Yay! Bebe and I attended our first-ever playdate this morning. It was delightful, and Bebe spent much of the time chortling or shrieking with laughter.
I was inspired to craft last night and made a few Valentines gifts for the group: a onesie with an applique heart, a felt heart pin, a heart-shaped lavender sachet.
Easy, simple, sweet.
“There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung”
- by The Beatles, from “All You Need Is Love”
Amidst the so-called “Snowpocalypse” this weekend, in which we were buried in snow and missed our Super Bowl party, we watched the musical Across The Universe several times, did a lot of sorting & cleaning, spent a couple days snow shoveling, and finished some crafting: a garland for Valentines.
Inspired by Elsie’s DIY Celebrity Valentines, I traced photos of our family with some handy fabric markers and then cut small pile of hearts from a couple sheets of felt. Sew it all together with a needle & some cranberry-colored embroidery floss and voila! Art on the wall for now, family memorabilia for later.
An easy & fun addition to my Year of Lovely Things list.
Mr. P and I aren’t so sure about how our own mini-portraits turned out (I have dubious drawing/tracing skills), but we both agree that Bebe is adorable.
Love is all you need.
Can you see the love?
We’re raising a New Orleans Saints fan here. Can’t you tell?
Ordinarily, this would just be a lifelong lesson on hope and tragedy, but this year the Saints have made it to the Super Bowl. First time ever. Either way things go on Sunday, this football season is a story to be cherished by generations of Saints fans. It will become part of the social folklore of Louisiana.
They’ve re-scheduled major Mardi Gras parades to account for all of the Krewe members needing to watch or attend the Super Bowl. People started setting off fireworks and dancing in the street after the last game, shrieking with joy. Babies will undoubtedly be named after the team members. It’s epic.
The family has sent Bebe lots of NOLA Saints clothing. I think he could go 3-4 days in a different Saints outfit. But this one’s almost done: he’s growing fast, my tall & happy baby.
Who Dat, y’all?
I am in love with this pattern again. Adorable.
As I’ve grumbled before, they are very fiddly to assemble – because of the way the straps are put together, you end up with lots of loose ends to weave in. But I found a way to fix a lot of that!
Note: Must use DPNs for this part
*corrected 2/7/10 – row 25 instructions
Row 24: same as pattern
Row 25: Transfer first 10 stitches to other needle, so that the back seam lines up as you knit. The loose yarn will be in the middle of these stitches. k 10, CO 10 using Loop cast on.
Row 26: k 30, CO 10 using Loop cast on
Row 27: k 40
Row 28: bo 10, k 30
Row 29: bo 30
This leaves only 2 ends to weave in – and the 1st tail is long enough to seam up the sole and back heel.
For me, because I’m a really slow knitter, each booty took about 2 hours, including seaming, weaving ends, attaching buttons, etc.
Button loops tutorial found here, video instructions found here.
Details
Craft: knitting
Pattern: Saartje’s Bootees by Saartje de Bruijn (free pattern)
Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Multi (Edgewater 208)
For more details, see Ravelry.
Snow over the weekend and more snow tonight – and maybe more later in the week! We’re having fun, really need to find a sled.
New dessert #3/100: Old Fashioned Molasses Drops, recipe from Moosewood Restaurant: New Classics by The Moosewood Collective.
Very nice – not too sweet, very chewy. Excellent with a mug of hot tea. Bebe loves half a cookie as a snack, and the Molasses Drops got a thumbs up from Mr. P’s co-workers. It’s a good addition to our dessert recipes. I didn’t use wheat germ, since we don’t usually have that in the house, and they still came out yummy.
Have started Saartje’s Booties #2: actual newborn size.
Nearly finished with the Faraway Shawl!
I love knitting shawls because the first 2/3 of the project flies by and is so exciting to see emerge from the needles. Then it slows to a crawl. By the end there are a million stitches and potentials for trouble. Last night I spent an hour on one 1.5 lines of stitches, realized there was a ghastly error, and then spent another hour undoing all of those stitches. If I can get it right, the layered drop stitch pattern is going to be lovely.
What are you working on this week?
