I'm almost certain that when Andrew Bird wrote "I was the cartographer of the tangles in your hair," he was not thinking about mothers and their relationships with their daughters and the daily ritual of the hairdo. But, this is just where my mind goes every time. It's is such a beautiful, intimate line—to know someone so well that you know where each snarl is likely to crop up. It brings to mind morning sunlight and the process of tracing all the golden hairs from Eva's head and trying to get them to lay smooth and look brushed.

Of course, most mornings are not that beautiful. They are rushed—we are trying to get out the door to school and work. Most days Eva's hair is braided is one or two very long braids, and there is little time for experimentation. It is more likely to be a time where we feel cross with each other for all the pulling and yanking that those knots require. Seldom do I stand behind Eva with a comb and think that I am privileged to be able to groom this individual. But every so often, this song, Armchairs comes into my head and I take a breath and remember that it won't be much longer until she doesn't want or need me to do her hair, and I braid with a little more intention.

The hat is Eva's Christmas present from me. It was intended to be a beret, but it ended up being a hat. The hat covers her ears, which is important. I used Palette yarn left over from my tulip socks, and Sock Pixie's La Parisenne Beret pattern.

Also, Andrew Bird comes to town every year. Why have I never been?

Dang, it's cold here! Elie just half-jokingly offered to use some of my felted crafting sweaters for weatherstripping and door wadding.

This weekend was all about two things: relaxing and doing chores that you'd rather put off. The relaxing was awesome and the chores were even fine because now they are done. Remember how I made Eva a beautiful redwork quilt? I put off washing it forever (if you look up the date of the post where I shared it, I will be shamed) because I knew I was facing bleed issues. This was my first quilt, and it was red and white, and I didn't prewash my fabrics. Gasp! I didn't realize how bad I had been until a rainstorm poured into Eva's bedroom window and soaked one little corner of the redwork quilt. Oh, did it bleed. It looked like melted blow-pop, and it was enough to shock me into very bad laundry practices.

This weekend Eva asked me if I would please wash the quilt. It had gone to far. I suppose there's no time like the new year for this sort of thing, so I bit the bullet and washed years of hand quilting and embroidery work with white right next to red. I started it off in my bathtub using cold water and a gallon of vinegar along with a cup or two of salt. My science is fuzzy, but maybe this is supposed to set the dye? I read it online and I thought it couldn't hurt. I also added 3 shout color catchers. It made the tub water so pink. After some agitation I squeezed it out then threw it in a laundry basket a whisked it down to the basement to the waiting washer filled with cold water, soap, and 3 more color catchers. The water was still bright pink on the second rinse cycle. It came out OK. The white is not pure and there's a general pinky glow, but I'm sure it's not as bad as it could have been

The Beebs was home sick today (feeling much better now), so we spent a good amount of time sitting on the couch knitting. She's knitting too. She temporarily rediscovered the fun of knitting and her scarf project from last year. It's fun to knit with her and to hear her say things like, "Mom! I can even do it if I close my eyes and don't look at it--for a few stitches." Yup, me too, just for a few stitches, otherwise we get all kinds of hell.

Lunch was sick-at-home chicken soup, which means pasta boiled in broth from a tetra pack plus carrots and dried thyme. It's somewhere between for-real chicken soup and ramen, and generally, it's about what I'm good for.

I am nearly, nearly done with sock number one. I had to unravel it to the colorwork at some point in the gusset because I had to admit it had canckles. I added some wonky decreases, but it fits now.

We are just overflowing with sweetness over here. Today we celebrated Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and ate many, many sweet things in hopes of a very sweet coming year. Also, they taste good. I made honey cake, and my mother-in-law's awesome kugel, and challah. These are the same things we've made every year since we moved here five years ago, so I guess it's officially a tradition. Poof—tradition! It's fun to be a tradition maker and a tradition embracer. I was thinking a lot about this today as I kneaded and stirred. I think that one of the reasons that Jewish holidays are so much fun for me to celebrate is that I'm not trying to reach back and recreate a glorious childhood memory. I find myself doing this with the Christian holidays that I celebrated growing up—I want my daughter's holiday experience to be as rich, and oddly, often to be just the same as mine was. I'm a lot more reasonable about the rest of her life being her own, so what is up with holidays? Maybe I'll try to make a point to cut this out. It's a lot of fun to celebrate a holiday without too may ideas about how it should be.

