The Homesteady

How to make a touch book for baby

One made for Miles and one for his friend Eleanor whose birthday we just celebrated, these touch books were fun and fairly simple to put together.

I scrounged through our craft room and basement for interesting textures, and came up with: window screen, pink bubble wrap (cut from leftover Glossier packaging), embroidered gift wrap, felt, sherpa fabric, reversible sequins (left over from this project), sandpaper, and clear plastic (used in the quiet book and this project, too). It's really a good way to use up scraps -- and to use up a lot of hot glue.

I bought the white cardstock and the binder rings [affiliate links], then set to work. More tools that might be helpful (and more affiliate links): X-acto knife, ruler, hot glue gun, hole punch. 

Start with determining how many pages you'll have, including cover and back. Cut that many 6"x6" squares of your cardstock. (I had 8 textures, so cut out 10 squares.) In all but two (saving those for the cover and back), measure and cut a 4"x4" square from the middle.

Punch two holes in one side of every square, trying to make sure they all more or less line up with each other.

Cut out your textures large enough so that they fill the 4" window you cut, but small enough that they don't overlap the edges of the cardstock or the punched holes. Hot glue in place.  

Some, like the bubble wrap, screen, and plastic, were see-through, so I strategically paired two of them with the book's cover and back page, and used a 4" square that had been cut out as backing so that the bubble wrap page would have a solid background. 

Hot glue the cover and a texture page back-to-back, and do the same for the back cover.

Hot glue two texture pages back-to-back to make the internal pages, being sure to keep your punched holes lined up.

"Bind" the pages with the rings, and write a title on the front in Sharpie. 

Scroll to see all the pages, and a video of Miles's book in action.

Gender (stereotype)-free toddler clothes, v.2

Striped tee, Etsy / Harem pants, North of West
Leopard PJs, Cotton On / Turquoise shorts, Cotton On 
"Kindness Makes the World Go Round" tee, Old Navy / Henley set, H&M

All links are affiliate links except North of West.

Knit Copenhagen Baby Blanket

It’s done, it’s done!

Holy cow. I’m so proud of this crib blanket, made for one of my oldest friends who is expecting a sweet squishy new baby this summer. She studied abroad in Copenhagen in college and I visited her for a week while she was there so when I spotted this pattern by Jake Henzler on his Instagram account last year (inspired by the beautiful buildings in the city’s Nyhavn area) I saved it. And I’m so glad I did.

My first time knitting from a chart AND doing colorwork, I actually loved this pattern — especially thanks to the support from drop-in hours at Webs, which is luckily in our backyard! (Also where I got all the yarn for this project.) I knitted 12 buildings, blocking and then piecing them together in three rows of four. I then sewed a cotton flannel back and border to make it as cozy and functional as possible. The best part is that every element is machine washable and dryable!

So now that this big project is done, I have to figure out what to do with all my free time. (Just kidding, I’ve already started like three new projects.)

Find Jake's pattern on Ravelry, and find photos from my trip to Copenhagen and said lovely buildings below. A few more notes about it here. 

Miles liked it, too.

And now, back to 2008...

Kids' Pride

Happy Pride Month!

Northampton celebrates early, our march held the first weekend of May so that the many college students who attend school in the valley are still here and can participate. Kristie and Miles and I marched with a group of students and staff from the community college where I work. It was Miles's first Pride (we were all out of town for a wedding last year), and I think he really liked it. Kristie gave him a small rainbow flag to hold while we were marching down Main Street, and he waved it furiously at the cheering bystanders. 

Personally, I've never made it through a Pride parade without crying, and this year was no different -- especially because we were experiencing it as a family for the first time. Northampton is a very special place. To borrow from a post I wrote a few years ago: "I cry because I'm happy, and safe, and part of such an amazing community."

So while our local Pride has come and gone, June is still Pride Month around the world. Here are a few projects and products to help you celebrate Pride with your kids.

