I've Been Crafting

Ready for a show-and-tell blog? I've been busy crafting!

Ergh. I uploaded these backwards. And I'm too lazy to change it. So! Most proud-of project (and most recent!) first! I decided to make Alex a toddler backpack for his 2nd birthday. I downloaded a pattern here: Made by Rae
I bought all the fabrics about halfway through last year when I stumbled across them on Etsy.com. I didn't know then what I would do with them, but I've had a lot of fun since then figuring it out! Of course it started with Jacob's tote that I made for Christmas. But THIS project featured all 5 coordinating fabrics, which I just think makes it super-fun!

It was a really challenging project for me, though. I'm intimidated by zippers, but I managed to make this one my first success! After a really badly done first try, at least. ;) Also, there are parts of the backpack that ended up being about 11 layers thick, which my sewing machine simply couldn't handle. I'm lucky I had my mother-in-law's machines available just 5 minutes away to use! I couldn't have finished it without that. Also, the zipper, bindings, and adjustable straps all came from her sewing supplies. :)

I just love it to death. I think Alex will love it, too! The reason I decided to make it for him is because he's always stealing Melinda's backpack, or grabbing some other bag or bucket, and pretending to go "bye-bye", complete with a smile and a wave and walking right up to the door. Plus, come on... what little boy can't use a super cute bag all for his own? I'm sure he'll come up with all sorts of things to put in it.


Alright, let's see. Next on this little out-of-order list is a little toy bassinet I made for Melinda. I found a tutorial online (because I couldn't think of how to do it myself!), and followed it. It ended up being small because I didn't take the time to measure it and see if it would actually fit her baby doll. But it does fit her Webkinz animals. She likes it, and wants me to make her a bigger one. Jacob wants his own for his Webkinz, too. I've been thinking about how I might modify the hood so it's less of a flap and more of a hood. Fabrics were painstakingly selected by Melinda out of Grandma Newson's stash.

Melinda was invited to a Kindergarten friend's birthday party, but it was on Sunday so we couldn't go. We decided to make her a gift, anyway. We *loved* the appliqued shirt that Aunt Sarah made Melinda for Christmas, so I decided to copy that idea. I had Melinda do some detective work and find out what her friend's favorite animal and color are. The answer? Giraffe and red. So I worked in a red flower and made a fun little giraffe applique. Very pleased with the results!! The appliques are all felt (well, aside from the fabric center of the flowers, and the ribbon stems)... we were so thrilled to find giraffe-print felt at Hobby Lobby! There's enough to make one for Melinda, too. Because, of course, giraffe also happens to be her favorite these days!

One of the first crafts I made... a pocket shirt for Jacob! He always prefers a shirt with a pocket, but he has so few of them. So I picked up a plain T-shirt and sewed on a pocket for him. With the same owl fabric that matches his church tote. He LOVES it. And Alex loves pockets, too, so I ended up making him one. Somehow I didn't get a picture of it? Anyway, his shirt is blue with a beaver on it (the same beaver can be seen on his backpack, front panel). I think Melinda wants a pocket shirt one of these days, too.

I also tackled making Jacob an owl tie. I mentioned it in passing, one day, throwing around ideas of what I could do with all those fabrics. He LOVED the idea, and begged me to make him one. I found another tutorial (gosh, the internet is great!), and grabbed some muslin and silky blue material to help finish it up. When I didn't have it already done that Sunday (I hadn't started yet - I had other project to finish first!), he threw an absolute fit. Apparently he was just dying to get that owl tie around his neck! I was happy with how relatively easy it was, once I figured out the process. The longest part was hand-sewing invisible stitches up the back. (And why didn't I make a little loop to stick the back end through? That was silly!) And yes, he does love it. But not enough to wear a tie every week. He doesn't really like the choking feeling of wearing a tie. And Jesse LOVES tying it. I bought some ties for Jacob a year-ish ago from Etsy, and they didn't have a supporting middle layer, which I guess makes it too flimsy and annoying to tie. But since I used muslin in the middle, this is a good, sturdy tie. :) Tutorial found here!

Also, I recently threw together another digital scrapbook page. I've been stocking up on templates when I can... now I just need to convince myself to take some time to use them! This page went together in less than an hour, and I'm so happy with how it looks.

