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Fun Times at the Farm

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Fun Times at the Farm

Fun Times at the Farm

On Friday I wrapped up the last of my camps with Montgomery College, hastily packed up my belongings, said goodbye to my lovely hosts, and swung around the beltway in DC to pick up Sweetness and Light.

For those of you who have begun following me in the last year, the monikers Sweetness and Light have little meaning, as I haven’t written about them recently.  Sweetness and Light are the name of two girls that I was a nanny to for four years – from mid 2010 until mid 2014, when Mr. Turtle and I moved to Richmond.  I began working for the family when I moved to DC – underemployed and still with the shine of college.  Sweetness was three, Light, just over 10 months.

Now, Sweetness is a precocious eight and Light is going to be six at the end of this month.  In the time in between, their parents have become more than friends, their family has increased by one (a 20 month old boy, now), and my employment has deepened into a friendship.  About once every four months, Sweetness and Light come for a sleepover, and since I was “in town” anyway, it made sense to “borrow” the girls, and bring them home for a few days.

Light rocking a ball-cap.

So what might have been a relaxing weekend unpacking and decompressing from camp became a joyful visit (perhaps relaxing might not be the word I’d use, but invigorating might fit).

Well, perhaps it was relaxing for Sweetness.

This was a particularly special trip, as we got to take Sweetness and Light to the farm.  Sweetness got to drive the riding lawnmower, we took rides in the antique jeep (without seatbelts!), and went to the James River to “ride the rapids,” fish and swim.

On Monday we returned to Ashland, and I dug out the camp materials for one last reprise, and we did needle felting to make pillows in honor of Mr. Turtle’s birthday, in a week.

Now the girls are gone, and it’s time to get back to the grindstone.  There’s updates to the website, design subs to create, patterns in a backlog that need to be written and edited, and camp stuff to unpack and find homes for.

Come next week, I’ll be trying to get back into the grove of blog-posts that are more informative that update-ish.  I’ve also got a bunch of patterns that have come out in the last four weeks, so I’ll spend some time highlighting those!

On Learning Crochet

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Sweetness, now 6, has recently been asking me to teach her crochet.  On Tuesday, happy circumstance led to my having extra yarn and a hook with me.

Now, many people will start children on a larger hook and larger yarn – I’m not always of the option that those choices are the best answer.  Sweetness ended up with a size D yarn and a non-splitty multicolored sock yarn.  The multi-color because it was easier to see the individual stitches, the smaller hook and yarn because… her hands are small.  A larger hook and yarn wasn’t comfortable for her to use.

I worked a row of foundation crochet for her to work off of, and started her on double crochet. Why double crochet instead of single?  Double crochet has more of a rhythm; at least when I teach it. (Yarn over, into the “V”, yarn over, out of the “v”, yarn over, pull through two loops, yarn over, pull through two loops. After every step you yarn over.)

One of the luxuries of small children is that I could sit Sweetness on my lap (with adults this is a lot harder to do). At first, I fed the yarn and held the fabric while she manipulated the hook. When she felt comfortable, she took over holding the fabric – I was still feeding the yarn.  We worked for a half an hour.  Sweetness could have kept going, but I wanted her to leave on a good note, and her sister, Light, was getting impatient to have her playmate back.

Yesterday Sweetness and I continued, reviewing the stitch, talking about what happens when she “drops her loop.”  Sweetness’ relief when I showed her that she couldn’t have a dropped stitch the same way she could in knitting was comic.  She’s gotten pretty solid – by today she had worked a row of stitches on her own before getting mixed up about which direction she was going.  Her sister also stepped on the yarn and broke it.

The best part about all of this, for me?  Like many of my beginning students, I gave Sweetness a locking stitch marker to keep her stitches from unraveling when she isn’t using them. (I love locking stitch markers.)  Unlike my beginning students, I told her “The first one is free, but if you want another one, it’s 25 cents.” (I figured a little financial incentive would help her not loose it.)

