I am a phoenix

Okay, so maybe that is a bit of a dramatic title, but it really fits my worldview right now. I'm recovering from a really low point in my life, and I find myself reborn from the ashes. I have started a program about inner work called Be A Beacon. It really came at the right time for me.

We have moved into a much better living situation and are now exploring the opportunities that await us here. We lost our van a month after I blogged about it, so now we only have our little car. It makes traveling interesting, to say the least. We are looking to add a puppy or dog to our family, too. In our new neighborhood there is a family with children close to my own's ages, and they have a very similar parenting philosophy to ours, which is so delightful. It is a real blessing to speak to the mom and have her understand what I am talking about without having to go into lots of background explanation.

I have been putting together a collection of my family's favorite recipes. I thought about converting this to a cooking blog, but I don't think that would really be such a great idea. I have too many other interests and things to talk about.

We found a violin for Moira and she has started lessons at the public school. She started late in the school year so she has been getting private lessons, but she said her teacher thinks she is almost ready to join the rest of the ensemble. I never have to remind her to practice, just to practice things other than Mary Had a Little Lamb. It is her favorite. And Eirik is now going to preschool for speech therapy twice a week and riding the bus. Most days when he comes home again, he is asleep. Poor thing.

I have found a renewed interest in genealogy (shh! don't tell my mother). I discovered it in college, and I got my mom hooked. She has been consistent with it these last 15 years, but it slipped out of my life as quickly as it slipped in, and now it is coming back a bit.

My Geocities website died when Geocities died, and I didn't really care at the time. I still have all my files on my computer, so I didn't really lose anything. I found a new host today, so now I am trying to decide what exactly to do with it. I think I will make it multi-faceted. I will put my traditional astrology course back up, and I think I will put my recipes there, too. Maybe some how-to pages as well, and some documentation of various projects. Any requests?

Christmas at our house

We had a lovely Christmas this year. Our apartment is so small that we don't have room for a Christmas tree this year, so we got some poster board and I outlined a tree, then the kids colored it in. We hung it on the wall and taped some ornaments to it and it is lovely. It comes down today and will be put away in case we need it another year. We hung ornaments from the ceiling and strung lights around the walls at the ceiling, so our living room looked quite festive. Cait is spending Christmas vacation with us this year, part of a new agreement that now eliminates our being on the road on Christmas Day every year for the 4-hour round trip between houses. This is the first time since Terry started working this job that I have had both my husband and my daughter home on Christmas morning. He works on Christmas on odd-numbered years and doesn't get home until after 2, and on those years Cait would spend Christmas morning with us, but go back to her dad's at noon. So this was an exciting year for me.

We even invited my mother over to spend the night Christmas Eve so she could be there first thing in the morning when the kids wanted to open their presents. By the time dinner at 2 rolled around, though, I think we all had had enough of each other. She left shortly after dinner to go visit my brother in Concord, and Terry and I heaved a sigh of relief. But the kids enjoyed her being there the whole time.

We tried to keep Christmas simpler this year. I hand knit something for everyone, and we got them socks and underwear (which they desperately needed), Terry got them each a DVD, and in their stockings were a couple of candy canes, a new cocoa mug with some cocoa mix and a few hair ties. We also got each child one specific present: Cait got needle nose pliers for making jewelry, Moira got a sketchbook that she has been asking for for weeks, Lauren got a stuffed animal since we accidentally culled too many of their dolls, Rowan got a Magna-Doodle since she is always drawing and uses far more paper than I am comfortable with, and Eirik got a rocking horse. My mom gave them each an article of clothing and a book or two. Cait also made presents for everyone, too. Overall, they got what they needed and something they wanted. Next year, though, I want to spread the purchase of such items out over a longer period of time. Did you know that socks and underwear for 5 kids costs $72! One package of each for each one. Egads!

We didn't overdo on confections, primarily due to our new diet, but I am making some decadent chocolate and coconut bars for tonight as New Year's Eve. We also get to get some of our baking fix by hosting our church's coffee hour this Sunday. Overall, it was a good holiday.

