Patterns/Maps/Plans (and the problems when you don't have one)

I've been feeling a little frantic lately. Halloween is approaching and I've been trying to figure out how to transform last year's bat costume into a dragon, for the girl critter. At least the wings are taken care of...but there's still a tail to construct and the pointy spikes along the spine to attach and part of me thinks it would probably be easier to start from scratch rather than trying to modify the old costume. Then I could go and buy a pattern and have someone else do the thinking part of how to craft it--all I'd have to do is follow the instructions. But the girl is rather attached to last year's costume (though won't be so easy going as to agree to be a bat again this year...) The boy critter wants to be an Ipod so that takes a big box and some time for him to trick it out--shouldn't be too big of a deal. But this week he also has his class Mythology Wax Museum and he chose to be Hermes, so we have to figure out how to make and stick some wings onto his sandals and on a hat, create a drapey toga thingy and a caduceus (thanks to the girl's reptile enthusiasm we have plenty of rubber snakes available).

I've also been preping like crazy for this year's NaNoWriMo. I'm working on a new (NEW!) novel and, though I'm hesitant to curse it, the prep has been going really well. I'm not letting myself write any of it until I've created a really detailed plot map, including a chapter synopsis and scene by scene summaries. I got lost in the narrative of the last book and realized that once I'd generated enough text for a three volume series (and it still wasn't finished...) that I really shouldn't have been writing without a map. Maybe someday I'll have the patience and distance to be able to go back and force a form on that text, but for now I'm going to let it sit and start with a completely different mindset. I'm pretty excited about November starting--I feel like a dog that's been kept on a tight leash and on Monday I get let off of it to romp and play and write all the scenes and chapters I've planned.

Of course I am a little worried about the necessary time commitment and the way everything else in our lives will go to hell.

Which brings me to my kitchen.  Maybe because my brain has been so preoccupied with stitching and plotting, I haven't had much energy left over for dinner planning. So instead of feeling free in the kitchen, for the past week or two, I've felt really stressed. The farm share ended recently and while I still have a big box of winter squash and bags of sweet and regular potatoes to work through, the rest of my produce is now of my own choosing. It should be liberating, right? I can cook whatever I want! But it's a different sort of thinking and I've been overwhelmed by the liberty, so there's been a lot of 5pm grouchiness where I dig through the fridge and/or freezer trying to figure out what sort of slop to heave on the table and pass off as dinner, while the critters subtly hint (by gnawing on my ankle) that they expect to be fed soon.

It's not going to get better once November 1st rolls around and I put food (even) lower on the priority list while I try to churn out the book. So, this weekend I'm going to take a little break from my Scrivener plot mapping frenzy to put together a meal plan along with a shopping list (so I don't find myself tearing through the crisper drawers looking for the cilantro I forgot to buy).  I'm thinking of getting really regimented for the month of November--making Monday Slow Cooker night, Tuesday Pasta night, Wednesday Mexican night, Thursday Stir-Fry night and Friday Pizza night. I'll probably feel a little annoyed with how repetitious and rigid this plan is (and I know it would drive me to despair if I had to do this forever), but hey, for the next month I'm going to keep reminding myself that prose, not food is the priority. If I can follow the map in my novel, I should be able to follow the plan in my menu.

And hopefully, stay sort of sane-ish.

I wish I was this good with duct tape

I took the critters to the Botanical Gardens this week to play in their wonderful children's garden and to check out the decorated flamingo lawn ornament display.

There we met this fine fellow--a flamingo transformed into a dragon, all done with duct tape!
If I attempted this I would probably stick all my fingers together and end up with wads upon wads of crumpled tape, not this elegant creature.

There were some other nice flamingos (flamingi?). There was a bird decorated to look like a strawberry (standing, appropriately, in a strawberry patch):


a bride and groom flamingo (which made me want to perch them on top of a really big cake):


and a few that had been transformed into other bird species, like this blue heron,


and this shy loon:


Maybe next summer I'll keep an eye out for cheap flamingos and see what the critters and I can come up with.

