August 13th

I'm Good with my Hands

Yesterday
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Now that I'm home all the time I've been catching up on the things I like to do the best - making stuff. I have been playing around with my new camera, organizing, and knitting up a storm, especially now that my feet get so swollen I can't bend my toes (knitting is easy to do whilst your feet are up higher than your heart!). So I'm taking time today to show off some of my newest creations for le bebe.

Dishcloth

First, here is a little something I whipped up last night while listening to music outside at the Shopper's Stroll. At my knitting group yesterday (which I have started up again since I'm not at work every Thursday) a lady brought in a pattern for this dishcloth/trivet/pot holder/whatever. I have made Hazel quite a few washcloths out of cotton yarn, but they are too boring for words - just a plain knit stitch square - so I was super excited to see how pretty these are and how quick they are to knit!

I exaggerated the color a bit so you could see the pattern a little better.

This little cutie I have been working on for a couple of weeks. May I present my first knitted wearable clothing item!!

Sweaterfront

Sweaterback

I used Lionbrand Microspun yarn, which is 100% acrylic but super slick and smooth. It really feels wonderful. In fact, I bought this yarn last year before I was married, way before I thought I would be pregnant, just because it felt so awesome at the store. It was kind of tricky to work with; if you're familiar with embroidery floss then you understand how loosely this yarn is twisted together. But I pushed through it and now I have a cute, lightweight, kimono-style sweater for Hazel in a gorgeous color. I love more adult colors on babies; who says all their stuff has to be ugly neon or pastel??

I have also been experimenting with stenciling onto clothing. I realized after doing these four that I've been using parchment paper, which is not the same as freezer paper, and infinitely more difficult since parchment curls up and freezer paper sticks to clothing a bit when you iron it. I can't even blame that on preggo brain! So here are my slightly smeared baby onesies (with more to come after a trip to the store for freezer paper!).

Onesies01

Onesies02

And this is a sneak preview of a super secret project I'm working on for someone else (you know I can't keep it totally a secret!!!)...

Supersecretproject

Baby Update!

3 days ago
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I had another check-up today. I'm going once a week now, and these visits are picking up in exciting news. For months it's been like a revolving door with me; seriously, I'm in and out in the span of 15 minutes. Now I go and we get to check on all this exciting stuff, seeing where she's at and having her kick at the nurses' hands!

Unfortunately I don't have any excitement from this visit, though. My cervix is soft, but closed, and the baby's still at station -5. For those of you who don't know, and really who knows about that except preggo's or women who have had kids, station refers to where the baby's head is in relation to my bony pelvis. The scale goes from -5 being at the very top, to 0 when labor usually starts, to 5, which is when the baby's head crowns right before she's born. The good news is I get another ultrasound on Monday!! The doctor wants to check on her size and get a more accurate feel for how low she is. The OB said she was sure the baby isn't really big, maybe around 6 lbs., but wants to get a better idea. I personally feel that she's a little small, and of course I'm worried that being a smoker before I knew I was pregnant is affecting her, even though the doctor assured me that's not the case. I can't help but worry just a bit though!

The good side to being so far away from labor still is that I'm cleared for travel! Our first anniversary is coming up quickly on July 28th. I can't believe we will have been married for a year already. I love Amos and am so excited that we can celebrate our anniversary with something special instead of just staying at home!! We are planning to spend a weekend in Ithaca, home to Cornell and, I've heard, tons of other awesome stuff. There are a bunch of cool restaurants and shops on their visitor's website, so I am really looking forward to a change of scenery. Especially if it involves delicious food and kitschy merchandise!! :D

I have been doing quite a bit in the business and DIY arenas, also. I'm not quite ready to talk shop just yet, but expect an update/new post by tomorrow to show off a couple of new crafty things for the baby.

These Things are Shocking (is it only me??)

3 days ago
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Be forewarned; I'm about to go on a mini-tirade, but please bear with me, because I think you'll be on board.

I'm going to smack the next person who smirks, "Are you having twins???" at me.

How can women, and ONLY WOMEN have asked me that, be so rude? Besides pointing out that I'm obviously very pregnant, that comment alludes that not only am I huge, I'm clearly too huge to be "just" pregnant. I am so big that it begs a public forum. I must be pregnant with multiples. Even in pregnancy I can't escape the constant body criticism of our culture. I can't remember ever saying that to a woman who was pregnant; mostly I remember thinking things like wow, I bet she's uncomfortable or will I get that big?