Cool Like My Moms tee [affiliate link] / Rainbow: A First Book of Pride [affiliate link]
Tie-Dye Rainbow Shoes / Rainbow Cookies
Rainbow cardigan (free knitting pattern) / Rainbow sweatshirt [affiliate link]
Dope Like My Dads tee [affiliate link] / Rainbow waffles

Also check out 6 Pride DIYs, plus a Polaroid Kristie and I at our first Pride together way back in 2007. 

*Images in this post belong to the websites with which they are associated.

A family-themed quiet book

We are lucky and not. My parents and siblings live close enough that Miles gets to see them regularly (and we have access to eager babysitters). Kristie's mom, sister, and our nephew, though, live in Virginia. They visit as often as they can and we're planning a trip to see them in August, but in the meantime, I wanted him to have a way to connect with them regularly (outside of Facetime).

Have you ever looked up "quiet book ideas" on Pinterest? There are thousands. Quiet books are wonderful things, I've come to learn. They're full of little age-appropriate activities –– although whether the books are so named because these activities are quiet or are designed to keep toddlers themselves quiet, I'm not sure. Both work. And the internet abounds with DIY tutorials for creating new pages which can be sewn or hot-glued into existence.

I decided to wed the "quiet book" concept with photos of Miles's (our) Virginia family members: Kristie's mom, her dad (who passed away suddenly in early 2017, around the same time I finally got pregnant), her sister Raven, our nephew Jacob, and Kristie's grandma and step-grandpa. I thought the little activities and games would keep him engaged while also looking at their photos and practicing their names. 

Happily, it's working. He refers to it determinedly as "MY book," and is regularly occupied by turning the pages, pushing beads from one side to another, and making Pawpaw's cars drive around the road. He spends a lot of time on Jacob's page as well, carefully moving legos from their plastic pouch to the waiting velcro squares. ("Jekkop," he says confidently.)

Have a look at the video above if you can. The photos in this post were hastily snapped near a window in the kitchen, and the light puts a glare on some of the printed images, making them look too light. (They're not.)

A few tips and sources, if you'd like to make one too:

• I made a secret Pinterest board to collect the favorite ideas I'd come across, and then plotted out the content of each page beforehand in Google Slides
• Much of the felt came from our local Buy Nothing group on Facebook (including the car page, already assembled) and from Etsy [affiliate link]
• I printed the family photos onto iron-on transfer paper [affiliate link], then ironed them onto scrap white cotton. Beware, if it matters because of text legibility, this process will flip the photo! (See backwards text in Mawmaw and Don's wedding photo. Oh well.)
• I designed the front cover (and Jacob's name) in Photoshop, then flipped it, printed it, traced it onto this paper [affiliate link], ironed to transfer it onto the felt, then stitched over it with embroidery thread
• The rest of the odds and ends I already had, or purchased in a $20 Michaels trip made the morning I put it all together

Solange's new album

Solange released a new album today called When I Get Home. Everyone in my office today is streaming it on Spotify, and I'm listening too and thinking back to the night Miles was born. My sister played A Seat at the Table for me in the delivery room on a little speaker, and it made me feel safe and strong and calm while I pushed our son into the world. (And I'm glad a creative, powerful black female artist was the first music he heard.) Listening to that album and now her new music smoothes some of the sharper edges of my memories of childbirth. It's an emotional balm.

Now that she has a new album out, I said to Kristie, "Looks like we need to have another baby!"

"Hmm," she replied, "let's wait for the next album."

If you're a parent, did you have a birthing playlist? What's on it, or what do you imagine you'd listen to?

Gender-free toddler clothes v.1

The clothing Miles wears comes from thrift stores, hand-me-downs from neighbors across the street (whose son is a few months older than ours), or the sales racks at fast fashion stores whose doorways we guiltily, greedily darken. Sometimes I am emboldened to make something for him to wear. Regardless of the source, when I have the opportunity to choose I do nag myself to try and select clothes for him that might be difficult to interpret as belonging to one gender or another. Lately he's been mistaken for a girl when we're out, which I suppose could be counted as a credit toward this effort ("Maya?" another mother mishears when I tell her his name. "She's beautiful!"), or perhaps to my furious unwillingness to yet consider cutting his hair. It's not perfect or maybe even great, but it is an effort; I think often about how we/Americans praise and empower parents for dressing their daughters in "boys'" clothing, but we don't do the same when our sons wear dresses or skirts. (Were Miles a girl, I know I'd bedeck her in dresses and skirts. And I don't, since – as far as we know – he's not. Am I not part of the complication here?)