Toile rescue

We moved our Alesis keyboard out of our living room and into the boy-critter's room, since he is the one who uses it most (recent repertoire alternates between: Bach minuets, The Who, Regina Spektor*, and his old stand by, Animusic). I discovered that my 9 year-old has very little appreciation for the efforts I put into the subversive toile keyboard cover. I kept finding it in a crumpled ball on the floor, hanging with the dust bunnies.

So I pulled out some natural canvas, made a (boring) keyboard cover that won't make me wince when I find it abused and rescued my toile. Last week I got some black velveteen, cut up the toile and made two couch pillows**:
So now I can hang with my aliens while watching TV.

But there are some places in the toile that are calling for more embellishment and I am trolling for ideas. Here are the locations that I want to corrupt:

Washing Lady

Empty Tree

Lady with a Rake

I'm trying to figure out if I can turn that rake into a pitchfork somehow; that, plus some devil horns and a tail could work.

Ideas? Tell me in the comments.
__________
*After a few week's worth of practice, I can now listen to the boy critter sing the "I've got a perfect body" line in "Folding Chair" without collapsing in giggles.
**By "made couch pillows" I mean that I attempted to sew two squares together with a zipper and only had to rip it out and start over twice!

Dignity, always dignity*

 

The fish hat strikes again!

It serves its designated purpose--keeping me warm but not crushing the curls.  And I like to think it lends its wearer a certain elegant je ne sais quoi.

If you're feeling shy, it can help with that too.

* from Singing in the Rain, my favorite movie when I was 10.

New problem: hat head

Since I filled up a trash can at my hairdressers with the bulk of my hair recently (quick way to lose 5 lbs) I have felt the liberation of the short haired.

I'm loving the short hair but, with the newly nippy weather, have now encountered a new problem: hat head. It's not something you have to worry about with a ponytail, but with short curls that are kind of wiry in the texture department, putting on a hat is like sticking my head into a weird hair mould--pointy hat=pointy head, bowl hat=bowl head, etc.

So I've been on a quest for a knitting pattern for a loose warm hat that won't smash my curls or make me look like I have a muffin on my head.

I knit this one (pattern is available for free on Ravelry if you are a member):
It treats the curls well, but isn't very warm due to the loose knit and the shape (it only barely covers the tops of my ears.)
If I pull it down over my forehead, my head looks like a big moss covered boulder. Not really the look I'm going for. So this will do for a brisk fall day, but I hear that a blizzard is on the way and this hat does not have the chops to keep my noggin warm.

So I also cast on to make myself a fish hat like the girl critter's. I tried hers on and it is pretty loose but able to be pulled down low to cover most of my head. And I don't look like a muffin-head; I look like a fish is swallowing my head (but that's intentional, right?)
The colors are all wonky in the photo; I'm making it in the subdued tones of grass green, dusty blue and black. Because subdued is really the quality I'm going for with a fish on my head...(really I chose them because they were a) in the stash bin b) all wool so hopefully warm c) passed the squish-up-against-my-forehead-not-itchy test).

Does anyone have ideas for other patterns that might work for non-curl compression? Please send me any ideas because I have a feeling I'll be in some situations this winter where a fish might not be totally appropriate...

Batty

I'm a little amazed, but my latest attempt with my sewing machine did not leave me batty or swearing a blue streak (unlike, dare I remind you, last time). The girl critter wanted to be a bat for Halloween and no, she would not be satisfied with a purchased bat superhero costume--she is into animals, not superheros. So it was time to drag that crafty side of myself out of hibernation.

First we assembled materials:
Some black satin that was on sale at Joann's, a McCall's #3329 pattern to crib the bat hood and smock (the pattern is for a superhero jumpsuit) that was on sale for 99 cents, and a black umbrella from the dollar store.

The hood and the sleeve caps were a little fiddly, but luckily a costume that has to hold together for three events (Halloween concert at Hill, school party on Friday and Saturday trick or treating) can have plenty of wrinkles and fraying edges and still look ok.

I contemplated leaving some of the wire frame on the umbrella to look like wing-bones, but then realized the kid would probably impale herself or one of her friends. So off they came! It looks good enough to me, and, despite her very serious visage in the photo below, the girl critter is happily flapping around the house.

