Month of the Military Child

Every month has a dozen Causes and every Cause has a month. This month is The Month of the Military Child. I have three of those. (kids, not months)

I don’t want you to feel sorry for my kids and their friends. Pity is absolutely unwarranted. I’m also not going to compare my kids to your kids, as they’d be different anyway, what with being different people, and all. But I’ll tell you some things about my kids that might make you think a little more about The Cause of the Month.

**My kids are just kids. They don’t walk around in miniature PT shirts or salute their Dad when he gets home from duty. They don’t have high and tight haircuts, their rooms are a mess, and I have to jump through hoops to get them to do their homework.

**My kids know the value of time.. They know how special it is that they can see their father at the end of the day and they know that not seeing him for a week of field exercises isn’t a big deal. A week isn’t a big deal. A month is a bummer. A deployment will suck, but is manageable. An afternoon at the park with Dad?…priceless.

**My kids know about death. As the children of soldiers, they have friends who’ve lost a parent on the battlefield. They’ve made sympathy cards in art class. Please don’t speak in platitudes or euphemisms around my kids. They’ll feel sorry for you and think you don’t know any better. They know that Daddy may not come home when he goes Over There, but…

**My kids have faith in God beyond their years. They know that Jesus is their best and truest friend. They know they can count on Him. They know if Something Happens, there will be a reason; but they have faith that Daddy will come home and they praise God all the way to Green Ramp.

Military kids can make quick friends and tell 24hour time. They know all the acronyms (PT, PFT, ACU, HRC, NCO, OIC) and the biggest one of all is…

**My kids aren’t afraid to PCS. (that’s moving to civilians). They don’t particularly like it, but they aren’t scared. They know the boxes and movers will come, they know their stuff will be show up in the new place eventually, and they know they’ll be making new friends. They know how to pack their Bag of Special Stuff that the movers don’t get. My kids are excellent road trippers.

**My kids are respectful of the Flag, of old veterans, of Memorial Stones, of Wounded Warriors, of Generals, of Retreat and Taps, and military spouses, and other kids, and of Command Sergeants Major because they get it and can comprehend the hard work and sacrifice behind every single one of those things. Their best friends’ dad is a firefighter…those kids get it, too.

My kids aren’t better than your kids, they may not be tougher or smarter. They aren’t more special than your kids. They are special, though. They’ve said good bye to friends, family, their dad, and their homes. Rejoice for them, however, because they’ve said hello to new friends and adventures. Most importantly, they’ve hugged their Dad and they know what a big deal that is.

Quilting and Tolkien

In which I bastardize Tolkien but giggle anyway…

I have pinned The Three Layers in the Middle Hallway.
One blanket to cover them all,
A million Pins to hold them.

A quilt to shun the frigid air (conditioner)
Three layers to keep the warmth
(fleece so that I won’t itch too much when I really should shave my Hobbit-looking legs.)
The needle and thread from Lobby of Hobbies (whose heart can be turned by my debit card) has pierced the sandwich Cotton.
One blanket roll to rule them all and
a gazillion yards cut on the bias to bind them.

The quilt will soon ensnare a new master, someone who has been waiting for two thousand years (or 4. whatever) and who had believed this project to have passed out of all knowledge. His patience shall be rewarded by great power and the ability to machine wash but lay flat to dry but not in direct sunlight and also don’t fold it but rather roll it up so as to avoid permanently damaging the guts.

The One Quilt will be complete soon. Like in another week or two.

Okay, maybe three.

28 Pleats

Kilt #3…

My respect and admiration for the craft of kilt-making is increasing hourly. real kilts…heavy, woolen beasts that nary a machine has touched… When I finally get these temporary/fun-run/semi-disposable ones finished, I hope to make some true kilts for my little clan. I’ll use leather buckles and tartan and stitch a gazzillion point one invisible stitches behind the pleats.

…until then, I’m having an illegal amount of fun learning how these bad boys come together.

Cheers!

A Slacker Makes a Kilt

I made kilt! Sort of.

It looks like a kilt, sadly, it’s not really all that authentic. Kilts don’t have buttons. Anywhere. At all. And apparently there’s some scientific way of properly measuring them, but I didn’t measure.

Like I said. Slacker

This isn’t a tutorial, as I have no idea what I’m doing. It was super fun, though, and I’ve got four more to make. I figure by the time I’m done with those four, I should know how to make a real one and may even swing for some authentic Tartan. As is stands, I spent less than half the cost of one Pre-made kilt on material for all five of us, including the pin.

I love Hobby Lobby.

I used pinking shears. I hate pinking shears. I didn’t want to sew edges if I didn’t have to, so…pinking shears.

^^ The selvedge had a nifty red edge. Yay! No hemming!

