end of the playing with sweaters

Final tally: I've made 8 longies, 5 soakers, and 3 hats. Two of the longies aren't usable-the first pair i made are just too stiff and scratchy and i shrunk one pair in the wash :( But not bad for $35 worth of thrift shop sweaters.

We're packing up the house so no more machine based creations for a while. We're heading back to my homeland for Christmas then will hit the road, going wherever Thairo has projects for a few months. I'm excited about being a temporary gypsy, hopefully will turn my creative juices towards photography or who knows maybe even paper writing.

More fun with old sweaters

so I've made more longies and a couple of soakers which are good under clothes or next summer when it's too hot for long pants.




And realized yesterday when we were out culture crawling that kidlet really needs some hats that actually stay on his head. So I made these two

woolies!

I don't think my great-grandma ever heard the term "upcycle" but I think she would have liked it. While I may not look much like that particular grandma, I definitely inherited her frugalness (it's frugal people not cheap). And as an ecological bonus, upcycling means I can get new stuff cheap and with very little environmental impact which are the 2 reasons that we're cloth diapering the kidlet.

To date we've been pretty simple with our diapers- prefolds (those square diapers with more fabric in the middle) and wrap covers. But I've been reading breathless, fawning reviews about wool and fleece covers. Basically the cotton diaper absorbs the liquid and the natural water repelling tendencies of wool or fleece keeps that moisture from getting onto the bed or my pants. I was skeptical but tried putting him in fleece pjs in just a diaper, no cover and was really impressed. Kidlet hasn't had any diaper rash and using the most breathable cover possible should keep that streak alive. So, I took the plunge and got some wool sweaters from the salvation army to turn into diaper covers. I'll make some diaper soakers in the future but I decided to start off making wool longies (pants) out of the sleeves of my recycled sweaters.

Close up of sweater before I felted it nearly out of existence


I should have taken a picture to show how big this sweater was before felting but I was just too excited to get the felting started. and the sweater kind of stunk so I wanted to get it washed. Anyway here's the sweater after felting-it went from a very large mens XXL to a weird shaped womens small.


Look how thick this material is now. I was afraid it would kill my sewing machine.


I cut off the sleeves and used a pair of kidlet's pants as a pattern guide. It's just an optical illusion that one sleeve/leg is much wider and shorter.


Standard pants crotch sewing-put right sides together one leg inside the other and sew. I used a zigzag stitch just to make sure that it wouldn't unravel but seriously this sweater has been turned to felt, it's no longer a knit.




Use the hem of the sweater as the waist band of the longies


And they're done


Yesterday I made 2 more pairs of longies out of 2 more upcycled sweaters. The orange pair is from a 100% merino sweater that I also felted a bit more than I wanted. I added a diamond shaped crotch gusset because the legs are pretty skinny and not streatchy. The blue longies are from an 80% wool 20% acrylic sweater that I abused along with the orange and purple sweaters but it didn't felt nearly as much. That pair is nice and stretchy and not too thick. It was the easiest to make-I think it took me less than half an hour to make that one. I made these pretty big so they are longies now but the waist size should be big enough that kidlet can wear these for quite a while.


We've tried both the purple and blue longies overnight with no leaks. And the beauty of wool is it doesn't need to be washed after every use, as long as it's not poopy or stinky it just needs to be air dried between uses.

Car seats and diapers

Since the kidlet really only sleeps next to/on me, I haven't been terribly mobile. But eating at my computer through grad school has made me a decent one handed typer, so I've been trolling the internet pretty much constantly the past few weeks. First I was in search of the perfect car seat that would fit the still tiny kidlet till he's a big kidlet and is super safe and keeps him rear facing for as long as possible. Oh and it has to fit in our car. Apparently so many of the car seat buying public have minivans that car seat makers don't feel the need to make seats fit sedans anymore. Arg, we went through 2 'perfect' seats till we found one that actually fits-First Years TrueFit convertible. It seems really comfortable for the kidlet, but it kind of wide so fitting someone on the seat beside him isn't as easy as I was hoping.

