Lovelihood

After all the gift basket-making and bib-snapping and napkin hemming, I've been jonesing to make a little something for myself. And, after having sat through all the gift basket-making and bib-snapping and napkin hemming, my workhorse office chair was in dire need of repair. Making new cushion covers had been on my list for a while, but after the past few months of supporting my rear, they were little more than worn out pieces of foam draped in the standard Ikea tatters. Tatters embedded with stamp ink and bits of confetti and late-night chocolate and milk spit up while I was trying to squeeze in some work while nursing.  

I picked out a fabric in a nice, cool gray. And because (1) every cushion deserves a cute little trim, and (2) I have a genuine disdain for pre-packaged piping, all stiff and monotone and blah, I whipped up my own piping, using an old stash-bolstering fat quarter and chunky yarn left over from my years-ago first ever knitting project (a hat and scarf who have been retired to the attic until we again reside in a place where such things as woolen scarves and hats are necessary. Today, deep in the throes of January, Houston mercury is scheduled to hit 70°). Bulky as the yarn was to knit with, it makes for a buttery soft and pliable piping, easily turning those corners and yielding to my worn out machine needle.

Mr. New Media declared that the gray fabric was nice, but that the trim was too girly. Nothing wrong with that, I say. I've spent many years hiding under khakis and sweater vests and gender-neutral tees. I'm ready for some girly in my life. And if it's not pink, then I can handle it.

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Speaking of girly, I've been wearing more dresses lately. The past year and a half of working from home, then too pregnant and unmotivated to wear anything flattering, I pretty much lived in jeans and ironically adorned tees. Entirely practical and weather-appropriate and rather dull. Now, I'm itching for a little more flair. There's some woman out there on the interwebs whose mission this year is to wear only things she has made herself. A laudable goal, but one entirely out of my skill level. I've never sewn anything I deem wearable. I've made several attempts. Nothing passes muster, and I resign myself to only sewing goods for the home for the next few months until the frustration fades away enough to try again. I've forgotten the angst now, and I'm thinking about digging into this pattern. I'm liking the shirt dress/tunic look, sometimes paired with jeans, sometimes with tights. I also like pockets, which this pattern does not have. I'll definitely need to tuck a couple into the seams. I've decided that all skirts and dresses should sport pockets. We'll see. I'm still mulling this one over, working up the nerve to cut into some fabric. Maybe some Japanese-y linen print.

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I've been feeling a bit of guilt this week over not being moved to strong emotion or action over the tragedy in Haiti. Five years ago, hearing of the Indonesian tsunami, and fueled by pregnancy hormones, I remember being moved to tears in the car on the way to work. And even from Seattle, Hurricane Katrina's destruction in New Orleans left me shaken. I think it's that I'm not working in an office these days, not regularly with and around people other than my family, that makes it harder for me to emotionally connect to what's going on in the world. So what did I do? I bought something for myself.

The Craft Hope shop on Etsy has lots of lovely things for sale, with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders in Haiti. Or you could, you know, just make a direct contribution.

I'm not one for making annual resolutions. My big life-changing movements tend to be more impulsive, a catalytic reaction of pent-up angst and self-righteousness. Like the evening I sat down to my mom's meal of beef stew and decided I would no longer be eating meat. Or when I threw out an empty box of Camel Lights and decided not to buy another. Or the day I woke up and decided to get an oil change, leave school and drive halfway across the country and be with my future husband. The ringing in of a new year hardly qualifies as impetus, so it's generally not when I suit up for any kind of change.

But I do sense a theme for the upcoming months. And it looks awfully green. Now, as an old print hack, this is a little difficult to resolve. Years ago, when someone suggested that the internet would kill print news, I scoffed at the idea, citing how much people like the tactile experience of reading the paper. I didn't realize that it was just me. I like the feel and smell of newsprint. I like paper. I like things on paper. I like making things on paper. I shop for it and stash it away and dog-ear corners and flip through pages and fold it and mark it up with ink. I carry around notebooks in all manner of sizes, some quad-lined, some unruled, some with bright covers, others with plain kraft paper. And then there's the paper we wipe our faces with and use to soften our clothes and wrap gifts and toss after emptying it of cereal. And that's just paper. It's rather exhausting and daunting just to think about reversing the role of waste and what consumer convenience has brought to my life. Which is why, I suppose, we spend so much time politicizing and bitching over Al Gore's carbon footprint instead of actually taking action.

