honey lately

Tags

baby, family, photos, she only smiles quilt

Oh. my. gosh. Two weeks since my last post! There’s no excuse. But, in my defense, we’ve been busy. Good busy, corn-on-the-cob busy, Old Town Hill busy, biscuits-and-honey-and-brand-new-quilts busy:

But we’ve also been plenty of bad busy too. Lucy had a minor infection that required a week of antibiotics. She didn’t feel well or eat great because of it, and I also had to clean the house–WITH BLEACH–from top to bottom. Several times. I’m just now getting my feet back under me. Lucy’s back to 100%, thank goodness for her kind pediatrician, sulfa drugs and Elmo On Demand. (Needless to say, we’ve been indulging in a little too much television.)

I was able to finish my green She Also Smiles quilt, and gifted it to a friend who is moving to Portland. I think she was pleased. 

I had a heck of a time getting a picture of it, because when Lucy hears that camera beep, she’s pretty sure she’s supposed to be posing. Also, she’s got this thing about walking on differently-textured surfaces, so she loves to have a quilt spread on the floor to play, sit, and watch television from.

Today? More cutting. I have a new quilt top to show you sometimes this week (as soon as I can snap a toddler-free picture of it) and I’m already ready to start a new project! Here’s hoping to avoid any baby-illness-related unexpected hiatuses. 🙂

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cutting days

Tags

baby, plus quilt, quilts

I’ve been busy recovering from our vacation all. week. Not only did I bring home the world’s biggest sandiest dirtiest pile of laundry, I brought it home to one of the world’s dirtiest apartments. This week I scrubbed the kitchen floor! On my hands and knees, with a brush and a bucket! (Swiffer generation.)

So it’s been nice to finally pull out the stack of greens and blues I sorted out before the trip and get into some cutting. This pile, mostly Hello Pilgrim, is destined to become a simple plus quilt, to be shipped overseas to a lovely couple we know from Groningen who just got married. This past weekend. Yeah, I’m a little late. It’s simple patchwork, so barring disaster, I should be able to get this shipped off by the end of August.

And here’s a terrible picture of that little Kona fat eighth stack I won from Elizabeth over at Oh, Fransson! square quilted throw pillow shams at this point, quilted with thick black embroidery floss. I’ve either got to find a backing print to coordinate with these sort of odd colors, or use the Kona Tangerine yardage I impulsively bought and have had hanging around for two years. I’m certainly interested to see what I decide.

And just in case anybody wonders what I do with the baby during all of this…well. Usually she’s asleep. She takes good 2-3 hour afternoon naps at this point. (I’m convinced she only sleeps 1.5-2 hours of this time, needing the rest to decompress by herself in her crib. She loves her crib, and is clearly her mother’s daughter.) But sometimes I do try and get a few things accomplished while she’s awake, and she looks a bit like this:

That is the striped bar from her Tiny Love baby amusement mat thing, the one she used to lie under when she was 2 months old and bat at the toys. She dragged it out of her closet today. She also sports an Ikea coster, and my favorite Crate and Barrel dishtowel. Why, yes, she does get stuck trying to go through doorways.

reading notes

Tags

book reviews, books, reading notes

I find vacation reading very tricky. In general, I don’t enjoy stereotypical “beach reading.” I’ll never read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, nor James Patterson, nor, probably, any of those Something Borrowed books. I’m embarrassed for Jennifer Weiner every time she postures and poses and tries to take on Jonathan Franzen. This is not to say that I want to take Jonathan Franzen on vacation! (I generally don’t enjoy Jonathan Franzen much more than Jennifer Weiner, truth to tell.) I get stuck between wanting to read something with substance, while also wanting to read something that will truly entertain me. One of my favorite feelings in the world is the feeling of being aggravated every time I have to put my book down and, you know, enjoy my vacation.

Sometimes I succeed when I choose my vacation reading. More often, I fail miserably. I think this particular vacation’s reading was a whopping success, even I didn’t love every book I read. Find out which book I will be shoving in every aquaintance’s face for the rest of the year, after the jump:

summer dinner, vintage pyrex

Tags

baby, kitchen, summer, vegetables, vintage pyrex

Yesterday Lucy and I hit our favorite farm stand and bought a big pile of summer produce. Have you ever heard of a black apricot? Neither had Lucy. We enjoyed one together after lunch today. But last night we made a lovely dinner of corn on the cob, real tomatoes (!!! Lucy’s first real tomato, sentimental tear), pattypan squash, local spinach, farmstead cheddar, and…some Trader Joe’s turkey burgers ahem. Lucy has this little problem. It’s called corn.

She ate most of my ear of corn after I cut it off the cob, and then started up the point-and-hoot thing that toddlers do so well until I handed her the rest of my ear. I think I got three bites. She was *so* happy.

After dinner I sent Lucy off to the tub (bathtime is and always has been Dad’s chore) while I cleaned up and unpacked a very special box my mom brought up from Tennessee for me last week. This box, an old egg box filled with newspaper and vintage Pyrex and glass, has come all the way from Oklahoma to Massachusetts without once having been mailed or brought on an airplane. You can’t replace your late great-grandmother’s Pyrex dishes if some doofus breaks them.

These nesting mixing bowls are clearly the prize. Funny how the colors exactly match Lucy’s summer tomato-squash-corn dinner from last night! This morning I carefully washed every piece and reorganized my cabinets (read: finally packed away the stupid clutter of bottles and sippy cups that my picky kid always refused in the first place) to find a home for each piece. Because I’m going to USE these suckers, baby. After I googled around to make sure it’s still safe to use 30-year-old Pyrex, natch.

P.S. My mom texted me yesterday afternoon to tell me that she saw a similar set of mixing bowls in an antique store for EIGHTY-SEVEN DOLLARS. Seriously.

 

 

 

reading notes

Tags

book reviews, books, reading notes

I’m a library addict. It’s official. The woman who works the circ desk at our local library sees me coming (every four days or so. What? I run out of material) and heads for the hold shelf. It doesn’t really help my anonymity that I carry around the world’s baldest, toothiest, grinniest blond toddler. Oh, us book types. We’d rather be left alone to read, but are forced into interactions with humanity because we keep running out of dadgum books to read. (Sometime ask me about my relationship with the UPS guy who brings all my Amazon Prime loot.)

As I mentioned yesterday, we just went South for a week’s vacation. So, of course, about four days before we left, all of my book holds came in allatonce. I had a huge pile of library books to finish before we got on the plane, because taking library books on vacation makes me feel squicky.

I say all this like I’m trying to justify the number of books I have to talk about this week. As if I ever need to justify myself about the number of books I read. Part I follows the jump:

back from vacation

Tags

baby, beach, photos, vacation

and oh, so sad we are. Somehow one can never drink enough pool drinks, enough pitchers of Bud Lite, soak up enough sun, or laze and read enough books, to justify the huge pile of laundry one must face upon vacation’s end. We spent seven days on the GA coast (one of the Golden Isles), with a day trip to Savannah thrown in for kicks.

Because I’m new at this and didn’t quite manage to plan ahead, things have been quiet here on the blog front, and quiet on the sewing front (one can’t expect to bring one’s machine to the beach! one has toddler chasing to do) but geez oh man what a pile of reading notes I have coming! Stay tuned. This week has me digesting the eight (or so) books I’ve read in the past ten days, cutting into two piles of fabric for two different quilt projects, rushing to finish hand quilting the green quilt, and…I mentioned the laundry and toddler chasing, right?

Maybe I should just buy her a wading pool and park her in it so I can get my work done, eh?