Six Quilts Down, 6 to go!

Yesterday I finished quilt number six. I really don't know where I find the time to teach myself something new. It must be somewhere in between work, sleep, breastfeeding the baby, cleaning the house and mopping up after the dogs. This one went smoothly for my first quilt not using square edges. I think I did pretty well with lining up the seams, B+ anyway.

I have 2 more using this design in the works and 4 others planned. A while ago, I bought fabric I liked on etsy and didn't know what to do with it until now. For the next two I am thinking about doing a new pattern for the top stitching. I don't know what yet, maybe a vine and leaf pattern. Up to this point I've only done a 'stipple' pattern for the top-stitching part so doing something else will be a huge challenge. I am going to try to draw the pattern with washable pencil so I have something to follow along while I'm stitching. The only hang up will be whether I can use the pencils on the fuzzy fabric I'm planning to use. I've decided it would be easier to move the fabric along if the fuzzy stuff was on the top rather than bottom while I stitch. That might help prevent some of the need to rip up seams, I think. It will be an experiment anyway.

Baby Field Notes loves all of the quilts. I use them to prop her up while I feed her and then when she finally falls asleep I can scoop her up in her quilt cocoon and lay her down still sleeping, snuggly and warm.

Finally - Uproarious Laughter out of Baby

We have waited a long time to hear genuine giggles from little Field Notes. She has laughed out loud, LOL, but never anything remotely resembling giggles. We've made silly sounds. We've played peek-a-boo and made goofy faces. We've tickled her belly, under her chin, her arm pits. We've laughed ourselves silly, hoping that would get her going — yet nothing. One time I got a single 'heh' out of her by kneeling over her and panting like a dog.

She's 6 months old. You'd think we'd get some giggles out of her.

Then finally last night, while Mr. Field Notes had her facing forward in one of our baby carriers, she started giggling almost uncontrollably while he tossed french fries to the dogs. What tipped her over the edge was when Yuki snapped at a french fry and bounced it off her nose.

I so wish I could have instant replayed it. The giggles didn't last nearly long enough!

Those two newfs are going to be the center of her world, I have a feeling. The first time she smiled was when I told her "Here come your sisters!" when Mr. Field Notes approached the car with the two big girls so we could all go to the dog park together. Then later, her first laugh out loud was when I panted like a dog. And now, dog-induced giggles.

I love it.

Magnetic Felt Food - 'Peelable' Cantaloupe Slice - Pattern!!

Ha! Here is my stroke of felt food genius - a piece of cantaloupe with rind that can be sliced off. The peel is held to the fruit by magnets that are completely concealed. I use the tiny but super strong neodymium ones. They are also lightweight. (Okay, in all honesty, it was Mr. Field Notes who suggested a fruit slice with removable peel. He's smart, too. It's just that usually he takes my good ideas and makes them even better, not the other way around. But the funky crust and cantaloupe part was all mine, neener neener. (We're not competitive with each other at all, the Mr. and I......)). Yeah, so enough about us — onto the cantaloupe.

So, this project is one you can do yourself - choosing either the easy route (not peelable, no magnets) or the harder one. I've included a pattern down at the end.

Supplies:
6 magnets
felt in the following colors: light orange, lime/neon green, tan
thread: brown, tan and orange/yellow

It really helps if you can use a sewing machine to make the criss-cross brown stitches for the outer peel. It would be a big pain to hand embroider, but could be done. I get the felt in 8x11 inch sheets for 20 cents each at my local JoAnn's. I found really small, thin neodymium magnets for sale on etsy and used those for this project.

You can click on the pattern below and save it to print out and use to cut your own felt pieces. If you don't want to make a hidden magnet one that peels, you won't need the wider strip in orange, just the one in tan and the narrower one in orange. You can also use velcro instead of magnets.

I hid the magnets completely by sewing them in place between two pieces of felt, cut slightly narrower than the outer layers they hid behind. Basically, I sewed a little basket/nest of thread around them to hold them in place - at the top, middle, and bottom of the peel and the bottom of the fruit slice.

The hardest part is making sure the three magnets in the peel meet up just right with the three in the fruit. Even when they are oriented to attract each other, if they are a smidge out of alignment, they won't hold the peel and fruit together neatly. I used the force of the magnets to guide me.

I made an interior panel to hide the magnets in the peel by sewing three magnets inside little nests of thread in three places (top, middle and bottom) between two pieces of felt that I cut slightly narrower than the outer pieces of the peel that you actually see (the green and tan). Then I sewed this in between the green and tan piece. Next I made the interior panel for the magnets that are hidden in the fruit. I laid one of the interior orange strips for the fruit on top of the lime green side of the finished peel. I laid a magnet on top of that close to wherever the magnet was in the peel. If you get close, it will just slide into place, attracted by the magnetic force. Then I put the other interior piece of orange on top of it and picked up the magnet with the two pieces of orange felt around it and then fixed the magnet into place by sewing a network of thread all around it. I repeated this for the other two magnets in the peel.

