The River Empires and some Exotics

River Empires
I have a new favorite band which I can't stop listening to. It combines most of my favorites: indie, folk, banjo, fiddle, poetic intelligent lyrics, beauty. This song first caught my ear as I was walking through some dappled light from shaky tree leaves as I was walking across my apartment complex, and the title and sound just perfectly matched what I was seeing! The shadows looked sparkly! But I will say that I enjoy the ENTIRE ALBUM, which is rare.

Exotics
I also tried out a new thing just now. I told one of the girls I work with the other day that I found these instructions for washing your hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. She said, "Oh, RS, you're always trying all these exotic things!" Yep, that baking soda is some exotic stuff. It's magical. I love talking to this co-worker because it keeps me from thinking I'm too normal. I told her another time that I wish I had some venison because I really wanted some chicken fried deer steaks. She told me, "you eat deer?!?!" HAHAHA. Yes. Delicioso and lacking in essential preservatives, antibiotics and hormones. We live in South Texas. I didn't know anyone didn't eat deer. We also take the deer's head and hang it on the wall, but that's a different story.

But anyway. Baking soda. So I just tried the instructions from the Simplemom website (sorry, too lazy to link). I suppose I won't know whether or not the method is effective for a couple of weeks. There is evidently a withdrawal period where your hair goes all freaky because it's used to having all of its oils stripped when you use regular shampoo and compensates by producing extra oil. I don't imagine extra oil can hurt my hair too much since it's pretty dry naturally. I'll report back on this crucial issue.

Here's another exotic idea that I stumbled upon from the same website. Washing your face with olive oil. I've tried this a couple of times so far and am quite impressed. It makes your skin look all luminous and glowing. The greatest part is that there are absolutely no pesky pregnancy hormones involved. It also has not led to any increase in pimples.

Encouraging Reflection
It's been quite an odyssey, but I'm slowly becoming a Catholic. The torturous pace is definitely not self-imposed. All would-be converts have to take eight months of religious education classes before they can be baptized and received into the Church. There are about 15 of us in the class, which is quite an admirable number. Every aspect of the Church which I researched with a critical eye has made plain why-didn't-I-think-of-this-before sense in accordance with not only what I've learned in the Bible, but also with what I understand of life. These are the things I love most so far:

1. Steadfastness and refusal to compromise its morality in the face of secular pressure.
2. It is consistent logically with the world and its own teachings. No contradiction.
3. Teaching authority which ensures that what I'm learning is reliable.
4. The Church teaches compassion and self-donative love as noble works.
5. It's teachings about the meaning of marriage and openness to life.
6. Never thought I would say this, but the Rosary has proven to be vehicle of grace.
7. REALLY never thought I'd say this, but the communion of saints. None of us are truly alone and without help!
8. I would say the Eucharist, but I'm not allowed to receive it yet.
9. I would say confession/reconciliation but I'm not allowed to do that yet either.
10. The lack of that strange "accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior" business with its weird emphasis on individuality. We're meant to work together, not separate!

Check out this blog if you don't believe me, the author is a former Atheist who has some interesting insights on so many topics.

New toy

So far we've found nearly $5 in coins. This morning we went metal detecting in the yard of an old house that recently got torn down. All we found was a buried toy car, a folded license plate, some pull tabs, a belt buckle, and a Peter Piper Pizza token. We didn't stay out too long because I got too whiney from waking up at 4 something AM. Oliver would be happy to verify this fact. I think this hobby will be more fun when we both have detectors, because so far I just follow the man around with a shovel and wait to dig. I will also probably have more fun the moment I find jewelry or silver coins. The tricky thing is that the tone for gold is very similar to the tone for pull tabs and bottle caps. Eenteresting.

Baby schtuff

I went to a friend's baby shower last Sunday, and finally handed over some super cute projects I'd been working on. The quilt was down-to-the-wire, finished the night before. Procrastinator style. I wanted to take pictures of it before it got marked with spit-up and other less pleasant bodily fluids, but the morning of the shower it was RAINING outside (whoa!) and I couldn't get good lighting. I will by no effin' means complain about that sorely needed rain, but I will say that my pictures are extremely lacking and unsatisfying because I had to use the flash. But still, here they are.