It's already borderline inappropriate to be asking pregnant strangers about their pregnancies anyway. I mean, think about it; if I saw a man walking around with a cane, could I politely inquire as to how much longer he'll be needing that cane? Or what's wrong with his leg? Not so much, because strangers asking other strangers about personal issues is generally not considered acceptable small talk.

I know what you're thinking: "Just smile, say 'no,' and don't let it bother you." No f*$(%ing way. It's invasive. It's rude. It's my right to go about my business without strangers commenting on my body. And while part of me wants to respond with, "Twins? No, I'm just really really fat," I'll refrain, because as we all know two nasty comments just make two assholes instead of one. But it's not my job to remain completely polite in the face of such inappropriateness.

This relates back to what I spoke about recently, about women judging women. I am just continually surprised and dismayed, as I traverse these typical feminine roles, of how much other women heap degradation, judgement, and their own baggage on my (very obviously 9-months-pregnant) back.

Books and Things

4 days ago
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A friend recently posted asking for reading recommendations. In this time of all things baby, I could barely come up with two. For a girl with a degree in English that's shocking; I guess for a 9-months pregnant girl it's believeable.

But interestingly enough I found the survey below, and I thought I'd fill it out for fun. I've definitely read more than 6 books on there, and believe it or not I think I really have read the complete works of Shakespeare. I had a concentration in British Lit, so there you go! :D

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.” 1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Underline the books you LOVE. 4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated. 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveler's Wife 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession - AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple, Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hug

So I come out with having read 38 of those listed, including a couple of series of books. Not too shabby, I suppose, particularly because some of the books on this list are horrible trendy novels like "The Kite Runner" and "Bridget Jones's Diary." I'm not a fan of those bestsellers books usually, and having read couple I tend to go more for back covers that are interesting versus a good review in People magazine. Also there are a couple, like "War and Peace," which I will never read. I actually read the first couple of pages of that one and it almost bored me to tears; I read great books, but why force myself through some dribble hmmm? Exactly.

Saturday Surprises

7 days ago
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Pancakes

Homemade buttermilk pancakes with blackberries freshly picked just yesterday.

It doesn't get much sweeter than my husband!!

Almost Done Baking

Jul 11, 2008
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We are at T minus 4 weeks! Four weeks! That's only a month!

I'm both surprised and dying for the end. I'm sure most women who have been pregnant understand what I'm talking about. On one hand I can't wait to meet the baby, have a drink again if I want, get out of the bathtub on my own (oh yes, I need a helping hand). On the other I'm going to miss feeling her squirming around in there, and once she's out I have to start worrying about what she's doing and where she is.

Suitcase-couverture

Amos and I have just about everything taken care of except packing a bag for the hospital. I'm not exactly sure what clothes to put in there. Every book I have suggests taking some nightgowns that are both suitable for breastfeeding and, to be kind of direct for a second, I would be okay throwing away since they could come back looking like I survived Vietnam or maybe a food fight involving only ketchup. You hear me? That's kind of a tall order. I mean, I like all my clothes! So I'm going out today to find something, I don't know what. Also I'm stocking up on mini-toiletries so I can just pack them and then throw them away there. Much less hassle that way!

You Could Fill a Book with the Things I Don't Know

Jul 7, 2008
11 comments

This has been on my mind a lot lately, and I think I just need to get it out there and vent a little.

How can a woman in our current times, with the exception of those chained into oppressive religious viewpoints, profess to not be a feminist? I find it ridiculous that any woman, or man for that matter, would be under the impression that the playing field is level or would be so irresponsible in not trying to make it so. I seem to be labeled "radical" in my thinking on this matter, though to me it just makes sense.

Feminism started decades ago to help liberate women from forced roles - the wife, the mother, the secretary, the uneducated, the prostitute. As it grew feminism had an impact on millions of lives, changed those lives for the better. It was also grossly misrepresented in the media, particularly relating to motherhood, being a biological occurrence that has risen to sainthood throughout history. Feminists have been portrayed as nazi, man-hating, martyrs to the womb. With the exception of the rare case, and every movement has those fanatics, those thoughts and ideas don't correspond to the actuality of feminism. I'm being short here, of course, but even a cursory approach at research will show that I'm correct in my short take on the history of feminism, and I've completed more than a cursory approach.

