What a week, what a week.

Current pregnancy craving: apples. Must be very crisp and on the tart side. Also: curry. And sweets of all description, but that's nothing new. It was the same when I was pregnant with Bear. With Miss B, I had mad cravings for a certain popular variety of fried chicken, the purveyor of which goes by its initials so as to distract from the "fried" part. I would go in, order chicken - just chicken, no fries, no coleslaw - and an orange soda. Gack! I couldn't get enough. That, and toaster waffles. And ice cream. I was living in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories at the time, and I didn't have a freezer, so I would keep my waffles and ice cream in a bucket outside my shack, with a piece of wood over the top and a big rock on that, to keep the foxes out. True story.

It's been a crazy week. A dear friend of mine lost one of her parents to cancer on Monday, and it's been so terribly heartbreaking. This person was a very well-loved and well-respected member of the community, and was adored by all of us. I had no idea of the extent of the illness - the battle was kept quite private - and so it's been a real shock. I'm entering that age, now, when my peers are losing grandparents and parents with a greater and greater frequency. We're also having babies with greater frequency, and I know it's all this big circle of life thing, but that doesn't make it any less sad. January has been a month of loss for so many people I know. People are either losing family members or people they didn't know but whom they held dear - Kate McGarrigle, Paul Quarrington (with whom I was supposed to do a reading this spring - weird feeling, that), now J.D. Salinger. Lhasa, P.K. Page, Howard Zinn. All in one month. Just strange. I wonder what it means?

I went to the funeral yesterday, where on top of all the feelings of loss and sadness, I had to make my way through the mysterious rituals of Roman Catholicism as a completely ignorant heathen. I always feel like a knob at religious ceremonies, because I'm usually one of maybe three people who have no idea when to do the standing and the sitting and the kneeling, and there are all these bits where the priest says something and you say something back, and all that. But it was beautiful, once I stopped being so self-conscious. Incense and stained glass and a very sweet priest who said some really nice things, and flowers everywhere. Lovely music (even if I didn't know the words).

Incidentally, despite being an ignorant ass as to church protocol, I do have a degree in religious studies, with a Catholic studies minor, no less, it's just that I spent my time studying the minutiae of 17th century theology and various sorts of imagery in late-Renaissance poetry of conversion, rather than the ins and outs of the contemporary Catholic funeral mass. Ah, when theory meets practice.

At the same time, Hubby C and I have been preparing for a big board meeting at work, and there's been a seemingly infinite amount of paperwork to prepare. I love our little mom-and-pop literary journal shop, especially the parts where we get to sit around and talk about poetry, and plan exciting events, and dream big about upcoming issues of the journal. The financial statements and the workflow charts and the operations plans are considerably less fun, but they've got to be done, and we've been at them all week.

And so there's been no sewing, no crafts-closet-organizing, no baking, no adventuring, very little picture-taking. Lots of sniffling over sadness and hair-pulling over paperwork frustration, and the worst pork chops I've ever eaten (oh, the recipe promised big things, but they were empty, empty promises).

The angels wanna wear my red shoes...

I've been tagged! Doubly tagged, by both Darling Petunia and Skippedydoodah, two ladies I admire very much. The challenge: post photos of seven red things in my house, then tag seven other bloggers to do the same. This came along just in time, as I'm in day five of a killer sinus headache (whatever you're about to suggest, I can guarantee I've tried it, but thanks), and I couldn't possibly write a coherent post if I tried. I've just made a dog's breakfast of my column for this week, and you should have seen me trying to figure out the Canada Post website. Sad times.

First: the photos.

My favourite, most well-worn shoes. I have a friend who says they remind him of bacon.

Pizza for Miss B's school lunch today.

Cherries from this summer, packed in syrup for ice-cream toppage. No food colouring used, honestly, just cherry goodness.

Invaluable kitchen scale.

Blocks and Bear. The table is an old suitcase I found on the side of the road across from Miss B's preschool a few years ago. It wasn't fit to use, so we attached some screw-on sofa legs (from another side of another road).

Detail of a painting by the incomparable Keer Tanchak.

Fat hand going for some blueberry pancakes in a favourite bowl.

Now, some tagging. A few old a friends, a few new reads (new to me, at least):

Beau Baby

Meli-Mello
Crafty Missus

Mushy Peas

Late Night Stamper

MarinaMaroo

Analog Me

You're it!

It's up!

Look! My little dress is up at the Craft Hope for Haiti Etsy shop. I hope it's not there long. As of Wednesday, the shop had raised $20 000 for Doctors Without Borders. Amazing. And to think there are people out there who ask why I bother with all this artsy craftsy business. Pffft!