…and then I ironed. And ironed. And ironed. I almost had to turn in my slacker card.

I didn’t want these gaps, so I top stitched the pleats.

I had read on line somewhere that the underside of the pleats were supposed to be trimmed to avoid bulk.

…fricking pinking shears again.

The waistband…

Kilts are supposed to have buckles. I didn’t know this until I’d already used buttons. Apparently, it’s a good idea to research historical garments.

Slacker don’t play dat.

The one thing I did know, is that kilts are supposed to have pins. The pins don’t hold the kilt together, but provide weight on the front apron to prevent, um…Marilyn Monroe moments. I made 5 pins for my clan at The Twisted Jeweler

We’ll be running this here’s the link

(I never measured anything, but I didmake The Boy model for me. I made sure the apron [front panel] went from his hipbone to hipbone, and then again to make sure the pleats went from hip to hip across the back. My measuring tape is still dusty. And angry. …it may try to strangle me in my sleep…)

The rest of the kilts will have buckles instead of buttons, but I’m super happy with how this one turned out. It took one afternoon of puttering and 2 pots of coffee. Awesome stuff!

Now excuse me, I need to slack some more. Cheers!

T-Shirt Quilt Day…whatever

The border has begun…

…slowly…

Now I have this giant, mostly done quilt top hanging in my living room hallway.

(the shoes in the hallway and by the door are fabulous little reminders. They remind me that I forgot to move them before I took that photo. Also, they remind me that I’m too lazy to move them and re-take the photo.)

How do you manage your projects when they have gotten too big for their britches?

T-Shirt Quilt day 989

Just two rows left…

…and then the borders…

…still trying to decide if I should quilt it in the ditch…

…or tie it.

Her Ladyship thinks it’s comfy so far.

What’s your favorite way to finish a t-shirt quilt? Stitching or tying?

T-Shirt Quilt day 984

I started a t-shirt quilt for my husband about 3 years ago. That means for three years I’ve been practicing for an episode of Quilting Hoarders and not throwing anything away. Skulking, gathering, “my precious”ing all the scraps that might possibly maybe somehow someday be squeezed into something remotely crafty.

We will eventually be PCSing to Somewhere Else, which means I’m doing the PrePCS Purge (P3. PPP.); while trying to clean closets, I kept finding stacks and stacks of old shirts. “What the heck?!”, I said. “Quilt. Remember?”, Self responded. “Oh, yeeeaaaaahhhh…”, I replied. Me, myself, and I decided that the quickest way to thin the stacks was to use them for their intended purpose: a quilt.

I didn’t start listening to tunes until the last two rows. I jammed to Dropkick Murphys newest (“The booooys are back!! The booooys are back!! The boooys are back and they’re lookin’ for trouble!”) and also this little jewel:

She’s sort of a mixture of Amy Winehouse/Adele/Billy Holiday meets Maroon 5 meets …I dunno…country jazzy rockishness. (also, sewing along to Dropkick Murphys will net you some seriously fast and questionably straight seamage.)

Her Ladyship assisted.

Today concluded with all the rows being completed and my carpet full of tiny thread corpses.

Tomorrow: I get to cut yards and yards of material on the bias, but with any luck I’ll get this quilt done before the Apocalypse. Or maybe just next Winter.

The Craft Room in the Sky

Today I stayed in my jammies and turned a basket full of stuff like this:

into a smallish bag full of stuff like this:

I won’t go into details about the project itself because it’s a gift, but while I was hauling the ironing board, iron, and cutting mat around, I got thinking…

When I grow up, I’d like to have a Craft Room. As of right now, this is my craft room:

I have a bag for my knitting stuff:

a bag for my current knitting project:

and about three tons of embroidery thread, patterns, quilting blocks, batting, and half-completed Christmas stockings upstairs. I don’t know that a dedicated Craft Room would make me craft more, but I imagine what a luxury it must be to leave a project in it’s unfinished state, out on a cabinet or desk.

My Grandma had a Craft Room. It was glorious and mysterious and smelled of cedar and oil paints. There were shelves upon shelves of yellow tackle boxes full of glitter, sequins, buttons, needles, thread…there were baskets of pine cones and dried leaves and gum drops. There were stacks of magazines and books, including the 1978 WorldBooks with the golden pages. A row of glass baby food jars held microscopic seed beads while a frumpy pile of rope for macramé lived in the corner. Photos of old women in horned-rimmed glasses smiled down from the walls, as if they were trying to tell me how to better mitre a corner of a quilt. There were boards holding paintings of owls and mice, corn husker dolls, and old water pumps. There was an easel, brushes, jars, half-used tubes of oil paints (the better for watching Bob Ross paint his happy little clouds…) next to the ancient and huge Christmas cactus by the window. It was a room of endless possibilities.

