Ordinary Time

J. has some pictures of him with his parents and next youngest sister on the wall in our bedroom. Sometimes R. notices it and wants to talk about it. R.: That your grandpa? J.: No, that's my daddy. R.: Your grandpa is so tiny. J.: That's my daddy and he's not tiny, he's a grown-up man. I'm tiny; I'm a baby. R.: You a baby?! J.: Yes, I was a baby.  R.: Your grandpa not a baby? J.: Not my grandpa, my daddy. R.: My daddy? J.: No, not your daddy, my daddy. R.: Oh, so little  I'm not entirely sure how many times they went round and round, but you get the idea. I thought about helpfully asking who was on first, but I restrained myself. And yes, if you were curious, J. is infinitely more patient than I am. 

In my pattern drafting class, we finished drafting the trouser foundation which meant that we turn could move on to drafting patterns for actual garments that we wanted to wear. I ended up with a very long list of patterns I would like to have. It was kind of hard to choose what to start with. In January, when it was so cold, all I could think about was making a pair of barn pants out of boiled wool. If the weather has stayed brutally cold, I'm sure that is what I would be working on. Thankfully it is now trending warmer and my motivation for creating a pair of very warm pants and buying the expensive fabric to make them out of has plummeted. I decided to pick something else.  Here is what I decided on. I loved this skirt and literally wore it to death. I loved it so much that instead of throwing it out, I tucked it away hoping I could make a copy of it. I even moved it in its present ratty state. I'm very excited to have a pattern for it.  First, since I've owned it for de...

We don't watch much television here and have cancelled all of our streaming services due to either political ideology or lack of use. That meant in order to watch the Olympics, we needed to get a month's service. I think we will be getting our money's worth, certainly more than three movie's worth. Yes, we still think in terms of how many movies from Blockbuster the cost would be. We are not young. All day today various children have paused to turn on the television and watch some of the Olympics. Y. was a little disappointed that curling wasn't as exciting as she had imagined it to be. Unsurprisingly, the curling team from Great Britain is dominating. If you were curious. And of course last night we all watched the Opening Ceremonies together. We'd had pasta for dinner and an Italian jam tart (compliments of G.) for dessert in honor of the host country.  Parts of the ceremonies I enjoyed. Listening to Andrea Bocelli singing an aria by Puccini was definitely the...

A reader posted a comment on yesterday's post asking about what my children read in high school and was there any overlap in what they liked. I'm always up for answering questions because it means I don't need to figure out what to write. Thank you to the reader who posed the question.  I've decided that this is a more difficult question to answer than I initially thought. It's been over a decade since my oldests were in high school, so trying to remember what they read is challenging. Plus, most of them read voraciously so keeping up also proves challenging.  I tend not to assign reading at this age unless it is directly to do with what someone is learning about. I would say nearly all their reading was or is their choice. They also tend to read widely. More than a few times a book would occur to me and I would think, "It would probably be good if [insert current high schooler's name] read it." So I would go in search of said child and asked if they h...

In college I was sitting in a discussion session that was actually run by the teaching professor and as an opening question, he wanted everyone to go around and say what their favorite book was. I've always had difficulty with this question. How does one pick a favorite? More especially, how does one pick a favorite when it feels as though it is going to define you for the rest of the semester? I don't suggest doing what I opted to do, which was to say I didn't have one with the tacit implication that I didn't have one because I didn't read.  This was in my years of never wanting to speak up in class, and it was beyond me to explain that there is no way I could pick one, but then offer a book I had enjoyed. This is most certainly what the current me would answer, and probably I would throw in a comment about the period of asking favorite type questions, especially in a situation of unequal power. I often wish I could go back in time and answer for my younger self.  ...

While I've been working on lots of projects this month, I realized this week that I'm just not up for anything terribly complicated. Take my doubleweave sampler I've been working on. The original project that I planned to do and put enough warp on for involved maybe ten or so different variations of different things that can be done with the structure. The last half were fairly complicated in that it involved picking up different warp threads by hand. Normally I am all for time consuming and complicated, but not right now it seems. Today I decided I had learned everything I would ever use doubleweave for and cut the project off the loom.  I did learn a lot and I'm glad I did it. You can't tell from just looking at it, but I learned to weave two separate layers of cloth, how to move the bottom layer to the top then back to the bottom, how to create cloth connected on just one edge and how to weave a tube. This was all great and I wove a few inches of each.  Now look ...