After my encounter with a real bat in the house this summer, I just have to resist the temptation to reach for a tennis racket and take a swing.

Putting on the pink

The days have been gray and there is a chill in the air. Autumn is definitely here and I need a jolt of color to keep me perky. In the last few days I've been drawn to hot pink. This isn't a color I usually embrace--I'm more of a red and orange type--but it has felt good and energizing in a transitional sort of way.

I've begun knitting a pair of wool socks from some stash wool that I acquired about 4 years ago.
I'm doing them toe-up, using the short row toe instructions that I found in Socks from the Toe-Up. This isn't the first time I tried toe-up socks; in fact this very wool was used in my first attempt and ripped out when it looked funky. But the short-row toe worked great. I'm not really using a pattern--just ribbing the top and keeping the sole smooth and I haven't decided what kind of heel I'll do yet. But it is very nice to have something so cheerful to knit and so portable; way better than wrestling with a big sweater when I go out (sweaters are better for in-front-of-the-dvd player knitting).

Yesterday I spread the pink into the kitchen by making 3 pints of pickled red onions.
I was going to do Orangette's recipe, but then I happened upon David Lebovitz's much simpler lazy-person's version and went with that. Mine aren't quite as brilliantly pink as his--some of my Tantre torpedo red onions were almost white on the inside so there wasn't as much pigment to seep out into the brine. But they should still be a cheerful accompaniment to the burgers I'm planning on making soon.

Crafty Question

I need some help here people. I discovered an amazing sausage throw rug on the internet that I can't afford and want to try and reproduce before October 7th, the date of Brian's birthday. Or if it was a really labor intensive process, it could be pushed back to Christmas.

Actually there are 4 different rugs. The Ham Sausage is pretty, but since I've never eaten Ham Sausage (Biershinken), it doesn't appeal quite so much as the others.
Aesthetically the Blood Sausage appeals to me most. (I've eaten British blood pudding sausage with big fried English breakfasts and liked it well enough, but I've never tried the German version):
Culinarily, I'm a Soprassata girl through and through (and I also think it is quite attractive):
I don't mind a taste of real Mortadella now and then but it doesn't strike me as "meaty" enough, though I do think this one is mighty pretty with its little floating bits of green pistachio and peppercorns:
So help me out, people. Is there anyway I could make one of these? I remember doing a rug-hook kit when I was about 9 years old (a hideous picture of an orange and brown mushroom on a lime green and yellow background--ah the colors of the 70s!), but I think that might look too fuzzy and fuzzy meat is not a good thing, I think. Maybe I could knit and felt something like this then sew it to a canvas backing? Actually what I think would probably work best is felted crochet (at which I suck, but hey this would be an inspiring way to get over my hangups). I saw this amazing crochet portrait in Craftzine and the technique looks adaptable to meat products.

I think I'll have to face down my crochet fears sooner or later because I'd really like to make Monster Crochet's awesome bacon scarf. You can knit it using intarsia, but the good thing about the crochet version is the back looks as good as the front, which cannot be said for a knit version.

In a more general note, crafty goodness has not been hovering around this household. In fact, I'm in a crafty funk. My knitting projects are not keeping my attention--I'm part way through two different items and have been ignoring both because I'm tempted to rip them out. I haven't started the Gathered Pullover even though I bought the pattern because of the color of my yarn--knitting with dark purple seems like it would be pleasant in, say, November. But the color turns me off in the middle of summer. About all I've done on the crafty front is a couple of lame beading projects with the girl critter. So I'm hoping some meaty craft project will get me going again.

Fish hat

You'd think that wearing a fish on your head would just about guarantee a smile from a kid.
But my girl critter has been working on her face of gloom.
I had to jump around like a monkey to get her to crack, but I finally succeeded.
She almost looks cuter from behind. Which is good, because now that she's 6, apparently the age of turning away from mom has commenced.
Pattern info:
The fish hat is from this awesome knitty pattern: Fish Hat [Dead or Alive?] It was really fast and fun to knit and I got to use up a bunch of stashed scrap yarn. I'll probably be making one for every member of my family.