Not that I'm bothering with much today. Or over the last couple days. Bear is teething and snuffly and miserable. I've got that sinus headache again, with the added joy of one very squirmy belly-dwelling baby-to-be doing somersaults all day and all night. For anyone who has never experienced this particular phenomenon: the word "kicking" in no way describes the actual choreography of the unborn child. "Underwater breakdancing" would be more accurate, or perhaps "sub-aquatic martial arts." Oh, sure, it's all kinds of lovely, until you really think about it, and then it's kind of creepy and gross. And I say this as a mother of two children to whom I am hopelessly devoted. Their antics are much more adorable when they're on the outside.

Miss B was home yesterday, as the schools were closed for a rather anticlimactic snow day. Because the government has shut down so many of the rural schools, kids from the smaller communities come into town by bus. If there's any chance of bad road conditions by three in the afternoon, they close the schools rather than risk sending buses out on dodgy roads. Which makes sense, of course, but it means that the kids miss a lot of school without the reward of awesome snowfalls. You kind of want a snow day to be a snow day, you know?

So many projects on hold right now - I've just had no energy for days, and young Bear has been so clingy and whiny that I can't even get anything done when I'm up and about. If you're awaiting reports on the winter coat, or that maternity skirt tutorial, or anything else, be patient. I haven't forgotten. It will happen, just not today.

Hearts and leaves dress for Craft Hope Haiti

I've just sent photos and a description over to the folks at Craft Hope so that they can add this sweet little dress to their shop. It will probably be a few days before the dress is listed, because the item donations are coming in fast and furious over there. In case you haven't heard, all the proceeds from the shop are going to Doctors Without Borders for their relief work in Haiti. As of Monday, they were closing in on the $10 000 mark. How cool is that?

The red pinwale corduroy I used is from a huge dress I bought at a yard sale last summer and have been hoarding ever since. The print is, of all things, a 1983 Laura Ashley fabric that a friend gave me during a de-stash. The heart-shaped pockets are lined, and roomy enough to hold many exciting treasures.

The covered buttons were original to the red corduroy dress.

French seams throughout, and the bodice is fully lined with the contrasting print material.

Pretty cute, hey?

If I could do nothing but sew toddler dresses all day, I would be a happy woman indeed. Toddler clothes and stuffed toys. Heaven, I tell you.

Fig twig

This is my fig twig. The summer before last, I was at a local farm with a friend of mine. One of the farm's owners was showing us around the greenhouse, when he pointed out that they had a fig tree there. A fruit-yielding fig tree. In our climate, this is pretty much magic.

The farmer gave us each a slip of the tree to take home, with the instructions to stick it in some soil in a pot, put it in a warm place, and cover it with a plastic bag until it rooted.

I did. The leaves turned moldy and fell off, but the stick rooted.

Then it grew some leaves - the first one appeared the morning Bear was born.

Then the leaves fell off.

Then it grew more leaves. And then those fell off.

And now there's a new leaf. What's going to happen to this one?

Every so often someone will look at my fig twig, in one of its leafless phases, and say, "You know, your stick is dead." And I reply to them, "No, it's not dead, it's dormant." I am convinced that one of these days I really will have figs. Perhaps I will live out my retirement under the shade of a fig tree. It's worth a shot, no?


*****

The last few days here have been all about organizing, streamlining, downsizing, making life easier and things more efficient here at our place. It grosses me out that in a world where so many people have so little, one of my biggest complaints is that we have too much. How did it come to this? Our house is littered with things, mostly junk things we don't need. The birthday party loot bag favours, the "craft supplies" picked up en masse at the dollar store (there's a limit to the number of sparkly plastic stick-on "jewels" that any six-year-old can handle), the very important information that the utility companies - even the ones we don't use - manage to squeak into our mailbox because if it's in an envelope it's not technically a flyer. Gah! It makes me nuts. And we're not even "stuff" people. We don't have electronic gadgets that require endless attachments and cables and adapters, save one digital camera and a battery charger. No mp3 players, no handheld gaming devices, one cell phone that seems to have been misplaced some months ago (I'd never even used the thing). And even without all this gadgetry, we're still knee-deep in crap.

I blame globalization, I really do. The constant flow of cheap goods from developing countries means that there's no reason not to buy something a child asks you for. Or that you think a child might enjoy. No reason other than good sense. You can buy soft toys and books that make noises and all this stuff for under ten dollars at any drug store or mega grocery shop, or wherever. And fine, it's nice to bring a toy or something when you visit someone with a kid, but when you take into account that everyone who comes over is also bringing something - and not something meaningful, but something picked up as an afterthought on the way past the "seasonal" section at Shoppers Drug Mart - that adds up to a lot of toys. And the result is that children fail to develop any sense of the value of their belongings, because every time they turn around someone else is giving them something for no apparent reason.

Can you tell this is a pet issue of mine?

