When the phone call finally comes

it isn’t as dramatic as you think it will be. Partly because every time the phone rings, you feel your stomach clutch and you feel the sweat break out…only to find out it is a reminder of a doctor appt or something. After doing this for a week, it is almost a relief to have the call finally come. And you find you are calm and able to talk… to try to sooth your parents who have said goodbye to a child.

You then call your grandmother and mother in law and have a good chat and a few tears.. all very controlled. You share the news with your children. The eyes are red rimmed and the nose stuffy..

But the dam is about to burst…not sure when, but it will. Grief, great waves of grief.. for what has happened, for a life too short, for regret and guilt, for pain and sorrow and a huge hole and a great gulf that has opened in your life.

That dam is about to burst, and I wonder how you get to the other side.

She was my childhood playmate and my teenage sparring partner. She and I were not 2 peas in a pod.. we were as different as night and day. She was brave and bold and I was reserved and cautious. She was always doing and trying things before me. I was always waiting to see how it turned out. Yet I was the older one. Somehow, that just seems strange. I was always held back by my worries and fears until I saw that she survived, so I would too.

And here again, she has been the first to take that journey into another place. I hope the heavens opened and welcomed her soul.. her brave, pretty, strong soul. I hope my great grandmother was there to welcome her and make her feel at home. I hope she is at peace. I hope she knows that tears are being shed for her.. that hearts are very sad.. that we feel that a hole is now in our lives.

Jan 27 – Nov 5

Hello…

4 weekends in a row painting the new house. And now 2 weekends in a row, moving in. Life has been very hectic and swirly. And the autumn backdrop of colorful leaves and cool rain has come as a surprise when I have had time to look up.

This weekend, a birthday for a newly minted nine year old, and the first wisdom teeth removed added to the fun. The new house has already provided us comfort and joy for these occasions.

You can check out the latest here:              http://rmlamb.wordpress.com/

 

Unfortunately, in the midst of all this happiness and contentedness, in the midst of everyday chaos, there is a shadow. My sister has entered the Valley of the shadow, morphine making her comfortable.. and I wait for the phone to ring. I try to comfort my mother as she faces that thing no parent thinks it is right to face. I told her it was okay to be angry.. this is not the way it is supposed to be. But it is what it is…at this point, we have to hope she is comfortable and not suffering.

 

Hello, hello… is this thing on?

Where have I been…

Well, working 5 days a week educating the future. School has been a bit hectic of late.. we had homecoming, Open House, and a near tragedy that took up some emotional space, but has turned out very happily. We have also been battling the forces of H1N1. It is tough to have 2 -5 students out each week due to flu and try to catch them up when they return. But, this is normal work stuff.

When I am not at work, I have been here:

That is me, painting the eldest’s new bedroom. He chose a slightly brighter blue than we used elsewhere in the house.. looks very bright and cheerful. This was Friday night’s job. Saturday it was time to touch up his room, and touch up the middle child’s room – he chose a very pale grey which he plans to accessorize with bright punches of red.

Eldest's room, touched up and finished...upstairs doors ready to install.

Because of all the allergies the middle son has, we are putting down flooring in there rather than carpet.. so we need to get to installing these bamboo flooring planks…

We have invited people to dinner and then not let them leave until they helped paint… okay, that is only partially true. But we have needed some help. Sat night an entire group helped paint the upper common room white.

Saturday night I touched up the den paint and the man about the place touched up the ceilings. The den and our bedroom and the youngest child’s bedroom are a lovely blue.

Youngest son's room... lots of nooks and crannies.

The children have helped quite a bit.. they fetch and carry and have done some painting. They help cook dinner and do laundry.

Today I spent the day putting on the second coat of paint downstairs… the living room, hall and stairway are all a color named “applesauce”… which is a bit more buttery/yellowy than these pictures show. It took me about 6.5 hours with a bagel brought in by middle son and water brought in by youngest. Whew.

We are near the end of this process. It has almost been 2 months.. so it has not been long.. but I am ready for it to be over. No mother likes having chaos and uncertainty.

And there is this nice pale pink office/sewing space off my kitchen with my name on it… cannot wait.

And it feels odd to realize that while I have been microfocused on this house project, life has changed seasons and began to move toward darkness….

The view out the new dining room window confirms that fall is here. This view is lovely.. reds and greens and browns and yellows. It will be so much better when the equipment goes home. There is a family of mallards that have arrived for a few weeks and are fun to watch from the window. We need rain though.. pond is way down.

Well, that is where I am.. hope to join you more regularly soon!

More of today's handiwork.

This post is for Little Jenny Wren…

If you have ever visited her blog, you would see the beautiful dolls she creates. Not long ago, she posted a vintage pattern for a Holly Hobby Doll , and it looked so wonderfully familiar.

