Big Hearts comments: 156

The weekend was truly wonderful. In every way. It was a dream come true. I'm continuously overwhelmed by not only the incredible beauty of motherhood but of adoptive motherhood. My life is so full now. It's filled not only with this incredible baby but so many new, extraordinary people in Amelia's birthfamily, who were here on Saturday celebrating the holiday with us. It's filled with so much new love. There is so much love for this precious girl. And it gets bigger and fuller and more beautiful every single day. I wish I had better words to say but I can't even get my arms around it. It all, all of it, pretty much blows me away continuously. I have no expectations. Reality has surpassed anything I could have expected or imagined. Now I just try to do my so-flawed but so-earnest best in every moment, and ride the wave. And it is a grand, most awesome, extraordinary wave. I am so, so blessed.

On Sunday morning Andy and I got cardamom lattes at the coffee shop, just like we did the morning Amelia was born. We went up to the park and walked on the trails and smelled the wet grass and the flowers. We had lunch with my mom and then sat in the yard. It was warm and cloudy, just the way I like it. After my mom left, Amelia conked out in her crib (it was a big weekend), and I sat under the big umbrella out back while it rained softly on the umbrella and the trees and all of my new flowers he planted for me last weekend. It was a warm rain. We ate Chinese take-out under the umbrella and the tree while it rained, and we talked about everything.

I send a wish out for everyone who wants to be a mother. I wish you, especially you, a Happy (belated, sorry — last week was crazy busy!) Mothers' Day. I know that in our hearts we all are mothers, whether our children have arrived yet or not. I always wished that people would say that to me, had seen that in me, during the long years of waiting. There are so many ways to be a mother. And I send a wish out to the birthmothers and -grandmothers, whose hearts are so big and so brave and so strong. I wish you a life filled with as much love as you've given, and you have given, I am very, very sure, much more than you will ever know. I pray that it all comes back to you a thousand-fold. Over and over and over again.

Bowl Food comments: 108

Thank you for all of the bowl food suggestions! This thing is going really well for me. A few people suggested the book Bowl Food: Comfort Food for People on the Move and I was going to go get it (really good subtitle), when I realized I already had it, and about twenty of the page corners were already turned down. Can't even remember when or where I got it. This book is cool. It's small, so I can take it to the store. It's not chatty; it's just recipes. With a Thai influence, for the most part? It's got a pretty color picture for every single dish. And it's all the things I like in one place: soups, salads, pastas, rices, and curries. I'm excited. So far I've made the chicken with Thai basil, chiles, and cashews and the shrimp, tomato, and saffron (my mother-in-law gave me a little tin of saffron for my birthday — isn't that a great present?!?) pasta. Both were very good, and really pretty involved, I must say. But that's probably what made them so good. Really filling, so a bowl is actually more than you need. It's Peanut Butter Puffins for breakfast, then I pick a recipe in the morning. Amelia and I walk up to get groceries somewhere after breakfast (we have a few options for that, so it's kind of fun), and then I do whatever prep I can do ahead of time while she naps during the day. She hangs out with me in the kitchen while I cook. She is SO good about this. I eat very early while she's still happy. Bedtime is between six and seven. I've been trying to come back downstairs and hang out after I put her to bed, but usually I just . . . pretty much watch episodes of Psych and fall asleep!

The weather here over the weekend was cray-cray. It was about 85 degrees and windy as all get out. Naturally, I was completely miserable. Trees were whipping around and throwing down sticks and leaves and immature plums all over the yard. Leaves blew in every open door, covering the kitchen and the studio. I think I swept four times. But it was too hot to keep things closed. Bees found their ways into the house and buzzed angrily against the few windows that don't open (why do they do that? when there's an open window just a few feet away?). The light flickered madly as the leaves thrashed back and forth in the bright sunlight. We replanted all of our containers that didn't make it through the winter. But it was just too hot and kind of crazy outside to really enjoy it. I find hot wind utterly unnerving. Monday morning Andy woke up and said, "Is it supposed to be nice again today?" And I said, "If by 'nice' you mean COMPLETELY HORRIBLE then yeah, it's supposed to be nice." Curmudgeonly me!!!