Loving Ravelry

It took me a while to get into Ravelry, but now I'm finding it more seductive in the time-wasting department than even my Bloglines feeds.

It has a fantastic database that allows for all kinds of searches: by yarn weight, by pattern type, by just-about-any-search-term-you-can-come-up-with. You can read reivews of yarns before you buy them and find out which are evil and pill almost instantly or that split while you knit and drive you to distraction. And the pattern galleries have helped me make some decisions--you can see what the sweater looks like on real bodies, read about alterations people made, and find out if the pattern was well-written or made people swear a blue-streak.

Thanks to Ravelry, I have FINALLY found a pattern to use up my huge stash of Rowan Biggy Print Yarn:
Unlike many sweaters made with superbulky yarn, the people wearing the resulting sweaters in the Ravelry gallery did not look like they were drowning in wool. I have a tendency to get claustrophobic in bulky yarn sweaters and feel like I'm being swallowed up by a not-entirely-friendly sheep who wants its coat back.

I'm still searching through the Ravelry database for something to do with all the Swish Worsted yarn that I bought to make a wrap sweater (got 3/4 of the way done and realized that I look like I'm wearing a bathrobe when I wear wrap sweaters and ripped it out). I might divvy up the yarn and make this gathered pullover for me and some sort of sweater for Fiona who has commented lately on my selfishness as a knitter.

The aliens...

...have landed on my toile.
The peeking one is my favorite:
And these little fellows are being fed mystery berries:
I got the idea for the aliens (and the blue one is roughly modeled after one) from these designs available at Sublime Stitching. There are some terrific ideas/designs available--I also really like the zombies and monsters series.

(For previous subversive toile entries look here and here.)

Glutton for punishment

Despite its recent major feeding, I think my seam ripper might be getting a little peckish again. That's the only way I can justify my urge to sew again.

Did I mention that one time I actually gave myself a migraine from stress after a day of attempted sewing? It turns out that hunching over a torture machine with extreme tension in your neck for hours on end can trigger a migraine!

And yet, I want to try again.

Blame IKEA. They have a whole bunch of cool new fabrics and I really like one of the super cheap ones:
It has birds and leaves and is only $2.99/yard so when I screw it up, at least my wallet won't hurt (just my pride).

There's another more expensive fabric ($7.99/yard) that I also really like:
The good news is that the cheap one is presently out of stock at my local IKEA and I don't have the confidence to start with the more expensive one, so for now, the girl critter will have a little break from the swearing and ranting.

The UN-tutorial

Wanna make yourself a yoga mat bag out of a spare pillow case?
Well, you should probably go find a competent sewer to show you how. But if you really like to swear and want to strengthen your relationship with your seam ripper, read on.

Sigh. When it comes to process vs. product, this one falls in the latter category--it turned out OK, but man, the process was not pretty.

A little background info: I have finally found a yoga class that a) fits my schedule b) isn't too hard or too easy c) isn't being taught by an angry teacher (I know, an angry yoga teacher? yeah...it wasn't pretty). So now my yoga mat, which had been hanging out at the back of the closet needs to be relatively accessible. After finding the black cat curled up on it every time I turned around (because cats have a magnetic attraction to anything you don't want them to sleep on), and noticing that the sticky surface of the mat was perfect for collecting cat hair, I figured it was time to protect the mat.

Sounds easy, yes? Take a big tube and make it smaller, with a drawstring and a strap. Ha!

Step 1: Locate spare pillowcase, make sure mat will fit:

Looks good.

Step 2: Cut away excess the fabric and use it to make the a shoulder strap:
Folding and pinning the strap...

...and sewing the strap. I "chose" contrasting thread because I couldn't find the white. And because I wanted to make sure everyone could see my crappy stitching.
Wow! This is going pretty well! Maybe I've shaken off that sewing curse!

Oooops. Spoke too soon. Should know better than to have confidence when it comes to sewing.

Fuck up #1: Sewing the tube for the drawstring before adding the buttonholes for the string to come out of.

Time to get out the seam ripper!

Hmm. Where is that thingy? Time to locate the seam ripper.

