The Boys' Quilts

Augusta Christine Durow was born in Fairhaven, Michigan, on May 26, 1886, the fourth of five children. Her father Albert was born in Germany and her mother Katherine was born in Canada, making Augusta (or Gusty, as she was nicknamed) a first generation American. Augusta married Frederick Koch and they had two daughters: Marion in 1917, and Lorraine (my paternal grandmother) in 1920. My deepest apologies, but I do not have a photo of Augusta, though I hope to possibly get one from Great Aunt Marion.

In the late 1940s, Augusta made twin bed-sized quilts for Lorraine's two boys: my father, Dale, and his older brother, Gary. She would have been in her late 60s at the time. Dad thought maybe the quilts were made in the early 1950s, but my grandmother's records indicate that Augusta died January 14, 1951, at age 64. So if she did make these in later than the 1940s, it would have to have been 1950, when Gary and Dale were just ages 3 and 4. I discovered these quilts after my grandmother died a couple years ago. Dad and Uncle Gary recognized them immediately and said I could have them.


Gary's Quilt



Dad's Quilt

Unfortunately, neither of them can be used on a bed today. They were definitely well-loved, well-used, and often-washed. The bindings and backings are worn through in spots and Gary's quilt especially has major damage to the top, with some pieces completely blown out.

Many people would have thrown these away or used them to move furniture or stuck them in a car trunk in case of an emergency. But Grandma had them tucked away in white pillowcases for safekeeping. I wonder if she ever got them out to look at them and remember the times when her sons were young and her husband was still alive. Or maybe she didn't look at them because it would bring to mind the sad fact that her husband had been gone for more than 30 years. Regardless, she kept them well and because of that, I can know my great-grandmother just a little better.

When I was preparing to do this post, I asked my dad to send me some photos of him and Gary at about the time they would have used these quilts. He did me one better, sending me photos of them actually sleeping under the quilts.

Gary asleep under his quilt. This photo and the one below it are
very early Polaroids taken sometime between 1959 and 1961.

Dad sleeping under his quilt. Note that he had the backing side up,
but you can still identify it because of the pattern.

This is a good reminder that if you have heirlooms in the house that you're unsure about, that you don't know the history of, start looking through old family photos to see if you can spot them. That might help you learn a bit more about who used them and when.

Uncle Gary and Dad in 1956. Dad still wears plaid,
button-down shirts just like this one today.

I occasionally feel a bit wistful about boys' clothes and bedding of the past. In our day of loudly-colored t-shirts and bedding covered with licensed characters from movies, it's hard to come up with sewing ideas that wouldn't make our sons or nephews cringe. I have made my own son a quilt (his baby quilt, which is the first quilt pictured in this old post) and I even made my nephew a rather unconventional bed quilt, but I wonder how much sweetness I could get away with on a bed-sized quilt for Calvin. I know he would enjoy a Thomas the Tank Engine-themed room (almost as much as his father would) or a Lightning McQueen toddler bed (almost as much as his father would), but I would far prefer to make him a handsome, not-too-cute but still little-boyish quilt (with no Disney/Pixer/Hit Entertainment characters on it) and decorate his walls with his own finger paintings.

And in fact the time where he won't really care and he'll like anything I give him is running out as he gets older. Will I miss my chance to make him a quilt that will someday be an heirloom for his own children and grandchildren? Let's face it, no one is handing down a cheaply-made Buzz Lightyear comforter to their progeny. The concept of heirlooms is in danger of dying out as we continue to consume cheap, mass-produced schlock in place of items carefully crafted with thought and love.

End rant.

Anyway, before wrapping this up, I want to leave you with my favorite picture of my dad and Uncle Gary, at least from this decade. Here the boys are with their cousins, Jim and Dave, the other grandchildren of Augusta Koch (but more importantly, the other members of the illustrious Hotshot Band). Not sure if she managed to make Jim and Dave quilts as well, but I will have to check that out.


That's Gary on the clarinet, Dale on the trumpet, Jim on the piano, and Dave on the drums. Just look
how intense and into it they are. Glenn Miller's band couldn't do any better, I suspect.

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The Literate Lutherans

A few weeks ago I was talking to my mother on the phone when she told me that the wife of my former pastor asked her to be on her spelling bee team. I laughed out loud, partially at the idea of an adult spelling bee, but mostly because I know my mom.

"I told her I was in remedial reading in high school," my mom said, "but she said that didn't matter."

Somehow Tracy convinced my mother to join her and another woman from their church (Linda) in this venture, which I later found out was an event to benefit the Literacy Council of Bay City. Their team, the Literate Lutherans (can you get more Lake Wobegon?), had never lost this event (granted, it's only run for a few years).

