The Dress (I hope I haven't overused this for a title)

Working on the loops here. I needed a foundation for the buttonhole stitch I planned to use and I needed it all to be well anchored. What I did was take a double strand of a mediumish crochet thread and worked my way from left to right, taking two stitches every inch. That worked pretty well.

Then I worked right to left doing a buttonhole stitch along the entire length--it was something like twenty-one inches from top to bottom. I finally figured out how to make it look really good on the last six inches. :) Of the second side.

One side done, one side pinned so I know where to make the anchoring stitches.

Working on the hem here. Many times around, it was. Once to pin, once to baste, once to cut, once to sew the hem lace, once to actually sew the hem. And that is not counting the time or two or three with the iron.

All finished! Aren't they loverly? I wish I'd have gotten some up close of the back and the lace at the bottom of the bodice but once I see all the pictures taken, perhaps I'll find something. All-in-all, I am quite pleased with the end result.

This is mostly hand and skirt but you can see some of the lace at the bottom of the bodice. It is lovely lace--I really like it. Laura really wanted it up above the seam; I think I'd rather have covered it. Still, it's all good.

The back. I just absolutely love this. Honestly I could not keep my eyes off this girl.

And this picture I just love. These two are great! I think I'll keep both of them.

Daughters of the Moon Sisters of the Sun:

Young Women & Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood

by K. Wind Hughes & Linda Wolf

What an interesting book. What diverse backgrounds these girls came from. It almost makes my life look like a walk through the park. Almost.

There was a time when I wished more than anything that I’d been born Native American. I remember the secretary of the school coming in to each classroom at the beginning of each year asking if anyone was part and I so wanted to raise my hand. Now, I do not remember if anyone ever did. Then, when I was about 10, my maternal grandfather learned that his mother was actually part Indian. She said eventually that it was Cherokee (which is what everyone says). The reason she put forth as to why she wouldn’t admit to that or the fact that she had any Native American blood because she and her family lived up and down the California coast from San Francisco to around Arcata (my grandfather attended something like 17 schools before graduating from high school) and part of this time was spent amongst the Hupa Indians who, according to her, might have become hateful if they’d known she was Cherokee. Whether or not it was actually Cherokee blood running in her veins, we do not know, but her father looked as if he might have been (although it was supposed to be his wife who was). Whatever blood it was, it would have originated in the eastern part of the US sometime in the mid-1800’s. I was happy just knowing that one sixty-fourth of me might be Native American. It didn’t change anything about me, but it made me feel good.

Now, having lived for a few years in New Mexico in close proximity with some Navajos, I am glad that I am who I am because I now understand that we all have our own trials, our own strengths, our own weaknesses. We are each an individual and this is a good thing.

I’m actually having a difficult time writing about this book because there are so many ways to respond to it. I think that an overall theme is that girls need to know that they are loved and cared for and respected and that they matter, not that they are just objects sometimes to be looked at, admired for our apparent beauty, used, or abused.

One of the experiences from New Mexico that really sticks in my mind is when a Navajo friend and I happened to be driving by a laundromat. A Navajo woman was lugging a basket or two of laundry out to the car and her man was sitting in the car taking a nap. My friend joked that Native women are tough—they can do anything. While I would agree, I would add that all women are tough and can do anything if they just set their minds to it. Being tough and doing everything takes its toll on us—those Navajo women are tough and they can do anything. The trouble is that many of them, especially those forced to do everything because they are with a man who will do nothing, look old far before their time. Some women who were my age looked twice as old and I find that incredibly sad. They not only had to do everything, they were often beaten for doing it simply because their men had nothing to do but drink and abuse their women. That is no way to live for the women or the men or the children who grow up with nothing but this example and thus perpetuate the cycle. In fairness, there were many Navajo men who were wonderful husbands and fathers as well (and their wives didn’t look twice as old as they were).

I really like how Tasha Flournoy (page 151) began her section: “I don’t see myself as black or African American. I see myself as a human being.” My oldest daughter is half Mexican and her children are half Korean. One of my favorite cousins is half black. In my mind, diversity is beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be a very dull world. However, we need to sometimes overlook some of our differences and focus on what we have in common.

Ultimately, while I do not agree with all the views expressed in this book, I do appreciate the honesty with which each of the contributors responded. Growing up seems to be fraught with difficulties and challenges no matter who or where or when we are. An open and honest communication would perhaps make a difference in the lives of some and if it made the difference in enough lives, then perhaps we would finally begin to see a difference globally. 

Halted, Phew!

A pile of white.

We have to eat, too, so I made bread in the middle of everything. Here it is just formed into balls and ready to rise.

The white thread covers the seam allowances I cut off the day before and there are a few black threads that were the basting.

Skirt pinned to the bodice.

I almost forgot to finish the sleeve seams. They look a lot better like this than they did before.

A look through the sleeve.

Looks kind of lifeless here, I think.

A meeting of the seams. Too bad this will be covered with lace when it's all done.

And the bread all done. I was going to give you a screen shot from what I was watching while sewing but didn't get it saved. Too bad, I think it was good. It almost had to be since it was from The Fellowship of the Rings. The only problem is that today I don't have a good reason to have The Two Towers playing.

More Sewing

Mounds of satin. It's never-ending. 

This is what I was watching for the first two and a half hours. I really like the imagery here with the tail of the dragon moving through the gold: the usurper king and the displaced king come to reclaim his own. In the movies, this was a huge turning point for Thorin.

Almost out of thread. One of these days, I'm going to actually have to buy more. Not this day, though, I've got a few partially used spools of white thread.

This seemed to be never-ending--cutting the seam allowances of the skirt.

I like this shot, too. Awesome movie(s) in spite of the many, sometimes drastic, changes from the book.

Round and round we go.