Actually, I'm trying to remember if I've ever shared anything I've been doing with Photoshop lately. I'm trying to look through my archives, and I don't think I have!! What?? Goodness.
Well.
Here's the other pages I've done semi-recently, then! I took a couple classes at jessicasprague.com, and learned a lot of cool stuff. I also figured out where to print 12x12 pages. Yay me! Now to go through 6 years of accumulated (thousands of thousands) pictures! Uhhhh. Yeah. I'm never going to catch up.

Fish Saga

I was just about to waste some time by playing Bejeweled, and it occurred to me... You know?  It's been a looong time since I've posted on the blog, and there's so much I could tell you about.  Alex is napping (as is Jesse), banana bread is baking, and Melinda and Jacob are co-op'ing a game of Mario Galaxy.  What better time than to squeeze in a little life details for my family and friends?  One of these days I'll find a way to get back into the habit of doing it regularly.

For Christmas, Melinda's "big" gift was to get a pet fish.  She got a tank and all the supplies needed, and we went to pick out a fish the next day.  We picked a pretty fancy goldfish for $2, and took her home.  Well, at least we decided it was a she.  Who knows if it actually was or not.  Melinda named her Lucy.  After a girl at school, apparently, but I thought it was a perfect name for a little goldfish.

After about a week or so, and reading up on goldfish from library books as well as internet sites, I learned that goldfish aren't meant to be alone, so we decided to get Lucy a friend.  Jacob got the honors of picking his own fish.  While at the pet store, the employee in the fish section told us that minnows and goldfish are from the same family, and that they would be fine together.  Jacob was very excited about this, because the little silver minnows were "super fast", so he happily picked a little $0.13 minnow, and we landed on the name Harvey for him.  We brought Harvey home and happily provided Lucy a new friend.

We figured Harvey would be perfect, because he was nice and small, and wouldn't add too much of a toxin-producing load to our small fish tank.  Unfortunately, I discovered something a little too late.  Minnows are schooling fish, and if they are kept in groups of less than 6, they tend to be very aggressive.  I hadn't really noticed very well, but Harvey had been attacking Lucy.  Her fins were all torn up and shredded.  I also discovered too late that our rock decorations were too sharp for a delicate, long-finned fish like Lucy, and that ended up causing her to lose scales.  I believe that stress combined with the loss of scales caused Lucy to lose too many electrolytes to keep her alive.

Eventually, Lucy died.  For a couple weeks, her fins were all clamped tightly to her body, indicating stress at very least.  Her death was difficult to watch.  She was floating around half-tilted sideways and drifting with the current for the better part of a day.  I couldn't decide if it would be more humane to take her out of the water and suffocate her to death, or to let her stay until she died naturally, saving her from the stress of dying somewhere other than her home.  (Side note:  If I'm ever dying a slow death, I'd much prefer it to be in my home.  Not in a sterile, unfriendly, unfamiliar hospital.  Just so you know!)  In the end, I kept her in the tank.  And she was dead when we came back from a trip to the store.  Melinda was very upset and cried quite a bit, and I was shocked at how much I was affected, too.  I never ever EVER thought I'd even so much as blink at an inexpensive goldfish dying.  But I was sad, too.  She was a pretty fish, and I liked watching her.  We took her out and flushed her down the toilet, after saying some quick goodbyes.  Alex rather enjoyed that process, waving happily goodbye to Lucy, and then practically skipping off with a smile on his face after she was gone.

We decided to get Melinda a new fish, a small $0.13 goldfish this time.  Melinda named her Lucy Two.  She was the teeniest little goldfish I've ever seen, even smaller than Harvey the Minnow, and she was mostly white, sporting a couple gold spots.  We instantly fell in love with her.

