And it was good

The split pea soup, a double recipe, made five meals — the other four are in the freezer. I was a little concerned about it because it looked so thin, but it tasted great and the blender made a nice puree. And Mark remembered we had leftover ham in the freezer, so there was a little meat in the soup, too. (I know, I could have cut apart the hocks and gotten one or two tiny pieces, but, no thanks.)

The bread was also pretty good, although it was a little sour / yeasty to my taste. Maybe I let the second rise go too long, or maybe the recipe really was crazy to call for a tablespoon of yeast (I had to check twice to be sure that’s what it said).

On the other hand, the “pour boiling water in a pan on the lower rack” method is apparently not safe for use with a baking stone. It cracked. Loudly. Fortunately, only three pieces, and the bread was unharmed.

And here we are, still awake, because my dulcimer acquaintance in Chicago, who has no little children and works a non-teacher job, and who is in the next time zone, called us at 10:15 to discuss our carpooling plans for the Chattanooga festival; Mark was already asleep and I was almost there. Oh well.

May I mention that Amy can count to twelve? Sort of. If you say “1″ she says “2″ and so on, and sometimes she strings together several numbers all by herself, often in the right order. And when she’s looking at a book she sometimes repeats phrases or sentences she remembers from it.

Split pea

My day has been focused on split pea soup, even though I haven’t started making it yet.

Set the bag of peas on the counter and the frozen smoked hamhocks in the fridge last night.

Looked up recipes this morning, realizing I needed an onion. Hmmm. Gas is expensive. Ask the neighbor? Or what else could I get done if I go to the store?

(Also got Amy up; after some naked time and breakfast we played in the music room (me practicing for the festival, Amy looking at scrapbooks and playing with Legos and my measuring tape). Somewhere in there I also washed and re-lanolized all of her wool pants.)

I decided to go to the store. I could also order some photo prints, post some YouTube videos at the library, and check my post office box, which has never contained any mail that’s for me. At least I don’t remember any. I could rattle off a list of names of previous boxholders, though.

So onto the computer to put the pictures and videos on a CD, then to the kitchen to make some lunch for us and eat it, and off we went.

Amy fell asleep for a few minutes in the car, so I decided to do the library first, so that she could nap in the sling if she wanted to. She didn’t nap, but she enjoyed being in the sling anyway.

Next door to the post office.

Back in the car and to Wal-mart, to choose one lovely Vidalia and to use the photo kiosk to order prints.

Home again, singing songs to keep Amy awake (if she sleeps in the car too close to naptime, she won’t nap), then a quick diaper change and into the bed.

Back to the computer to look up French bread recipes using whole wheat flour. I picked one, revised to make the flour ratio half and half; it’s rising now in the sunlight from the sliding glass door.

Soon it will be time to punch it down and shape it for the second rising, and to start the soup.

Mmm… soup and French bread…

All sweetness and light

Not me.

The banana bread — one loaf and eighteen delicious muffins. Whole wheat, oats, bananas, milk, butter, maple syrup, honey, baking soda.

The more things change…

The mini-crisis mentioned below?

Same as always, though the places and people change over the years.

Willful and unintentionally idealistic, if I can’t have what I want the way I want it, I’d rather not have it or anything at all.

I’m thinking particularly about the world of people, and how often (like in Africa) I am tempted to withdraw from that world, keep to myself, avoid relationships entirely and minimize social interaction as much as possible. If you’re not going to be my friend on my terms (which feels like, ‘if I’m not that important to you’), I want nothing to do with you at all.

Except that reaction doesn’t really punish you. It hurts me instead, because as much as the world of people sucks, I need it. Like everyone else I’m made for community and relationship.

But can I just say it also hurts to suck up that reality and continue to engage in social stuff?

The unintended poem from my journal last night says continuing social engagement is like saying:

Yes — I’m worthless scum.
My feelings may be trampled
But I’ll still come lick your crumbs.

This post is much more light-hearted than it sounds. I am aware of my own ridiculousness as well as the validity of my feelings and needs, and am endeavoring to piece everything together with compassion and respect.

Old T-shirt into wrap top

This used to be an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship t-shirt, from 1992 or 93. I used my dress / top pattern as a guide to create pattern pieces for a wrap top — a back, a back facing, a front wrap piece that reverses — and then eyeballing from the size of the armhole, I cut the existing sleeves shorter and narrower. That took two tries. I am very pleased with the results. The main downside to using the existing hems is that when you do the side seams, they look a little sloppy. But no hemming!

Here’s Amy wearing it; unfortunately, I didn’t realize a bit of the hem was tucked into her pants, but oh well.

Overalls-to-jumper reconstruction

I didn’t take pictures of the process. The overalls were tight in the crotch but too long in the legs. I did the following:

Cut the legs off before the crotch curve
Cut off the snap tapes
Cut the legs in half across the knees
Picked out the hems and other seams
Sewed the pieces in a circle, alternating a longish width with a shortish width
Used a long stitch to gather the circle, centering the embroidered motif — which didn’t really have enough white space between it and the cut edge, but at least the whole motif still shows
Sewed the circle to the garment body
Hemmed

Clothesline

Our clothesline is finished, and already sporting a load of whites.

