By Brienne

Why I Sew (and Knit)

This post was originally featured on the Kids Clothes Week Blog last February:)

I spend as much time as I can making things. And even when I can’t, it consumes my thoughts. And kids things in particular. As I considered this post over the last few weeks, I couldn’t come up with exactly what it was that compels me to make. Compulsion is the nature of it, to be sure – but why?

There was a time when my marriage was new and my babies were both so little and unfamiliar that hand-making helped me to make sense of domesticity – a concept that I had always flailed hard against.

But that’s not why for me anymore.

As I worked on this leather-feathered vest (using this pattern), I finished listening to a novel, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. About midway through, the book’s writer answered this question for me and much more eloquently than I could have.

“In the evenings, she lit a lamp and unfolded the fabric on the table. Following the pattern offered a kind of comfort, a quiet balance [to her day's work which was] coarse, exhausting [and unpredictable]. Sewing was different. She knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the lines, took each step as it came, and obeyed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be (205-6).”

That passage about a woman sewing a coat for a child is one that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. Even though she’s musing there about stitching, the passage also contributes to the book’s persistent theme of impermanence. The stitching, it helps us to cope with the fleeting nature of things. Of kids and of youth and of thwarted meant-to-bes. And, I think, that’s why I do it.

 Joining Frontier Dreams readers today over here:) And the Small Things knitters over here:)

 

Home and Away

One of the great things about living in Northeastern Minnesota is having easy access to wild places. 

 We've had this vintage trailer for a couple of years but haven't yet had enough time or energy to get it rolling. Last week we brought it to a campground way up in the woods where the raspberries, bears, moose and eagles are plentiful.

It felt good to unplug. Mr. Moody commuted to work all week from our remote campsite while the kids and I luxuriated in half mile hikes that took two hours; browsing blueberry patches, squashing rosehips and trying in vain to catch crayfish. 

We watched two young eagles all week that had nested above a campsite nearby. We saw them eating. We heard them screeching. 

One morning, the kids and I watched a group of French-speaking young people solemnly wade, knee-deep, into the water to spread something that must have been a loved-one's ashes. 

We read stacks of books and wrote some of our own. 

She painted. 

I knitted.

We laughed.  

We made friends with our good neighbors, who serenaded us with their accordian in the afternoons. 

For awhile, I pretended that I would always have these long days with my littles. 

And the days were so good. 

Joining both the Frontier Dreams and Small Things readers today. 

 

Perspective

More and more, my son has been reaching for my camera. It's always been my intention to share photo taking with them but I've never been very good at including them. It's heavy, it's fragile, I'm lazy. 

I'm working on letting him in, though. So, yesterday - when I heard the shutter clicking, I resisted the urge to caution him or to tell him that today was not a good day for it.

He took these in the sewing room yesterday and although, like many moms, I have a deep fear of camera lenses - I am saving them. 

I was fortunate to participate in a photography class with Thea Coughlin last summer. The camera technique was over my head (due in NO part to her instruction - I was just out of it that day:). But the classwork  also included material about the spirit of photography and so much of what she and the other students shared really stuck with me. 

I hesitate to try to narrate the details because her presentation was so well articulated. Do help yourself to one of her classes one day, you'll not be sorry!

Suffice it to say that Thea encouraged us all to be photographed. She shared a slideshow with us of her mom, who - like me and practically everyone else in the class, did not appreciate having her picture taken. Her mom is now gone. And she reminded us that those photos are for our families - who are not likely to look back on them with disdain over imperfect skin or the way that their mama looked in jeans. 

If you're curious about Thea or her photography projects, or if you're a mom, or a blogging mom, or an aunt or a grandma or a sister, check out her across the room project. Just head on over there and read a bit of what she has to say. It will do your sweet soul some good. Be sure to have your kleenex close at hand. 

Love this one he took of his sister, hard at work. 

Do you let yourself be photographed? How do you get past the discomfort? 

P.S. I was working on a Brigitte Needles and Notions Pouch . I need about four or so of these, upsized in order to fit my longer double points. 

 

Joining the Small Things readers today - head on over for loads of knitterly inspiration. 

Slow Sewing: Practicing the Button Placket

I'm getting to be a relatively quick sewer. Relatively. And I feel like I'm beginning to get a feel for patterns - to sort of know what to expect from the sketches, what the techniques used will most likely be and how I can tailor the pieces for what I need. 

