cheating

i would blog, i really would, but i'm busy playing bejeweled blitz on facebook. it's sucked me in and i can't quit until my score tops 150 000. (i'm currently at 128 600) it's not optional, folks.in my absence, watch this. i really love it. i don't think i've ever seen anything quite like it, and truly original music videos are few & far between, wouldn't you say?

and one last goodie, to assuage my guilt over the blog neglect.

done!

my bff socks for daffodylic are finally done, and i am very pleased. look!
i mailed them off today. enjoy, friend.next up: a shrug for my friend's wedding and socks for my little boy, since he's already outgrown the ones i made him for xmas.

yarn joy

the other evening things were dreary and grey. my partner was taking the kid out, leaving the baby and i home to enjoy the marvelous joys of doing taxes. the baby was weepy and clingy, i had a headache... it was not the best moment of my life.
i was settling down in front of the computer, coffee in hand, whiny baby being ignored, when i heard a weird thump at the door. i looked out the window and saw a postal worker heading back to a canada post truck... do postal people deliver stuff at 7 pm? apparently so. or some divine spirit knew i needed some day-brightening and moved a spiritually aware package deliveryperson to bring me some goodness. either way, i was mightily surprised and pleased.

inside the screen door i found a plump, cheerful package that looked mightily pleased with itself. i was mightily pleased with it, too. pleased turned to ecstatic when i opened it...oh my dear lord.

• allergen-free 'granola' bars for my son
• lace-weight merino yarn in a stunning colourway
• packaged in a yarn bag

a yarn bag, i discovered as i read the tag, is a waterproof bag for holding a skein or two of yarn, for knitting on the go. if my thermos dumps itself in my backpack, if i set my bag down in a puddle, if the river overflows its banks and i'm chest-deep in water, i don't need to fret. my yarn is dry, secure, and in a stylin' bag.

the yarnis very, very soft. and pretty. i've never knit with lace-weight yarn and i have no idea what to make with it, but yarn doesn't go bad, so when the perfect idea arrives i'll be ready, pretty yarn in hand.

i don't have anything to say about the granola bars yet, since i'm saving them for the next outing i take my son on. there's nothing like an exciting new treat to bribe him into sitting still on the bus.

so thank you, yarnfloozies, for making tax night ten zillion times better.

book review: the mercy rule

the mercy rule by perri klass is a great book. it's written in the most straightforward prose i've ever had the pleasure of reading. the book handles many sensitive topics with unsentimental truth and blatant elegance.

the protagonist, lucy, is a suburban mom of two. married, working, taking her kids to soccer practice and birthday parties. dr. lucy weiss is a pediatrician specializing in at-risk and foster children, and a nationally recognized authority on the subject. she is also a former foster child, herself. the book centres around two main subjects: lucy's complex relationship with her complex daughter, isabel, and her efforts to balance her difficult, often wrenching work and her home life.

there's a fine balance between being an evil babysnatcher, removing kids from bad homes to put them in worse ones, and being a rescuer of children at risk, removing them to safety. i once had a job where i had to make that call occasionally, and it is brutal. the home life is bad, but is it so bad that it warrants removal? at what point is the line crossed that necessitates breaking up a family? it's a hard, hard choice, and perri klass does an excellent job of articulating just how excruciating it is.

isabel and lucy are, like many mother-daughter pairs, both stunningly similar and amazingly different. their relationship is fraught with misunderstandings, but also has nuggets of harmony. it's complicated, painful, wonderful, and incredibly real. this relationship is so well developed it's almost like another main character. also beautiful is the way isabel, a pre-teen, isn't another faceless stereotyped young girl. she's got a fully formed personality, and she is an amazing, talented, messed up, neurotic kid, just like the ones you'll meet in real life. the depiction of isabel is hands-down the best character development of a minor i've read this decade. if for nothing else, read the mercy rule to see how well the author creates the characters of isabel and lucy.

i don't know if this book was better than the groom to have been, but it's at least on par. it is therefore now tied for best book of the year.

this bathroom is brought to you by etsy.com

today my soap dish arrived, and i love it. i spent enough time in the bathroom, admiring how it adds colour and interest to the sink, that my kids started banging on the bathroom door and yelling for me. in other words, about 15 seconds. i hope to spend longer admiring it after my babies go to bed tonight. this beautiful item was purchased here.

i had been using body shop facial cream and it was ok, but i don't like body shop ethics. naturally, i went to etsy when i saw that it was time to replace my cream.

my search led me to summerland scrubs, where sample-sized jars of goat milk and cocoa butter souffle cream are less than 2$. i was surprised and delighted to see that the 'sample' contained almost as much as the body shop jar (1 oz vs 1.7 oz, if the body shop charged as much per ounce as summerland scrubs i would have paid about 3$ for my old jar)

the moisturizer itself is light, with the texture of chocolate mousse. a tiny bit goes a long way. it rubs in really well without residue. the body shop stuff left a residue. it was gross.

i'm not wild about the 'chocolate fudge' scent, it reminds me of chocolate skittles (bleugh!) in that it's a fake chocolate scent. sort of like how grape flavouring smells nothing like grapes. i'm not discouraged, though. i'll happily use up this cream and next time try another of her fantastic-sounding scents. maybe lemon cilantro.

the final way that my new cream kicks my old cream's ass is the ingredients list. the etsy stuff has about 1/4 as many ingredients as the body shop cream, and i can pronounce all of them. most of them i could find at the health food store. the body shop cream has the usual mile-long list of scary-sounding ingredients.

