My two main goals

My major goal in life is to raise great kids and make my husband’s life a happy one. So far, so good on those two, I think. Just staying at home and homeschooling the kids fulfils most of these goals. Our kids are allowed to grow and learn in the ways that best suit them, good homemade food is always available and as a group of people we have strong bonds to each other because we are so physically close day in and day out. My husband has no worries about the kids or the house while he is away, because he knows I’m on top of everything here. Now if only I could get the house to clean itself…

My next goal in life is to write and publish science fiction novels. This one is much harder for me. I spent my college years studying science and even though I wanted to be a writer since 10^th grade I always “knew” I couldn’t be one. I’ve spent decades living into that reality.

It’s been 5 years since I said “ENOUGH!” to that thought and I’m on my third novel. The first two are bad. Very bad. So bad they’d make your eyes bleed if you read them. This third one has some serious promise and I’m about 70 percent done with it. I’m stuck on the ending though. The motivations I gave my two bad guys seem rather flimsy right now and I’m trying to come up with something better. I hate it when a writer changes the motivations of a character to suit the story (I’m looking at YOU, Phillip Pullman) because suddenly things aren’t working out in the story. I won’t have that in my novel. So I’m stuck, but thinking.

I’ve got about a month of writing left to finish my first draft. After that I’ll let it sit for a couple of months while I work on writing short stories. You would think a person who has written 2 ½ novels could manage a short story with her eyes blindfolded, but not me. I tend to read and write in long, sweeping arcs of time – give me a 5 book series and I’m in Heaven. 10 pages seems way too small to write a complete story. I’m working on it though.

Home again

It's amazing how it took me an entire week to get ready for a long weekend away.

I spent the last 3 days at Boskone, which I completely love. I took the two older kids with me and left the two younger ones at home. My niece brought her two kids and boyfriend/fiance/whatever-the-kids-are-calling-it-these-days and watched my youngest two.

I love my niece very much, but she's not much of a cook. I spent 2 days cooking and baking so she'd have plenty of food to assemble and/or reheat so it wouldn't be too difficult to feed everyone. I also baked bread and breakfast foods to take with us. All in all, I baked 13 loaves of bread and 6 dozen muffins. You may think that's a lot, but for 10 people over 3 days it's not so much because 6 of them are ravenous kids going through growth spurts.

Anyway, now I'm back and full of fabulous ideas for finishing my novel, and starting the next one.

And, lest you think I was slacking on the knitting front, I present to you the Boskone Sock:



This pattern is Los Monos Locos (Ravelry link) and it knits up quite quickly. I am very happy the pattern is not lost in the variegations of the yarn.

And speaking of the yarn, I bought it from one of the Guests of Honor, Astrid Bear. She has a shop, Damselfly Yarns. This is the Boskone colorway and I'm not sure if she has any left, but it is the Sturdy Sheep blend - 75% superwash Merino and 25% nylon.

I am planning on wearing these socks a lot this Spring, since they are such nice spring-y colors. The yarn feels warm and soft on my toes, which I'll need because Spring isn't always a warm time of year here.

But I have nothing to wear!

Wow, did I just save you from an annoying post.

I had this whole post written abut how I had nothing to wear tonight to Scout Shabbat and how annoyed I am about not having a perfect wardrobe.

Then I decided I should get over myself and work with what I have. And now you know what I'm wearing to Scout Shabbat.




The dress isn't actually shiny, it's just the flash. I do have a head, but I haven't even brushed my hair yet.

Photo taken by Zach, who seems to like photography.

Summer!

Come on, Summer! It was 6 degrees out this morning and I completely do not approve! It warmed up to about 20 degrees when I took my cub scouts out to play this afternoon but since one of them only had a sweatshirt and no coat, we didn't stay out very long.

I'm moving on to the Fall portion of this project, but I'm about to run out of embroidery floss. I'll have to get more when I'm out doing errands this weekend, and I'll have to find some good border fabric as well.

I didn't get any stitching done with Tirzah today. She promises we can work together tomorrow.

After lunch needlepoint

Here we are, in a sort of Mother/Daughter bliss.