“25 Cents! With four of those, I could buy an Ice Cream at Ikea!” was Sweetness’ response.

Now, every time I look at my stitch markers, I can only think about how many ice creams I could buy at Ikea.

Glimpses of My Life, Lately

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Things have been rather chaotic lately, so some pictures to hold you over until I can create a more content-worthy post.

On National Train Day, Michael and I dressed up a little old-timey and rode the train to Baltimore, where we proceeded to spend the entire day at the Baltimore and Ohio Train Museum.

We were mistaken three times as was figurines – we’d be standing with each other looking at an exhibit, go to move to the next one, and scare the living daylights out of somebody.  I think it was the hats.

Summer has truly settled in, and I’ve been kept jumping to land on things to keep Sweetness and Light entertained.  They’ve done so much growing lately.

I’ve been teaching a bevvy of classes at both Woolwinders and Fibre Space.  I love getting to teach new classes – and I have a bunch of new classes that I’m getting ready to roll out in the Fall!

I got a DSLR Camera, and I’ve been having way too much fun figuring out its capabilities.  Michael and I went to the farm this last weekend, and I had a bunch of fun with my tripod and setting long exposures.  Naturally, after a few shots of the stars, I couldn’t help but play with flashlights.

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This was going to be a post about how I desperately hoped that spring was around the corner, because I’m reading for this cold to end.

Then I got distracted by a picture of Sweetness, when she turned six, and I spent a good 15 minutes realizing that Light is the age of Sweetness when I first started watching the both of them.

Then I thought I’d do a recap of what has been going on the last few weeks – since it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

But I decided that all that can wait.  I want to tell you a story of some boxes in an attic.

You see, when Michael and I decided to move to the DC area nearly 3 years ago, we weren’t sure how much room we would have in our next place.  Living in Davidson, space was pretty cheap, in a way it isn’t in DC. We would be downgrading space.  So we took many of the non-essentials, and put them in the attic at Michael’s family vacation spot.  Once we move in, we could sort and figure out what else we wanted.

Fast forward three years.  We’ve occasionally gotten some boxes down from the attic (like Christmas decorations and a few things Michael wanted) and we still hadn’t brought home the boxes filled with my books, papers, and things from college.  Last weekend when we were at the farm, I’d HAD ENOUGH.

I carried them down from the attic, and began sorting them, right in the kitchen.

It was a blast from the past.  Letters I’d saved from Michael and my family.  The My Little Pony pictures my roommate and I had colored and put on our door.  Bank statements, and best of all, some of my writing which had been lost in a computer crash.  Here was all my work from my memoir class.  Hallelujah!

And books.  Books that were old friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.  My favorite books from college, some that I wondered if I lost, were there.

Also, when I couldn’t find the glue Michael, and you told me I lost it?  That was there too.

This is where I would normally show a picture of the weekend, or at least a picture of the books, or something, but all the pictures of this last weekend turned out a blur.  I had my settings wrong, and forgot to change them… and well, it was like a blast from the past, when I’d develop a roll of film, and there would be ONE picture that was good.

So I’ll give you the view from the farm porch, not this trip, but it doesn’t change much.

https://www.tinkingturtle.com/2013/03/this-was-going-to-be-post-about-how-i/

Feline Friday

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After Michael and I got Peake and Watson, Sweetness and Light were desperate to meet the cats.  So I took them to visit.

Since then, it’s become something we do every few weeks.  We get on the metro, take it from College Park to Silver Spring, then take the Bus (the girls love riding on the high seats in the back) to the closest stop.  From there, we walk to my apartment.
I’m not sure who loves the visits more – Sweetness and Light, or Watson and Peake.  The kittens get someone that will chase and play with them for several hours straight.  The girls get to play with kittens.  I get to take a bit of a break and sit in the comfy chair and watch the four of them romp for about 2 hours straight, AND Michael and I get a good night’s sleep as the cats are too tired to make trouble.  Finally, the kittens learn how to deal with children that perhaps are not as respectful of cat-boundaries as grownups.  Peake and Watson have learned to be quite tolerant of the girls.
Not a bad deal at all.

