Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

New Pattern! ‘Tree Bowl’ on Etsy

Monday, March 28th, 2011

Last year was not a great one for my development of my Etsy shop. I did not get a single new pattern in! Last year I wrote up three patterns for the next One Yard Wonders, half finished two soft electronic patterns that I gave up on because I didn’t want to deal with possible people-shocking-their-children liability issues, worked on some doll house food I never finished that I’d still like to re-visit, went through a ‘sticks and string’ dreaming-about-a-book period that I don’t think even made it to the blog, and then there was that doll pattern that has been sticking me up for months. Not one of those made it to my Etsy store, and in December I shut the whole thing down until now, because I was so depressed about it! But it is open again! Hurray!

Obviously the One Yard Wonders patterns are not a ‘failure’, but it was several months worth of working on patterns that were *also* not going to my Etsy store. 2010 was a sad year for that store, no progress! 2010 was also the year that Penelope went from 6m to 1.5yr, so there were lots of reasons for no progress, but I still felt bad!

But by picking a reasonably small goal though, I’ve made it from start to finish on another pattern, which is good, because I’m probably going to be going back to work for several months now, and getting very little done other than basic house and child survival. We will see how the blog fares through that, if I suddenly disappear completely until June you will know why! I still don’t know exactly when my contract will start though, so I’m in an odd holding place, trying to get things wrapped up so we can survive being a two-working-parent household, briefly anyway. I am so rambling right now. But YAY, new pattern in my Etsy shop.

Also, YAY, we won Rebecca’s school lottery and will be going to our local progressive hand-on parent-participation PUBLIC school. Which means FREE (almost), which means we will not be (trying to) save 20k (and then 40k for two kids) to spend on private education (that was going to be a difficult budgeting problem!), and I am SO glad we don’t have to choose between a great school and retirement. Maybe we will go to Egypt (NOT right now) and see the pyramids instead of paying for private school… Stay tuned, six years from now I’m sure I will be stressing about this all over again for middle school…

Singing don’t worry, about a thing,
’cause every little thing, it’s going to be all right…

Twirly Skirt

Friday, February 11th, 2011

Here is a beautiful skirt we made based on the under skirt from the Insa pattern from ‘Sewing Clothes Kids Love’. This is the third time I have sort of used this pattern. (Here is the second.) I don’t think it really counts this time, because I changed the curves, and I realized at the end that it was basically a circle skirt (but sewn out of four wedges), with a straight waist. Not very fancy fundamentally, although there was lots of subtle pink ribbon trim following the book’s philosophy that more trim is better trim. :-) The fabric is really the lovely part though, it is a cotton faux linen, covered with floral embroidery and sequins that I got half off with a coupon from Jo-Ann’s. (Really it seems that their entire business model revolves around getting people back in their stores to use coupons, and if you pay full price for anything it is ridiculous… Not my favorite game.)


Hey, I never posted the first one either, this one was for a friend’s daughter, I probably wouldn’t have picked these fabrics out for a skirt, but I really liked it when it was done. You can’t really tell from the photo, the red fabric is a fine corduroy, actually the same that I made my own red skirt from. It made a nice skirt the first and second times, corduroy has a nice weight.

Did I make either of these recently? No. My life for the past two or more weeks has been devoted to reading the good, the bad and the crazy about Waldorf schools (no black crayons? Anthroposophism? There seem to be some pretty bitter ex-waldorf parents, but everyone I’ve met involved with Waldorf has been really really nice) and trying to decide if we want to go through the admissions process. Most of it seem very cool, and a lot of it aligns with our personal values, we actually have no TV, (we do watch movies on laptops sometimes), but it is so expensive here. Maybe we could get financial aid, but I’ve always *hated* bargaining. Also our lease came up, so we had to re-evaluate the whole rent/buy thing. Where we live the rent/buy ratio still makes it much cheaper to rent an equivalent house than buy (using the simple numbers OR factoring in all those headachy numbers like maintenance and property tax exemptions.) Major life decisions and uncertainty. I’ve been getting pretty depressed with all the uncertainty. The other kindergarden we’d like, Stevenson PACT, is a lottery, and we won’t know whether we got in/where we are on the wait list until the end of March. Bleh. Maybe I should make some more twirly skirts for morale? I have been making fermented pickles like crazy, using a new-to-me no-mold-skimming fermentation lock process. (I know, mold on your pickle brine is fine! No. I do not feed my family things with mold on them, or near them, or whatever. I can’t get over it. Yuck.) Two thumbs up for no mold and yummy pickles. Something to be positive about anyway.