Every day I see a dozen things that Miss B would "love" to have. Love for about five minutes, until she moves on to something else and forgets about it, or it breaks. Sure, I can afford them financially, but does that mean I should buy them? No! Birthdays, Christmas, a special celebration like a new sibling or a great personal achievement, fine. But isn't one well-chosen, well-made present better than ten generic, mass-produced ones?

Of all the things Miss B has, almost all of which have been given to her by people other than her parents, let me tell you which ones get the most use:

1. cardboard cut-out old-fashioned key on a string that Hubby C made for her one day when she was going on an adventure of some sort, and which has been in rotation ever since,
2. a raft-like object made of pieces of wood with wire threaded through them that my mother made for her house rabbit (the "raft" bends to make a little cave-like hideout), and which serves as a cave, cage, boat, and any number of other things for Miss B's dolls and other creatures, and
3. a paper cup wrapped in pink hockey tape that Miss B has been using as a mobile phone.

Seriously. And yet, we have a storage closet full of stuff I pulled out of her room last week. It looks like this:

The easel at the back is new and actually does get used, it's just that it can really only be brought out in the absence of Bear. Everything else is arts and crafts supplies that are going to be categorized, packed into sensible containers, and arranged in the shelves there on the left. The closet has a lot of potential as crafts and games storage, it's just a matter of weeding through the crap and sifting out what's really worth keeping. Anything that might be useful to someone other than me is going in the "to donate" bin, and anything that's of no use to anyone (which, I fear, might describe much of it) is getting tossed.

In the mean time, we're going to have to establish some rules about what comes into the house. I've a tried a "one item in, one item out" policy, but we've been bad at sticking to it. It's coming back, though. And then there's "what Grandma/Dad/whoever buys, Grandma/Dad/whoever keeps." Honestly, whenever she comes back from a visit with her dad, the child brings half a thrift store with her. Not meaningful gifts, just stuff she looked at, and then it was bought for her. I think I can say with some certainty that we have enough fairy wings, flower baskets, and dress-up jewellery to outfit a preschool. And the activity books, oh the single-use throw-away activity books! It has to stop!

So there you have it. Once the arts and crafts and games closet is dealt with, then we can move on to Bear's room. And then to my sewing room (ack!). And the basement.

Honestly, how do people get organized? And how do they stay that way? I spend an inordinate amount of time reading craft blogs, and people always have these lovely, tidy, organized spaces, and their kids' rooms look like film sets. I've been assuming that three minutes after the photos are taken, there are broken crayons all over the floor and corn flakes covering every visible surface, just like at my house. If I hang on to that belief, it makes me feel much, much better.

Haiti

I know I'm not the only one thinking about Haiti today. I actually think about Haiti a lot of the time. I remember reading a few years ago about Haitian women making and selling clay cakes for people to eat because they had no way to buy actual food. People eating clay. Dirt. It's an image that has never left me.

I've read articles about Haiti in which interviewees described having experienced some of the most atrocious acts that human beings can commit against one another. Women and children are, of course, particularly vulnerable in countries like Haiti. The poverty, the violence, the sheer depth of human suffering in that country is incomprehensible to me.

And yet, people carry on. They live, fall in love, care for their children and their ill and their elderly, they mourn their dead and miss their relatives who have emigrated to other countries in search of a new life. All while hungry and poor and very often ill themselves. People still make music and art. They still have spiritual lives and dignity. Some people have big dreams and some have small ones, some people strive toward something better and some are swallowed by despair. People continue to be human.

Human strength, especially in such circumstances, absolutely blows my mind.

When I read about SouleMama's Caps for Cap-Haitien project this summer, I thought, "Wow, that would be a really good thing to do." But I didn't do it. Yesterday, hearing about the earthquake, it was one of the first things I thought about.

Right now, I'm eager to send money along for relief efforts - that's what's most needed at the moment, while the damage is still being tallied and while people are desperate for food and water and medical attention. Once the clean-up begins, though, I'm planning to find a way to help using the skills and resources I have. I'm not in a position to fly to Haiti and immunize people or set up water purification systems or rebuild houses, but I can sew hats or blankets or dollies or dresses (or overalls) here at home and get them to the people who are helping out on the ground.

I posted the suggestion on Facebook this morning that some of us start a craft group to work on a project for the people in the earthquake zone, and almost instantly I had a dozen people saying, "Count me in," and "Have sewing machine, will travel." I don't think it would be difficult to get three times that many in this small city alone. Now it's just a matter of waiting for word on the best way to help out.

I'll be watching for news of any Mama To Mama mobilization, and I've just learned that Craft Hope is setting up an Etsy shop to help Doctors Without Borders.

I've also just sent a cheque to Partners in Health, but there are many other organizations doing good work in Haiti, too: Oxfam and the Red Cross are two I would trust (and Doctors Without Borders, as well). I'm not a church person, but if you are your church may already have programs in place in Haiti.

