PINC GLAS AND YELOFEED (glove pictures)

Here are a couple of glove pictures I haven't shown you yet. I packed up a big order of gloves this spring - the one on the top is a freebie I threw in as a thank you for the massive order. I was getting a little tired of monograms at this point so the geometric folk kind of flower design was really fun. I will definitely be doing more of those.



After the big order was this pair.



They were a special order.



#8 on my order list - it says: Ailsa (the name of the orderer, my daughter) A H (The desired monogram) pink gloves. Yellow thread. You know, all the details. Don't you just love kindergarten spelling? I love that thread starts with the letter F. Precious.

On Water. And how to get more of it into you.

We’ve been struggling with water in our house this year. Our older daughter has a medical condition and meds which require her to drink a lot of water.

Her specialist is a very different sort of doctor. I like him. At our April appointment he brought out a spreadsheet and detailed how we could increase her water intake a little at a time at specific times during the day to eventually get us to where she needs to be. I get spreadsheets, and this made a lot of sense to me.

But I am really really random and following a specific, timed, numbered consistent plan like that was doomed before it began. Oh, we gave it good effort, but fell off the boat in a couple of weeks. Fast forward to last week’s appointment and I realized we need to take a radically different approach and be serious about this.

And that is how the race began. A. and I are in a race to see who can drink more water in a day. To make it fair we somewhat arbitrarily decided on a 2:1 ratio – as in 1oz of her water = 2oz of my water. The logic is that I am at least twice as big as her. I should mention that it’s not just water that counts – juice, popsicles, soup, jello, freezies, snow cones, lemonade, iced tea, anything wet other than milk is fair game (and we’re looking for new ideas here – please comment if you have any suggestions.).

We’ve got bar graphs and everything.




Hers on the left, mine on the right. Notice how my bars are twice as fat? That’s the 2:1 ratio. We just have to compare the height of our bar graphs to tell who is winning.

She totally creamed me yesterday. We’re 4 days in and she’s already only a couple of ounces away from her daily goal. Now, doubling your water intake in 4 days is definitely not recommended, but it shows that this method is really working. Hopefully it is sustainable. We’ll have to figure out how to make it sustainable. And how to make it work when school resumes in (eek) 5 weeks.


Now I have to tell you that it all falls apart on the weekends. Remember that random part? Ya, the kid needs set meal times and routines to get her body back into a normal rhythm. I am totally lost on how to do this on the weekends. I could do a whole post on weekends because I can’t decide if we’re severely dysfunctional on the weekends or maybe that’s the only sane part of the week.

Well, I’m off to fill the water bottle again and head to the bathroom for the 4th time this morning! Please comment if you have anything to say, I'd love to hear your experiences, ideas, wisdom.

why I’ve been gone so long.

I had a dream one night where we were all becoming mindless robots.

I’m worried about that. Worried about living a life without meaning. I think we all should be at some level. I believe that’s part of what it is to be human. Many things that I won't go into here led up to this realization, but I'm deciding to do something about it. I have to.

So I’m readjusting my attention to things that are more grounded. Instead of trolling the internet looking for humans, I’m meeting them in person. There’s a group of like-minded moms that meet for coffee and support. Reading blog after blog looking for something to make me smile has been replaced with a running conversation through the day with my sisters (love the internet for that).
I catch myself when I’m bored or annoyed turning to facebook or the blog reader and am making a conscious effort to turn it off and deal with whatever it is that I am avoiding, spending time with the family, neighbours or making some art (or bread) instead. I’m even reading a real paper book for the first time in a long time. And, yes, it does feel better than the shallow un-focused existence. I just didn’t know how to get here before.

So where does that leave this blog and my shop? I don’t know yet. I’m sure I’ll return to blogging. I’ve always enjoyed doing it for myself, not the readers. It really bugs me that I can’t put lots of pictures on here and do it properly, though, a problem that I’m sure technology could solve if I threw some money at it.
The shop, maybe not. I can be creative without the hassle of listing and promoting. I always thought it would be a good back up if I got laid off – I could easily throw it into high gear – but this doesn’t seem like quite enough anymore. It challenged me creatively, that I will miss for sure, but I’m sure I can find that passion elsewhere. I keep going back and forth on this one.

So that’s where it stands. I’m having trouble articulating all of this because I’m still in the middle of it. And this is, of course, the abridged version. If you have any thoughts, please comment, I’d love to hear it.

gisele

Mumford And Sons - Awake My Soul

This is just where I'm at these days.

Wouldn't this make some good art - Awake my soul.

p.s. If you haven't yet you should check out more Mumford and son's videos. I'm digging this music right now.

blogging break ahead.

I’m a little out of sorts this week. a lot out of sorts today, we put our big old dog down last night. It was the compassionate thing to do. But it still feels pretty crappy.

Guest Post

Guest Post!
Check out my guest post on the lovely and gracious Gina's blog.
Lots of pictures, I promise, and I can't wait to see what her other guest posters come up with for the rest of the week.

what inspires you?

Gina (from Dreamland) is having a multi-week long discussion on her blog on creativity and invited me to guest post there on Monday. Here’s the prequel (you know, like star wars had a prequel?) to that post. Like many of you, I am driven to create things. I am happiest when I’m busy making something. It’s my fatal flaw.

I create mainly for 2 reasons. First, I have a brain that often spins out of control and leaves me behind. By doing something with my hands I can trick it into slowing down, then I catch it and get it to do what I want. I didn’t always know this trick so I try to tell others often.

I also create because it makes me feel whole. It makes me feel like I fulfilled some higher purpose beyond the necessary getting things done that takes up so much of our energy and time. I believe there ought to be more to life than just getting through it, and being creative fulfils that need in me. I feel whole again.

So, you see, this drive to create goes way beyond simply making something pretty or useful. Lots of people don't get that. They think we're just playing around. Which we are, what's so wrong with that?