Christmas trees

My mother remarked that it has been a while since I last posted, and I suppose she is right. Right now I am crazy knitting, trying to finish the last of my Christmas presents before, well, it was supposed to be before Dec. 1, but that has come and gone because I was playing World of Warcraft too much. So now I am hoping to be done by the 15th or 20th. I just don’t want to be knitting on Christmas Eve. I have also been busy house hunting since we would like to be able to move right after Christmas. Finding 4-bedroom houses for rent is not easy.

I thought today I would talk about Christmas trees. A week or so ago, I was driving with the kids downtown and the fire department was putting lights on the big tree in the square. Rowan remarked that it was the same tree they decorated last year. I agreed and said that was the best thing to do. Which got me thinking about the tradition of Christmas trees.

I hate fake Christmas trees. I deplore them. They don’t smell good, they are a pain to put together, and I consider them a waste of resources. But a real Christmas tree has been cut down at a time in history when we need all the living trees we can get. No, I am not naïve enough to think that it contributes to deforestation, because I have been to a Christmas tree farm and cut my own before. But how good is it for the soil to keep replanting Christmas trees each year? Our soil is depleting at a terrible rate and we need to build it up, not strip it further. I have done no research on the soil necessities of Christmas trees, so I don’t know exactly what the burden of a Christmas tree farm is. But I do know that we have no way to make use of the tree after Christmas. We have no woodstove in which to burn it for heat, we have no compost pile in which to rot it for soil. The only thing we can do in our city apartment is to take it to the dump. They will probably burn it there, but that fire doesn’t benefit anyone by keeping them warm. It only makes room for more brush.

This year we have talked with the kids and decided to forgo a Christmas tree this year. We will hang the lights around the rooms downstairs and hang the ornaments from the ceiling where toddlers and kitties can’t reach them. It helps when proposing such a thing to one’s children to point out that Laura and Mary Ingalls didn’t even see a Christmas tree until they were almost teenagers and they never had one in their house. The children wanted to know where Santa would leave the presents and so that is one thing we are still working on. Laura and Mary got their presents in their stockings. That is an option if we can find a place to actually hang their stockings. We usually leave them on the ends of their beds since we have no mantle. I am not leaving all the kids’ presents on their beds for them to open before we adults even wake up. We will figure something out in the next three weeks.

Yikes! Only three weeks? I have to go back to my knitting. I still have a pair of socks to make. I will try to post again soon.

What I've been doing

It seems that it has been almost a month since I last posted. Shame on me. So what have I been doing? Well, we have been finishing up the garden. We got about 10 carrots, the longest of which was about 3-4", a dozen or so good sized potatoes (which is remarkable, since I never hoed them or did anything else with them), a handful of tomatoes, a boatload of cherry tomatoes (which we don't eat and I would have bought a different type of tomato if I had realized that one was a cherry tomato), a few peas, several cucumbers, several blossoms of broccoli and cauliflower, some lettuce and lots of lettuce seeds, a strawberry or two in the few days after we brought them home, some tiny onions, and a couple of radishes that never got big enough to even be a single bite. We are still waiting on the beans that I planted very late. The beans are growing nicely, but now I worry that they won't have time to dry properly before the season is over.

I learned some valuable lessons with this garden, though. First of all, I can actually grow something and not have it die as soon as it sprouts. That discouraged me for a long time. I learned that watermelon and pumpkin really do need sun rather than mostly shade. The potatoes did okay in the shade, producing a half dozen or so that were as big as my fist. We had nine potato plants. The "Atomic Red" carrots are really red and look neat. Tomatoes should definitely be caged, preferably with something other than a bent split cheap curtain rod. Trellises need to be securely planted in the ground for the peas and cucumbers so they don't continually fall over onto the peas and beans and squish them. Slugs really like strawberry plants. Inchworms really like broccoli and are nearly impossible to see there. It is a good thing I started working with the white cauliflower first and saw the green worm against the white flowers. Yuck. If I hoe the potatoes, I could probably get a lot more potato from each plant. Fences would have been nice so as not to lose baby plants to 3-year-old neighbors stepping on them to reach the first bright red cherry tomato or to 5-year-old neighbors playing lawnmower with a stick. I can really put a lot of stuff in a small space using the square foot method, but I really should do it right and not try to fudge it by eyeballing distances. My "feet" turned out to be closer to 14-15" rather than 12", thus requiring a bit more weeding. I already have nest year's garden planned out, and it will be roughly twice as big as this year's.

