Penelope Knits

My dogs are barking...

2011-10-09T19:42:00.002-05:00

Long day downtown at the Marathon today. We left the house this morning at 4:30 sharp, and got home around 6:00. Brett and Nicole ran 26.2 miles (and walked about three or four more to get around downtown) . They ran in honor of their Grandmother and each raised about a thousand dollars to support Alzheimer's research. Great goal, and a great effort by both of them. They did get separated around mile 13 and each struggled far more on their own than they would have if they had each other to talk to and keep each other motivated.
Christi, the baby and I guess we walked about 10 or 12 miles ourselves, trying to see them at the best spots for them to get snacks or encouragement. We saw them twice, and they saw us the second time. Then we saw Brett at mile 20 and missed Nicole. To accomplish this we walked very many blocks, braved the loop, two two El lines, went up to Old Town and down to China town. The kiddo spent a lot of time looking around, some time snacking, and some time napping and the whole time being a super trooper.
Now we are relaxing at home and I'm not looking forward to going to work tomorrow. Ugh.

Square One

2011-10-02T20:13:00.002-05:00

Back again. It's been, what, a month or two?

Brett, T-man, Honus, Chester, Abby and I now live in an actual house which we own. We own the dirt outside, the cathedral ceilings in the living room, the noisy and inefficient dishwasher plugging away at our dinner dishes. We moved in August 31st and have been working on unpacking and making it home since then. The former owner was an older lady named Bernice, and we think of her often as we clean things up, and make repairs and alterations.

The living room wallpaper came down and we painted it a warm apricoty peach. I was going for parchment, but I do like the color we wound up with. The Besta wraps around the wall and hides the 80s era fireplace. In the bathroom, Brett changed out Bernice's old handheld shower sprayer for a cheap-and-cheerful $3 showerhead from Target. I couldn't be happier with it. He also removed the handrail for the bathtub and the splash guard. Then he took the overwhelming 4 foot by 3 foot mirror off the wall, pried out the medicine cabinet mounted in the wall to the right of the sink, patched the hole, spackled and sanded the marks where the mirror mastic was left on the wall and picked a beautiful denim blue color. We painted, put up a new white framed mirror/medicine cabinet, set our linens and shower curtain up and I love that room. It's probably my favorite room in the house right now!

The little guy is doing great, growing strong and healthy after a trip to the doctor for a checkup. He rolls over often, sits up and babbles with us, grins when we get his bedtime story out, giggles when his Dad blows raspberries on his belly and laughs when we laugh, which is usually right after he has an amazing spit up or ill timed fart. I worry what that might be teaching him... He's in his first week of sleep training, which I know is a sensitive issue on the interwebs. Personally, I think it's the best thing to happen to our family in a long time. We have a set bedtime and a good bedtime routine of personal hygiene, pjs, snack, book, and saying goodnight to everyone, then he lays down in his crib and stays there until he falls asleep.

He had no problem sleeping from 8:00-4:30 at about 2 months old, as long as we were in the room with him, but he's almost always cried at least a few minutes before falling asleep. In the beginning it could be an hour of constant screaming waiting for him to fall asleep. Even when he was sleeping his best he would cry for five to fifteen minutes in our arms. When we moved into the new house and he had his own bedroom, sleeping through the night was over. He would wake up every hour or hour and a half and cry, so I also got up every hour and a half and fed him until he fell back asleep. We could get him to fall asleep after fifteen minutes of crying, but just setting him into his crib would immediately wake him even from a deep sleep. Eventually this was so exhausting, I would just nurse him to sleep in our bed and he would stay there with me. If I left he would wake up, so we had the same bedtime most nights.

I was glad he was content, but I was miserable going to bed at 8:00 every night. I never got anything done around the house, or spent time with my husband, or had a time to myself to write a blog or do some knitting. The sleep I did get was tense and uncomfortable as I snuggled around my baby, to protect him from anyone rolling around in bed. I had a lot of practice side sleeping like this while pregnant, but it wasn't ever really relaxing. Between waking every hour or two to nurse and not sleeping deeply between feedings I'm afraid I was rather miserable to be around. After a month of this, getting the Dr.'s encouragement to try sleep training has been a huge relief.

Now we do our bedtime routine and he lays down in his own bed. He always cries, but after five or ten minutes (with some reassurance from us after five that we hear him and love him and checked to make sure he's ok, but now is time for him to sleep) he sleeps and sleeps well until four am or so. We're teaching him to sleep without us, and I think everyone is sleeping better. He sleeps more calmly, we sleep more comfortably. It's awesome.

I'm not sure if it will translate into more blogging or knitting, but I'm going to at least keep the kitchen clean and snuggle on the couch with Brett.

Upcoming projects:
Mark out garden bed for 2012 veggies.
Knit T a pair of mittens.
Organize front closet.
Plan for Christmas!

three weeks and a bit

2011-06-21T10:31:00.002-05:00

turns out it's getting better. I'm still entirely on baby time, so the hour of the day means almost nothing. 3 am on the clock now doesn't mean the same thing that it did a month ago. Instead of, "it's the middle of the night; why am I awake?" it means, "The baby is hungry." breakfast lunch and dinner happen if and when I can set the baby down for a half hour. It is now legal to nap at any hour of the day. Showers and teeth brushing are no longer a morning routine. But we're making it work and I'm getting sleep and getting help and occasionally getting out of the house. Giving up on old routines without giving up on the things that help me feel normal and happy has been very important to feeling better.

But when i get to see Brett and Tris snuggling on the couch, watch him fall asleep with a full tummy, take him for a walk in the stroller, or see our families' faces light up when they see him I know that he is worth any amount of stress and frustration.

Two weeks

2011-06-09T22:08:00.002-05:00

I was going to talk about how amazing my husband and baby are, as they lay snuggling on the couch next to me. But then The Child burped an impressive amount of milk all over Brett and the couch.

Ah, the joys of fatherhood!

Brett's mom has been here for a few days, helping with the baby, and it's been great for me. Brett and I managed to have a date yesterday and went to see X-Men. It was wonderful. Today the power of the moms combined and with a fantastic gift certificate from my mom and babysitting from Christi, I got myself a fancy haircut. Probably the first time I've brought a picture to a stylist and left with exactly that cut. She did a great job and was very sweet.

Having a baby does a number of your self esteem. I think I'm evening out a little bit, but I found myself sobbing at the mall last week looking for a good nursing bra. Between being tired, feeling physically not like myself, and feeling like I wasn't doing anything right as a mom, I spent a lot of time weepy the first week. Having a stranger tell you how good you look, how nice your hair is, how nice your skin is, is really really lovely.

I've also had a ton of support at home. Mom is over often, cuddling her grandbaby and telling me I'm doing good. Christi ran all over town on errands for us, and helped us get up and out of the house. Most importantly, Brett has been amazing. When I'm crying because I've been feeding the baby for the last two hours and he's STILL HUNGRY, he sits with me and tells me he loves me and that we can give him a bottle and still be good parents. He keeps my spirits up with encouraging words, super help, and even a bouquet of roses. I couldn't ask for more!

Baby-riffic

2011-06-01T04:06:00.003-05:00

So what's new with me? Oh, you know, not much. Except everything. I'm a Mom now to a beautiful baby boy who is, at this 4:07 AM moment, sleeping soundly in his chair next to the couch. Brett is taking a much needed and deserved sleep break, after taking charge of feedings and diapers for eight hours while I got something like a normal night of sleep.

I've been told to sleep when the baby does, which is great advice, and something I hope to do more of. The Child has been asking to eat about every hour or so and wiping himself out after a half hour of nursing, giving me all of 30 minutes to try to fall asleep. And it's hard to really let yourself relax when you're primed and wakeful at the first hint of a fuss or wimper. Knowing Brett is there to care for him has helped me keep my sanity and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

My plan has been to keep a written journal for my boy to read when he's older about my pregnancy and his first months. I don't plan to turn this blog into an all-baby all the time channel, any more than it was all about Brett's life after we got married. Of course, these two fellas are hugely important in my life and for a while I'm going to be pretty focused on them. But knowing I'm going back to work (shortly!) and will be gone for ten hours at a time doing my own thing means I'm just that much more eager to gobble up every moment of this on-demand motherhood experience.

Thursday was a pretty normal day for me. I got up at 7:30, dressed for work, spent the day working on projects, getting things set for my summer seasonal, and took time to get my seasonal situated so that he would be comfortable taking over for me when I left for a month. I felt agitated and remarked on Facebook (something I rarely do) how hard it was to relax. I was impatient for the baby to come, "tuned up" awaiting the first contraction, or, more embarrassingly, my water breaking. I was on edge, and had been for a while, but I joked on the walk up to our vehicles that now that Ed was up to speed, maybe tomorrow I would have the baby. Maybe he was courteously just waiting for that.

I had made last minute plans to have dinner with my Dad before he moves out of town and we talked about how great it would be if the baby were to come early so that Dad could have a chance to meet him. I ate a delicious sausage, roasted pepper and pesto pizza, said goodbye to Dad and we headed back home to watch the Bulls game. Unfortunately, it was a miserable defeat at the end of the fourth quarter by the Heat. I headed to bed at 11:00, ready to head to work the next day.

Instead, I woke up around 11:30 with pretty painful stomach cramps. I figured the delicious meal was too much for my tummy, and spent some time hunched over in the bathroom. The pain in my gut was intense and constant, accompanied by continual sharp pain in my pelvis. The doctors had identified this feeling, which had occasionally shot like fire through one hips or the other as ligament stretching, but this was pretty solid agony. After about a half hour of this, I grabbed the stop watch from the hospital overnight back and tried to time the stronger waves of cramping pain. Because everything seemed to blend into one big mass of unhappiness (which I was still attributing to diet) it was hard to tell when one started and stopped, but I was timing things at well over a minute. I finally woke Brett up, crying, telling him something was wrong. He called the hospital who asked me a bunch of questions I gaspingly tried to answer. They suggested I come in to get checked. I knelt over the edge of the couch while Brett took out Honus and grabbed our bags, my purse, my toothbrush, everything he could remember we would want.

I remember he asked me something outside by the car, to which I snappily replied, "Let's just GO!" or something to that effect. Apparently I said it louder than necessary, as our neighbors heard it and figured out I was probably in labor. Poor Brett; he took such good care of me!

We made out way on deserted 1:00 AM streets towards the hospital, listening to Garth Brooks and Brett coaching me through deep breathing. The difference was that in practice, there had been painless moments between contractions, spaces to rest and catch your breath, hope to cling to when the pain was unbearable. For me, the whole thing was unbearable. I remember screeching to a stop at a light I could tell Brett was thinking about running, being pleased with Brett's musical choice, and commenting that one of three things could happen at the hospital: they would tell me I was fine and to go home, they would tell me I was almost complete and we would have a baby in minutes, or they would say I was in labor, but barely started, and I would beg them for drugs. Obviously, I had my preference.

When we got there and checked in, I was so dazed and confused by the pain that I could barely undress. We worked with two nurses in triage who got me monitored, stuck with the IV and did an internal exam (agony!) and pronounced me nearly 4 cm. I said "Thank GOD!" that we were in labor, and immediately determined that I wanted the epidural. Brett held my hand, kept me connected to something positive and calm. He got me a barf bucket when that previously wonderful pizza made a second, third, and fourth appearance and then still let me breathe RIGHT INTO HIS FACE to get through the next wave of pain. Nurses kept asking me if the contraction was over, trying to work between them, and all I could say was that I didn't know. I still couldn't tell the contraction pain from the constant pain.

We walked down to the labor and delivery room where I was sat in bed (ouch). The nurse was very pleasant, but not very helpful. Brett asked if I wanted to be talked out of the drugs, but I didn't. He told me to breathe, demonstrating and coaching me. At one point, I switched my out breath to a low moan, and the nurse admonished me to breathe. I charmingly replied, in Brett's direction,"THAT'S. NOT. HELPING!" but tried to do as I was told.

The lovely anesthesiologist came and explained what he would do, told me about the epidural, while I gasped out affirmations that yes I understood, yes I wanted, yes yes yes to an end to the pain I had been in since I had tried to go to bed. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, arched my back and waited for him to work between contractions. Brett sat facing me, and looking into his eyes kept me from drowning in the pain. He was amazing. At this point, sitting up, I opened my jaw and moaned my way through the next handful of contractions. Maybe they were getting stronger, but now I could pick them out from the background pain, when they came, and I leaned over and moaned, I could feel things opening, working, progressing. Maybe if that had happened sooner I would have been able to forgo the drugs, but I'm glad I didn't.

The little stick in the spine was no problem, hardly felt through everything else and when they adjusted the medication to suit me, the background pain faded and the contractions were easier. The shuddering slowed, and I got my sense of humor back. They checked me again (pressure, but no pain), said I was 8cm (nearly there) and we waited for the doctor to come look at me. Mom came at this point and it was great to have her support there too. I floated through the next while, sleeping on and off, and when the doctor came at 4:00 AM, he said I was ready to go, but that my water was still intact. He suggested breaking it to encourage the urge to push, but I elected to wait another half hour, since things had moved so fast so far, I thought it might happen on its own. We called him back at 4:30 and he broke my water at 4:45. At 5:00 I started pushing.

Brett monitored my contractions, which I could hardly feel except as a little more pressure than usual, and told me when to push. He counted through my breaths, and I crushed his hand as I tried to bear down and move things along. The sun rose. The nurse was not only unhelpful, she seemed to delay things. I felt my pushes were stronger when I breathed out during them, but she said I had to hold my breath. My back was on fire and I longed for a change of position, some Tylenol, anything to relieve that burning sensation every time I pushed. I looked at Brett and knew I couldn't deliver this way. I was sure the baby was stuck and I was so tired. He told me I could, that I WAS doing it, that I didn't have a choice. So I clung to him for dear life, screamed, and pushed some more.

I pushed through the end of the shift (7:30) and when the next nurse came on, she said I could breathe out. By 7:45, she had called the doctor and I was getting prepped for delivery. Two or three pushes after the doctor arrived and there was a new person in the room! He cried once or twice.

They put him on my belly right away and then he was so quiet, staring up at me with big blue eyes. Brett cut the cord. The nurse cleaned him dry, measured and weighed him while the doctor took care of me. When we were both ok and fixed up, the nurse brought him over for his first meal. He latched really well right away and nursed about 45 minutes in one shot. Amazing!

All things considered, it was a quick delivery, especially for a first. I went in almost 100% effaced and got to 4cm in about two hours on my own. Another 6cms in another four hours. Three hours of pushing. About 20 minutes of sleep in those nine hours, which is more than Brett got.

He's healthy, I'm healthy and now I know what to expect for the next time. (you never know!)

House Hunters

2011-04-26T19:48:00.002-05:00

Brett and I are watching The Bulls play the Pacers! It's been bringing back fond memories of watching the Dream Team win six championships back in the day. I couldn't tell you anything about any of those games, but I remember them providing fun evenings.

We went to visit two new houses today in the Great House Hunt. Having put two offers on houses and being twice disappointed, I have these words of wisdom to offer the world:

When you think you know how buying a house works because you've watched House Hunters, you are wrong. That's the show where they take someone to look at three properties, all of which are beautiful, in the right price range, and empty. The buyer then decided between the property with the great yard, the one in walking distance of the beach, or the one with a home theater in the basement. They choose the house, low-ball the asking price, and move in the next week.

Yeah.

That is not what this is like.

I'm sure, like the job here KCF, that things will work out for us...eventually. It just adds stress that I'm not dealing with well right now in the first place.

wee!

2011-04-10T23:01:00.005-05:00

I finished the Sprout baby sweater. I kind of love it.

I had some scraps left over so I whipped up a little hat to match. I could probably get a wee little pair of mittens out of the remainder.

I love the colors and the buttons are perfect. We're all set now for fall trips to the forest preserve and the museum!

In other news, Brett and I are working on buying a house, next weekend is Sheep Shearing on the farm, the weekend after that is Easter, the weekend after that is the plowing event and the weekend after that is my new Mother's Day program. The week after that is our big week of intensive school programs, then I'll be training a seasonal to fill in for me and the weekend after that would be a fine time for a baby to put in an appearance. I think I'll need the break...

quickly

2011-04-04T20:59:00.002-05:00

Ok. I'm getting over the lamp. It really isn't a big huge deal, so I'm going to blame my weeping and raging on the insane hormones.

The baby sweater is coming along nicely. The body and one sleeve are done and I love the colors. I'll show you when it's done. Should be soon!

Lights out.

2011-04-03T13:51:00.003-05:00

Remember my awesome Ikea lamp, the short egg shaped one with the frosted cherry blossoms on it? That looked so modern and cool and delicate and made me feel like my house looked more like what I want it to someday look like? The one that made me have a long debate with myself at the store about whether or not I could afford to splurge twenty bucks for a silly piece of lighting and decided to be responsible? The lamp that my mom surprised me with for my birthday because she knew I loved it?

Well, one of the cats knocked it off the dresser today and it shattered. A lot. As in, unrepairable.

I was, I still am, so upset! I must be on some weird hormonal kick, because intellectually I know it's just a LAMP for goodness sake and although it was special, it is replaceable. It's not like one of Brett's statues or one of Mom's quilts or anything like that. But it was so NICE and it made me happy to have it in my apartment. Like I might aspire to have beautiful things in my house, something that I had chosen just because I loved it, without compromising or finding a cheaper look alike.

This is why I can't have nice things. Ugh. So unhappy...

What sound does Shamu make?

2011-03-14T22:31:00.005-05:00

Doctor's visit today to check on the progress of the baby. The little one is healthy and growing strong.

Do not attempt to adjust your monitor! No, I have not swallowed a basketball! That's all me and the newbie.