Real Fall is a good month and a half away, but yesterday the air was cool, so let's allow ourselves the Fall Preview.

Socks! I finished the pair. The toes are quite messed up, and I think they really would fit Eva better, but I love em.

Pickles! The pickles came out tasting like pickles. We made real canned pickles and refrigerator pickles. I like the refrigerator ones better, but I also added extra unnecessary salt the canned ones. You know, for good measure. It's a bit much

Pulling up carrots! Our garden carrots never really took off, possibly because we never thinned them and due to a gardening miscommunication, radishes were planted directly on top of the carrots. Elie pulled up what we had. It's not bad though—two quarts of baby carrots. Ridiculous.

"Harvesting" the corn! A squirrel planed squirrel corn in our yard and we let it grow. Isn't it creepy-looking?

Cat fest! Wearing a cat shirt and reading a cat book with a real cat on your lap.

My little girl had a little birthday. I won't get too sentimental (at least not now), but I will say that she is now halfway to 18. If the second half goes anywhere near as quickly as the first, I am in big trouble.

Nine is a funny age for parties. You still need some structure, but little kid party games aren't going to cut it. I asked Eva if she wanted to play Hot Potato at her party, and she almost died of embarrassment at the thought. I can't say I blame her. I mean, really? Hot Potato? And yet, Simon Says is still OK. Where is a parent to draw the line?

We did a craft—gluing eyes and beaks on to pom pom chicks and putting them in eggshells. We may have mostly done them because I wanted to make the pom poms. It's not entirely on me though, because this was supposed to be a Nature and Chicken themed party, and I did not invent the theme.

I used the party as a good opportunity to use the Martha Stewart test tube containers I got on sale post-Halloween two years ago. They are way cute filled with "magic" jelly beans. However, I did get chided by the resident scientist for buying plastic test tubes when real glass ones could have been had from the lab. Hmmm, don't know about that one.

Buying the jelly beans was even more fun that I thought it would be. I went to the mall on my lunch hour and filled a bag with all the light green and light blue Jelly Bellys that come in flavors we like. It was like a mini version of picking quilt fabrics—a little happy for the middle of the day. I also stopped at Gap kids and picked up a few summery sale things for Eva (two tops and some leggings). The jellybeans cost as much as the clothes. What does that mean?

It can be hard to find the right present for grandmothers, especially when they've told you that there really isn't anything else they need and there really isn't anything else they want. This year, my maternal grandmother, Lib, was particularly hard to "shop" for. Her eyesight is not very good, so she can't read all the books that I know her retired librarian self would enjoy, and her memory is bad, she has Alzheimers, so I don't want to get her anything confusing, and she has never really liked clothes and she feels like she has Enough.

But, she (just like my other grandmother) is very giving. In my head my grandmothers are like the two faces of charity–one giving locally, and fund-raising, and setting up organizations to continue helping people in the community into the future, the other giving internationally, thinking of herself as a citizen of the world. Lib is the latter of the two. When I was a girl, she always answered my letters on Unicef stationary, she had the AFSC calendar on her walls, and was the first person to tell me about Heifer, and that was ages ago. And also, Lib taught me how to knit, the first time when I was seven, the time it didn't stick, but perhaps laid the foundation for my future success. (wink)

I decided to give to someone who gives by giving. I made the mittens above for Afghans for Afghans, and brought them to our Christmas celebration and shared then with my grandmother along with a letter of explanation and love. It's a risky sort of gift—the person doesn't actually get anything in the end, you could be misunderstood as being cheap, and it involves and awful lot of explanation—but, I think it was well-received. I hope that she got what was at the very bottom of it—that I love her and that the person she is has left a mark on me.

This is where I depart from the sentimental and give you the particulars on the mittens. They were made from this kool-aid dyed yarn using this mitten pattern. They were my first mittens ever, and there will probably be more, but not this year.