I've admired a lot of felt food for sale on etsy and have never seen anything like this before, so I think I have something unique here. There are loads of other possibilities with this general style and technique, too. Watermelons, oranges, apples — just about any peelable fruit. Cool! And, more fun for a little one =D

The Third Way

There are two common ways quilters bind the three layers (top, bottom and batting) of a quilt: free motion and 'stitch the ditch.' But there is a third way, and for lack of knowing if there's an actual quilting term for it, I am going to call it faux appliqué. It involves stitching around one or more of the shapes on one side of the cloth, essentially outlining it very carefully. Since people affix appliques by stitching around their edges, I like the term 'faux appliqué.' It can be a great way to bind what might otherwise be a tricky quilt because it is very forgiving of different tension that can exist between the top and bottom layers of a quilt.

This third way takes about the same amount of time to sew as the other two methods, and may actually be less time consuming because it totally eliminates any bunching and subsequent need to rip up and redo seams. This method is best suited for cloth that has a neat pattern you want to highlight. For my quilt I chose to outline the giraffes on the animal print on the other side.

There are two ways to make quilt bindings too, and now that I've tried both ways twice, I can say I definitely prefer one. The method I prefer is to fold over one side of the quilt that has been cut slightly larger than the other (about two inches) and then hand stitch it to the smaller side while being careful not to sew through both sides. If you want a different fabric for the trim, a variation of this method involves sewing that two inch strip of cloth to the edges first. The other method, which I think is inferior (perhaps because I can't make it look good) is to sew on pre-folded, using an iron to make the creases, strips of cloth to each edge which you then sew onto the top and bottom of the quilt at the same time. It is a much faster technique, even with the need to go back over your work and re-sew where the two sides don't match up, but it looks uglier because it is impossible to perfectly line up the two sets of stitches where they didn't line up correctly the first time.

Even though I used the inferior binding technique on this quilt, I think Baby Field Notes approves of it nonetheless.


Eventually I will get back to academic blogging but there just hasn't been anything really exciting to write about in that arena lately! I will entertain suggestions though =D

A Baby Milestone

Baby Field Notes sat for the first time on her own on December 27 while at her grandma's house. It was pretty neat and totally unexpected. She still falls over right away most of the time, but it's a start!

Imperfect, but Finished Quilt

Finally! Here are some pictures of the quilt I recently made, the one that was a giant pain in the but to top-stitch.

Two things made this harder than it needed to be for a beginner: minky backing (plush fabric is difficult to quilt) and extra-thick batting. Yes, I learned a lot from making this one! The back may be hilly, but it's soft and WARM.

I couldn't get a better photo of the scrunched back portions, or the screwy stitches, but you can get a sense of it from this.

1,000 quilts later...

Quilting is quite the challenge. I am approaching my wit's end for the one I have been working on, but I am almost done with it, and yes, I am looking forward to the next one. I think I have finally found something I am not naturally gifted at. I mean, usually when I try something, it turns out really well. But not this. I feel like a compete failure at it. I suppose that is one reason I am looking forward to the next one — I want to succeed at this.

This afternoon I ripped up seams three times before I threw in the towel and considered the last try 'good enough.' The top stitching is what is really a giant pain. I have figured out how to do it, in general, but this time I am using this cloth called 'minky' cloth for the back. It's very soft and very fuzzy and I just cannot get it to move well. Top stitching requires being able to move the cloth around fluidly underneath the needle in a free motion sort of way. This minky stuff feels nice but it is a royal pain to move it along.

My quilt backing is bunchy and looks bad. Mr. Field Notes tried to give me pep talk about it when I pointed out the flaws, but it didn't really work. I just can't look at the bunches and see them as neat little hills.

Right now I am just making quilts for us, but eventually I would like to be able to make quilts that are good enough to give as gifts, or even to sell. I want them to be that high of quality. I have a long way to go. My seams don't line up, the backing isn't smooth and so on.

I am in awe of the woman who writes http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/
She's got some mad skills — definitely PhD-level free motion quilting genius. She posts videos of her free motion quilting. I am going to have to study her technique.