My grandmother sewed most of her clothes from a young age. She made beautiful taffeta and organza masterpieces for her only daughter, my mom. And when my sister and I were young, she made many of our very 70s style clothing. She would come for long summer visits, we would pick out fabrics and materials, and she would begin a sewing marathon: everything coordinated – jumpers and shirts and skirts that could mix and match.

So I learned to sew from her, even inheriting one of her machines for my first sewing projects. I made my confirmation dress of a white dotted swiss material. And my first dress was made for the first day of junior high. I loved that dress, and I still have both of them. It took me 3 tries to make the collar of the junior high dress because I kept clipping through the seam when I tried to clip the curve.

But even though I was 13/14 at the time of this dressmaking, I still enjoyed dolls. Not so much to play with, but I appreciated them, enjoyed having them.  And I made the very doll that Little Jenny Wren posted the pattern for. I think I enjoyed the wardrobe aspect of the doll the most, and this doll had lovely dresses and aprons and underwear and shoes.

With things packed up for the move, it took some doing to dig these out. And there wasn’t much time for spending on pictures, but I snapped a few – they are not great, but I wanted to share my doll.

Her head is made of a white child’s sock. This is very similar to the way we make Waldorf dolls here. We use a gauze tube, or an old childs sock, or a bit of torn pantyhose to shape the head and hold the stuffing, and then we place the “skin fabric” over this bit. This doll simply has a head made of a sock. And the body is made of cotton. Waldorf doll bodies are made of the same knit skin fabric. My doll was stuffed with the only thing available to us at the time.. a hideous chunky polyester stuffing. This stuff was in cube like shapes, and one side of the cube had a smooth, shiny, stiff surface. Which means the stuffing is sort of boxy. When I learned to make Waldorf dolls, I was so in love with the wool stuffing – no hard edges when you go to give your doll a hug.

I was making this purely on my own, with only the instructions as my guide… no course, no previous experience, no one to help me. I think she turned out okay overall, but today, I can look and see where my mistakes were.

This doll has button eyes, which is also different from Waldorf dolls. Usually, they are embroidered on, very simply. This doll has embroidered features – mouth, nose, eyebrows – much more detail than you see on a Waldorf doll. You can also see I used pastels to color her. I think I was always a bit disturbed by her paleness – she is so very pure white. So a bit  of chalk in a peach color for blusher helped make her look more alive. To my grownup eye, it makes her look  a bit gaudy. And I was fascinated by freckles from an early age, often using my mom’s eyebrow pencil to freckle my own nose. This doll has a smattering of freckles too.

She had bloomers and a slip with lovely beaded edging with a blue satin ribbon threaded through it. She had an everyday blue dress with white pinafore with tiny buttons for trim. And a fancier green dress with tatted edging and a peach pinafore. She also had some accesories borrowed from my mothers old dolls. Like the umbrella – wooden handle, opens and closes, and still looks lovely almost 60 years after my mom played with it.

She had a stole, which also came from my mother’s things. And black felt shoes which I made. One shoe stretched a bit over time, and kept falling off. I could not find it for the photo, which makes me wonder if I lost it a long time ago, or if it just somewhere at the bottom of the large trunk where she lives.

Stitches were made in the hands to delineate fingers… another detail left off in a Waldorf doll…

Her only current shoe, with a button for a buckle.

I would love to find the pattern for the doll at my mom’s house. And someday, I think I would like to either try again with the pattern, or perhaps simply renovate this doll.  On the other hand, I also think I would love to make another Waldorf doll and dress her up. (I know so much more about doll making now, although I am certainly no expert. Getting the stuffing packed in firm enough is still one of my weak points… I always wished I had made it just a bit firmer later on.)  Make her a wardrobe. I made dolls for all my boys, and they are very clearly loved and bedraggled. I sometimes think I just need to freshen them up, but on the other hand, all these dolls in their battered state represent love and care and childish joy. To remake them and make them pristine again seems wrong somehow…

So maybe, in my new house, in my new sewing room/office, I will make my very own grownup play toy – and use all my scraps of lace and trim to make her a smashing wardrobe. Who knows…

Sunday evening catch – up…

Currently: Listening to BBC 7 – To the Manor Born, and I need to catch up with Lord Peter Whimsey and the Unpleasantness at the Belona Club. (I really love reading Dorothy L. Sayers, and I love Lord Peter.. mmm.)

Dusk is coming.. and it is early. This past few weeks the light has really changed. Not even 7:30, and I need the lights on.

