. However, I did something crazy and trusted my husband, the professor, both boys, and two dogs to behave themselves and manage the situation while I (ahem) went to the bathroom.  When I returned?  It looked like a bad news pie eating contest, gone horribly wrong. Most of the cornbread was gone. Crumbs everywhere.

Sadie the dog was making weird coughing noises. (Hint, this is what happens when you eat half a skillet of cornbread without benefit of butter or a glass of milk...) And no, I am not giving my dog butter or milk to wash down the cornbread she ate while no one was looking...  AHHH!

A day later, she decided to open her plastic container of dog treats with her teeth, and eat those, too.  Her tummy is maybe a little upset now.  Just a smidge.  And Sally, our old dog, is not 100% better yet herself.  Fun times.

I've just made a fudge brownie pie and an apple cake--we're going to Shabbat dinner at a friend's house.  I took precautions.  Sadie is locked in with me on the third floor-thank you, baby gates- and I sort of barricaded in the desserts with heavy jars, etc. so they could cool in safety.

OK, I am not going into anything else, it's too long a list!  Here's a quick look at the sun light pouring into our dining room after a big snowstorm passed.  Winter sunlight is the best, it really lifts my spirits!

On the making front here, well, it hasn't been the best week for wild bursts of creativity.  I've done the basics--written and edited some articles.  I'm knitting a solid black cardigan for myself (boring but necessary) so there's nothing to see there!  I'll leave you with this multi-colored piece of art, produced by a kid at our house.  (OK, he was kept inside for recess due to some seriously bad stuff he did at school, but whatever.  The art came home....)

I'm wishing you a peaceful weekend.  With lots of cake.  Maybe some snow, colorful art, and umm, did I say peace?  Yeah, please pass me some of that as well.  In the interim, I might just need more cake.

Sale & Freestyle

This fall has been intense--lots of stuff on the homefront to sort out and fix.  This past week, Sally the dog (now, age 14!) had a bad tummy ache and we were worried things were all over for her.  She seems to be on the mend...with a lot of antibiotics, anti-nausea pills, and more.  Meanwhile, things haven't been quiet elsewhere either.

I wrote about some of it in this article that came out last Friday:
Sorting out playground fights

The short version is that untangling what's happening in my twins' lives can take a while. Lots of appointments and drama. Sometimes, it's a lot easier to fix a sweater!  Stripe Freestyle had a major blow-out this past weekend.  This is one of the cuffs, and suddenly, I saw my kid's thumb going through the cuff like a thumb hole...where I hadn't made one when designing the sweater!

He loves this sweater.

So, first I got it off his body. (not easy, actually.)
I waited until all seven year olds were asleep....
I put a piece of white paper behind the enormous hole so I could really see it.

I picked up stitches substantially below the beginning of the hole, using a double pointed needle one size below what's called for in the pattern.  Then, I began recreating the cuff, picking up whatever weak stitches and edges I could on either side of the hole.
When I was finished, it did not look perfect or untouched.  In fact, I even took a tapestry needle and stitched over many weak stitches I'd spied around the hole--after this was knit up.

And making this, and RE-making this, felt good.  He loves this sweater and has worn it just about every other day for the last year, and I have no intention of trying to either knit a whole new one or shop for anything right now.  Instead, I fixed what I'd made previously, and that was the kind of "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra that I'd like to have more of in my life.

After the big mending job, it needed a bath, and then it dried on a towel on the radiator over night, and is now good to go.  I am, however, encouraging my lovely boy to consider rotating his sweaters a bit more, because this one will not last forever.

THE SALE
If you too are a "maker" sort?
I'd like to invite you to download a pattern from Ravelry, at 25% off, with this coupon code:
Making

The sale lasts until midnight, CT, on November 30th.  Please share this "Making Sale" with friends!

Stay warm.  Happy knitting, cooking, reading, resting on the couch, and enjoying this hibernating season. :)

Supporting change through knitting

At the beginning of August, our family took a trip together.  We flew to Montreal and saw some good friends there. They were just returning overseas from a sabbatical (with a two year old) and our flight left Winnipeg at 5AM, so we were all sort of a mess, but had a big meal together and enjoyed seeing each other very much.