I did a test run of the Saartje’s Booties knitting pattern with the yarn that I mentioned earlier. Um, yeah: bigger yarn + needles = booties sized for our 1-year old Bebe, not a newborn.
But very cute, and Bebe wears them around the house in place of socks. So I have to start again in fingering weight (as the pattern suggests, derf) with teensy-tiny needles. The booties are SUPERcute, but oy! there are a bazillion ends to weave in when you put the pieces together. After months and months of flirting with me, the pattern has finally revealed that it is not an instant-gratification project: quick to knit, yes, but very fiddly to assemble.
At least I finally got to use my new ball-winder
and yarn-swift (a holiday present from Mr. P). The yarn swift was especially fun for Mama & Bebe. He loved all of the colors & spinning, I loved the speedy transition from pretty twisted skein to pretty ready-to-knit skein.
Unfortunately, I am afraid this kind of knitty efficiency will just enable more impulsive knitting projects, which always seem to tempt me around 10 or 11pm, “Hey, you can’t sleep? Start that cute project. You already have the perfect yarn…” I used to fend off this blandishment by the soothing (but very hour-consuming) hand-winding of a yarn skein into a knit-ready yarn ball. At the end of all that winding – and re-winding when I drop the ball a few times, I am usually tired and ready to sleep. Late night project successfully avoided. Now that I have swift & a ball winder in my life, we’ll see how much sleep I’ll lose to cute knitting projects…
And speaking of cute knitting projects – yay! – Bebe’s Lime vest is nearly done.
Just need to add buttons, block it, and c’est fini. The pattern size is supposed to fit 12-24 month, but I think the length, width & especially armholes are snug. This would have fit Bebe perfectly at 9 months, which means I should have just finished it in September. Yar! Mr. P says it’s perfect, and Bebe doesn’t actually care. Those cables to me forever to learn & do, but I love them on Bebe.
More kitchen yumminess this weekend:
Thyme & rosemary calzones stuffed with ricotta & mozarella cheese, broccoli, garlic & prosciutto. Adapted from the recipes in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois. Delicious.
Joy! We have a new baby in the family. He’s a big, healthy boy (9lbs, 4oz), and we can safely assume he’s sweet & beautiful, based on his lovely and wonderful parents. And while these bundles of yarn may not look like adorable knit baby goodies,
they will be by the end of this week: Saartje’s Booties.
We have been bursting busy in the kitchen this week: corn & crab bisque, chocolate chip cookies, mesquite roasted pork, Bebe’s FIRST EVER fruit smoothies (frozen fruit blended with yogurt),
broccoli cheese soup, BREAD, and today – oh yum, red bean & sausage soup.
I meant to make red beans & rice on Monday (Mr. P usually makes it, this was my first time), which is a traditional Monday dish in Louisiana, but I kept forgetting to soak the beans overnight until last night. Erf… But it’s very yummy today.
And I am loving these cookbooks this week:
Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cooking by John Folse, and Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg & Zoe Francois.
I love the Encyclopedia for so many reasons: it includes Louisiana history and culture as well as recipes, has amazing photographs, structures the recipes so you can learn techniques as you go, it’s wider than my bookshelf and heavier than my Bebe, and it ALWAYS ends up with tasty meals on our table. We’re feeling a bit homesick around here, so there’s been a lot of Louisiana on our menu this week. Friday I’m making the recipe for Shrimp Creole. And maybe a King Cake this weekend. Oh, delicious…
As for the Artisan Bread book, well it sounds like a gimmick, but I am loving it to pieces. It’s been my first foray into bread making and I love how with each kind of dough, they also include a variety of baked goods that dough can be used for. Example – tonight I made a big 4-pound batch of thyme & rosemary boule dough. Over the next week, that will turn into: 1 boule bread loaf, 2 small baguettes, 1 large spinach & cheese calzone, and 6 servings of onion & rosemary focaccia.
Just thinking about all of that homebaked goodness makes me excited & hungry. The authors just came out with a gluten-free recipe book, too, though I haven’t tried it yet. I want to work my way through this one first. Next week we’ll be doing the brioche dough, which means lots of lovely pastries.
Mr. P says I’m turning him into a fat old man, and that we have to use the gym more often if I’m going to keep cooking like this.