It is hard to behold the perfectness of the joining of the sleeve to the bodice here but after many, many attempts, it was finally achieved.

Ending of one day; beginning of the next. Kind of hoping I don't make it through another Hobbit movie--oh, wait, there isn't another one to go through--plus the complete soundtrack of Les Mes again.

A Day of Cutting (even though it looks like pinning)

The first piece pinned on. There aren't any pictures of the fun I had making patterns for the gussets or changing the top of the skirt pattern pieces. Or changing the bottom of the skirts pattern pieces. I can assure you it was fun.

The last three pieces pinned on the first piece of fabric. I think I mentioned in January what fun Laura had finding fabric. She bought what she could and was able to order the rest. From this piece, I was able to cut all the bodice pieces and all but three pieces of the skirt. She ended up with about eight yards left over and she already has plans for them which I think is pretty cool.  

This is what I was 'watching' while I was pinning and cutting. I listened to the soundtrack for Les Miserables while making and changing and cutting out pattern pieces. I tried listening to music from Middle Earth while cutting but it just didn't cut it, so I started 'watching' instead. It worked out well. 

When I was all done, I noticed these icky spots. They look like someone was eating chips and go all the way through. I ended up cutting a new piece because I didn't want to deal with spots. Yuck!

It's easier to see the gusset pieces on the organza. 

And that is that. I didn't take any pictures of sewing, either. Maybe today. Maybe not. It's been an interesting journey so far.

Menstrual Cycle and Pregnancy chart

Yesterday I thought it was time to do the activity for the Fertility and Conception section of the Well Woman & Sexuality unit. It was a busy day to begin with with the usual school for the boys as well as sisters over for grilled cheese and tomato soup (and hot chocolate) for lunch and the Petzold's over for fettuccine (made with shell pasta) and pickled carrots with custard and strawberries for dinner. Not to mention all the fun usual stuff like feeding goats, doing laundry, etc., etc., etc.

Everyone was home from school and I had my paper on the table along with the hot chocolate I hadn't had at lunch because I like to enjoy mine as I'm reading or working on something. There was very little left in the cup but a very little is all it takes.

"Mom!" Amena exclaimed. "Cedric spilled. . . ." That's all I heard because Laura had just called but I certainly saw what she was talking about. Laura got her ear filled with my rantings. I believe Cedric was sufficiently contrite and

as you can see from this almost finished with the pen work, the chocolate milk cleaned off the paper pretty well. Good thing--I did NOT want to start over.

This is what it looked like when I was done with the pen but before I erased the pencil.

And this is the scanned version of the finished product. I'm pretty happy with it except for the line that I get whenever I scan or print something using the thing on the lid. I should have done it from the flat bed but it's so much easier from the top. Oh well, such is life. Also, I'm not crazy about the second Menses so don't look at it too closely. The first one is fine. If I were going to do some modification using the Wacom I would fix that but I didn't want to do any electronic modifications.

I do need to point out that the assignment was to create a chart of the Reproductive Cycle such as the one found on page 175 of Holistic Midwifery by Anne Frye. My chart is a freehand (and ruler) version. I would have made improvements but like Anne's so much I couldn't think of any to make.

More Thoughts from Michel Odent

More thoughts from Michel Odent.

Dr. Odent discoursed on the new super-brainy Homo Sapiens.

Babies born vaginally must be able to fit, squeeze, through their mother’s pelvic bones. Before the advent of relatively safe Cesarean birth, mothers with babies whose heads were too large and babies with  mothers whose pelvises were too small, died. Now, there is no reason for a woman or her baby to suffer through a vaginal birth. With Cesarean deliveries so safe, all babies could be born in this manner.

With no restriction on head size, might our brains grow even larger? Odent believes, and his evidence is compelling, that it is quite possible. However, there seem to be myriad problems, consequences, if you will, of being born with the “simplified techniques of Caesarean (Odent, Michel. Childbirth and the Future of Homo Sapiens. London: Pinter & Martin, 2013. Print.)”. One of these, since many cesarean births would be elective without a trial of labor, would be a lessened, eventually lost, ability to love.

It seems that while these new super-brainy Homo Sapiens would have superior intellectual intelligence, they would be lacking in emotional intelligence.

Some might be familiar with the aphorism, “Use it or lose it.” Odent mentions that as women are not given the opportunity for oxytocin to play its part, they may lose the ability to produce it. Since it plays such a big part in every aspect of our lives having to do with love, would we lose the ability also to breastfeed? To care four our offspring? To have sex/make love?

While I was reading this, two things came to mind. One was a story I began writing when I was in high school and which I never finished. In it, on the planet where the story begins, people are grown from test tubes. There is no pregnancy; there is no birth (don’t ask me how, I never got that far; I was 14 or 15). Once to the point of being able to live outside whatever the means of gestation was, people were assigned dormitories. Each was presided over by a male and a female and each had one or two boys and the same number of girls. Sex was not a part of life. Although people had physical characteristics of being male or female, it meant nothing.

The main characters, a boy and a girl from the same dormitory, somehow found reading material introducing them to sex. Please remember at the time I knew very little of the actual mechanics myself. My main characters thought they would experiment and before they got very far, were arrested and schedule to have their memories wiped and to be sent off to another planet in the galaxy to live.

I was planning on having the memory wipes be unsuccessful and thus allow them to discover how different life could be but never got that far.

The second is the 2002 version of The Time Machine which I only recently finished watching (after I read Childbirth and the Future of Homo Sapiens, actually). It has two classes of humans. One looks much the same as we do and one has been adapted to more efficient hunting (and these are actually further divided into more selective/specialized castes). Wouldn’t it be fun or interesting to change that a bit to humans who look like we do today and who have emotional stability as well as humans with much larger heads/brains and who have no empathy but are super intelligent?

Food for thought.