A successful trip to the yarn shop today yielded three lovely skeins of fluffy cuddly cotton by Classic Elite Yarns called "Sprout" (Ravelry link). I liked the texture and thought it would be a nice baby sweater yarn. I don't usually enjoy working with cottons, but I couldn't find a wool at the store that I thought was both soft and sweet enough for a bebe and durable too. So cotton it is! It's a little bit heavier than I was looking for, but I can work with that.

I chose pale grey and cheerful persimmon to work. Since I've never really bought awesome buttons and that's a shame, I splurged for six cream colored antler buttons for this little piece of awesome. They are round and sensible but kind of wild in a subtle way. Perfect for spring toddles through the woods with Mom and Dad. When he outgrows the little version, I will feel no qualms about salvaging the buttons for a new "big boy" sweater.

I want him to have a nice sturdy sweater for his first fall and into his first spring, so I'll probably make a 6-9 month size. It should have classic lines and be easy to get into and out of. What does the peanut gallery think about the Baby Sophisticate? The main body would be the grey and the collar, button band, garter hem and cuffs would be the persimmon color.

I've been chugging away at the Tamarix blanket since finding out about the baby and am a little over half way. The yarn is the lovely Serendipity Tweed from Brown Sheep. They make such nice stuff! It's a mostly cotton yarn plied with a strand of wool for a little extra warmth and softness. It's starting to wear on my hands.

The pattern I'm using is graphic and neat. Unfortunately it was a little bit confusing at the beginning. Definitely the kind of technique you need to see to understand. The written instructions in the magazine on how to join each new mitered square while working are unclear and leave out pretty key information. I looked for help online and found some videos that the pattern's author posted but I don't think you could perform the technique with the directions as written.

I'm at the point in the project where the charm has dissipated. The yarn is nice, but not as sexy as it was when I fondled it at the yarn store. The first blush of casting on and getting to know the ins and outs of the new pattern has faded. Even the pleasure of working through the difficulties has come and gone. Now I'm slogging through lots and lots and lots of garter stitch. At least there are frequent color changes to keep things interesting.

As much as I like the color changes, I have decided I'm no longer really digging on the color combos. I'm going to try overdying the whole thing, probably with a blue. Dyeing the cotton may prove interesting. I'll practice on some yarn samples before I drop the whole giant thing into a dye bath.

closed...

2011-03-07T15:17:00.002-06:00

The yarn store was closed when I got there. I tried to call the number on the gift card, but it was disconnected. I returned home and called the (different) number listed on the website but there was no answering machine/ voice mail box to leave a message with.

I'm a little baffled that you wouldn't be open at 1:30 on a Monday, wouldn't leave a note that, "the yarn shop will be closed today. Sorry for any inconvenience!" or wouldn't at least have a way for customers to contact you. I know it's a small operation, but still...

I'm probably just grumpy that I didn't get to fondle yummy baby yarns...

Waiting...

2011-03-07T12:48:00.002-06:00

It is not warm outside yet. It blows and the wind is chilly. I still wear my wool when venturing outside, though I will swear up and down that the baby sucks all the warmth into my belly.

It's time to think about Spring though. At the farm, we're already planning events six months out, and hard at work on those coming in the next month or so. The maple trees are tapped and the weather is great for collecting lots of sweet sap to boil into syrup. It reminds me of New York, where suddenly buckets and plastic tubing showed up on someone's sugar bush. This time last year Honus and I were about half way through out 5K training program. I remember running my favorite route in the late daylight, snow still heavy on the ground and enjoying the damp smell of the air and the warmth of the sunlight.

At work, the farm has turned to mud and I just got my first seed order for the kitchen garden. I was very careful about the varieties and am looking forward to writing the garden manual for 2011. I'm always optimistic about a garden. Someday I will have time to spend the morning hours weeding and harvesting my own plot of dirt. I'm thinking about planting a little box of herbs at the apartment to share with the neighbors. I never harvest enough to keep herb plants productive, and how fun would it be to have an itty bitty herb garden for our little community?

I'm back!

2011-03-06T12:39:00.002-06:00

I'm back to the world of the computer-abled! After over a month of being without the machine, Brett and I got it back last night.

I got pretty used to not having it and using Brett's i-pod to check email when I absolutely needed to. Every now and then there would be a moment where I missed it: looking up movie show times, looking for directions and train schedules, search for recipes, that sort of thing. But mostly I just didn't think about it too much. Now that it's back, I'm not sure what to do with myself.

The hard drive crashed, which was covered by the warranty I had purchased, but the data recovery was not. We bought a massive external hard drive and the guys at Geek Squad saved as much as they could. Haven't check that yet to see what they got. I also had to order the system back up disks to restore the operating system and now need to reload Microsoft Office too. But at least everything is fixed now! We even got a new battery and DC cord when we sent it off so hopefully the battery life will be a little longer than zero.

I'm looking forward to surfing the web for cute baby stuff this afternoon. I've been keeping a paper journal of thoughts and experiences, but I probably won't put much about the baby online. I'd like to keep things a little more private. Maybe that will change with time; we'll have to see.

Icky

2011-01-17T16:16:00.003-06:00

We went to the doctor yesterday for Brett, who has been diagnosed with H1N1, poor boy. When we went to the doctor for me today we were disappointed to learn that the ultrasound tech wasn't there today. I must have goofed up the schedule because I was pretty sure that today was when we would find out boy or girl, but no such luck. We'll go back next week to find out, I hope. We heard a strong heartbeat, and the doc said that although I'm not gaining weight, the baby is growing just like it should. So that's good. (Also, I am huge of belly...)

The doctor scolded us for not getting flu shots and when I mentioned that I don't have quite the same symptoms as Brett, he called me illogical for thinking I wasn't going to get the flu too. Then prescribed Tamaflu, without actually examining me or asking what symptoms I do have. What if I have bronchitis instead? Should I be taking drugs if I don't have to?

I appreciate that I don't have any medical training. That I don't know anyone who has recently had a baby. But I really hate feeling patronized and it's happened more than once. I mean, yes, I'm sure I have some silly/ stupid questions. This is the first time I've had a baby after all. But I don't think that means I should be made to feel stupid. If I question why I should get a flu shot I don't think the answer should be, "you need to have one; you're pregnant." Sometimes I feel like I'm bothering the doctors. I just wish I was treated more routinely as if I have choices, as if it were up to me how to have my baby. Instead of just a passive baby factory. Am I just being sensitive? It makes me feel icky.

Year End

2011-01-01T12:12:00.003-06:00

Happy New Year all!

2010 was a pretty stellar year for me, as such things go. I got to work at the Baseball Hall of Fame as a teacher, which bumped up by street cred with the kids by a significant percentage. Then I was offered another job within spitting distance of my family doing exactly the thing I've been trained to do with ease.

In August I got married to my wonderful husband and I can't believe how different every day is now.

I had some bumps, some completely unexpected dark points, but for the most part, I would take 2010 over and over again.

I hope your 2011 is filled with joy and love and good fortune. I can't wait to see what this year will bring!

countdown

2010-12-16T17:28:00.002-06:00

Almost ready for Christmas, friends! I made a spreadsheet, which was a great idea. I don't feel behind or like I'm scrambling to get things last minute. A lot of it is even wrapped and ready to pack up. This weekend I'll finish up the last bits and we'll be ready to go to over the river and through the woods, as it were.

Go me!

Ho Ho Ho

2010-12-09T21:50:00.002-06:00

How do ya'll feel about Santa Claus?

At my house, when I was a kid, I seem to remember getting most of my presents from Mom, Dad, other relatives, and a couple really sweet presents from Santa Claus. We opened presents at my parents' house on Christmas Eve during my formative years but starting a couple of days before Christmas Eve, presents began to pile up under the tree.

I recall a Christmas Eve at a very young age waiting for Santa to come so we could thank him(?). Mom convinced us after waiting all day that we should take a break, so that evening we left cookies and milk just in case while Mom, Paul and I drove around the neighborhood to look at luminaria and Christmas lights. Dad stayed behind (in case Santa came by I imagine, though this part is fuzzy). When we got home, Dad was fast asleep, the cookies had been eaten, the milk had been drunk, and there was a pile of new presents that hadn't been there when we left. We must have been sleepy and equipped with very poor sense of the passage of time because we didn't question how Dad had fallen so deeply asleep so quickly.

I couldn't tell you any moment where I found out that Santa wasn't "real." I think I probably always knew, the same way I knew about the Tooth Fairy, but Mom and Dad never made a big deal out of Santa, so I didn't feel lied to or mislead when I let go of him.

I can recall two very early influences on my concept of Santa: Sesame Street and Peter Pan the musical. In the Sesame Street Christmas Special, Big Bird is very concerned with whether or not Santa is real. He waits up on the roof in the snow to catch Santa coming down the little apartment chimney. He never sees Santa, but someone brings presents and leaves foot prints in the snow. Peter Pan is memorable because it ingrained in me the idea that magical things can be real but only if you believe in them. Remember when Tinkerbell drinks the poison to save Peter and everyone has to clap to prove they believe in Fairies and she gets better? Well wouldn't I be a jerk if I didn't clap because I was too cool and I KILLED a FAIRY!? Better safe than sorry. And Tink always got better, so I must be doing the right thing.

As I got older, Santa became the name that appeared on "anonymous" gifts. You were always pretty sure who was responsible, but when confronted, the giver would usually look to the heavens and say, "It must have been Santa!" I still think that's fun.

I don't know if it was my mom who said it, or if I heard it somewhere else, but a mom said that she wanted her kids to know that she was responsible for the presents, not some unknown personage they have no relationship outside of Christmas. I think it's good for kids to be grateful to the appropriate people for the gifts they receive, so I'm all for putting names on the gift tags.

But if my kids want to believe in Santa, I'm totally cool with that. I don't intend to lie to them, but I don't see a problem with a little suspension of disbelief. Historically, the story starts with St. Nicolas. He was a good and generous man who gave gifts to people who had nothing (dowries for poor girls being key among them). He brought hope for a bright future and a little bit of holiday cheer to cold houses. I don't think there's anything wrong with having faith in that spirit, believing that it changes things for the better, and bringing it into your own home.

I do think it's just as likely that my kids will wind up getting a totally cool toy from Batman or other "imaginary" figures though.

Grateful

2010-11-25T10:53:00.003-06:00

The bread is rising by the stove, the games are picked out and ready to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house, I'm watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the TV, and I'm about to take a nice long hot shower.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

There's so much to be thankful for this year, it's hard to know where to begin.

I'm thankful that my new job brings me challenges and a sense of doing something worthwhile with myself.

I'm thankful for the fact that I live close enough to family that we've gotten to spend so much time with our loved ones.

I'm thankful for all the wonderful people who took time from their lives to help us celebrate our wedding in August.

I'm thankful for my wonderful amazing husband.

I'm thankful for the opportunities that have come my way this year, for the love I've received, for the new beginnings that Brett and I are creating together as a family.

purchase power

2010-11-23T21:56:00.002-06:00

Dear everyone who is trying to convince me that buying things will not only make me happy but that not buying things will make me a bad person,

Kindly knock that noise off.

Thank you,
Kate

I Heard it Through the Grapevine

2010-10-20T21:07:00.003-05:00

Quick check in.

Was reading my wedding sister "Bride Sans Tulle" just now and she wrote a lovely piece about keeping your community connected to your marriage. As in, those of us who saw wedding magazines and said, "This is not what I'm experiencing, or reflective of who I am," are going to have the same kinds of struggles looking at "typical" ideals of married life, especially newlywed life.

I was recently involved in a conversation regarding a former coworker's recent decision to seek a divorce, just a year after being married. The overwhelming viewpoint of those in the conversation ran, "Everyone knew it wouldn't work from the beginning! We've been telling her this since before she even got married!" From their description of the situation, which was graphic in its gossipyness, he was a bad egg who was only going to bring her shame and disappointment.

Honestly, I felt bad being a part of the conversation. I wouldn't want someone talking about my personal life like that. I mean, we worked together for 6 months, like, four years ago. We were the same age, with similar goals and backgrounds. We probably would have been better friends if I weren't such a hermit or we'd spent more time together. I identify with her.

One of the big signs that the marriage was doomed was that they weren't happy together.

A co-worker turned to me and said, "I mean, that's how it works right? Newlywed bliss?"

And I replied, "Some days." The truth, for me, is that like most things in life, you've got days that are wonderful, sunny happy days. Brett and I go to the Field Museum downtown. We cuddle on the couch to watch John Adams. I cook and he cleans and we take the dog for a walk and buy groceries and all that stuff.

But some days are cloudy. Some parts of some days are pretty darn stormy. We have never been a couple that thought fighting meant the end of anything though. We're always going to come back to each other, maybe after a nice long walk around the block, apologize for hurt feelings, and feel stronger than we did before. I think that's normal for us.

So the newlywed bliss thing? Let's cut each other some slack here and realize that even though you just got through your wedding, you still have work and chores and life to deal with and that stuff is going to make you grumpy occasionally. Just the way life goes.

When a newlywed tells you that she's been fighting with her spouse, don't chalk that up to imminent doom! If you were at that wedding (coworkers!) if you supported it with well wishes from afar, well, it's your job to help us remember why we got married, help us seek resolution rather than dissolution. Stick up for our partner to us and help us choose every day to be with that person, even when "love" is the last thing we say we feel. Still, I'm all for a good vent session now and then, and I would never tell someone truly unhappy or uncommitted to their relationship or facing an uncommitted partner to stay in a marriage "just because."

I also want to point out that more often than the blissful honeymoon part of the glossy magazine image of marriage, I see the helpful advice articles, and the TV sitcom families where the husband is assumed to be lazy, inconsiderate, or annoyed by the things important to the wife (matching embroidered hand towels, potpourri, and shopping) while the wife is portrayed as alternately nagging, oblivious or dismissive of the husband's interests (sports, sex, and snacks). Any reaching across this gulf must somehow be manipulative (sex in exchange for shopping, for example).

I know that's not how I want my relationship with my husband to look. Any good examples of happy healthy balanced marriages in modern culture that you guys can think of?

Goin to the Chapel...

2010-10-16T15:20:00.006-05:00

Hi all,

Last time we talked, I was recounting the amazing experience of spending the day before the wedding relaxing, primping and chillin with my homegirls. Then getting up at dawn on the big day to visit the farmer's market for flowers. (So so so highly suggested!)

Brett and I recently recieved our photos from our amazing photography team Libby and Joe of Joe Crimmings Photography. I really can't say enough nice things about these two. They got every important moment that we'll want to remember forever and some lovely family and personal portraits. Joe's got a great style that made the portraits look bronzed and vintage without being stodgy or corny. I can't wait to have some of his art up on the wall. I would love to work with them again and will recommend them to anyone asking for a photographer in the Des Moines Area. Go check them out, they're awesome...

I'd like to share some photos they took, my favorite ones, in chronological order, up to the church service.
My Maid of Honor, Kate, was completely supportive on the day and the whole weekend. She helped me keep my cool when I was freaking out a little in the dressing room. Can't imagine the weekend without her!

Kate and Nicole helped get me all set for the ceremony. I wonder if part of the nerves of the wedding come from not really doing anything NORMAL all day, like dressing yourself. People fuss over you, fuss over the decorations, all that stuff. But it's also really exciting. It separates this day from other days in your life, which is cool.
The dress was a David's Bridal off-the-rack number which I never really had altered because it fit so well when I bought it. It was strapless which is not what I wanted, so I did ask my Aunt to add the little sleeves. I loved it right away, loved it more when Aunt Karen modified it, and loved it all day I got to wear it. I love it even more now that it has about two inches of dirt on the hem and tiny holes burned in the netting from the sparkler party we had at the end of the night.
The flowers are from the farmer's market and the festive bunting is from my Mom's sewing machine. I asked and she delivered perfectly. I love the buntings!

We got married at the Church of the Land at Living History Farms. My Grandparents were among the first to arrive. I love this shot of them walking up the boardwalk to the church.

More to come!

Wedding!

2010-08-31T17:27:00.011-05:00

In the wake of my last post regarding my wedding to Brett, I'd like to offer another view. This is the way I really remember the day, the view I want to bind to my heart and carry with me to my office, to the grocery store, through every moment of my day. This view of my wedding lifts me up and fills me with bliss and hope and boundless love for my husband and all the wonderful people who were able to come and support our union.

To begin with, the time I got to spend with my favorite ladies before the big day was really great. Since we all live pretty darn far away from each other, hanging out isn't really an option. To have a whole weekend to do all my favorite things? What could be better?
We spent Friday afternoon at the spa getting our nails done.

I'd been saving up tip money at the bakery to afford this treat so I didn't feel even a tiny pang of guilt for indulging. What a great feeling to be surrounded by happy best friends and family, relaxing and feeling pampered! I warned Brett that now that I've gotten a taste for it, we might have to put a line in the budget for monthly pedicures.

One of the great things about the wedding was treating myself to looking and feeling good without indulging guilty feelings about it being a poor use of my time. I took long showers, wore fake eyelashes, got lots of labor intensive curls in my hair, pretty toes and fingers, and soft skin. It was like I didn't work at on a farm! I don't usually take that much care of myself and it was a fun change of pace.

The morning of the wedding Kate, Chelsea and I woke up just after dawn to meet Katie and head to the Des Moines farmer's market. Katie is a market pro and she knew just when and where to go to get the most beautiful flowers. She even brought a basket for us to use!

We got bouquets and perfect little zinnias for boutonnieres at the first stand. Would you like to guess what we paid the wonderful creative florists who hand selected flowers with shapes and colors we liked? If you guessed six dollars you would be guessing too high. For three bouquets and flowers for three bouts, we paid twenty dollars! The magazines and even online sources were preparing me to spend about two hundred dollars per bouquet, so I was ready to have the best day of my life at that point.

