My Love/Hate Relationship with Technology

This weekend I received my first smart phone.  I'm struggling to get used to the dual bonging of my tablet and phone registering a work-related email.  One of those bongs has got to go!  To make up for all this technology, we had a "no drive" day.  No need for the car!  The bikes can get us to the pool just fine, thank you, and isn't a day spent harvesting goodies from your garden about all you need for entertainment?  We think so! 

On the other hand, I am sort of falling in love with Instagram.  I know I'm a late comer to the ap; I usually am, but I'm having fun with yet another way to take pictures of my gardens!

Hats and Dresses

Lately I have been a bit distracted by hats and dresses.  It's a little out of character for me, a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl, but it's true.  I have been wearing more skirts over the past couple of years because it solved the age old problem of "what do I have to wear that is dressy enough for work but cool enough for the summer?"  Then even more recently, I rediscovered the dress.  It solves the almost-as-ancient-a-problem of "what do I have to wear with that?"  The awesome thing is that skirts and dresses are fairly easy to sew.  In theory, that is.  In practice, it's hard to find the time to get out the sewing machine and have at it.  Which explains why my son has three pairs of pants that are waiting to be patched, and why I have two skirts in my sewing closet that I cut out this winter but haven't made up.  Not to mention the dress I made myself six years ago that is still not hemmed.  

This issue underscores, of course, why Pinterest is so popular.  Because you can just pin the ideas for dresses that you want to sew, and it makes you feel as though you are making progress, when in fact you are doing nothing of the sort.   I have some seriously cute skirts and dresses pinned,  and I like to look at them and pretend I am going to get to them someday.  Which I might do, eventually, after I hem that dress and patch my son's pants and sew up the two skirts.  Right.

That brings me to hats.  Making hats is pretty quick, and this winter I'm already knitting my second hat.  The first one was a lovely cloche (shown below) which I made entirely on the drive to Bend, OR and back, and the second one is a beret.  I've never had a beret before but I love the yarn.  It's Palouse Yarn Company Yum and believe me, Yum is the perfect name for it!  It's wonderful to knit in, and by the end of the week I expect I'll have a new hat, which will promptly be put up until next fall since it's already warming up quite a bit.

So that's why I splurged recently and bought hats for spring.  They are from the milliner's shop in Portland, Bonnet.  I am in love with their hats.  My friends and I discovered them by accident while we were searching for a yarn shop near our hotel in Portlandia.  And Moscow is weird enough to get away with hats, right???

My Easter bonnet! [source:  Bonnet Boutique]

My new winter go-to hat! [source: Bonnet Boutique]

A hat I wish I had!

My summer hat! [source:  Bonnet Boutique]

Drooling over hats!!

 I can't figure out why it's sideways...

 

Creativity Abounds...

Valentine's Day Banner

The sun is shining, the air is cold, the ground is dry, the wind is howling.  We have been inventing ways to keep ourselves busy indoors.  One of the coolest activities we've done is to dye play silks with Kool-Aid and vinegar.  Depending on what flavors you use, this can make your house smell very fruity, but is a great way to use a non-toxic dye for kids' toys.  It takes about six packets of Kool-Aid to dye a large silk square and three packets to do a smaller one.  Some of the colors are pretty potent though, and will stain your hands and clothes if you aren't careful.  

My husband spent yesterday in the garage putting together a soccer goal out of PVC pipe.  I couldn't figure out how he was going to make the net and imagined myself trying to weave something.  But he was very resourceful and used the cargo netting from our car top rack.  It's perfect!

Finally, today was puppet theater day, apparently.  So we made puppets out of tube socks, Styrofoam balls, lemonade cans, and dowels.  Oh yeah, and paint.  Lots of paint!

All the "silkies" drying!

New soccer goal!  The net is from our cargo rack!

Puppets!

Change of Scenery

Sometimes at the beginning of the year, one just feels like changing a few things.  We changed our walls.  Specifically, we hung two beautiful oil paintings of the Palouse over our piano.  They were both created by our friend Noel, an artist here in town.  One painting my husband gave to me for my birthday; the other one I gave to him for Christmas.  We hung them both two weeks ago, and I love looking at them. 

This painting is of Tomer Butte, which is very near our home.  It reminds me of all those late summer and fall evenings at the cyclocross track.

