Guilt. It's What's For Dinner

I'm almost there, folks.  I'm really really close to arriving at the bottom of my barrel of tolerance for parental guilt.  This is good, because my kids are little.  I figure if I can, as Missy Elliot says, "killit with a skillet" sometime soon, I'll be able to create room to turn on some of the more outwardly damaging things associated with motherhood: martyrdom, criticism and perfectionism.

So, in my effort to start having some goddamn compassion for myself, I'm starting a parenting group.  It's called The Worst Parents Club.  In real life.  Here's the flyer I gave to some people:

Are you the Worst Parent Ever? 

Do you sometimes feel like if you hear the sickening crunch of one more Cheerio under your slipper that you might fastpitch your mug of not-enough coffee through the nearest window? 

Does hearing Gisele Bunchen say her son “thinks broccoli is, like, a dessert” make you want to tie her up and force feed her doughnuts until her own mother shows up and apologizes for her very existence?

On a bad day, does someone telling you to “enjoy EVERY minute of parenthood” cause you to fantasize about delivering a precision death strike to his or her windpipe?

If so, then this is the club for You!

Forgot everything you learned in other parent support groups.  This is going to be The Worst one yet.  Because it isn’t designed to help you get any closer to perfect.  It doesn’t even need to make you feel better.  (Though it probably will.)

No, this group is going to talk about failure, pain, and kids who will eat only Lucky Charms for dinner, delivered by parents dressed in a Pony Express costume.  And then we’re going to talk about how that’s okay.  (Sure, we might talk about strategies for upgrading said child to merely Golden Grahams, but it will be against the Law of The Worst Parents Club to feel bad about it.)

If we start by showing forgiveness for ourselves, for our complete lack of expertise in this, the most important work of our lives, things can only look up from there, no?

The Worst Parents Club will meet once a month or so (depending on how Bad we’ve been).  Our goal will be to start the casual discussion by fessing up (anonymously, if we choose) to our lowest points and then, buttressed by our glass of wine or coffee and the relief of finally being surrounded by parents who are willing to admit just how low they can go, we’ll spend the rest of the time working our way up to the parts we’re actually proud of. 

Come prepared with an open heart, a muddled head, and a love for your child that is so enormous you threaten to burst into an exploding asteroid of guilt at any moment.  And we’ll make you feel better.  In fact, by the time you leave, I promise you will be whistling Dixie in four different languages.  Okay, maybe not. But the wine always helps, doesn’t it.

Love yourself, whynot,

Lisa

I got a lot of responses.  If you are a friend of mine living nearby, e-mail me to find out about my plan to sneak up on our guilt and beat it to death with a pillowcase full of soap.  (You see there?  Without even thinking, I associated guilt with prison.  Fascinating.)

 

 

Tha's Allotta Bibs

Batch of bibs.  Trying to decide if I can continue making these, since they have a less impressive cost/ revenue ratio than some of the other Baby Hobo products promise to have.  They are lovely little objects though and they always sell, etc. etc. I wanted to post them all here side by side so we could have a good look at the Baby Hobo color scheme, which they represent so well.

 

 

Bobblehead Loves His Striped Pants

This is really pushing the limits of correct human proportions and I would say that, despite the mathematical impossibility of this child's head size, he is one lethally cute little sir.  In the yellow and gray sweater pants I whipped up.  You own those pants, Griffy.

My babies are 1.  As every friend and acquaintance has observed over roughly the last two weeks, I " have survived".  Parts of me have, yes, though parts of me have been temporarily (I hope) subsumed into the Coiled Snake of Bitchery that is Post-partum Depression.  I'm digging out finally though, now that I actually admitted that I have it.  Have had it.  Continue to have it.  Need to get rid of it. 

I won't go into it too much here, but post-partum depression is a sneaky, evil thing to have.  All this time I just thought many bad things about myself.  That I am an inferior mother, wife and person.  That my pain and rage is a selfish matter made of kicking and screaming that my previously over-indulgent and spoiled existence has been interrupted.   But I think suddenly, thankfully, that I get it.   And it's serious and terrible, and there's a new sheriff in town and that shit is on its way out.  NOW. 

I'd love to go on, but this is mostly my creative blog, so I won't because it could get weird.  I kind of wish I had more of a mom blog because I would love to bust that crazy bullshit wide open and say exactly what its like and talk to other moms who have gone through it.  Suffice to say, if anyone reading has been through it, I feel you, girl.  Yuck.

Alas, we have survived, haven't we.  We had a lovely birthday party and I made a quilted "AND", which was fairly speaking, one of the most satisfying micro-projects ever to grace the sewing table.  I don't know why, but it just made me laugh.

 

Our fella and his mom:

Our ladybaby on her special day:

 Happy Birthday adorable little people of mine.  I love you and I promise I am back to you after this brief recent absence of heart.