We went to a couple other flower stalls to buy other flowers for decorating the church and the reception. As we four girls walked around downtown Des Moines in the beautiful morning light with buckets of the most gorgeous flowers I could imagine I kept thinking how lucky I am and how excited I was for the day ahead.

Wedding Thoughts

2010-08-28T23:35:00.003-05:00

In the last 21 days, lot of people who know me by varying degrees have asked how the wedding was. Lots of my friends who are roughly my age have asked how married life is.

I find my feelings about the later question are much simpler than the first one. Married life is great. It's not that much different than before, honestly, but now I know I've got a partner and that makes everything else feel more important, and more exciting. While we might not have a "honeymoon" period, so to speak, I'm still getting used to the idea of Brett not just being my best friend and companion for the day, or the week, but for the rest of our lives. Everything we do together now is an investment in that future. We still go to work, watch TV, and take the dog out, but right now, those little things feel nicer because they're really the building blocks of the rest of our lives. Going for a bike ride to the farmer's market down the road with my husband feels completely different than going with my fiance.

On a different note, the wedding was a strange day. I know I was supposed to feel blissful and peaceful and that all the stress was supposed to just melt away when I saw Brett at the end of the aisle. I know that people who didn't know the things I had planned didn't know if they went smoothly or not and didn't care one way or another. I also know that it was really really hard for me to let go of the stress and let go of the desire to have everything go smoothly. I keep telling people who ask that it was a great day. It really was, but I wish I had been able to be more present in the moment, instead of worrying about the next part of the day and whether it was going to be right when I got to it. And I feel guilty that that's how I remember it.

It was a little bit like going on vacation to a completely amazing place so wonderful you feel like you have to do as much as is humanly possible to take full advantage of it. But then you wind up feeling like you didn't get everything done and that you didn't get the full value of what you actually did do because you were so busy planning how to get to the Parthenon you forgot to enjoy the resturant you were eating at.

I will say that the best parts of the day were the less crazy parts where I wasn't thinking about the next part. Getting up early to buy flowers at the farmer's market with my friends was great, and having that project to work on with Karen and Chels helped keep me calm. I really enjoyed the quiet moment with my brand new husband in the buggy at the top of the hill, and holding on to him as we walked to the reception site, Joe and Libby our amazing photographers snapping away behind us. Talking with folks after dinner, lighting up the sparklers and playing bags in the dark. The parts of the day where I just got to relax and be me for a little while were great.

So my advice to brides everywhere? If you are a planner by nature, a manager by trade, or any kind of control freak, hire a day of coordinator, let them worry about it and get your bridal crew to run interference so no one asks you a single blinking question all day long. Your opinion on how to handle clearing the tables is not even vaguely as important as you enjoying your first meal with your spouse and dearly loved ones, so let someone else handle it. I was lucky that Chels did so much of that for me with no warning and little enough thanks, but even so no fewer than four people asked me how I wanted the tables cleared as I got a plate of food and sat down to eat. Hire someone competent who you trust then relax and be present with your spouse and your loved ones. It's not an opportunity we get often in life.

Looking back at the wedding I know it was beautiful, that it was full of people who came to wish us love and happiness, that it reflected Brett and myself (sometimes too much!) and that it brought us closer together. It set the stage for the life we're living now and for that I will always be thankful.

Week one

2010-08-18T11:54:00.005-05:00

Today Brett and I are going to take a hike at nearby Waterfall Glen. It's the second day we've both had off together since our wedding eleven days ago, so we're going to get out and do something fun.

The wedding was awesome, though I'd like to wait a few more days before I really crack into writing about it. I've had some pretty strong and even conflicting emotions about it in the week since it happened, so I want to continue to let my thoughts about it formulate and settle in my head before I try to memorialize it on The Blog.

Suffice it to say, for now, that Brett and I are an extremely fortunate couple to have such wonderful generous people among our friends and family. There is no way we could have had such a lovely day without them. In Offbeat Bride (please treat yourself to this book if you are a bride in identity crisis) Ariel talked about wanting to have her wedding reflect the people who she cared about, instead of a commercialized idea of what a wedding was supposed to be. I'm very glad to say that everyone I worked with to organize the wedding was a pleasure to work with from the professionals Joni the caterer and Joe and Libby the photographers, to Chelsea and Aunt Karen who arranged all the flowers and decorated the church and reception site, to friends of my mom who stayed to the end of the party to help us clean up. I'm grateful to you all for everything you did for us and will be grateful every time I look back at pictures of how beautiful the day was.

We celebrated our one week anniversary with cake (Honus ate the leftover wedding cake we brought back from Iowa. Can't blame him. It was awesome!) and then ice cream.

We got a Kitchenaid stand mixer and ice cream churn attachment as wedding presents and a cookbook with collected LHF recipes from some farm friends, so we whipped up a batch of vanilla farms ice cream. I should have thought more carefully about the fact that the recipe makes enough for a 5 quart churn and ours is decidedly less than that. But we split the "batter" into two batches and now we have some waiting for us to churn tonight.

I added some fresh strawberries to mine for a little added umph and it was delicious.

Now as to my particular choice!

2010-08-05T11:00:00.002-05:00

I just read an amazing blog post by Sharon at Practical Wedding. She talks about how she answers the question, "When did you know he was 'The One'?" with such eloquence and honesty, I feel like I just want to steal everything she said.

Rather than a fluffy romantic moment where fireworks went off and the heavens opened and a golden light shon down upon her fiance, she uses the metaphor of buying a house. It's awesome and, I feel, accurate expresses how I knew I wanted to marry Brett.

When you're looking for a house, Sharon says, you look at lots of houses. Some of them might be dumps, but most of them will be beautiful in some way. You might be able to see yourself living in lots of the houses you look at, but eventually you decide on one and you make it a home by the time you invest in it, by trusting it with things you care about, by having amazing experiences there. And you grow into never being able to imagine living anywhere else.

Of course Brett's a wonderful person, full of energy and enthusiasm and a driving desire to be better tomorrow than he is today. He is sensitive and sweet. He's so unbelievably smart and interested in so many things. He works hard and likes to be outside. Our interests overlap and even when they don't he supports me in what I love to do. He treats me like a partner and respects my work. I know he's going to be a wonderful father. He's a great kisser. I get a funny jumpy feeling in my tummy when I see him.

But aside from his practical features and my feelings for him, he's the one I choose. We've grown together over the years, over big dinners at a hundred year old tabl and over nights of cable news and political discussions. We've experienced setting up camp in the rain and the dark on a trip to Niagra falls. He's taken me to baseball games and I've taken him to Rhinebeck. We've shared darkness and frustration and hopes and goals. He knows me better than anyone else and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life without him beside me.

As a commenter to that post said, "Love is an action," not just a feeling or something that happens to you. At least, it's not in my experience. I do feel love for Brett, of course, because of who he is as a person. I couldn't help but feel love for him, and I wouldn't say I have much of a choice in that.

But on Saturday I will choose to (verb) love him for the rest of my life. Not the romantic-comedy idea where if you don't feel lovey about someone, you don't really love them, but a deep pledge to continue to grow together and to care for him above all other men. I want to make a genuine honest choice to make love a action in our household, not just a feeling, starting from day one.

I'm so glad he asked me and I'm so glad I said yes.

First, my reasons for marrying..

2010-08-05T09:05:00.003-05:00

Ok. So, I'm going to be a little bit busy this weekend.

Turns out I have this wedding to go to.

Mine!

Brett and I will be getting married at 5:00 on Saturday at the Church of the Land at Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa.

I've had a lot on my mind with the new job, the move and planning the details of the wedding, but I've also been trying to keep in mind the reasons behind all this big stuff.

I've thought about what a wedding is and what it means. I've looked at the historic customs of marraige and tried to make them coincide with the modern expectations of marraige. I've considered my identity and how marraige can and will change it. I've thought about my specific relationship and what makes me confident that I can honestly vow to commit to it for a lifetime. I've looked at my husband-to-be and thought about what it will be like to see him next to me for the rest of my life.

Because that's what's important.

We will wear our finery, a beautiful cream dress and a custom-made grey suit, and it will be an outward expression of our inner joy, a symbol of starting fresh, and a sign of our respect for each other and the sacrament we're partaking in.

We'll exchange wedding bands, mine of simple gold so I can wear it every single day, his of titanium and meteorite, durable and rare, and our families and friends will bless them. Rather than being passive societal witnesses, our friends and family will have the chance to participate in our ceremony, to make their own vow to support our marraige and help it thrive.

I'm thrilled about the pretty calico bunting my mom made to decorate the church. But what makes it important to me is the care that my Mom took in creating it, that it's fabric and hand made and unique and will make me think of her when I look back at pictures.

I can't wait to taste the carved baron of beef and the garlic mashed potatoes. But what we're really doing is marking the first time my husband and I feed our friends and family together.

When we cut into the baseball-and-yarn-shaped cake and share it with each other, what we're really doing is representing the sweetness of life, the things we love, and how sharing those things with each other is our responsibility to our marraige and our great pleasure.

All those little details that I've worked so hard to coordinate and plan will tell our guests who we are as a couple and who we would like to be: unfussy, traditional, fun, creative, steadfast, generous, loving, happy.

It's about finding blissful happiness with another person and seeing it side by side with complete frustration and still knowing that you want to share your life with them. It's about bringing the strength of family and friends to help you keep that commitment. It's about celebrating love and life and happiness. What could be a better way to spend a weekend than that?

The Weather Channel

2010-08-05T08:59:00.001-05:00

rush

2010-07-30T16:40:00.002-05:00

In one week, at this time, I will frantically be throwing together last minute details, trying to keep at least one brain cell on everything that needs to be done and everyone who is involved at all times, corralling wedding party, and immediate family together and generally losing my cotton pickin mind as I get ready to go to the rehersal for the wedding.

I've had to completely cut caffeine from my diet because I was screaming sentences comprised of words that made no sense in the general direction of my bewildered and frankly annoyed fiance. Over seating charts. I would shake and rock back and forth and generally flip my lid.

No more diet coke. At all. Until after the wedding.

check in

2010-07-21T21:53:00.002-05:00

You try stuffing two functioning households worth of crap, including a rather impressive collection of yarn, work out equipment, and collectibles into a one bedroom suburban apartment and then come and tell me how you feel.

I bet you'll feel a little overwhelmed.

Cause that's how I'm feelin'

Curb appeal

2010-07-10T19:32:00.002-05:00

Brett and I are now down by two giant heavy cumbersome couches. Hooray!

We each had a pretty comfy couches when we moved to NY, and we kept them both through the last move. Now that we're downsizing to a small apartment, though, we don't have room for two couches and neither are particularly amazing. When we have a little bit saved up, we'll probably buy a nice new one.

So to get rid of the old ones, we asked around work to see if anyone wanted one, but were planning that we would need to pay the dump to take them. The nearest salvation army that takes furniture is all the way down in O town but just tossing them (and paying to do it) made me feel sad.

Brett's was a sleeper sofa, which meant it was HEAVY and old as something really old. Still, it was in really good shape and we found some one at the Hall who was in the market for a sleeper sofa so that took care of that.

Mine was super comfy and, once upon a time, it reclined, but one of the springs had since broken and it doesn't lay back like it used to. As a 50 dollar thrift store buy, it has served its purpose and I wasn't especially attached to it emotionally, so we pulled it out to the curb and put a big "FREE!" sign on it.

Not 15 minutes later, a guy with a truck pulls up, knocks on the door and asks if he can take it.

So that was easy.

Two couches down, two tvs, an entertainment center, a queen mattress left to pawn off on someone. Anyone interested?

Revolution!

2010-07-07T23:26:00.004-05:00

Brett and I arranged to have a day off together today so we could try to do a little day trip traveling while we're still in the area.

There's a ton of great stuff within a day's drive that we never felt we could afford to do, but knowing that it's either spend the $40 on gas now or $600 on a pair of plane tickets in another week, it's hard not to take advantage of our proximity. I'd really love to go to Boston or Philadelphia, but those may be too much for us to do right now with moving costs and the necessity of getting everything packed up.

Today we drove up to Rome to visit the battlefield at Oriskany where General Herkimer's Tryon County militia and Oneida Indian allies were ambushed on their way to aid the rebel soldiers besieged in Fort Stanwix. Most of the militia soldiers were fighting very close to their farms and families; Herkimer himself lived less than thirty miles from the site of the ambush. The story of the battle reads like a movie script: General Herkimer and his soldiers march through the early August heat to try to raise the siege on Fort Stanwix. They are about six miles from their destination where they expect to fight Barry St Leger and his forces: a mixed bag of British soldiers, Hessian mercenaries, Iroqouis allies lead by Joseph Brant, and Loyalist rangers including Herkimer's own brother, Johan Jost. They come to a marshy ravine with a small stream running through the bottom. Tired and thirsty, some of the poorly seasoned troops break ranks to run to the stream to drink. As they put down their muskets and kneel on the bank, a group of Iroquois attack from the forests around them. Stories say that the stream ran red with blood by the end of the battle.

Joseph Brant, the Iroquois commander, lead a group of Loyalists and Iroquois to set the trap, intending to catch all the rebels in the ravine where the military road crossed the stream. Though the trap was sprung prematurely, what followed was the bloodiest battle of the Revolution. General Herkimer was wounded in the leg by a shot that killed his horse. His men tried to insist he leave the field of battle but he refused saying, "I will face the enemy." He sat down under a tree, smoked a pipe, and directed the battle. A rainstorm forced a delay during which both sides regrouped. Herkimer changed tactics to limit the effectiveness of the Iroquois skirmishers and wound up in possession of the field, but with heavier losses. The British claimed victory, but were thoroughly demoralized when, upon returning to their camp outside Fort Stanwix, they found the soldiers of the fort had raided their camp and taken or destroyed supplies, maps, letters and strategic plans.

The wounded Herkimer was taken back to his farm, but a delay in treating his wound and a botched amputation took his life ten days later. But his march had given the defenders hope and demoralized the British forces. A short while later, Benedict Arnold marched to lift the siege and the greatly exaggerated rumors of the size of his force eroded the Iroquois support. Without the Indians, the British didn't stand a chance and retreated without a battle.

It was the first real confrontation where American forces engaged each other, Rebel against Loyalist and the extremely high percentage of casualties on both sides made Oriskany the bloodiest battle of the Revolution.

So why all the fighting right here?

Fort Stanwix was built during the French and Indian war to protect the strategically important portage route from the Hudson River and the Atlantic to Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes. The Fort was a sleek, super modern fort for its time, a collection of hills and angles that all come together to be a pretty bad ass position to defend.

Brett and I actually went to the fort first, but it was an afterthought to the battlefield. We were pleasantly surprised at how much well funded information there was at the site, which is technically a National Park.

We got their in time for a guided tour that filled us in on some of the information we didn't know.

We had a great time poking around the reconstructed fort.

Defending the Sovereignty of the Colonies from those nancy British redcoats!

The spiky things are a French invention apparently. I think Paul and Steve could have a couple of these whipped up in no time to defend the 1850 farm from Ioway Indian attack.

Can you guess who took all the good pictures?

Ch ch ch Changes!

2010-06-28T15:27:00.002-05:00

Look out Windy City, Brett and I are blowing in!

The big news is I have been offered and accepted a job at Kline Creek Farm in Winfield, Illinois, which means that Brett and I are going to be moving west in another few weeks. The timing is wonderful in some ways (we'll be about 13 hours closer to the wedding ceremony come August and I'll be much closer to my relatives which will be good for planning purposes) and in someways is pretty darn lousy. We'll miss the HoF inductions by a couple weeks, we'll have less than three weeks to settle before the wedding weekend. All the wedding stuff is going to have to get boxed up separately and well labeled so that I can get to it without unpacking everything.

That being said, I think i need to go get cracking on some packing planning. No way are we going to be as disorganized as the last move. There's no time or energy for crappy packing!

Farmers Market

2010-06-12T12:52:00.003-05:00

Went to the Farmer's Market today and picked up a beautiful spring bouquet. I've decided that we want to go with local and farmer's market flowers for the wedding. Some will hopefully come from my Aunt's yard, but my excellent friend Katie has managed to find a farmer's market vendor who will assemble our held flowers for us. I can't wait to see what happens, and I love that it will be a surprise on the day.

If it looks anything like the flowers I got today, I will be a very very happy bride.

Did I mention how adorable the shower in CH was? My Mom and Aunt went to town with their creative girly selves. They made little heart shaped sugar cookies in lots of sizes and strawberry rhubarb jelly with rhubarb from my Great Grandma Steben's rhubarb plant.

Brett's folks came all the way from Iowa just for the party and then turned around and went home. Seriously, how cool is that! Thanks everyone for making the day so special.

Slammed

2010-06-10T16:51:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone.

So, it's been quiet on the blog, which either corresponds to a period of super boredom in Real Life, or a period of insane business. In this case, it is the latter.

In the last month I have:
Applied for a new job

Been running videoconferences all over the place at my current (big girl) job.

Tread a fine line between being emotionally disconnected from life in Cooperstown while still trying to be involved in life in Cooperstown. (e.g. packing boxes for a longed for move while cultivating a new relationship with a local spinning guild.)

Travelled 2,684 miles across the country by car.

Made stops on the journey at Niagra Falls, Clarendon Hills, Des Moines, Atlantic, and Aurora to get soaking wet, be showered with presents, fumble a catering meeting, eat some tasty tacos, be showered some more, introduce families, attend a beautiful wedding, check out our wedding venue, touchdown the catering meeting, and interview for previously mentioned job.

Celebrated the one year mark in my engagement to Brett.

Found a new wedding website (mywedding.com/brettandkategarrett) that is easier to write and remember.

Wrote and mailed thank you cards for showers.

Assembled and sent out wedding invitations. And if you think that Brett didn't assemble every single invitation by hand or that I didn't break out the calligraphy on every single envelope, well, you would be mistaken.