Things you Don’t See Everyday

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The other day my derailer on my bike was gunked up, which resulted in my bike not working the way it should. (For those of you who don’t know, I commute by bike three out of five days a week.  My bike not working is a problem.)  You see, my derailer wasn’t springing back, so every time I stopped to coast, my chain would fall off my bike.  *unhappy face*  This means I had to keep peddling on the downhills.  Not fun.

It also meant that I couldn’t take Sweetness and Light where I wanted to take them in the bike trailer.  I was pretty bummed, because I really don’t like to push a stroller when I would be pulling a bike trailer and riding.  Then, Sweetness said, “I can take Light on my bike.”  Keep in mind Sweetness if five.  Her bike is maybe a third of the size of a grownup bike, and also fixed gear.

I told her that I wasn’t sure I wanted her pulling her sister around, but Sweetness insisted she could do it.  The hookup to my trailer is only a clamp, so it can work on any bike, even Sweetness’ so I couldn’t protest that technically it wouldn’t work.

Well, I figured she’d tire out soon enough, we’d walk the bike home, switch to the stroller, and go on our merry way.

Not so.

Sweetness biked herself and Light (with me running behind to keep up and to assist on some of the uphills giving a starting push because Sweetness couldn’t downshift to start on hills) ALL THE WAY TO THE LIBRARY.  AND BACK.  That’s just over two miles.

Can I mention just how proud I am of Sweetness?

And also what an incongruous sight it is to see a child pulling a child in a bike trailer.  It was also really cute.  Just sayin’.

Anyway, I am now, in this regard, completely superfluous.  I don’t even feel bad about it.

Content is going to be a little… sparse

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If you haven’t noticed already by the picture heavy posts the last couple of days, I’m on a deadline and my brain, it only has so much it can give before it needs a rest.

So I’m giving myself a little bit of a write off – it doesn’t mean I won’t be posting, it just means it’s going to be more picture heavy, and less about anything of value.  With any luck though, I might have a series of posts to come in the next couple of weeks.  They’re going through my hatchet squad right now, as they are a bit above the caliber of my normal fare.  So hang in there, and I promise it’ll get better.

Can’t you tell I’m a little busy?

Sweetness and Light

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Poor Light.  Sweetness’s gotten a new bike, and she’s really thrilled about it.

To tell the truth, I’m pretty thrilled about her biking too, because Sweetness has been getting rather heavy over the winter (she’s five now!  FIVE) and hauling the two of them around meant I was pulling an awful lot of weight.

So we’ve been going on a bunch of bike rides as Sweetness has gotten more and more confident with her bike, an I’ve gotten more and more sure that she’s able to stay in control of her bike, which dictates where I’m willing to take her.

This means Light’s taken to riding in the back of the trailer all by herself, which she has mixed feelings about.  On one hand, she’s pretty thrilled about all the extra room she has, on the other hand, she misses having her sister to play with and read books with as I haul them around.  She also doesn’t appreciate all the attention Sweetness has been getting.

Still, Light did pretty well the other day, drawing and taking “notes” in her notebook as we went along a trail.  She still will pipe up when I’m going slow and up a hill, telling me “You can do it, Jen!  You can do it!”

Well, we were going up a hill, and it was rather hard, and she said something too me about paper and her helmet.  Not really understanding, but getting the gist that it was about preventing them from blowing away, I just made the noises any adult makes when they’re only half listening, because we’re concentrating on something else.  I put the conversation out of my mind after that until we got home.

When I got home, I went to take of Light’s helmet and lo and behold, I find nearly two dozzen “notes” in her helmet wadded up.  I go and ask her, “What’s this?”

Very solemnly Light replies, “I was keeping them from blowing away.”

To this I have to say, good job light, I would have never thought of that myself.

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