Babies in sleeveless onesies, though. OMG. Utterly, utterly sweet. My sweet, sweet girl. She's drooling so much I keep checking for a tooth, but no. Not yet!

***Shoot — I forgot to add that for those who have asked, the baby food book I am using is this one, given to me by my friend Ann. I like it a lot — it's nice and simple and straightforward. Making baby food is so much fun. Watching her eat it is completely amazing. I'm sure that sounds silly or something, but it's true. It's one of the best things in the whole wide world. The whole time she's eating I'm just sitting there thinking AW YEAH!

Big, Beautiful Spring comments: 138

The weather has been unbelievably gorgeous. This is perfect weather: Sunny, smooth, in the seventies, a bit of a breeze but only in lovely, dress-fluttering way. Mellow-yellow days. This has been the best spring weather I can ever remember. We haven't really had time to clean up the yard, even. And already the hydrangea (that's climbing hydrangea, on my fountain wall) has fully leafed out, and everything else looks fat and lush and happy. I think I actually have to water some of my wine-barrel hydrangeas already. That's unprecedented!

We've had kind of a quiet week, with sore throats and runny noses moving from one of us to the next. I'm last. I've been cooking and knitting generally laying low. Walking around the neighborhood a lot, especially in the mornings and the late afternoons. This morning Amelia and I saw a woman walking a baby (pygmy?) goat on a leash. Down a very busy street. Awesome. Everyone's yard is gushing greens. Everything smells so nice. The scent of cut grass is in the air. Lilac. Roses are starting to bloom already. This little pearly pink one sits on our woodshed. The bush that has probably been here eighty years. I put up a rosebud hair clip tutorial on my web site. Good for using up your extra felt scraps!

I made myself a dinner bowl last night of jasmine rice cooked in chicken stock and coconut water, black beans from this recipe, corn salad (I just used frozen corn) from this recipe, and a whole avocado. I would've added some shrimp but we didn't have any. It was pretty good, not great. Fresh corn would've been a major improvement. I like the concept of a dinner bowl. I think I'm going to start looking for recipes that go in a bowl. (Especially since I just bought myself a really pretty Japanese bowl with a lid on it this morning. Inspiration.) Rice, quinoa, noodles. Those are fast and good. I need a plan . . . that happens in bowls. And is not soup. Do you have any favorite bowl-food recipes?

There's always ice-cream bowl. In a pinch. I've done that.

Power Sewing Session comments: 104

We're all fighting colds here. :( Waaaaah! Oh well. I got some power sewing done over the weekend! It was a blast. I haven't sewn much at all lately. The lovely Amanda linked to this baby bib tutorial and I made some in a hurry. I'm not sure how many to make. I did eight. They're really fun and fast. I also made Amelia three more pairs of big bubble pants. I love these so much. I think she could use a pair every day, honestly. It's a good project for 1/2 yard of fabric. I made the legs a bit fuller, as well. My girl's got some chunky thighs! Is there anything cuter?

She's sleeping right now. Greta's coming over in a bit. We're making progress on the next batch of Maggie kits. I'm still thinking mid-May, and I hope that's not too ambitious? We'll see. I'm almost done with my patterns. Greta's still cutting dress fabric. Martha's still winding yarn. Tiny buttons are here, though one color is backordered (naturally). Yarn, too, was backordered (blah). Oh well.