I decided during that phone call that I had to go to see this momentous occasion, my mother spelling words on a stage. Imagine my disappointment when I found that only one person on the team actually spells a word at any given time, and that the honor did not have to rotate among team members. So the teams pick the person who does the best job spelling out loud (which is harder than it sounds) and that person could be the only one who speaks.

The event was held at the State Theatre, which was recently renovated to look more like it did in the 1930s, is decorated as that decade's vision of what a Mayan temple looked like. Read a very short history of the theatre here.

Before it started, the spellers and attendees had great hors d'oeuvres (that word was not on the list of words to be spelled) that included a yummy satay (also not on the list). It was a light crowd, which is too bad since it was a benefit. But it was a fun time nonetheless (also not on the list).

Here Linda, Tracy, and Donna (Mom) confer about the rules before going up onto the stage.

So serious and studious-looking, aren't they? But is was actually a lighthearted event. The judges were funny and charming and the other teams were not overly serious either.

You can tell by the way these women sit on stage that they grew up going to church. Their knees are together, their hands are folded demurely (not on the list), their chins are held up, and they are paying close attention. No fidgeting. After a practice round in which the words related to the organizations that the teams represented (pastor, return, smiling, interest), the real list began. And the words were easier than I'd anticipated (though I suppose they would be easy during the first few rounds).

Here's the list of words they got through before a winner was declared:

cherub
horizon
marine
privacy
stinger
tremor
wobble (at which the first disqualification occurred because the women spelled it "wabble")
carom (at which the Literate Lutherans were out because none of them knew the word, perhaps none of them had heard the word [at least, that's what their stunned expressions would have indicated], which is more frequently used as a sports term than anything else)
unique
trilogy
wholly
gyrate
mustache (which I would have spelled wrong because I thought it was "moustache" but according to Merriam Webster, it is a varient, so perhaps they would have accepted it)
sieve
risque
wrangle
counterfeit (at which the third team was disqualified, accidentally spelling it "countrfeit")
coquette

The team called the Spell Binders won, which was nice because they'd apparently been runners up to the Literate Lutherans in the past few years. The whole contest took just 14 minutes (probably about the same length of time it took to explain the rules) becaue there were only four teams and two were disqualified one right after the other.

I hope they can publicize this event better next year so they can make more money and have more teams participating. It was fun even if it was short.

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Secondhand Clothing Extravaganza with Mom

Thursday morning I headed to Bay City, Michigan, to visit my parents and attend the adult spelling bee my mother was part of (more on that tomorrow). When I got into town I perused the Bay City Antique Center and found some buttons and two charming collections of fairy tales, one from Hans Christian Andersen and the other from the brothers Grimm, published in MCMXLV (1945, I believe).

Mom and I went to lunch at Intermission Deli then headed over to The Cat's Meow, a higher-end secondhand shop that helps fund a charitable organization. They have nice clothes very cheap, and my mother the coupon queen gets things even cheaper. So we walked away from that store with a bag full of great stuff for about $35 (we each got five things, so it averages out to about $3.50 per item).

While we were there we ran into a friend of Mom's who made a call and got us into her friend Mary's shop, Glad Rags, despite the fact that she had not actually opened for business yet. Mary had just relocated her vintage and unusual clothing shop from Saginaw to Columbus Street in Bay City. And boy-oh-boy did we have a blast there. So much crazy artsy clothing with some more conservative gems thrown in as well. We certainly spent more at Glad Rags than at The Cat's Meow, but it was so very worth it.

Mary has an interesting philosophy when it comes to the clothes in her store. She cuts the sizes out of nearly everything, thus forcing customers to try on the things they like instead of dismissing something as the wrong size when in reality the actual size of women's clothing often has a tenuous connection with the number or letter on a label, especially when dealing with vintage clothing. In addition, there was practically no organizational philosophy that I could see in the racks, though Mary did put some items together or near each other that would be complimentary. I suspect, though, that she had been purposeful about the placement of each item and that she knew exactly where every scrap of clothing was.

Mary made us coffee and chatted with us while we tried things on. She chatted like she was there shopping with us and was very casual, not like some store owners who make you feel sort of uncomfortable because they won't leave you alone.

When we were ready to pay she took our money and tucked it into a round antique tin. There was no cash register in sight. And as we were walking out the door, she took a shirt back off the rack that I had tried on and liked but not bought (because I had to draw the line somewhere). She brought it up to me and said, "Here, Erin, I want you to take this." Just gave it to me. Such a sweet, sweet woman.