A few weeks ago, I jettisoned my paper to-do list for this online one. A teeny tiny step, to be sure, but much of my life can be sussed out in the lists I have made since, as a wee girl, I first picked up a pencil to itemize the things in my world. So this is no insignificant change. I love this app, by the way. I've been using it as a combined daily taskmaster and crafty wish list of sorts. Editable and accessible and forgiving and superior to my paper list in many other ways. My anal retentive app-crush aside, what I've noticed about this list is how much it's dominated by things I want to make to render consumer goods obsolete in my home. Or to repair and refashion instead of replace. Like making more snack bags to replace the plastic baggies in The Boy's lunch. Or sacks to bring produce home from the store. Or reusable woolen balls instead of softener sheets to toss in the dryer. 

This all reminds me of a college friend who, with her roommate, would reuse plastic produce bags (a fairly normal practice at our liberal and liberal arts hippie school). She had some on the counter, washed out and air-drying, when her sister came to visit. The sister promptly returned home and reported to their parents that my friend was living like a savage.

Cloth napkins, though, hardly speak of savagery, and have long been on my list of things to make. In my post-holiday, in-between-projects, puttering-around-the-house malaise, I endeavored to clean and oil the sewing machine, something I've never done in the half-decade that I've owned it. Apparently, I've never taken a close look at the assortment of doodads and presser feet that occupy its accessory compartment, either, because when I pulled out the rolled hem foot, I had absolutely no idea what it was or how to use it. But judging by its description in the manual, I deemed it the perfect tool for the long elusive napkin project. 

For the fabric, I used the last of a pair of twin-sized duvet covers purchased from Ikea a few years back and previously cut up for other projects around the house. It's weave is loose, a little gauzy, very orange, perfect for napkins. All cut up, it yielded 31 squares (the fabric stash gods work in mysterious ways), plus some small scraps for some other use.

So, no more paper napkins for us. These cloth ones have supplanted their paper counterparts in the table dispenser. They're plentiful and washable and casual enough for everyday use. And cloth napkins, even slightly soiled with a baby's avocado and rice cereal mash, just seem so elegant on the dining table. But maybe a little less so on the floor where the she threw it after having gnawed on a corner between spoonfuls.

While the rest of us brought in a new decade with popped corks and fists full of confetti, our little Girlie celebrated her exact half-year-ness, to be rung in with a scheduled doctor's visit and introduction to solid food. Well, solider, at any rate. Which means that new bibs are in order. 

The Boy, also, of course, once embarked on the whole solid food thing, and had his own set of bibs, made of the cheapest of terry cloths, purchased by the gross, and declaring such pithy gems as "Grandma loves me." But those are gone, having been sent off to Goodwill or left to the moths in some forgotten corner of the attic. So, like I said, new bibs are in order. Which is just as well, because we have some old flannel receiving blankets taking up precious dresser space in the kids' room. These dozen or so blankets have been the latest go-to in my constant house-scrounging for fabrics to re-imagine into something new and useful. It's not that I'm cheap. God help me, I'm so not that. And I do love a good trip to the fabric store to test the hand of printed cottons in modern hues. And sometimes I do bring some home to bolster an already rich supply of fabric to have on-hand. But I like the idea that these soft little blankets that once snuggled our baby boy, all asquirm with limbs that refused any ordinary swaddle, can find a home in the life of his baby sister, who even now at six months, thinks her brother is the bees knees. 

Those blankets have already had their ranks thinned in the name of a quilt for The Girlie whose progress has been slow, advancing only on those nights when (1) I want to curl up in my favorite chair and watch the ol' tellie, and (2) I don't have a crossword puzzle stumping me (because I like to work on crosswords while watching tv, which I know, seems a tad counter-productive, but it's what I do).

But now I've found a second perfect project for the flannels. I've spent a busy little week making and tweaking these bibs, from the pattern in Amy Karol's book. Now, each of those receiving blankets yielded 6 bib fronts. And the inexpensive Ikea dishtowels each yielded 4 backs. So, doing the math, I should have ended up with 12 bibs, right? A lofty enough number, to be sure, but I decided to dip back into my stash for some fabric more befitting a Girlie. So sixteen cozy little bibs now sit at the ready, eager to de-splatter the face of my now not-so-little baby.

