Photos from a moment during Manly’s nap. It feels as if this is the first time all week the house is calm. I made it around to the front yard and heard Manly singing very loudly. I knew this was not a nap day. He played with the train set while I set up the jogger for a walk/nap. Glad it is Friday. I feel like I am coasting on fumes.

sewing cabinet fits in nicely

In an effort to clean up the basement and convert it into work space I actually want to spend time in, I took a carload of stuff over to my mother’s neighborhood garage sale. After dropping off my load of crap, I walked next door to see what new crap everyone else was selling and I scored a drop down wooden sewing machine cabinet for $2. That’s right, $2.

Ragnar the Viking vs. Rundown Singer

$2 is less than a cup of coffee.$2 is less that the gas it took to drive to my mom’s house. I snagged it up and brought it home, giddy with the thought of sewing in my living room instead of the dungeon of my basement. The plan was to swap out the broken down Singer that came with the cabinet with Ragnar, my beloved Viking sewing machine. But as soon as I opened it up, I saw how the Singer was perfectly set into the cabinet. The router lines were clean and exact and the machine even had screws incorporated into the cast iron body to allow the machine to drop down securely. Ragnar has a plastic body and no room for screws, therefore, no way to drop the machine into the cabinet and negating any possibility that the machine could disappear when not in use. I have 3 children that pounce on any craft I am working on. They would take apart an exposed sewing machine in 4 seconds. Less time than that, if you count pushing it off a table as “taking apart”. Therefore, it is imperative that all craft and handwork items be put out of reach before I go to bed, lest one of them smell an exposed craft project left out on the table and wake up during the night to seek and destroy the fragile and infantile project.
I have learned this lesson over and over with exposed knitting projects and as a result, I have learned to pick up entire rows of dropped stitches very quickly because one of The Rebels has pulled out knitting needles in an attempt to “help” me. The coupe de grass was when Rebel #2 tore the threads out of the serger in the amount of time it took for me to switch the laundry from washer to dryer. If you are not familiar with a serger, it is a sewing machine with 4 needles/knives that cut and sew at the same time. Two needles are above the sewing plate and two needles/knives are below. A serger comes with special tweezers and in the instruction manual, it suggests tying new thread to the old and pulling through, so you don’t ever have to re-thread the machine. Major bummer.
Anyway, I realized that the machine and the cabinet were one unit and if I tried to remove the Singer from the cabinet and replace it with Ragnar the Viking, it would be a bloody, hack job of a transplant and the cabinet and Ragnar might both die in the process. So I did what anyone does when they don’t know what to do with a machine. I went online for information. Turns out that The Singer Fashion Mate 257 is beloved by so many that no one sells them. Not even on Ebay. And people blog about how much they love this machine. If it is so great, maybe it will change my life. Maybe this is the missing link between me and eternal happiness. This morning I was getting rid of objects I don’t need. Now I’ve acquired, no, more like adopted, this supreme item I didn’t even know I needed until I saw that others needed it.
I call the local sewing and vacuum repair shop.
“Hello, yes, um… I just bought an old Singer and I am wondering if you can fix it…I don’t know if it works… it doesn’t have a footpetal or a cord to plug it in, or a manual…the guy who sold it to me said it works…Well, I don’t know how he would know if he couldn’t plug it in, either….can you just take a look at it?”
I know, a fool and her money…. But it only cost $2 and they won’t be able to fix it until August. I guess that everyone and their sister is having their sewing machine fixed right now. But now the die is cast and I have a vision of me sewing away on my Singer while Mr. Brown plays piano and a fire burns in the fireplace, and the Rebels sleep snuggly in their beds. I know that I could use Ragnar the Viking for this fantasy as well, but that isn’t the point. And all the time I am using to fix up a jallopy could be used to finish one of the projects in my studio. But what fun is that?
I’ll let you know what the repair man says.

Love,
Brownbuilt

Play Dough recipe (Yields approximately 5 cups)

3 cups boiling water
1.5 cups salt
6 cups cheap white flour
2.5 Tablespoons baking powder
3-4 Tablespoons vegetable oil
food coloring

Grownup: remove boiling water from stove and add salt. Mix in a large bowl.
Kids: mix flour and b. powder together. When cool enough, add to water/salt mixture, then add veg. oil and stir, stir, stir. When the dough is cool enough to handle, and grownup gives the okay, turn out onto table and knead it until smooth. Add flour as needed. This is messy.
Grownup: separate dough into equal size balls. Add a couple of drops of food coloring into stand up mixer fitted with the dough hook and blend color into ball. Rinse bowl and paddle between colors. This is to keep the food coloring somewhat contained.
If you want it to be a “learning activity”, only make red, yellow, and blue, and let the kids blend the colors into orange, purple, and green. Whatever you decide, it will all end up brown anyway, so save some of each color dough for next time in an airtight container.
This recipe is a bit on the wet side because  kids like to play “bakery” and spread flour all over the table and then roll it out. A a word of warning, this project makes a huge mess, but can soak up an entire rainy afternoon with play.
Waldorf bonus points: make play dough and stuff it in Easter eggs instead of candy.