One of the best finds at Glad Rags was this pair of vintage green suede shoes for $12. Anyone out there care to venture a guess at the decade from which they hail? I thought they looked sort of 1940s, but Mary thought 1960s.

Regardless of their origins, to find any pre-owned shoes in a size 10 is so very rare. And I found two pair at Glad Rags. Here's the second.

The designer is Nina Shoes, and from what I can tell from their website, their fashion shoes run around $80. I got these for $8.

After our excursion we popped back to Mom's house so she could change clothes, then it was off to the State Theatre for the Adult Spelling Bee . . .

(to be continued)

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Stylish? Moi?

Wow. I haven't been the recipient of an award since college, but this week the lovely SusieQT at Practice in Time gave me the Stylish Blogger Award. Thanks, SusieQT!

While I'm new to the blog award process, I do know that with this particular award I'm to share seven facts about myself with all of you and then pass the award on to seven other bloggers. So, here goes . . .

1. I started this list at number seven and worked my way backwards to number one. Whenever I do anything that involves a list, I number the whole thing first so I'll have spaces to fill in. I love filling in things. Crosswords, sudoku, bubble tests (I loved taking the MEAP, the SAT, and the ACT—actually, I love any kind of test and the longer the better), checklists, order forms. I wonder what that says about me.

2. I'm a pretty strict parent. My parents were strict and I feel like I turned out fine, so if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And there is little that annoys me more than a poorly behaved child, especially one who obviously has the upper hand and rules over his parents. I was a happy kid and I always knew that my parents loved me. I never doubted it. And when I was punished I knew I deserved punishment. I understood that it was their job to make me into a respectable, respectful person who contributed to society, who didn't expect others to do things for her that she could do herself, who didn't believe the world revolved around her, who behaved in public, who did her best all the time.

I want to raise my son with those values, as well as the wonderful additions that my husband contributes from his upbringing: compassion and charity (my parents are charitable, but as a child I didn't actually witness that as much as Zach did with his parents), devotion to God and the church (we were churchgoing people, but we didn't talk as much about faith when I was a child as we do now), and looking for the good in people even when they behave badly (I'm still working on this myself as I tend to be pretty hard on people most of the time). We both have wonderful, loving parents and are so blessed that our families are intact. Our parents are married, our sisters are married, and their families are full of love for one another. I always remember how blessed we are to experience that when almost everyone I know seems to be dealing with divorce, resentment, anger, and grudges somewhere in their family tree.


That's Alison on the left and me on the right.


3. I have a lovely older sister named Alison. As children we did what most sisters do. We played dress-up and put on plays and played catch. She coerced and bribed me to play Barbies and basketball and I . . . well, I don't remember forcing her to play anything in particular. At Halloween we would set up "stores" and shop one another's candy. She always got the better stuff even though I attempted to be shrewd. When we played Clue or Monopoly, she always won. When we picked up fallen apples for my father before he mowed the lawn, Alison would fill her plastic grocery bag as fast as possible with the newer green apples, leaving the old rotting ones for her poky younger sister to pick up. She was a strategist and I never seemed to catch on. That's what older sisters are for though. They prepare their younger siblings for a world that will try to take advantage of them. Thanks, Alison!

4. I have a fair number of idiosyncrasies regarding food, including texture issues (cauliflower, mushrooms, coconut, blueberries, raisins in bread, etc.) and a low tolerance for ultrasugary things (marshmallows, fudge, cotton candy, cake frosting). I like few sort of strange taste combinations (bologna and peanut butter sandwiches, for instance). I am also frequently a chore to have at a restaurant (I learned from my dear mother that there's nothing wrong with making special requests—if they have it in the kitchen, surely it can be added to your meal for a small charge).

I love looking at the details in this photo. The makeup case, the roses, the junk strewn over the counter, the terrible flourescent lights, the plywood cupboards that were filled with costumes and props, the gloves that go past my elbows. Theatre was the best part of high school.

5. I enjoyed being in several theatre productions in high school, including You Can't Take It With You, Arsenic and Old Lace, 1984, Witness for the Prosecution, Damn Yankees, Hello, Dolly!, The Bald Soprano, and forensics. My parts ranged from bit parts to starring roles and some of my best memories of high school involve play practice, backstage at performances, getting to the state level with forensics, and hanging in Mr. Smith's office with friends. In fact, it was because of Arsenic and Old Lace that my husband and I met and started dating. He tried out because he found out that I was trying out. And the rest is history.