Fortunately today I realized that when I first started making handmade paper, I was terrible at it. Now of course, I am really good at it and people even pay me to make them paper for their special occasions. Ten years ago I would not have thought so. My first attempts at making paper were awful. The sheets were unevenly thick and some had holes or super thin spots. If you held them up to a light, you could see the lumps. And they were roughly textured, not the smooth sheets I make now. I have no idea how many sheets of paper I've made, but I'd guess that it is in the thousands.

I really hope I do not have to make 1,000 quilts before I get good at making them.

Kids and Toys: Avoiding the plastic crap trap.

I am against plastic toys. Not for any sound, research-based reason, but because I just don't want a huge pile of that stuff hanging around the house.

So, I aim to stick to a few basic types of toys, which are those that cover all the basics. And, really, kids are resourcesful and inventive all on their own. They will make toys out of anything. One could argue that those cheap, ubiquitous plastic toys actually stunt kids' creativity.

But, there are a few toys that don't. Blocks are one. I finally finished the fabric blocks I set out to make. There are 9, one for each letter of Baby Field Notes' name. Each side has something different on it. On the reverse side of her name letters are numbers, and on a facing side are the numbers 1-9 in arabic. Because the numeral symbols we use are derived from arabic, there are a lot of similarities in the two sets of numbers. The white sided block, right underneath the division symbol in the photo here, is a 3, for example. In addition to some letters for her to spell out the two newfs' names, I threw in some mathematical symbols. Those sides she can have fun with later. I loved math as a kid and I won't be surprised if she does too.

As far as other toys for her to play with, we have been pretty spare. Better to not start that bad habit in the first place. I do not want to get in the habit of accumulating a bunch of plastic toys that only do one or two things and that quickly lose appeal.

So, I am trying to keep toy purchases and planned ones to a minimum of what is really essential in my opinion. Stuffed animals are essential, I think. They serve the same purpose as dolls as far as make-believe goes. They will also be a stepping stone to an interest in biology and the natural world, just like going on nature walks and playing in the garden will. She'll have her giant collection of felt food too — another one that is wonderful for play because she can pretend to not only serve meals and shop for them, she can pretend to operate a restaurant and farmer's market stand too, if she wants to. I am sure her stuffed animals and I will have to sit through more than one 'tea party' where sushi is served.

Every child needs to have a truck or two — the kind you use in a sand box or out at the beach or in the dirt and mud in the backyard. We've already got a dump truck. I get a kick out of the fact that it is in use as a handy place for us to keep a stash of diapers. More fun than leaving them in a box in the closet!

Other than trucks to play with in the dirt and sand, she'll need puzzles and blocks. Both are essential in my opinion. We've already got a few puzzles. I plan on getting her a really nice set of wood blocks to build towers and bridges and whatvever else she puts her mind to, if no one else does, but I have a feeling between her grandparents, aunts and uncles and great-grandparents, I probably won't need to buy her a thing! When she's older, we'll do the Legos. Mr. Field Notes still has the Legos he played with as a kid! Tangrams are awesome puzzles as well. They are excellent for practicing spatial skills and are fun for kids and adults alike... which is why we already have a set.

I really cannot think of other toys that kids really need. Paper, crayons, balls? That's more basic stuff we already have. Mr. Field Notes and I are really just big kids, so we've already got just about every basic type of toy I can think of. The only thing we really need from toy land for the next several years are wood blocks! Ha! I make it sound like we can get away with not buying toys for the next 4 years.

Check out all the monkeys! .... And a word on BPA and behavior

Just about every day I check the snow monkey web cam at the Jigokudani Monkey Park in Japan. I've been doing it since we came back from Japan nearly a year ago. I've enjoyed seeing the changing of seasons and the comings and goings of tourists. This snapshot is remarkable for the numbers of monkeys hanging out at the hotsprings and the complete absence of tourists. The day we visited there were easily five times as many tourists as monkeys. I had a good time but it would have been way more awesome to have them all to ourselves!

The Arashiyama monkey park right outside Kyoto is far more accesible than Jigokudani and even though a similar number of tourists frequent it, the place is bigger and everyone is able to spread out more. People are also allowed to feed the monkeys at Arashiyama from inside a cage (the people are in the cage) which makes for a fun experience — at least it was for me. I had a blat hand feeding itsy bitsy pieces of apple to the babies and also observing a bit of a sense of entitlement on the part of older monkeys who displayed a considerable amount of disdain for such stingy handouts. If I offered a piece of apple that wasn't large enough, one monkey slapped it away, more than once (so I knew it wasn't an accident). He or she readily accepted larger chunks. Spoiled much?