In addition to the garden, the school year has started up. Moira has done a block of mathematics and is now starting a block on farming, while Lauren started with a block on form drawing and is now beginning her letters. Oh, and we did a week on nature as well at the equinox. One day that week we harvested elderberries from a tree in the park nearby and made elderberry syrup for coughs and colds this winter. The people on the internet lie. Whoever would put elderberry syrup into yogurt is masochistic. The stuff tastes like Robitussin, which I suppose is appropriate. Ick. Even with extra sugar to try to make it more palatable. Now it tastes like a very sweet bitter flavor. Moira agreed that it did work for her the one time she took it, and is amenable to taking it again if she gets to hacking her lungs out again.

And finally, knitting. My order of yarn came in from Knitpicks.com and now I am slowly but surely working on Christmas presents. Since I know they will never read this blog, I will telly ou what I am making. For hubby and Eirik, I am making earflap hats (scroll way down to #37). For Cait I am making Pixie slippers since she is the only one in the house now without warm woollen slippers. I saw her Shrek slipper today but I don't know where the other one is, unless the one Rowan was using as a treasure holder is the other one and not the one I saw today. Moira is getting a lace cowl, Lauren is getting tights (no pattern or picture, but I am using this yarn, color Princess Multi), and Rowan is getting bloomers. My goal is to have them all done by December 1 so I don't get overwhelmed in December. We will see how that goes.

So that is what I have been doing other than worrying about the economy, the election, and all the other normal everyday worrying that everyone else is doing.

I can do it!

This has been quite a year for growth for me. I have learned that I am capable of so many things I never thought I could do. I have planted a garden, actually harvested food from it, made jam, tried my hand at water bath canning, and today I even scheduled the upcoming school year. I am still working out in my own mind why I think myself so inept. I have always had a terribly low self-esteem, and I am not completely sure why. Perhaps because I have always lived my life as an outsider. Perhaps because I am naturally a pleaser. I don't know. I have lived a pretty bizarre life by most standards, so people often have trouble relating to me and my experiences, and I to theirs. But I will try not to dwell on the wherefores for long. Ultimately, they are proving irrelevant.

I just noticed this newly found self-confidence today. Public school starts tomorrow and of course we homeschool. So Caitie has gone back to her dad's for the year, and Moira and Lauren have both started asking about starting lessons. My history with providing lessons is spotty, at best. The first year I took Moira out of public school, no reporting was required since Kindergarten is not mandatory here. The next year, I had to submit a curriculum with my letter of intent, but I wanted to "unschool", and use no formal lessons. I came up with ways that her learning might take place over the next several months and qualified my submission with the statement, "We reserve the right to adjust this curriculum as needed to best meet the needs and interests of our child." I worried all year that I didn't do enough, teach enough, show enough to her. In December, I had gotten myself so worked up that I found a curriculum that I liked and bought it. We started the lessons in January, which complicated things. I decided to just do what we could and then we could finish the rest of it the next year. Then when I was filling out the evaluation paperwork at the end of the year, I read through the sample and saw that I had done plenty. My one-page paper was nearly two pages long so I had to edit it down.

The next year, we started again with the curriculum pretty much where we left off, but by now we didn't have enough to finish the year. I did well with giving lessons regularly until we ran out in December. The rest of the year ended up being mostly unschooling. I was feeling better about it though after having gone through it all once and passing. I think that is a significant statement. I have been viewing homeschooling as a test for me to prove I am good enough to teach my child, instead of viewing it as educating my child and to hell with the system, which has enough faults of its own. She did fine at her year end evaluation, even with no formal lessons after early December.