Also, if my cousins and I were caught in there without permission, it became a room of “you kids scoot!”.

I want a room where I can tell the kids to scoot. I want a room with squishy corners for reading and spacious counters for cutting. I want to see all my threads on the wall and never have to hide my Bernina.

…maybe when I grow up.

(side note: look! Glass knitting needles! Aren’t they cute?!! Got them on Etsy.)

Out of the Frying Pan, Into a CrapTon of Chemicals and Pain

I’ve been watching too much Netflix lately. Specifically, I’ve been watching too many shows about the deplorable state of the American food system and Big Agriculture.

I get it: factory farming is super-bad. Some people believe killing animals in any way is bad. Egg Chickens are miserable, Momma cows are emotionally and physically tortured for their milk, calves and piglets … Well, you get the horrid, bloody, sad idea.

I’ve changed the way my family eats. We only buy local, grass fed beef and local, free range chickens/eggs. Our veggies are local, too. But we’re lucky: my husband has a good paying job and we are smack in the middle of farm country. What are the chances of others who live in Metropolis and/or don’t make ends meet? They’re left with Wal-Mart cardboard veggies which genetically resemble veggies as much as I genetically resemble the Empire State Building.

These movies I’ve been watching really anger me. Not because of the animals or the points of view, but because of the simpering, intentional ignorance of some very basic points:

**Fine. Killing animals may be bad to you. That leaves plants. Where do the plants come from? Who harvests them? How do they get to your table?

**under-paid, sometimes illegal workers gather the veg in just a few pockets of agricultural greatness in our country. That means that somebody else’s kid goes without good food and decent housing so that we can brag about our organic strawberries. That means 100 gallons of air-polluting, vehicle-emitting gasoline had to truck the stuff here.

** have you SEEN the chemicals they put in “vegan” or “vegetarian” packaged food?? Holy crap!! It’s a poop-storm of unpronounceable death. …but I’m supposed to feel GOOD about poisoning my body so that Big Agriculture won’t get my money.

**folks will protest in the streets against war for oil or demand we all drive a Prius, but by-golly they have to have their California wine or their white asparagus, or their Georgia Peaches, or their Florida Oranges… Just exactly how do you think that stuff gets around the country and on to your self-righteous table?

**Rules and laws come out of Congress, and Congress is elected locally. That means we the people can locally unelect the people who are paid to make laws which only benefit Big Business/Agriculture. We suck when we fail to act on things we want to change.

I like plants. Plants go into my smoothies, my clothes, my shampoo… But I should not assume that just because it’s a plant, it’s harmless to the environment or the process of feeding and clothing me. I have just as much responsibility to know here my cotton pants come from as my steak. Personal responsibility doesn’t stop at the butcher case.

It irks me when folks get on their vegetarian high-horses about meat, but they don’t stop to think about where their veg comes from, how it gets to them, or what the consequences of the process are.

And when somebody wants to smack a burger out of my hand and give me a marshmallow instead because the marshmallow didn’t kill a cow? Nope.

Well, you know what? That marshmallow was made in a pollution-producing factory, packaged in petroleum-refined plastic, and trucked here in a big-ass semi.

I’ll take my cow. You go think about your friggin’ marshmallow and the guy who harvests your organic apples. He doesn’t want your marshmallow, either.

Beginning Knitting

A couple of Christmases ago, my Sistah by Anuthah Mistah (LaToya) taught me to knit. It was great, all snuggled up on her mammoth couch, the kids playing, snow falling, spending time with her. I told her that every time I knit for the rest of my life I’d think of her. I bought yarn and needles and set about becoming a proper knitting fool.

And then I got back home and forgot how to knit.

And then almost two years passed.

My neighbor, Liz, is super crafty. Check out her fabulous blog here. It’s way more organized and useful than mine. Anyway, Liz knits. She was knitting and it gave me the bug and now I’m knitting again, too.

Here are some of the YouTube videos that helped me to remember the things Toy showed me two years ago:

how to knit: the basics

how to knit: the purl stitch

how to knit a scarf

Super helpful videos!!

So here’s what I’m working on:

^^^^ this is a scarf for Boy#1. I started this before I watched the video on the purl stitch and scarf-making.

But I’m mostly excited about this:

^^^^ yep. A Gryffindor scarf.

I know…my Nerd is showing. I don’t care. (I’m also going to make Hogwarts cloaks for us for next Halloween. I got Gryffindor patches at Universal. Eeeeek!!)

I have no words of wisdom to impart about knitting, as I’m such a Noob. I will say this, however:

Knitting Needles can totally take out a zombie. (and the wooden ones can be used to stake vampires!) Any tool that can make warm stuff and nets and wipe out the undead?? Gotta keep those bad boys handy.

Cheers!!