Sew Special: Tunic Sweater and a Scrappy Quilt

I've been working on this little eyelet tunic sweater off and on for about a year now. The yarn is very fine and so it was rather slow going and I would set it aside whenever I got bored.  It took so long to finish that I had to make some adjustments to the pattern to make sure that it would not be too small. 

I finished this little cropped vest awhile ago, but could not settle on the right buttons for it. The yarn is a mixture of hemp and wool and gives it kind of a rustic look.  I think it will be a cute fall maternity item over some of my shirts.

I also started on this year's scrap quilt this week. In contrast to last year's Ugly Quilt, I had a lot of scraps that go nicely together this year.  (Probably a result of my goal to focus more on making clothes for myself). I am not sure what size it will be, but I am hoping to make it twin or full so that it can be used on the kiddos' or guest beds. 

Family Schooling Summary

For FHE this week we went to a playground that is about a mile from our house. Every time I go there I think, "we should come here more often".  But it is huge and there are usually a lot of kids there, so watching all 3 kiddos by myself seems too risky. The kiddos had a blast! It is fun to see their progress on the parts that were hard for them last year. 

Parks around here have so much cool stuff -- like this pogo stick ride.

We did a lot of reading this week (per usual), workbook activities, joy school, soccer classes, dance, and co-op school.  Our little old house seems to offer endless opportunities for creating these "reading nests".

The kiddos have each been doing a bunch of fun activities at their co-op school.  Here are two examples from the "Art as Science" class and "My Amazing Body" that big sister A is taking.

Recommended Reading: Classics List

I have a bunch of books on my reading list right now.  Basically, I found a list of "classics that everyone should read" and decided to read all those that I had not already read. Here are the ones that I read this week and last:

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
 A watched a movie of this book at some point and all I remembered about it was that it was a ghost story.  That in mind, I thought that I would probably not like it. Wrong.  I liked it the best of all the books that I read this week. Each character was real with their own multifaceted personality. The descriptions of the setting were rich, but not overly drawn out. I highly recommend it for anyone 14 and up.  There are some violent scenes.  I think it is an adult book, only because it would be hard to have enough life experience to appreciate the characters' personalities otherwise.

 2. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
This is another book that I would have classified as kind of a "scary" book based on the dust cover description. I read it in 2 days. It was absorbing to see through the eyes of the "heroine".  It is written in the first person and there is a lot of inner dialogue, which can be very annoying, but helped illustrate her insecurities and perceptions without being annoying in this case. The ending is not perfectly tidy and leaves some questions unanswered.

3. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
This is a good book in terms of illustrating marriage customs in India.  It would be appropriate for the teenagers in my cultural anthropology class. But it is a sad story and I did not like the ending. I don't recommend reading it for fun.

4. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
I wish that someone would have told me to read this when I was about 8 or 10.  I would have loved it. It is a great kids adventure story about sailing, camping, and islands.  It takes us into the imaginations of the children without losing touch with the real world around them.

Chicken Update: Lots of eggs and the Truth about what Chickens say

We think that 4 of the 5 hens are laying now, since we have been getting 2 brown and 2 blue eggs each day. 

The hens seemed to be having trouble understanding where they were supposed to be laying. They kept kicking all the pine shavings out of the nest box too.  I decided to try filling the nest boxes with straw and that seems to have done the trick. That bright blue one is one of the wooden Easter eggs that we are using to give them the right idea. 

On Saturday while hubby was out mowing the lawn he tried to move the chicken coop and one of the chickens, Sally, would not come out.  He looked in and saw she was in the nesting box. He came back after a few minutes and saw her singing about what a beautiful egg she had lain. Here is the video of that cool moment:

Family Schooling Summary

Monday was our first day of the LDS Co-op school, called SHARP.  It is about an hour drive and we took the back way since I wanted to avoid traffic.  On the last turn before we reached the schoolhouse parking lot big sister A threw-up all over herself and her car seat. Did I mention that we were an HOUR from home?  I think that it was just nerves and maybe a little car sickness.  She said that she felt fine and wanted to go to her first day of school.  Picture me taking deep cleansing breaths of fresh air as I stepped out of the car trying to come up with a rational plan.
I left everyone buckled in their seats and went in to talk to the head teacher for a minute.  I told her the situation and that the class that I teach was scheduled for the first hour.  I proposed that I bring brothers M and S in for their classes and leave the course packets for my students to start looking at while I went somewhere to buy big sis A a new outfit. She thought that was a good plan.
It worked great except that big sis A had gotten impatient with waiting while I took the others in and arranged everything. She got out of her carseat and took off her yucky clothes and was standing there in just her underwear when I came back to the car. Some of the puke got spread around in that process. Leather upholstery is such a life saver.  I wiped her and the car off with diaper wipes.  Then we cobbled together an outfit of the fleece pullover that little bro M had worn out to the car that morning and little brother's extra "accident" shorts, and were back in the school, only about 10 minutes late for class.  She did not get sick anymore after that.  My class went relatively smoothly and all the kiddos really enjoyed the day. Then it was time to get back in the car to go home. Yuck!
Part 2 of the plan was to make a trip to Walmart (5 minutes away) and buy big sister A her booster carseat (we were planning to do that when the new baby came anyway) and a couple boxes of baking soda.   I doused the pukey carseat with the boxes of baking soda and that held down the smell and absorbed yuckyness until I could pull it out at home.  I installed big sis in a different seat in her new booster and we were off. A very exciting first day!