I made this chicken with peanut sauce over the weekend and oh my stars, it was so good. I felt quite proud. Almost as proud as I felt the other day when I was making a Boboli pizza and squirting pizza sauce out of the little plastic baggie thing that comes with the crust and thought, "Wow, look at me! Making a pizza that wasn't even frozen first!!!" Puff puff. I was so pleased. Then I remembered that I used to make actual pizza dough, from things like yeast and flour. And sauce from actual tomatoes! That's funny! I burst out laughing. While I ate my Boboli I pledged to make a greater effort to cook more. I really miss it, actually. I'm making baby food for Mimi, but I am possibly the most pathetic regular meal planner in the world. When I am busy or tired, cooking — fancy, yummy, fun-type cooking, not just survival cooking — is the first thing to go in my day, always. And when I'm busy or tired, I seriously could not even care less what I eat. This chicken was so good, though. I am inspired. I want to do better at cooking for Andy and me. I feel like I say this all the time!

Do you know how to make a little rose hair clip? I'll take some photos next time I make one and show you how. I've bought a few (you can get a poufy one like Amelia's here, and similar rose ones here and here and here and here — there are a lot on Etsy that are adorable) and have been making a lot. I like making them because you can do them in so many different colors (and they get lost all over the house, so we need them in every room). They're really fun and really easy.

comments: 171

My best friend lives in Boston. We've been friends for over twenty-five years. We text or talk almost every day. We happened to be texting on Tuesday, just at the moment that local news was breaking on her end. Martha, three-thousand miles away. I had been out walking around the neighborhood with Amelia. We walk very slowly, up and down the sleepy, quiet blocks, ambling to and fro. I pick blossoms from trees, a sprig of rosemary, a froth of blooming lilac that somehow fell into the grass for her to sniff. This is an English daisy. This is a daff-o-dil. This is violet, like your kitty you never met, like your great-grandma's favorite flower, and oh how she would have loved you! The sun dips and bobs in and out of white clouds. The April wind is still chilly. Amelia stares placidly out at the world as it rolls by. These are the houses and gardens and bakeries and shops and driveways and trees and sidewalks that will become — that are already starting to become — her little corner of the world. Our streets. Will be there a memory, locked away, of the scent of apple blossoms there? Of how we linger every time in front of the big sepia-colored wooden house I've always liked while I study their tulips? Of the smell of the spicy tea that I drink as we walk? Of the canopy of ancient dogwood trees, arching above her in pink arcade just as we approach our own driveway, and turn? Will she know her trees the way I knew my own, the way I feel I would still know them, the way I did know them even two summers ago when I visited Forest Avenue, alone, for a whole afternoon. I walked, tearful for my own reasons, up then down the other side of my street; two oaks towered over my house, planted much too close to the front stairs, still there, familiar as nothing else I've known. The king and queen of my former kingdom. Protective lion, lioness.

My neighbor brings me hot chocolate and a coffee-cake slice every couple of mornings or so, while Amelia naps. Every time, it feels like the most perfect, decadent, luxurious gift. I think about this small kindness, the millions of generous, civilized kindnesses that make up most of all of our days, and then the rare but terrible rendings that rip the weave of them so viciously, and with such terrible permanence. The spectre ebbs and fades but is always present. As a child, I grew up with a father who, upon entering any public venue, scanned the place for exits, identified each one, and briefed us on the disaster plan should this performance of Timbuktu or the Ice Capades be fireballed. I will just say that it was a very hard way to grow up. But it comes from this: You would do anything, anything to try to protect your child.

My heart and thoughts and prayers are with the people of Boston this week. With those lost, and those injured, and those helping, and those witnessing. I wish that Martha and I lived closer, were neighbors, wish that together we were walking our little girls under the blossoming branches, teaching them (Martha used to be a landscape architect) the names of flowers. Teaching them to be kind and gentle people. Teaching them to be brave, generous, building, healing people. People who make things, and don't destroy them. People who reject cynicism, and instead create, and repair, and provide medicine. People who practice peace, acceptance, optimism, faith, joy, and, always. Always: Love.