I sent the girl critter on a quest to find it which she enjoyed because it meant emptying out the four separate boxes of poorly organized sewing crap.

The contents of just one of the four boxes. (Oh look! There's the white thread too!)

Luckily the girl critter located it because from here on out, the seam ripper is the main character of our sordid little craft drama:
So with our purple protagonist, I ripped out edges of the drawstring tube. Yum yum, munch munch. (I found it helpful to imagine the seam ripper as hungry. Then at least I could feel good about feeding it.)

Fuck up #2--Remembering how to do buttonholes. You'll notice that there is a break in the photo documentation of this process. At this time I was too busy swearing a blue streak and ripping/feeding the seam ripper to remember to take photos.

Despite practicing making buttonholes on a spare scrap of fabric, I still screwed up 3 times when trying to make them on the drawstring tube. (More swearing, more snacks for the seam ripper!)

Step whatever: re-sewing the drawstring tube.

Step whatever+1: sewing the side seam.

Fuck up # whatever: sewing the two completed buttonholes into the side seam.

(Insert favorite curse words, start brandishing seam ripper like a fencing foil.)

Try again to sew the side seam without enclosing the much-suffered-for button holes.

Half success! Also known as: Fuck up # whatever+1. This time only one buttonhole was trapped in the seam.

(Sigh. Consider alcohol. Then realize that drunk sewing is probably dangerous.)

Riiiiiiiiip! Munch munch (even the seam ripper is getting full/sick of this). Finally succeed in sewing a seam in which both button holes are not trapped.

Thread through ribbon for draw cord.

Close up of crappy buttonhole with drawcord.

Bag is finally done.
It doesn't look like it tortured me for three hours now does it?

For $12.29 I could have saved myself the grief, not exposed the girl critter to some very creative language and bought a bag that is ventilated (so your mat can breathe?) and has the added bonus of not looking like an old Ikea pillowcase.

Favorite things of 2008

Time for a little looking back at my obsessions in 2008 before launching into 2009.

Books
In the books-intended-for- grown-ups department:
1. My favorite book of the year is one that I just finished last week: Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link. I give this book credit for keeping me in a good mood while the kids were out of school. (Well, at least in a better mood than I would have been without the book...can't be cheerful all the damn time.) Link's stories are strange and ominous and surreal. But this collection also had a touch of whimsy and optimism that I don't remember in her other collections, and which I appreciated very much. I loved "The Wizards of Perfil," "The Surfer," and "The Constable of Abal," particularly the last story which has permeated my dreams. Even better was the fact that each story began with a drawing by the immensely talented Shaun Tan (I love his book The Arrival). Putting Tan and Link together is a perfect match and I commend whatever editor or publisher had the vision. I have the book sitting here, ready to go back to the library, but I really don't want to let it go. I don't feel that kind of greediness very often.

2. Runner up: Monsters of Templeton (yes, another book with Monsters in the title...)

In the intended-for-children department:
The revelation of the year was the audio version of Tale of Desperaux. I'd read the book before, and enjoyed it, but the audio version is a whole different level of wonderful. It has become a part of our family lingo with lines like "Whoopsie" and "Cripes" resonating through our speech on a daily basis. In fact, we even named our new car "Whoopsie" (an explanation of the name will be in an upcoming post). And you couldn't pay me to go to the movie--every clip I've seen has rendered the story "cute" which is the opposite of the book.

Crafting
I didn't make a whole lot of progress on the knitting front in 2008, just a baby sweater and a lacy scarf. That's not too impressive. It does look like I will finish the Urban Aran before it is 90 degrees out though. So my two favorite crafting things from the past year were sewing related which is a bit of a surprise since I'm not a natural with a needle.

1. My most satisfying project were these super simple little bags which I use to hold my MP3 player and digital camera:

I made the first one following (loosely) the plans in Bend-the-Rules Sewing, and made the second one even more basic with fewer seams (and it is just as functional for something this small). They keep the crap off my electronics when they are bumping around in my purse next to my wallet and the bag of dried apricots I always carry for blood-sugar-level crises.