Here are some pics that I took of the kids in their classes the 3rd hour of school:

Brother M has a music class for 3rd hour--

Big Sis A has "Science as Art"

And baby S has nursery/free play time:

Soccer class also started this week.  Here are some shots daddy took of them in class-- a blur of motion:

Garden Progress: Free Mulch

I think I mentioned this last year, but I am on the county's list of people interested in free mulch.  If they happen to grind up a tree nearby they call and say "can you take a delivery today?".  It always seems to happen at an inopportune time...  Last year it was November, so I did not have enough time to get it all spread where I wanted it before the first snow and it sat a long time. This time it was the Thursday before we were going to be gone to the amusement all day Saturday (aka "work outside day"). And it was about twice as much as last time! A really huge old ash tree they told me it had been. And hubby was worried about it being against the garage with rain in the forecast -- last time it flooded the garage.  In short, I decided to call in a favor.  The missionaries are always asking me to tell them some kind of service that they can do for us. We feed them dinner regularly and I work with them a lot as a ward missionary.  So I called them Thursday night and they happily agreed to come at 11 am Friday.  They distributed my huge pile of mulch in less than 2 hours and then I feed them all (4 Elders) pizza for lunch. It was awesome.  It would have taken me at least 10 hours to do it myself.  We had plenty to do a thick layer around all the beds, the trees, and a reserve pile for the chicken coop. 

We have been slowly clearing beds as the summer vegetables die off. For winter veggies we have one bed of quinoa greens, 2 beds of turnips, and one bed of beets and various other lettuces.  I am persisting in my resolution not to buy any new seeds for this year, so those are all leftover seeds from the last 2-3 years.

Reuse Recipe: Old Baby Blankets

With three kiddos and another on the way, we have accumulated a lot of baby blankets over the years -- about 20.  Of course, I would never upcycle the special family made ones, but the store bought ones seemed a good way to pare down the mass of them.
Here are some quick pics of the flannel PJ pants that I made for big sister A with 4 of them.  All I did was lay them out flat and the pattern on top.  They are all different colors and patterns since the blankets were different on each side. No complaints from the testers though.  Their least favorite was the only pair that was all matched.

Family Schooling Summary

This week we had Joy School, dance class, and practice worksheets from big sister's new workbook - First Grade Brain Quest.  I like this one because it includes a variety of subjects. Big Sister A has been quickly working her way through it.

This weekend we were excited to see some dear friends from France who were vacationing in NYC, but came down to meet us half way in between so we could spend the day together on Saturday. We met at Dutch Wonderland, an amusement park in Lancaster, PA.  It was the kids first time going to a real amusement park. The rides are mostly for little kids and so it was a perfect fit for them.

 Here we are with our French buddies on the little train ride around the park.

The cousins came for a few hours too. Here they are riding the tall bouncing frog ride.

Brother M was a bit uncertain about this ride at first:

They had a cool animated dinosaur exhibit where they moved and make noises. Baby S was convinced that he was in real danger.

It rained on and off during the afternoon and we ate lunch indoors, had a covered boat ride, a monorail ride, and "Princess Storytime" during that part. Here is brother M watching out for S on the boat ride.

We watched a performance of "The Frog Prince" with talented divers that was a little scary for me. Especially, when they jumped from the highest tower, about 3 stories up, into a 9 ft pool. Yikes!

Then we had a mini Christmas from the red Mustang sleigh of our French buddies and Rozenn playing Santa's elf. Even after a long day of fun times, she had the kids full and undivided attention.

It was so great to see them, but one day was too short and I was very homesick for France in the car ride home.  

Recommended Reading: Things Fall Apart and Gene Everlasting

I read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart as an undergrad at BYU, but forgot a lot of the plot details over the last 10 years. I am happy that teaching my cultural anthropology class gave me an opportunity to read it again.  It takes place in Nigeria during the time when tribal society and customs were being pushed aside by Christian missionary efforts and the new power structure of colonial government. In cultural anthropology, you are supposed to try to view things with cultural relativism, in other words without your own biases. I find that harder to do in terms of religion than government. Culture by nature changes and adapts to environmental conditions and the availability of new knowledge does not seem a bad thing.  The missionaries in the book do not use force, only invitation.  They also use science to prove old taboos wrong - like twins being evil or a forest being haunted and unlivable.  The political changes are quite the opposite -- violent and humiliating.  Forcing tribesmen to do an immediate change from one power structure to another causes tension and makes life miserable for the generation caught in between new and old.
It is violent, but not graphic and very educational. I recommend it to anyone 13 and older.

I read a lot online about small scale farming and one website recommended several books by Gene Logsdon.  My library only had Gene Everlasting.  I requested it without really knowing what it was about beyond farming. The main focus of the book is the author's experience with cancer and what he learned from cancer in the context of his life experience with farming.   I found it a slow read, very philosophical.  My favorite parts were the practical suggestions on farming and observations about how nature heals and replenishes itself.