6. I have begun but not finished at least four novels in the past five years. I have plans to finish three of them. I work on them from time to time. I have had better success at finishing children's stories (because they're ever so much shorter) and currently have six manuscripts that I'd someday like to get illustrated and published as picture books.

7. I actually write and/or contribute to a few blogs. The earlier incarnation of this blog is Stuff No One Would Publish, and some of my favorite posts can be found archived there. I also write occasionally (as often as I finish a piece of classic literature) on The Books I Should Have Read. I'm a contributing author to a serial end-times satire called Beauty and the Mark of the Beast. And from time to time I post on Potter Park Zoo's blog. These cover a lot of ground as far as interests and the circles in which I run—literature in English, publishing, the church, the zoo, education, and a love of animals—and are a great way to get to know more about me.

And now to pass on the Stylish Blogger Award to seven bloggers I enjoy reading. I'm sure that some of these may have gotten the award before, but if you can win multiple Oscars, why not multiple blog awards?

Liz at The Quilted Turtle shares her unique life as a yearround resident of and math teacher on Mackinac Island, one of my favorite places in the world. She gives you interesting information that you don't get as a mere tourist and she shares some great tutorials. She shares beautiful photos of this small island where the automobile has been outlawed since 1898. I got the opportunity to meet Liz on the island last October. If you're interested in reading about that trip, click here and start at the bottom.

Valerie at The Victorians Didn't Even Like Pink! is a personal friend and has appeared a few times in photos and posts on this blog. But don't think I'm showing her favoritism. She really is one of the most stylish bloggers out there and shares her vintage sewing, hats, and hobbies (like crocheting amazing doilies—really!) along with her knowledge and opinions about historic architecture in the United States. She's a hoot. I'm pretty sure she's gotten this award before. If that's the case, Valerie, don't feel obligated to pass it on again unless you really want to!

Jody at Couture Allure Vintage Fashion is not only a wellspring of fascinating information about vintage fashion designers, she also sells eye-popping vintage dresses through her shop. They just got in some gorgeous dresses I wish I could squeeze into. My word. Her blog and shop really make me bemoan how casual and frumpy women's dress has gotten. Sigh.

Anna at The Sweet Nest never fails to make me smile. She takes beautiful photographs of her gorgeous children and the lovely details of her home. She has a great sense of style and seems to thoroughly enjoy life. Reading her blog never fails to perk me up and she's one of the bloggers I read that I would dearly like to meet someday. I think we'd have a great time together.

Liz at Mabel's House gives me great inspiration for projects around the house and is currently pregnant with her first child, a little girl named Jane. Liz's blog is one of the first I started following. She loves anything mid-century modern and is helping me develop my own appreciation for that style. She's super funny and takes photos that make me want to redecorate. I remember feeling a little thrill when she first commented on one of my posts, like how you felt when the more-popular-than-you kid smiled at you in the hallway in junior high.

Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio is the most amazing modern art quilter. If you think quilts are sort of stodgy and too flowery and smack of old-ladydom you must visit her blog. Her quilts are a smorgasbord of color, simplicity, style, geometry, and plain old pizazz. I pretty much want everything she's ever made. She challenges me to think out-of-the-box and never fails to inspire. She also has scads of tutorials on her sidebar to help you recreate her style in your own quilting.

Mena at The Sew Weekly. I challenge you to look through Mena's homemade wardrobe and come away not itching to get sewing. What started as a personal challenge to herself to sew one new outfit every week of 2010 has ballooned into a cooperative website and sewing circle that gives out weekly sewing themes and challenges, giveaways, and more inspiration than you'll know what to do with. You could spend hours tooling around her site and never get tired of it. Makes me wish I had more time to sew!

So there you have it. I hope you'll visit each of these blogs and wile away many hours looking at old posts because they are treasure troves of amazing photography, inspiring projects, and good humor.

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Making It Up

I don't mind following directions. In fact, I rather like it. Directions help you do things right the first time (if they're good directions) and they act as a progress map, a checklist that allows you to see how close you are to finishing. And when you first start a hobby, they are imperative. They help you succeed so that you won't abandon it as "too hard."

But when you've been doing something a lot for a decent amount of time, you can start using the skills you've learned while following directions to make something up. You can make estimates and guesses and judgment calls and come up with something sort of original.

One of my goals for the year is to design my own dress pattern from scratch, using only my measurements and inspiration from pictures to draft a pattern and make an original dress. But I do want to work up to it a little. So I've made a partly-original shirt/light sweater. I've taken the sleeves and part of the bodice measurements from my knit shirt pattern and changed the neckline and the shape of the bodice to make this deep blue cowl neck shirt. I used a shirt from my closet and my dress form to get the bodice shape I wanted.

