Shirt by anise mouette via The Makery, and diaper cover by my cousin (in law), Rachel.

Also, here’s a good article.

(Feel free to move right along now – this is probably only interesting if you have an Etsy shop or something else that you are trying to make visible on the web. And even if you DO find it interesting it’s going to get really long.)

(Happy birthday Mama!)

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The Makery is a super-awesome little shop run by our friend Melissa. She has done such a good job with this place & it’s jam packed with treasures made by her and many, many other talented folks. Stay tuned for a photo of my gal in some goods from here when our tshirt weather returns in the next couple of days. When we walked into the store Melissa was playing country roads, just for us even though she didn’t know were coming.

WHY Louisville, another awesome shop full of their own screenprinted shirts, stickers, jewelry, and all kinds of stuff. We made Andy pose at his desk and pretend to be working. Notice the poptarts. This store makes me feel the need to restock my tshirt collection, starting with this one.

There is also this awesome record store, but I didn’t take any photos there.

Now I must go cook a delicious, nutritious, post-roadtrip-weekend supper of… veggie burgers and tater tots. Typo: poptarts. I’m not THAT tired.

I’ve been devouring Prodigal Summer for a few days, and while it’s an amazing novel, it’s leaving me feeling really desperate. I’d finally adapted to all of this snow and now this book. To reassure myself that warmer weather really is just around the corner, I got a jump on Hazel’s summer wardrobe this afternoon. I decided – for the sake of being able to use up some random fabric and revamp other materials – that I’d make her some pajama pants. I cut out five pairs and got two sewn together – some fabric left over from a *baby blanket and an adult shirt (below), as well as another adult shirt, and old pillowcase, and a half-meter of fabric that I bought in Canada to make bibs a few days before she put her foot down on the bib-wearing issue. I need to find/order some plain tshirts to go with them and applique things on them with left over scraps of each fabric.

*a Chinese food baby blanket for the world’s newest foodie baby – Flannery Maria Muscar, born just fifty short minutes ago!! When Mikey said “I think I just heard my phone” and read the text message silently to himself before he read it aloud, my heart had time to stop for a few moments before he announced her name, birth time and weight, and then it exploded with joy. We’ve been waiting so long to meet this precious little babe and now we are snowed in! Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll get to see her. Gives me time to make some itty-bitty pants :)

Listening: Hazel & Mikey chatter downstairs
(I am) Reading: Prodigal Summer
(Hazel is) Reading: The Foot Book
Working on: blanket; pants; Etsy mailers

Welcome home Mikey! Sorry your house looks like this:

And sorry that you have a cough and a fever, and sorry in advance if I end up wanting to throw in the towel if you get the swine flu TEN DAYS BEFORE WE MOVE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY.

At least I had time for two more skirts amid all of the packing:

I have been brooding all day about this, and then Janet emailed that she had this article published in an online journal. My sister rocks. We all clearly need to read a little more Harry Potter, since it’s almost 2010 and we are STILL EXECUTING PEOPLE. Jesus.

Also, I lost my right contact and it was my last pair. I can either a.) pay $300 for a year’s supply here (um, no), or see if I can fax my prescription to the Morgantown Walmart, where Maggie could surely be persuaded to pay $20 to pick up three pairs and bring them to me so I don’t have to drive home in glasses – I HATE driving in glasses. You know, since she does every other thing for my life she’d probably do this too :)

Serenity now.

Listening: the only music to enter my ears today was Philadelphia Chickens – a very odd day, but really, what else do you need?
(Hazel is) Reading: everything she owns, clearly
Working on: hemming the last of a big batch of baby legwarmers; packaging earrings; eternally knitting dishrags while Hazel plays in the bath
Packing progress: eight boxes

My cousin Rachel has been known to say this about the awesome cloth diapers and covers that she makes, often from recycling clothing and linens and baby blankets that have worn out their first incarnation in her family’s life. She could easily open an Etsy shop and sell them I always tell her, and she always tells me that she doesn’t have the time to keep up with an Etsy shop… she just learned how to make them because she needs to diaper babies and couldn’t afford to / didn’t want to buy disposables all the time.

Sadly, I don’t know very many people who make the things that they need, and definitely not in my age group. I am totally guilty of this, coming from a generation where making your own salad dressing or baking your family’s bread is an admirable feat, and where you just buy whatever you need because everything is so cheaply mass produced. It’s even worse because I know I am completely capable of making so many of our family’s needs – especially food – and I don’t always do it because I’d rather spend my time making wants or Etsy-wares, or because I insist that I cannot possibly can food or bake a week’s worth of bread or this or that in our tiny closet-sized kitchen.