Now I'm on to obsessively researching cloth diapers. We went with simple old fashioned cotton prefold diapers and PLU covers for when he was first born-worked well and laundry was simple-rinse all diapers and wipes, wash everything on hot with just a bit of detergent, rinse again, dry. But he's outgrown his newborn diapers so I'm figuring out what is next. We're still using mostly prefolds with covers but I'm trying out some pocket diapers too since they keep his cute little butt dry while he's in his diaper for long chunks of time at night. The pockets that I got came with microfiber inserts which are supposed to be super absorbent but are the tactile equivalent of nails on a chalk board. I've bought some hemp inserts and am just waiting to get them-they should be even more absorbent than the microfiber and not feel horrible. Yes this really is how I'm spending my days when I'm not snuggling, feeding, or changing the kidlet. Stay tuned for my further musings on hemp vs cotton vs microfiber. or for a real treat I may discuss laundry

Pictures of kidlet

I've decided not to post any more pictures of the kid here (I'll continue pretending this could turn into the sciency blog I thought I was starting). For now, I'm just going to post them in a private picasa album. If I haven't sent you an invite to see that album and you would like to, send me an email.

Last garden update

So I've been kind of distracted the past few weeks and didn't see the early signs of late blight on the tomatoes. This week my mom was here to help out with the little guy (nom de plume still not determined). Anyway she loves tomatoes as much as I do, so we went to pick some and realized that they were very badly damaged. We picked those that we thought were salvageable which wasn't very much. As soon as it stops raining we'll have to go tear out all the plants so we stop being a source of blight spores in the neighborhood. All told I think we got less than 10 pounds of tomatoes out of the garden this year. so sad

Kidlet is here

He hasn't chosen a nom de plume yet. So kidlet will have to do for the moment.

Picking tomatoes early, I guess

Ok our friend google showed me this article from K state

http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/news/sty/2005/harvest_tomatoes071805.htm

I tend to completely believe extension agents. So if he says the tomatoes will ripen off the plant, I'll try it. Even if they're slightly less tasty it'll still be taster than no tomatoes.

What is doing this and how can I kill it????

Here are a few pictures of the tomatoes that were munched on today. Sooooo irritating. Just a few days before the fruit is good to go, something eats it. I think this is happening during the day, I checked the tomatoes this morning on my way to work and I'm pretty sure that they were whole. but this afternoon found this. What ever it is is eating both red and yellow tomatoes.

I still haven't gotten a tomato out of the garden this year.

Thairo's first diaper change

No blood or tears were shed, total success in my mind.

Something is eating the tomatoes-AAACCCKKKKK

After the not great tomato weather we've had this summer, we were finally going to have ripe tomatoes this week. BUT something keeps eating them just a day or 2 before I'm ready to pick them. I'm not sure if it's birds or skunks or what? So I still haven't picked a ripe tomato from the garden this year.

Labor day salmon feast

The salmon run this year is incredible-as in more salmon than they've seen in the river since the 1913 and this after 4 years of no commercial fishing because there just weren't any sockeye running. Fortunately for us, our very nice upstairs neighbor loves to fish and even better share fish. So we have a quarter sockeye to grill. With it we're doing veggie kebabs, wild and brown rice, and a pistachio vinaigrette that we adapted from American's test kitchen.




Pistachio vinaigrette (so I don't forget how to make it cause it's pretty much the best sauce we've every had with salmon)

1/3ish c crushed pistachios
2 tsp very finely chopped onion or shallot
4 tsp cider vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
2 tsp honey
2 tsp water
1 tsp tarragon
zest and juice from half a lemon

More baby prep

I didn't sleep much last night, either because I have a cold or I have a cold now cause I didn't sleep well last night and pregnancy has knocked my immune system to non-existent. Anyway, I skipped work to sleep alot today. But now I'm feeling the urge to actually accomplish something for the day. So I'm boiling diapers. Apparently this is a way to prep cloth diapers that doesn't involve 8-10 trips through the washer and dryer. Considering that part of the reason we're doing cloth diapers is to lessen the kidlet's environmental impact, I thought that anything I can do to reduce the number of loads of laundry he generates is good.

We'll see how well this works. I'm using our huge canning or feed an army stockpot which fits a dozen prefolds. I found instructions on the internet, which of course must be true cause someone posted it, that suggests between 15-45 minutes of boiling. I'm going with somewhere around 30minutes. Once I get them all boiled I'll run them through at least 2 hot washes and drys. I'm not sure how I'll know if they are fully prepped...

my Sigourney Weaver impression

This may be the first of many videos of the kid that I find amusing that pretty much no one else is interested in. But what can you do, it's my blog.

