While Tangerine Dreams

I Sew Twinkle-y

You know I love the Twinkle Knits series. I made a sweater and a couple of hats and now she's out with a sewing book that I'm super gung ho on tackling each and every project from. This of course would only happen in my fantasy life where I have all the time in the world to sit up in my creative space and sew until the cows come home (perhaps in the springtime). What a trip by the way pulling out those past project links. Looks like only last year I use to actually took the time to get dolled up for those close ups  with lipstick and all. I notice too that Edie use to make a great prop, now she's not so much into it.  Plus, something about being jacked up on those pregnancy hormones made me about ten times funnier. Oh, well, at least Craig's still finding something quaint enough about me to stick around and be my personal photographer.

 

This one is called Take Manhatten. I made this little number for my friend Emily's art show last Monday. So fun, the book comes with a cd filled with the patterns you can then print out. My only complaint is that the pattern pieces come out all whole as opposed to in half so you can place on fold then cut out. I guess that's all professional pattern maker style for the pattern maker I was working with for Sheesh suggest that too. More accurate cut that way but sure calls for a lot more eleven and half by eights to print then glue together! Not very sustainable as Craig would say. Every pattern in here is gorgeous. I'm trying to start up a sew along at Burda Style so if anyone wants to head over there I started a thread in "sew alongs".

 

Speaking of sewing along, my mom sewed up Edie's Halloween costume for Mama was too busy playing with her new book. Check out the Winter Fairy Princess (the princess bit is very important). She and Dada went to the Waldorf school's Enchanted Halloween Walk in town. I stayed home with babe and had pumpkin soup ready for their return. Turned out that the walk went on much longer than anticipated so they had Halloween tacos in town instead. That's cool - got to discover pumpkin soup is Kale's favourite food on earth so far. Little pumpkin...

Wagon Man

Kale has officially found his happy place. I can assure you from now on each photo of him you see on the blog he'll be sitting on the gardening wagon. He loves it there. Even though it has already tipped over with both him and sister in it, he still wags his tale excitedly whenever Craig says, 'want to go on the wagon?'.

Even Barney loves being in the wagon with him for the enthusiasm about it is so contagious. As long as it doesn't move of course. But then again Barney loves being anywhere Kale is. So cute how this big tiger is so gentle around him.

Yup, no butt about it, this guy has found his place in the world. What a wise little one. That's half the challenge isn't it? Speaking of challenge, here is the winner of the Lumpkin draw. Drawing randomly from 2 to 8 the winning number is ... (deeking out to a random number site) number 3. That's swati! Congrats, I'll send Lumpkin your contact info. Gotta haul the little man around now.

Summer Spun Away

Oh where, oh where did the time go? My mom's right, once you have kids time seems to accelerate. Or else, my girlfriend's right. The Earth's axel spin is picking up momentum and the world is literally spinning faster and time is accelerating. Whoa. Trippy. Smoke another one sister-girlfriend. Regardless of which conspiracy theory camp you're a member of, the mornings around here are getting mistier too. I love that. It's like frost but not cold. So thick I can't even see the mountains surrounding our home. But when I look straight up - blue sky.  Though I always wish for just one more beach day the fall is so beautiful here it totally makes up for it. Not to mention, the beach isn't exactly the most relaxing place in the world with naked yoga guy (and I'm not talking about Craig) and a baby in tow putting grub in his mouth then crying about it. Exactly what dosage of Benadryl does Soulemama feed her kid to get him sleeping on  the gorgeous handmade quilts in all the beach shots?

 

My little man officially turned ten months old yesterday. Double digits! This has been all a blur the last ten months. Damn earth spinning. Now he's creeping around, not slamming his fingers in drawers over and over again , not trying to scrunch into a little scrunchie then pull certain body parts off his person anymore. Sigh - they grow so fast. Stop with the spinning already!

Speaking of spinning - I spun this up to participate in a spin then knit along. I spun all the Isabella (the happy sheep mixed in with some splashes of subtle surprises) I had left to spin and then the tunic I was working on only came up to my belly button. Yeah, my belly button's not ready for a return debut quite yet after he, up there, happened to it. So I frogged the project and I'm going to put the rest of Isabella up in my shop sometime today. Going to be a sweet sheep deal so check it out!

Ready to Roll

Kale's out of his baby hammock for the bike trailer - little guy growing so fast! Edie loves how the absence of the tiny throne makes the interior much roomier. His head's just needs to grow a smidgen more to fill in the melon protecting device. After Dada's crash here last month we're big fans of head gear now. Always have been I guess except for those couple of days where all I wanted on my head was my cute new hat. But yeah, we love street smart Mommy and book smart Mommy.