Got sick.

As if I couldn't see that one coming. So today I'm staying home from work and trying to relax. I've been sleeping for most of the day and am trying hard to feel better. I'll try to catch you up with some pictures soon.

2010-04-30T16:09:00.002-05:00

This is, in fact, the best way to do wedding planning. Oh yes.

Some more quotes I'm thinking about for the festivities:

The Confirmation

Edwin Muir

Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.

I in my mind had waited for this long,

Seeing the false and searching for the true,

Then found you as a traveller finds a place

Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong

Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,

What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,

A well of water in a country dry,

Or anything that's honest and good, an eye

That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,

Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,

The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,

The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea.

Not beautiful or rare in every part.

But like yourself, as they were meant to be.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Two are better than one: they get a good wage for their labor.

If the one falls, the other will lift up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm? Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.

Appellation

2010-04-29T21:09:00.003-05:00

Since I was a little girl, when many females of the species are concerned with understanding and internalizing their predicted roles in life, I've been pretty darn certain that when I got married, I would take my husband's last name. I assume this understanding was the result of a conversation with my Mom about why Grandma and Grandpa J, who were her mommy and daddy, had a different name from her. I assume that she told me that when she married Dad, his last name became her last name. And I never questioned this.

In the intervening years I've seen why this whole name changing business should be fraught with peril, despite not really having the example of hyphenated or staunchly keeping-her-own-name-thank-you-very-much role models as a wee thing. I do know that this "women take their husband's name" understanding must have happened very young, since it was already breaking down by the time my Aunt married (I was, what, 7 or 8?) and she kept her own last name for business and that didn't seem to shock me. I was more stunned that I might not get baby cousins out of the deal, which is an insight into how I figured the life cycle goes.

I always thought my Mom's name was pretty cool, cause it is. I mean, her initials are HRH, which I would have monogrammed on all my big fluffy towels and bathrobes if I were her. I remember her explaining that it was our family name and that made it important to her. It was something that she shared with her husband and her children. We spent so much time with my maternal grandparents I never questioned the strength of her relationship with her own parents and sister, and rightly so.

But now on the other side of it, as an affianced woman, I'm examining the custom and what it actually means. I've never questioned the rightness of taking my husband's name in my particular case but I can definitely understand why it is so complicated for lots of other women.

First, there's the career thing. As for my Aunt, if you're established in the field as Ms. K H and then you suddenly disappear and Mrs. K G pops up instead, that can hurt you in terms of clients referring you, or people trying to follow your academic work. It's not like in the olden days when people would advertise their marriages to their local community so everyone could keep track. In some sense, you have to start over as a new person and what you did before you were married doesn't count. (I guess even when people were routinely putting out those marriage notices, what a woman did before marriage was largely irrelevant, as the entire goal of being a woman was to get married and manage a household.) Harsh. This reasoning may seem very practical, and I think more men are accepting of this as a genuine "excuse" not to change because they sympathize with the "it's for my career" idea. However, I think it hits on the idea that a woman can have an identity in addition to her role as wife.

Secondly, there's the family thing. I have a strong relationship with my family and that won't change because of the name I carry. But the name I have now is the name my parents, specifically my father, gave me. I prize it because it's unusual and ethnic and it ties me to my ancestors like nothing else I have. I don't want to seem ungrateful to that heritage, and I would hate to see society change to the point where it would be a slight to my parents if I chose Brett's name over theirs for our new family.

Thirdly, there's the cultural and historical implications of taking your husband's name. I like thinking of it as joining his tribe, becoming one of his people, but there's been some times in history and places in the world where it only signifies becoming the property of his family group. You lose the protection of your family, and the right to being part of the future of that family. Maybe for a 16 year old girl in medieval France who is a little bit sick of her folks anyway this is just another stage of life, like going to college and finding a new identity there, but for plenty of modern American women it's very valid to be unsettled by that sort of thing. I know I'm not going to be paraded from my village and abandoned by my family to another clan who I barely know. It won't even be like it was in my Grandmother's day where a woman stopped being Miss Kate H, and became instead Mrs. Brett G, losing everything that signified her as an individual to an outside observer. Thank goodness. But in taking Brett's name, I will be assuming a new, unfamiliar identity. It's going to take time to get comfortable with that.

For me, thinking about all this cultural baggage makes taking Brett's name an act of love, rather than rote adherence to social custom. I know and understand why it sends some women into fits to even be called Mrs. G on junk mail, when they've worked so hard to be Ms. H. or when they feel it's got more to do with being his family's newest acquisition than making a new family of their own. I don't happen to share these feelings, and I do not think they are equally valid across space and time, but I do understand them. To know that there is debate about the usefulness and relevance of patrilineal naming makes my decision to become Kate G more meaningful, I think, because it's my choice rather than something that just happens to me because I'm a woman getting married.

Yes, it makes me want to cry and cry to give up my H. Yes, I love it and what it means to me. There's a road in the backwoods of Michigan with my name on it. I've never met anyone with my name I wasn't directly related to. I love that. Even more though, I love Brett, I love his family, I want to be one of his people and I want our children to have my name too. That doesn't mean that the kids won't know how important that H is to me and to their family history (and their grandmother's maiden J for that matter).

I won't stop being who I am because my last name changes, but I can't deny that names are serious business and I would never dream of telling another person how to handle losing/ giving up the way they've thought of themselves for the last 25 years of their life.

2010-04-27T15:44:00.001-05:00

It's snowing.

April, you can kiss my butt. And I mean that.

breakfast

2010-04-26T10:58:00.002-05:00

One of my fondest childhood memories is of nights when I stayed over at my grandparents house and in the morning Grandpa would make us Creamy Wheat.

I don't remember Grandma ever making it, oddly enough, because she's definitely the Master Cook in the family, always laying out a huge feast at holidays and special occasions. Grandpa carves the roast beast, but Grandma does pretty much everything else. I don't know if she didn't like cooking wheat porridge or if she felt it was a "Grandpa and the kids" thing, but in my memories, Grandpa is always the one at the stove.

Paul and I would get the step stool and stand to the left of the stove watching and "helping" as Grandpa heated the milk and stirred in the Cream of Wheat. He'd add sugar and cinnamon and we would sit at the kitchen table and eat our bowls together. The texture of Creamy Wheat is something like a very fine tapioca pudding- each grain plumps up and gets kinda sticky so it's just a little bit chewy, like good al dente pasta, but so soft that it melts in your mouth. Honestly, it doesn't look very appetizing; I'm not sure how Paul and I were convinced to try it initially, but we asked for it often.

Lately, I've been thinking about warm, soft, creamy wheat in the mornings. On our grocery store run last night, I picked up a box and made some this morning.

It's always shocking to me how keyed into memory our sense of smell is. The smell of warm milk took me right back to childhood in my grandparents' kitchen and when I added the cinnamon....I remembered exactly how the bowl would taste when I sat down to eat.

And it was just as excellent as I remembered.

Photos!

2010-04-19T14:44:00.002-05:00

Picture Update:
From Easter

And now that spring is here:

I picked these little purple bell flowers from the yard just today and filled them out with the few alestomeria left from Easter. I love having fresh flowers in the house!

I've been looking for readings for the wedding ceremony this August, trying to find pieces that are sweet without being saccharine, heartfelt without being lame, short, meaningful and carefully balanced between solemn and lighthearted.

I'll be posting some of my favorites here. Not sure if everything I post will make it into the ceremony, or featured somewhere else, or if they will just be things that bounce around in my thoughts as I get married, but they have struck a chord with me and I like em.

To start us off, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Wedding Prayer"

Lord, behold our family here assembled.

We thank you for this place in which we dwell,

for the love that unites us,

for the peace accorded us this day,

for the hope with which we expect the morrow,

for the health, the work, the food,

and the bright skies that make our lives delightful;

for our friends in all parts of the earth.

Amen

And from Frau Ava, the first female German author

I am yours. You are mine.

Of this we are certain.

You are lodged in my heart.

The small key is lost,

You must stay there forever.

Which in the original 12th century Middle German is:

Du bist min, ich bin din,

des solt du gewiz sin.
Du bist beslozzen in minem herzen.
Verloren ist daz schlüezzelin,

du muozst och immer darinne sin.

P.S. I think my grammar is just fine. Thank you very much.

Springy

2010-04-16T19:32:00.002-05:00

Slowly, slowly, spring is coming to Central New York. And it is good.

Last Sunday was Easter and we celebrated with a big meal out on the porch. It was a little too chilly, really, but it felt good to be welcoming spring when it felt well and truly springy. I'm looking forward to more meals on the porch as the weather warms.

The little red shoots in the front flower beds turned into big leafy tulips and now have buds just tinged with pink at the seams, ready to bloom in another week or so. We also have a few daffodils, the first one of which just opened up today. Daffodils have been blooming in other people's yards and all along the roadways for couple weeks, so I was wondering when the ones in our yard would bloom. I blame it on the amount of daylight the yard gets- slows everything down and keeps them straggly and small. Bummer for a veggie garden.

I'm still working on the socks I talked about in the last post, the ones from the book my Mom bought me (bad Kate...) for my birthday with the yarn my Aunt got me for Christmas on the needles I bought myself as a souvenir from Chelsea's wedding.

The pattern is fantastic! Really really fun to knit, yielding a fabric that is feminine and full of movement without being overly complex. I've worked on it during the slow minutes at work, trying to keep my fingers out of the donuts, and it's been very helpful. Given that, the socks should be further along than they are, but I've been spending a lot of what used to be knitting time playing Dragon Age on our Xbox 360. I get sucked in, what can I say.

I'm also spending more time running. Ostensibly, I'm training to run a marathon this fall. I'm on the last week of a 9 week long "couch to 5K" training podcast. This last week I run 32 minutes without walking, which should be about 3.1 miles. After this week is over, I will start a new program with Brett. the goal is to get fit enough to marathon, but I'm hoping it also will keep me motivated to eat wholesome food for energy, and help me trim down for the wedding.

Which is coming up fast. 113 days, according to The Knot. Invitations need to go out soon- still have to finish putting together all the enclosures and get them ready to address. I know we will be sending them slightly earlier than is customary, because we want to be sure everyone has time to make comfortable travel plans.

Knitting Update

2010-03-15T11:19:00.003-05:00

Long overdue update.

Remember the giant snow storm we had two weeks ago?

Most of that snow is gone now. There's still in inch or two in shady places, and where it was piled up after we dug out, but we're starting to see more grass than snow which is great.

I don't know what plant it is called, but along the streams and in the marshy places around here there is a willowy bush/tree/vine thing that turns a vivid magenta when spring is coming. Last year, it was the first sign of color coming back in March when the snow receded and everything looked drab and dead.

There are a few little bulbs poking back up through the dirt right by the front door. They have a dark dark red color. I wonder what they will grow up to be!

The Cider Mill geese have been venturing out more and more too. Spotted them strolling down the street outside the front door a few days ago. They hissed at me for taking pictures of them on such a bad feather day.

I finished the Olympic Sweater a few days late.

Alas. But I do really like it, so I'm pleased. It has a beautiful drape and soft luxurious warmth, despite its relatively open fabric. It's much bigger than the pattern suggests. I blocked it realtively tightly to open up the fabric and to help nudge the arms and hemline a little longer, so that might be part of it, but I'm guessing my gauge was off by a few stitches once I got into the stress of the Olympics. That would account for the arm holes being about an inch or two too big.

Don't misunderstand. I loves me the sweater. Brett thinks it looks good, and it has that funky loose look that so many cardigans have in the stores these days, which is exactly what I was going for. Perfect to wear over a fitted long sleeve shirt or a summer tank top. I'm looking forward to reaching for this on warm summer mornings when I need something I can stuff in my bag and toss on once the sun goes down and it gets a little chilly. Hooray!

I finally finished Brett's Kansas City socks too.

I knew he needed a pair of his own when he kept boggarting my handknit woolies. He needs good wool socks because he does crazy things like run around in the snow to celebrate U of Minnesota victories. He's a crazy person.

After searching the stash, I found I had a great skein of royal blue Mountain Colors Bearfoot that I'd been hoarding since the days of the employee discount at Iris Fine Yarns. (I really miss working at a yarn shop!) Since the color was appropriate, I charted out a little KC design to feature on the cuff and planned a purl bump diamond pattern for the leg and top of the foot. Started out with a few blue and white stripes, jumped right into the colorwork, struggled through a few repeats of the diamonds before abandoning them and then suffered through a men's sized sock worth of dark blue stockinette. I don't know what I was thinking trying to read a purl bump pattern on dark knitting that I usually do in the evenings. As far as eye strain goes, only an eggplant purple or solid black yarn would have been worse.

So I finally finished the first sock and then, of course, second sock syndrome kicked in and the thought of doing another one made me want to take a nap. It took me almost a year to even start the second sock, but it went so much more quickly than the first that I cast on the cuff and kitchenered the toe in 4 days.

Such is the paradox of the sock knitter. You spend weeks, maybe a month on the first sock, the prototype, experimenting with design elements, writing and rewriting the pattern, knitting the damn thing, until you have spent all your creative juices and, now that all the hard work is done, you nothing left to carry you across the flat stockinette finish line. You have hit the Knitters Wall. I have found the same thing to be true of weaving in ends and blocking sweaters and shawls, or the last stretch of most knitting projects, really.

But I find that time is the best remedy. Now that the KC sock monkey is off my back, I feel free to start another pair of socks, this time following a pattern without making many, if any, alterations. Good thing Aunt Karen sent me a copy of Knitted Socks, East and West for my birthday. Beautiful patterns and inspiring photography. I've cast on for Chouwa, a highly textured feather and fan sort of pattern that is producing a lovely surf crashing on rocks sort of feel. It's great. I'm knitting with Christmas yarn too: Happy Feet from Plymouth Yarns in colorway 26 (such a romantic name, right?) which is a really mysterious variegation of charcoal grey, periwinkle purple, and a tiny hint of robins egg blue. From afar the overall effect is purple. I do really like the way the strange color combo is working with the texture, sort of softening and homogenizing the colors.

From now on, I'll remember that sometimes after over analyzing a project, I should try something I don't think will work at all and just see what happens.

Bridezilla!

2010-03-02T12:58:00.002-06:00

I just read a very excellent "wedding undergraduate" post over on A Practical Wedding. It articulated something I've seen on the internet and run up against only occasionally in my own wedding planning where you suggest wanting something (maybe a backyard pig roast BBQ, instead of a buffet reception) and the response sounds like, "Oh no! That's doesn't feel like a wedding! It's kind of...hick, isn't it?"

It's well intentioned, assuming, I suppose, that it's not coming from a wedding industry professional insisting that going with the white standard table cloth is cheap so she can try to upsell you the colored overlays for an additional $50 a table. When it comes from a relative or (dare I suggest we don't always agree?) Fiance, I believe the intention is really to create a beautiful day that everyone will remember forever.

While the post made me feel a sense of support for making unconventional wedding choices, it made me think a little more about the other people involved in the wedding planning process.

Take the parents, for example. My parents have been great about the whole thing. Mom dealt with me wanting non-matching bridesmaids, compromised with me on the dinner service, has left pretty much every decor decision up to me and has generally supported every choice I've made thus far.

Other brides get this:
"it finally struck me this weekend that the only parts of the wedding she's [Mom] happy with are the parts she's been 100% involved in. Any decision my fiance and i have made together, ourselves - she has already decided will be a disaster. anyone involved with the wedding that she doesn't know, will be a failure."

And I thought, "seriously? Your daughter and her fiance are grown people! Trust them already!"

Brett and I watch Bridezillas sometimes and love feeling superior to the poor people on the show. Being tuned into the bridal blog world makes me look at the show and see women who are one week out from what society has told them should be the most important day of their adult lives. So often they scream in tears at their fiances, "this wedding isn't about you! It's all about me! And those table cloths have to match the bridesmaids shoes exactly or the WHOLE DAY WILL BE RUINED!" It's easy to laugh at that and call her a crazy Bridezilla, but honestly, that's exactly how she's been told to feel, and can you really blame her if she's not dealing with that particularly well? The wedding day is supposed to be a reflection of the bride: her taste and class and her value as a female member of society. She's supposed to throw the best, most luxurious party possible. The event of the season that everyone will still be talking about in a year.

A) That's stupid.
B) I know how that feels as a bride, but I honestly (I'm ashamed to say) hadn't thought how that pressure translates to Mom and Dad until I read this comment, "I think, in respect to our parents, many of them still think we are/want us to be 12 years old, not actual, full-fledged adults. Or, if we're going to go and be full-fledged adults instead of 12-year-olds, by golly we better look like extensions of them!"

It was like the clouds parted and I realized that while it's probably not always true, it is a really good thing to keep in mind that Mom and Dad are as invested in my wedding as I am.

Their parents will be there, their friends and co workers and of course they want to be comfortable with the big decisions (in a church, not a pasture) and want to have input in the little ones (bridesmaids attire). I get that. It makes sense.

So I will try to understand where the desire to input is coming from and I will try to be more receptive to compromise. I've gotten everything important to me so far and there's no reason to be difficult about the things that are important to my parents.

Love you Mom and Dad.

News Release

2010-03-01T15:44:00.003-06:00

Bob Costas: There is the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. One such story of heartbreak comes to us from Fly Creek, New York where Olympian Kate Hackelberg, after 17 days of struggle, fell just shy of gold. Here to tell us her story in her own words...Kate Hackelberg...

Welcome to the studio, Kate.

Me: Thanks Bob, it's an honor to be here.

Bob: Now, your event was the...knit sweater?

Me: That's right Bob.

Bob: Now, for those viewers at home who may not be familiar with the sport of Olympic Knitting, can you tell us a little bit of how it differs from the Knitting many of us are accustomed to seeing practiced in our living rooms?