2. Runner up was pimping the dragon which made me feel like a competent parent for a change.

Recipes/Food
1. The recipe that I tried for the first time in the past year and will probably make more often than any other in the coming year is tahini lemon sauce. I have pretty consistently kept a container of this in the fridge at all times and it has provided countless "relief" meals when I haven't had a clue what to make for dinner. I dig through the fridge, find the tahini lemon sauce and then am able to improvise something pretty tasty and low effort: dollop it on roasted vegetables, toss it with some sauteed chicken, thin it with a little extra lemon and water and use as a salad dressing. Really useful stuff to have around.

2. Runner up: lamb/yogurt pasta stuff. This isn't the easiest recipe, nor the most challenging, but it has a flavor profile that I seem to crave often.

In the food someone-else-cooked-for-me department:
1. I am so happy to have a friend who makes the effort and invites us over to consume his wonderful smork.
2. Runner up: the three Lady Food Blogger events I've been to have made me feel nourished by my community (and by the terrific and widely varied cooking passions of the members).

Writing
1. My longhand editing project was my favorite writing experience of the year. It was particularly comforting to me since I had a year of rocky computer experiences (at this time, my computer is the only one in the house that is working so while the computer gods still are not smiling on our house, at least they've decided to spread the pain around among our family members.)

2. I don't really have a runner up in this obsession, except for the fact that I'm still having fun writing my novel.

Now onward to 2009!

Christmas meats

I left it until the last minute, but today, on Christmas Eve, I started (and finished) a revision of the decorations to Brian's stocking. Some folks who've been reading this blog waaaay toooo long may have a vague memory of our personalized stockings. Fiona's robot decorated stocking is pictured here. Mine has a pile of books; Ian's has a train. And Brian's used to have an assortment of cheeses. But cheese just wasn't right (I think it was just the first word that popped into his head when I asked him what he wanted on his stocking. It could very well have been "pontoon" on a different day.) Don't get me wrong, Brian likes cheese just fine, but he does not fetishize cheese the way he does meat. This is a man who has a "wall of meat" display of weird meat-related items next to his desk at work.

Here's a close up of the meats:
Ham, bacon and sausage (with fluorescent mustard) in a roll. The sausage was by far the hardest to pull off. The meat-man gave an appreciative nod of approval to the alterations.

And today, poking around at the Vault of Midnight, I found the perfect item to stuff in said stocking:
It looks revolting, but will be warmly appreciated.

When it comes to real meat, tomorrow I'll be making a prune stuffed pork loin for Christmas dinner, loosely based on this recipe.

A return to fiber

Now that there is some cool air moving back in to my surroundings, I'm willing to immerse myself up to my armpits in woolly goodness again. My serving-as-a-cat-bed for the summer Urban Aran Cardigan has been retrieved from the felines in time for the restarting of my son's piano lessons (also known as my guaranteed one-hour of knitting time.)

And I figure I really should get going on it since there are a bevy of new knitting books at the library that I've requested and will be receiving in the near future. Thanks to Ed, who taught me how to create an RSS feed for any new knitting book that my library enters into its catalog, I get first notice on acquisitions and can get my request in at the front of the line. I usually get the books within a month or two of them being added to the collection.

Coming my way in the near future are:

Boutique Knits





Closely Knit





Inspired to Knit





Knit So Fine





Knitted Critters for Kids to Wear





Continuous Cables




and

Alt Fiber





Based on my judgmental perceptions of the covers, I'd say I'm most attracted to Closely Knit because the sleeve on the cover looks like something I'd wear. I'm guessing that Inspired to Knit and Boutique Knits won't be my cup of tea based on the quantity of lipstick that the cover models are wearing (because you know all about that inverse relationship between lipstick quantity and knitwear wear-ability, right?) Knitted Critters looks promising for the smallest member of our household who pretends to be an animal for most of her waking hours, but the photo on the cover looks like the hat doesn't fit well. One of my pet peeves is the number of kids' hats that sacrifice fit for cuteness. If the hat doesn't stay on, no kid will wear it and thus your effort has been wasted. (I learned this the hard way...) And I don't have much of an opinion on Alt Fiber or Continuous Cables since the pictures of their covers are a little too small for me to make out.