Frisco Has Fits

You should totally never call the city "Frisco," by the way, unless you're a tool. But Yerba Buena was a hit, of course, with all its green space and pigeons to chase and awesome murals and painted tiles:
The Modern Art Museum, unfortunately, was so not a hit with the under-five set that Willow had a hysterical tantrum after a total of about eight minutes--a record? Back to Yerba Buena! I gave Willow a meaningful lecture then, the subject of which was the fact that since she was one, her dad and I have visited every children's museum, hands-on museum, zoo, and dinosaur resting place within a four-hour drive of wherever we've been, without complaint. Unreasonable, then, that the single time we'd like them to accompany us to an "adult" museum, she has a fit? Will did not agree. It turns out that I don't have kids who are as eager to engage in intellectual and cultural pursuits as I am, happily wandering the modern art museum, sketchbook and crayons in hand, or sitting, rapt, at the opera, weeping at all the right parts, re-enacting the death scenes later with the dress-up clothes. Off to Crissy Field.
Crissy Field rocks real hard.

This brings us to the second 24 hours of knitting--stop looking at how I messed up the color change!
Next up, beaches! Beaches! Beaches!

Berkeley Has Dinosaurs

Berkeley has dinosaurs:
And ample opportunities for knitting. Here's the first 24 hours of my Ravenclaw scarf, from Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter:
You can see that I messed up the color change--I was supposed to change colors, knit two rows, then tie the new color on, but I added the silver, knit two rows with both, then thought, "Huh. That looks like crap." Knitting must bring out my anal side, because I actually thought for a minute about unraveling the silver and trying again, but I don't unravel--I've barely begun convincing myself to rip out missewn seams on the rarest of occasions. Eh, it adds character. And I did teach myself circular knitting in the very back seat of a minivan driving over the mountains, and I'm prone to motion sickness, so there you go.

Next up, San Francisco! More knitting!

P.S. It didn't take long for the unicorn band-aids to see some action:

I can't convince the girls to try out the skull-and-crossbones ones, however; guess they'll be for me, darn.

Our trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium went something like this...



... Um, yeah, and we saw lots of fish, too.

While in Santa Cruz, I bought these unicorn band-aids and , which are awesome. And they actually stick, which is much more than I can say for the crap rainbow bandages I bought from Wal-mart one time when I was trying to help the girls rock their ouchies without contact from media characters. I have also, due to California's depth of stores, finally managed to make a pilgrimage to Torrid, the store of awesome clothes for curvy girls. I restrained myself, in this crazy spree of buying actual new clothes (It felt weird, the nice fitting room and the mirrors and the privacy, and the tags with the sizes RIGHT ON THEM, and not searching for stains--actually, I didn't like it very much), to stuff that I obviously couldn't make or modify myself, and thus I ended up with, among other treasures, this skull tank top (Me? A tank top? But it fits!) and this pair of denim capris with skulls embroidered on the cuffs (Me? Capris? But they fit!) and, um, this other skull tank (Sort of a theme here? But seriously, you don't know how many fat clothes I've seen with stuff like Tweety Bird on them--skulls make waaay better fat clothes), and a couple more things, and yeah, one more thing with skulls.

In tomorrow's update--dinosaurs! Yarn store! And the grand revelation of the first rows of my very first real knitting project! Oh, and we're going to Berkeley.

More Sightseeing, Less Crafting

A long blog silence, but here we are in California, sleeping in Matt's childhood twin beds (lucky they're not still bunked), chasing seagulls (Willow refers to them as "sea eagles"), watching the girls bond with their grandparents, and visiting every hands-on children's museum in the Central Coast. At the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, I learned an interesting fact about my hometown-- --Sydney and Grandma Janie had a tea party--
--I tried to get one of those photos of my family in the room with the altered proportions so that they look all weird compared to each other, but certain members of the family would not cooperate--
--and the "paint your own face" face painting booth was a BIG hit:
So no, there hasn't been much crafting, but I do have plans, at least, to visit Uncommon Threads tomorrow (beware of the stupid baa-baa noise when the page opens) to get the exact colors of Cascade 220 yarn that I need to make the Hogwarts House Scarf (I'm a Ravenclaw, don't you know) from . I have my brand-new circular knitting needle in my possession, and I'm sure that if I could just do the exact same stitch about eight billion times in a row, like I will with this scarf, then I'll finally be able to remember how to do it the next time I knit. Is it too ambitious to be thinking about House Scarves for the whole family for Christmas (Matt and Sydney are Hufflepuffs, and Willow is a Gryffindor)?