Me: Sure, Bob. Many people are used to seeing knitting practiced as a hobby, at various skill levels, with a wide range of goals. Olympic Knitting takes that hobby and cranks it up a few notches by imposing two rules: you must knit a challenging project and you must knit between the flames.

Bob: So there's a certain amount of subjectivity in the judging?

Me: Oh no no! It's very cut and dry. Either you finish your challenge before the flame goes out or you don't. There's no silver or bronze in the Knitting Olympics; only gold.

Bob: How did you decide on your challenge?

Me: Well, I've been knitting quite a while and in that time, I've completed a number of projects of various sizes and skill levels so I figured I would try a sweater. I chose the featherweight cardigan by Hannah Fetig. I knew that it would be a challenge to do so much knitting in the time frame, but it was a very simple pattern so I thought it would be doable.

Bob: And yet, you're here today with no gold medal. What went wrong?

Kate: Bob, I think it was hubris.

Bob: Hmmm.

Me: The more I thought about it, the less challenging the pattern seemed. I mean, when you're in the company of Olympians, it's hard not to compare yourself to them and the fearless leader of the Knitting Olympians, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, was knitting Whistler, a brilliant 4 color Norwegian style sweater. Next to that the Featherweight Cardigan seemed like a piece of cake. So in the beginning, there were nights I didn't even work on the sweater. Of course, I regret that now.

Bob: Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but if you knew then what you know now...what would you have done differently?

Me: Unfortunately, Bob, all of my issues came down to poor planning, rather than equipment failure or lack of training. Can't fault the yarn or the pattern here! I would have tried harder to write a reliable schedule. I didn't realistically think about how long the sections would take, but if I had, I would have known on day 5 whether I was behind schedule and would have been able to put in a few late nights early on, instead of being completely out of time in the last few days.

Bob: Well, it seems you've taken a lot of good lessons from these Olympic games. Will we see you back on the course in 2014?

Me: Absolutely, Bob. And next time I'll be coming for gold!

Bob: Alright, we'll be keeping an eye out for you. It's be a pleasure to have you with us today, Kate, and best of luck in your future knitting endeavors.

Kate: Thanks so much for having me on, Bob.

Bob: So many stories have come out of Vancouver, some of glory, some of disappointment, but regardless of the outcome, these Olympians have given their all. They strive to knit swifter, higher, stronger, and we all learn from their efforts. From all of us at the studio...goodnight.

We stocked up on bottled water and canned goods

2010-02-26T10:04:00.004-06:00

Snow Day!

Last night we got slammed with our only real snow storm of the year. I don't know what took so long, but it sure made up for a relatively nice winter with about two feet of heavy fluffy white stuff. Brett and I had both gone into work but got to leave early.

The ride home was scary and we wound up abandoning my car in a city lot overnight and Brett drove us both up the snowy hill to Fly Creek. Today we went back for it and not only had to shovel out those two feet in the driveway to get Brett's car out, but the 4 feet or so the plow had dumped into the drive, AND the snow that had buried my car in the lot. But it hadn't been towed or ticketed and I'm just thrilled we got both cars home safe.

Yesterday we enjoyed the early dismissal and played in the snow a little after we shoveled the first foot of snow out of the driveway.

Today we just bummed around and cooked yummy food and did laundry, but it was nice to have a day off. Our mailbox is completely destroyed, though, and our poor snowman has been buried to his waist.

Those plows toss that snow around but good.

The Olympic Sweater is not looking good folks. The body is done and I'm making good progress on the sleeves but I'm pretty certain the collar is at least a three day bit of knitting and I only have two left! I'll keep knitting away though, like the USA Women's Hockey team playing to the last second, rather than concede defeat.

Olympic Knitting Post Secundum

2010-02-21T16:14:00.006-06:00

Olympic Knitting is over half over! I'm starting to get pretty nervous that I won't medal. A few nights ago it looked like this

Today it looks like this

I should be focused and project monogamous, but I'm finding loyalty to seemingly miles of stockinette (knit across 400 stitches, purl back across 400 stitches) hard to stay excited about. If a brilliant pair of colorwork mittens is like the pairs figure skating, then this sweater is probably the men's 30k cross country skiing pursuit: long and repetitive with little chance for dazzle (except this year's thrilling race. Go Sweden!).

The yarn is lovely to knit with and is producing a soft elegantly draping fabric that I really like. It's now too heavy to hold and knit standing, so I've had to stop knit while getting in my bike work out. fortunately, the mindless knitting is good to take with to work. Winter is slow at the bakery and I have about an hour to an hour and a half's worth of spare minutes during any given day. The last couple days I've brought the Olympic Sweater and worked on that between customers and clean up. By the end of tonight, I hope to have finished the body and be casting on for the arms. They are knit over far fewer stitches, completely in the round and only need to be 3/4 length, so they should be just a two day section. Then I'll pick up and knit the shawl collar which I already know is going to be the hardest part.

I have let myself be distracted with other projects. I'm working on a little something for the wedding guests and have done some trials for that experiment. Looking good so far. I've also cleaned up some empty jars I had laying around and hot glued some of the Christmas doilies to them.

And Brett asked if I would draw a tattoo on his arm, so one evening instead of knitting, I designed an arm piece featuring our pets as comic book heroes.

It's all washed off now, of course, but I thought it was pretty awesome.

Knitting Olympics Post Unum

2010-02-11T16:42:00.004-06:00

I've been saving this post for something special.

::cue happy parade music::

It's my 100th blog post!

Hooray! When I saw that is was coming up, I knew I wanted it to coincide with my Olympic Knitting post.

For those of you who don't know about the Knitting Olympics, kindly find your way to The Yarn Harlot.

Over the next 17 days, beginning with the torch lighting ceremony tomorrow night, I will be casting on, knitting, binding off, and finishing.......

A WHOLE SWEATER!

That's right. A whole sweater, start to finish. Specifically the Featherweight cardigan at the top of this page.

This will be a challenge because I've never knit a sweater start to finish in 17 days, especially at the gauge this piece is knit at. I'm really excited to see if I can do it. There are no silver medals in the Knitting Olympics, only gold baby!

I've checked my equipment.
I've done my training.

My gauge is on and I'm feeling confident. Let's DO THIS THING!

Update

2010-02-01T22:43:00.003-06:00

A few things:

1) Today I had my first paid day as a Hall of Fame Museum Teacher. It was nice to walk around in high heels and a suit jacket with a binder in my arm feeling professional again. Been a little while. I think I'm really going to love the work too, which will largely be teaching thematic units to student groups via videoconference. Unfortunately, it's just a few hours a week for now and I'm still going to need to keep pretty much all my hours at the bakery.

It's hard because I really want to be dedicated to the museum and be flexible and generous with my availability there. I know the more time I invest with them, the more quickly I'll be qualified for all the programs and the more hours I'll get, but I can't afford to ask another day off at the bakery and sacrifice 9 hours for 2 or 4 museum hours. Hopefully, I'll be able to work with my manager at the bakery to get an optimal schedule for both jobs.

2) Brett and I drove all the way to Albany this weekend to eat at the nearest Fuddruckers. (Very good. Probably not worth a four hour drive...) Since we were out there, we checked out a few of the comic stores in the town and one of the yarn shops. (Very good and certainly worth a four hour drive) The yarn shop was the best I've been too since I went to Three Kittens in Minneapolis. They were at the end of a class when we walked in, so it was pretty crowded and a little hard to look closely at everything without being in someone's way.

My qualifications for yarn shops include a few things:
The overall store layout should be organized by weight or fiber content, maybe by brand, and not by color.
There should be an excellent selection of pure wool, preferably Cascade in a variety of colors.
There should be a dedicated sock yarn section, especially if yarn is grouped by brand.
There should be a good rotating display of yarns unique to the store or area. Local fiber, or small dyeworks.

If a store meets two or more of these qualification, chances are good I will come back again and again, because they meld with the things I think are useful and valuable when choosing yarn.

My only issue with the store was that the owner lady gave Brett a little flak. I know she was trying to be funny and warm, but she said to Brett as she passed, "See? You didn't melt!" I mean, come on, the guy took me to Rhinebeck and spent all day walking around in the cold with me, getting into things just because I did. He bought me Cinderella glass knitting needles and beautiful bone needles. He has a good eye and I know he was looking at the yarn just as intently as I was. He's a pro, and I do think it was a little presumptuous to assume not only that he isn't a knitter himself but that he was scared to come in. Honestly. Give the boys a little credit!

flicker

2010-01-31T23:45:00.001-06:00

Remember those boxes of doilies and lace trims I got for Christmas? I think this is what's going to happen to them. Do we love it?

Norwegian Blue

2010-01-29T19:10:00.003-06:00

Let me introduce you to my newest knit project.

When Brett and I went to Rhinebeck, I budgeted for a small scale colorwork project and this is what I've come up with. The yarn is a simple, very richly dyed, wool yarn in Blueberry and White. I pieced together the pattern from a chart in Mary Scott Huff's The New Stranded Colorwork, a very nice book with beautiful, inspiring photographs (also a Rhinebeck buy), and the traditional stranded black and white mittens in Selbuvotter.

I made up my own chart and it's needed a little tweaking but it's working very well so far.

Wheee!

2010-01-27T20:06:00.003-06:00

Brett was looking for some workout clothes in the dryer this evening.

Instead, he found one of these:

Bwahahahahaha. Silly Chester.

Been using my time off from work to be productive (ish). We haven't signed contracts yet but we've started filling them out for a photographer and a caterer. We have printed up our Save the Date postcards and will be mailing them out really soon. Wedding plans progress! (I can't wait to show you the photographer's website; I love his work and can't wait to see what he does for us.)

I finished a pair of mittens for Brett. Double thick. At about a 8st/in gauge. Oofda. A nice knit for picking up whenever there was time but it was pretty simple. Reports are that they are very warm. Now I've started a pair of blue and white colorwork mittens. The yarn is from Rhinebeck and the pattern is mishmoshed from the Selbuvotter mitten book with a motif lifted from Mary Scott Huff's The New Stranded Colorwork as the center. I'll show you pictures soon.

"These streets will make you feel brand new"

2010-01-11T13:26:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, Brett and I finally made it down to the big city! He took me down for my birthday and we had a great time. We drove about 4 hours, parked the car and hopped on a train.

Love trains! I wish I could commute on one every day instead of driving.

We did have some trouble finding the station so we could buy our tickets. We ran around in the 0 degree wind chill to all the buildings near the train tracks and we found a lawyer, a post office, a bus depot, and then finally decided we could buy our tickets from the conductor on the train. Little did we know that on the over pass over the tracks, there was an automated ticket machine. Awesome!

We sped our way along the Hudson river

and saw a bald eagle.

It's the little black speck up there. So on the way to Rhinebeck, Brett saw a bear and on the way to New York City we saw a bald eagle. Neat, right?

We pulled into Grand Central and met up with my college friend Kate at the clock. What a beautiful train station. The ceiling is a ethereal cerulean color painted with the constellations. There's intricate metal and stone work everywhere. Lots of oak leaves.

"Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who funded the building of Grand Central, created his own family crest featuring acorns and oak leaves to symbolize his rise from rags to riches.

We walked down towards Times Square and saw Bryant Park and the Conde Nast building on the way. Stopped for lunch at a cute little pub that Kate frequents. Times Square is pretty overwhelming even on a slow Sunday, with video billboards dozens of stories tall, vendors and all kinds of people.

The best part of the trip was Rockefeller Center where we saw amazing Deco art and stopped in the NBC store. (Who wants a Top Chef apron? I do!) Brett and I bought tickets to go up to the observation deck while Kate waited for us down below. I wasn't super keen to go because it's a little pricey, but it was completely worth it. The first level of observation is mostly inside with a few corner balconies you can go out for another (colder) view. Then there's another floor that's all outside, protected a little by big plexi barriers. But the best view was waaaaaaay at the top on a small patio.

There's literally nothing higher than you on the whole building. We could see Central Park, the Empire State building, the Chrysler Building, and far out the Statue of Liberty. New York City is a BIG sprawling city.

After the Rock, we stopped for tea and a birthday cupcake at Dean and Deluca's then strolled down 5th Ave taking in the beautiful art and architecture. We checked out the stunning Plaza Hotel which smelled of lilies and made me think of An Ideal Husband. Kate and I overheard a young mother with very poofy lips ask a hotel staff member where Eloise was and he replied without missing a beat that "Oh, Eloise is in Paris." I wish I'd had the nerve to take a picture of the box of Kleenex in the back window of the Rolls Royce parked in front of the hotel. Didn't really feel like getting in trouble with the guards though, so we finished with a quick jog over to the Central Park subway station and took it back to Grand Central to take the train back to our car. It was a long ride home, but what a great day!

2010-01-09T10:27:00.001-06:00

And today, for the first time in what feels like a very long time, there. is. SUN!

Changes the whole look of the wintery world, and I can't even say how grateful I am for that.

christmas catch-up

2010-01-06T18:46:00.003-06:00

My brother's glittens went out in the mail yesterday and hopefully they will arrive soon to warm his poor frigid 1850 workin hands. They were a pretty simple pattern that I whipped up to use up left over yarn bits in green and blue and red. It's perfect "recession knitting" and they're all ideal yarns for hardwearing handwear. Hope he likes 'em.

I'm working on a pair of mittens for Brett with some of that Rhinebeck yarn. It's the same basic structure as most of my other mittens, but since the yarn is a little on the thin side, I'm going to line them like I did with Aunt Karen's alpaca mittens.

Christmas was excellent for collecting antique textile things. The awesomness started in the stocking where there was a lovely little apron with purple gingam and an embrodiered cluster of grapes. Also a pocket. Love it! There was a darning egg (I needed one, remember!) that opens to store your darning needle and thread. It's wonderful! AND! There was a whole collection of these weird little crocheted hot pads? decorations? rodeo clown flags? in shapes of things like bloomers that I have no idea what to do with. Suggestions?

There was also a whole bunch of beautiful handkerchiefs that I would love to work into the wedding somehow. There's one in particular that I think I'll probably be carrying down the isle. Want to see?

Flora

2010-01-05T21:45:00.002-06:00

I promised my Aunt I'd throw a post up about wedding flowers.

I've been collecting pictures online for a while now, mostly from The Knot and Offbeat Bride as inspiration and to try to decide the styles, shapes, colors and kinds of flowers I like the best. The plan at the moment is to do most of the centerpieces and ceremony arrangements ourselves and to have a florist do the bouquets and boutonnieres. I'd like to be able to talk to a florist with general conceptual ideas and then let him or her get creative and fun with it.

Generally, the flowers should have a simple, old fashioned feel to them, like they just came out of someone's wonderful garden. (If I get really lucky, maybe they even will be...) The fabric details will all be royal blue and the floral details will be bright orange, yellow, and red.

I like this style for the pews at the ceremony, with the pretty galvanized pail and the billowy hydrangea. The white is good, but big orange carnations or marigolds would be nice too. I think the silver detail would be nice with all the warm natural wood in the church. And we can pick the pails up and take them with us to the reception site pretty easily.

At the reception, we're going to go with simple groupings of tall skinny vases with single blooms in each. Like this!

I think these are carnations and dahlias and I love the way they just float above the table with all that pretty glass below. Imagine these in those flame colors with just 4-6 blooms on a table.

The use of herbs at weddings is a pretty old and usually overlooked tradition, but I really love the idea of fresh smelling rosemary, mint, and lemon balm in among the flowers. This arrangement has mint in with zinnias. How summery and pretty is that?

Maybe a pretty pitcher full of mint with a few golden nasturtiums nestled in to put on the desert table would work for us?

I don't know logistically how sprigs of rosemary would work tied to menus or napkins (we're short on set up time between the ceremony and the reception...) but isn't this a lovely little set up?

In India, marigolds are traditional wedding flowers. They string them in gorgeous long garlands. How beautiful would a few of these look curtaining the door to the reception?

For the bouquets?
The girls should definitely have fun bright blooms. I love the one on the top of the post with the little blue buttons! And how's this for elegant?

For myself? I like the one above. And I lurve this relaxed white and slightly blue bouquet.

So I'll probably either go with some serious color, or a pretty white and blue thing, depending on the advice of my floral artist!

Of course, I haven't ruled out flower alternatives, like these gorgeous fabric (or maybe paper) blooms. How fun are they?

For other gorgeous paper and fabric flower pictures, head over to Martha Stewart Weddings (right here, actually) and don't blame me if you waste the next hour looking at all her pretty ideas.

Argyle!

2010-01-04T13:52:00.003-06:00

I didn't do much Christmas Knitting this year, which is either a blessing or a disappointment, depending on who you are. I pick my Christmas projects very carefully and both the ones I worked on this year were specific requests. My grandpa asked for a pair of socks and my brother asked for a pair of convertible fingerless glove/mittens. I love making things that I know will be appreciated.

My Grandma used to make handknit argyle socks for Grandpa back when they were first married, so I figured I'd give them a shot. I ordered the yarn in September and cast on when I got the package a few days later. I put the last stitches in on December 21st.

Pattern:
Based on Minerva's Argyles, sized for a 10.5 men's foot.
Yarn:
Knit Picks Gloss, 1.5 skein burgundy, 1 skein mushroom
Needles:
US 2 circular on the flat, US 2 dpns for the toe
Notes:

Oh goodness, argyle is a seriously major project. I like color work, but argyle is done intarsia style, so it has to be knit flat with a seperate strand of yarn for each color section. Most clever intarsia knitters wrap a section of yarn onto a bobbin to keep the extra from getting in the way. Since this was my first project, I wasn't sure how much yarn to bobbin up, so I wound the yarn into smallish balls and worked like that, but this resulted in a ton of fidgety twisting, balls rolling away from me, and slow slow progress as I had to stop and reset everything every few rounds. It was about the least portable project I've had yet. It involved a huge seam up the back

(have I mentioned how I loath seams?) and a whole lotta duplicate stitch to put on the cross marking. Not hard but was a little tedious.