overall i give the summerland scrubs goat milk and cocoa butter souffle cream an enthusiastic two thumbs up and the body shop soy & calendula daily moisturizing cream a distasteful shrug.


the final etsy-based product i plan to review today is my bag of cocoa butter bath melts from bubbles n suds. these fizzy little bombs of joy are tiny - just look how shrimpy that one looks next to the huge, hulking lush bath bomb - but it's exactly as big as it needs to be. instead of being mostly fillers and air, these melts are dense and intense. it fizzed hard, and when it was done the bathroom smelled like a belgian chocolate factory and my skin was coated in delicious cocoa butter. all the patches of dry skin that had been forming on my body disappeared that day. i'm officially converted, and there's no going back.

to make things even better, a typical lush bath bomb costs ~6$. these delicious little treats are 6.50$ for 6. instead of a moisturizing bath being an expensive extravagance it can be an ordinary luxury.

seriously, these are the shizznit. buy them, and if you don't like them, send them to me. and when you're buying some, check out the lego shaped soap, the fight club soap, and all the other cool stuff to be found at the bubbles n suds soap company.

disappointment is...

when i was a kid, when there was something i really wanted that was beyond my allowance (fifty cents a week until i was in my teens, then two dollars a week. but in a small town there isn't much to buy) i was told to go roll the coins in the change bucket. my efforts generally rewarded me with enough rolled small change to buy whatever lego set or scrunchie had caught my eye.

i've been quietly yearning for a magical windfall that would enable me to go to my friend's wedding this spring. trips to florida aren't cheap, though, and even if i had the money i'd need a passport, which i don't have. disregarding those irritating details, i decided to go begging from my sugar daddy of yore - the penny jar.two canadian dollars. 1.55 american dollars. i don't think i'll be visiting the sunshine state this year.

although the coppers and browns in the penny rolls are really pretty. can someone find me a sock yarn in those colours? pretty, penny-coloured socks might soothe my aching soul.

more kid art cuteness

this afternoon my son (who is 3) took the camera and tried it out. out of 142 images about 15 weren't too blurry or dark, and these are the best five.
i promise that tomorrow won't be about my kid's artistic endeavors. thanks for bearing with me.

pure silliness

the front

the inside

my boy has been really into making cards for people lately. he's very specific about what he wants the picture to be, what he wants the inside to say, and who the card is for. this card was created while i napped today, and when i got up the little guy said told me that 'da big bug is scairting the persons in the building'.

who would have guessed that a giant, villainous bug would melt my heart? i must be getting sappy in my old age.

four good things

i've been in a funk for a few days, so i am going to list some of the things in my life that are good.

1. last night i did a short session with a yoga dvd before bed, and it was wonderful. each of the dozen or so times that the babes woke me up i noticed how good my spine felt. when i'm done this post i'll do another session, and have another happy-spine night.

2. i won a contest! see? i think the prize is yarn, but i won't know for sure until i get an exciting surprise in the mail. the blog that hosted the contest is worth checking out, it's a collaborative effort with lots of good cat and knitting pictures.

3. my bff socks are practically knitting themselves. i've already started the second one, and the first looks fantastic. see? the yarn is very nice, the pattern gives me shivers, the knitting is supremely enjoyable, the end product is excellent. i'm not going to want to give these up when i finish them. i will, though, because no matter how nice the socks are, daffodylic is nicer and i want her feet to be clad in my love.

4. i drink fantastic coffee. really good coffee can make even the shittiest type of day quite a bit better.

so here's to coffee, friends, socks, knitting, contests, yarn, blogs, yoga and supple spines!

cheers!

seed pot tutorial # 1

in honour of the temperature being all the way up near freezing today (and so balmy and summerlike, compared to the -30 and colder that i've gotten used to over the past four months) i will show you one of the ways i make my seed pots.
i'm not into paying for peat pots that destroy the planet. instead, i save my toilet paper rolls and paper bags for a while and make my pots out of them. that way i'm reducing, reusing, and upcycling. see how green i am?

this tutorial is for the very simplest possible seed pot. let me demonstrate.
did you catch that? because it's the whole thing. i'll write it out.

1. cut a toilet paper roll in half. (if you want a nice collar to protect your tomatoes from the horrors of cutworm, leave the roll whole but only fill it 1/2 or 2/3 with soil)
2. cut a strip of newspaper or paper bag (i prefer the paper bag, it's sturdier) that's long enough to wrap around the length of the roll and then some, and wide enough to cover the circle of the roll.
3. place the roll in the middle of the strip and pull the paper up to the top and tuck the ends into the roll
4. fill with soil. the soil will hold the paper in place.

next you put the pot in some sort of tray under a good window, plant your seeds, and let them grow.

you'll need to support the bottom of the pot when you move it, since the paper is going to slowly rot and become even more prone to tearing. but that's the idea, since you want the pot to biodegrade as the plant grows, once you transplant it outside.

if when you plant your pot in the soil, if you're nervous about the roll not decaying quickly enough, you can slide it out of the ground, leaving the plant behind. i don't think it's an issue, though, since the pot is so short that roots easily spread out below it.


my other method of making seed pots involves folding origami boxes. i've slightly modified the basic box design that you can find anywhere. (the regular plan makes a wide, low box, and i prefer something cube-ish)

if there is interest i can post a tutorial on the origami pots. is there interest?