A Doll and the Resistance

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

I have been sick for the last week and a half, the kind of cold that sneaks up on you as a little tickle for a few days, then you think you’re getting better, then you just get worse and worse! (Really I was only sick-sick for 4 days probably.) But now I am getting better, hurray! My kids might disagree that this is a good thing, because they have watched more TV (internet, we don’t actually have TV…) over the last two days than over the previous month. Srsly.

Anyway. I could have used the couch time to do something productive, like work on my (2008!) photobook, or blog posts, or this doll, this doll that is currently defeating me, but I didn’t, I gave myself a break and watched 2/3 of Fruits Basket on Hulu. Woo! Anyway Anyway Anyway!

So this doll. This doll that I have been working on, since, since, lets look at my photo catalog… For FIVE MONTHS (OMG!) Okay, I didn’t think it was that bad. That’s bad, seriously bad. It isn’t the doll’s fault, there is nothing particularly difficult or complicated about it, it is that I am trying to write a pattern for it, and I am having serious problems with the RESISTANCE. Have you heard of the Resistance? Read this (guest) post on ZenHabits. It is awesome. It explains why we never finish things, and the many ways we sabatoge ourselves so that we won’t be noticed in bad OR good ways. It has become my mantra over the last year, oh, it is the resistance that is trying to distract me with that shiny new idea, it is the resistance that is trying to get me to read another blog rather than doing my work, I will defeat the resistance! But sometimes the resistance wins. More often than I probably realize or would like to admit. It really helps to have a name to call it out by though! But this doll, I am writing about it because I am GOING to finish it. Five months, eesh! When I look at this doll I feel this enormous overwhelming sense of failure, but I am going to get past this! Maybe. After I watch another few episodes of Fruits Basket?

Dragon Wreaking Havoc

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

We have spent the last two (practically blog-less) weeks getting Penelope to sleep in Rebecca’s room rather than ours. Rebecca has been asking for this since Penelope was born, so that’s not a worry, but Penelope is rather less convinced. Previously she has always crawled out of her co-sleeper and into bed with me, spending the rest of the night demanding snuggles like the cutest little teddy bear ever. I’m sure this has something to do with my husband finally needing to take on the job of night weaning her, because I was failing miserably! Well, I thought we were doing pretty well, she wasn’t nursing before 3am anymore, but he was not impressed. Turns out we picked a really brilliant time though, we thought she was just working on one next-to-front tooth, but she was sneaking in two molars on the top! Things are looking up though, and we might actually be getting more sleep than we were previously rather than less… She’s getting less irate about things anyway.

And now I am supposed to be packing for a week trip to Vermont, for grandparents and a wedding, and I am NOT taking my computer with me! I’m not sure what I’m going to do!

For your amusement, here is the bio I just sent in (after procrastinating until they demanded it for the final edit) to the next One Yard Wonders book:

Katherine loves to make things, anythings! Robots, princess hats, quilts, felt barrettes, an articulated metal hand, her wedding dress, chain mail, dinner, a lego powered animatronic birthday cake… These days it’s mostly toys and clothes for her young daughters, (and meal after meal), but she’s really looking forward to the day when her girls are old enough to join her in wild robotic-textile mashups and dreams of getting a family booth at Maker Faire with her awesome maker husband. Catch some of their exploits at http://oneinchworld.com.

I super hate writing about myself! Wait, why do I have a blog? Right, it’s not about me, never about me, hahaha! I suppose I hate trying to sum up my entire being in 125 words or less? Hate writing advertising copy? Am embarrassed trying to sound like my life is not a train wreck of soggy diapers and a living room that you can’t walk across without slipping on drawing paper and board books?

And now I need to finish packing before I fall over! See you in a week or so.

Happy Fall Farm Visits

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Happy November. :-)

Japanese Junk Food

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you live in Silicon Valley or Tokyo. For afternoon snack we went to Imahara Fresh Produce. We weren’t interested in the fresh produce though, just the snack aisle next to the registers. Rebecca picked the Hello Kitty strawberry jelly filled marshmallows, a health food nightmare! She decided they didn’t have nearly enough strawberry jelly in the middle, just a little smear sadly. We got the Pocky for Penelope, and I have a soft spot in my heart for C.C. Lemon and Apollo strawberry chocolates, which I only just realized refer to how the candy is in the vague shape of the Apollo space capsule. 10 years, it only took me 10 years to figure that out… oy.