I'm very pleased to hear that my province's premier has pledged one million dollars to the Haitian relief effort. That's pretty great. He made a comment on the radio saying that he recognized the adage that "of he to whom much is given, much is required." We are so lucky here. And I'm talking as someone whose household income doesn't even come close to reaching the poverty line recognized by my country. We may be broke, but we're not poor. Much has been given to us.

Anyway, if you would like to help out with the relief effort, either with money or with your hands (or with both), do consider some of the organizations I've linked to. Or if you know of another group doing good work, please feel free to leave their website or phone number in the comments. And of you're in St. John's and want to join me and the rest of the willing and eager folks who will be gathering with sewing machines and scissors when the time comes, drop me a line and let me know how to get in touch with you.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hug everyone in my house.

Pumpkin-buckwheat muffins with chocolate chips and pecans

Miss B wasn't feeling well Monday night, in a gastric sort of sense, so I kept her home yesterday. The school is pretty strict about wanting parents to keep the kids home if they've been at all ill, so we let B snooze late. I kept her on dry rice cakes and water all morning, until it was clear that there was absolutely nothing in the world wrong with her, and she could have been eating steak and eggs without any adverse reaction. Then I felt kind of bad for not letting her have anything with flavour all day, so I made some muffins of apology. They were very tasty indeed.

Pumpkin-buckwheat muffins with chocolate chips and pecans.

makes 12

1/2 cup pecans, chopped
1 1/2 cups pumpkin purée
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 cup chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate Ghirardelli ones)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin, or line with papers.

In a skillet over medium-low heat, toast pecans until fragrant, stirring frequently. Nuts can scorch very easily, so keep a close eye on them. Once toasted, remove pecans to a small bowl and set aside (if you leave them in the hot pan they may burn).

In a medium bowl, combine pumpkin, sugars, butter, egg, buttermilk, and vanilla extract. Stir to combine.

In a large bowl, whisk together flours, soda, spices, salt, and xanthan gum. Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture and stir just to combine. Stir in pecans and chocolate chips.

Spoon batter into muffin cups; batter will be thick, and cups will be fairly full. Bake 20-25 minutes, or until tops of muffins spring back when touched. Remove from oven and let muffins cool in tin about 10 minutes, then remove muffins to a rack to cool further.

Like most muffins (especially gluten-free ones), these are best slightly warm. Day-old muffins can be wrapped in foil or parchment and reheated in the oven.

I'm tagging these as "breakfast," although of course if you didn't want chocolate chips in your breakfast you could leave them out and add more nuts, or some raisins or chopped figs or something. I don't mind a bit of chocolate in the morning, myself.

Crafty blogging craftsters in the neighbourhood

Welcome, welcome, crafty friends! I'm so excited that three awesomely talented women from around these parts have started blogs to show off their creations (and to maybe share a bit about their lives). Two of these blogs are new, one is new-ish but definitely new to me, and they've all been added to my reader.

Crafty Missus Workshop is where textile artist-clothing designer-toymaker-sassy lady Cara Winsor Hehir will be posting her new work and surely a witty remark or two. She's someone who enjoys a cup of tea and who doesn't mind getting her hands dirty, and whose art and craft help the Woman of Substance feel as beautiful as she oughtta. And she makes awesome pull-toy high-heel shoes that wobble drunkenly across the floor in a way that makes me smile every single time I see them. Yeah, she's great. Oh, and if one of the models in the photos from Cara's SWERVY Garmentry show in November looks familiar, that's because it's me!

Rosalind Ford isn't someone I know very well, but her jewellery and soft toys are amazing. She uses hand-dyed fabrics to make finger puppets and very huggable dolls, and then she turns around and makes beautiful and perfectly grown-up accessories with silver and fibre. She loves her work and you can tell. Do you remember my emergency stand-in model from the jetpack photo shoot? He's one of Rosalind's creations. Except he was a gift from Santa. But apparently Santa has been contracting out some of his work to local craftspeople (globalization and what have you), which is great as far as I'm concerned.

And finally, Tara Bradbury's Mushy Peas site somehow escaped my notice for a little while, although I'm not sure how. Tara's another friend of mine from way back. She's a journalist and a photographer and last year she had an adorable baby. She's been making cute baby things for a while now, the most famed of which - or whom - is the infamous Munkeh (scroll down, you'll find him). Munkeh will be returning to St. John's kid-stuff emporium Gingersnap in short order, I am standing eagerly in line for him.

I am always amazed and humbled by the talent of the craftspeople I meet in blogland and in the real world. And I love that you never know who your next craft idol is going to be: maybe the mom whose kid is in your dance class, maybe an old junior-high-school mate. What a world, hey?

Sometimes

Sometimes I am rewarded with a pink sky for having to get up at stupid o'clock in the morning.

Sometimes I accomplish something I thought was completely out of reach, like actually finishing a scarf without being overcome by the tedium of knitting the same eight rows over and over and over and over again.