I know that Hazel’s generation is going to be so much “worse” in this respect, so I think that my top fears for her little life are:

1.) that she will die of a freak accident, or get cancer, or become an addict, or any of those awful things
2.) that she won’t be a happy person
3.) that she won’t be able to stand me as she gets older and we’ll end up in one of those bad mother-daughter relationships that are totally foreign to me
4.) that she will have no desire to make things

I know that even though she will be molded by Mikey and I to WANT to make things, that’s no guarantee. Luckily I’ve got these – and other – amazing backups:

Bag of fabric balls sewn by Maggie.

Andrea-knit sweater (her FIRST – still trying to wrap my brain around this can be her first non-rectangle knitting project) and Kelly-sewn pants, which are a birth gift that this skinny gal JUST grew into.

Kelly-sewn art apron, made from a leg of her dad’s old jeans (Ella has an apron made from the other leg:)

Wee Rachel-made owl (downstairs Rachel, not cousin-in-law Rachel).

She also got an awesome piece of wall-art made by Emmalee, which is currently being enjoyed by my parents, because I knew if I brought it back here it would immediately get packed in a box with the last of our decorative odds & ends. I will take a photo when Hazel’s little space is set up at Not Our House in a month.

Those birthday gifts are just a drop in the bucket of the talent that exists among Hazel’s friends and family. Once Mikey and I tried to figure out if we could build a house from the ground up, including all electricity, plumbing, drywall, etc. with just the help of our friends, and we decided that we definitely could. We also know people who could build all of our furniture, lay flooring, make all of our mugs and dishes, build our kitchen cabinets and bookcases, make art for the walls, clothing for our closets, quilts for our beds, curtains for our windows, food for our kitchen, make stained glass lamps for our tables, toys for Hazel’s toybox, and a couple of people who could make new banjos for Mikey’s music room. And I think I could definitely manage to make some braided rugs – I read a tutorial awhile ago and have been wanting to give it a go with some recycled clothing and fabric… fantasy house would be the perfect excuse.

We would also, of course, fill fantasy house with the very best creation of our friends…

Listening: Dire Straits
Hazel is Reading: I Love You Through and Through
Working on: huge batch of pendants half way to completion after working all through Lost in Translation last night. I love you, Bill Murray.
Packing progress: two boxes this morning

Hazel’s birthday week is officially over, wrapped up yesterday by celebrating with ten kids (no fights, no blood, no epipens needed), their familes, and a few other friends. After the party she had a nice long nap to regroup, and then we headed out in the evening to Chris’s CD release show at the Sixth, where we kept her out listening to our friends play music until midnight (she spent much of that time fast asleep in her Ergo). She made it through the whole day without a meltdown – such a happy girl :)

I am taking a break from my packing to share photos…

I agonized about what to put in loot bags for the kiddos, wanting to send them away with a little something from Hazel. I wanted it to be practical, but toddlers are, by nature, impractical, so I was at a loss. I was ready to steal Andrea’s idea of a prettily-wrapped bottle of bubble bath for everyone, then I spied these goodies in the Target dollar bins: sweet basil seed and soil kits, two-packs of pots, and tiny spades. Ten little urban farmers instead of ten little kids hopped up on sugar and the excitement of cheap plastic toys? Yes please. Although for the record the beloved dollar bins also contained cheap WOODEN toys – all sorts of vehicles and the little puzzles where you have to get all the ball-bearings settles into the little holes. The paper bags and glittery foam letter stickers and pipe cleaners are all from the dollarama :)

The birthday project I’ve been alluding to for awhile – a sewn birthday banner that I plan to use for all of our family birthdays. As Maryellen put it, “you know this is going to mess her up the first time she has a birthday as an adult and doesn’t have the banner for the first time in her eighteen years or whatever” – which I’d already thought of, because she is MY kid and I would totally be messed up about something like that… but hopefully it won’t cause trauma. Maybe I can mold her against her genes to not freak out when the silverware gets put in a new drawer. Leo asked if I made it and when I told him that I did, he said “I KNEW it! I knew you made it because you’re a good knitter.” Well shucks…

Colored bandana prints – leftovers from a pack of Martha Stewart dishtowels bought for a summer 2006 wallet project. I’d used all of the green one so Maggie kindly donated hers to the cause :)
Yellow bandana print – $2.00 a yard on the clearance shelf
Green bias tape – $1.something a pack
Yellow recycled pop-bottle felt – fifty cents a sheet

Big and little friends

The birth buddies – Hazel, Maddy, and a very tired Oscar.

They always sing her to sleep.

Release show for Chris’s new album, Old Dog… which is reeeeeeeally awesome.

By the way, thank you to everyone for making and/or getting Hazel wonderful gifts that, miraculously, will probably fit in two totally normal-sized boxes. I was worried we’d need to upgrade our U-Haul size after two first-birthday-parties. You have made our lives easier. Mikey has also made my life easier today by washing a HUGE, and I mean huge, pile of dishes. And to Fuzzibunz, who so artfully contained every single bit of the most explosive diaper-filling of Hazel’s life this morning. It could have started off as a very bad day, but it is a good day.