The beginnings of the autumn nature table. We played with beeswax this week for the first time and Edie just loved it. She made the apple bits of our apple tree after the telling of the Red House story. Unfortunately, the sun's loving the apple tree to droopy death so might have to think of some other set up for displaying the beeswax creations. Ugh, sunflower's seen better days too.

 

And our dabbles in red water colour. These sessions happen when Little Bubba naps. Special times between Edie and me - all candle light, stories and google-y eyes. Well, seems like all my blogging energy went into trying to get the internets up! I'll be more interesting next time, I promise.

Oooo... this is interesting. Let's randomly generate a number for the giveaway for $20 gift certificate to Elly's shop. Number 6! Kat - you're a winner! Woo hoo! I'll send you an email and then I'll get you touch with Elly.

Summertime Falls

Just like a mermaid saying goodbye to her tail, so must we start our farewell to these magical summer days. The days still have their hot flashes but my ovaries contracting toward my spine after a jump in the river reminds me that we better get our Vitamin D-rich sun injections in while we can. That's okay, fall's my season, remember? Things to get excited about:

From spirocreations. Handmade boots! What a luxury these would be. Mama needs her some boots.

Or how bout these vintage pair from whiteelephant sale? Maybe more in my budget range until my shops really take off. Need me some heels for when I need to get gussied up some. The gum boots just are cutting it anymore.

And of course, fall means knitting circle starts up again. Actually, it never stopped but have spent the summer trying to figure out when the little lad needs me around. Seems like I have a small window from 6 to 7:30 to go A-wall. Not sure how much I can knit in that meager time frame when you budget in travel time but it looks like this free pattern, the Stella Pixie hat could be whipped up pretty quick. Plus, Buddy likes to rip off anything covering his cute little noggin so perhaps the strap would be quite strappin and useful. Speaking of Buddy, he's up, must go - yeah! he slept in until 8:30 (after much prompting of the boob persuassion at 6:30). Harvest as much rays as you can!

Garden Gnome and Banged Up Dome

Look what we found lurking among the potatoes: a little Fritter. Just want to squeeeeze him! But that would wake him up right now. We don't want that to happen quiet yet. We had a pretty action packed week. Have I mentioned how lucky we are to have an emergency room nurse living next door? Craig went to drop off Edie at Art Club his usual style - pulling her on the Chariot trailer. He came home informing me had a wicked bail on his way home. Split his helmet open! Poor love, after I started crying telling him to 'hang in there, Baby' and 'I don't know what I'd do without you-oo-oo (that's me crying after saying 'you' by the way) we called Pearl who is so getting a sweater from me I just decided seeing as how she practically lives here with all the house calls over the years.

 

Can't remember, did I share that she came over just last week to help out the little Gnome up there with a squished bee in his hand? Why yes I did - the BumbleBee post. Pearl advised we take Evil Kenievel to the hospital to get him checked out. After an x-ray to the necker regions, the doctor told us to keep an eye out for any strange behaviour. Well, that left a lot open to interpretation.

I'm not sure if there was any significant change in personality but let's say the last 48 hours I kind of feel like I'm married to a new man. He's super gimped that's for sure but I've also noticed we've been laughing together a lot more than normal. Kind of like the old days, pre-kids, when we use to bang a bong on a regular basis (to clarify - we use to inhale). Maybe it's because it hurts him all over when he gets a giggle fit and I have the LAOM sickness my buddy Brenda's been afflicted with for many years (Laugh At Others Misfortunes)and I'm subconciously being funnier than normal. Or maybe it's because everytime I ask him to take a photo of me wearing a new creation he tells me I'm a joke and then we both start laughing our heads off and yet I continue to post pictures of my projects all over the internets? Oh, I just don't know. The Universe works in mysterious ways. My Leg of Glam top is up in my shop now by the way - roflmao. Hoo, I kill me.

Brown-Eyed Susans, Black-Eyed Kathies

So cute, Edie had a boyfriend come over (a friend that's a boy - don't want this all over the Perez Hilton type sites) and he brought her flowers... awwww! His mom and I had lots of note swapping to do. She too has decided to homeschool her boy this year on a Kindergarten level. I was nursing Kale to sleep last night and realized that every single mom that I consider a friend out here is homeschooling. And there's  a lot. And not for the lack of schools around here. There's a public school smack dab in the middle of town and a real cool alternative school spearheaded by hippies in the seventies that has recently relocated downtown too. There's so many reasons to homeschool, for our family anyway, I just find it interesting that all these families discovered similar reasons on their own as well. So if anyone has experience with Live Education please let me know! That's the course we're heading toward. At least for two years of Kindergarten anyway. After that we're leaning toward Christopherus; both of these are Waldorf-based. So much to learn! Luckily, learning's fun. Or should be. Thus, homeschooling (then unschooling later on - mwah,ha, ha).