Sometimes I chop off all my hair and then take a ridiculous amount of time trying to get a photo of it, ultimately chosing a photo that is both poorly lit and out of focus because in every other picture there are weird reflections in my glasses.

Another winner, more winter

Weird - the last time I chose a winner for a giveaway was probably the last time we had a huge snowfall. It's been snowing all day today. Quite something to see, although I hear the roads are terrible. All the more reason to stay inside.

I used the old Random Number Generator again, partly because I can't find any paper to write numbers on, and partly because I just (very belatedly) learned to do screen captures and I kind of dig it. Nerdy, I know. Thank you all so much for commenting! I've really enjoyed visiting the blogs of those of you I hadn't already met (in the real world or in the virtual one).

The eleventh comment came from Sara, who wrote,

Now, Sara is a friend of mine, and someone I've known for a long time; we went to high school together, we're both writers, and we both live in St. John's. So I know a few things about her. These include, but are not limited to the following:

• Her first novel, Skin Room, is heartbreaking and beautiful and you should probably read it (if you like heartbreaking, beautiful novels). There are a few words about it here. It won the Percy Janes First Novel Award and the Fresh Fish Award.
• In addition to being a novelist, she is also a theatre-maker of growing renown. Her most recent production, The (In)Complete Herstory of Women in Newfoundland (And Labrador) was voted Best Theatre Production in the Scope's Best of St. John's Awards in December.
• She is also - seriously - a clown. And she is one of only a handful of few people trained to teach Pochinko Clown Through Mask techniques. One of her recurring improvisations involves reading people's fortunes through (vegan) luncheon meats as the Weiner Shaman.
• Oh, she's an arts administrator, too.
• She has a greenhouse and is eager to grow things in it.

I'm completely serious. Don't you all have friends from high school who went on to become novelist-dramaturge-clown-administrator-horticulturalists?

Anyway, I'm excited to make something for Sara. I'll let my brain do some percolating, and I'll let you all know what I've come up with once the package is safely in her hands.

Andreae and the Giant Coat

There's still time to get in on my 100th post giveaway! The info is right here.

*****
Sorry I've been quiet over the last couple days. Just more of the same, only much more, since we've cut Bear's nap frequency down to one a day. Which means that he requires much more entertaining. Hubby C's had lots of work to do, so I've been primary Bear-wrangler around here.
My adventure of the day involved the quest for fabric and appropriate winter outerwear. I've never needed winter maternity clothes before; both Miss B and Bear have birthdays at the end of September, which means I've been able to breeze through my pregnancies thus far without having to deal with the hellishiness of trying to wrap a coat around an expanding belly. It hadn't even occurred to me that I might need such a thing as a winter coat until I saw the very industrious Megan Neilsen's post. And then I was all, like, "Oh crap."

I know I could just pick up a giant parka somewhere and walk around like a sleeping bag trying to steal a large watermelon, but winter is very long here, and I can't bear the thought of looking like a formless down-filled lump for the next four months. I just can't. I've sworn to myself - and I know this is horribly vain - that I will not wear maternity clothes I don't like this time around. When I was pregnant with Miss B, I lived in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and I had to cobble together a maternity wardrobe from whatever was on offer at Walmart and Reitmans, plus a couple key items from a friend who had lost a great deal of weight. It was pretty bleak. I did it, but I didn't like it. With Bear I had a few key items that I loved, and a lot of borrowed clothing that I liked well enough, but that wasn't really me. I hate having to wear clothes that I wouldn't ordinarily choose just because I happen to be a little medicine-ball-ish around the midriff.

So this time, with my recent refashioning experience and my newly-discovered ability to see the potential in otherwise ill-fitting or unflattering clothing, I have pledged to go through the remainder of my pregnancy in comfort and style. Without spending a lot of money. Or any, if I can swing it.

Which is why I spent $7 of my hard-earned cash on this ridiculous coat at the Salvation Army this morning:

I estimate that it must have belonged to a man of at least 6'4", who got a great deal of use out of it. The cuffs and collar are a little worn, but I'll be cutting them down anyway. Look at me! I look like a little kid dressing up in her dad's work clothes. What a dork.

The double-breasted-ness and giant pockets mean that there is a lot of material to work with. It's a lovely soft wool and I think I can make something lovely, or at least functional, out of it. And, if not, a lot of stuffed animals.

I'm considering lining it with this stash material, given to me by a friend who was cleaning out her sewing stuff. I'm not sure it will work out, bit I'll give it a try. That dark burgundy colour is not a favourite of mine, so I think I'll have to do some brightening-up. (Pardon the wrinkles.)