My favorite part of these bibs? The snaps. If, instead of going with a pattern, I'd decided to just wing it and fashion up a bib-shaped thing, I probably would have gone with Velcro hook and loop closures. These metal snaps are a nice and substantial little touch. And that snappy sound is rather satisfying. And any sewing project that requires a hammer to finish is tops in my book. Here's the first lesson of the new decade. If you're trying to take advantage of the kids' naptime to get in some solid bib-making, perhaps jaw-rattling hammering that reverberates through the floorboards to where the kids are sleeping in the back of the house is not the best idea. You live and you learn.

To more complicate the endeavor, I decided to attach a pocket to the back of a few of the bibs, designed to tuck the goopy aftermath away and into the diaper bag at meals out. Sure, I could just toss a bunch of the bibs in a plastic baggie, as I did for The Boy three years ago. But what's the fun in plastic baggies? There is no fun, no fun at all, I say. I've been trying, trying, trying to purge the things from our storage repertoire because, yes, they are environmental evil. Of course they are. But also because ridding my cabinets of them means I get to craft up a new solution. But more on that later. Right now, I've got a baby to feed.

The daytime temperature this Christmas weekend was way down in the low- to mid-50s, and around these parts that means it's time to break out the snowflake sweaters, earflappy-hats and chunky knit scarves. I may be a knitter, but for whatever reason, I've never made anything in any of these categories that I deemed wearable. So, with the exception of my pride-and-joy fair isle gloves hastily finished the winter I was heavy with The Boy so that I could commence with the baby projects, my winter go-tos are all store-bought. 

Except, now, for this scarf. I've long claimed 55° to be my ideal temperature (it's actually more like the low 60s, but saying 55° makes me feel heartier), so bundling up in winter woolens now would be an admittance of weakness. Like how, after all those years in Seattle spent snickering at bumbershoot-toting tourists, the mere existence of an umbrella in our home brings me hot, red-faced shame. And yet, I like the look of winter, of people dressed in defense against cold weather, armed with snuggly textiles in bright hues. And there have been times in the past when I donned a scarf in centrally-heated conditions, nuzzling my nose in the cowled loops of a light scarf just for the sheer comfort of it. So seeing all these people in cool weather gear has sent me searching for solace in fabric odds and ends. 

(This post, believe it or not, is actually about our favorite Christmas gifts this year. So how it is that I've already spent this much web-space on a scarf I made for myself, and how I still haven't gotten to the actual creation of the thing, is really beyond me. You know that little bit of categorization on the side there, where it says "things that… I ramble about"… Yeah, I'm going to have to get rid of that soon, because, yeah, I know, this whole site is things that I ramble about. But, of course, I digress.)

This scarf was a scrap trimmed off from a throw, itself comprised of fabric scraps, I made for Mr. New Media for our new couch, whose color is incongruous with the rest of the room, but whose shape and style and price made it something we decided to live with. The blanket is bits of gray t-shirts and some flannel on one side, the reverse a patchwork of fabric reclaimed from promotional tote bags and napkins and tamale packaging with some muslin to fill it out. To get the two sides to size up, I had to trim off some of the t-shirt side, and what came off seemed perfectly suited to assuage my scarf-envy.

The throw was, admittedly, one of those things I really made for myself under the guise that it was a Christmas gift for my husband. I know this, he knows this. It's all good, because he got some other gifts, notably the Gocco prints I purchased in support of his Radiolab fanboy-ness, that were actually about his interests. 

For his part, the husband gifted me with some interesting crafty gear that has left me with a resolve to do more with ink and film. But, so far, what I've been enjoying most the past few evenings is this stampset Mr. New Media picked off my wish list (good boy) and, I kid you not, some empty cardboard boxes left on our porch alongside some linzer cookies and cranberry relish while we lazed in our post-unwrapping stupor. 

Oh, how happy I've been, imagining up little stories to accompany the days of the people who inhabit these little blocks. The boy received a barn playset equipped with all the usual farm animals, and another little playset with horses and ponies. But I suddenly realized that our play room notably lacks little people to pose and create lives for. Sure, there are the few Lego people in the mix, but they came prefabbed, complete with equestrian regalia and farmer coveralls. Their stories have already been painted on. I'm I thinking I need to find or make some fresh little people who wouldn't feel so out of place making their lives and livelihoods in these little buildings.