This week’s addition to the year of lovely things:
make a family photo wall
When my nephew was a toddler, his daycare center had families supply them with pictures of each child’s immediate family members who lived far away, along with names/nicknames for each person. Part of the daily ritual for the children was to “greet” their family – thereby learning the names & faces of loved ones whom they only got to see a few times a year. And let me tell you, it was bring-me-to-tears cute to have that tiny person shriek my name with glee when he saw my face after being away for months & months.
I wanted to recreate that for Bebe, and it’s finally here. We found simple clip frames on sale at Ikea. Most of the pictures are done, a few have been requested (where I didn’t have a face-forward shot). We’ve started including this into our daily schedule – Mr. P or I hold Bebe and point to each person, “Look! It’s [family relation]. Hi, [name]!”
Loving it.
And there’s dessert #2/100 for my list of 100 new desserts:
lemon cakes
I am really intimidated by baking, which is why I love the challenge of this list – to try 100 new desserts recipes over the course of the year. This one was inspired by the very talented Lori of Thrums (thank you, Lori!). The superyummy recipe is from The Barefoot Contessa. Lots of lemon zest, lots of fresh lemon juice, lots of fun to make, and sooo delicious. Perfect with a mug of hot tea or cold milk.
Cake for breakfast this week: yummm…
I follow the news online, and even there Haiti is starting to fade away. We don’t have a working TV anymore – a casualty of finances during last year’s switch from analog to digital broadcasting (and a more limited broadcast areas) while we couldn’t afford a replacement due to gradschool & my wages in the non-profit sector. So I don’t know how the major television networks are doing with their coverage on Haiti.
Having been through several large-scale disasters on the Gulf Coast, both as a resident and as a responder, I know that public attention quickly becomes overwhelmed and so the coverage drifts away. We give this phenomenon a polite name and call it disaster fatigue. But meanwhile the need remains, the people remain. And communities need help rebuilding.
How can I help? is often asked after a tragedy, and sometimes the options are overwhelming. But even very little things help. You can support by sharing information, donating money, donating materials, or volunteering. In a large-scale disaster, there is a timeline when each of these things is most effective & helpful to residents.
Right after a large-scale disaster and for weeks following (i.e. still going on in Haiti), the main focus is immediate relief and rescue. You can think of it in the context of a very local crisis – an apartment building fire: police, firefighters, and emergency medical teams are helping first, while the local Red Cross chapter is getting people to temporary shelters. Community members who want to help can do so a bit later by sharing meals, clothes, helping with clean-up, and so on.
Material donations generally are not helpful right after a natural disaster – that need comes much later – because these kinds of donations require additional time, money, logistics, and people to (1) sort and transport materials, (2) store materials for community distribution, (3) distribute effectively.
In a natural disaster like Haiti, the first responders are focusing on providing water, food, medicine, shelter, security, and information. And this is where roads, electricity, buildings, and communication are broken, so they have to work on that too.
This is why there are requests for monetary donations. Charity Navigator has a useful evaluation guide to the U.S.-based charitable groups that are active in the Haiti relief effort. Be sure to read the “Tips For Funding Haiti Earthquake Relief Efforts” – including the guidelines for making text donations safely. There are many very, very good organizations that we can and have supported. These are the ones I personally support for Haiti, because I have seen their effectiveness first hand in other disasters.
Red Cross / International Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières)
Habitat for Humanity
Convoy of Hope
UNICEF
Do you want to volunteer? Around here, people are volunteering through organizing fund drives – Boy Scouts, radio stations, churches, etc and several VERY cool fund drives via Etsy. After intense conversation, Mr. Perches and I decided that this is not a good time for Bebe to have me gone overseas for a long period of time, although I am trained and have experience. Generally, to volunteer in immediate disaster recovery, especially if you are not there already as a resident, you need training, experience, and attachment to a relief organization – government/military, medical, or an NGO/INGO (non-profit organizations, faith-based organizations, etc).
If you are interested in becoming trained and gaining experience, your local Red Cross chapter is a good place to start – first aid & shelter management to begin with. There are also college/university degrees & certificates that specialize in disaster response & recovery. And most major organized religions have national and international relief departments – Catholic Charities, Episcopal Relief & Development, etc., just to name a few.