As for the neckline, I was sure that YouTube and Google would give me some good advice and tutorials for how to draft and make a cowl neck. I was wrong. So I looked at a shirt I have already with a cowl neck, looked at pictures online of ready-to-wear shirts with cowl necks, draped my fabric over the dress form, thought long and hard about the scissors, then took the plunge and started cutting.

Perfect? No. I was hoping the collar would be a bit droopier than it turned out to be. And the sleeve caps aren't as smooth as I'd like. But good enough when you're just making things up.

If you find yourself terrified to think outside the box a little and experiement with your hobby, be it sewing or quilting or crocheting or whatever, buy some cheap materials that won't break the bank if you mess up, and just go for it. If you create a monster, just hide it away from judgmental eyes and try again. You may find, though, that some mistakes are happy ones.

One nice thing about this shirt is that it already matches a number of bottoms in my closet, including this old wool skirt from Banana Republic, one of my favorites. And that was just a happy accident.

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Caution: Rogue Squirrel

He may look cute and innocent . . .

But he's off the reservation. This is what he's doing to my yew tree:

What? Why? For what purpose? What could possibly be going through his pistachio-sized brain? He's not lugging these branches away to make a nest, just piling them up day by day. Just arbitrarily chewing them off and letting them fall.

Madness. Sheer madness.

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One Glorious Week

I have decided to take next week off of work. I'll go visit my mother one of those days (and I'm predicting an amusing blog post to follow—Hint: it will involve an adult spelling bee team called The Literate Lutherans) but the rest of the week I will be home. It will be my week to tackle a growing to-do list around the house that includes cleaning, quilting, exercising, and relaxing. I want to make the most of this week off, so I've come up with a list of projects that I want to work on.

Floors
I don't remember the last time I really cleaned the all wood floors of my home. I vacuum them fairly regularly, but it's been some time since they were truly scrubbed clean. Growing up Mom cleaned the hard floors of our house on hands and knees with Murphy's Oil Soap diluted in hot water in a bucket, hands begloved in bright yellow rubber and scrub brush moving steadily and quickly across the floor. I have one of those Wet Jet Swiffers and a couple sponge-type mops, but deep down I don't feel like they quite do the job that a scrub brush on hands and knees does. Regardless, these floors need a wash. Furniture and rugs will be moved and the floors will be cleaned thoroughly. While I'm at it, I may do the baseboards.

Windows
I know it's only February, but I have to get these storm windows down so I can hear the birds outside! Also, when the sun shines through on warmer days, the windows get all fogged up and I can't really see out the windows (not that late winter is anything special to look at, but still). So the storms are coming down and the windows will be washed, just on the inside for now. I'll get to the outside once it warms up a bit more.

Quilt
It's not all going to be grunt work during my time off. I'll spend many hours (hopefully) working on my quilt in the gloriously bright sunroom while I listen to something . . . perhaps I'll buy a new audio book. While I'm not setting a specific goal as far as how many rows I get done, I am hoping to get past the halfway point. I'm nearly done with the fourth of eleven rows right now. If I could get two more rows done, so that I only had five left, that would be nice. It would be great if I could get even more than that done. I really would like to redo the bedroom before the weather gets too hot, and getting the quilt done is the first step.

Relaxing
I have scads of books I want to read, an embroidery project and a crochet project to work on, and I'm thinking about getting some sort of British historical movies or a miniseries done by the BBC that I could watch while working on crafty things. And darn it, I'm going to brew a pot of tea each day and make some scones and relax. Maybe I'll browse some antique stores too.

So those are my big plans. Lots of alone time, some time with family, some time to work, and some time to veg. I. Can't. Wait.

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Think Local, Buy Local

In the past ten years or so there has been a big push to "think global." I'm not entirely sure what people mean by that. It just seems like one of those things people say to sound cultured or puff themselves up. But after that phrase became part of our vocabulary, something was added to it: "buy local." I suppose thinking globally and buying items grown or made all over the world was beginning to hurt people at home, so we were all admonished to buy things from non-chain stores and things manufactured or grown closer to home. This was also touted as a way to help save the environment from the pollution caused by shipping items from distant places.

Well, I'm not terribly interested in thinking globally. I do think about and care about what happens to people who don't live in America. I pray for peaceful solutions to political unrest and wars, I pray for those afflicted by natural disasters, and I give money to various causes to support people abroad. But when it comes to what I eat and what I buy for my home and what I wear, I am working to be less and less reliant on the world and more reliant on people closer to home.