Of course, I didn't take a picture of them completely finished, but I was pretty pleased with the end result and Grandpa loved them. He said that store bought socks just don't have the same fit as a handknit and, of course, he's right. If he likes them and wears them it's completely worth every minute of work.

I'm pretty sure I'll do more argyle someday. I know better than to swear off any technique for the rest of my knitting career. But I don't think I'll be doing them any time soon and I'll absolutely be using better technique!

Next season on Penelope Knits

2010-01-01T20:28:00.002-06:00

Welcome 2010. Thank goodness you are here.

Last night Brett and I watched the ball drop in Times Square, rang in the New Year in the customary fashion of a glass of bubbly liquid and a hopeful kiss, and then immediately went to bed. Brett's been under the weather since about Cleveland on the way home from Christmas vacation and so we figured we'd better take it easy.

It was great to be home with both sets of folks for our holiday celebrations. It just wouldn't be Christmas without family, after all. But the drive is always long, and we did bump into a bit of blizzard on the leg from Illinois to Iowa that made things a little more exciting. Other than that, we pretty much dodged the winter weather.

Now we're back in NY, feeling like that drive is just too long.

So what do you, my loyal readers, have to look forward to the upcoming year?

There will be more knitting. After all, this is a knitting blog, and as often as other things pop up in my life, that's the touchstone for my corner of the Intertubes. This year is an Olympic year, and I'm hoping that The Yarn Harlot will again be championing the Knitting Olympics that she founded back in 2006. I missed the 2006 event because I was just finding the online knitting community, but I'm ready for competition now. I'm still deciding what project to tackle. It should be a personal challenge to complete during the running of the Olympics from torch lighting to closing ceremonies and no longer. So there's that to look forward to.

I have yarn for lots of socks, (including Rhinebeck yarn and some gorgeous new Christmas yarn)
a few sweaters worth, at least one colorwork project planned, and plenty of loose balls for one off projects, not to mention rather a lot of fiber to spin. So there's that to look forward to.

But it can't all be fiber goodness all the time. Sometimes we're going to be talking about other things, including my very exciting wedding planning. (We started registering and we probably found our caterer. Only about a thousand more decisions to make till the big day!)

There will be various crafty posts. Projects for the house and for my friends and for my wedding and all sorts of things. I'm definitely going to need to show off some of that neat stuff (or bemoan my miserable failures with a little company).

I hope I'll also be showing off my amazing super healthy lifestyle. You know the one where I eat 3 cups of veggies a day, go to the gym all the time, and drop about 20 lbs? I'm sure you'll be seeing lots of posts about that!

You'll get to see the pride of my good days, and probably some of the frustration of the bad while I start teaching at the HoF and keep working on Penelope Fiberworks. There will be the boredom and the beauty of our small little village in the hills of New York. You'll see my impatient garden plans in late winter and the first green of the land in the spring. The summer mists and storms and the brilliant fall colors. And all sorts of things that I can't even imagine yet.

Stay tuned. You don't want to miss 2010.

First, my reasons for marrying...

2009-12-12T14:54:00.005-06:00

In the midst of the fluffy white princess haze of wedding planning on The Knot and Martha Stewarts weddings and the like, I've seen how quickly my urge to control every little detail to blissful wedding perfection can rear its ugly tiara-ed head. For shame Kate!

Today I Googled "feminist wedding" to get another perspective, and I'm super glad I did. I came across this blog and while the entry was interesting, the comments were great. I disagreed with most of them, but they made me think again about why I want to be married, why it's important to me that Brett and I have a ceremony and a reception when yes, they are enormously expensive, largely centered on consumerism, not equally available or joyful for all American citizens, and often a woefully tense start to so many short marraiges.

Even while I'm stressing out about finding the perfect caterer, I found an even better article on the Boston Review website. It's more picking apart the role of class in wedding planning, but identifies exactly the sentiment that is so terrifying, "'A wedding is a couple's day of days,' proclaims the latest edition of Emily Post, raising the bar of expectation up to the stratosphere."

On the other hand we have Miss Manners who declares, "Few of those who prattle about the 'happiest day' seem to consider the dour expectations this suggests about the marriage from its second day on. . . . At any rate, someone whose idea of ultimate happiness is a day spent at a big party, even spent being the center of attention at a marvelous big party, is too young to get married." Here, here.

And then I found offbeatbride.com and a great article on being tacky at your wedding. Basically, the theme is, "Tacky: the dark monster that creeps in at night … tacky is the manifestation of your fears that people won't approve of your wedding."

So in the middle of deciding if my guests will be happy with just one meat option instead of two, or if I need to rent chair covers to polish off "the look"I need to remember why we're doing any of this instead of just going to a courthouse and having a Justice marry us.

I'm getting married in front of my family and friends in a place that is meaningful to Brett and me as a couple because, no matter what anyone else says, traditions are important. I want to have a ceremony where Brett and I can define the duties and joys of our marriage in front of the people we most care about; to involve them as our community in our promises to each other. I want their blessings because I know we will rely on them for support in our future together.

Weddings are times to gather to celebrate new beginnings and be merry. Not every one of our guests will be perfectly satisfied with every detail of the big day but I'm confident that as long as Brett and I stay true to the things that make us who we are that OUR happiness will reflect on the whole event and make it a memorable day for everyone involved.

The weather outside is frightful

2009-12-09T09:00:00.003-06:00

Snow day!

We got probably close to half a foot over the night, and my poor little car couldn't make it over the hill to get into town. I'm waiting for a plow to help me out a little, but until the snow and icy rain stops, I don't think we're going to see much improvement in the roads. Looks like I really do need new tires.

Sunday View

2009-12-06T12:59:00.001-06:00

It's a pretty view today.

Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow!!!!

2009-12-05T18:39:00.002-06:00

We have snow tonight! It started lightly snowing a little after noon and has not yet completely stopped. I got to sweep the snow off the sidewalk at the bakery, and feel quintessentially small town doing it. It was awfully pretty to watch from the nice cozy bakery. Tomorrow I'm going to put on some boots and head into town to do some photography.

It's Balsam Fir us!

2009-12-03T20:17:00.002-06:00

We had our first real snowfall December 1st, the morning after we put up our Christmas tree. It was fluffy and white and stuck around a little while and was just right.

The night we pulled in from the Midwest, we stopped off to get a tree stand and some lights. The next morning we cleared a spot in the house,

got giant pickles at the Great American, and headed to peruse the tree lot.

The Lions Club guys were very pleasant (tree lot guys always seem to be, have you noticed?) and soon we had a very lovely balsam fir twined to the roof of the car.

We pressed an obliging branch into service as a tripod and commemorated our First Real GrownUp Christmas Tree

We dragged it inside, lit it, ornamented it and now we sit and enjoy its cheery glow. 22 days to Christmas!

Honus can't wait!

LHF road race

2009-11-22T12:16:00.002-06:00

We're hanging out in IA with Brett's folks for a few days before Thanksgiving. Brett ran the Living History Farms road race yesterday with Chris, his childhood buddy. Tradition has that this race is cold, wet, and absurdly muddy. I'd only seen pictures of the happy finishers until this year, and having seen it in person I can vouch that it is completely disgusting. The only reason Brett wasn't totally covered in mud was during one of the 8 creek crossings, a log someone ahead of him jostled tripped him up and he went face down in the frigid water. He was soaked.

Brett's folks and I had staked out a place along the run to watch them. (We also had to ford a creek to get to the prime locale, but no one fell in.) As soon as the first racer came past us I turned on the camera and waited. Every time it shut itself off, I turned it back on. I had it held up in front of me so that when we saw them coming down the trail, all I had to do was click the shutter and we'd have beautifully framed photos of our runners emerging from the mist.

Well, as you can imagine with a pack of 7500, it was a while before Brett and Chris appeared. Like, an hour. Eventually, the little low battery warning light came on, and I thought it was probably better to shut off the camera and save some for their grand entrance.

It's hard to pay close attention to thousands of runners for a whole hour. My only possible defense is that I was too diligent too early, expecting that they would be closer to the front of the herd.

Anyway, when they did run past us, we didn't even notice them until they were nearly past. I tried to turn on the camera quickly, but it was too late.

Well, I was determined not to miss a picture of them crossing the finish line, so I told the folks I'd meet up with them at the finish line and sprinted back across the creek and up the hill to beat the boys to the finish. I found a good spot, settled in, went to turn the camera on, and was horribly disappointed to find that there wasn't even enough battery to turn the stupid thing ON!

So there are no pictures of the guys running the race. I am shamed. Next time I go to a Brett race, I will be bringing my non-battery-powered, easy to use, SLR camera that Grandpa got me. I don't use it more often, because developing the film takes a while and is more costly than digital. But I do think it's worth it to get the shots I want.

Relaxing Weekend

2009-11-16T12:11:00.003-06:00

Today is the last weekend day of my long weekend. Then I go back to work for a few days and then jump in the car to head out to the Midwest for the holiday.

I've been spending good chunks of each of my days this weekend making progress on both cleaning and holiday knitting. The goal is to have everything neat and tidy so that when we come back from vacation, we don't feel immediately oppressed by mess. I doubt it'll look as spotless as our respective parental houses, but it would be good to feel the house was calming and relaxing instead of stress producing clutter. I will say it looks a lot better. There are still boxes from the move, almost all stuff that no one's missing while it's boxed up, but I'd feel so much better if there were no cardboard containers left to clutter the house at all.

I have made good progress on knit projects, too. I finally darned Mom's sock, and blocked Brett's Mom's shawl so at least we won't be returning to the Midwest empty handed. My Priority One Christmas Knit is also making good progress. I'm not going to put too much info up here, but it is a technique I've never done before, so I'm experiencing a pretty big learning curve.

Spoiler A. I am using some combination in some proportion of the following yarns:

I didn't get to cook at home Saturday night because we went out to dinner with friends, but last night I cooked a pretty yummy shepherd's pie and one of the best loaves of bread I've made since leaving the farm. I want to do Knittle Bread rolls for Thanksgiving dinner, but I know I'm out of practice, so I did a little trial run. While I was looking for my recipe (a year ago I had it memorized!) I came across my Great grandmother's baked goods notebook. There's plenty of very old fashioned cookie and cake recipes in there, and I think it's time I pulled some of them back out.

So for dessert I made her molasses cookie recipe. Luckily it was one one with pretty good directions about how to execute the cookies. Lots of Greatgrandma's notes are just ingredients, some as wonderfully specific as "enough flour." She probably made those cookies all the time and knew just how the dough should look and feel, whether to roll and cut them or drop them, and how long and hot to bake them. I wonder how old some of the recipes are though; they often call for lard or to "bake in a quick oven". Those were things I was used to seeing in turn of the century cook books back on the farm, so it's neat to have some family recipes that may go back that far.

The recipe for the molasses cookies calls for melted shortening, and I recall Mom using margarine when she made cookie reciepes that called for that. Since my other shortening options were lard and Crisco, I went with Smart Balance, to get a buttery flavor I thought would be more appropriate in a cookie than that yummy lard flavor. I also thought, "this is plenty soft at room temp to cream together with the sugar, I don't think I need to melt it." Probably a mistake. The cookies, while totally delicious, were soft to the point of being goo when I took them out of the oven. I let them cool flat on parchment paper and they did firm up a bit and get kind of wafery crisp around the edges, but I'm blaming my substitution for their weirdness. I will use a more traditional shortening next time, and go ahead and melt it. But they did taste heavenly with a nice cuppa tea. The next recipe I'm trying from her notebook are the Phiffer Nusse.

Molasses Cookies
¾ cup shortening melted
1 cup sugar
¼ cup dark molasses
1 egg
2 tsp baking soda
2 cups sifted flour
½ tsp cloves
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
Mix in order
Chill 2 hr. roll in balls roll in sugar bake on greased cooky sheets 375 degree oven 8 to 10 min take off pan when hot

Darn it!

2009-11-15T10:44:00.002-06:00

Last time I was in Illinois, Mom informed me that the socks I had knit her for Mother's Day one year had a pretty nasty hole in the bottom. I inspected the damage and, confident, able knitter that I am, I said, "Oh I can darn those, no problem!"

Judging by the placement of the hole, I'm blaming the damage on a wood floor mishap, rather than regular wear. It wasn't a bad hole, really. Sure, it had gotten a little out of hand with some dropped stitches, but the problem seemed to be a snagged thread on just one row.

Now, darning is not difficult.
No.
It's not.

But, like seaming, I always have a hard time reading the fabric well enough to pick out where to put the new stitches so everything is seamless. So last night I got a nice bright light, and kept the sock very close to my face while I worked. Often times a large hole is repaired with a weaving technique. However, since there was only a break on one row, I decided to try to mend with something more like a Kitchener stitch. (Oddly enough, while I hate seaming, I do love Kitchener. I use it all the time!) I was going for a subtle mend that wouldn't be too different from the rest of the sock.

First, I picked up the dropped stitches. A tiny little crochet hook would have been just the thing, but the only hooks I have are a smidgen too bulky to get into the little stitches of the sock. So I fiddled around with the darning needle until I had things picked up on both the top and bottom of the snagged row. I really wished I had a hook by the end.

The other tool that would have been helpful is a darning egg, or mushroom to hold the sock taut while I worked on the hole. It would have helped to keep the tension even and made it easier to see the stitches I was securing together.

I did run some black sewing thread through the stitches to give a solid background to work on and to pull the hole back together a bit. Then I took some spare yarn, the closest color I had to the Koigu I used in the sock, and Kitchenered the drifting stitches together along with a few solid stitches on either end of the loose ones. That's all it really took to fix the hole.

To keep things stable though, I went back over the strong stitches a few rows above and below the snag. I know from experience that the yarn in the repair will wear about the same as the Koigu. It will soften and bloom and felt just a bit and be plenty strong.

So there you have it! About an hour's work saves a perfectly good pair of socks. Does it take some effort? Yes, of course. But far fewer hours go into a good repair than into a new pair of handknit socks.

Saturday View

2009-11-14T10:57:00.004-06:00

And the Saturday view is awfully pretty today.

Milkweed is great food for Monarch butterfly larva, so maybe next year we'll see some butterflies in the yard. It's a beneficial plant for other plants in the garden, as it repels lots of pest bugs. It's also supposed to be a great plant for natural folk remedies, which is why Carolus Linnaeus got it's scientific name from Asclepius the Greek demigod of healing.

Cool!

2009-11-11T18:10:00.003-06:00

Have you seen this!?

Sparkly Dream in Color sock yarn! I'm not a big one for sparkles, but the pictures I've seen of the stuff in piles at yarn shops make it look totally gorgeous. Dream in Color has really beautifully dyed yarn. (Remember the Chinatown Apple Mittens from last winter?) But I want to know how they manage to spin the silver into the yarn. If I was spinning by hand, I can only imagine it would be painful or even dangerous.

And technology has given us yarn made from seaweed and soy; corn and bamboo; along with fleecy animals, fluffy plants, and worm spit. How neat is that!

Off the needles

2009-11-08T15:01:00.003-06:00

I really hate the light getting shorter and shorter these days.

But today I took advantage of a day off to grab a little sunlight and take some knit pictures.

I've finished two projects lately, both gift knits. The first one was a really fast winter hat I made for Brett out of the pearly grey Seacolors I picked up at Rhinebeck from Nanney Kennedy. There's a little bit left, enough for some wrist warmers, or mitten cuffs. I wound up just winging the pattern. It's a pretty basic boy-style stockinette hat, so it wasn't a huge design challenge. Still, I think it suits Brett and I like it a lot.

I do think my design tastes are trending more to the simple. I think it's because I'm appreciating my materials more and more and when I have great wool, dyed with such beautiful colors, I like to let it speak for itself.

My other F.O. is the shawl I started for Brett's Mom way back in the spring. The expectation was that I would polish it off in a matter of weeks, but then I got hung up on the yarn not being quite what I wanted for the pattern. It's a heavier weight which turned what should have been a super lofty confection into a little more serious winter scarf sort of shawl. Brett kept bugging me about not working on it, but I was convinced it wasn't what she wanted so I was delaying to see if I could get some actual laceweight from Lynn. No luck. So I just finished it off as best I could. I hope Brett's mom likes it regardless.

Unblocked lace always looks a little ragged,

but the afternoon sunlight helps it a bit, don't you think?

I do still knit sometimes

2009-11-05T18:13:00.002-06:00

Since getting back from Rhinebeck with oodles of yarn I have actually been doing some knitting.

I finished a hat for Brett, which I love and think looks very nice on him. The next time I get home early enough to still have light to take pictures, I will.

And I'm still working on the Swallowtail Shawl. Pictures of that too.

Wooooooooooh!

2009-10-31T14:31:00.005-05:00

Happy Halloween Everybody!

Brett and I just finished carving our pumpkins. And they look MAHVelous.

Next we're going to roast the seeds.

I seem to remember trying this long ago and not being impressed with the results. Let's hope that either technique or tastebuds have changed enough to make a difference.

2009-10-26T21:11:00.002-05:00

I redeemed myself after the polenta disaster with a very nice (from scratch) white cake. I made two layers, but we're going to freeze one so we can have homemade cake on a work night.

2009-10-26T18:12:00.002-05:00

So I was wondering how making polenta would go? The answer is not well.

When I'm not playing with wool, I'm playing with my food

2009-10-25T18:00:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite things to do with my days off is cook.

Right after missing the people I worked with, the thing I miss most about the 1900 farm was having the chance to cook a great big meal every day and have it enjoyed and critiqued. Working with simple ingredients, basic tools like a wood burning stove, and poorly written instructions from hundred year old cook books taught me more about cooking than anything else I've done. Even more than my food guru Alton Brown. It was stressful at times, but incredibly rewarding.

