the ghosts of '09

just moments after pulling off their bat costumes last year, the girls decided that for the next halloween they wanted to be ghosts.. or witches.. or mermaids. when october rolled around there were several rounds of deliberation, but they finally, officially, decided on being ghosts. because in addition to being the one and only day of the year that the girls like the color black, it is also the one day they like to be "just a liiiittle tiny bit scary." i love their choices- so traditional, so simple, and so reminiscent of my own childhood. 

old sheets were pulled from the give-away pile, the edges cut and ripped, a hood made from excess sheeting was attached and a slit cut for the head to pop through. layer the hooded sheet over white shoes, white tights, white leotard, some sticky paint on their faces and we were ready to go. charlie's ghost costume was even simpler, taking no more than three minutes to put together. white leggings, white hooded sweatshirt, black circles around the eyes and a squarish piece of fabric with a hole cut out to put over his head.

watching the girls float among the brownstones, shouting a giddy "boo" at many fellow trick-or-treaters, and smiling in wonder as their buckets filled was wonderful. and watching charlie walk the streets with them, in his little ghost costume, getting ready to play peek-a-boo each time the girls tried to surprise with their shouts was insanely adorable. barely taller than people's knees, the little ghost smiled and laughed as he toddled alongside the adults and big kids. candy in hand and a dribble of chocolate running down his chin, he was so happy and so awesome.

after a few exciting blocks we made our way home, past the plaza, past the library, through the few drops of rain and into our little apartment where we washed faces, chose two (more) candies to eat, cozied together to watch a show and called it a good halloween night. 

the girls have been having some discussions about next year's costumes. a witch is the top of eve's list, but ruth is pulling hard for gingerbread (not a gingerbread man, or girl, just gingerbread..). they've got a year to hash it out. either way, i think we're starting in a good place.

++photos will (hopefully) be added/changed later today. after downloading all our pictures halloween night. i checked them, looked through them with the girls and went to sleep. next day i went to the computer and, poof! most of the pictures were gone forever. only a few remain that i downloaded. and, of course, since it seemed the download was successful, i wiped my memory card clean. bummer. here's hoping image recovery from the memory card works!

carefree

my 50mm lens broke. then one phone died while the other disappeared. two days later a water balloon burst all over (and killed) my one-month-old laptop. a water balloon. inside my home. i can really only blame myself, but still, there were a few days these past two weeks where i was pretty sure that life was against me. 

then the crisp fall wind came and blew in the anniversary of our wedding. nine years. (high-five, chip). last tuesday rolled around, chip surprise-took the day off work and pushed me out of the door to have a day of wandering all to myself. the city was wonderful and strange without my squad. i hardly knew what to do or how to interact with the city without kids.. or at the very least without the threat of an outrageous babysitting bill or looming pick-up time. but, i eventually figured it out. i wandered in soho and central park, i saw a movie at 5pm at the Paris (i was the youngest by 35 years, at least. maybe my favorite NY movie viewing experience to date.), i wandered down 5th avenue and grew even firmer in my deep love of brooklyn. chip and i met at balthazar for dinner, wandered to the east village for ice cream and another movie, then took a cab to the west village to stay the night at the jane*. all by ourselves. no kids calling our names in the night or "whispering" in our faces in the morning. it was a first ever and it was nice. and chip did it all. (big-time high-five, chip). the next morning i watched the hudson from our window and after leaving the hotel, chip took off to work while i slowly wandered home.

for a life that has seemed anything but carefree lately, it was the perfect gift. the break from everything, the time alone with chip and the happy reunion with the kids.. just right. 

and now we are back. back to schedules and volunteering and lunch-packing and scrambling to find the missing shoe and fundraising and playing and eating and meetings and eating (charlie is beastly hungry all the time lately) and trying our best to wrap it all up in pajamas, brushed teeth and a cup full of water before 8pm every night.. and i'm trying my best to approach all we have going on with the same happy attitude i approached my day of wandering. 

