Storm troopers and tummy time

Posted on October 10, 2007. Wednesday by supa

Dear [your name here],

Hi! What’s the haps?

Everything is fine here. Mac got his shots Monday and has spent the last two days attached to my boobs, even moreso than usual. He weighs 13 lbs 10 oz and is 25.5 inches long and is composed of 97% drool. Owen has been building castles with his blocks and being a Storm Trooper and asking to watch “Mon-sters In-cor-por-a-ted.” Iain has been following Steelers football. And I am learning to knit actual sweaters, like a nerd.

Wish you were here!

Love, supa

Your sleep training begins, young Jedi

Posted on October 6, 2007. Saturday by supa

So. Now that Mac is 4 months old, we are starting our version of sleep training. It entails starting him on a bedtime routine and getting him used to sleeping by himself in his crib. We did the same thing with Owen and it ended up working out pretty well, so we’re going to try it with Mac.

We give the boys a bath around 6:30. Then we dry them and dress them and we gather as a family on my and Iain’s bed. I nurse Mac as Owen and Iain take turns reading (or “reading”) three story books. Tonight, Mac fell asleep on the breast, which kind of made things easier.

I swaddle Mac while Iain tucks Owen into bed; then they sing a few improv’d songs (“Gray Guy and Bad Guy,” “Zoo Zoo Zoo,” et cetera) and have a last hug and kiss. I lay Mac in his crib and we leave.

Five minutes later Mac wakes up and I spend the next hour or two rocking him and laying him back in his crib and picking him up and nursing him and laying him back down in his crib and picking him up and rocking him again and laying him back in his crib. By 9 p.m. his wailing has turned to half-hearted fussing and blithering and I let him lie. After a few more minutes, he’s quiet and presumably asleep. Then I pop open a beer and wait for The Office to come on.

As with most parents of very young people, our day revolves around sleep. Just as a pregnant woman can drop and give you 20 physical complaints in 10 seconds, parents of totlets can give you a minute-by-minute account of the sleep they got last night. It’s the first thing out of our mouths when you say hello. But think about it: A good night’s sleep — for the kids OR us — can make or break the day. It’s the difference between sweet angels or bionic devils, between Regular MB and Commercial-Strength Bitch MB.

So the sleep, we like to have a lot of it. I don’t get a lot of it when there are kids in my bed, so teaching Mac to sleep on his own is important. But teaching him that Mom and Dad are only a few steps away, and that we respond to him when he needs us, is important to me too.

Now, if only someone could teach the people on our street not to honk after 10 p.m. or before 8 a.m. Doorbell, man. Doorbell. Learn to love it.

How-to: Lunch bag based on plastic grocery sack

Posted on October 6, 2007. Saturday by supa

I work in an office two nights a week, and until now had been packing lunch in a plastic grocery sack because my insulated lunch box was too small for a frozen dinner. Plastic grocery sacks are an unsatisfying lunch transport system for many reasons: they are bad for the environment when they inevitably end up in the trash (even if you reuse them many times); they are flimsy and tear easily; and they are ugly as sin.

However, they are roomy and accommodating. So I decided the perfect lunch bag for me would be a plastic grocery sack that wasn’t plastic.

This is how I made it. I am assuming some rudimentary sewing and bag-making knowledge. (You know: Be sure to back stitch at the beginning and end of your seams, press your seams open, maintain a better tension than I obviously did, etc.)

You will need probably about a 1/2-yard each of exterior and lining fabric. The bag I used as a template was about 18” wide by 18” tall.

First, take a plastic shopping bag and cut across the top of the handles and across the bottom. Spread it out on the floor; this will be your template.

Next, take your exterior fabric. Fold it selvage to selvage, wrong side out. Place the plastic bag on the fold. Trace around it. The tracing line will be your sewing line. (I love this trick; I got it from Bend The Rules Sewing.) Leave a little room to the left and right of your bag for seam allowance.

Keeping the fabric folded, I turned it over and traced the template on the other wrong side too, making sure the two were matched up where the side seams would meet. Unfold this to get a very tall vertical rectangle.

Take your exterior fabric, which is unfolded and with the wrong side facing up and sewing line visible, and place it on top of the lining fabric, right sides together. Sew all along the sewing line, leaving about 4” for turning.

Boy, that stitching tension is looking … pretty bad. Anyway. Next, trim to about 1/4” away from the stitching line. Trim across the seam allowance at each corner and clip notches into the seam allowance at curves, but do not cut across the stitching line.

Turn the bag inside out through the 4” hole you left. Using a point turner or a chopstick, poke out the corners.

Press flat. Fold in half, matching edges, and stitch the sides up to the bottom of the handle. Stitch across the top of the handles.

To better mimic a grocery bag, I folded the handles in half, bringing the outside edge toward the inner edge and stitching on either side of the seam line. This photo shows the right handle.

You could also fold in the bottom edge and sew this down.

The finished object. I can answer questions in the comments. (I’m all right at sewing, but telling someone else how to do it is hard!)

Frog, frog again

Posted on October 5, 2007. Friday by supa

I’m taking up knitting! Again!