So, monkeys are a curious bunch, and they've been on my mind again lately on account of some research that's started to make the rounds of news sites. It's on BPA — the chemical added to plastics to make them hard and is now known to pose health risks. Well, it also apparently feminizes male behavior in monkeys. The dangers appear to be most linked to prenatal exposure. In monkeys, research published this year in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology shows that prenatal exposure of monkeys to BPA causes male monkeys to cling less to their mothers and look away more while clinging. Supposedly this is more typical of female infants in the species of monkey studied (long-tailed macaques, a close relative of rhesus macaques).

Chemicals added to plastics to make them softer are also blamed for feminizing behavior — and this time the research comes from humans. It's not experimental data, but pilot research published in the International Journal of Andrology shows that preschool-aged boys with more exposure to phthalates in utero were less likely to engage in stereotypical boyish play, specifically play fighting and playing with trucks and guns.

Weird mailing prohibitions in foreign countries

This morning I had to look up the USPS postal rate to send a letter to Germany, which was easy and I got just the info I was looking for: 98 cents. But I also found something I didn't expect: the inclusion of a strange item on a list of mailing prohibitions to the country — melatonin. Weird, but understandable. I wondered to myself what other weird exclusions might be found for international mailing, so I browsed the listings for other countries and discovered these.

Weird International Shipping Prohibitions:
Feeding bottles to France
Maps showing incorrect borders of Ecuador to Ecuador
Chain letters to the Czech Republic
“Musical” cards (that play a recording when opened) to Bulgaria
Leeches to Cyprus (why single out leeches?)
Police whistles to Guatemala
Bells to Italy
"Extravagant" clothes to Albania
Stilettos to the Dominican Republic
Rulers not in the metric system to Mali
Walkie-talkies to Great Britain
Blank invoices to Costa Rica
Pencils to Tunisia
Soap or socks to Syria
Newsprint paper to Guyana
Butter substitutes to Canada
Shaving brushes made in Japan to St. Lucia
Suitcases to Paraguay
Playing cards to Greece
Footballs to Iran (if they're made of pigskin)
Cassette tapes to Iraq (as if that's the only thing that's keeping terrorism alive there)

Paper and writing products (envelopes, ink, pencils, pens, erasers, chalk, etc.) to Sri Lanka.

... and whatever you are thinking of sending to Peru, forget about it because it's probably on the extensive list of things prohibited in mail sent to Peru.

Among many countries there are also the usual postal prohibitions, such as live plants, perishable food and material which may be offensive, such as pornography or religious material that isn't congruent with the state religion (such as Bibles to countries that are predominantly Muslim) as well as articles that may interfere with the country's commerce, such as leather shoes and straw hats to Ecuador, but the unexpected, other oddball prohibitions surprised me.

I also didn't expect so many countries to ban goods made by prisoners or convicts, but many do. Postal items bearing the mark of the Red Cross are also prohibited by a handful of countries in Africa, and many poor countries around the world prohibit people from mailing used clothing, be it shoes, hats or shirts. Maybe that's to prevent the spread of lice? I don't know. That would make sense, but newsprint to Guyana? Do they not want people to start up printed newspapers or what? It's not like newsprint is dangerous like stilettos are! Perhaps they really do not want people to produce printed material. Hell, in Sri Lanka, the government doesn't even want you to write.

Mealtime Psychology

Spending a week with a toddler reminded me of exactly how valuable knowledge of basic psychology can be when it comes to mealtime with a 'picky' two-year old. They are notoriously picky about what they'll eat, but rather than giving in and catering to it, parents can use a few psychological tricks to get kids munching on healthy foods.

One easy one is to give kids a concrete goal and a reward. The reward doesn't have to be sugary treat like a cookie or candy either; it can be whatever the child wants to do more than eat. In psychology, this is known as Premack's principle. For my little charge, it was a newspaper ad insert for Toys-R-Us. With obvious enjoyment, he pages through it and points out toys he likes, naming each one, and can occupy himself for a good long time. So, when he got distracted at mealtime by its presence at the corner of the table, I used that as an opportunity. I eyed his plate and estimated he had about 6 bites left (about two less than he started the meal with) and told him he could look at the flier after he ate 6 bites. He knows numbers so he knows what that meant, roughly. After each bite I told him what a good job he'd done and made a rather embarrassingly big deal of it, exclaimed how many bites he had successfully eaten. I switched to the number of bites left when he had already eaten half of them. This way, he got 'social rewards' right away for doing some of the work and when he got close to being done, he had only a small, easily met problem ahead of him. Once he ate all the bites, I gave him the toy catalog. You have to follow through if you want this incentive-reward strategy to work, and you have to be imaginative with non-sugary rewards. The goal also has to be concrete and reasonably easy to meet.