so it seemed right that when reuniting with my lonely sewing machine i turn to one of my favorite japanese craft books newly translated into english (hooray!); carefree clothes for girls. the japanese version made me want to dye the girls' hair red and move to the country, and the new english version does the same.. but since that doesn't make any sense (yet) i'm happy that it also makes me want to sew up a ton of these adorable clothes for eve and ruth's life in the city.

i skipped on the lovely handwork the book instructs for the apron (i get impatient for a final product when i haven't sewn in awhile.. but really, the detailed handwork in the book is insanely charming). and i went for strips of bias tape along the pant leg rather than the wide lace in the instructions- no lace on hand and i find stripes+cropped pant+little girl to be an irresistible combination (and who really has the power to resist the sailor trend, especially after just lodging in the "captain's quarters" at a hotel that was originally built to lodge sailors in port and was actually home to the survivors of the titanic while that sad mess was sorted out? not me). i love it. simple and darling and so easy to sew. eve's feelings about the outfit? she can put "special secret and even super secret messages and things in the gigantic pocket without anyone knowing" all while practicing moves for ballet class, so she's a fan. even ruth, while in her cave (laundry hamper turned on its side with blanket over it), rotating between her bat costume and skirted lime green swimsuit and shouting "pumpkin pie!" every thirty seconds gives it a very enthusiastic thumbs up. so, even with 80% of technology dead in our home, and charlie throwing everything he can find to the ground, it isn't so hard to feel carefree with images of life on the sea, super secret messages and pumpkin pie on the brain. 

* for those who follow the link to the jane, know that chip didn't surprise me with a tiny room with bunk beds (although that would have been ridiculous and hysterical.. and a revisit to our past- on a maiden scouting voyage to new york nearly 9 years ago we visited the jane when it was gritty and cheap and a friend was lodging in one of those tiny tiny rooms until he found an apartment).. we stayed in one of the captain's rooms which was cool and fun, but not without some mysterious weirdness.. 

i cried, they didn't

they did it. last wednesday both girls got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, posed for pictures and ran to school where they joined their classmates as members of the new york city public school system. eve is a big time kindergartener and ruthie is a big time pre-k-er. things didn't seem to go as smoothly as last year, which i suppose is natural now that there are two. especially when one of them is ruth, who is going through a real phase right now, the kind of phase that i would think was so crazy and entertaining and absolutely endearing (if slightly alarming) were i an observer.. but as her mother, my head explodes about fifteen times a day..  still, even though ruth is awesomely unpredictable and even though it was completely different than last year, this year's first day was a great day.

after our run to school chip took ruth to register and i jogged hand in hand with eve to kindergarten. the room was hot and crowded. eve was a little nervous, but amazing. no nail biting, no tearing up. a tighter grip on my hand and a shoulder pressed into my leg for a moment and she was off.. cautiously and quietly, but she was off. after all, she is in kindergarten now. "did you like how i listened to you right away and didn't scream when ruth drew all over my arm with marker? it's because i'm in kindergarten." "did you see how i didn't throw a fit when ruth pulled my hair even though it hurt super bad? it's because i'm in kindergarten now." 

 

ruthie got into eve's old class, which we were thrilled about. ecstatic about. especially after the months-long battle i've had with the nyc department of ed just to get her into our zoned school. on day two she got pulled out and put into another class. i wasn't happy (enter: break down in the principal's office) but have since gotten over and embraced the change. ruth was sold the second she got to dress up like a "super cool princess" with the new friend that has her exact same shoes.

midnight the night before school rolled around and i couldn't not make them something for this big day. the stripes were pulled out and i sewed into the wee hours of the morning. their response when i presented the shirts? "do i have to? really? i kind of don't want to." eve took pity on me and my blank stare and after some coercion, ruthie did too (although she will never ever wear the tunic with jeans again, only tights because [exaggerated sigh and attempted eyeroll] "this is a dress mom, not a shirt. look!").

and, off they go. one resolved, the other mostly oblivious, both happy and good and ready to take on the world. as long as you don't make ruthie eat pickles or make eve take more than three bites of chicken (even though she's five). 