The question now is whether to get started on this before I tackle the simple but rather tedious task of making Bear some new diapers. The ones we bought were cheap and are showing their cheapness. I hate velcro, I really do. It's fine if you hang it to dry, but if you chuck a bunch of velcro-tab diapers in the dryer, they all come out in a lump. Trying to extract one is like trying to remove one candy from a bowl of satin mix. And I think I probably spend as much time picking hair and fluff out of the pokey part of the velcro as I do actually changing Bear. Anyway, the diapers I can afford to buy suck, and the ones that work I can't afford, and the smell of disposable diapers makes me ill. So I'll be cutting and sewing an awful lot over the next couple days. When Miss B was a baby I used the poorly-named but otherwise excellent PooPockets pattern. I used the same three dozen diapers from the day she was born until she was in training pants. Now, I just have to do it again. And then again in a few months. Yeesh.

Jetpack!

Welcome! If you're looking for my 100th post giveaway, it's right here. Kick off your shoes and stay a while!

*****

When I saw my pal Sue's DIY mei tai tutorial last year, I said to myself, "Well, that's just brilliant. I'm going to make one of those, and it's going to rock." But time slipped away, and Bear got too big to be carried frontwards, and then we got a rockin' stroller that I love, so it just never happened.

And when I saw Sue's DIY "Bundleme" tutorial, and I said to myself, "Clearly, the woman is a genius. There is no doubt that I am going to make one of these for Bear, post haste!" I also said, also to myself, "I wonder why I have never seen one of these contraptions in St. John's?"

Then the snow came, and I figured out why I had never seen a Bundleme or anything like it here in my fair city. It's because the City of St. John's doesn't plough the freakin' sidewalks! Gah! It's not so bad right now - we've had rain for days, and there's no snow to speak of at the moment. But over the course of a winter we get ridiculous snowfalls and storms, and nobody does anything with the stuff on the sidewalks. If you're intrepid enough to shovel the sidewalk in front of your home, the city rewards you by ploughing it in again with snow from the roads, which, by that point, is mixed in with salt and gravel and which freezes to rock-solid immovability overnight. It's awful.

And so, if you have a stroller-age child, and you don't drive, you're more or less stuck in your house until May. The buses won't let you on if you have an open stroller, so if your kid is asleep or if you can't fold your stroller with one hand, you're out of luck. The great irony is that our provincial government is currently paying us to have more babies ($2200 a pop over the first year for any baby born or adopted into Newfoundland and Labrador), but our municipal government is doing nothing to support those of us who actually do this. Oh, the rage! The insanity!

Anyway, I figured that if I wanted to leave my house this winter, I would have to take matters into my own hands. I don't have a baby backpack, and I don't really like them: they throw my centre of balance off, which is no good while scaling mountains of ice with one baby on my back and one in my belly. With Miss B, I had used a wrap-style baby carrier to carry her on my back over the winter, but that wasn't ideal either. Even though wrap carriers are really easy once you get the hang of them, it's a great feat of acrobatics to get your baby on your back and securely tied on while you're both wearing layers of winter woolens. I'm one of those people who starts to panic if I get my head stuck while taking off a sweater, so attempting to spread out bunched straps while overheating in a winter coat sends me into fits. Also, wrap carriers provide no neck support for the toddler who inevitably falls asleep on his or her parent's back, and so I always needed all kinds of shawls and scarves on hand to further secure Miss B's bobbling head (and to further constrict my own range of arm and shoulder movement - aaaaagh!).

Over the course of a few weeks, a solution to my problem percolated in my head. What if I combined the warmth and protection from the elements of the DIY "Bundleme" with the easy-on-easy-off aspect of the mei tai? And thus, the Jetpack was born:

What I have here is essentially a winterized Asian-style carrier, with the wide and just slightly stretchy straps I liked so much about the wrap carrier. I used Sue's tutorial for guidance, but adapted it to the materials I was using: a puffy nylon vest for the shell (picked up at a clothing swap about four years ago and never worn by me), a fleecy, outgrown bunting bag for the lining (handed down from friends), and some thick, sturdy cotton knit for the straps (leftovers from my Hallowe'en costume in 2004).

I used pretty much the full back section of the vest, only I flipped it upside-down, so the upper edge of the Jetpack is the bottom edge of the vest. You know what I'm saying? The neckline of the vest is the crotch, and the armholes turned into legholes. That elastic loop there is for loosening and tightening the upper edge, so if Bear falls asleep I can easily snug it up a bit and keep his little noggin from bobbing about. The toggle-y thing and elastic were both part of the original vest.

See? It takes two hands to tighten, but it's easy to reach and it only takes a second. It only takes one hand to loosen if Bear wakes up and gets squirmy.

In order to keep Bear from slumping and squirming his way out the side, I added these wings from leftover bits of the vest, with buttons and tabs from the cut-up bunting bag. They're a little off-centre, but they do the trick, and I can move the buttons out as Bear grows. Obviously, my model was fed up with the photo shoot by the time I got to this picture, so I had to use a stand-in.