Today I read two articles that support my push toward frugality and greater sustainability. First, I read about the frost that has destroyed crops in Mexico. Tomatoes, asparagus, peppers, cucumbers . . . they're all going up, up, up in price because of scarcity. We may balk at the cost of groceries already, and now fresh fruits and vegetables will be even more expensive. But not so very long ago, people didn't buy bag upon bag of fresh fruits and vegetables from the store in winter. They grew and canned their own food, which saves lots and lots of money. Or they bought canned or frozen food, which is far cheaper (though perhaps not as tasty) as fresh food. Or they bought things that are available fresh that are grown closer to home: potatoes, apples, and onions. Or they did without salads in winter. They may have had less variety, but to be honest, variety is a luxury, not something we're entitled to. It's not an unbearable burden to eat canned corn or frozen green beans rather than spring greens and baby spinach in February.

This frost, which is reminiscent of the ice storm last April that caused citrus prices to skyrocket, gives me renewed excitement, vigor, and sense of purpose as I plan my kitchen garden. Perhaps next year I can can even more fruits, vegetables, and jams to feed my family, save me money, and keep more pesticides out of our bodies and more pollutants out of the air.

The second article I read is a bit more complicated to process. This article talked about the coming rise in clothing costs. Now, I've already mentioned in my old blog that while I had this vision of making my own clothes as something that could save me money, it really didn't bear out because clothes today are so cheap. Cheap labor, chintzy fabrics that don't last, and hurried construction makes our cheap clothes possible. But if clothing prices rise, then perhaps handmade clothes at home will be the cheaper option. Besides, there are tricks to make it more cost effective, including utilizing sales, reusing patterns several times, and finding bargain fabric.

So rather than buying tomatoes from Mexico, I'm using local Michigan tomatoes, bought from a local farmer, that I canned at the peak of ripeness last August. And rather than buying asparagus or strawberries in winter, I'll wait until our local crops are harvested. They are far tastier anyway. Rather than buying clothes made in China, with cotton that was probably shipped there from the United States (does anyone else see the idiocy of this?) I will buy fabric from a local store, I will look harder for fabric produced in America, and I will enjoy the process of making my own clothes with care and precision.

Really, when you think about it, this is just what we should call intelligent home economics. It's just smart living and good stewardship. Something our female ancestors took for granted and something we should strive to reclaim.

Here's a resource for my Michigan readers who want to support our state by buying more locally produced items. It's called Buy Michigan Now and has a searchable directory of Michigan-based businesses that help you find sources for your buying needs that keep more of your money within the state. I'm sure that many other states have organizations like this. Get on Google and find yours today!

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Dinner for 13

The calendar may say Monday is Valentine's Day, but tonight we had a traditional American Thanksgiving meal with the family of Chin refugees I have been tutoring in English. I would refer to them by their family name, but they don't really have those! Each Chin person I have met has a first, middle, and last name (and they tell you their full name every time if you ask their name, rather than just using their first name, but they say it so fast that it sounds like just one name). But the last names are not the same within a family. I really can't tell if there is any naming convention at all, or if perhaps names are simply chosen randomly or built upon the names of ancestors. So I just call them my Chin family.

Biak Cin Thang and Ngun Siang, along with their son Abahram, were the first people I began to tutor back in October. Then in mid-January, Biak's father, mother, sister, and three brothers arrived in Michigan from Malaysia, which is a stepping stone of sorts for the persecuted Chin minority as they work their way to freedom in America. Another sister remains in Myanmar (I presume she is married). Biak and his siblings range from age 24 to age 1, and their parents are 40 and 41. I found out today that his father and mother were married when he was 15 and she was just 14! They don't have the kind of weddings we have. If a man and woman (or in their case a boy and a girl!) want to be married, they basically just move in together and that's that. They're married.

From what I can piece together, Biak's father worked as a farmer in Malaysia for 15 years while the rest of his family stayed in Myanmar much of that time. He grew corn, rice, and pineapples. He can also build furniture and install ceilings in houses, apparently. When I learned this I started to wonder how he feels now, without work to do. I'm sure he is grateful to be back with his family living in a free country, but I have to think he will soon get bored or frustrated without a way to work. His children are catching on to English fairly well, especially his two middle sons who are 16 and 13. But he needs to learn more English in order to increase his work prospects.

Also joining us tonight was Amawng (far left in the white shirt), who has been in the States for many years. He was in the US foster care system as a young man and taught himself English. He speaks very good English now and helps interpret complicated concepts with our friends who are still learning. He interpreted some very nice sentiments from Biak's father, Za Uk Lian, who said that we were like parents to them, helping them understand a strange new country where they didn't really know anyone. He also said that the meal we served was like when people kill a pig in honor of a guest from a different town.