I still love to cook, but it's hard to motivate yourself to cook something wonderful after a day of work. On my days off, then, I can put out a serious spread. Tonight we had a fall dinner. Brett seared us up a lovely appetizer of little bay scallops. We had a pork loin, seared in a little butter along with a couple Honeycrisp apples and a shallot, flavored with sage, thyme and bay, then braised in chicken stock. I turned the baked apples into a savory applesauce, and reduced the braising liquid into a gravy. I trimmed up a stalk of brussel sprouts from the farmer's market and made a sauce for them from chicken stock and cream. And I finally got to used a box of spaetzle Aunt Karen gave me for Christmas either last year or the year before. Now we're eating chocolate pudding. Yumm!

Of course, cooking big meals means lots of left overs. I'm seeing pork loin sandwiches and spaetzle n' cheese in our future.

But it'll have to be for lunch tomorrow, cause tomorrow night (if we're not watching game 7 Yankees vs Angels in NY. Brett got tickets through the Hall) we're going to have creamy polenta and bolognese sauce. I've never made polenta before, so we'll see how that goes. We're also probably going to carve our pumpkins, so there will be pumpkin seeds to roast. And maybe some creme brulee for after dinner?

I love days off!

Rhinebeck!

2009-10-19T19:17:00.002-05:00

It was a fiber fiend's dream come true! Oh my goodness. Yesterday was a wonderful and very full day.

Brett and I left the house around 8:00 and took a beautiful scenic route to the fair. Brett took care of mapping our route and I'm so glad he did because a huge part of the fun of the day was the drive out. We drove through the hometown of Rip Van Winkle, and along a very steep mountain road with a pretty intense drop off to the right.
the drop to the right here was scary! snow on the mountaintops

The colors were awesome and Brett saw a black bear in the road! At exactly the same moment he saw the bear we were driving past a barn that had a big weathervane in the shape of a black bear, so while Brett was shouting, "Look at that big black bear!" and I was saying, "yeah, that's really neat" we weren't at all on the same page and I missed the real wild bear because I was impressed with a weathervane!

Once we got to the fair, we hit the bathrooms and stopped to check out the arena. We were just in time to catch the leaping lamas competition.

we identified an early favorite leaping lama

but had to cheer hardest for the hometown heroine, Lynn, our neighbor from down the street and her little guy. He was the last alpaca standing in the competition. Way to go Lynn!

We saw the community college students launch pumpkins with homemade trebuchet. It took them a long time to reset everything between launches.
but when they launched it was impressive.

I was most entertained by the dorky non-knitting husbands who spent a lot of time talking amongst themselves about the engineering behind the rigs and episodes of Mythbusters that may or may not have proved one thing or another about the trebuchet's effectiveness as a weapon of war.

We also watched a sheepdog at work and frisbee dog demonstration. These two pups were fast dogs.

There was a ton of fun stuff besides the fiber,

but if it hadn't been for the yarn, we'd have been hanging out at home yesterday not eating awesome gyros and cheese fries. Oh my goodness there was a ton of the fluffy stuff. Brett got a ton of pictures of me walking around with my mouth hanging open and my eyes slightly glazed. And a few were I look like the kind of person who might knock you down and steal your wool if you don't tell me where I can buy it.

(note the one mitten approach to maximize warmth, manual dexterity, and yarn fondling capacities.)

I had a really really nice day.

Also, I came home with sweet loot.

In that mix, I've got some Socks that Rock sock yarn that reminded me of the colors we saw on the trip out, a copy of "The New Stranded Colorwork" signed by the compleately charming Mary Scott Huff (there is a pattern in it called "Norwegian Blue" inspired by the Monty Python dead parrott sketch), some steel grey merino lace for my sweater, a skein of creme colored sportweight that Brett grabbed of his own accord and said, "if you knit me a hat out of this, I would wear it," a skein of solar seawater dyed pearly grey also intended for a Brett knit, and a bump of lovely merino top to spin.

To top it off, on the way home a box magically appeared out of Brett's jacket pocket containing a glorious set of glass knitting needles.

I feel like the Cinderella of knitting! So I need to stop blogging for goodness sake and get to work.

Baaaa

2009-10-17T20:41:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow is Rhinebeck!

Budget is set. Brett's handling all the details. All I have to do is go and take as many pictures as possible.

Say it with me now...

RHINEBECK!

Pressure

2009-10-16T18:00:00.002-05:00

Last night I had a terrible migraine. I don't often get them, so I've noticed some patterns. Usually they have one of three causes: dehydration, caffeine, or air pressure.

Knowing that if it was caffeine related, there wasn't anything to do, I drank a bunch of water, took a couple Excedrin and went to bed. When I woke up this morning and there was a blanket of snow on the ground I wasn't exactly surprised.

First snow of winter '09-'10: Friday October 16th!

Last winter just about this time, there was a horrible early snow storm that trapped Brett alone in the just moved into house on Donlon without heat, phone, cable, internet, or snowshoes. Can't wait!

Bummer

2009-10-14T17:58:00.003-05:00

So, I didn't get the job. I am, as is to be expected, devastated.

I got the call around 1:00 which made for a hard afternoon at the bakery, but Brett came by and gave me a hug and stocked up on tasty goodies. So now instead of asking people how I can help them, all I have to do is sit on the couch and eat the Ben and Jerry's my future husband wisely invested in.

I was told that I was one of the final two candidates. That should make me feel good, and in another week, it probably will. And they liked my presentation so much, they offered me a different position working part time as a museum teacher. If I saw that position posted I would have been just as excited about it as I was about the one I actually interviewed for. Right now, though, it feels like a big time silver medal when I was sure I had earned gold. I will (future tense) be happy about it, I'm sure, but I guess I need some time to grieve.

RHINEBECK!!! couldn't be more longed for or necessary at the moment. As every knitter knows, wool heals all wounds. Ben and Jerry's and love doesn't hurt either.

patience is a virtue

2009-10-12T11:16:00.004-05:00

It's Monday. Logically, I know I won't hear about the job at the Hall for "about a week and a half" so, conservatively, Wednesday.

It's killing me. I've been checking my e-mail constantly, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they made a decision early and (joy of joys!) it's me and I can have the job and an office and teach again. It would be very good.

Last Monday I thought that the wait wouldn't be so bad, because I'd be at work and the time would just fly. But it's been impossible not to think about it every minute. I imagine Brett is very tired of me saying, "I really want that job" over and over again. While I know I gave a great interview and I clicked with the staff and my resume is strong, I've been thinking about all the other people who could have interviewed who could be so much more qualified. Grumble grumble.

In the mean time, I'm knitting but I can't show you because it's Christmas Knits. Bwahahahahaha!

POV

2009-10-10T16:03:00.002-05:00

I went for a nearly pain free run today and I'm pretty psyched about it. I bought a new pair of running shoes last night at the Sneaker Store in New Hartford and it was a good idea. The knowledgeable staff looked at my feet and my ankles, listened to my price range and found me a lovely pair of stability shoes that let me run 50% longer than I usually do with minimal shin pain. It's going to take a while for them to work their magic, but they feel good today.

Next weekend is the uber awesome New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. Since I've wanted to go since first hearing about it, I will be dragging Brett and making the pilgrimage down to see the sheep and commune with the People of the Wool. There will be lamb tacos and pumpkin chunking and frisbee dogs and lots and lots and lots of wool. I've decided I need to have a project or two in mind to buy for or I'll probably buy too much.

Project A:
The Featherweight Cardigan needs about 1200 yards of laceweight yarn. It calls for Malabrigo Lace, which would be fantastic, but I bet I can find something as awesome and much more unusual at Rhinebeck. I need something with close to a 470 yd/50 g weight. I want this to be a celebration purchase for when the Hall of Fame offers me the job (cough cough) so I want a nice flexible color I can wear to the office. Pearl grey, or oatmeal, or go bold with a cherry red or maybe even the chartuese in the pictures I first was attracted to.

Project B:
A great pair of socks. It's easy to buy sock yarn, and I knit more socks than anything else.

I'm also giving myself budget room to buy skeins that I fall in love with, provided I buy enough to make a matching hat and mitten set.

I've been super good about not buying yarn for the stash this year and last and Rhinebeck is a once a year event so I'm ok with indulging this year.

I've decided to make Saturdays a new weekly ritual where I take a picture of my view. I love reading blogs with lots of pictures. So every Saturday I'm going to point the camera out the window and show you a shot of the weather, the scenery, the whatever. Today it's the fall colors across the street and the pumpkin on the front step. Enjoy!

Leaf Peepers

2009-10-06T18:51:00.004-05:00

I have absolutely no good reason for not posting before now, other than I don't have much of interest to report.

We're still unpacking boxes, more slowly now than in the beginning, but now we're down to knick knacks and whatnots instead of clothes and cooking utensils. That's nice.

Our new rental is extremely awkwardly set up for furniture placement. It's a beautiful house architecturally, but it's an old house, so there's quite a few big windows that conflict with putting things against walls. The second story is a well finished attic, so the ceilings pitch down very abruptly. Again, a ton of non-functional space. We are left with rather a lot of furniture that doesn't fit well in the house making things feel odd and uncomfortable. We're set up for optimal usage of the space, in that things make sense where they are, but they don't feel or look like they're in the right spot. Hard to explain.

Cooperstown is drop dead beautiful right now. Rather a lot of golden fall sunshine on dramatic hills. Lots of pretty colors in the trees. We live right next to a cider mill now so when I get home from the bakery I'm greeted by the smell of apple cider and pie and woodsmoke. Not bad, all around.

Other good news:
Brett and I got a joint membership at the local gym. It was more expensive than it would have been anywhere else, but it's still affordable and a really good idea for us both. The heated indoor flat track is a lot more enjoyable to run on than the cold, rainy, unlit hilly roads. We can also cross train in the pool or on the climbing wall, or use the bowling alley, or whatever, so that's great.

I interviewed for a position at the Baseball Hall of Fame on Monday. I really really really really really want the job, so I hope they think I'm as perfect for the position as I think the position is for me. I'll update with either shouts of jubilation or gnashing of teeth and rending of garments sometime next week.

In crappy news I have a horrible head cold that won't go away and I feel like ugh.

Wedding Bells

2009-09-24T14:27:00.002-05:00

So it's been weeks since I got back from Minnesota and I never got a chance to tell you about the actual WEDDING.

There were two whole days of primping beforehand. We got our nails done on Saturday.

On Sunday the wedding party did hair. I got a little emotional when Chelsea put on her veil.

The ceremony was in Chel's folks' backyard. Everything was lovely and I think Chelsea and family and friends put in a ton of work to get it all so perfect. Chelsea and Jeff were married with a view of a calm lake behind them. The sun was high in the sky and quite warm, really and I used the wedding program to alternately shade my eyes and give myself a little breeze.

Directly after the ceremony, the wedding folk ran off to take a million photographs

and the rest of us found our way to our seats for dinner.

All the flowers were from the local farmer's market and assembled by one of Chelsea's friends. I think our centerpiece was the prettiest.

Brett and I had a wonderful time.

And it was great to see all my girls again.

We left the dinner in the garden and headed to the Five Event Center in Minneapolis for drinks and dancing.

I hope Chelsea and Jeff enjoyed their party as much as we all did. It was a great way to celebrate an amazing love.

2009-09-14T22:45:00.001-05:00

I will tell you one thing. That Doctor Who show gets it absolutely right. For real, yo.

Traveling Sock

2009-09-13T13:33:00.004-05:00

On our journey to the Land of a Thousand Lakes, I started a pair of socks for mindless downtime knitting, in the grand tradition of the Yarn Harlot's traveling sock.

Brett and I left New York Wednesday afternoon bright eyed and bushy tailed with two (matching) suitcases, snacks, and two skeins of Koigu KPPPM and a set of US2 DPNs.

About a hundred miles down the road I was still working on the finishing repeats in Chels's garter, so I didn't get to work on the socks until we were almost to Pennsylvania. I cast on 8 stitches with a Magic Cast On and finished the toe increases in a hotel room in Mentor just outside Cleveland.

The next day we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though the sock went, I couldn't get any pictures inside the hall as cameras are forbidden. Boo to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I did pick up a souvenier button though, which I think becomes the sock very well.

Cleveland is a very pretty city, really, right on the water with all those fancy pants sky scrapers.

The heel turn came conveniently when we stopped for the night in Clarendon Hills at Mom and Dad's.

We stopped at a rest stop in Wisconsin that seredipitously turned out to be in Aldo Leopold Territory, which was very appropriate considering I was meeting up with college friends who all read the Sand County Almanac with me in Freshman Studies.

When we stopped at the Minnesota border, the first of the pair was nearly done.

In Minnesota Kate put some stitches into the sock and Chels put some stitches into it too. I bound off the first of the pair at the bachelorette while playing Bridal 20 Questions.

On Saturday, the sock went to visit TCF Bank Stadium where the jumbo screen was showing Minnesota playing Syracuse and we got to watch the Gophers win (while we were) at their beautiful new stadium.

I intended to have pictures of the second sock at the reception and forgot to put it in my purse when we left. Major bummer.

I knit it back through Wisconsin and stopped at the Illinois welcome center for a photo op of the sock on my native soil.

Again, turned the heel at Mom and Dad's where Grandma and Aunt Karen put some stitches into the sock too and then I knit knit knit all the way home. Cast off a day or two after we got back to NY.

So very productive, though now I'm being politely reminded that there are still a pair of KC socks languishing on my needles...

Pros and Cons

2009-09-12T22:25:00.002-05:00

Hard Things:

A) The pets have been pretty badly behaved since we got back from the trip and I don't know what the trouble is, other than they don't have as much room to screw around in now that we're in the smaller house. Honus has been especially rowdy, picking on Abby just for fun, and confronting Chester at inappropriate hours of the morning. We need to do more running.

B) I got used to staying in a beautiful house, sleeping in a beautiful bed, having my beautiful friends close at hand and feeling ok spending a little more money than usual over the vacation and it is hard to return to reality.

C) Pretty much everything is still boxed and a total mess. I can't walk around without tripping on something and I can't find anything I need when I need it.

Good Things:

A) I have tons of knitwear ideas bouncing around my skull. In MN, I went to a real yarn store and I felt the Knitting Spirit move me. On vacation I finished a pair of socks and now I want to do a whole bunch more. I'm imagining a big wooly sweater with long sleeves, a zipper, cables, and a hood. How about a few pairs of solid socks in subtle stitch patterns? A matching hat and colorwork mitten set. A pair of argyle socks. A colorwork sweater solid enough to wear as a fall coat...

B) Mom and Karen and I found a beautiful wedding dress and we bought it. So I can cross that off the wedding list.

C) I'm about to have about 20 extra hours a week to work out and cook and plan wedding stuff and volunteer at a local museum and get Penelope Fiberworks off the ground. This is a Very Good Thing.

lace diamonds

2009-09-09T22:00:00.003-05:00

I am back in NY. It is good to be with the pets and good to have access to all of my things and nice to not be running around or sitting in a car.

But the trip was great and it's hard to go back to day to day life after such a fantastic vacation. Blog coverage of the event shall be in two parts.

To whet you appetite a bit let's start with that heirloom lace.

I suggested a while back that I might knit a garter for Chelsea's wedding. That perhaps it would be purple and silk.

Well, living in the backwoods of NY cut down my yarn options, and I went with white merino wool instead of purple silk, but I did knit a garter for Chelsea. Even better, it fit. And best of all she wore it proudly.

Chelsea's Diamonds

Project Specs~

Yarn: Laceweight Merino Wool

Needles: My superslick Addi Turbo US 0s circular needle. The needles were probably a little too slick for the work I was doing. There were at least half a dozen instances where either Abby or Brett, or (yes) I myself jerked a needle a little too hard and pulled out all my stitches.

Pattern: My own design, just for Chels, based on a lace design published in a free download by Interweave, first published in the January/February 1997 issue of PieceWork. The lace edging I used was romantically titled Rule 58 Lace Edging, originally from Florence Home Needle-work published in 1887 by Nonotuck Silk Company. I used this pattern for the bottom half of the lace, ran a pair of (YO, K2tog) down the middle so I could lace a ribbon through the garter, and I did a very simple eyelet on the upper ruffle for a little bit of garter stitch calm in the storm of all those lace diamonds.

Size: About 30 inches of lace, gathered to fit the bride.

Reflections: Writing my own chart for this pattern absolutely saved my life. No way would I have ever finished if I needed to read the instructions for every row. Probably would have slipped the first stitch on the eyelet side for a more perfect edging. Would have chosen a more easily memorized pattern so that I could work on it without toting the pattern with me, but for heirloom lace, putting in the extra effort made perfect sense.

I felt rushed to get this done, mostly due to bad project timing thanks to un-lace related life stuff, and next wedding I'll need to make sure I have it done about a week ahead of time so I can give some thought to the blocking, finishing, and presentation. The last stitches in this went into it on the road to the Minnesota and the last blocking pin came out about an hour before I gave it to the bride. She seemed please though, and a gift knitter couldn't ask for anything more.

On my way to sleep

2009-08-25T22:31:00.002-05:00

Long days, my friends. Long ass days.

99.9% of our stuff is in the new place. 80% of it is still boxed. Due to the helter skelter grab and go technique we'd adopted as we neared the end of the moving, 100% of those boxes are poorly organized, unmarked messes that will take weeks to properly sort out.

My mission tomorrow is to clean the old place, and fix up the new stove so we can do some actual cooking. I brought home hot dogs and mac and cheese to have a meal on the cheap, but realized that I wasn't going to be able to even boil water on a stove with rusted out dishes under the electric coils.