Long-term recovery, which happens for months and years long after the news stories fade, is a better place for non-professional general volunteers. This is where material donations & volunteering give the most benefit to a recovering community. Volunteering through mission trips, Habitat for Humanity trips, etc. are a wonderful community support. People can help with rebuilding schools, daycares, homes, public spaces, and other community infrastructure. Material donations are also more useful at this time, because organizations in the area are back on their feet and able to store & distribute the supplies to where they are actually needed. This is when people can organize drives like the Mama to Mama drive that Soule Mama organized for Haiti in 2009.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” -Anne Frank
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da life goes on brah!
La la how the life goes on
-The Beatles
Lots of running around this week: hours and hours of paperwork & bureaucracy, lovely weather calling us to play outdoors, huge messy fun in the kitchen, a briefly sick mama, and lo, the week has sped by. Some of the highlights:
Bebe’s first hair cut: before
first hair cut: after
enjoying a couple days of warm-ish weather
finally put the bottons on Bebe’s coffee bean cardigan
still working on the lime vest (oy, those cables…)
and a pretty shawl
Tonight: sampling martinis & fondue with the ladies. Tomorrow (very early): off to spend a weekend with some college friends (and our very patient spouses) for an 11-hour, extended edition, Lord of the Rings movie marathon. Full-on geeky bliss.
And Monday!! Oh, it’s one of my favorite days of the year: Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service. Thousands of commuity service projects going on simultaneously across the country, and the beginning the the Season of Peace. Looking for a service project to join? You can search the MLK Day website (MLKday.gov) to see what’s going on in your area. Joy!
Have a lovely weekend, see you next week.
Many thanks to all who shared their thoughtful advice with our little family.
We have been talking things over this weekend, are looking at books, had a great chat with our pediatrician, and have been experimenting with a little potty chair for Bebe. Progress and much laughter.
“in the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning
and is refreshed”
-from “On Friendship,” by Kahlil Gibran
When Bebe wakes up from his nap, I’m going to try making a batch of really decadent vanilla marshmallows from the gorgeous not without salt (note: this is actually Alton Brown’s recipe, verbatim, with vanilla seeds substituted for vanilla extract). Marshmallows always seem like a very seasonal treat: toasted in the summer bonfires, dunked in the winter hot chocolate. Yumm…
We’ve also been enjoying a large pot of yummy cauliflower & white cheddar cheese soup from Maryanne at allrecipes.com (mods: no salt necessary; sweet whipping cream instead of milk; add 1/2 Tbsp ground ginger; add 1 tsp ground white pepper). I’ve made it before, so it doesn’t count toward progress on my year of lovely things list.
This is a tasty vegetarian recipe for the winter – lovely with a baguette or some other kind of crusty bread. And it actually tastes good chilled, too, kind of like chilled cucumber soup, so you could eat this in the summer. Bebe loves to eat it mixed with a bit of cereal (rice cereal or whole grain cereal). He loves broccoli & cauliflower, and it’s pretty fun to watch him gobble it up and hum happily.
I would love some advice on 2 baby issues:
1. What do you do about baby temper tantrums? They’re a brand new and unlovely phenomenon for us. This week our small happy person has frequently morphed into a small frustrated person who howls (and shrieks) with outraged, red-faced, furious tears when denied some object of his desire – like a hot plate, or a computer cable, or the fireplace. Our usual soothing rituals are fine as a response (i.e. they soothe him into hiccuping calm), but we need an earlier intervention.
2. Potty training. Book suggestions? You know you’re a mom when you only discover the baby poo smeared on your pants twenty minutes after the epic morning diaper wrestling session. And you think, YUCK! but oh well: just another costume change. Unlovely.
And when the quality of a child’s silence draws you speedily from the next room to check on things?
I found Bebe’s little face perched at the window
staring quietly at the giant clusters of snowflakes as they tumbled down. He turned to me and said, ”Mama,” and signed “snow.” So lovely.