I love that I can put the unmentionables on the middle two lines, and shirts and socks on the outer lines to hide them a bit. I don’t love that the posts lean, but that’s to be expected — they sit in metal squares that are anchored in the ground via long spikes — not the same as burying the posts themselves in the ground.

The posts are 4×4s — Mark used a circular saw to make lots of cuts halfway through each piece (two posts, two crossbeams), then a chisel to break off and smooth the pieces between the cuts. This created two notches so the post and crossbeam fit snugly together. Screws hold them in place. We turned the posts so that the crossbeam is pulled by the lines against the posts.

The lines each go through a little clamp, through an eyelet screw in the crossbeam, and back through the clamp, which tightens with screws.

New hat

Our yard has no shade except around some of the edges. It gets pretty bright out, and we all end up squinting a lot.

So a) I fixed Amy’s secondhand pink hat, which fit her head fine but the straps were too short. I took them out, added a bit of elastic, sewed it in place.

And b) I decided to make a new hat with fabric scraps. This is made of three fabrics — the eyelet leftover from her baptism dress, a lace and pintuck edge from a woven cotton slip, and (for the lining) random white cotton leftover from something I no longer remember.

I traced around the pink hat for the size of the brim. Measured her head circumference and did some minor algebra (circumference = pi*diameter) to get the diameter needed for the opening. Measured on the pink hat for the height. Measured the circumference of the top of the band to get the top piece’s measurements. Added seam allowances, and there we go.

Mostly Mama-Made

Made the dress last year, the pants several weeks ago, and finished the shoes this morning.

Amy sees the camera and wants to see herself in it, so it’s very difficult to keep her at sufficient distance to take a picture. We were chasing back and forth in front of the sunny open door, which she thought was very funny.

What I thought was very funny happened later, when she and I were reading books in her room. I was lying on my back and she’d bring a book over and sit on my belly to read it. At one point she put her foot on me instead of swinging it over, as if she was going to stand on me.

Me: Don’t step on Mama!

Amy: Move it. (Swiping me across the shoulders as if to sweep me out of her way.)

This is from my efforts to teach her not to walk on her books, puzzles, toys, etc. I tell her don’t step on x, move it out of the way, and I show her how. She’s listening!

New shoes, again

Amy’s new shoes (didn’t I just make those a few weeks ago?) are already sporting holes at the toes.

So, despite the Tandy fiasco, I decided to try again to buy a big piece of leather to use for her now and near future shoes. This time I ordered from the place I liked in the first place, but Tandy was cheaper — Brettuns Village. I chose the piece of tan suede in the middle right of this photo, the one with two square holes in it. It looks small in the picture, but it’s really about seven or eight square feet. It arrived the other day and I’m happy to report it looks like it’s described — there are two small holes that look pretty natural, unlike that Tandy piece that had been used as a cutting board or something.

This time Amy was happy to step on a piece of paper so I could measure her feet. (Last time she kept bringing her knees up as if she was afraid to stand on the paper or thought I was picking her up.) In fact, when I was done she continued to play putting her feet on the paper.

Two shoes ago I had altered the Tacky Living pattern (oooh, my previous shoes made it to the gallery!) to make the shoes more asymmetrical, matching the big toe to little toe slant of typical feet. Instead of scaling their pattern and trying to eyeball the same adjustments again, this time I scanned my altered pattern pieces, scaled that, and printed it out for the new size.

This time I wanted to make all the parts (not just the soles) from leather, in hopes that the shoes would last as long as they would fit, unlike the denim from last time. I used some lightweight light blue fabric for linings.

First I adhered the sole linings with iron-on adhesive, but only in the middle, just missing the seam lines, so that I wouldn’t have to sew through the adhesive. (The package says not to sew through it.)

Next I zigzagged the top edge of the vamp linings, then made the button holes to thread the elastic through, and sewed the linings to the vamps.

For the back linings, I cut them taller than needed, and folded and pressed down the top edge to make the elastic casing. I sewed the fold down, then sewed them to the backs.

Then sewed the vamps and backs to the soles. This is always the hardest and most annoying part. At some point the machine always skips — maybe one stitch, maybe a dozen, and maybe backing up fixes it, or maybe I go over the same place ten times and not one stitch catches. I don’t know why that happens or what to do about it, other than to keep trying and eventually something works. Also, at the points where the backs and vamps overlap, I was sewing through three thicknesses of 3-oz leather — I could see my size 16 (my heftiest) needle bending a bit and was afraid it was going to break.

I should mention I hand-crank the machine when sewing on leather — it just seems less likely to break a needle then, and it’s much easier to make smooth curves and maintain the 1/8 seam allowance. Sure does take a toll on my arm and hand, though.

Now I just need to buy some more 1/4-inch elastic, measure Amy’s ankles, and thread and stitch it through, and they’ll be ready to wear.

And meanwhile I’ve got that nice big piece of leather ready for the next pair, and several more. Maybe next time I’ll try embroidering something on the vamps.

One last thought: this leather is rather thick, which is great for the soles, but if I ever find any usable scraps of a thinner leather (i.e. maybe from a purse or clothing from the thrift store), I would like to try that for the uppers.