Almost ripe

These are sweet million cherries and should be ripe really soon. The tomatoes are nearly a month behind where they were last year.

getting there babywise

We decided to cosleep with the kid-partially because it's supposed to
be good for his psychological development, mostly because cosleeping
breastfeeding mothers get better sleep. But our bed is not big
enough for 3 of us and I'm less worried about rolling over and
squishing the kid if he has his own space. Hence, we made a sidecar
out of a crib. It needs to be raised up just an inch or so and it'll
be perfect. He'll be safely removed from his sleep deprived parents
but still within arms reach.

Green tomatoes

The garden is good but still pretty far behind where we were last year. Someday we'll get ripe tomatoes.

navel gazing

Easier to do these days since it's sticking right out at me. I had an interesting conversation with my PI today about maternity leave and what I wanted out of my career. I was planning on going back to work part time 6 months after the kid is born (because I get 6 months full salary and 6 months half salary for my 1 year of mat leave, crazy good I know). However, PI doesn't want me to come back half time unless I really feel like I can be productive-which makes sense and is fair, but I'm just not sure if I'm going to want to go back if I take a whole year off. Or maybe I'll spend a few months with the little guy 24/7 and decide that day-care cost be damned I have to get out of the house.

I'm not a rock-star, I hate writing way to much to think that I'm going to get tenure at a big university even if I were able to get a job at said big U. I do think that I want to be a prof at a small master's only kind of school but there just aren't that many jobs out there and I'm guessing a large number of other people wanting the same kind of position. I just spend a depressing hour or so looking at academic job postings, there just aren't that many.

It's coming along slowly

We now have little tomatoes for each variety except the green doctor, but both of the very weak plants that we put in are alive and growing.

Garden update 2 weeks old

Alright I haven't done a very good job keeping up with the garden progress. Here's what it looked like 2weeks ago just after we put up the trelli for the tomatoes. Some of the plants are now above the middle support. Maybe I'll get a more recent picture up some day.

Garden stuff

The garden is looking pretty good. We've finally got warm weather-this past week several days it was at or near 30. The tomatoes and lettuce are really happy about that. The lettuce was growing at least an inch every day it was that warm.
But this kind of heat is the end of the peas-there are still lots on the vines ripening but I think they'll be done by the end of the week. This year we planted Sugar Snap peas and I'm really happy with them, they are powdery mildew resistant and produce tons. They're much bushier than the Super Sugars that we planted last year and didn't grow at tall but I think the output is pretty much the same.

I finally started pruning the tomatoes yesterday, some of the suckers were pretty huge but they're all gone. After seeing how well pruned tomatoes performed last year, I'm only allowing each plant to have one vine. Last year I let some have 2 or 3 vines which I don't think improved yield but did make for more crowded plants. I'm pretty happy with the state of the tomatoes but we are at least 2 weeks behind where we were last year-combination of our cold spring/early summer and the damage to the seedlings while we were out of town. Oh well we're getting blossoms now on a lot of the plants, just no baby tomatoes yet. Thairo built the rest of the trelli yesterday but forgot his shovel in the field so we'll have to put them up next weekend.

kidlet

Lazy weekend

We just did a a little gardening this weekend but not much else which was wonderful. Mostly we were weeding-actually we were probably pulling a wildflower that we planted but it was just taking over. And Thairo battled his current nemesis-bindweed. It grows so fast here, not in the veggies but in all of the more established flower and shrub beds and nothing kills it. We filled most of our smaller compost bin, so about 50L of biomass.

Today we planted a few more tomato seedlings-one to replace a black pineapple that died and the 2 green doctor cherries that are kind of hanging on after nearly dying last month because of the water snaffu. I'm not that hopeful about the green doctor's but we really wanted to get that variety and decided that they weren't going to get any stronger in the little pots. I took pictures showing how tiny they are but can't find the cable for my camera, I'll post those pictures next week, hopefully with a good update on their progress.
The garden is doing pretty well. Raspberries are ripe and the peas are getting close. Everything else is growing, except basil so I planted more again. Our compost garden material works great for established plants but it's not that great for sprouting.

