the peaceful peacock

This week’s trea­sure hunt for it begins with a colour… was to squash as many col­ors as pos­si­ble into one frame.  Easy peasy with our new dia­per bag:

You might remem­ber this from a few posts ago but here it is all fin­ished and home from the Com­mu­nity Food Co-op’s Earth Day Art Show.   It’s made from recy­cled mater­nity jeans (huz­zah!!) and scraps of vin­tage fab­rics that I’ve col­lected over the years dur­ing yard sale quests.  I love it because it’s big enough to carry sup­plies for both lit­tle beans but it doesn’t look like I’m loaded up with enough gear to sum­mit Everest.

The first of my blog­ging assign­ments for the sum­mer!!  (More on that later.)

The boy and I pulled up his lit­tle step­stool and got down to busi­ness on a cloudy, rainy after­noon this week and made some of our favorite cookies.

This was his first time help­ing with some­thing that involved choco­late chips…

He was espe­cially good at help­ing with this part (yeah, I know)…

and this part.

After all of the design­ing, plan­ning, and hours and hours of stitch­ing, I’m finally ready to update my Etsy shop.  With all of the details set to go, we were plan­ning on a lit­tle trip to the park to take advan­tage of the beau­ti­ful sunny days we’ve been hav­ing lately.

And although I may be ready, appar­ently Mother Nature was not.

Win some, lose some.  Ah well, we’ll see what hap­pens tomor­row.  This also gives me a bit more time to work on a cou­ple of almost fin­ished items and that’s always a good thing.

Here’s what’s def­i­nitely ready to rock:

Three sets of leg­gings:  wide wale navy blue cor­duroy with vin­tage trim, flan­nel lined batik with the fire lotus applique, and softer than soft vel­vety cor­duroy com­plete with reclaimed Asian embroi­dery and a lamb­swool lining.

And a lit­tle wrap­around skirt with some pretty intense applique:

Though there’s been a lot of rest and prepa­ra­tion for baby going on around here, I have man­aged to steadily ham­mer away at the pile of unfin­ished projects that I shared with you all a cou­ple of weeks back.

After much sewing, seam rip­ping, cut­ting, and more seam rip­ping, the boy now has a sweet lit­tle pair of boots and I have a sweet lit­tle pat­tern that will serve me well for months to come.  This pair is made from a repur­posed wool sweater and lined with super soft flan­nel.  There are (of course) a cou­ple more adjust­ments to be made but these meet all of our needs in a lit­tle boot:  func­tional, unique, warm, and they actu­ally stay on.

I fin­ished the hat that I was ini­tially mak­ing for last month’s Gypsy Road chal­lenge, com­plete with cro­chet cov­ered but­tons and a whole lotta pop­corn stitch.  I am so in love with hand­spun wool that it almost hurts.  The best part?  This is a com­pletely orig­i­nal design that actu­ally looks and fits just like I was envi­sion­ing.  I dig it so much that I actu­ally put one of my labels in my own hat…now that’s good stuff.

And though it’s only about 20% fin­ished, I have been plod­ding away at the baby’s sweater.  I even learned a new stitch to add to my knit­ting bag of tricks–the hon­ey­comb stitch.  I love the ele­gance of knit­ting but it cer­tainly takes a lot more time than crochet!

As part of the Gypsy Road team chal­lenge last month (Tak­ing Care of Num­ber One), I whipped up this lit­tle wrap­around skirt for myself.

Here’s the view from the side of the pocket, which is a bit too big but I’m not going to take it off and redo it so there.

And the other side.  This wrap­around style is based on a skirt that my mama brought home from China–it’s cut on the bias so it lays nicely and looks great even when you gain four­teen pounds in one month. My favorite part is the orange ter­rycloth bias edging…love that.

Here’s another one that I made for my friend Car­rie last summer…can’t get the pics to post here but it’s worth the gander.

I’m work­ing on a line of these for a spring debut in The Shop, some of which will fea­ture some applique and patch­work ideas that have been buzzing around my mind lately.

Lately I’ve been aim­lessly wan­der­ing around the world of the third trimester, try­ing to nav­i­gate where I’m headed and deter­mine what self-imposed  expec­ta­tions are going to be met within these next few pre­cious weeks.  Look­ing for­ward, reach­ing toward the ever­stretch­ing fin­ish line, try­ing to run when it’s get­ting tough to even walk these days.

Time to slooooooowww it down.

And there’s no greater exer­cise in still­ness than mak­ing bread by hand.  No rely­ing on the Kitchen Aid, no rapid rise yeast, just a counter full of ingre­di­ents and these two hands.

You just can’t rush the process.  It’s an all day event, just right for a bloom­ing belly that is quickly forc­ing more and more lim­i­ta­tions.  A bliss­ful baby that is announc­ing her place in this tribe.  A bummed out mama who feels like a wild horse who’s finally been broken.

Hands plung­ing into a med­ley of stick­i­ness, stop­ping to wait while tired eyes deci­pher new direc­tions.  Again.  And again.  Dis­tracted by the keen inter­est dis­played by a tiny boy sit­ting nearby on his sturdy wooden throne.

Fret­ting about how this mass of flour and water will come together:   Will it turn out ok?  What if this recipe is hor­ri­ble?   Will my oven catch on fire when I spray water inside to steam the dough?  Will the heat recover quickly enough?  Will it rise?  Will it rise enough?  Will the seeds burn?

Stop.  Knead.  Listen.

Lis­ten as the dough per­forms its magic, its ancient secret of bind­ing the sin­gle parts into the sum of the whole.  Lis­ten as it sud­denly grooves into its new form, effort­lessly, imme­di­ately.  All by the work of these two hands.  Slowly.  No rush.  Right here, right now.

Every­thing is going to be just fine.