Actually, I know exactly what you've been up to, all you folks who have been able to have a December and keep your blogs going. Hooray for you! I have enjoyed seeing all your Christmas, Channukah, and Solstice posts so much.

Eva made me the little mushroom for a Christmas present. In a totally non-biased parental way, I think it is the best. She actually did it one Sunday morning while I was still sleeping, but then she couldn't keep it a secret and she woke me up with it. Handmade cute present! Best wakeup evar!

OK. I am actually really happy to be back, But I will try to tone down the enthusiasm and use fewer exclamation points for the rest of this post.

We went away for Christmas and Channukah and visited the vast majority of our family in New Jersey. I ate soooo much good stuff, including pot roast, which I haven't had since before I was a vegetarian, which I no longer am. I am going to buy a slow cooker (crock pot :-)). Also, I found it liberating to call and order my favorite pizza ever whenever I wanted to from the place down the street. Why not? (In case you're wondering, it's floppy crust, fold in half, slightly burnt crust.) I also had the yummiest cottage cheese at Elie's sister's house. They get it fresh from a farmer and it is all whole milk and oh yum. I wish I knew a farmer like that.

And speaking of yummy, check out my new yarn. From my dad and mom I got yarn and Anthro gift certs respectively. I burned through them in one very enjoyable morning. Projects to come!

Love,
Dorie

Halloween. Done.

Eva wanted to be Galadriel this year, you know from Lord of the Rings (LOTR if you want to get dorky). She was way into getting her costume together. She picked the trim, used buttons from her collection, chose and elfish necklace, and remembered the silver choker (as headress) from a box of ebay jewelry my dad gave us. I made the dress. You will note that it has the all-important flowy sleeves and skirt. It's made out of a cheap nylon knit from a princess pattern. I had been thinking that I might want to try sewing with knits, but this Halloween costume reminded me that I really don't. I mean, wavy seams are all well and good for dress-up, but I don't not think I I want to mess with getting them straight for something to wear for real. Wovens—Ah!

So, if you've been trying to view my blog and it's been what we in the industry call "jacked up", I'm sorry. Having a major CSS error on your blog is the digital equivalent of having your underwear showing. People are not sure if they should tell you or pretend not to see. Thanks to my dad for clueing me in, and thanks to Brendan for reminding me that it's really unacceptable, because yes, I did let it sit a week between the time that I was told and the time I made the fix. Sry. :-)

I've blogged the progress of the quilt some, and here it is, actually done. I started it when Eva was only 9 months old, and I was very new to quilting. I just fell in love with the folksy, yet detailed red stitching. When I was a stay-at-home mom during Eva's first couple years I used to watch Simply Quilts with Alex Anderson—I really think she taught me how to quilt—and I know she did an episode on redwork and I remember seeing some way back in a Country Living too, but, these were both after I had already started the quilt, so I'm not sure exactly why I decided to do a redwork quilt. I just did.

Here it is in situ.

It's a double Irish chain pattern and I hand quilted it all, but first I did the embroideries—thirty-one of them to be exact. Many came from this book (as did the pattern), but I started to get bored with them and some of them were just too old-fashioned and weird, so I started doing animals from a Dover book, plus a few literary characters (Little Bear and Mother Bear, Frances), and some random other animals. It's mostly animals, plus a nameplate and a lily of the valley. Oh, there's also the square that lists all the cats we know. I call that square The Becats.

It's odd. The quilt is already so old, even though it's just been finished, that it already has history in it. The pug dog has "Rosie" embroidered under it after my stepsister's dog who was alive then, but has gone now. Half of the Cats We Know are also gone, and we know a lot of new ones. I held off doing the signature block for a long time before I finally embroidered my name on it. Then, Elie and I got married and now my name is a bit different. It all makes me smile a little and maybe cry a little.

I had thought that there would be a moment of elation when I finished it and that I would put it on Eva's bed with great pomp and pageantry. But no. When it was done I left it on the couch for a while, until we had an extra chilly night and I used it to cover Eva up in bed. It had been living along with us that whole time I was making it. It has so many bits in it—all the years of my baby's life, all our progress. I like it a lot, and in the end, I'm surprised to say it was about the process.