a sprinkler suit

watching those sesame street kids play on their sad playgrounds always puzzled me. as a girl growing up on acres of land in northern california, it just didn't make sense. there had to be some kind of joke that i just wasn't getting, because i didn't believe it.. a couple lousy swings, a handball wall, maybe a sand pit, some sprinklers and a sad set of monkey bars and i was supposed to be convinced that it was real? that anyone would ever do that to a kid; build a playground on blacktop without any kind of grass anywhere? it wasn't real, but if it was, i felt sorry and confused for those kids. 

today i watch my children play on those playgrounds. i watch them run on the blacktop and swing on the swings and stomp their feet in frustration at not being able to get the monkey bars right. those kids i pitied are now my own and those sad playgrounds i didn't believe in are theirs. they are theirs and they are amazing. the girls will run and charlie will walk, so slowly and carefully, all over that black rubber matting and asphalt for hours. every season of the year we are there, never noticing or thinking about the missing grass. we run,we draw with chalk, we blow bubbles and swing, slide and chase. but during the summer, while charlie searches for the nearest ball, the girls are concerned with one thing on their lovely little playground; the water. no matter what they are wearing, eve and ruth drench themselves in the geysers that pop up when the weather turns hot. more often than not, on those summer days we spend in brooklyn, the girls walk home, leaving a trail of little puddles behind them.

for those days of sprinkler bliss, a sprinkler suit was made. now that the very last day of our summer vacation is here it seems a little late to be sharing this, something made back in june, but here it is anyway. eve and ruth both balked when i tried to present it as a swim suit. "but it's just a shirt and underwear!" they cried. they were right, and we have used each piece separately as such, but when the two pieces are put together it becomes eve's "sprinkler suit", a term they were both willing to fully embrace (ruth didn't want one for herself unless it had a big hole in the back of it and neither of us were fans of the prototypes i came up with.. next summer). with her sprinkler suit on eve can run and play in the water and dry off in record time and i can watch as she scootches and spins on the ground and throws her little body around without once thinking about how much damage she is doing to her suit or clothes. after all, it is a sprinkler suit, and sprinkler suits are made for summer and all that comes with it on these new york playgrounds we happily call our own. 

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also, this is my favorite sesame street song. ever. there are funnier and cleverer songs, which are awesome, but this was my favorite as a child and is even more so now that the girls request to watch it over and over and charlie rocks along to the beat. 

fodrz day

with father's day sunday and his birthday yesterday, it has been an eventful week for chip. the girls have made him no less than twenty cards (each) and several involving stacks of oversized cardstock stuck together with gluestick. pictured next to the (second of three) official father's day/ birthday gift are the official father's day cards. ruth drew a portrait of the whole family with charlie the size of a small parrot resting on her right shoulder. eve also drew a family portrait but went thematic; a circus family. complete with circus-y building, large spinning wheel, balloon-bearing clown and chip in plaid pants. penned along the top is an excellent example of eve's "sounding it out" skills. makes me want to cry i love these stages so much.

and what were the official father's day/birthday gifts? first: a jacket chip has been thinking about for months. chip never thinks about clothes for months, so we had to. second: a father's day classic that has been long overdue. ties.

his work uniform rarely involves more than jeans and a t-shirt but each sunday and one or two nights during the week chip puts on a suit and tie for church and related meetings. the girls helped me choose the fabric (although their first pick involved sparkly unicorns), i cut one inch off the pattern width (chip is a skinny tie kind of guy) and got to sewing and ironing. 

for the last few inches of the tie we used different fabric for a cool semi-secret surprise. i've gone back and forth about my feelings for the surprise, but now i really like it. chip does not feel the same way. he says he does, but he is a terrible liar. i can't blame him; it is a fact that, aside from the skinniness, he leans pretty conservative and subtle with his ties. however, he likes them and us enough to wear them very happily anyway. and that's part of what makes him our favorite.. that and the fact that in two weeks he will be used to the tiny bit of flash and will be telling the truth when he says he loves them. edit: one week! it took one week!

as for the third offical father's/birthday gift.. it hasn't arrived yet. but hopefully will within the next week or so. which works out well, because a birthday week is much better than just one day of celebrating, right?.. and when father's day is in the mix too, we might as well go double time and make it two solid weeks of gift giving.. (mom, you were a genius when you started the "birthday week" when we were little. it now serves as the perfect cover for my procrastination..).

get ready, chip, the third offical gift will be your favorite.. if for no other reason than you don't have to wear it.