As I'm preparing myself to become a mother, thinking about how my life will change and how I will teach my daughter what is valuable and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, I find myself surrounded by women who question my ideas. I have to shake my head sometimes with incredulity; how could I not feel the conflict between work and home, when women for decades have felt the same? Why is it that my decisions for my life and my daughter's can easily be turned into a public forum, even though they are private and personal to me and mine? How, when my husband can accept my decisions, can it be so hard for people I've never even met to understand that I chose not to take his last name when we married? This judgment for personal matters is, in my opinion, one of the very things feminism was first started to prevent; I am not on trial for my decisions because I am a woman. No one has ever asked my husband how he could let his wife not take his last name; almost everyone I meet assumes that I'm an unmarried pregnant woman who is lucky her boyfriend hasn't taken for the hills yet.

I guess I've answered my own question; women, people, who fail to seek out knowledge about feminism and rely instead on one-sided, slanted reports and hearsay are the ones who can feel justified in slamming those men & women who have worked so hard to get us to this point. People who have no idea who bell hooks is are the ones who are so vehemently opposed, and to something they don't even understand. Still, ignorance is no excuse, people, and starting your sentences with, "I'm not a feminist, but..." are not a get out of jail free card.

The Butcher, the Baker...

Jul 4, 2008
2 comments

Whew! We've had so much going on lately that I feel like I'm blogging everyday!

With the baby on the way Amos and I have gone a little heirloom-crazy. Not that it's a bad thing; we're just interested in having special things for our daughter and other maybe future children. Add that to Amos's persistence in doing things correctly and I give you this:

Starter Pot for Sourdough bread

Holes in the Starter Pot

This is a custom pot he worked with the local potter from Clinton pottery to create. It's an ideal environment for making a starter for sourdough bread. If you create a starter you can always cut from it, from now until whenever! It grows back because of the yeast activity, so as long as you leave some dough in there you can always make more. This pot was designed to shelter the dough and allow yeast from the air to collect via these tiny holes in the pot. The shaft of the hole goes diagonally down from the inside, so nothing but air (and the yeast it carries from all over) can get in that way.

It's a really neat concept, and one that Amos completely designed. He researched the process and saw that most people start theirs in something like a mason jar, which is not that attractive and quite a bit smaller than he wanted, so he designed this pot. With the increase in surface area, he went from dough ingredients to this burst of activity in only 24 hours!

Yeast Action after 24 Hours

I am really proud of him for designing this pot and seeing it through production. It's already working out amazingly, and I'm sure I'll be partaking in some gustatory rewards soon!

New Product Photos - Santa Fe Stoneworks

Jul 3, 2008
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We featured these knives at the Villager for the first time shortly before Amos and I moved to New York. I love the detail put into every facet of the construction. The handles are smooth and balanced, with the blade being every bit as beautiful. I'm hoping to get a pocket knife of this style for my grandpa for Christmas.

0001

This is probably my favorite handle style. It really is that golden color with green shot through, and on the side like this you can see all the layers of green in the handle. I chose a golden background to match the honey color of the wood.

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This is a close-up of the marble handle of a wine opener. The intricate pattern of the marble is truly breathtaking, and I used this textured green paper background to highlight all the earth tones of the stone.

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This knife features Damascus steel, which is pressed over and over to create this pattern and a very strong blade. I photographed this knife using some day-old bread we had from Amos's recent baking spree.

I'm Rolling my Eyes

Jul 1, 2008
1 comment

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A couple of months ago our remote bit the dust. After a couple of weeks of looking for one that would work with our old ass TV and VCR plus our DVD player, Amos brings home this giant monstrosity. Apparently he had been wanting this remote for a while. Despite the inconvenience (it's a two-hander) I decided to let him keep it, since it was so hard to find one compatible in the first place, and also it's pretty funny.

And now it's at Urban Outfitters for $16.

That's right - the huge remote that we got at the Dollar General is now so dorky it's cool.

Since we had one before it was super hip, I've gotta wonder: does this make us dorky, old, or SUPER cool?

I'm going with the last option.