Another trick is to make eating a game. "Airplaning" food in is an obvious trick, but food can also be animated. He had dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets one day that he didn't want to eat. So I stabbed one with a fork and walked it across the plate and made a game of him biting off the dino's head, then its tail, feet and so on. Toothpicks can be used to make little men out of food too. A grape head, cooked mini carrots for arms and legs, etc. One of his forklift trucks delivered a bite of sandwich.

Both goals and games work well for getting kids to eat food they don't want to eat, but there are a few things that can be done beforehand to prevent even getting to that point.

Arranging small amounts of different kinds of foods on their plate can help kids eat more and also eat a more well-rounded diet. If one type doesn't go over well, they only have to eat a few bites of it. Yes, it takes more time to prepare, but the extra effort I think is worth it and it sets up the habit of a lifetime of eating a well-balanced meal.

Color is a good one to use to advantage too. Colorful foods are also likely to be more nutritious and can be arranged in an artful way: faces are a good choice because they have concrete 'goal' parts that can be eaten. An ear here, an eye there and soon enough the meal will be in the tummy rather than on the plate still, or worse, the floor.

Kids can and should also help make their meal. It teaches them parents and others aren't there simply to wait on them, and it gives kids an opportunity to make decisions and take ownership of their food. If so inclined, kids can also help grow the food by starting a garden or helping maintain one. Every little bit of involvement can help.

When we get to the point of having li'l Baby Field Notes eat with us, I really hope some advance planning will help us avoid having a picky eater. I like the idea of never giving her an option to eat something different from what we're having. I think our little charge always had something different at dinner, and it was always less nutritious, which struck me as weird. If I ever need to babysit again for a stretch of time, for crying out loud, I am going to the freaking grocery store and buying fruits and vegetables! And I will cut them up into little tooth pick stick men and drive them in on a dump truck if that's what it takes.

"I Wanna Dumb Fuck"

Got your attention with that one, I'm guessing.

"Dumb Fuck" is exactly what it sounds like my little nephew says when he says "dump truck." The first time I heard it, he was asking me to zoom one of his toy dump trucks around: "You dumb fuck!"

I could have died. And then I figured it out. It's a terribly unfortunate mispronunciation. Why couldn't he just say "dunk tuck" instead????

Later told us he wanted to go "see the dyke. " Ahhhrrrruh??? We figured out that he wanted to go see whether he could see in the dark after we bribed him to eat his carrots.

__________

And so began our introduction to toddler-speak. My pregnant sister's water broke 2 months early and she has had to stay put in the hospital on strict bed rest, IV fluids and antibiotics and steroids for the developing baby's lungs, and since her son had never been in daycare, we went to her house to take care of him for the week. Now it's my dad's turn. He's really good with kids and I am sure he won't have any trouble understanding the little guy.

It sure brought back memories of taking care of my little sisters. I had forgotten some of my favorite toddler speak:

Irtday Ardy! (Birthday party)
Chet Boyardee (those horrid raviolis in a can)
Fo Fo Fire (pacifier)

That last one stuck so much in my mind, that I still call pacifiers "fo fo fires" in jest. Around our house, being young adults of the 90s, we have warped it into a "Foo Fighter" because really, the magical plastic nipple does fight "foo," a catchall term that can encompass so many baby complaints.

I am really looking forward to some adult conversation. Seriously. I now understand why moms sometimes slip inadvertently into toddlereez. Once you've been immersed in a second language like that, it's hard not to slip back into it. I really do not want to be one of those people.

The other thing I observed about toddler 'language' is that he readily recognized symbols that are part of language, even if they aren't English letters. Baby Field Notes has a quilt to play on that has Japanese hirigana on it and as soon as he saw it, he pointed to them excitedly and exclaimed, "Letters!" I thought that was really cool.

It was also really neat how he repeated immediately, and in the same tone, something I said without thinking — and fortunately — it was G-rated! ((Phew!!))

Round and round the mulberry bush......

POP! Goes the weasel.

He had a toy that played the tune and I naturally sang along without realizing. Pop! Goes the weasel, he instantly repeated. Yep, we heard that an awful lot after that. I had assumed someone already had taught him the words to it, but when his dad came home from work, he asked if we taught him the song.

It's impressive, that the ability to repeat something heard or seen just once, and it is easy to take it for granted. It's one of those hallmark human abilities. Apes imitate, but not with nearly the same facility.

A L'il Lobstah for Ya!

Here's one for my family since I haven't been able to send email lately. Gmail has been on the fritz for a few days now. Enjoy! I'll send along better ones as soon as I can =D

Under the Sea

My most recent finished project is a smallish 'activity' quilt with marine animals hidden under waves. Inside the waves I tucked cellophane so they'd make a crinkle sound when folded down to reveal the hidden animals: a few small fish, a shark, octopus, manatee, turtle, sea lion, jellyfish and a small spotted ray.