YES!! No.

You want to see something kinky?

That, my friends, is a binding attachment for an industrial sewing machine.  You see there a very handy diagramatic illustration of what it does.

Yes, you remember all the hours you've whiled away making bias tape, ironing the bias tape, lining up and pinning the bias tape then sewing on this bias tape binding to something, only to find out that it's not lined up between the top and bottom?  Hours you no doubt could have used catching up on Real Housewives of Atlanta trying to decide if you love NeNe Leakes or hate NeNe Leakes.  I'm sorry, but those hours are gone.  But waste no more!

Or so I thought.

I bought a version of this attachment to bind the edge of the shearling/ sweatshirt baby quilts, and in my test samples, I finally got it to work perfectly, as proven in Exhibit A:

Your eyes are not playing tricks on you- that is perfect.  Bias tape made from t-shirt (a continuous length for the whole binding cut strategically from a single t-shirt), and a layer of sweatshirt and shearling.  You feed them in together and the attachment folds, encases and stitches it top and bottom.  That is a truth and not a lie.

So I finally put a finished quilt up for slaughter, all scared and holding my breath as I tried to feed it through my machine.

Demons.  After having to call my nanny out to the studio to hold the tape as it fed, while I held 'fore and aft' and surgically manipulated the tape with tweezers every time it jammed, we got all the way around.  Triumphantly, I said "We made it!  Yes! This looks pretty j'awesome!"

Then we looked closely and realized it is all gobbled and ripped and ruined.

But now it's ours which is a sort of nice downside to ruining a for-sale item.  "Seconds", they're called.  So back to the drawing board.

I emotionally recalibrated from my high then low extremes by making a good old-fashioned piece of do-nothing art.  (And taking half of a Diazapam.  But that's really more for the kids.)

Chevron Quilt and The Potty Zombies

I know it's been a long time since I loved up on my blog, but I have been getting chased by The Potty Zombies in an especially vicious manner lately.  The Potty Zombies are Annika and Griffin and they are like zombies in many ways right now, which, since they kept me awake last night (SEE!  Zombies.)  while Julie was out of town, I am going to go right on ahead and detail the similarities for you.

1.  Like zombies, they teeter menacingly in your direction with arms poker straight in the air.
2.  While doing so, they drool, usually across previous patches of dried up face plaque of unknown origin.
3.  If you try to run, they come faster.  Their talent for somehow matching increasing speed defies physics.
Four. (You remember the spilled coffee on my computer's 'four' button right?):  They bite.
5.  If you try to go to the bathroom alone- if ANYONE tries to go to the bathroom alone, they will be immediately set upon by two teetering, high speed, drooling creatures who, if you are lucky to get the door closed, will bang on the door until it falls to the floor in a pile of splinters.

Still, they're very cute, which ameliorates some of the terror.

Here's what I made, while running from The Potty Zombies:

 

It's part two of a series of six.

For scale:

 

The Real Workroom Reveal + New Quilt Panel

Since I promised I would post a photo of the new studio with all my junk strewn, I must do it.  I'm sure you can guess how it pains me to have defiled such a chapel.

Heal thyself.

I finished this sweatshirt fabric stroller blanket top this morning.  I am working on a series, officially now, so I am going post them as they come.  It may take some time, since sweatshirts are out of season and all my fabric sources have dried up for the time being.  I was smart this summer and bought a load of t-shirts to work with for the winter.  I will be smart this winter and buy a load of sweatshirts to work with off season.  I'm headed for bulk buying soon.  500 lbs. of sweatshirts in my studio?  Sign me up.

Meaningless but pretty color composition shot:

 

Now, you've been wondering about that fraying in the seams on the sweatshirt quilts I made for the babies.  I've gotten many e-mails about it.  Not really, but writing that made me laugh out loud and I take my kicks where I can get them.  But, if you were wondering, I am trying out a seam reinforcement to try and prevent this problem.  This is called Stay-Tape (creative play on words, isn't it?)  I'm hoping it will solve the problem, but I will resent the added 3 bones per blanket it will cost me to put it in.  

So last, but not least, for all you lovers out there...Super Sexy Stitch Time:

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The Baby Hobo Mothership!

Phew.  It is done.  Behold the Baby Hobo International Headquarters!:

300 sq. ft. of pure disorder, coming right up.  I sort of failed to budget for storage solutions, so after this photograph was taken and I proceeded to move in all my other equipment and fabric, it became not pretty, rill fast.  But that is how it goes.  I will iron it all out over time, then post an honest picture of the place as it actually operates as a workroom.

I need to build a bigass cutting table, and procure just a couple of shelves/ carts, then I'll be good. I will report back from the floor shortly.  I am currently just trying to bust through a couple of orders and reel in the dough, you know.  So I can buy me a Mercedes Benz.