Today (homeschooling year 3.25), after the girls asking if they could learn Spanish (a language I studied in high school and college, but haven't really used in 12 years or so) and if we could start lessons tomorrow, I sat down to schedule and coordinate their lessons. I picked up the curriculum overview (which I had actually not read since I bought it two years ago, instead diving straight into the syllabus) and read up on grade 3. Lauren will be doing 1st grade this year, and I think I will repeat it again next year so that she is on track with the lesson content. If she struggles with 1st grade this year, I will repeat her Kindy year, or maybe I will combine them together and stretch out 1st grade for her. When I looked at my chart and lessons and planned projects (not too many, I was realistic), and field trips (I may have planned a bit too much financially, we will see), I looked at it and felt confident. I can do this. It isn't going to be terribly difficult. The hardest part will not be the lessons themselves (which I have feared in previous years), but maintaining the discipline to do them every week, establishing the household rhythm that lends itself to learning. Finding the link for the curriculum showed me that the author actually did what she swore she wouldn't do - write syllabi for grades beyond first. My first thought was, "Whew! I can get a syllabus and know I am doing it right." Then I thought, "No, I don't need someone to tell me lesson by lesson. I just read up the overview and I can do this myself. I don't need to spend all that money."

That is what I have been feeling all summer about various different projects - I can do this! And I daresay, you can too, if you want to.

Birthday socks that don't fit

When we went to Panteria in May, Cait saw some striped knee-high socks she wanted. Unfortunately, we had spent the last of our money (and then some due to miscalculating on my part), but I mentioned she had a birthday coming up. She said she would like some in pink and army green. So I bought the yarn for these socks and attempted to get an entire pair of knee high socks knitted in secret in 2 weeks. I got one done and gave it to her on her birthday, promising to get the second one done as soon as I took a breather. She tried on the sock and the foot fit fine, but I had added too much for her calf (she doesn't exactly have curvy legs, my little bean pole) so it kept sliding down her leg. I made the second one up with this in mind. When it came off the needles, she tried it on and loved the fit. So I ripped the leg down on the first one and re-knit it to match the second one. I finished the first one again and told her to get the second one so we could see how they looked together. But she had washed the second one, so it shrank. My lesson: Only use sock yarn for socks. She finally pulled it on and of course the first one now fit well but was bigger than the second one. I suggested she wash the first so they would both be shrunk the same and we would see how hard it would be for her to wear them. Getting one sock on after that was a 5 minute ordeal. Sadly, we had Lauren try them on, and they fit Laurne like a charm. I only used half of the yarn I bought for the socks, so I have two choices: I can either knit them up again, but larger to allow for shrinking, or I can buy new sock yarn and knit them in the same size, and find some other project for the Knit Picks Pallette yarn. The colors are Petal and Clover. Christmas is coming up and I want to start knitting on all those projects so I have a hope of getting them done on time, but I want to replace Cait's sock, since that means she now has no birthday present.

What the kids have been up to lately

What a week it has been. Jenny asked for an update on the kids, so I will start there.

Cait has turned 12 (OMG!) and has taken up jewelry making with beads. She would like to sell some stuff on Etsy and is saving money to get all the tools she needs to do it right. She is also blossoming into a young woman, and has discovered her own bioweapon - BO. Whew! I commented to her the other day that she was a bit ripe and we should pick out a deodorant for her when we went grocery shopping. Her response? She took her baby brother's hand and rubbed it in her pits and said, "See, Mom? He's the one who is stinky!" What a ham! He, of course, thought it was funny.

Moira has spent this last week at Girl Scout Camp, in a program called Chocolate Chef. She sent us a lovely (short) letter mid-week. It read, "Dear Mom and Dad and Girls, How are you? I have 2 3 4 5 friends. Do you miss me? Love, Moira." It was so sweet.

Lauren has gotten comfortable enough in the water this year that she now swims out deeper than she can touch and does not panic. I am so proud of her! This time last year we had a hard time just getting her into the water instead of playing up on the shore.

Rowan will now go up to her chin in the water, but is not yet swimming. She also has her first loose tooth. I think she is the same age Lauren was with her first lost tooth, but 4½ still seems so young to me.

Eirik is still not talking any more than Mama and Dada and No. He is happy to walk out up to his neck into the water and no longer clings to me with a death grip when we go out to my chest height. He also ripped the refrigerator lock off so he can now freely open the fridge. I also discovered that he can open the back door and unlatch the patio gate. So now I need to get another padlock so he doesn't run off.

The kids are all doing quite well. Lauren is looking forward to lessons starting up in September. Cait has mixed feelings. She shocked me a couple weeks ago. She asked if she could still live with us even when she was grown and had a family of her own. We told her yes, she will always be welcome in our house, though we suspect she will want her own space by then. We decided we will have to build her a house next to ours when that time comes. Of course, that means we have to find some land and a house for ourselves first.