Then, we headed to northern Vermont, to a big family& friend celebration.  My best friend from childhood got married quietly last year, but we all gathered for an informal weekend to celebrate their big decision.  It was held at her folks' farm, and we picked many many raspberries and blueberries, played in the apple orchard treehouse, swam in the farm pond, and had fun together.  We stayed at a hotel near a glacial lake...and had a fairly big canoe tip over, too.  (All was fine, only parents fell out and it was still shallow where it happened!)  I'd seen the farm in winter  and in May, and maybe other times, too, but every season is a stunner on a well-maintained farm! (click on the links for more photos)

After that, we drove to upstate NY and visited the Professor's family vacation place, an old dairy farm.  While there, we shot more photos of Fissure.  I now wish I'd waited to release the pattern until I had these photos as I think they are much better than the first ones I featured in the pattern.  However, something more important followed.

My sister-in-law bought me this lovely yak yarn as a present a while ago.  She lives in Manhattan, and lovely high-end yarns are not hard to come by there!  However, in the meanwhile, she has been working very hard.  She is a lawyer, and is about to become a judge in New York City.

I'm enormously proud of her.  It's so important to have women in democratically elected positions of authority in our society.  Women are half of our population, but often never manage to get into positions where they can make such a big difference in the lives of others.

 While we were at the farm, our nephew, age 1, got sick with a virus and she took him home-so I could not feature her in the photos.  We stayed on with our niece (the same age as our twins), brother-in-law, the Professor's father and his wife, and spent a day or two more out and about.  Climbing on hay bales, going to Lake George, and hanging out.  We also caught a few more glimpses of Fissure before it went off to its new big city Manhattan home.

 I finish things very slowly these days...so I have only turned out one of these...but was so pleased to find out that the second completed version of this pattern is going to support Chase the Chill, a charity that donates hand knits scarves to people in Winnipeg who might need them.

I wanted to say in words how important and exciting it was to me that my (younger) relative will take on such an important and powerful position in the near future.  Words failed me, and anyway, there were three 6 and 7 year olds racing around, a toddler crying, and well, too much noise for adult communication.  Instead, I could hand her something I'd made.  So I did.

The pattern for knitting Fissure is now available on both Ravelry and Loveknitting.com.  
Let's make a break (a fissure?!) for good....making change is important.

Embracing Patched Jeans

Hurray!  My first piece went live yesterday on CBC-Parents!

It's in the "Learning" category.
It's live, and on a national CBC website!
Here's a link:
 Why My Kids Have Patches On Their Clothes And What That’s Taught Our Family

In other news:
Sadie the dog had a little run-in with the leftover sugar from canning yesterday.  Rather, she was annoyed that I left home (She was saying, "The nerve of that lady!  Going out for some groceries! Leaving me at home with Sally the dog, the Professor, and both twins---  All on my own!") and decided to do some investigation of our kitchen counters again.  Everyone else was upstairs, getting ready for kid bedtime. This time, Sadie's adventure involved taking a 2 kilo bag of sugar (maybe a pound or .5 kilo was left) and bringing it to the living room, ripping up the bag, and spraying sugar everywhere.  Talk about a mess...OY.  She is paying for it today with a real tummy ache.

It was a lot to clean up but it was also pretty funny.  Oh, we have a big puppy!
Note to self: Do not leave stuff out on counters!  Repeat! (Read that note, again and again.)

She'll grow and learn, but it takes training and time...and I have to train all the other family members to keep better track of her.  (Cause sometimes I do leave home to do things...crazy, huh?)

July-the mending and making edition

The professor was invited to give a talk (lecture) at a conference in Naples, Italy.  For a variety of reasons--the cost of airfare, finding stuff to do with twins alone in Naples while he was at the conference, and well, the fact that I speak no Italian, among other things...I chose to stay home with twins and dogs this time while our professor did a very speedy trip to Europe.  He came home with treats for everyone.  For us though, one of the tastiest treats was the 10 Euro he spent in the duty-free shop on real Buffalo Mozzarella.  He carried it, in a little cooler, through many airports.  We all thoroughly enjoyed it!  (See above for the tomato and basil, plain, and dressed with Italian herbs versions...balsamic vinegar and olive oil were optional, too!)