On top of it all, I'm rushing to finish some serious heirloom lace on a deadline.

2009-08-22T21:32:00.002-05:00

I'm in a new house!

Brett's been busting his hind end getting boxes and furniture moved over the last two days while
I've been working 7:30 to 11:00 and then 7:30 to 9:30 making money. I have felt terribly useless knowing that I'm not doing much moving. We borrowed a truck for the day tomorrow and we both have the day off so we're going to try to empty the old house and get it all into the new house.

The internet here is so fast I'm a little dizzy just typing this. The kitchen is repainted and completely awesome. The cell phone works almost all the time. And from where I'm sitting on a couch Brett moved ALL ALONE, watching our DTV and posting a blog, life is pretty good.

Catch you tomorrow!

VanGough cut his own ear off, you know...

2009-08-19T11:06:00.002-05:00

Hi.

I'm still alive.

I'm moving into a new place. It's closer to town and a little smaller. Hopefully it will be less costly to heat and the landlords will be easier to deal with. The internet will be faster and cheaper and won't shut off if I use it too much. It'll be good.

But first we have to repaint the kitchen and dining room. So I'm working about 70 hours this week, painting a new house, packing things to move and I haven't had time for much else, sadly. Have faith that this too shall pass and September will be a month of blissful daily blog updates.

I hope.

Summer of love

2009-06-25T10:10:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone.

Catch-up:
I've been working lot and lots of hours, though it looks like I'll be able to quit my P&C hours soon. I feel bad about quitting now that they're in full summer swing and I'm office trained, but I do want to have a little time to do other things. Like work on the fiber business, which has majorly been on the back burner. Juggling three jobs, planning a destination wedding with no budget, trying to lose serious poundage, and still have a life is not exactly conducive to also trying to build a business. Ugh.

Still, the days are long and sunny. And though the deer (or something) has taken most of the more exciting plants, there is enough lettuce for salads and the peas are covered in elegant white blossoms. I want to cut armfuls of them and bring them inside, but I know I'd rather eat the peas.

Cooperstown in the summer is a beautiful place to be and I'm happy to be here. The trick is taking time to appreciate it.
Before we got crazy busy, Brett and Honus and I went for a walk around the Glimmerglass State Park. It was a good relaxing day and I'd like to do it again.

I'm also looking forward to my next dyeing day. My favorite results from the last experiment were encouraging. I used simple food coloring dye to color the wool and set it with vinegar. Beacuse eggshells and wool are made from the same material (protein) the same techniques work for both. Unfortunately, you need a lot more dye for grams of fiber than for eggshells, so the color isn't nearly as saturated as I hoped, but it did varegate beautifully.

smooch

2009-06-10T11:11:00.003-05:00

Among the things I love about Brett...

When he really cares about you he's not afraid to show it.

Lakefront

2009-06-07T20:31:00.002-05:00

Brett's parents, aunt and uncle were in town for a couple days this last week and it was lovely to have the company. We were scheduled to look at a couple houses with a realtor (which was a huge, huge bust) so the family tagged along. Afterwards, we all went to the Lakefront Restaurant for a nice dinner (the duck and the scallops were particularly awesome).

The engagement ring had just come back from the jeweler after being resized, so I got to show off the bling to the very appreciative ladies and tell them the story of how Brett proposed. It was a beautiful day and we were finishing dinner at sunset, so I asked if they would mind taking a picture or two at the spot where Brett actually got down on one knee. We were harassed for aparently "looking funny" in the pictures, but I think we got some good ones. Here's my favorite:

I'm gonna marry that man!

Sunday in the Park with Brett

2009-06-03T22:55:00.003-05:00

To start off with: I'm writing this post Monday night, June 2nd, but I am setting it to auto-post in two days because this is An Important Post that I do not want to miss for any reason and because it will give me a deadline of two days to tell as many people as possible about the Important Stuff before this automatically goes live.

When I moved to New York, I moved in the company of a guy. Named Brett. Brett and I met when we were both assistants at the 1900 farm at Living History Farms in IA. We started hanging out pretty much right after I started working there and we got close really fast. It wasn't long before he was my best friend in Des Moines and the one with whom I spent most of my free time. I liked him, but we always made it clear that it was a friendship and that neither was looking for the complications and strings of a "relationship."

When he finally got the job at the Hall of Fame, I was thrilled for him, and I was even more thrilled when he asked if I was going to come with. The way he said it made it seem so obvious that that was what should happen that I said, "of course." We packed up a U-Haul, and drove across the country to our little rental in Fly Creek and he, the animals and I have been a happy little family ever since.

Gradually, the feel of the relationship had changed in little ways. We articulated the fact that we loved each other. We missed each other terribly when he or I had to go away. We bought a vaccuum cleaner together. He put a picture of me on the background of his phone. Nothing ever felt weird, or obligatory, or bad. If anything, when I noticed these changes, it was to be amused at how happy they made me.

Last night, we took a drive down to Oneonta, as we occasionally do, mostly to get rations at the Big Box Store and for an excuse to be out of the house. The day had been really pleasant and the drive to Oneonta was equally nice so I was feeling pretty darn content with life by the time we headed back towards Cooperstown.

As we listened to the Plain White Tees's, "Delihla" on the way home, Brett said he wanted to take a detour into town and look at the lake for a little while. It was chilly, but the idea of a quiet dark lake sounded pretty soothing, so I was up for it. We headed to a our favorite local park with the bronze statue of a hunting Indian and his fathful pooch and benches that all face the lake. We sat and cuddled up for warmth and Brett started talking about how he had been thinking and he had something important to ask me.

(I got a little butterfly in my stomach.)

He told me he tried hard all day, but he couldn't find a ring to give me. Then he got down one knee and said he loved me, wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and asked, "so are you going to marry me?"

I was completely and honestly floored, but I said "of course," because, it seems like the aboslute undeniable right thing to do. Of course I want to marry him, because I love him more than he can guess. Because he helps me happy and helps me be who I am. Because I can't think of another man I have ever felt this way about before. Because I want to be there for him and know he'll be there for me for as long as we both shall live.

Hey guys,

Last night, I got engaged!!

Re-Branding

2009-06-02T12:11:00.003-05:00

I think shmooze is a terribly dirty word and I'm not fond of Networking either.

To help get my fiber company off the ground on the right foot (without mixing too many metaphors) I've been doing a lot of reading and research. The library in Cooperstown is a little underwhelming when it comes to books on business even remotely related to starting a company where your main product is your creativity. What I need is literature targeted to artists and mostly I've found that online.

In particular Havi, of "The Fluent Self," has plenty of interesting and encouraging things to say about having your own business. She talks about addressing your personal issues so you can move on and do Good Things. Her writing reminds me of "Eat, Pray, Love" and often advocates a sort of spiritual approach to business, wrapping up meditation and lessons on loving yourself so that you can be unhindered in bringing Your Thing to the world.

Lately, she's been talking about relabeling corporate terminology so that you can get rid of the negative feelings you have towards a proccess or a business essential and make it, basically, more friendly and easier to approach. For her "marketing" is the big bad swear word.

I don't mind marketing so much because it reminds me of a market, like an agora or a forum- an exchange of ideas and goods to the benefit of all. But being a naturally shy person, networking scares the the pants off of me. I know part of my terror is the fear of being judged. A social situation where I would also want to be selling my creativity and having all that judged too? I get clammy hands just at the thought of it. But I think to myself, "what would Havi say?"

Well, probably something like fear is my personal biggest block that will keep me from achieving what I want. That I need to figure out what that fear is doing there and why I have it. What is its point? I should try to accept that I am afraid without beating myself up about it.

Accept that I have fear and that it is something I have created to protect myself from the pain of rejection, of not being good enough. Accept that while the fear is trying to keep me safe it's also keeping me from facing the adversity of criticism and coming out of that adversity stronger in my own sense of self. It's keeping me from being successful in bringing My Thing to the people who want My Thing. And it's hurting me. So today I'm going to say to my fear- "Thank you for wanting to keep me safe. But I got it from here."

And I'm going to relabel "networking."

In the Meantime...

2009-06-01T10:42:00.003-05:00

Enjoy the happy kitty fluff.

The Listing Habit I get from my Mother.

2009-05-31T15:18:00.003-05:00

My first day off in a week and a half! I'm not quite organized enough in my head to sit down and write you all something cohesive, but I miss chatting with you when the internet decides to only work sometimes. I will write you points.

A. The garden has recovered and is enjoying New York spring. Lettuce, sunflowers, and radishes (thanks for the seeds, Aunt Karen) are up and the tomatoes and peppers are in and doing well.

B. The job at the bakery is great, but the owner encourages snacking and I'm going to have to control myself better than I have been.

C. Being tired and hungry when I get home from work at 9pm has lead to some pretty destructive food habits. All I have been craving is fresh, tasty stir fry, skewers of chicken satay, and giant salads topped with juicy grilled chicken, but all I have been eating are bags of chips and pints of Ben and Jerry's. I've never been one to believe that strict diets are healthful, but mine needs serious whipping into shape. I want to modify my diet to fit with my work schedule, or I will not fit into my summer wardrobe.

D. I also need to get more physical activity. With the DVR on the TV, I've got a week's worth of Yoga programs stored and I like them, but I need to do the cardio and weight training too.

E. I have a very persistant internal edit button. I know the edit button is just there to keep me safe from criticism and to keep me from hurting other people, but sometimes I really really hate knowing I'm restricting myself all because I fear external reaction. Nowhere do I feel the Button's hulking presence more than when I'm trying to write for this blog. I started and stopped this post at least a dozen times, worried that anything I said would be boring and unamusing and uninsightful and that I would dissapoint people if it wasn't perfect.

The complete, unfortunate truth is that I'm not perfect. I really need to work on the self-delusion that if I'm not, I don't deserve to be loved and cared for. You who read this blog either care about me and will keep reading regardless of what I do or do not say, or you actually like what I say when I'm being genuinely myself, or you don't read my blog. No one has everleft me a critical comment or writen a dissapointed e-mail but even if they had, I suppose none of what anyone else says or does can change who I am or how I feel about myself anyway- that's all up to me. So all I can do is say what I'm thinking, and work on my Stuff (as Havi says), and not put my own issues on anyone else's shoulders.

F. I knew that if I started with the little stuff and kept writing, that the stuff I actually wanted to articulate would come spilling out. That's how it works. It's my process. All my good papers in college happened that way.

G. August is going to be a big month for me. I have a little start up money now and I'm going to establish my Fiberworks here in Fly Creek Valley. I'll be selling handdyed yarn and authoring patterns. I'm planning to open an online store front through Etsy, that great purveyor of the modern artist and the handcrafter in August, so stay tuned for all the news about little Midwestern Kate building a fiber company.

Locavore

2009-05-25T23:13:00.003-05:00

Well, it looks like the late frost did in most of the seedlings I had planted- the cosmos, cucumbers, and cabbage were all done for. Luckily, I think all the broccoli will make it and the parsley (which I covered with pots from the kitchen) wasn't even phased. The moral of the story is listen to the freaking frost warning and cover the freaking plants.

I should have scraped together enough coverings to try to save them, but I honestly thought that cucumbers and cabbage would be hardy enough to survive a little frost. They survived Abigail The Anti-Plant Cat's repeated attempts to kill them by knocking over their planter tray and spilling dirt and baby plants everywhere. What's a little frost compared to a 7 lb ball of fur and teeth? Alas, it was one trauma too many and they are lost.

The seeds are coming up though and in another few weeks we'll have lettuce and radishes for the table. I'm planning a local food party to celebrate Midsummer, and backyard garden salad should definitely be on that menu. The goal is to only serve yummy foods raised or produced within a 100 mile radius, the closer to me the better. I doubt that it will be an inexpensive meal, especially considering I want it to be a small dinner party, but it's something I've wanted to do since moving out here, and I really hope it comes together.

Of course I'd like to serve local meat. I wonder how expensive a good beef roast would be? Should I stick with cheaper chicken? Or go adventurous and get some lamb or rabbit? All these options (and more!) are available at the Cooperstown farmer's market, well within my radius.

My guess is that unless I can find some nearby farmer who grows wheat, I'm going to be severely handicapped by a lack of flour. Given this roadblock I could either use another starch (potato maybe?) or give myself the leeway to follow 1850 rules and let myself use store bought staples. What do you all think? Is that cheating?

dust buster

2009-05-20T17:28:00.002-05:00

We bought a new vacuum cleaner.

I had very little to do with the purchase, really. Since Brett brought a vacuum with him when we moved out here, it was pretty much his call. While I was away in the Midwest, it was determined that this minor appliance would no longer make the cut. It was a fairly sad piece of equipment; the brushes didn't really spin and there wasn't much in the way of suction, but it had worked well enough we thought. But that week, Brett called me and said that we would just have to get a new one.

Which, as you might imagine, did not make me terribly happy.

When I got back from my trip, Brett had already done a bunch of research online and pretty much already picked out a model that he liked. We trekked down to the Big Box Store in Oneonta. Feeling a little out of the loop and a little poor, I made some reluctant noises and annoyed faces and I insisted on looking at each of the vacuums they had in stock. The one he liked had a HEPA filter, a pet hair attatchement, a little tornado bucket instead of a bag- it's one serious cleaning tool. Still feeling a little pinched about the price, I eventually agreed with Brett that the one he picked looked best and we stuck it in the cart and headed to check out.

And you know what? He was completely right.

The thing is amazing!

Seriously, I've never been this psyched about an appliance before. We pushed it around the living room and filled the bucket multiple times on the first sweep. We kept pulling the bucket out and looking at it and every time we were shocked at how much dirt we had been living in. It even picked up all the cat fur in the big shaggy carpet upstairs, something the old vacuum never even came close to doing.

The only problem I can see is that being this thrilled and entertained by a freaking vacuum cleaner must mean I'm getting old...

Library

2009-05-19T12:39:00.002-05:00

Today, Penelope Knits comes to you from the Village of Cooperstown Library porch where the paint may be peeling from the eight magnificent Corinthian columns, but the air smells of lilacs and a group of ladies sits and knits. No kidding! I showed up after walking around town for a little and having lunch with Brett at the park by the lake and lo and behold there was a group of knitting ladies, chatting about shawl patterns and sharing the local gossip.

I know I should go over and say hi, find out if they're a regular group or what, but I'm shy. What if they think I'm intruding? I'll have to tell you later what I decided to do.

In excellent employment news, I start working at the local bakery tomorrow! Now I have enough regular jobs that I think I should be able to catch my finances up and feel pretty comfortable by the end of the summer. And I know I've committed to the grocery store at least for a while since they've spent all this time training me to work in the office, but I feel like I could quit there come September when (hopefully) I'll be full time employed at the bakery. How awesome!

To make things even more excellent, I pretty much owe the opportunity to the girlfriend of one of Brett's co-workers. She is very friendly and a sci-fi geek like me. I think we're going to get along great.

I'm so happy about this turn of events I could giggle. From complete homesick misery to joy in one week!

Welcome Back

2009-05-18T22:24:00.004-05:00

A few quick points:

1. I had an EXCELLENT trip home to Illinois, in which I traveled a total of 1116.4 miles (according to Google Maps) by car around the Midwest and about 1800 miles by plane to and from the Midwest.

2. We've had frost warnings here the last two nights. I planted broccoli, cabbage, cucumber, parsley, and cosmo seedlings a few days ago, hoping that they would be able to survive cool temperatures, but I was pretty sure they wouldn't need to deal with frost. (A danger which was supposed to be over three weeks ago here in the middle of NY, by the way!)

3. I've got lots of patterns in the works over here and I can't wait to have a spare month of bright warm summer days to just sit on a blanket in the sunny back yard, letting the scent of apple blossoms waft over me and and let my creative self go nuts. A girl can dream, right?

To the KC Socks

2009-05-05T12:28:00.004-05:00

Dear Socks,

I think I was seduced by the first blush of your heady color work, your strong deep blue, your fanboy charm. All I know is I had to have you.

Now, we both know, the bloom is off the rose and you sit, languishing in my work basket. Believe me, nothing about you has changed. You're still the wonderful, charming socks you were back when I first cast you on. I know we have some issues to address, like getting your color work and your patterning to be a little easier for me to deal with. But I've been so focused on work I haven't really been paying enough attention to you. I've let us drift apart.

It's not you, it's me.

Tell you what, I'll take you with me tomorrow on the plane (and bring a self addressed envelope to send you home in if they won't let me carry you on). We can spend the whole week together and really reconnect. Won't that be nice?

Love,
Kate

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2009-05-04T10:11:00.003-05:00

It got cold here again. Boo.

But Wednesday night (if all goes well) I'll be on a plane headed back to the Midwest for my brother's college graduation. And to help set up my Mom's quilt show. And help LilBrudder move into his new apartment. And Mother's Day is kind of an added bonus. It'll be a big trip.

I'm looking forward to being home, but travel always makes me nervous, and air travel especially so. Not that I'm afraid to fly, but I don't enjoy all the ways the whole thing can go wrong. I'm already rehearsing everything that I could screw up so that I can make sue to leave early enough to have time to spare just in case. I've already decided not to take the computer, cause I don't want to hassle with it through security. I always forget to dump my water bottle, or take my keys out of my pocket or something as I'm trying to rush to get my stuff in the buckets and not hold up everyone else in the line. I worry too much about disappointing or inconveniencing these random strangers in line and let the worry of it screw up nights of sleep before hand. Lame, yeah?

Albany is a small airport, though. The last time I was there, it took up maybe 15 minutes to get from the door to the gate, but that was at 3 in the morning and this time I'll be on the latest flight I could get and it'll probably be busier, and I'm limited as to when we can leave by work. I'll have about 45 minutes to get to the gate, which should be enough (barring me screwing up), but I'd feel better with another half an hour. I'm actually nervous that I'll miss my flight.