Impatient is the mood. The new house is coming along fine.. but this end part of the process seems so slow. We knew it would be tough. But to live within feet of something that looks finished.. torture. A few more weeks. Tomorrow finish off insulation, Tuesday get the final inspection done on the insulation (passed all the electrical/plumbing/mechanical inspections last week) and then the sheet rocking upstairs begins, and then it will be almost done.

The house continues to overflow with boxes. This summer I packed all the stuff I definitely didn’t need before we moved in or shortly thereafter… like winter coats and Christmas ornaments and the kids memory boxes. They are safely stored at the inlaws. Lately, the focus has been on cleaning and sorting the stuff we will need soon after we move in. Getting rid of duplicates, emptying book shelves so we can move them. Going through the fabric and yarn and organizing. So weekends I dust and pack, and there is a den area full of boxes. And a front room full of give away/donate.

Recently: But, I have finished a sweater project. The complete details are on Ravelry, for knitterly types. I think this will be a very nice late fall/winter sweater. It has 3/4 length sleeves, and the yarn is soft and squooshy. Looking forward to wearing it.

Closeup of the lace on the bottom and the sleeve.

Packed and ready to move into the new house.

This sweater is called the Ring of Tara jacket from Knit N Style magazine, August 09 issue. I used Galway yarn by Plymouth yarns.

Last week: This week has flown by. Last weekend was Labor Day, and we packed and cleaned and went on a family hike at Badin Lake.

The 5 best guys in the world.. The husband and my three sons and Uncle B.

We hiked up and down for 5 plus miles, making a circuit around the various campgrounds, most of the hike being at the water's edge.

We kept bumping into this fellow...heron or egret.. can't remember which..the leg color tells the story.. should look it up.

Looked it up here, and it appears calling it either heron or egret is okay.

Fresh air and exercise felt great... and we were scouting it out for a scout weekend coming up.. it should do just fine.

These were so pretty and summery...

But it is clear that the seasons, they are a changin'...

Sewing Treasures…

I took these pictures this summer as I was packing and sorting, but did not get them posted. I have a lovely Aunt – in- law who runs an estate sale business, and at various times has had an antique mall booth. When she draws my name in the Christmas lottery, I always get some amazing treasures she has picked up during her work.  (She was also responsible for this post.)

One year, she gave me this fabulous brown zippered case:

Inside, were someone else’s sewing notions…

The case has a light blue silky/satiny lining. There were several pincushions of the usual tomato variety. But there was also this cute velvet number:

Shaped like a hat, this is a pin cushion. I wonder if she made this, or someone made it for her.

There was also this brightly colored bag made of a polished cotton/poplin type material. It has elastic in the casing to pull it closed. Inside the bag, were the things one would need to make such an elastic/drawstring casing:

Thread your ribbon, elastic, drawstring through one of these bodkins…there was also a supply of elastic in there.. mostly knicker/lingerie elastic.

Snaps, knicker elastic, and shoulder straps for your own lingerie…all needed in case of repair, or for making something new.

Every sewing case needs threads of all sorts, and here was a collection of blues, most likely for mending. There were lots of things in this case designed especially for mending, for example this:

This is such a tiny mending box… contains a needle threader and small thimble… and very small thread spools – so tiny and sweet.

But this box of JP Coats Mending Floss really opened my eyes. Each spool inside contains 10 yards (or did originally) of 10 popular colors for mending SILK HOSIERY, GLOVES and UNDERWEAR!

The thread is very shiny and thin.. how exotic!

Best Irish Flax Shoe Thread – was this truly for shoes? Seems a bit thin. Maybe for buttonholes or buttons? It seems very strong.

Another tiny metal container.. it has a hole in the bottom and divides into 2 pieces…

Put your thread inside and keep it orderly… the label on top says 40 Bis  Faub  Poissonniere.Paris Leon Bernardel France.

There were also packets of pins… pins with colored heads…

And there were lots of needle packets… most of them a form of advertising.

(Being a bit silly here:  What puzzled me were the ones for funeral homes.. when did they give these out? Does one associate funerals with sewing? There were several of these from different funeral parlors. I wonder if they were effective advertising. Did one decide to choose the funeral home based on the needle packet in ones sewing basket? Hmmm…)

Insurance anyone?

But the most intriguing of all the little items in the box was this little matchbook size item:

This was given out by  “Royal Neighbors of America, one of the largest fraternal benefit socities – writers of modern forms of Insurance Protection for Women, Men and Children.”

There is the cute girl walking the dog on the cover, as the leaves fall…and on top of the matchbook it says, “This will stop that run!”

Open it up and it reveals some match like looking sticks.. but they are the ORIGINAL, Best and Only, Genuine, Magic Run Arrestor Wands…

It’s a hosiery repair kit. It has a needle and threads in all the popular hosiery shades, and these magic wands. According to instructions, you moisten the wand and apply to both ends of a run or snag in a stocking. It will remain fixed until washing, allowing hose to be repaired. Equally effective for silk, nylon, rayon or Lisle.

