Homemade Friday: Semele Shawl

I was checking through my archives and realized that I haven't posted a Homemade Friday post for a month.

Woops.

I'm not really sure why.  I've been making lots and lots of things, as usual.  Just today I made mozzarella and ricotta and butter. 

I've been sewing and knitting and my son has requested that I make everyone coming to his Star Wars Birthday Party a Luke Skywalker costume.

Stay tuned to see if I actually do that.

(Or not.  The answer is no, kid.  Learn to sew.)

But let's jump back in like I haven't taken a long hiatus and pretend that I've been keeping up with this blog like I'm supposed to be.  And by 'supposed to be' I mean 'forcing myself to.'

...............................................................................................................


I knit this shawl for my friend who lost her husband.

I honestly debated on posting it here because it was a personal gift, made for someone suffering.

But this is who I am.  I picked out this pattern and yarn because I felt helpless.  And knitting is a way for me to keep my hands busy, to feel like I'm doing something that may provide a bit of comfort, and to show my friend I'm thinking of her.

The pattern is Semele.  I thought it was intricate and delicate and just what I wanted.  I used Hand Maiden Sea Silk yarn in Mint.  It's so soft and shiny and I thought the color would look really nice with my friend's red/auburn hair.

The pattern was tricky and it took me longer than I wanted because I messed up once and dropped a stitch and had to take out a bunch of other stitches and redo a whole side and it has an imperfection in it because of that but there was nothing to be done. 

That's the way it goes, yeah?

Motherhood and More: Screen time piles on guilt*

I feel like a failure as a mother.

I mean, that’s really nothing new at this point. But specifically, now, I feel like a failure as a mother because I allow my son to spend entirely too much time parked in front of a screen.

As many mothers do, when I first found out I was going to have a baby I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of mother I would be. And I settled on the cloth diaper-using, breast-feeding, no-television-watching hipster mom who would eschew any form of cartoon-character marketing on principle alone.

I know. I want to slap me, too.

And I did OK for awhile. I nursed both my kids for 13 months, and we did use cloth diapers, but supplemented with disposable. I made a lot of my own baby food.

But where I ran into trouble was the television.

I tried. I really did. But when my toddler son sat still for the first time and watched a program, it was like I’d been given 15 minutes of freedom that I hadn’t had before.

We started with public television. Because it’s public television — it has to be educational and hipster-approved, right? “Thomas the Tank Engine” led to “Barney,” which led to “Dora the Explorer,” which led to “Wonder Pets,” which for some reason led to any and all “fighting shows,” as my son calls them.

I honestly don’t know how it happened. One minute we’re learning about dinosaurs on “Dinosaur Train,” and the next I’m running to the television to turn off a Batman cartoon that shows Bruce Wayne losing his parents. All the sudden my son is too big for the nice, educational shows, and the only thing that piques his interest includes light sabers and/or the good guys fighting the villains.

And here’s where I show even more of my failure at parenting and tell you that I don’t preview everything my kid watches. It’s just, I don’t think I can sit through another “Ninjago” episode without smashing my head into a wall, you know?

So my own personal mothering rules have relaxed considerably over the last five years. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty about it. I think about whether I’m permanently scarring him by exposing him to so much non-educational screen time.

But then I think about me.

I watched “Jaws 3” when I was a few years older than my son is now. I mean, sure, I had some nightmares and have a horrific fear of the ocean and all the teaming masses of killer fish that are swimming along, just waiting for my shadow to cross their paths so they can bite off my leg.

But am I affected, really? Has watching that damaged my psyche irrevocably? I mean other than my inability to swim in a pool without convincing myself that a shark is chasing me, of course.

And so I allow my son to watch shows that sometimes give me a twinge of doubt. I do try to force some educational programs on him occasionally, and he still likes “Wonder Pets,” though he won’t actually admit it, but will sit and watch it whenever his sister does.

But the epic battle of good versus evil is what occupies his mind these days.

But there could be worse obsessions than “Star Wars,” right?

*This column originally published in The News-Enterprise on May 22, 2013.  

I should probably find work as a landscaper now

I know it may not look like it, but a lot of hard
work went into that little bit.

For some reason I have decided to build a rock patio.

Maybe it's because my children are a bit older and can spend time outside without me constantly running after them to make sure they don't charge into the busy road in front of our house.  They can occupy themselves without me, though of course that doesn't stop them from asking for multiple cups of juice and milk and water and then the littlest one needs a bathroom break from all the juice and milk and water and the oldest one insists that I push him on the swing and the youngest wants me to hold her while I push the oldest on the swing.

Ahem.

Or maybe it's fact that it's gardening weather - it's finally warm enough to make things like 'walking out the back door' a little easier.  We've been cooped up all winter, which takes its toll on all of us outside people.  I've felt stagnant and unable to do anything to improve the yard while the weather was the way it was. 

Or maybe it's the story I'm writing for the newspaper on hardscapes that got me thinking that this was something to do.

We love child labor in this house.

Whatever the reason, I started work Sunday afternoon.

No plan.  No experience.  I just started digging.

We have an area to the left of our back steps that for as long as we've lived her has been overgrown with random grass-type plants.  There's a really pretty clematis and some columbines there, as well, but they seem to be overshadowed by the mess. 

We'd been talking about putting a rock patio there for awhile now.  And we have all the rocks that we've collected from around our yard and my parents' house.  So I thought: Why not?  Why not now? 

So I got a shovel and a wheelbarrow full of sandstone rocks and started work.  I've been digging down, trying to make it as level as possible, which is a bit difficult with these lumpy, awkward rocks.  It's not going to be a permanent fixture - just something to hold us over until we can afford to do it the right way. 

But it's kind of cool.  It's like a puzzle with really heavy pieces that don't fit together exactly, but are good enough.

Sebastian has been helping me, shoveling dirt and gathering rocks.  And the kid loves puzzles as much as I do so he's really enjoying putting the pieces together.


I'm sore from all the lifting and bending in places that I didn't know could be sore (the top of my butt?  REALLY?).  But it feels good.  I like the work and the accomplishment I can see progressing from just my own two, rough, scraped up hands.

I had plans to work on it again this morning but it rained just enough earlier to make it too muddy to work.

I don't claim that this will be the nicest rock patio anyone has ever seen.

But I can say that I built it.

Although the ability to sleep in would have been nice, too

For Mother's Day my children thoughtfully gave me their stomach virus.

And my husband left for a work trip.

And then there was all the grumpiness and fighting and no-napping.

But I also got this wild, goofy, incredible boy who tells me almost every day that I'm the best mom in the world:

And this one, this rambunctious, silly, sweet girl who wants me to hold her all day and will randomly come up and kiss me and gives the best hugs:

Not a bad trade off.