Spring Mish-Mash comments: 102

Oh, it's been a busy week here. I don't know where the time goes. Amelia is a busy lady these days! Not too interested in napping today. I personally would like nothing better than for someone to zip me into a polar-fleece sleepsack, turn out the lights, and beg me to sleep for two hours in the middle of the day. But. The weather has been cold and cloudy and I am secretly glad — I so much want to finish my indoor chores before the nice weather comes for good. Once it comes, we'll be busy in a different way. An outside, woods-and-water, flower-field way. Out of the house. That's my plan.

I made broken up lasagna noodles with chicken and mushroom ragu from this recipe last night and it was very good. I added a big blob of whole-milk ricotta cheese to mine and I really recommend that. Andy is not down with ricotta. For me, I would say it's in my top-five favorite foods. Along with tapioca pudding, avocados, asparagus, and . . . maybe . . . fish tacos. Or sour-cream apple pie. It has to be whole-milk ricotta, though. The part-skim stuff tastes, to me, like a completely different kind of cheese.

I'm working on the bunny shirt and pants pattern, and the knitting patterns. The yarn is Brown Sheep Nature Spun sport weight, and it's what I am using to design all of the bunny knits (and, eventually, bunny crochets). I've ordered yarn balls so that we can carry this yarn in my web shop. If you got in on the first round of kits, this is the yarn that was in the kit (and it will be in the second round). It's my new favorite yarn. I looked at a lot of different yarns before deciding what to use. I like this one because it's 100% wool, comes in a really nice palette (though I have to say they could use a few more pinks/peaches, in my opinion), has a slight halo, but knits up to have a very matte sort of look to it, which is exactly what I wanted. Rustic. I don't like shiny yarns. After blocking, it's actually really soft but still holds its shape very well. I think we'll have about fifteen colors in the shop. My plan is to make everything available — kits, patterns, yarn, new size #18 needles (which I use for threading the elastic around the neck of the peasant dress) — all at the same time. Not sure yet exactly when that will be but I will keep you posted. Our dress fabric still hasn't come in yet. Greta's pulling floss right now and is about halfway done, and Martha's winding yarn. If these kits don't sell, I'll be making Amelia and myself entire wardrobes made entirely of five Liberty prints and sport-weight-wool. Which I think I could get on board with, but still. Don't leave me.

Isn't that little animal ABCs poster so adorable? Andy's mom got it for me for my birthday from this Etsy shop. Her friend also Brenda made that darling pink hooded sweater that Amelia is wearing. It finally fits her perfectly and . . . oh my dear me . . . how adorable are babies in hoodies????? (***The pattern is here [though she modified it to include the garter button band] and the yarn is Plymouth Encore. Thank you Brenda!!!)

Which also reminds me: The Maggie knits are a dress, a raglan, sweater, and the garter hoodie. Bunny in a hoodie. Now I'm typing with one hand or I would link to the photos I've posted in the past months of the prototypes. As it is I feel fairly accomplished today just spelling prototypes out (now twice, and added parentheses! and spelled parentheses!) with one finger. Some days that feels like miracle enough!

***Have you ever seen a dog look at anyone with more deliberate skepticism than this, by the way? She's like, "Yah, yer nuts." I know. (She's teaching it to the baby.)

***Forgot to say, I'll also have those tiny buttons that are on the little shirt in the shop. I think we're getting ten different colors of those, too.

Big Bubble Pants comments: 165

I made some big bubble pants yesterday. I thought they came out pretty cute. I used this pattern but added 3" to the top and 4" (total; 2" to the edge of the pattern piece that goes on the fold) to the width. The cutest thing about them was that the minute I put them on her (she'd had tights on all day and I'd just taken them off) she started kicking her legs and clapping her feet. It was so adorable. She was happy. I was THRILLED. I have trouble figuring out how tight to make the elastic on things. I have made so many things that are gathered on 1/4" elastic and unless the pattern tells me exactly how long to cut the elastic for a neck or a cuff or around a leg I can't seem to get it right. That's my goal today (my goals are very simple): figure this out exactly for her right now, and write it down. A lot of her purchased baby pants seem too small around the waist, and the elastic seems tight and uncomfortable. She's pretty big for her age. (Her little birdy-deer blouse is from H&M, by the way — I got it [along with a lot of her clothes] at the resale shop.)