This can, of course, be used as a front carrier as well, but Bear is much too large for that. Next winter, though, I'll have another baby to tote around, so we'll see how that works.

If you're wondering how on earth I get Bear onto my back in this get-up, check out this site, which has excellent instructions for all kinds of carries with an Asian-style carrier. Scroll down to the section on the back carry that starts with the toddler seated: that's it! I button the wings around Bear's belly first, then take it from there. Very easy and really, really comfortable.

Since I'm talking baby carriers, I should add that any baby carrier, homemade or manufactured, should be inspected regularly for wear, and you shouldn't put your child in a carrier that is wearing out. Carrying your baby on your back is the norm almost everywhere in the world, but in our culture, we don't have a lot of people around to show us how it's done. Take your time, practice before you hit the road, and if you don't find your carrier comfortable, switch to another carrying position, or to another carrier altogether.

Oh, and if you're moved to write or phone Mayor Dennis O'Keefe to suggest he review the snow-clearing issue, I'm sure he would be more than thrilled to hear from you!

OMG hundredth post!

Now, I know it is customary among the blog people - or among the crafty blog people, at least - to host a giveaway in celebration of a hundredth blog post. If I were a very together person, I would have something cute all ready to go and packaged neatly, represented here by well-lit photos. But no. This hundredth thing kind of crept up on me. Nonetheless:

100th post giveaway!

Leave a comment and I will toss your name into the hat (literal or metaphorical hat, depending on how many comments I get) for the chance to win a... something, made by me, especially for you.

If I don't know you, leave a link to your blog/photostream/whatever so I can learn a thing or two about you. If you don't have a blog/photostream/whatever, tell me a few things about yourself in your comment.

It's Monday now, so I'll leave this open until bedtime on Friday, January 8th. I'll call bedtime 10:00 pm Newfoundland time, which is 8:30 pm Eastern. Give me a week from then to get your special surprise giveaway package ready, and it will be in the mail, on its way to you, anywhere in the world. Tell all your friends!

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I actually had enough energy today to get a few useful things done. Many loads of laundry (most of it actually for the grown-ups, who are at the bottom of the priority list for laundry, seeing as we are the least likely to soil ourselves or end up covered in food), supper simmering away in the slow cooker before lunch, much envelope-stuffing for work, errands downtown, and a bit of sewing.

I took a long, unflattering thrift-store skirt, and made it into a shorter, more or less flattering maternity skirt, employing the old use-the-top-of-some-yoga-pants-for-a-waistband trick.

I posted about it over on Wardrobe Refashion, where I've taken another six-month pledge. I have a few things I've been wanting to write about my WR experience (which has been wonderfully positive, and I recommend it highly), but that will have to wait for another day. Anyway, as soon as the skirt was finished - I arsed it up completely the first time, and had to fix it in a hurry so I could get some photos while there was still daylight - I went out and bought some really nice, comfortable maternity pants. Oh, they are really lovely. They're not proper, intentional maternity pants, but they have that soft, fold-over yoga waistband that you can fold up and look like Humpty Dumpty, so that says "maternity" to me. I kind of love them a little. Considering that I haven't bought any new clothes in at least six months - and probably closer to a year - I feel no shame. Plus, they were from a locally-owned store, and they're made by a small company. Aaaaah new pants!

As for this guy here:

Well, he didn't exactly sleep all night, but he slept a little better, as did I. I'm still imagining a world with uninterrupted stretches of slumber. I know it will happen some day. That's the difference between going through these things with a first child and with a second. The first time around, you really don't know if the insanity and the sleep deprivation is ever going to end. After that, you know there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. Mind you, with a third kiddo on the way I can't exactly see the light, but I know it's there. Somewhere. Like, in the year 2020. If I'm lucky.

In very sad news, I learned today that Montreal-based singer Lhasa de Sela died on New Year's eve. How heartbreaking. She was only 37. I'm not familiar with her more recent work, but her album La Llorona is a favourite record of mine. This is a bit of live footage of her performing La Celestina, a song from that album:

Such a loss.

Not that it's all peachy...

I suppose my last post could suggest to some that life as I know it is a little more supermagnificent than it really is. I mean, it is perfect, in its imperfect way, but that doesn't mean it's all fun. For example, Hubby C and I haven't slept more than four or five hours a night for the past, oh, many months, thanks to the Incredible Sleepless Bear. It's come to a critical point over the last month or so, and now we're in Operation Sleeping Bear mode, which, as many of you might guess, is code for Week of Hell While Sleep Schedule Adjusts, if it Adjusts at All. We've had some pretty hilarious zombie moments over the holidays, and some pretty frustrating, tantrum-and-sullenness-inducing ones, too. (I'm a little ashamed to say that most of the tantrums and sullenness have been mine.)

