Ordinary Time

I don't know about you, but I need something a little lighter tonight. So let's play the first installment of...  Am I the Only One?!  The game show where I learn whether I am somewhat normal or if I truly do have a runaway imagination.  I'll list three actual, real life occurrences for me and you tell me in the comments if you do this, too.  1. I seen to be an optimistic and a cynic all at the same time. My optimistic side comes out every time I go collect the mail from the mail box. There is always a little fizzle of anticipation because you never know if this will be the day when I open the box to discover a letter with a large check for us inside. In reality, 99.9% of the time there is no mysterious envelope with a large check. But every once in a while (think decades here), there actually is a surprise check, so you just never know.  2. Along those same lines, whenever I'm in the vestibule where the cost closets are I always am sure to look through the fron...

I realized this morning that it was ten years ago today that we all (well, those who were living at home) went down to Felines and Canines  (extremely highly recommended if you are looking for a new friend) in Chicago to see if we could find a dog.  For those who weren't reading here ten years ago, this was right after we had returned from China with R. and Y. We had left on that adoption trip a week after my father unexpectedly passed away. When we returned home, our Labrador Retriever, Gretel, unexpectedly passed away shortly after our return home. She had not been doing well, but what we didn't know was that at the age of three she had developed cancer through many of her internal organs. We were all reeling for any number of reasons and a new dog was feeling necessary.  I had made an initial trip to the shelter by myself in advance. I was well aware that families with as many children as we had were not always welcomed with open arms. I needed to scope things out in a...

Living in the United States is just a hot mess right now. It's actually terrifying if I allow myself to think about it all too much. To the rest of the world, I'm so sorry. There are good people here, but there are so many other evil ones it can feel hopeless. Some days I have to spend some time hiding away in my studio working on things that are simple but require just enough attention to keep the hamster off his wheel inside my head. Today was one of those days and I have a few more bits done on my English paper piecing project.  It also means that what I really want to write about, because being silent is the same thing as tacit approval, I just don't have the emotional reserves to do so. If I were to try, it would be a very expletive filled post. I'll spare all of us that and share a couple non-expletive filled quotes that I came across this past week in my reading.  The first is from the book Shopkeeping: Stories, Advice, and Observations by Peter Miller. (This is ...

I've written about this probably more than once over the years, but it might be time to revisit it. I'm still managing to keep our weekly grocery budget under $200 for eight people. That's with 90% of our groceries being purchased at Aldi. Not included in that number are trips to Costco, which are probably once every five weeks, an occasional bulk order, and the Chinese market. At Costco I buy paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, olive oil, peanut butter, some seasonings, mayonnaise, honey, and sometimes sun-dried tomatoes. That total is usually around $125. I tend not to buy much food there because often it costs more than at Aldi. The Chinese market I go to every couple of months where I stock up on ingredients that are impossible to find at my regular stores. This total is also around $125. The bulk order happens when I need more wheat or oats and I'll throw some other baking items in as well when I'm ordering. Figure around $150 for that depending on the price o...

I don't have much to share today. Much of my time this past week was spent doing horse related things and not fiber related things. It's such a shame that the hours in a day are not infinite. My pattern drafting class had a week break, which was very good because my business took a lot of time, but also not very good because yesterday I realized I had quite a bit of work I needed to do in order to have my next class be profitable.  This is why I have spent a pretty significant chunk of time trying to understand how to sew a fly zipper. It has always been one of those things that just hasn't made sense in my head, so I did a pretty good job of avoiding fly zips completely. Until now. Because the skirt I am drafting has a fly zipper. I couldn't really move on until I had figured them out.  I am happy... oh, so happy... to be able to share with you my first correctly sewn fly zipper.  I don't even want to say exactly how many hours these two pictures represent. The goo...