I also found the most awesome book in Matt's mother's house, and after I asked her to make the quilt for the girls, she told me I could just have the book (and make it my own damn self, darn it). But how amazingly, awesomely awesome is ? I am really, really excited about making these blocks using only thrifted/vintage materials. You have to watch out, though--the layout for the applique is spot-on for the character blocks, but the actual block illustration is just an example of what your block *could* look like with a little more creativity and skill than the book provides. For instance, the Fozzie Bear block is made with the actual fabrics used to make, you know, Fozzie Bear--good luck with that one, home sewer.

And last but not least, my Sublime Stitching Stitch-It Kit is sitting there patiently in my luggage, waiting for me to whip it out and learn some basic, yet valuable, embroidery skills. On account of that's what vacations are all about, right? Ooh, and visiting local thrift stores!

So Easy, Even Small Children Can Do It!

Look at my little urchin--CLEANING THE RUG! Our rug always needs cleaning, but after an "incident" this morning (I'll spare you the horrifying details, except to tell you that it involved Sydney and a diaper, and I almost barfed), the rug NEEDED cleaning. I've probably mentioned before that I am obsessed with --I use some recipe from that book every day, I swear--so this afternoon I made up the Carpet Cleaner recipe (subsituting baking soda for washing soda--washing soda cleans better, but is a little too caustic for our house) and started scrubbing. Willow, seeing me up to something that doesn't immediately look like drudgery, is immediately all, "I want to help!" Help away, kiddo!

It's just about my favorite aspect of natural cleaning, particularly making your own cleaners--the kids can actually productively use them to help me clean, and since I know exactly what's in the cleaners and that they cost about a penny to make, I know that they're not harming themselves or the house or wasting money when they begin to clean a little, um, boisterously. Sydney likes to take the spray bottle of vinegar and tea tree oil, for instance, and spray, well, everything--walls, tabletops, couch, cat, floor.

When she does that, I think, "Oh, good! The baby's cleaning."

Simple Dolls

Willow hasn't yet really been into dolls--sure, she had her fair share of eco-conscious cloth dolls and dolls made by Mama, complete with doll cloth diapers and kid-sized doll slings (which are great for carrying toy dinosaurs in, apparently), but the types of toys she prefers over dolls are vast, indeed. Sydney, now... Sydney likes herself some "babies." Sydney loves the cloth dolls and the dolls made by Mama and the cheap plastic discard dolls from Goodwill and stuffed animals you can treat like dolls and kittens you can treat like dolls and even playing with her old toy garage this morning, I heard her talking to the Matchbox cars--"Momma. Dadda. Baby car--night, night."


And so, as it was with the dinosaurs, when my kid gets into something, I tend to come to appreciate it, too. And by appreciate, I mean make stuff: I really love, now, felting old wool sweaters and sewing them (this post on SouleMama about dying wool felt is about, I fear, to take me in another new direction) into awesome stuff. I've done felt food, shapes for the girls' felt board, ornaments, pincushions, stuffed animals, quilts, and all manner of other things that both turn out and definitely do not, all with tacky old wool sweaters cut up and felted in the washing machine. I'm most fond right now, though, of making children's playthings, balls and cubes and bean bags and these dolls, for my Syd and my etsy, all with really simple shapes.
It's in some ways a response, I think, to the wide variety of overstimulating children's toys on the market today, sort of like in The Bean Trees: A Novelwhen Taylor's roommate, Lou Ann, goes to work at a salsa factory and all her cooking becomes really, really spicy, so on the nights when Taylor cooks she makes the blandest foods she can think of, white fish and mashed potatoes and such. I make really simple toys for kids, with simple, organic shapes and single fabrics with interesting textures----and my girls love them, at least. Although I don't know what possessed me to put the creepy eyes on:

Gettin' Our Jump On

I really did do lots of stuff today. I cleaned up after the party (a little), finished off the birthday cake, just nearly finished my stuff for my Christmas in July Stashbuster Swap over at Craftster, photographed these awesome little guys for my etsy shop----picked up all our stuff from the Monroe County Fair (Willow and I have both been obnoxiously toting around our Champion ribbons, on account of we are All That), hung out with some friends who came by (Oh, the party was yesterday? Oops!), thrifted at Goodwill (pillowcase for a dress, T-shirt for a quilt, book for my babies, videogame manual for my guy), and spent at least an hour coloring with Willow in her new stained glass coloring book. And yet, the vast majority of the day was still spent doing this:
and this:
and this:
until finally, finally, finally, for the first time in my life, I am rendered Utterly. Jumped. Out. What satisfaction can compare to the satisfaction of that?

And so, to tomorrow, when all I have to do is start getting ready for our Thursday trip to California. That won't be stressful, right? Right?