When he got home, we took a walk in the neighborhood to do some errands, and this bag was on sale at a boutique.  It's made of recycled fabric and made with fair trade workers in India.  I love it-- (I kind of have a bag thing...) but it needs some more pockets and a closure.  I haven't figured that out yet.

Also this past weekend, we had other projects going on.  The twins and the professor picked our cherry bushes completely clean of ripe cherries-and those are now sitting in the frig, waiting for me to make cherry jam.  First though, came strawberry picking.  Usually this is a family trip, but Sadie the new dog is not quite ready yet for long stretches on her own.  So, I hung out at home and they went off to pick berries yesterday.

When they came back, one twin's lightweight gray pants were, umm, trashed.  Mending needs to happen, but when we thought on it, we all concluded that really, he just needed more warm weather trousers that he would agree to wear.

After some discussion, we decided that his most comfortable, holey, patched jeans would make good "long" shorts--essentially surfer length, if not longer.  Three pairs of pants rushed up to my office sewing machine last night.  50 minutes later...2 pairs for the kid with the urgent need...and 1 pair for the other twin.  (Maintaining parity is always good!)  We will see how these work.  In any case, the cut-offs look slightly nicer than some of the patches at this point. :)

Over the weekend, I took a quick trip to a fabric store I love, and I found this Marimekko-style remnant.  It was slinky and a weird shape.  Definitely not super useful, but I had to have it--and at $2.60 CAD, it was a cheap splurge.  While I made cut-off shorts, I pondered.  I had a linen tank top that never fit right.  It was sitting in a pile to be mended.

I hemmed the remnant and attached it to the tank top in a sort of handkerchief pinafore style.  We'll see if it stays assembled when I wear it...but at least now I can look at this pretty block print flower style some more.  The fabric was so sheer and slippery that pins made holes in it.  It was hard to work with--and I am not sure I'd like to try sewing something bigger with it.

Today though, it was all about strawberry jam.  17 cups of jam later, we still have two flats of strawberries left in the refrigerator.  There is one fabulous thing about seven year olds though.  Hand them a cutting board and a butter knife?  And the whole family hulled strawberries at once.  This saved me hours of prep work on my own.
I love making homemade, local "fast food" that goes on my pantry shelves for winter...but it also takes work and a chunk of kid-free time. (I find boiling water baths and kids do not mix, especially when trying out their new palm sized Italian race cars...)

Tomorrow, I start doing the cherries...wish me patience...I might need it!

Making knitting needles

When I went with my family and friends to that Arts Center in Alexandra, VA in May (the one that does art with recycled materials)  I scored something unusual.  They had a jar of unfinished knitting needles in rare woods in all sorts of sizes.  This used to be someone's business, I think she was turning knitting needles on a lathe in ebony, rosewood, etc. but then she retired...and donated her leftovers.  I got 2 sets of straight needles at $3 a piece.  I could have bought a ton, but in truth, I don't really need more needles.  I do use size #6 and 7 (4 mm and 4.5mm) pretty often though.  None of the needles were marked, and none had ends yet.  So, I eyeballed, bought two, and flew home to Winnipeg.

I have a weird collection of beads in many sizes.  I always thought I might get into beading, although honestly, it has never been my thing.  I've made beaded yarns, knitted beads into garments, and in the end, I find it a bit too fiddly and the end result was too girly for my personal taste.  However, I just happened to have some wooden beads...that would work well on these needles.

I did this in a low tech way.  I grabbed some of my kids' glue, some newspaper, and set things up on the front porch.  I didn't measure or get overly particular about details.  I put glue inside the beads, slid them onto the ends of the needles, and left it to dry.

Once dry, the needles look good to go.  I have knit on straight or double pointed needles without anything on the end, and while I can manage it in a pinch, I like a firm cap on the end so stitches don't fall off when I race off to chase a dog or kid.  These will fit the bill.  If for some reason the glue does not stick, I have more wooden beads and I can use fancier glue later.  I started with easily accessible non-toxic glue from the kids' art shelf.