The kid is doing great. He's been super active the past few weeks-not just kicking and punching all the time but doing flips. When he rolls over it's really weird, almost makes me seasick. Thairo says he's getting back at me for taking him to sea in February. We've got another ultrasound next week just to make sure that he's growing well. Thairo couldn't make the 20 week ultrasound but will be able to go for this one with will be great-I'm sure he'll still look like a bug-eyed alien but at least Thairo will get to see how much he's moving rather than just the occasional kick. I've been playing pattycake with him this past week-when he kicks I'll push back then he'll kick again. I tried to have Thairo play with him too, but I think that the reply kicks are just a little too light for Thairo to be able to feel them. Oh well, they can play without my stomach in the way in a few months.

long weekend

We both took Friday off to drive out to see Thairo's mom. It was a good trip but fairly fast. Yesterday we went down to the little lake that Thairo used to fish in when he was growing up. No fishing but watched a family of osprey fish and fly around for at least half an hour.

I had this grand plan where we'd drive through Canada to get out there, then drop down into WA on the way home. I'd drop Thairo off at his field site then come home. The drive through WA and Canada is pretty much the same time because the interstate is so much faster than the roads through the mountains. It was a great plan. Undone by the fact that I forgot my passport. so poor Thairo is having to finish up the long day driving 4 more hours to get down to his field site.

On the plus side cherries are ripe in the Okanagan so I have a nice big bag of cherries to munch on for the next few days.

Planted the tomatoes

We planted the tomatoes and peppers yesterday. My attempt to rescue the very damaged tomatoes a few weeks ago wasn't very successful, only 2 of the 20 or so that I transplanted were hanging on still yesterday. We had enough to plant pretty much what we wanted but no extras to give away like we've done in the past. Something tried to eat one of the tomatoes-no idea if it'll survive. 2 of the peppers shocked in the night and dropped their leaves which we've seen before. They may recover.

Not dead yet

The seedlings look better today. A little greener. We'll probably hold
off on planting them in the garden till next weekend just to see which
ones are going to survive. I'll be happier when some of them start
putting out new leaves.

Set back

We were both away last week and had set the seedlings out in a cold
frame to be watered using the automatic system. But a new neighbor
moved in downstairs and turned off the water. Aaaccccckkkk. This is
what the plants looked like last night. Today I transplanted all of
the seedlings that were really bad and built up the dirt around the
rest. Then gave all of the a good soaking. We'll see how this works out.

Quick update

I'm posting this because I can't believe how much the tomatoes and
peppers have grown in just one week. We weren't planning on putting
them in the garden till the end of the month but if they continue at
this pace we'll have to do it earlier.

Garden update

This has been a mostly gardening weekend. We transplanted the tomato and pepper seedlings into their new trays, they're small but all had lots of roots so they should be great this summer.

Yesterday I finally tried to tame the herb square, trimming several pounds of parsley, thyme, oregano, and sage. The parsley has turned into parsley shrubs but the leaves are still really tender and flavorful so I'm going to let them keep going. The stalks on these parsley shrubs are 1/4-1/2 inch diameter and have the texture of tough celery, it seems like I should be able to cook with them but haven't come across any recipes yet.
We also built our little cold frame to protect the tomatoes in a few weeks while we're both away and have the watering system set up so they get watered. The peas and carrots are doing great, we're doing 8 square feet of peas-double what we did last year cause I can always eat more peas-those are the trelli that are up. The spinach and radishes aren't doing well and we're not sure why, so replanted them today. Also planted basil, cilantro, tarragon, chervil, and green onions.

Not much going on here

It's been a fairly quiet week or so. Thairo is working about 4 hours away so has been driving down on Monday then coming home Friday evening. We don't generally do much weekday evenings but it still seems a lot more boring around here without him. I've been working on my Yellowstone paper, still...
The weather has been great. It's been sunny and warm for most of the past week. I think that I'll put the tomatoes out tomorrow so they can get some direct sunlight. That's about a highlight of the week-taking the tomatoes for a walk.

Housing coops-who knew?

So in this lovely (and crazy expensive city) there are some interesting experiments in socialist housing. As much as we love our current house and especially garden, it is really expensive so we've decided to try to get into a housing co-op. We checked a number out yesterday and really liked what we could see from the outside. There are 7 around Commercial Drive which I think is my favorite neighborhood, I'm filling out applications for all of those. And we'll apply for a few that are in downtown or closer to the university. But really I think we want to live over by the drive. The waitlists for these places seem to be very long-probably at least a year, but might as well get the clock ticking.