For the reverse side I used a soft, fuzzy dark chocolate fabric and between the front and back I put some batting and tacked it down with some free motion quilting. All of the animals are appliqués from a yard of cotton fabric I found on etsy.

This project was a logistical challenge but it was fun. I first had to figure out the right order to do things so that I wouldn't have seems showing where I didn't want them, i.e. outlines of animals showing through the waves. I appliqued the animals onto the waves first, then sewed them to the fabric and then sewed the sides of the waves together. Once I had those done, I sewed some curved lines to the crests of the waves to hold down the cellophane. I did it freehand and I think in the future if I make another one of these, I'll use a wax pencil to draw the lines first so I have a a guide to follow for more tidy details.


When I had all of the wave details finished, I sewed the waves onto the lighter blue cloth background, then put the layer of batting between it and the brown for the back and started pinning, tucking in folded pieces of ribbon as I went.


All told, this one took me 9-10 hours, or just about as long as the baby's quilt did!

Finished my first quilt!

Yesterday I finished the first quilt I've ever made. Bold patterns in black, white and red cloth interest newborns the most, which is why I chose them. It took me a few weeks to find cloth in enough different patterns to make it. Some I bought online through etsy, most are from JoAnn's and a few .. are from Walfart. Each of the 20 squares is different. They are a little over 5 inches square so the entire quilt is not very big, but just big enough for BFN to squirm around and eventually crawl on.

Making a quilt can seem daunting, but it isn't hard — at least not for an easy pattern like this one. I finished it in 3 days, working a few hours at a time and never for more than about three hours at a time thanks to having a very hungry baby around. I broke it into 4 parts:

* cutting the cloth pieces
* pinning pieces and sewing them together as I went
* free motion stitching the top and bottom together
* sewing the binding on

Cutting the cloth pieces was made easy by a cutting mat, rotary cutter and clear plastic ruler/straight edge. This was probably the easiest step. Pinning was tedious, but I pinned and sewed one strip at a time, so the monotony of it was broken up. I pinned and sewed horizontal rows first, alternating short vertical strips of white cloth between patterned blocks. Then I sewed long strips of white cloth between each row.

Before I started pinning I took a snapshot of the patterned blocks that I had arranged on the floor so that I had something to reference just in case I were to jumble it once I started pinning. I never needed it, but I am glad I took it just in case. I really thought about how I wanted the blocks arranged and spent about 20 minutes arranging and rearranging them until they looked right to me. I wanted to keep similar patterns and colors away from each other and also keep a balance of light and dark.

After pinning and sewing came the worst part: laying down and pinning the batting between the top and bottom (black cloth with small Chinese characters in white). There has got to be a better way to do this but I don't know what it is. The first time I pinned them, I ended up with the top taut but the bottom piece wasn't. It looked awful so I unpinned it all except for along the top and then used that as an anchor and smoothed the cloth from the top and bottom as I pinned. It was a pain in the butt but by the time I was done, both top and bottom were equally taut.

I really had no idea what I was doing. I've never taken a quilting class and the last class I had on sewing was during some class resembling 'home ec" that I "took" during high school because it was either that or typing. I think I skipped out on much of it simply because I could get away with it. Home ec was just not my speed; I was always way more interested in math and science. It's amusing that now I would be sewing like crazy! In any case, I think a quilting class or two would probably help. My quilt has flaws, but as Mr. Field Notes reminded me, no one is going to notice but me. The flaws? They have to do with the layers not lining up just right, I think. But, it could also be I missed doing some crucial thing during the next step: free motion stitching.

To help nail down the top and bottom layers, quilters can use a special presser foot. It appears to be spring loaded and doesn't press down as hard on the fabric so there is a lot of movement to it. The trick is to move the fabric around in whichever direction you want. You can go forward, side to side and even backward, easily. But, as I was told when I bought it at a quilting shop, "It takes some practice." Ha! Does it ever!

At first I set my machine to the slowest possible speed setting because anything higher and I felt like the fabric was flying all over the place and I couldn't control where the stitches went, but then as I got more comfortable with how it moved and how I could move the fabric, I found the slowest setting wasn't optimal and settled on the middle speed. Even so, it took a lot of concentration to control where the stitches went even though the stitches were free form and not in any particular pattern — just random, wavy lines. This part was definitely the hardest, I thought, and made me think twice about whether to make another quilt.