But when it comes to technique, I could really benefit from practice... Especially the finishing!! So I'm taking the plunge. I'm trying to tackle techniques that have long been ignored on my sewing list. Patterns that I've been avoiding because I can't necessarily bend them to my will:) 

First up: taming the button placket. Here's my first attempt...

I love buttons. My mom is a pioneering seamstress. She made my baptismal gown, quilts, stuffed toys galore, a poodle skirt for the school play, added feathers to my prom outfit, and on and on. She did put her foot down about making my wedding dress but I think that was because she was already responsible for making the genache for 300 plus guests and because I wanted her to make a Vera Wang or something ridiculous. Oh youth...

Insert gratuitous shot of youth with mom waiting on me literally hand and foot at the end of the aisle, which I insisted on tromping down alone. Wince. 

As a saavy seamstress, she has always had a box full of intriguing buttons.  I remember combing through them as a kid. Some time over the last couple of years, she handed them over to me and now my daughter spends hours sorting them in the sewing room while the machine hums. 

So, I've long wanted to add buttons to projects but it is a tough step. You know, you have a perfectly pretty garment and the final step is to cut holes in it? Eek. But Rae's Geranium dress got me used to the idea a couple of years ago. And she makes the process foolproof. 

I added the buttons to the front, instead of the back and made the placket extra long to overlap the skirt. 

It is not perfect, it almost was, though, but at the last minute I decided to make the buttonholes that I had already marked, washed off and remarked, horizontal instead of vertical and instead of taking the time to mark them again - I eyeballed it and they ended up quite a bit east of where they should have been:( But I still think it's sweet and next time I'll do better. 

About the dress and the alterations that I made: 

• I cut out a size 3/View A
• I changed the hem to a high low, inspired by the dress in this post and using my previous notes for monkeying up a hem. 
• I eliminated the overlapping button placket part on the Geranium's back bodice piece and cut the back bodice on the fold instead of in two. 
• I used this tutorial for making the new, front button placket and made mine 9.5" long. 
• Additionally, I omitted the lining and instead used bias tape as facings. I made the bias tape using this tutorial .
• The lavender shot cotton and gray linen are from here. The whitish/bluish dot is from here (this shop is so super awesome, fastest shipping ever and pixie sticks in their packaging, woot!). 
• The buttons are from here. 

It took me most of the weekend to make. And it really is something that I'm proud of - just a muslin, I don't think that it'll end up in her regular rotation but now I know! I can make bias tape, I can make a placket and practice makes perfect, right? 

What are you working on?

Joining Nicole and her readers today over here.

And finally, just caught a lovely little Geranium with back ties over here. Check it out:)

I Was Wrong.

I was in no way ready to have kids. I didn't plan on it. Never planned on being married, never planned on being a mom, never planned on raising a family in my hometown. My only plan, in my twenties, was to flee. 

Somehow I ended up back on the shore of Lake Superior where I grew up. I fell in love bought property with my boyfriend, lived in a tent, then built a tiny house that we lived in with our two dogs and without running water. I went back to college. I got pregnant. I had two kids that were born 16 months apart. I studied all the time and traveled back and forth to my school, five hours south of home,  every other weekend. 

The travel and school plus two new kids was a strain on us financially, to put it mildly. I taught dance in the evenings to supplement my husband's modest income. We boiled water to do dishes and carried our son up a ladder to bed with us at night. 

I was a fearful new parent. I read everything that I could about parenting and scoured the internet for advice. My college courses offered an opportunity to do scholarly research about child rearing using many different lenses: biology, history, womens studies and literature. It was pretty thrilling to discover concrete research to back up my more casual reading about parenting - you know the guys, Kim John Payne, Dr. Sears and Alfie Kohn. The one that I liked the most was probably Naomi Aldort's, Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves.  

I graduated when I was 31 years old, with honors and with two toddlers in tow. I will never forget how proud I felt. I'll never understand how my husband coped so lovingly with all of the chaos that my education brought to our young family. 

I got to be a pretty confident parent. I've even dared to think that parenting is what I was meant to do - if there is such a thing. I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to raise kids. I'm so glad that we're doing it.