I read Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer as part of Sharon's Post-Apocalyptic Book Club. It is written in diary format from the POV of a 16-year-old girl. It was a great read, and when I was done, I suggested that Cait read it, which she did. She says she enjoyed the book, proven by the fact that she spent probably 6 hours a day reading it.

Moira has been reading anything she can get her hands on. A lot of Secrets of Droon, the Sisters Grimm, etc. She even began The Fellowship of the Ring, but I think it was a bit too much for her because it is now back on the shelf.

So that is what they have been up to lately. Enjoying the summer, nearly daily swimming (at least when it isn't thundering) and playing with the kittens (named Mini and Salem) who are now 3½ months old.

Monkey pictures

See pattern here.
See story here.







Here are the long-awaited monkey photos.

Sockless Sock Monkey

See pattern here.
See pictures here.

I have finished knitting a sockless sock monkey for my son. I had to make up a pattern as I went, because all the instructions and patterns I found involved cutting and sewing an existing pair of socks (hence the name sock monkey). I didn't have any of the "right" kind of socks, but I had bought some lovely wool yarn with which to knit the monkey. Also, I didn't want to knit up a pair of socks just to cut and sew them. Too wasteful for me. So I started knitting and tried to make my monkey at least resemble the appearance of the proper style of sock. I read up on the differences between the authentic vintage sock style and the more modern one using an updated version of the same sock. I studied the cutting pattern so as to most closely simulate the proper seams. I also tried to size the "socks" to something a little bigger than my foot, but not as big as my husband's, the monkey would be approximately the same size as a cut-and-sewn monkey.

It took me about two weeks of knitting. I knit in the playground while I pushed the boy on a swing, while standing in the kitchen waiting to flip pancakes, or just sitting at the table to get it done. The hardest part for me, strangely enough, was the ears. I got the legs and body knitted up, and the girls stuffed it with woollen fabric scraps. I knitted up the arms and tail, stuffed them with more woollen fabric scraps, and attached them. I knitted up the mouth and finally liked how it looked on the fourth (or maybe fifth) time I stitched it on. I kept stitching it assymetrically, and I am a stickler for symmetry. Then I knitted up the ears and stitched them on. And I had a cat instead of a monkey.

It took me probably half an hour to figure out why I had a cat instead of a monkey. See, I had done something strange with the top of the head, (which would have been the toe of the sock) and used adjacent paired single decreases instead of a single double decrease to shape the toe and I ended up with ladders between the pairs. I had then knitted ears just the right size to cover up those ladders, and of course, putting smallish ears on the top of the head gave me a cat instead of a monkey. Once I realized my mistake, I knitted up new, bigger ears, but then I had to figure out what to do about the unsightly ladders. So, after having stitched on the eyes by sewing in from the back of the head and anchoring my thread knots in the fabric stuffing deep inside the head, I frogged the whole top of the head, snipping the monkey's stitched on eyelashes as I went. I had to set it down to put Eirik down for a nap, and when I came back downstairs, Moira asked me if I was doing brain surgery on the monkey. I said I supposed I was, and gently picked up all my stitches onto my needles again and started the toe-top all over, this time using one double decrease on each side of the head. The result was a much better looking head. I stitched the ears to the side of his head, and voila, I had a monkey.

I gave the monkey to my little punkmonkey son and we went out to the swing. He had much fun throwing the monkey on the ground while swinging and making me rescue him. He then would coddle the monkey for a few moments before throwing him down again. Finally, at one point I picked the monkey up off the ground and put him in the next swing over, which was empty. He left it there. We got down and went and played at the slide where Monkey was hurtled headlong down the slide. Eirik and Monkey returned to the swing where the coddle/rescue cycle began again. This time, Rowan was swinging right nest to him, so I put Monkey next to her. This time, he climbed down out of the swing and walked right under Rowan to get Monkey back. She was on her back swing and he got kicked in the head and went sprawling on the woodchips. Poor guy. Being only 20 months old, he was resilient and was soon playing Throw the Monkey again. He seems to really like it, which makes me very happy. There is little that is more disappointing than spending so much time and effort on an unappreciated gift.

I will try to post some pictures here if I can get my camera to work. I suppose I should also try writing out the pattern, too.