If you are handy, you can easily sharpen dowels and make knitting needles.  I have also knit with pencils in a pinch.  Sometimes you need to knit and supplies aren't close at hand.  If you're not into sharpening dowels, consider visiting some thrift shops and secondhand stores to get needles affordably.  This is how I built up my big collection of needles when I first got married and moved away from my mom's stash of needles.  This also helps you learn to knit with a variety of needles.  I learned not to be overly picky about wood/metal/plastic but to enjoy knitting with tools that were well-loved by those knitters who came before me.

Making as a way of giving Thanks

As a dual citizen (US/Canada), I'm often feeling betwixt and between this time of year.  We celebrated Thanksgiving in October in Winnipeg, but right now, everyone --my family and friends--in the US is running around, getting ready for Thanksgiving.  We will be having school and work as usual tomorrow... but I can be thankful anyhow...

1)So, I'm throwing my own party here on the blog.  First, if you've been wanting to buy any of my Rav Patterns , including my brand new pattern, Woolly, you can save 25% off any of these patterns on Ravelry from now until November 27th at midnight (Central Time, US & Canada) with the coupon code:
Thanks

2) Second, if you are the kind of person who wants to say thank you by knitting for others, well, that is awesome.  Yarncanada.ca wants to help you by giving yarn for you to knit for your good cause.
They are offering free yarn (with a contest) to knitters in both the US and Canada who like to knit for good causes.  So, if you knit for charity, hop on over there and enter their competition; the deadline is December 15th.

3) I cannot really cope with this time of year without cooking stuff.  So, I'm making a roast and some potatoes and sweet potatoes and some squash and kale---and....my Professor bought me this cool set of things I had to tell you about.  Here in Winnipeg, we have lots of root crops.  We have an extended season vegetable share this year, so we're getting a lot of cabbage, carrots, etc and there's only so much slaw a person can eat, let me tell you.

As my friends know, my attention span for cooking is about 24 hours.  After that, I seem to forget things like sourdough starters or sauerkraut and, at least when I lived in the Southern US, they would grow strange pink or green colors and the Professor would come along and throw it out to protect us from keeling over.  (He took those university health and safety classes while I did Arts& Social Sciences. :)

But I still was curious about fermentation.  Small batch fermentation in a cooler climate seemed like more of a sure thing, so he bought me Pickle Pipes and glass Pickle Pebble glass weights to try this out with canning jars and rings.  (We already had loads of those) I'm making my first small batches of sauerkraut and pickled carrots now.  They sure look good sitting on the counter...and these silicon pickle pipes have a little valve at the top so the fermentation gets air without introducing anything else into the concoction.  I look forward to seeing how it comes out.

--Canadians, here are links to Amazon.ca for these things, I used the US links above first--
 Pickle Pipes and Pickle Pebbles

(I'm using a handmade book by my friend Janet as a way of keeping notes on my kitchen experiments.)

Have a wonderful holiday, or a great Thursday--wherever you live!

making

Nothing gets me back in my "work groove" better than a little quiet and a chance to do things and make stuff.  This past week has been pretty darn productive.  I've written two articles (and one will go live this weekend sometime), I've done some blocking and knitting, I've mended some clothes--which instantly increases what I can wear again...it's all good.

Both twins are also somewhat better settled when they are back at school, so I love routine.  Part of that routine is getting to do something absolutely crazy beyond producing meals for everyone else--It's eating a homemade lunch, by myself.  Better yet, the lunch doesn't comprise of a calzone or sandwich (things I could eat one handed while trying to feed those babies, for instance) but rather a salad.  here's an improvised delight I ate yesterday.  One cut up leftover baked potato, some spinach, some dilly beans--canned by me in long ago hot summer weather, some leftover 'mediterranean' type salad on top (cut up tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, with oil, vinegar, and Italian herbs), topped by plain yogurt and some peanuts for crunch.  Eclectic?  yup.  Good?  You bet.  And...I did not have to compete with two five year olds over the salad, which, by the way, is an issue.  I have two boys who love salad but will eat it all before I get to serve myself any!  

 Also on the schedule?  Writing up a pattern to submit as part of my local festival's collection!  Here's the sample, all blocked and tidy.  The yarn?  Handspun flax, from TapRoot Fibre Lab.

That one bead?  Recycled glass, purchased from an African fair trade vendor, at a long ago street fair.  Having a deep stash is great when it comes to finding that perfect bead or button...
Happy Spring Making!
Joanne