After free motion quilting the top and bottom pieces, I prepped the binding. I suppose I could have sewn the binding onto the bottom of the quilt and then folded it over and sewed it to the top, but I didn't. Instead, I cut long narrow strips of red cloth and folded it over about 1/4 inch on both long sides and ironed it so it would stay folded. Then I ironed it in half lengthwise so I could tuck the whole piece over the edge of the quilt. I knew I would have some places where the top and bottom binding edges wouldn't match up perfectly and I was fine with having to re-sew or stitch those by hand. In the end, that only happened over about 20 percent of the edge and was easily fixed by gently tugging the part that wasn't sewn down and repinning and resewing. The binding went quickly.

All in all, this quilt took a lot, lot less time than I thought it would. I estimated it would take at least 2 weeks, but I had it finished basically over one weekend and despite numerous interruptions. I am already looking forward to the next one.

My 'Dubious' Dog Bell Plan

For a few months now, I've been battling the problem of what to do about the back door. When I let the newfs out in the morning, I leave the door open just a crack so that it's shut but not latched. They wrestle around outside and some variable amount of time later, they barge back in. Usually, but not always, I notice when they come in and can go shut the door. It's those times I don't notice, when the door has been open for an hour, that I want to solve.

What I need is a simple alarm to alert me that the door is open. A bell on the backdoor is perfect, so at the craft store, I choose the biggest, loudest bell I could find and figured I could hang it on the door nob from a ribbon — except — that would scratch up the door. So, I made a little padded cushion to hang between it and the door. It'll still make a nice clang when they rush in, but it won't scratch the door.

I quilted the cushion using a new free motion presser foot for my sewing machine. I have really limited experience using it, and it takes practice, so I'm inventing all sorts of excuses for using it before I use it on my next project — a quilt for Baby Field Notes (my first quilt). This door bell cushion was a perfect excuse for practice.

It ought to do the trick, and it might have the added benefit of serving as a bell for when they ask to go out. Katy will vocalize to go out, but not Yuki. Instead, she just stares at the door. Sometimes she nudges the nob with her nose, so I'm thinking we might be able to get her to deliberately jingle the bell to ask to go out.

Katy needs none of these tricks. But she's stuck with it. (Notice the slobber hanging off her jowl?)

Katy has these amazingly disgusted looks she shoots at us when she thinks we're being dumb (which is pretty much all the time when she's not sleeping — or eating). She shot me one of her dubious looks when
I told her to wait by the back door after I balanced a treat on the nob. It's her equivalent of the teenager's rolled eyes. You can get a hint of it in the top photo. Perhaps amazingly is too much, but she's got a real skill for looking at us this way when we ask her to do something that's beneath her... like 'waiting' for a treat. Being a trick she learned long ago, it is so juvenile.

Behavior Change through FUN

Can we get people to choose the stairs by making it more fun?

Here's a fun video that illustrates behavior modification:



How could you not take the stairs?

A Stylish Snooze

Infant Handedness: Baby Field Notes a Lefty?

A greater preponderance of left-handed U.S. Presidents aside, it has me concerned, a little, that Baby Field Notes might turn out to be a lefty. She's showing what I would call a strong preference for sucking her left hand, moving her left hand more, and holding things longer with her left hand.

The first question I had was whether there's any research to suggest that early hand preference correlates with handedness later. I'm still doing the research, but so far I've turned up some interesting stuff, all published in reputable journals like Developmental Psychobiology and the International Journal of Primatology.

Handedness is associated with brain lateralization and specialization, meaning that the two hemispheres are not exactly alike. The right and left hemispheres execute different functions. For example, most people process language in their left hemispheres. Spatial reasoning, such as mental rotation of objects, is processed in the right hemisphere. Although it's not a perfect relationship, the vast majority of right-handers (90%) process language in their left hemispheres, but only about 70% of left-handers do. A higher proportion of left-handed people process language in the wrong hemisphere, or both hemispheres. It's also said that they are more likely to be dyslexic.

Nonhuman primates are generally not thought to have much language capacity (there are exceptions!). They are also thought to not show much evidence of brain laterality, i.e. their cerebral hemispheres are more symmetrical in function and do not show a left hemisphere specialization for language (there are exceptions!). Furthermore, they are not thought to show a hand preference, i.e. they don't preferentially grasp or manipulate stuff their right hands (there are exceptions with this too!).

What all this means is that other apes don't have the amazing language abilities that humans have because they don't have the brain circuitry specialized for such a complex task and their lack of hand preference is one piece of evidence for that. However, I think that there is plenty of evidence that other apes have some language capacity and that it's likely early human ancestors (6 million years ago) also had language capacity. The human ability to write and recite nursery rhymes didn't just appear out of nowhere, it built upon earlier capabilities.