All week, Bebe has also been laughing every ten minutes, cutting new teeth, and sometimes wrestling with the results of a major cognitive leap (i.e. the temper tantrums). Bing! Light bulbs are turning on in that toddler head.
With his language understanding, he is responding to and requesting more communication in both sign language – “Please bring me the ball/shoe.” “Where are your pajamas?” “Time to read a book/take a bath.” Etc. – and vocalization. He chatters and burbles and coos and he talks: Bebe language is numinous and associative and barely untranslateable into Adult. Today we talked about snow – and birds in the snow – for the whole morning.
He has been using his toys & objects to explore the concepts of Under, On Top of, and Next to. And how do buckles really work? How do doorknobs open? Does the world change when I bend over and put my head upside-down on the floor?
So today he flips through books while Mama tells stories. While Bebe tells stories, Mama knits. I’m working on a little vest that I started ages ago, before the holiday crafting took over. First time with complex cables, yarr! Another 2 or three hours and Bebe will have a new knit-by-Mama. Lovely.
Please: share any advice you may have on tantrum intervention & potty training books. I need a little help here.
Happy 12th Night! January 6th is the Twelfth Night, the ending of the 12 Days of Christmas, and thereby marks the Epiphany in the Christian religious calendar. In Louisiana and other parts of the world, it is also the beginning of Mardi Gras season (aka Carnival). Normally this is when a King Cake starts making appearances at parties, social gatherings, and by the office coffee maker.
Since we will be away from Louisiana, I’m going to try making my own King Cake this year, but for today I’ll share the French cousin to the King Cake:
la Galette des Rois.
This delicious treat is usually made of almond cream, almond paste (marzipan), or almond custard (frangipane) baked between two layers of puff pastry. It took some finding – and asking – but I found several recipes available in English:
Dorie Greenspan shares a very traditional recipe
Tea Lover offers a simple recipe with helpful tips for making it look pretty
CakeSpy shares an adapted recipe for petit galettes des rois (adapted from the full-size recipe at AllRecipes.com)
Holybasil offers a delicious variation with chocolate and sliced pears
For this one, I used Dorie’s recipe and some assembly/baking mods from Tea Lover. I’ll try the mini galettes soon – after all, it’s still January. Save Holy Basil’s chocolate variation next year. The traditional recipe was a little labor intensive – and for me, quite messy – but very, very fun.
Oh, my: it’s extremely delicious. I didn’t actually bake a favor inside (the feve), since a) only myself and Mr. Perches will be eating this first trial effort, and b) I don’t have anything that small that I could bake inside food. Something to search for over the next twelve months. So no favor, no “winner” – we’ll just crown Bebe as Monarch for the day.
And the Paper Crown? This would be a quick & fun activity for kids – and adults who like fiddly things. It’s like cutting papersnowflakes.
Materials:
1 sheet of regular paper, small scissors, tape or stapler
Directions:
Cut paper in half, lengthwise. Take one piece and again, cut in half, lengthwise. You now have 3 peices of paper: the wide front piece and 2 narrower strips to form the headband.
Use tape or stapler to attach the narrow strips together, end-to-end, to form a circular strip that fits on head – you may only need one or 1.5 strip to fit around a child’s head, so check the size before attaching the 2nd end.
Now for the fun part: the fancy crown front. As with paper snowflakes, fold in half or in quarters. Cut a crown design. Unfold and tape to the headband. Done!
As always, be careful with sharp, pointy objects. I myself am ridiculously prone to small injures while doing just about anything. I sometimes trip over my own feet. Seriously.
Progress? That makes #1 of 100 new desserts; #1 of 53 in my list for the Year of Lovely Things.
A year ago, I found an alternative to New Year’s resolutions: a year of lovely things by Jessica at Utopia Parkway and this year also Maggie’s Mighty Life List from Mighty Girl. The idea is to make a list of simple, fun activities for each week of the year. There’s no pressure if they don’t happen, but how nice if they do!
Although I didn’t specifically write about them here, I checked off most of my list for 2009. Yay! And doing so brightened our year in small, easy ways. I still love the idea, and we’ll do it again this year with a little more oomph.