I took photos for my friend Prescott's new restaurant, Township and Range. Isn't it pretty in there? I had the fried chicken and mashed potatoes and they were awesome.

I got to go fabric shopping by myself the other day and it was pretty wonderful. A lot of people like massage, or manicures, or . . . I don't know . . . yoga . . . stuff like that . . . when they want to relax. Not me. I go to Goodwill or the fabric store. Goodwill is a lot cheaper. But I realized that most of my fabric stash is made up of smallish pieces. Quarter-yards, half-yards. So I needed some new fabrics for some spring clothes for Amelia. Win-win. I think I can make a dress or blouse and bubbles for 1 1/2 yards. Half-yards for the bubbles. I made a nightgown for Maddie (we have two bunnies — Maggie, and Maddie). It's made of this fabric. Just a longer version of the peasant dress her pattern comes with, tied with some silk ribbon. Thinking I might go back and get more and make a nightgown for myself. . . .

Oh, by the way, thank you for the pattern recommendations the other day! I've got some good ones now. Now that my time is much more limited, I have completely different requirements for patterns. It's kinda funny. Things I wouldn't have thought twice about in the past (buttons, continuous placket — basically anything finicky) — if I don't have to do it to get the general look, I won't. The length, the fullness, the angles — the cut of the thing matters more. And the easier it is to make and get on the babe, the better.

But I do care about the cut.

Also, fabrics. At the fabric store, everything's very bright. Bright aquas, bright limes, hot pinks. No. Those aren't mine. I don't like those colors. I like the colors of old books. Paris apartments. Ice cream and convents. Pansies and plum blossoms. Blushy pinks and mustards with a touch of gray, and French gray, and inky blue, and robin's egg, and violet, and apricot, and palest of yellows. Wildflowers more than tropical flowers. Weeds more than roses. Unless they're teeny weeny roses. Small flowers rather than big, loopy flowers. Dots and stripes rather than fat ruffles. I like feminine things, but I don't really like frilly things. Though I'm more gathers than pleats.

You know?

If you roast some broccolini and some asparagus with olive oil and salt and pepper, and some shrimp with olive oil and salt and pepper, and then you toss it with a half-container of mascarpone and some peas and a pound of thin spaghetti (and some parmesan), I don't think you'll be sorry. I was ecstatic that I was eating something that wasn't previously frozen, to be honest. But even given that, it was really good. And now I have dinner for tonight, too. Yippee yay.

*Thank you to everyone who has sent me photos of their Maggies!!! They are so awesome. I couldn't be happier to see how adorable they are turning out — thank you!

Little Leaves and Petals comments: 182

Mimi (that's what we call her at home) is five months old. Five big, beautiful, blessed, extraordinary, wonderful months. Oh how I love this girl, her smiles and her moods, her dimples and chubby hands and chunky thighs, her open-mouthed kisses and her hands on my face, trying to get my nose into her mouth. Her voice and her calls. Her sighs and little snores and her loud hollers and her chuckles when something's funny. Her floppy hair and her big, deep eyes and her big, warm cheeks. Her breath on my chest, her hand flung out, her hand tangled in my hair. I love her wonder, and her pleasure, and her heavy head on my chest as we sit in the window seat and find the sky. Always the sky. Dearest, dearest, dearest, dearest girl. My dream of dreams.

Six-to-twelve-month clothes! We need 'em. I bought a bunch of sewing patterns, both new and vintage, over the weekend. Very excited. The vintage patterns from the '70s make me crazy nostalgic. In looking through them on Etsy and eBay I see so many things that my mother made for me. I bought some of them to make for Amelia someday. Vintage patterns generally don't have several sizes included; they have one size. Maybe when she's six I'll make her the prairie maxi-dress and bonnet in pink calico, just like mine.