While teaching preschool children to dance, I could never understand why a parent would drop a screaming child off at class and leave them. I judged. I felt so sorry for the little, misunderstood people. The early childhood parenting techniques that I favored included: holding your children when they cried, nursing them (if applicable), sleeping with them - protecting them from harm above all else. 

My son started preschool this past September. I wept when I dropped him off the first day. I pledged never to leave him there if he was crying or distressed, like the children in my dance classes had occassionally been. To me, that would have been an expression of neglect - of disrespect. 

He's always been happy to go. He's quiet and cautious but loves his friends and the teacher. Then we were ill for almost three weeks and he remained home with his sister and I during that time. When he was well and I brought him back, something had changed. He clung to me and screamed. He was exhibiting behavior that I was not at all familiar with. He rarely crys and I really can't remember a tantrum. He's easy going and skilled at articulating his feelings. This was uncharted territory for me. 

I asked his teacher, a friend and studied early childhood educator, what I should do. She gently recommended that I allow him to lean on her for help - that I would leave and that he would remain for his regular afternoon class. 

I trust her fiercely. Eero has known her since he was a wee babe. She is kind and respectful. Her classroom is well ordered and provides predictable rhythyms for the students that include songs during transition times and independent work opportunities followed by reflection time. So, I left. It was awful. And I expected him to have stopped trusting me by the time he got home. 

But I realized that it's not my job to teach my son how to avoid discomfort and suffering. It's quite the opposite, isn't it? The most difficult part of being  a parent, for me, has been teaching my children how to experience sadness, anger and frustration fully and in such a way that they are able to move past it, once it has run its necessary course. 

So I was wrong. I was wrong to say that I would never leave him somewhere while he was crying. And I was most certainly wrong to think badly of those parents who left their distressed children with me. I wish that I had been as compassionate with them as my son's teachers have been with me. Sheesh.

It was very difficult to leave him when he was so sad. And I wish that it hadn't happened. Still, I am confident that my role in this case was to reassure him that he is safe, that he can rely on people outside of our family to help him through difficult times and that although suffering is a part of life, it is fluid. He will move past it. 

I haven't talked about parenting much here. I don't know if I will again but this lesson was significant for me and I hope that it might be a comfort to someone else out there. I'm interested in your thoughts. 

P.S. I'm almost through with the Lila and I'm totally in love. I simply cannot wait to get it off of the needles and onto my shoulders.

Nursing my emotional scrapes todayby joining the Frontier Dreams readers "Keep Calm and CraftOn..." and yarning along with the Small Things readers too. 

Also, hats like his can be found in the shop. And I talked more about his galaxy sweatshirt here. 

Earflap Hat and Girls in the Woods

When I was a wee girl, I was shy. And I liked to spend all of my time reading. I remember reading everything and all of the time. My son is doing it now. Every new sound he can see let's him into a world that he was excluded from previously. Shampoo bottles, road signs, tags in clothing all have new and curious meanings. 

For me, with adolescese came impatience and a creeping sense that reading and pretending just for the fun of it were not the normal things to do. I was self-consious and nervous. Around this time, I met a once-in-a-lifetime friend whose family raised sled dogs and lived primitively in the woods without indoor plumbing or television. Her name was the same as a slain lover in a Johnny Cash tune and was therefore much weirder than mine and hard to pronounce too. We were natural allies. I escaped with her as often as I could. 

We were brave while we drug buckets of water and food through the snow toward the howling, wriggling dogs. We slept in down sleeping bags that kept out the subzero temperatures. We woke with frost on our noses and dressed by the woodstove. And it couldn't have been more perfect. Adolescent superficiality was meaningless there, where there were real-life adventures to be found in the snow-covered pines and on the back of a sled pulled by dogs. 

Knitting, sewing, sketching - handmaking of any kind is connecting me again to the kind of quiet work that I did when I was a little kid. Eowyn Ivey's novel reminded me of who I was as a young woman in the woods. 

I will not spoil it for you here because if you haven't read it, I think that you should. If you're curious about its content, I shared an excerpt from the book  here. And if you do decide to read it, I hope that you'll share it with your nieces and daughters. There are some fierce women in this tale. I think you'll agree that they deserve a spot in your imagination. 

This is my son in the photos. His hat is the Garter Ear Flap Hat from the Purl Bee. Full Ravelry notes are here. I'm joining the Small Things readers and knitters today. Head on over there for some very inspiring knitting and book recommendations galore:)