While the rest of the country turned its eyes towards Madison, I snuck out-of-town to Austin for a girls weekend and 1/2 marathon.
Notes about the race:
Times I heard “Eye of the Tiger”… 2
Number of bands set up on the side of the course with their own generators…  7+
Schools and colleges I ran past…  4
EMTs reviving man at the side of the road (mile 6)… 1
Oblivious runners wearing i-pods and wandering the course…  Too many to count
number of cross or biblical tattoos on legs and shoulders… 5 (Texans love tattoos and God)
Training all winter to run in 60+ degree weather, eat tacos, and see a great friend… Priceless
It is possible to plan a course that is uphill, both ways. I don’t know how they did it, but by crossing the river twice, we were always running a slow uphill.
What happens to the pacers after mile 2? I never seem to be able to find them.
Running is much more fun went you don’t have to dress in multiple layers, wear Vaseline on your face, and worry about frostbite.
Other things I observed about Austin while I was not running:
It is the new Nashville. If you are a singer or songwriter you head to Austin to make it big.
Everyone owns at least one dog, a fixie bike, and has at least one arm with a full tattoo sleeve. I started to feel like I should try the tattoo thing again and this time go much, much, bigger.
Eating at the numerous taco stands and trailers is the way to go. For $9 I scored the best and maybe biggest two tacos of my life.
Everyone was so kind and I swooned a bit at the Texas twang and the fact that men went out of their way to hold the door for a lady… and me. At the end of three days I was starting to say “All, y’all”.

I was so happy to chat and hang with Laura. Isn’t it great to have friends that you see once a year and pick right up where you left off? We are already planning for 2012, and no I won’t be running the full marathon. Or bringing my kids.

Shown above, the Rebels and I henna our hands while BabyBrown naps. Henna kit available from Madison Waldorf School Store and also available at novanatural.com.
Nothing like death of a loved one on New Year’s Eve to scramble one’s New Year’s Resolution list. I have been feeling a bit adrift, like my keel is broken.For the first time I am not desperately trying to cling onto goals and outdated life milestones and markers.
I love New Year’s Resolutions. I make them a few times a year, once in January,one in June on my birthday and then another in September. It must be the teacher bloodline in me that thinks in semesters, or maybe the farmer bloodline that turns my focus internal after harvest.
Here are the Resultions that came from Harriet’s passing:
Let it ride Mondays; Popcorn for dinner, sure. Kitchen sink is broken, use the bathroom sink. Don’t want to get dressed, fine by me. No laundry. No groceries. No school. No errands. I need to enjoy just being with my kids and husband, and dog for that matter, and stop trying to be the constant Event Planner.
Take a digital photography class with my mother. We are both smart and know how to use technology, but we just can’t let go of f-stops and meter readings. Time to bond and admit that we will never, ever, figure this out on our own. Time to take the fancy camera off the green “auto” button and she what she can do.
Not do a triathlon; Don’t want to train that much. I don’t want to figure out what to do with the kids or how to fit two long workouts in on the weekend. Do I ever want to do an Ironman? Maybe, a half, when I retire and have 20+hours a week to devote to training. I want to train for more life events, like long bike rides, running in the arboretum and getting stronger. I won’t lie, I still need to lose that baby weight. And I do love food. So move I must if I ever want to see my waistline again.
The year of the Sock: I have outfitted the entire Brown clan with hats, now I must move on to socks. In search of a easy sock pattern that I can adjust to different people.
Meditate; 2500 years of buddhism can’t be wrong. It is the first religion I have come across that makes total sense to me. Running in the morning is slowly becoming a form of meditation, and I would like to explore this further. Don’t worry, I am still keeping the Jesus fire burning, but I don’t think that I have to trade in one religion for the other.
That is it. Not very glamorous. But it is all I can handle until June, when I make my New Year’s Res. List v.1.2 for 2011.

This is how I want to remember Grandma Harriet.

This is the first time she met The Boy, who was just a month old when the pictures were taken.

She died New Year’s Eve in hospice with her three daughters by her side. She was 91.

I have been thinking of words to type to express how grateful I am that she was my grandma, but all the words I type are weak.

Manly has your eyes, Grandma.

Those wolf strong northern eyes.