 One day I'll have a real piano!  Maybe I'll even play again!

I switched out the artwork in our bedroom as well.  Large, single botanical prints, to go with the northwest fish motives.  Now almost all the art in our home is either southwest or Pacific Northwest themed.  Oddly though, the southwest bedroom has the northwest art, and the north-facing office has the southwestern art! 

 

Clean Slate

I am in an intense declutter frame of mind.  I don't know why January makes me want to go through every drawer and closet in the house, but it does.  Perhaps it's the soft snow falling outside, covering up the winter garden.  Perhaps it's triggered by putting away the Christmas decorations.  Wherever the feeling is coming from, it's intense!

In the interest of full disclosure, I will have to say that decluttering is not a habit I came by naturally.  My husband has taught me everything I know about the art of the purge.  Living in a small house also helps.  And I still fight with myself sometimes about what to keep and what goes, so I had to come up with some ground rules.

1. If I haven't worn it in a year (or it doesn't fit), it goes.  Of course everyone says this, but it's amazing how clothes can hide out in your closet as if they know that if they make themselves too obvious, they will find themselves in a Goodwill bag.  I do allow a few exceptions, like my suits, that I may only wear every 18 months or so.

2. If my son hasn't played with it in a year, it goes.  Come on people, we're not getting any younger here! 

3. If it's a seasonal decoration that I didn't use in a year, it goes.  

4. If there are electronic (and backed-up) versions of the document, it goes.  This rule also applies to children's art projects.  I will keep a select few pieces (emphasis on few), but it's easy to take photos of artwork and then save those for posterity, rather than letter N's made out of noodles that the bugs will eat.

5. If I haven't used it in a year, and the probability I will use it again within the next year is less than 10 percent, it goes.  I just purged my shorty wetsuit today after being surprised I still owned it.  Even if I started diving again, the shorty wetsuit, while totally appropriate for the southeast where I grew up, is useless in the Pacific Northwest.

These rules apply primarily to articles of practical and recreational significance.  Heirlooms are a bit harder, but even then I try to a) use them (such as quilts, vases, or dinnerware), b) repurpose them (I am making jewelry out of the rock collection I inherited from my grandparents), or c) take a hard look and potentially get ride of things that seem to be decreasing in sentimental value as they age. 

A repurposed casserole dish, given as a wedding present, now used as a planter!

 

Getting Ready for Fall

Even though fall has been decidedly here for several weeks, we spent some time this weekend "getting ready for fall."  We went around the neighborhood and found pretty leaves and dipped them in paraffin wax to make a garland.  We dug up the carrots and planted the garlic.  And of course, we went to cyclocross races.  Fall.  We're ready!

Leaf garland...unfortunately it matches the brick colors almost perfectly!

Getting ready to work in the garden

Who says red and green and yellow don't go together?

The willows, looking pretty.

A rainy day for cycling...

 

Knitting Update

Unlike most years, my knitting did not taper off this summer.  I'm on my fourth sweater for myself, plus I've finished two sweaters for friends' babies, and have started one for my son.  

So first, the sweaters for me...

I made two short-sleeved sweaters this year.  Haven't done any short-sleeved sweaters before, but they knit up super quick and I think I'm in love.

I knit this sweater (Mud Season) in Cascade 220.  It's perfect for those fall and spring days when it's still actually pretty chilly around here! My only complaint is that I wish I had shaped a little more around the waist.  

Ok, this sweater (Rusted Root) has to be about my absolute favorite ever. I did shape at the waist, I love the yarn (Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool) and the leaf pattern is awesome!  Perhaps this would have been better knitted in green but I had just done a green sweater and wanted some purple!!

This sweater (Dimple V-Neck) took me over a year to finish because I didn't like the original neckline (with no border).  The neckline just hung open a little too much without some support, so I added the border.  I wish I had knitted in cotton, as it's not really a summer sweater, (my original intention), knitted in wool as it is.  I also think the sleeves are too wide, but I'm just going to take them in with an additional seam.  Wide sleeves are a chronic problem for me!   

For the babies, I knit the Tiddlywinks Baby Set.  One baby, a girl, got the t-shirt, while a little boy got the hoodie.  Which was no longer a hoodie after I got through with it, mainly because I was tired of knitting a sweater on size 2 needles.  Whose idea was that anyway? 