Well. My experience was that it was much easier to find a wider range of gender-free choices when he could fit into smaller clothes. (Do you think that's for parents who decide to wait until birth to learn their baby's sex?) Now that he's larger, it's like a schism has opened between the pink/sparkly/ruched and the blue/construction-themed/sturdy clothing that is made in his size. I've started quietly pinning options that couldn't really be shoehorned into either camp, and I'd like to share them with you in a new series. I'd like it also if you could please tip a cap in my direction when you find something that might belong on a future iteration of this list!

Striped tee, Nordstrom Rack / Knit bauble sweater, H&M
Bunny booties, Hanna Andersson / So Much Fun tee, Nordstrom Rack
Knit set, H&M / Heart leggings, Old Navy

Oh, and be aware – all of these are affiliate links.

A small, striped sweater

Slowly, my mind has started to shift. If I'm already sewing or knitting our own clothes, I wondered, why not do it with fibers made close to our home? I posted in local Facebook groups, did internet searches, called around. The timing of Katy's Christmas gift for me, a copy of Mending Matters [affiliate link], couldn't have been better. My head is swirling with ideas and inspiration –– thrifting eco-friendly fabrics, dyeing with locally harvested plants, weaving and spinning and mending my own clothes with my own hands.

(My favorite part of all of this? How easy it feels. Like leaning into the pull of gravity. Also new: the gentle realization that one needn't do everything all at once to be good at this, or good in general. A little bit at a time is still good. Almost every morning, I place my spent coffee grounds in the compost bucket. On the days I don't, it doesn't cancel out the rest.)

So. Finding fabric made nearby has been a challenge, but local yarn abounds; we're lucky for that. Thanks to my search, I saved lots of Etsy shops and nearby farms that produce yarn for future projects. But in the meantime, it's the most sustainable choice for my budget to knit through what I already have –– including a worsted multi from Stonehedge Fibers, via Knit New Haven, via my Aunt Carol. I bumped the patiently waiting knitting projects on my list to make room for one small, striped sweater. I used the worsted multi, and then (after misreading grams for yards and thinking I had enough, oops) had to go to a chain store and get a small skein of cotton-acrylic to finish it.

But wait!

I bound off too tightly, and the neck wouldn't fit over my son's (admittedly, a little larger than average) head. I almost gave in, and wondered, disappointedly, who I should gift it to. But I love this yarn, and I put work into this sweater, and I'm proud of it. I think it's lovely. So I brought it to our local yarn store, Webs, for drop-in help. And in just a few minutes, a kind and patient teacher named Susan had taught me how to unpick what I'd done, and instructed me on how to do it better, again. And better it is. I put it on Miles for a day trip to my parents' house, and myself wore a sweater I'd made. I settled in to rock him to sleep for a nap (no rules when we travel) and thought about the fibers I'd woven together that were wrapped around both our bodies, which were wrapped around each other. 

(In almost no time, both of us were too warm to be comfortable, so he napped in my arms in his undershirt, and me in my long sleeves. But I still like thinking about it.)

This is the free pattern I used, if you're curious. I liked it very much.

Intention

More art projects, mending, composting, donating, “yes” (to Miles, to rest), being present, making for us, baking (later crossed out and replaced with "cooking"), and fun. I added the words “woods” and “saving” too after taking this picture, and then Miles ripped the whole thing up. I know there’s a metaphor in there somewhere... 

I’m excited for the adventure of a new year, and for sharing it with you here!

Miles is one

We reserved two picnic tables at an indoor park one town over. I baked the cake, and saved extra junk food to put on a matching store-bought one. Three little friends, their parents, and my family joined us for two hours on a Saturday. Together, we celebrated our one-year-old.