Whoever owned this sewing kit had never used any of the wands. I wonder:

1) Was she so meticulous she never laddered her stockings?

2) Was she so lackadaisical she never cared when she did?

3) Had she used them before and found they didn’t really work?

4) Had she tucked it away and forgotten about it, always wishing she would remember to put it in her handbag?

5) Did she think someday it would be a historical object, and therefor worthy of preserving?

I wonder. But for whatever reason, I have enjoyed the peek it has given me into her life.

Whew….

TGIF…

The work of educating the future is tiring. And this is a short week, lol. But the school year is off to a good start, and I hope it will keep running smoothly.

The house work is going well too. For more details, see the house website.. but for a few quick photos, here goes:

Roof complete, and siding done except for small areas on ends where we will have board and batten instead of clapboards

Upstairs framing complete, and wiring almost done.

Lovely new bathroom

Wonderful utility space

Light and airy kitchen.

I pinch myself every day…

Pictures from the middle son’s birthday…

The fancy meal...

Blowing out the candles... I now have 2 teens!

His actual birthday was spent watching the house coming together, and swimming in the pond in between -- when asked, he said his bday was awesome.

Well, here we are….

The end of summer.

I feel the walls of regret closing in – wishing I had done more of this or that, wishing I had not packed away that cookbook or that article of clothing, realizing that the glorious moments of being carefree are now gone until next summer – this is a gloomy place to be.

And I go to this place each year at this time. I think much of it stems from fear of the unknown and a lack of confidence on my part. Am I ready for new classes, new students? Did I study enough this summer to be able to teach this new course? Will my students like me and will I like them? Past experience should tell me that everything tends to work out, things tend to flow smoothly, but no year is ever just like the last.. there is always a new challenge, a new obstacle.

And of course, I am pulled by the new house. It is both comforting and calming.. just walking through the empty rooms can calm me down and remind me of the joys to come as we make this new house our Home…and it is also the source of some discontent. I want to be home with the new house, playing with it, decorating and moving in… and when that time comes, will there be time to enjoy that process in the midst of a hectic fall semester? Sounds like I am borrowing trouble though.. those worries need to be put away as nonproductive. When the time comes, it will be what it will be.

So today and tomorrow are jam packed with preparations.. it is all so different when one works full time. Grocery shopping can no longer be a casual affair, because if I forget something I can run by tomorrow. It must be a well-planned orchestrated trip, because there won’t be a minute to go again until next weekend. Laundry and house cleaning must be done now, because there is so little time during the week. And there are a few things I still need to do for class on Tuesday…Monday is a work day, and I have a list of things I need to get done.

I have been keeping this blog long enough to see that I go through this every fall… this is the moment when the deep breathing and earnest praying begins. Asking for my eyes to be opened to my students and their needs, for the ability to reach them all and bring them with me on this journey, to not leave anyone behind. The prayers extend to my children, that their teachers are ready, that my children are receptive to their lessons, that they have a good experience, that we can help them when it gets rough.

The 25th is the first day of school.. and it will be so much more than that as well. We will have a memorial service to attend that evening for the father of a dear friend. And it is our 19th wedding anniversary. What an emotional day…

Here’s to the beginning of school, and a new semester and learning experience, new challenges and experiences…

Update on the day….

Well, sheets got changed and washed. Floors got mopped and vacuumed. Half of the bathroom got cleaned, and some laundry was washed and folded. So housework, check.

Mostly we spent the day, giddy with excitement, as the house arrived, piece by piece, every 2 hours. And we would take new rounds of photos, and upload and update the house website. SO that was a lot of fun, and really, we almost feel emotionally spent.

Included in the watching for the house was a long hike down the road to see the house come down a hill. All blogged at  This New House.

The meal for the middle son has gone ahead. He is having blackberry ripple cheesecake for dessert. Recipe here at Mennonite Girls Can Cook. Love this blog!) It took all morning to get it right.. I had to make the sugar syrup 3 times and botched one batch of eggwhites  in the process… my candy thermometer is decidedly off. But in the end, it got into the freezer. We are also having mashed potatoes, and this recipe for Cornish Game hens… remember, the birthday child gets to choose what he wants, and this was the request from the middle son.

I leave you with a few pictures. It may be awhile before I am back again…tomorrow I start back to work, and of course, there is the house excitement. So, be sure to check back in… when you have time.

Thanks for sharing the summer with me and for sharing the house excitement!

Crust and cream cheese mixture, waiting for me to get the sugar syrup meringue right.

Yumm.. let the folding begin.