 

And finally, I hopped back on the wheel again. Must come up with a name for the spinning wheel - how do you spell Kway-lood? Quaalude apparently (just googled). It relaxes me so. I decided to come up with a line celebrating the opening of the second shop. The yarn above is part of my Jupiter Dreams space series.  And now for the Black-Eyed Kathies bit of the post title- Ay Karumba! Yesterday I sold four items in the While Jupiter Dreams shop! Things are a bit different over there in that when I sell something I have to then make it. Which is cool. I get off on the rush. But I'm hopping now, excited about the fall plans and fun challenges ahead.

Itty Bitty Obi

Shout out to Nytesong for the bright idea for creating some obi sashes for kids too! Funny that Universal consciousness phenomena; the kids and I were gearing up for our morning walk to the mailbox and Edie tied one of her scarves around her waist proclaiming it to be her obi. I remember thinking, "how sad. The kid doesn't have her own obi. Oh, well." Then I totally forgot about it. Then reading the comment I was like "What a great idea! Deja vu, man." So thanks for collaborating with me, kind of, on this one and here I whipped one up for Munchkin in pink and purple - her two most favourite things in the world other than kisses from Kale, kisses from her chickens and bobbing in her swimming donut. Going to plunk it into the shop now!

Spoiled Little Brat

We had some gnarly smokey Sunday going on. This time not from my cooking but from neighbouring forest fire, so the morning light was eerie and beautiful. I think these shots captured the warmth in the air. And talk about heart warmth, these were made especially for Kale by my dearest friend. Wish I could link to her shop because she makes the cutest hand sewn baby booties ever but we're still in talks about that. We're still in talks about everything because, well, we talk everyday! We have lots in common; four year old girly girls, nine-ish month old girly boys and an almost unhealthy love for cream and butter. I'll let you know when her shop materializes.

And how's this for caputuring my unoffical tag line: Like Soulemama. But on acid...? Months ago, Soulemama was sharing how her boy (remember how she got the bright idea to whip up another photogenic kid when she found out I was pregnant?) was ready to get started on solids so she carved him up a bowl and spoon with her bare feet while she was knitting. Well, Kale looks like he could down a burger these days (other than the lack of teeth I suppose) so I sent Craig out to make like Soulepapa and carve him up a bowl already. Instead he dropped into my most favourite brick and morter store in the world, Maplerose, and picked him up a pre-carved one (like Soulepapa...on acid). I have yet to buff it up with beeswax and breastmilk (kidding) but that's okay - he seems totally uninterested in solids yet. Probably because the finger tip of avocado I offered him gave him the runs for a week. A little gun shy now.

And, on the new shop front...the obi's are up! The obi's are up! Custom-dyed to your liking, raw silk noil Japanese obi-belt inspired kidney warmers. Whoa. That was a finger-tip full!

A Couple of Bums and A Bumble Bee

It's evident now that Kale's carving a special little niche for himself into our family unit. Here he is helping out his old man with recycling duty. Hey, have you ever loved someone so much it hurts? And when they hurt you hurt? And then when you hurt so much because they're hurting so much you start panicking like a designer on Project Runway at the eleventh hour and the man who just so happens to hurt when you hurt wants to hurt you because your panicking is making the situation way  worse? Well, that's what happened this week.

We have a cycle of infesting insects all year round. Maybe it's super sterile zone for about four days in the dead peak of winter but other than that we share our home with either an abundance of ants, flies, mice or packrats in the roof system, lizards that waltz through the front door all non-chalantly. This week it was the dawn of the bees.

Yes, you can see where this is going now. Our floors were a creepy carpet of bumble bees crawling their last crawls. Reminded me of a recurring dream of a moving carpet of hamsters past. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad but I was picking up for three days about four to seven bees off the floor. Especially around dinner time. Finally, I said out loud to Craig, (cue in banjo music) "let's keep our eyes peeled for dem critters or else the littlest loin fruit going to get his what's coming for" - or something like that. Sure enough a half hour later he's screaming on the floor, I look and there's a bee on his pant leg and another one in his chubby little hand. I freak - "take his pants off! Take his pant's off! Run! Don't walk! WHERE'S THE BABY BOOK? CALL PEARL!!!". Luckily there's an emergency room nurse living next door that gladly makes house calls which if really handy for times when you pull your daughter's arm out of its elbow socket or son falls off of the change table. Birthday celebrations really should be grander here to celebrate surviving yet another year in this challenging environment. Anyhow, turns out he's not allergic, yet anyway, a shot of Benadryl did the trick (bubble gum flavour- his first food other than a pinch of avocado) and his finger looked like nothing ever happened the next morning. Tough little guy.