Since I read a lot, I'm always on the lookout for new titles to add to my pile of books to read. Because truly, it makes me very uneasy to not have several books waiting for me as I get close to finishing one. Sometimes I will hear about a book, put it on my library hold list, then promptly forget about it. It's always a fun surprise to discover what books have arrived for me.  Such was the case with the book, The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt. No, as much as you might suspect this is yet another book related to the fiber arts, it's not. It's published by the New Directions Publishing Corporation under the Storybook ND label whose tag line is, "the pleasure of reading a great book from cover to cover in an afternoon." An afternoon might be stretching things. I read it in about an hour. Really, it's a short story in book form.  I didn't know this when I put it on hold. It's probably a good thing, because I don't typically enjoy the sho...

Y. spent her birthday making baozi for our joint Lunar New Year and birthday celebration. They were very, very good, and there were even some leftover even after 15 people ate their full. We also had coconut beef curry, a lotus root stir fry, and apple pie for Y.'s birthday dessert.  Not everyone could make it, but most could. As always it was loud and funny and great to have these remarkable human beings around. Is was a very fun way to celebrate a very special child. Happy birthday, Y.!! We love you very much!

It's felt like a busy week and I have ended many days feeling as though my to-do list got longer instead of shorter. I don't like weeks like that. Admittedly, I tend to have a lot of different things going on, both from outside responsibilities as well as my own projects. When everything needs my attention at the same time, it can be a lot.  Because I don't have much bandwidth to write at the moment, I thought I would share some things that I have communicated to others in various venues this week.  "Please don't equate the fact a child is homeschooled with pathology." "Sometimes you need to go back and find the missing pieces and work on those before other learning can happen." "There are so many stressed parents out there who just want to fix their kids that they forget that they are part of the equation." "Honey has antibiotic properties, so I think we need to put that on the chicken's foot after the spray." "We have a...

This morning, L., who takes care of the chickens, noticed one hen was limping. Upon closer inspection, L. noticed that one of the hen's feet looked oddly swollen. The hen was immediately whisked off to quarantine and L. started doing research.  It turns out the hen has a condition called bumble foot, which is when a chicken gets a cut on its foot and the cut becomes infected. It's painful and if not caught in time can lead to death as the infection moves through the body.  I write this as if I know about chicken illnesses. This is merely my reporting of L.'s research. It seems that it was caught early, which is good for the hen. It's also good for the hen that I wasn't in charge because I'm not sure I would have caught it.  Treatment involves soaking the infected foot in an Epsom salt solution, removing any scabs that have formed on the foot, treating with an antiseptic spray (it was a pleasant surprise to know we had this stashed in a cupboard), them wrapping t...

Today marks the start of the Lunar New Year. We're not celebrating tonight because of schedules, but will be celebrating this weekend. It lasts two weeks, so we're good. We're also ready. The decorations are up. The Chinese lantern window clings are also up, but they're impossible to take a photograph of.  The menu has been planned. Y. will be spending Saturday making two different kinds of baozi (steamed buns). This is her choice as she mostly associates the holiday with cooking good food. We'll be having other things as well, I just have to make a trek to the Chinese market before Saturday.  I'm case you don't celebrate the Lunar New Year (we certainly didn't before adopting children from Asia) we are now in the Year of the Horse. The Year of the Fire Horse, to be exact. This happens only once every six years and can signal a time of massive change and transformation. Let's all hope that it is positive change and massive transformation because our ...

The bit of my mending pile that did not get tackled over Christmas break wasn't so much mending as adding. I had a few shirts and sweatshirts that I had collected that I wanted to embroider my business logo on and use for work shirts. This would be machine embroidery, not hand embroidery. I already had the file for my machine and had done this before, so in theory it should have been easy.  But machine embroidery involves getting out a lot of supplies I don't normally use and switching parts of my sewing machine. It is also one of those things I don't do quite often enough to keep the process fresh in my head, so it also involves a bit of figuring out as well. Yesterday afternoon I had a few free hours and I really needed the shirts that had been decorating my studio for months. It was time to bite the bullet and just do it.  When it's been a while since using the embroidery function, I always start with the shirt I care about the least. That way if I make a mess of it,...