Aaaand I think I'm getting a sinus infection, a condition to which I am especially prone, for reasons I don't entirely understand, mid-way through pregnancy. I've had a blinding headache since about 7:00 this morning, and so far it hasn't been improved by headache pills, food, water, saline up the nose (ugh), or caffeine.

Right now I should be taking a nap, but I can't fall asleep, due to a case of Overly Full Brain Planning Many Projects. I say, "Shut up," and it says, "You know, I'll bet there's a good tutorial online that would show you how to mat and frame that poster for Bear's room, and also the white twill with the navy flowers would make a really nice baby carrier, and if you lined that green and blue flat sheet with some of that other blue sheeting it would make a decent curtain and if you want to make a pillowcase for that pregnant-lady-body-pillow thing you could use that light blue jersey, no, wait a minute, I don't think that would work for that, so maybe not, but I'll bet you could do a nice pot roast in the slow cooker tomorrow..."

So now I'm going to sit down in the quiet and work on my knitting. I'll probably doze off just as the Bear is waking up. Typical. Still, as they say, it beats a kick in the arse with a frozen boot, doesn't it?

It's all brand new!

Welcome to 2010, friends. Twenty-flippin'-ten. Can you even believe it?

You know what's crazy? Most of us who have kids are going to, one of these days, be subjected to the question, "were you seriously alive in the 1900s?"

Yup. The future is now. It came without flying cars, it came without robot maids and jet packs, but it came just the same. Holy crap.

Our New Year's Eve celebrations were lovely, subdued, and just perfect for us. Hubby C and I decided a few days ago that we would have a nice, fancy dinner at home, and by the time dinner rolled around, the plan had morphed into turning the dining room into a snazzy restaurant, donning our best clothes (chic black dresses and gold shoes for the ladies, a vest and tie for the gentleman of the house, and a shirt without arrowroot cookie goo dried on to it for the Bear). A checkered tablecloth, some candles, and a little Serge Gainsbourg on the stereo, and Chez Callanan became the most sophisticated bistro in town.

Dinner was coq au vin, which occupies a space of fanciness in my mind, probably because that's what French food would have been in the 1980s (and I can only imagine that it would have been on the menu at Jack's Bistro on Three's Company, which, I am somewhat disturbed to realize, was probably my earliest culinary influence). Despite what I had always imagined, coq au vin is actually really easy. I found the recipe in a book of one-pot meals. Enough said. Aside from being insanely delicious, it has the following to commend it:

• it uses chicken thighs, which are pretty cheap,
• you get to douse it in brandy and then set it on fire, which is rad, and
• it involves the word "coq", which, to a couple of anglophones with really mature senses of humour, is comedy gold.

I made some very well-whipped and buttery mashed potatoes to soak up the buttery, bacony, winey juices (and to appease the children) and cooked a bunch of baby-cut carrots to serve alongside. I never buy those (you know they're just gnarly old carrots whittled into little baby-carrot shapes, right?), so it seemed like a very special occasion indeed.

Dessert, you ask? Oh, just a batch of chocolate soufflé. Which is - and I'm not at all exaggerating - dead easy. I used this recipe, the better part of a slab of President's Choice 70% cacao dark chocolate (which was on sale in the post-Christmas chocolate purge), and I baked them in my new cute and sturdy coffee cups. I didn't manage to get a photo of them at the time they came out of the oven, but here's how the spoils looked this morning:

I have some uncooked soufflé left in the fridge (I added extra egg whites to the recipe for lift, and then ended up with way too much batter), and I'll try to make those during daylight hours so I can get a decent photo for you. But if you picture what chocolate soufflé should look like, it's pretty much that. They all rose up beautifully, despite my crappy (but soon to be rolled down the hill to its death) oven and its refusal to hold a steady temperature.

After dinner Miss B and I retired to the living room for some knitting while Hubby C put Bear to sleep. Miss B eventually passed out on the chesterfield waiting for the fireworks. The city moved the location of the official fireworks, so we can't watch them from our neighbourhood, but there are usually a bunch of, um, "unofficial" displays in the hills on the other side of the harbour, and we can see those perfectly from our place. We tried to wake up Miss B when they started, but she wasn't quite lucid enough to enjoy the magic of some dudes setting off illegal fireworks in their backyards. Maybe next year.

Today we have two fragile, overtired children, the eldest watching Christmas specials in the living room, and the youngest napping. Hubby C is in no great shape either, after having been up with a screamy, teething Bear most of the night. I came out if it all relatively unscathed, so at least one of us is in a decent enough state to look after the rest.

I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions, really. To be honest, this past year has gone so well, I think I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. If I could make a little more money doing it (just enough to pay the bills on time, mind you), I'd be even happier, but the fact is that life is better than it has ever been. When I think of the way things were four and five and six years ago, I could cry for the utter crappiness of it. But right now, it's all perfect, in its imperfect way, which is more than good enough for me.

To the future!