I had requested a Ravelry invite AGES ago — they’re still in beta — and finally got one yesterday. Or the day before. And let me tell you, this site is fun. It has a place for you to organize your current projects, and keep track of your yarn stash (meager and sad, in my case, but still), and look for patterns. It’s just so neat. So I’ve been messing around on there and I found a cabled vest I think I want to make and I went to Joann today (because I can’t afford the “luxury yarns” at my local yarn shop, or at least what Google is telling me is my local yarn shop). And I bought, let’s see, 4 balls of brown yarn. But on Ravelry I can nerd out and tell you that what I really bought was 592 yards of Patons Shetland Chunky in the colorway Earthy Brown. Yarn nerdery. Is awesome.

I also bought an assortment of Clover bamboo needles because they are made in Japan and they are prettier than the Susan Bates metal ones I was using. And I knitted a gauge swatch of the brown yarn this evening — and actually measured, which I understand is important — using the bamboos and hey! Me like. Soft and quiet.

It’s like knitting has finally clicked for me. I remember when CSS finally clicked for me, all the divs and the IDs and the classes. I was on fire, man. It was awesome. And I remember when garment sewing finally clicked for me, and when crochet finally clicked for me. I live for that click, man. Maybe that’s why I’m always working on something: I’m addicted to the click.

Tangent: Owen calls our good friend Clint “Mr. Click.” It’s cute.

De-tangent.

So, anyway, point. Now that I have my sewing room mostly in order and my fabric stash organized by chroma and intensity … I’m turning to knitting. Heh. And this means I must studiously apply myself to building up a supply of needles, yarn and tools. I’ve had the same pair of number 7 needles since I first decided to teach myself knitting in college. Oh, those days. I was going through my black-turtleneck college-radio phase. I invited my friend Jeff to choose my first ball of yarn while shopping at the Ben Franklin. He chose a garish rainbow acrylic, which I dutifully tried to turn into a scarf. Did you know it’s very difficult to knit while you are smoking? It is. Difficult but not impossible. The holey, lumpy, irregular piece of rainbow-colored fabric could technically be called “knitting” but only from about 3 miles away.

That was 7 years ago. I’ve made two weird scarves and a miniature sweater in the interim, but it’s only within the last week or two that knitting makes sense to me. So of course I’ve started buying yarns and different sized needles with my birthday money, and picking up things like stitchmarkers here and there when I’m out with the kids.

Stashbuilding, eh? I remember when I was starting out sewing, I had my sewing machine, some straight pins, a pair of shears and a pin cushion. It’s only been s l o o o o w l y over the years that I’ve added things like bias tape makers, water-soluble-ink pens, rotary cutters, acrylic rulers. Every time I buy a nice piece of fabric or a tool, it’s here to stay. I feel a little more professional and what I make looks a little more professional. I mean, for pete’s sake one of the first things I ever sewed was a paper-towel dress for my Barbie, using thread and a needle taken from my mother’s sewing kit, which was really just a mess of old buttons and bobbins in a Danish-cookie tin.

Man, the old days.

So the yarn-building goes. Thanks to my lovely lovely parents-in-law, I had a little scratch burning a hole in my pocket and shazzam! Now I have a needle gauge, circular needles, stitch holders. The little things. Next I’ll have to find a cable needle so I can learn to knit cables and aran sweaters.*

Phew. Long, pointless post. In sum: Love the click. Money burns my pant leg. Me buy yarn, me learn how to use it.

Oh, and the title is referring to a piece of yarn that is on its third incarnation. It was a rib-knit scarf, and then I ripped that out to use the yarn to make a sweater for Owen, and then I ripped that out and am doing a proper gauge swatch to make a vest, since I don’t have enough yarn for sleeves.

*Ha ha ha ha. As if. I do not have the personality required to knit an aran sweater.

Little by little

Posted on October 2, 2007. Tuesday by supa

Made a tiny bit of progress on the attic, which is also doing business as my sewing room and Owen’s craft room.

I get the feeling we’ve hit That Spot in our home improvement, where you leave the windows uncurtained and shelves unpainted simply because you’ve been working on the damn place for weeks and weeks and you just want to use it already. So I just started using it already.

As you can see, I’m only doing tiny projects these days, things I can pick up and put down in five-minute increments, or things I can finish in an hour or less. I just can’t get both boys on a synchronized schedule. Rather, they’re staggered, so when one goes down the other gets up, and they just don’t cut me a break. Too much of my sewing is done at midnight. I keep sewing, though, to get the projects out of my head and because I like to hold the finished item in my hand. I’ll take finished over perfect any day. And also I keep sewing because it’s my favorite form of zen escapism. I am an escape artist.

The bib is from Bend The Rules Sewing, which I highly recommend for anyone who wants to start sewing, and the hexagon is from Machine Made Patchworks Vol. 2, which I find immeasurably inspiring. The last two are of a log-cabin coaster/potholder/trivet I made up, with cotton twill tape loops. I love cotton twill tape loops.

I also started making my holiday ornaments for the ornament exchange I’m in. They are wicked crazy, but I’m having a lot of fun making them. I hope to finish about 50 by the end of the month. Maybe I am wicked crazy as well?

I wish to hire a grown-up

Posted on October 1, 2007. Monday by supa

Because I think I’m too adolescent for this parenting thing. I stuck my tongue out at Owen today when he asked me “why” one time too many. I flooded the laundry room trying to do laundry. And I am just too tired and defeated to do anything but sulk and wish I had a door to slam and some Green Day to listen to as someone else took care of the difficult things.

Switch to our mobile site

supafine

Monthly Archives: October 2007