Now, back to packing. Packing, packing, packing.

Listening: Hazel Dickens
Hazel is reading: M is for Maple, and Mama is book-fasting if you remember… I even packed up every single “to-read” book in the house this morning so I’m not tempted
Working on: craft show stuff
Packing progress: five boxes so far today

Got this email on Thursday afternoon:

I know it’s the night before you guys leave, but are you up for a going away party?

C.

…cried my eyes out.

Went to a farewell potluck for Leanne and I at Maryellen’s house last night. Got home, went to bed, cried my eyes out into sleeping Hazel’s sweet baby hair.

Woke up to a Facebook invite from Ella for the show/party at The Sixth. She and Chris are scheming together.

…cried my eyes out.

I might stop crying by 2013. We have the very best friends.

Listening: Kathy Mattea
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: a picture dictionary with stiff cardstock pages – she finds it much more delightful than her board books because it has PAGES.
Working on: birthday project; a multi-colored batch of owls; photographing & inventorying vintage & destash to sell; a square here and there
Packing progress: two boxes of books just made their exodus to Crux to sell; bagging up some freestore stuff; about to rearrange our storage room to make a corner for piling packed boxes

I love love love Christmas, but nope – I’m talking about October. October is full of all things comfy and cozy and pretty and Halloweeney and delicious, and Hazel decided to be born during this month, which makes it extra fun. At this time last year I was huge, but still happily pregnant, only wishing her out of the womb so I could meet her after all those months. But I have to admit, with the pumpkin spice candles burning and waiting for the ginkgo on the corner to lose its leaves and all of that other fall goodness… at least once a day I thought something along the lines of “if *she is born tomorrow, then I get to have some pumpkin ale in two days.”

As it turns out, she was born on a Friday, so on Saturday evening I was sipping on an ice cold half pint of delicious Great Lakes Brewery pumpkin ale, guilt-free because our midwives told us beer in moderation helps you lactate (and boy did it, painfully so). Unfortunately, 24 hours into motherhood and 24 hours off the nine month sobriety wagon, a quarter of a pint was enough to make me deliciously sleepy, so I went to bed and Mikey drank the rest.

Last night I made it most of the way through a pint before Hazel grabbed my glass and spilled it.

One of these days I’ll finish a bottle, although I don’t know where we will find this beer of the gods when we move back to WV. The ginkgo leaves had fallen the first time I left the apartment after her birth. I like to think that they fell on the day she was born, but I really don’t know. I think I’ll plant a ginkgo tree on top of my placenta, which is still nice and frosty in my parents’ deep freezer. Hopefully it won’t still be there in five years like some other people I’ve known.

Last night we briefly got to visit with Mario and Jenn. They took a detour through T.O. on their way to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, and we got to go out for Ethiopian and hang out for awhile. Hazel wasn’t shy with them – I’m glad she remembers everyone from home. At one point Mario picked up our bottle opener from the table and asked if it was a wedding gift, “because it doesn’t look like something you’d ever buy for yourselves.” And he was absolutely right, if we ever had to buy a bottle opener it would be just a hunk of metal, not a fancy-comfy-gripped-bottle-opener (which was not a wedding gift – I think it was inherited from a former roommate). We have some amazing friends here to be sure, but it will be nice to be home with the people who know our bottle opener preferences and other stuff that only people who REALLY know you could figure out.

Today is so rainy and dreary that I’ve had lamps on all afternoon. But it’s the cozy kind of dreary because it’s October. Or maybe it’s because we get to see our friends play music at the Cameron House tonight for the first time since early summer, and no day that ends in their music can ever be dreary.

Listening: Iron & Wine
(I am) Reading: The Blue Cotton Gown
(Hazel is) Reading: she has been looking at her photo album all day instead of books – kind of strange
Working on: the last of Lukie’s birthday gift; Hazel’s birthday invites and a project for her party (and every future birthday in our family); a batch of anchors
* I always thought of her as “she” unintentionally – we didn’t know for sure, but I knew

…until something happens, like one of them has a new boyfriend and he’s intimiated to meet all of her academic friends because he’s “just a plumber”, and then it occurs to me that my friends here ARE incredibly intimidating. Brain-wise, that is. They are brilliant. They think for a living. Almost every good friend I have in this country is someone I met through Mikey, so they are all academics. Normal to me, but scary some. Once there were about fifteen of us out on a Wednesday night and I just sat there as the most uneducated one among us (with my “measly” bachelors degree), going around the table and mentally adding up the number of university degrees sitting at the table. And then I tried student loan debt, but I suck at math so I got no further than mine plus Mikey’s plus Ella’s. It’s astounding, being friends with all of these incredibly brilliant people. And sometimes when they start to lose me in coversation I can see how they are intimidating academic studs to a lot of people, but mostly, to me, they are just this:

“I just wrote the phrase “conceptual thrust” in a footnote. It sounds so perverted, but I’m leaving it.”