Our weather has been unusual. It's gorgeous weather, mind you, we're not complaining, but it's just not right. In a month where the Chicago area has experienced significant snow storms, today we had sunny skies and low sixty degree weather (~16°C). It was wonderful... and a bit disconcerting. Everyone I've talked to agreed we're all just waiting for the other shoe to drop. While I've done some organizing in the barn, horse coats are still accessible, heated buckets are still in stalls (though not turned on), and stock tank heaters are not stored away.  But this type of weather is definitely something to enjoy, anomaly or not. So today, I continued to kick the pastures which were in a sorry state due to all the snow followed by frigid temperatures. Things are warm enough to actually be able to do something about it. And it's not a bad job in 60° and sunny weather.  G. spent some time working on halter training the younger sheep. They are not really fans yet, ...

If you've read here for any length of time, you are aware that reading to our children is extremely important to us. We start when they're babies and continue often though high school. J. still reads to Y. every night (her choice). Between reading out loud for school, reading at tea time, and reading at bedtime, we probably averaged well over an hour a day of books read out loud through the elementary and middle school years.  There are so many positive benefits to reading out loud to your children: Increased vocabulary  Increased sense of how written English sounds Increased ability to follow oral speech Increased ability to follow complex sentence structure Understanding of the idea of story and story structure Connection between parent and child Exposure to stories a child might not be accessible if the child has to read the stories themselves  Exposure to different ideas and concepts Focus I'm probably missing some benefits from that list. There is pretty much nothing...

You know I'm always interested in the difference between perfection and striving towards excellence. I came across this passage in a book I'm reading by an author and creative writing teacher which I thought was profound.       "Nothing perfect is interesting. Sometimes a student who is struggling to get work to me will say, 'My problem is that I'm a perfectionist.' I always answer, 'Oh, you don't like to fail in public, unlike the rest of my us?'       'No, no,' they say. 'The problem is I'm my own harshest critic.'      'If that were really true,' I will say, 'then you should have no trouble at all showing me your work.'       I'm a perfectionist. They say it apologetically and boastfully, a character flaw that speaks of high standards. Not I'm better than you , but I need to be better than you. Nobody ever modestly said they were a perfectionist." from A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction by El...

To celebrate the warmer temperatures, I’m offering a half-off SALE through March on adult Equine Assisted Learning!  What is Equine Assisted Learning? It is creating self-awareness which allows for the possibility of change by working with horses. Horses reflect back the physical and emotional states of the people they are near and we can use those reactions to gain insight and experience positive change by using an experiential learning cycle. No horse experience is needed or expected. This is not therapy and I am not a therapist. We deal with present experiences and tools for everyday life; I don’t need to know your stuff. Who would benefit? People seek out Equine Assisted Learning for a variety of reasons. I’ve had people come who were feeling stuck, who needed to face upcoming changes, who were grieving, who were overwhelmed by life, and just for curiosity.  What is the benefit? Here are a couple of testimonials.  “After my first session, I was hooked. At no point did...

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 ...

As you might imagine, January and often February are extremely slow when it comes to doing anything equine related in terms of my business. I'm happy to work in the cold (I'm out in it anyway), but it seems other people are not as excited to join me.  This explains why a post someone shared on FB caught my eye. The post that was shared said, "Parents of children who want a horse... This week only, for $100 you can drop them off at the barn for two hours and I will change their mind." [Original poster is Kate Montgomery, whom I don't know.] My first thought was finally a way to bring in income in winter, quickly followed by missing a prime opportunity with our recent frigid weather.  Of course, while this might work for some children, I know first hand that for those of us well and truly bitten by the horse bug, that this wouldn't work. I used to ride in the summer in Arizona. In an uncovered arena. I can remember getting off the horse after a lesson and downin...