Left-hand preference may be just one symptom of something gone haywire in brain circuitry regarding language development given the links between the hemisphere dominance, handedness and language processing. In other words, it's not too surprising that more lefties would have language difficulties and I hope that Baby Field Notes doesn't! Language stuff aside, it would make life a lot easier for her to not have to deal with the hassles that lefties encounter.

A good example would be the rotary paper cutter we have. It, like the vast majority of paper cutters, is set up for right handers. The blade is on the right side and the grid and platform to rest the paper on is to the left. For a left handed person to use it, they would have to either operate the blade with their clumsier hand, or, they'd have to hold the paper with their right hand and reach across their right wrist and hand to grasp the arm or blade to cut the paper with their left hand — a recipe ripe for making a mistake and winding up injured.

Speaking of language I find it interesting that the word dexterous, meaning nimble or skillful, comes from the word dexter, which means right. The dexter hand is the right hand. In contrast, left in French is gauche, which in English means clumsy or boorish. Compliments that have a subversive, not so nice element to them are left-handed compliments. I'm just saying, left handers don't just die earlier (as research has found), our whole language schema paints them in a poor light.

However, left handedness/right brain dominance is also associated with being gifted analytically, particularly in mental rotation and three-dimensional problem solving.

In an effort to find out whether early left hand preference is associated with being a lefty, I skimmed a bunch of journal abstracts, and although I haven't yet found an answer, I did learn some other interesting stuff.

At just 5 months gestation, fetuses already show brain lateralization. Using ultrasound imaging, researchers measured the size of both lobes of the brain of around 100 fetuses and found that their left hemispheres were larger than their right hemispheres. Also interesting is that the girls had larger brains.

Fetuses suck their thumbs in utero, no surprise there, but they also show a preference for sucking their right thumb and this can show up as early as 15 weeks of gestation. Also, research on some primate species, including both monkeys and two kinds of apes (bonobos and chimps) has found that they have a nipple preference — left — which is also associated with a preference for turning their heads to the right, which would be toward the left breast when being carried and while suckling. What's noteworthy too, is that nonhuman primates and humans both show a bias for left-handed infant carrying and cradling.

Early on, BFN preferred the right boob, the atypical pattern. I also have a strong preference for carrying her and cradling her in my right arm. Mr. Field Notes does it in the more usual primate fashion — with his left arm — and was the first to observe that I don't. So I guess I am odd and maybe Baby FN is too.

In any case, Baby Field Notes may indeed turn out to be a lefty, and it's not likely I will be able to change that if she is. Handedness is not learned, a plethora of research suggests. Instead, it is "a spontaneous expression of the developing nervous system unaffected by the environment," as Dr. Johanna de Vries put it best.

However, other researchers, such as William Hopkins, point out that behavior can influence brain development, so use of the right hand can theoretically cause the brain to develop asymmetrically. [I think there's some merit to that, but how likely is the preference of right hand use to be just chance?] I think it's more likely hand preference is genetically determined and there's a good chance that no amount of me putting things in Baby Field Notes right hand will change anything if she is indeed a lefty.

My intuition is also that she is likely to be a lefty, given her hand preference now.

First Date in 3 months!!

I didn't set out to make it a French day, but that's what it became. Leon Le Chameleon, a kids French song I discovered on iTunes, filled the morning air. By dinnertime I was dining in a French restaurant and sipping beaujolais. Afterward, we stopped at a patisserie on the walk home. Not bad for the first date I've had with Mr. FN in three months!

Needless to say, I freaking love love love living in this sleepy corner of the state. When we lived in this town 'the first time,' none of this would have been possible and I am so glad we waited to have a kid, even if that wasn't entirely by choice. We can provide so much more for her than we would have before — not just materially — but culturally, intellectually and emotionally.

The world wide interwebs certainly helps with that. It means I can locate French kids songs about reptiles, download them to my iPod and play them on our home stereo all without spending more than a buck and 5 minutes time. Truly awesome when you think about it. Using Facebook, I can connect with friends who also have babies and even chat with them virtually for free while I am nursing and they are 3,000 miles away. I can read research articles relevant to child physical and social development in peer-reviewed journals without having to actually go to a library. The internet makes all of that possible. Back when we lived here before, none of that would have been possible. Yes, I am a huge fan of the internet. It is truly awesome. and so is actually getting away from the computer to enjoy a night out with my honey, well honeeeeeeeeeeys, now.

The beaujolais wine, yum. I really like having a glass of red wine now and then. I think it's prefectly fine to do so even while nursing so long as you keep it to one glass, have it with a meal and drink it slowly right after nursing the baby and hours before the next breastfeeding session.

Now if I could just walk through the Louvre tomorrow morning...