This is my daughter, Tirzah. She's going to be 6 this April and we are sitting in my bed working on our needlepoint projects. Yes, her needle did go MIA in my bed when she was done working for the day. Hopefully I'll find it before I roll over on it tonight.

Her project is a small wall hanging for Valentine's Day that says "I love you" and has 2 hearts on it. It's for her father and I told her she would have to work on it every day to make sure it was done on time. My project is the Fall panel of my four seasons wall hanging. I am also working on a Besotted scarf for my husband for Valentine's Day - he's one lucky guy, getting all these hand made gifts.

She got bored after a while and got up, but she did manage to finish almost half of her first heart in a sort of wonky backstitch that I love to death just because she made it.

We're under the blankets because it's chilly and I'm not turning the heat up.

You can see the purple color of my walls that I love so much. The top blanket is the Feather and Fan shawl (Ravelry Link) in a worsted weight yarn. This was my first lace project and It was really difficult to figure out on lace weight yarn, so I switched to thicker yarn and suddenly it all seemed to make sense to me.

My youngest son has made a comic strip for my husband for Valentine's Day as well. The oldest two have no interest in making anything for anyone - I blame pre-teen angst and a pretension to "cool". They have no idea they are the nerdiest kids in the world. They're also still in the school room working on their math.



Photo by Zach Shalek, one of the angst-ridden kids.

Give Away

The Crafty Crow is having a give away here: http://belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow

It's a nifty looking book called "The Book of Days" and has recipes, activities and fun stuff for kids and families to do.

I hope I win!

Spring

Spring is here, at least in my embroidery hoop.

This is the first season of my 4 seasons wall hanging for my office. The purple color is a lovely match for the walls.

The pattern is from the book Shadow Redwork by Alex Anderson. I think I'll be making several items from this book as my office is also my bedroom so some throw pillows and pillowcases will be necessary.

The fabric is from curtains I hung when we were selling our old house. It's a plain white cotton and holds up nicely. I have one curtain set aside for a bedskirt, four curtains hanging in the windows and the rest will be used for a quilt, wall hangings, pillow cases and throw pillows. I am really looking forward to making my office/bedroom a cozy space full of hand made items.

For those of you who can't help asking why my office is also my bedroom? Because my husband snores very loudly and I can't take it any more! Once the kids are older and start moving out of the house I'll be able to move my office into the school room and then my bedroom will be just my bedroom.

Tomorrow I should have a photo of Summer.

Also, this morning's breakfast of cinnamon toast went over without a problem. Maybe breakfast will be smoother for a while now.

Monday Musings

Last week my kids complained about breakfast. They are sick of 'the same old 7 things week after week'. The same old 7 things are: donut muffins (basic muffin with lots of nutmeg), pumpkin gingerbread, pancakes, spice muffins (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, mace, cloves), banana bread, cinnamon bread toast and bacon and eggs.

All this food is made from scratch (well, not the bacon and eggs) either the night before or early in the morning - it's my ideal way to start a morning. A fresh, warm home made breakfast with recipes I've tweaked to make them healthier but still yummy.

They just want me to buy cereal.

So I've been on breakfast food strike. I haven't made anything for them for about 5 mornings now and they're now sick of having to fend for themselves. They ran out of cereal fairly quickly and the boys who can make pancakes are tired of that as well. Now they're sick of their last option, eggs.

Maybe it's time to start back up with the yummy home made breakfast foods. I have tried a million different breakfast foods and the reason they keep getting these is they're the only ones everyone will eat. Can you believe the kids won't eat blueberry muffins?

The problem is they hurt my feelings. I work hard to make sure they have good foods every day and they'd rather have take out pizza and cold cereal. I'm trying to rise above the whole thing, but I'm feeling very unappreciated.

I know once they move out and go to college they'll be amazed at how life in the 'real world' is and how hard it is to get a good spice muffin but I don't think I want to wait that long for appreciation.

So, what should I do? I think new recipes are in order, but I need tried and true ones because, despite their complaining, they aren't really open to new foods.