...

edit: fabrics used for ties (all 100% cotton):

tie one: brown and cream stripe (pictures make it look black. it's brown.) by yuwa. brown dots on cream also by yuwa but i couldn't find it available in my hasty search just now.

tie two: both the brownish and pink tiny dot are part of the "30s collection" by atsuko matsuyama. they were bought at purl's soho shop and again, i can't find them online.. (if someone knows a source online, let me know!)

american summer

if there is an american flag anywhere nearby ruthie will find it, point, and give a gleeful shout: "MERIYAN FLAG!" on the bus, flying above the playground, stuck to accelerating cars, painted on the fire house, waving in little passerby's hands, way beyond in the distance flying above buildings.. she sees them all and lets us know so that we, too, can share in the delight. an exasperated eve will complain, "she always says that." but then she will smile (we all do) with wide-eyed ruthie as she points and exclaims, holding her breath and spreading the excitement.  

as the heat increases each year and the sewing really gets going, i find myself continually (but somewhat unconciously) drawn to that flag's classic american color palette of red, white and blue. old pieces of fabric are pulled out, new pieces brought in and they wait in their pile until i figure out exactly what it is they will become.

as always, but particularly in the summer, they become simple shapes that remind me a little of my own childhood days.. days that looked nothing like eve, ruth and charlie's; rolling hills in the place of brick and cement buildings, one neighbor down the hill in place of hundreds on one block, five acres instead of 600 (maybe 650) square feet.. but days that i still, somehow, see glimpses of everyday as i watch these kids laugh and fight and play.

there are more reds, whites and blues to be put to use, and soon. but here we have a start. 

round one: american summer

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this many pictures for one post would certainly be unnecessary if i wasn't so entertained by eve's modeling lately. here's to summer and the extended days i'll be able to spend with this moody little girl again.

waiting for the heat

i say that we are waiting for the heat now, as we search for socks to warm our chilly toes just after peeling off three sets of wet, cold clothes from our morning walk to school, and i mean it. but really, when the heavy heat of new york summer hits i will hardly be welcoming it. for now, though, on this shivery morning, we are waiting anxiously for some warmth and we are preparing. 

ruth wears her skirted swimsuit and practices "swimming" in the bathtub daily. eve discusses our upcoming summer stay in oregon and prepares for the risk of tsunamis (she asked for an example of a word that started with "ts" and out came "tsunami". we're now going on week five of tsunami-related conversations... if only i had thought to say "tsar"..). little charlie remains blissfully unaware of plans beyond his daily task of finding the colored pencils and distributing them as far and wide throughout the house as possible, but his little legs are practicing standing on their own so he can be ready for the summer playing. and me, i am sewing. sewing for the day when we no longer need layers or socks or something warm to drink. 

summer sewing is my favorite. skirts, easy dresses, uncomplicated shirts, jumpers and shorts. done. 

these shirts will be repeated in several different fabrics for the upcoming season. maybe with different details, or maybe the same. i'm a sucker for rolled sleeves and ribbon loops.. 

there will be more shorts, too. i always forget how easy pants and shorts are. in fact, i'm almost tempted to say they are easier than skirts.. they come together so quickly. testing my pattern by making three pair in one day was easy and totally do-able, not torture, for me or the kids. and even if only the final pair fit the way i wanted (flowered denim wins), i can tell myself that the other two pair are great too. after all, they are shorts, and shorts don't need to be perfect. shorts just need to allow little legs to run and play and dance in the sprinklers. and that is the glory of summer sewing. 

someday little charlie will be included in the sewing. i have no choice, really. soon all he has will be too heavy and too short for his skinny legs. and soon i will not be crouching in front of this computer, rubbing my feet together for warmth, i will be on the playground watching as all three red-faced kids run and jump and scream in the heat while i tap my toes in the spray of bursting water balloons, wishing for cooler days.  

tutorial: flower collar

so, i had a birthday yesterday. in honor of this new year and decade of my life (which i think should be pretty good), i give you the gift of a previously promised and overdue tutorial. i'm generous now that i'm in my thirties. 

here we go. how to make this collar (or something like it):

 

you need: lightweight fabric (i used shot cotton on the easter dresses and will be using it, in a different color, for the tutorial today), scissors, needle, thread, thimble. that's it. 