There are a lot of really nice designers making very pretty patterns out there right now! This weekend I got patterns from Oliver + S, Sis Boom, Sew Sweet, Lily Bird Studio, and Brownie Goose. And there are a ton more designers on Etsy. It's really fun just looking through everything that's out there. Who else should I check out?

*I made her blouse out of Liberty "Boxford" Tana Lawn and this pattern from Citronille, and her hat is here :)

Sun Spots comments: 132

Spring sunshine. It's so nice. We had such a nice weekend! Short but very sweet. Amelia adores her grandparents who held and played with her non-stop for three days straight. So sweet. Andy made corned beef and cabbage for us. He's the most non-Irish Irish person I know. We listen to Irish music the entire month of March. There is a lot of Pogues and Flogging Molly playing. He makes corned beef and cabbage in my dad's old cast-iron pot every year. He buys us all shamrock swag. I love how much he loves things.

Remember the quilt I started for Amelia a few weeks back? I had it finished by BumbleBee Quilting and picked it up on Saturday morning. I absolutely love it! The way I did this was ridiculously easy. I bought many (I'd have to count how many, but maybe thirty or more?) 1/8 yard pieces of random fabrics from several different local fabric stores. I just picked stuff that I liked. I had no particular color scheme in mind, but I wanted it to feel sweet and subtle and mellow and pretty. My colors wound up being peaches, pinks, inky blues like her eyes, pale grays, vanilla creams, aquas, a few saffron yellows, a few nutmeg browns, an orchid. Most of the prints are tiny calicos, small polka dots, tiny ginghams, and a few baby animals mixed in. To make it, I trimmed the 1/8-yard strips to 4" wide, trimmed off the selvedges, and then cut the strips randomly into rectangles. The rectangle lengths weren't measured. Then I started sewing the short ends of the rectangles together until I had a pieced strip that was vaguely 54" long (I put two pieces of tape on my sewing table, which is just a bit longer than 54", and just laid the strip out between the tape pieces to measure it). I sewed the strips together until the quilt top was about 54" across, and then I trimmed the pieced edges until they were all even. It was so fast. Only half the measuring. I am definitely going to make another one for her bed with the leftoever fabric (this one is more of a throw). Rectangles go so much faster than squares. I don't have much time to do stuff like this anymore, so fast is key! And I also think the rectangles let the fabric print show better, which I've always wanted in my quilts. There are so many beautiful fabrics out there. If the pieces are too small you just can't see the fabric prints, you know? I love looking at the individual patches in quilts, picking out favorites. I love how dated the patches get, timestamping the quilt even without a label.

My darling peachy-pink girl! I love how she loves everything, too. She just loves everything. She inspires me. Every moment. She's teaching me.

Thank You comments: 256

Whew! Hello!

How are you?

It's a cold, rainy morning, so dark in the house I need all my little lamps on to see. Andy has the day off and is at the park with Clover Meadow and Miss Amelia. I'm sitting in the studio, eating breakfast and drinking orange juice. The rain is plinking on the skylights. I feel, I am quite sure, quite, quite ready for spring. It seems far off today!

Thank you again for your Miss Maggie orders! It always emotional for me to go through all of the orders and see everyone's names and addresses, and read all of the sweet notes people leave, and think about where all of these kits that we've worked on for months and which have become part of all of our lives here are going. Around the world. It's amazing to me. It brings me so much happiness. More than I probably remember to say. Thank you for that, and for being here all of these years, through many things. Today is actually the fifteenth anniversary of my accident. Posie was just my dream then. I had a lot of dreams then. I cried because I didn't think many of them would come true. Andy always believed that they would. He sees where I am trying to go before I ever do, and is already helping me get there before I even know I'm standing. He's pulled me to my feet more times that I can possibly count, and probably many more times than I've even realized. And then I go forward.

A most amazing man. My love. Greatest partner in life, and the greatest father. Most beautiful, fun, creative, kind, generous person I've ever known. Andy.