Seedling nursery

Here are our tomato and pepper seedlings. We switched to a 40w compact fluorescent-which still isn't a real grow light but the seedlings seem to be happy and not leaning towards the window. I'll transplant the tomatoes once the get their second set of true leaves.

writing (sort of) and the things I do to avoid writing

I'm still working on my big paper from my phd. I think that I finally have a story that I like but it requires that I go back into some older papers in big-thing ecology that I may or may not have read in general classes. Hopefully I can find enough of those papers online, I sure wouldn't want to have to go to the library.
So in between serious thinking time, we've done some more working in the garden. Today we put new copper mesh up around the boxes to try to keep slugs out of the veggies-it seemed to work last year but got pretty beat up by the end of the year. Thairo weeded the herb garden and planted more rosemary, savory, chives, and margoram. I can't believe that the parsley and chervil overwintered. The tarragon has come back from its roots. And as expected, the thyme, oregano, and sage overwintered fine. We're going to wait a few more weeks to plant basil and cilantro. The tomatoes have mostly sprouted including the variety that I saved seeds for last year, I wasn't sure that I did it correctly but apparently it's good enough.

Begining of garden season '10

We survived the Olympics and haven't seemed to have any of the dreaded post-Olympic depression. I think that I'm finally recovered from the cruise-dock rock lasted 5 days this time. It's still amusing to Thairo to watch me stagger into walls and still not amusing to me. We've agreed to disagree. Thairo's still waiting for a few projects to start, seems like spring is taking it's time to spring in Nevada, Washington, and Mars (or where ever else there's archaeology going on).
We're trying to not get too far ahead of ourselves gardening even though we have this extra time with both of us at home. So far we've planted poppies and wildflowers in the front yard, larkspur in the back, and have a tray of lupine sprouting in our seedling nursery (AKA the bookshelf in front of the dining room window). This weekend we're going to plant red sunflowers in the front yard.
And (drumroll) start the veggies. Peas, lettuce, and maybe carrots can go into the garden this weekend and we'll probably start tomatoes in the seedling nursery too. We saved some seeds last year so will try those, plus Thairo's friend sent us 6 more fun varieties. I think that we're going to get a brandywine, roma, and cherry from either West Coast or PNW seeds. We've talked about having 24 tomato plants. I know probably not enough for me. I can't wait for the glut of tomatoes in August, I want to make gallons of tomato juice.

I'll post some pics once I take some.

OLYMPICS!!!!

We don't have tickets to any of the official events but have been thoroughly enjoying our city turning into the biggest party on the planet. Last night we went to see Corb Lund. Love him. It was a great show. Then this morning we got up early and went to watch Steven Colbert film his show. Also good times.

We don't have anymore specific plans but will do something this weekend. A couple of very lucky friends are coming in tomorrow-she got Canada/US hockey tickets in the lottery last year. So we'll have to do something with them to show off our city.

Nearing the end

I only have 20L left to filter from what is hopefully the last large volume filtration I have to do for a while. And this one was really easy, my lovely compatriot let me sleep 5 hours while she watched the filtration. Whoohoo. We didn't make it to the last station on the line because of a huge storm, but this water that I'm finishing up right now is from the station that we skipped on the way out that is really important. We're going to do a minor station later this morning, which will wrap up our part of the cruise. I'm not sure what we're going to do for the next 3 days because the ship's time is already paid for and I'm sure that we're not going to get back to dock more than 12 hours ahead of schedule???

Heave ho

I'm not sure if the weather is actually worse this Feb than last or if I'm just over the excitement of getting tossed around. We've already skipped 2 major stations of the 4 that we've passed. I'm filtering the second set of large volume samples, yeah 2 down 2 to go-hopefully. One of the major stations that we skipped is really important to the project. We should have enough time to pick up the samples if the weather is reasonable-which what does that mean in Feb? I think I'll go nap while I'm waiting for carboys to filter

Line P v. IV

I'm back out at sea. So far so good. The water is pretty calm. I was feeling a little woozy this afternoon but just took the opportunity to nap and try to get on the overnight schedule. More to come...

Not dead yet, I'm feeling betta

Not much going on here. We spent Christmas in WY with the fam. Thairo and I snuck away to Saratoga one day which was great. The water was too hot to stay in very long even though it was hair-freezing-cold.
Now I'm getting ready for my first and last cruise of the year. There's an army of us going this time. 3 from the oceanography lab, and another post-doc from my main lab. We'll be doing all the regular DNA and gas work, plus several nitrogen and sulfur species. Not sure if we'll actually detect the compounds that we're looking for deep in the ocean, but as far as I've been able to tell, we'll be the first to try. So hopefully even a "not there" result will be publishable.
I should post more about the cruise in the next few weeks.