Stacked coins quilt

This project taught me many things, and also reminded me of one fact I seem to always forget:

1. Quilts are always freaking harder to make than they look, especially when you don't have a rotary cutter or mat or other essential accouterments that make things easier and you have to do things the old fashioned (less accurate) way. I think these things work like childbirth. Supposedly your brain just glosses over the pain of labor when you see your complete and fully formed baby. Same with quilts, I think. I'm ready to do more! 

2. If you are going to do any quilting AT ALL EVER, you need to invest in a walking foot for your sewing machine. When I first started quilting the vertical lines to tack down my quilting layers together with my regular presser foot, I was having a heck of a time keeping the layers from shifting. Even after peppering the thing with a zillion pins. In desperation I appealed to my local fabric store and they hooked me up with the most angelic device known to man: the lowly walking foot. After attaching the thing to my machine, the quilting portion sailed by and required a ton less pinning. Best $40 I ever spent.

3. Measuring and cutting fabric is what I'll be doing in Hell, so I better be good. I'm pretty sure this aspect will lessen if I had more accurate measuring devices. No matter how straight you think you're going to cut out a cardboard template, it's always going to turn out a little off. When you trace around your cardboard template with pen, it's going to get a little more off. When you cut that out, and then just fold your fabric square in half and cut across the crease things just might get a little wonky. The "it looks straight enough" philosophy is not terribly effective in quilting.

4. Binding is funner, but slower than it looks. Enough said. I was always afraid of separate binding before. I would always just cut the backing a little bigger than the quilt top and then fold the backing over the top. I actually quite like the look of separate binding, but it takes longer because you have to hand-sew the fold in the back with an invisible stitch all the way around. It's peaceful work.

5. Always search the internet before beginning to find the easier more effective way to cut and sew your particular pattern. Really enough said. This mostly pertains to my half square triangles quilt that is waiting in the wings.

All that said, I also present the lowly matching baby hat:

I hope these things and Baby Evan will be very happy together!

unrelated note: It is 5 AM. Shit.

Seeing DAHLIAS!!!

YES! I am seeing new, fresh, bright reddish pink, full, beautiful DAHLIAS in a vase on my table!

I was presented with these lovelies yesterday by my husband on our 2 year wedding anniversary. He knows dahlias are my absolute favorite flower of all time, but they are a rare breed in South Texas and so for the wedding we used also-wonderfully-pretty-but-significantly-less-expensive-and-less-temperamental sunflowers, white daisies and such (there pictures of those in my last post).

But I just can't stop admiring my dahlias, although my cheap-o camera washes them out a bit. I just love them in my Fiesta pitcher. I love them so much that I moved them about 10 thousand leagues away from cats' reach last night, because I didn't want to have to mourn the little sundrop petals on the floor in the morning.

Yep, I present this post as testimony that it really is the little things in life.

Every Flower

“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our lord's living garden.” - St. Therese de Lisieux

2 FOs and a Shawl to Be

Summer has overstayed his welcome, so in a desperate effort to encourage him to leave I started knitting hats. Even though I'm reading about a thousand books, I've also managed to find lots of knitting time.

Oliver claimed it because it's fancy and yet still mantastic. Made from Paton's Wool Classic.

Made for my dad, I suppose for Hunting Season from clearance $6 Fishermen's Wool.
It's also appropriate because my dad really is a fisherman.

Just begun Jane Eyre shawl, you can already see the bottom ruffling.
Those are my Knit Picks Zephyr needles that I bought last year (love).
This is the same Fishermen's Wool as above.

From the recent Jane Eyre movie.

All three of these projects are knitted on the same size needles (7), with the same size 40 (?) inch cord. I'm learning that I actually prefer the magic loop method for knitting hats, even in those instances where I DO have the right size needles with a short cord.  Here are some reasons why I think magic loop is better:

1. It's great that I don't have to buy new needles with short length cords every time I start a new project. 

2. I hate wrestling with DPNs when I get to the decrease portions of a hat. 

3. I never have to switch needles at all throughout. 

4. I don't have to even bother with marking the beginning of my circular objects.

Stacked Insanity

The books I've bought or checked out in the past month.

I think it is clear that I severely overestimate both my reading speed and ability to absorb information. Still, my appetite is insatiable. I guess I might as well expose the topic that's created such a vacuum.

Young Adult and classic literature, with a humongous dollop of Catholicism.