There are 53 weeks in 2010, including last week’s first (and very short) week in January. That makes for one lovely thing each week, which I hope will be very manageable. My 53 Lovely Things for 2010:
MAKE clothes for Bebe | candy | a puppet | a family photo wall | something lovely | stuff for Ravelympics | paint a wall mural | a book for Bebe | a skirt and/or dress | a sweater | BAKE a new dessert | bread | a turkey | cinnamon rolls | 5 new vegetarian dishes | GIVE time & money to local food bank | a nice treat for Mr. Perches | knit baby hat for local hospital | participate in a local blood drive | a love note for Mr. Perches | knit hat for local homeless shelter | time for a Habitat for Humanity house build | knit hat for Nest Maine | donate backpack items to Safe Harbor Child Advocacy Center | PAMPER get a manicure | do mehndi | dye hair a crazy color for a little while | go see a movie | paint toenails bright purple | LEARN a new dance step | more sign language (ASL) | try canning/preserving something | HOST a hanami (cherry blossom viewing picnic) | friends at park for bubble-blowing | a $5 thriftstore contest (see who can get the coolest purchase for under $5) | some kind of online -along | a Family Dinner | some kind of craft swap | gathering of ice cream sundaes | party with a color theme | friends over for cocoa & decorate cookies | a progressive party | GO to the beach | visit a museum | puddle-jumping after a big rain | take a photo field trip | camping with Bebe | berry-picking | have a formal tea | listen to live music | attend a free concert at the Kennedy Center | visit a local lavender farm | roll down a hill
Do you want to try it, too? I found it helpful to divide it into a few categories and then go from there. But really, you can just make a long list of things you already like to do and things you want to try.
If you’re the kind of person who enjoys inspiration & a little group support, consider joining my new Year of Lovely Things group. Just complete this form (required: name, email, blog/flickr/etc, 10 things from your list). Sign-ups start today and run through January 19th, or until we reach 53 participants.
There are also 2 fun goals that I am setting for myself this year:
100 pretty things: make a lot of pretty things
100 desserts: try new dessert recipes
I’ve set up a new page to help track the adventure. Enjoy!
Silly me, last week I forgot that for both Christmas & New Years we had 4-day weekends this year. And holidays are more for family than anything else, so the computer was mostly off (except when checking news & football scores). In order to get on with current events, here’s a quick summary of the rest of the handmade holiday projects.
holiday knitting: hats
The Tam for C, because every librarian should have a beret-style hat. And she looks gorgeous in this color.
Details
Craft: knitting
Pattern: Lace Tam by Susan Rainey (free pattern)
Yarn: Malabrigo Silky Merino (Celeste)
For more details, see Ravelry.
This next - and very structural hat – looks really cool on the head and kind of like a funny beehive off the head. It reminded me of another C, so I cast on and really enjoyed it. The reinforced headband technique (k 1″, p 1 rnd, k 1″, fold at purl and knit edge together, continue on) made a nicely secure base with a clean bottom edge. I’ll probably adapt this to other hats in the future. It’s a little slouchy, which you can’t tell in this picture since it wasn’t quite done yet (the 2nd skein disappeared somewhere in the holiday craft piles or maybe into one of Bebe’s treasure holes).
Details
Craft: knitting
Pattern: wurm by katushika (free pattern)
Yarn: Katia Austral (2)
For more details, see Ravelry.
holiday sewing: misc
There was holiday sewing a-plenty. For the machine sewing bits, I had to squeeze very carefully between the prickly tree and my sewing desk. So there wasn’t as much machine sewing as I had originally planned. Hand-sewing was very soothing for late nights, when everyone else was asleep and all was quiet. Cup of tea, anyone?
A reversible needlekeeper for Ca. Many years ago, she gave me an embroidered handkerchief (still have it and love it) and thereby inspired me to learn more about embroidery.
And in true form with my best girls, part of their belated holiday gifts. Here’s a close-up of some really tiny knitting.
There were a few more knitting projects that had to be substituted with another gift due to (a) time (b) skill (grr… lace weight yarn…) (a) time (c) mysterious disappearances of particular skeins and again (b) skill (slooowwww…..knnnitttinnng).
It was a good year, and I found so much inspiration from the online community of crafters. Already making notes for next year’s handmade holidays.