I think everyone enjoyed dinner, despite the fact that traditional American fare is a bit bland compared to the spicy foods of Myanmar. There was much animated conversation, in Chin and in English, and lots of laughter (which is the same in any language). I even saw Calvin feeding Abahram corn at one point and sharing his juice with him. I know I had a great time celebrating with my friends. My kitchen is full of dishes to do and my fridge is full of leftovers. Note to self: people from impoverished countries do not eat as much as Americans.

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Lydia at the Window

Lovely Lydia perches on one of my newly recovered dining room chairs in the evening light.

I moved all the chairs out from the table to vacuum the rug. We're having ten Chin friends over for dinner Sunday evening, so the house cleaning has commenced. In order to feed that many people easily and on a budget, I'm recapping the Thanksgiving-type meal I served for other Chin friends who came over in December. This time I bought a 20 lb turkey for a little over $9 (who knew turkeys were on sale for 49 cents a pound just before Valentine's Day?) and we'll be having corn, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and pumpkin and apple pies.

Now, to find enough chairs . . .

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Evening and Morning and the Problem of Time

At 5:15pm last night I sat in the living room facing west, the setting sun streaming through the window into my eyes. This position was quite deliberate. I tend to seek out the sun in mid-winter. I'm happy to report that by this time of day last month the house would have been lit only by the streetlights because the sun would already have finished its evening descent.

Upstairs I had a sick boy napping. Poor thing had been coughing all day. We spent much of Wednesday afternoon at the doctor, waiting, waiting, waiting. He fell asleep in my arms in the waiting room. When we got home I put him in bed to nap and he woke up not long after crying about the doctor. Must have had a nightmare, though everyone at the doctor's office was very kind (if slow).

Days like these I find myself wishing I was a housewife, with nothing but laundry, cleaning, and cooking to do. No deadlines. No projects waiting for me. No emails piling up from people waiting for files. Then I could be fully and completely with my son and not have work things nagging me at the back of my mind.

Ah, to be home, truly home. I'd like to make real breakfast each morning for my guys and real dinner each night, with a homemade dessert, and have the kitchen completely clean by 8pm, ready for breakfast the next day. I'd like to feel like I am directing my household tasks rather than feeling that they are yanking me around and I'm stumbling along behind. Are these things possible when you work full time? Surely they are. How am I 31 years old and still unable to do this?

I read blog posts from women who stay home and I feel sharp pangs of jealousy. This may seem to make little sense, I realize, since I am at home almost all the time because I work from home. But working from home and not working are not the same thing, folks. When you work at home you have the rare privilege of seeing all the jobs you should be doing both at work and at home piling up at the same time because you don't really have time to do it all.

I had such good intentions on Monday and Tuesday evening this week to get all the laundry caught up since my husband was out of town. What a nice surprise it would have been to come home to every speck of clothing, every towel, washed, dried, folded, ironed, and hung in its place. Nope. Didn't happen. Though I was close to my goal until Calvin threw up on my bed last night. But I shouldn't complain, I guess, because I did spend some of my time working on my quilt, which I need to prioritize if it is ever going to get done.

There just never is enough time, is there? The sun comes up and the sun goes down and still things are left undone. It's funny that this post should come the day after my post about all my cleaning and home improvement projects. Slightly bipolar of me, I know. Oh, well. That's just February affecting my brain. I'm sure I'll be back on top this weekend.

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The Home Improvement Itch

It has struck. The cleaning/redecorating/DIY project bug has bit me, as it usually does around this time of year. My mind is starting to swim with all the projects I want to get done in the coming year. Here's my short list.

~ Finish bed quilt
~ Repaint bedroom to match new quilt
~ Roman shades in the dining room
~ Tiered garden beds in the back yard
~ New living room couch and rug
~ New window treatment in bedroom
~ Repaint front porch

 

The longer list includes, among other things, painting all the woodwork in the house, possibly refinishing the front door, getting new window screens custom made, refinishing the dining room table (which our cat ruined practically the first night we had her back in 2003 by knocking over a vase at night and allowing the water to sit there until morning), a new garage, and built-in shelves on the upstairs landing and in our bedroom around the window.

 

I also want to take everything out of my kitchen cupboards and drawers and clean every surface (Mom, I know you're itching to come over and help me with this—hint, hint) and reorganize. And our basement needs some serious purging, cleaning, and reorganizing. I wish I could take a month off and do all of this. But barring that, I can take it one project at a time as schedule and budget allow. And when I can't start a new big project, I can direct all that energy into cleaning my existing rooms and things.