:: with fabric folded, cut a strip. the size varies depending on the size of flowers you want in the end, here i cut a 3" strip. keeping fabric folded, cut strip into squares. (you do not need to be exact with any of this).

:: trim the corners off the squares, making a flowery square. these "squares", with two layers each, will be used to make one flower.

:: making the individual flowers. pinch and gather first layer of "square" in the middle so it looks (wow, you're going to get tired of this word) flowery.

:: while holding the middle of the first layer secure, bring second layer to it, gather around the pinched part. move and gather fabric until it looks good.

:: stitch the flower through the pinched stem to hold it all in place. i usually run the needle and thread through four times or so, just enough that all the gathering/ruffling is secured. knot and cut thread.

::repeat many many times. you'll need a lot of these flowers.

:: attach flowers to fabric (shirt, dress or whatever you're making flowery) one at a time. if you have children who, like mine, are really good at pulling on things, you'll want to secure each flower very well with several stitches before moving to stitch on the next. this is where the thimble comes in handy. pushing that needle through again and again gets rough on the fingers. 

:: depending on the look you want, you can either pack them really tight (i did this for the easter dresses) or you can keep it a little bit looser and let each individual flower show a bit more. here i have 15 flowers. the first picture shows them tight, the second a bit looser. great either way. 

that's it! just stitch them on in the shape you want and you're done. so easy, right? just plan on spending a little time on it. it's one of those great projects to do while listening to this american life. especially act one of this episode. break-ups, phil collins and starlee kine. so good. 

...

also, there were some questions about the specifics of the easter dresses. unfortunately, other than the flowers (kaffee fassett shot cotton in blush) i don't know what the fabrics are, exactly. ruthie's light blue is either kona or p+b color spectrum while eve's yellow dress is a lovely cotton twill from my stash. 

once there was a peddler

crammed on the shelves, piled on the table, clutched in little hands, tucked under pillows and covering our laps... books are everywhere in our little place; freshly read, forgotten about and waiting, or being scoured for inspiration. eve studies the animal books and grabs her pens, ruth finds the illustrations of her favorite dresses then runs to the closet, charlie listens to the clack of the wooden book's turning pages and dances. the picture book inspiration is not for the kids only; occasionally there is a book that i cannot stop looking at, cannot stop reading and cannot stop thinking about. 

caps for sale is such a book. each time i pull it out - and i pull it out a lot - i am struck. not by the simple story or the giggles the peddler and naughty monkeys elicit from the girls (although these are constant and wonderful), but i am struck by the handful of bold, lovely colors chosen to tell the story. i often feel this way about books from the 40s, but this book is an exception even among its fine peers. a perfect and simple combination of bright colors, with plenty of white thrown in the mix. 

after years of staring and admiring i decided to make a quilt based solely on the palette of this fun book. the perfect solids were found, but after several months the quilt has yet to form- in my head or otherwise. in its place plans for little, simple, clothes highlighting this palette gestated and are being brought into the world just in time for the warmth that has finally arrived. 

round one: dresses for the girls.

if we can tolerate not taking in every second of the spring glory going on outside, these dresses will soon be joined by play clothes in ms. slobodkina's inspiring palette. but, as ruthie says, "we have some business too. like the monkeys. but that business is outside. ya, playground business." 

easter dresses '09

 

church, new dresses, singing, family, cherry blossoms, food, egg hunts, baby brothers, sunshine and wind. easter was wonderful. and with eve now teaching ruth how to dance the merengue, our spring break is off to a hilarious start.