But I do love, love, love the pattern, and the sweaters both turned out great!  I added a zipper instead of hooks and eyes for the cardi because who wants to fuss with hooks and eyes on a wee babe?

 And now it's fall, so the knitting can really ramp up!!  Yeah!!

Here's a Dang Tissue

I had a really crappy week.  Not crappy in sort of a life-altering bad way, but it was pretty sub-par nevertheless.  Work was one crisis-management issue to the next, my preschooler wasn't sleeping, and one of my best friends moved to Australia.  That's right, Australia.  The country on the other side of the world.  I spent most of the week feeling pretty sorry for myself.   So in the words of my friend Rhonda, here's a dang tissue.  Except given that I like to reuse, and I love antique linen, here's a dang hankie.  Or several. 

 

August Days

What fun we've been having around here!  My husband is getting excited about the cyclocross season starting soon, my garden is producing a ton of food, and my son is enjoying playing with all his new friends, especially our new neighbors next door.  After a busy start, we are enjoying a few calmer days as we watch the wheat harvest come in.  For some reason, I love the smell of ripe wheat in the fields, even though it makes me sad in some respects because I know the summer is almost over.

We've been biking to the farmer's market almost every Saturday.  It really is the place to see and be seen around Moscow, and oh yeah, there's produce and food and crafts and flowers too.  I think this weekend we definitely need another outing to the flower farm and the pool.  What other summer things can we think of to do???

I love tea roses, especially ones that don't require pampering!

Stawberries, tomatoes, and peppers, oh my!

Purple potatoes!

I "inherited" a lot more linen this summer.  My mother brought me wonderful cutwork from my grandmother's house.  This piece was one of my favorites; I love the colors so much!  It makes me happy to use these pieces in my kitchen, just as it makes me happy to sleep under an old, loved, hand pieced quilt at night.  I like to think about the hands that made each piece, and wonder what the maker was thinking as she cut and sewed and seamed.  But then I wonder, would I want someone knowing what I was thinking one day when they look at something I've made?   Sometimes I stitch when I'm angry, or frustrated, or sad.  I often stitch when I am very happy and content.  A lot of time I stitch to pass time when traveling in a car, chatting away with the driver or occasionally interrupted to take a picture, restart a video, or pass a snack to someone.  And sometimes, I only think of really, really boring things when I stitch, such as "crap, is this row 8 or row 9" or "should I get up and fold laundry, or just sit here"?

Lots of life happens when stitching, gardening, and otherwise passing time in the summer!  Oh, for a few more weeks yet of warm days and pleasantly cool evenings!!

Old Things

We have a hard and fast rule in our house:  no clutter.  If items are to be retained, they are to be used.  We have a low tolerance for knick-knacks (a.k.a. "dust catchers") and we almost constantly have a brown paper grocery bag behind our bedroom door to catch donations to Goodwill.  Of course that tactic is not without side effects, as a Goodwill "drop off" almost always results in a Goodwill "pop-in," but generally we are big proponents of weeding out the unnecessary things of life.

Now, I fully admit, I was not born having an abhorrence to clutter.  In fact, pretty much the opposite.  I have learned everything I know about the art of decluttering from my husband, whom (as I mentioned earlier), would rather be living off the grid in a yurt.  While that is probably unlikely, at least on a full-time basis, the ideal of that lifestyle does tend to lead one to be a minimalist.  

Learning to declutter has not been easy.  At times, I have rather painfully learned to let things go.  I have made difficult decisions.  But I have also learned that if I am going to keep something, I'd better find a way to use it.  Thus, we play with our post-war Lionel trains and use antique quilts on our bed and sometimes our nice linens get wine stains on them that have to be carefully removed.

So when my cousin sent a cutwork tablecloth to me that had been shut in her cedar chest for years, I knew I had to find a use for it.  As we still have a preschooler at the dinner table, I'm not quite ready to use it for its intended purpose, but I did find a way to repurpose it instead.  It now adorns the outside of my cedar chest, and lightens up our tiny bedroom in new ways.  

We aren't quite sure who made the tablecloth.  It may have been my cousin's grandmother-in-law, from whom she received it.  Or it may have been someone else.  At any rate, decades later, it is being used again!