 

I am encouraged by the extensive list of home improvements we have made since we moved into our house a little over five years ago. In that small space of time, we have managed the following:

• Painted all walls and ceilings (every single room)
• Redid family room ceiling and installed new light fixtures
• Built workshop area
• Turned family room doorway into media shelving
• Added light to living rm. fan
• Added lawn in back yard
• New mailbox
• Completely renovated main floor bathroom
• Carpet runner on stairs
• Added screens to roof vents
• New roof
• New gutters
• Made a rain barrel
• Custom window treatments in office and Calvin's room
• Built pantry shelves in basement
• New light fixtures in office and sunroom
• New stove
• Various and sundry landscaping improvements (ongoing)
• Recovered the dining room chairs

Not bad for five years, if you ask me. So I think in the next five we can manage a number of smaller projects. And I'm feeling energized and pretty jazzed at the moment (it might have something to do with my morning workout, the bright sunshine, and the coffee I've just consumed) and raring to go. Who cares if there is a foot of snow on the ground? It's never too early to begin spring cleaning! After all, the dog started to shed her winter coat the day of the big blizzard. She must know something we don't.

 

Well, maybe not.

 

 

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The First Song

Sunday morning when I went out to start the car to let it warm up before heading to church, I heard the first spring birdsong of the year. I'm fairly certain it was a tufted titmouse. To hear it, click here and play the little sound track below the photo. I stopped in my tracks and watched the little singer way up in the old sugar maple flit from branch to branch as he called out for a mate. This pause may have been part of the reason I was late to Sunday school that morning. But what northerner could tear herself away from such a beautiful sound?

I stared up at the sky with a dumb smile on my face, thinking of all the little springy signs that would follow this song. Soon we will have our February thaw, which will in turn cause otherwise sensible people to go around in shorts and no coats, despite the fact that it will probably not even get past 36 degrees. This won't last, as we will get snow again in March and likely in April (as always). But it will trick us into bizarre behavior, like trying to sneak the seeds of tender vegetables into the ground, thinking that maybe, just maybe we'll get a jump on our very short growing season. They'll all perish in the ensuing frosts, but I guarantee some overeager gardeners will do it just the same.

But I am a realist. It will be cold and fairly miserable during February and March. So let's just embrace it. Make some "transitional" garments and accessories.

This weekend I crocheted these wristers to go with my blue beret. They're alpaca, so they're warm, but the pattern is full of holes, so they're cool. They're perfect to wear while I'm out tromping around in the woods in March, searching for signs of spring to photograph.

Here's the pattern, if you're interested.

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Detroit

I didn't watch the Super Bowl because I couldn't possibly care less about professional sports. But I'm happy that through friends on Facebook I saw this commercial.




Detroit is part of my heritage. My mother and father are both from Detroit. Their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents? They came to America through Detroit. From Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, and Canada, they came and Detroit was the welcome mat for everyone. Through the fabulous resources on Ancestry.com I've seen scanned copies of the passenger lists that name my ancestors as they crossed the river. They came and served the US as soldiers. They came and built cars. They came and became part of the fabric of that city.

Detroit has been beleagured for decades. It has been in decline for my entire life. And it has been hit particularly hard in the last ten years. It has become a byword, a case study in greed, corruption, and broken dreams. Much of the city is in ruins and the fleeing tax base makes it seem impossible to fix.

But Detroit will come back. Because the spirit you see in that Chrysler commercial isn't just for show. It's really how Detroiters are.

Want to help? Not just Detroit, but our country as a whole? Next time you're looking for a new car, don't buy Japan. Don't buy Germany. Buy Detroit.

Be part of America's solution.

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I was wrong . . .

Those scraps of yarn didn't want to become a scarf. They wanted to become another hat. I had to buy new to do the brim, but the rest were leftovers from my friend Kristin. The pattern was from one of her old Crochet Today magazines. Tres chic, non?

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Spring Green

My second knit shirt, in the color of the very newest spring leaves. Same pattern as this one, but I made it longer and with 3/4 sleeves. I'll wear it over an ivory tank and I need to make a flowy spring skirt to wear with it. It will be perfect for April.

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Odds and Ends

These odds and ends are begging to be a striped scarf to coordinate with my blue beret. Don't you think?

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Winter White

What a simply wonderful way to start February. A foot of snow and afternoon sunshine. I shoveled the walk and dug out the cars after my workout while Calvin was napping. We had a fire going all day and lasagna for dinner. Simply wonderful.

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