Of course, it wasn't until after we had Lucy Two that I discovered the problem with keeping a single minnow in a tank with other fish.  After the first day or so, I really noticed Harvey chasing Lucy Two around, and not wanting Melinda to lose a second fish, I removed Harvey and stuck him in a tupperware on the counter until I could decide what to do.  After stewing over it, I decided I didn't have the means to get enough minnows to keep Harvey happy, and didn't want to spend the extra effort to try to find him a new home, so we released him into the neighboring lake.  I'm certain it killed him.  The lake was halfway frozen over, definitely ice cold, and everything I learned about keeping fish told me that even just a couple degrees of temperature change at once could shock the fish and do it harm.  We didn't stay at the lake long enough to find out for sure, though.  All I saw was that Harvey stayed right near the edge where I released him, just under a thin layer of ice, and didn't dart around as was typical for him.  We walked away, Jacob already talking about his next fish. 

And yes, we were on the way to get yet more fish.  After all, we still didn't want to sentence Melinda's fish to a life of solitude.  We ended up picking out two more little tiny goldfish (instead of minnows!!).  Jacob's fish was plain white, and named Harvey Two.  The second we picked out was plain gold, supposedly Alex's fish, and the kids named him Jack.  I didn't bother taking a picture of them this time around.

The three fish seemed to get along perfectly, ate up all the food we fed them nice and quickly, and the water stayed clean.

At least, so I thought. 

Two weeks later, when I looked in the tank first thing in the morning, I found Jack laying upside down against the filter intake.  I was shocked, but scooped him out and flushed him down the toilet.  I had one little water quality test strip left, and I quickly tested the water.  The Nitrate levels were off the chart.  I made a huge mistake in assuming that since the water looked clean, that it was clean.  That day and the day after, I did two different 50% water changes, hoping to bring the levels down quickly.  (Most of the time, it's recommended that you stick to 10-20% water changes.)  After those two days, I took a water sample to the pet store, and the nitrate levels were still dangerously high.  The employee showed me an additive that can bring down nitrate levels, and I bought it and used it ASAP.  The next day, with the help of a new stack of testing strips, I learned that we were back down to perfectly safe levels.  Phew.

Two days later, Lucy Two died.

I broke the news to Melinda after I picked her up from school.  She was not happy.  Didn't cry quite so much as when the first Lucy died, but was still upset.  We were both hoping to watch Lucy grow up to be a bigger fish, and see if her gold spots changed as she got bigger.  I thought she would be okay... but she was such a tiny fish that I think the initial super-toxic nitrate levels just poisoned her little body beyond repair.

Somehow, through all of this, Jacob's little plain-white Harvey Two has survived.  It's been two weeks since the last death, and he's still going strong, and nitrate levels are still looking good.  I think we'll go ahead and get one or two more small goldfish soon, to keep him company.  I think I've learned from my mistakes:  I'm not putting anything even remotely sharp into the fish tank.  I'm feeding only once a day, a small amount.  I'm only buying goldfish, no more mixing of species for me.  I'm using a better water additive to help keep the water clean.  I'm making a water change at least a couple times a week.

Still, it's been quite a surprising adventure.  I thought the biggest problem we'd have with pet fish would be getting algae all over the tank.  That hasn't even been a hint of a problem.  Instead, I've had to research all my problems to see where I've gone wrong.  And I've felt really bad about how many fish I've killed.  Lucy, Harvey, Jack, and Lucy Two.  Four fish in two months.  Eeek.  And through it all, Melinda keeps on telling me that she wishes we could move to a new house, so we could have space to buy and keep a bigger fish tank.  Uh-huh.  As if that would help my rate of fish-killing!

I guess it's a good thing I didn't start out with a dog or a cat.  And probably a good thing I never intend to go that route!

Broken

(WARNING!  This is very loooooong!!)

About two weeks ago, after I had tucked Alex in and said goodnight, I headed to the bathroom so I could ahem...relieve myself... before starting the rest of my evening.  I had completely forgotten about the fact that  before heading to the bathroom, I had tucked my iPod Touch into the waistband of my lounge pants.  So when I heard a "plop" in the toilet water just before I sat down, I was confused.  When I turned around to see my iPod floating down into the toilet water, I was completely aghast, and didn't even hesitate to reach down in and grab it out.  I promptly ran to the kitchen so I could clean it off (pants half down - no time to waste!), and told Jesse what happened, drying the iPod off with napkins the whole time, while my brain somewhat numbly tried to comprehend the consequence of this event.  I gathered a bag full of rice and stuffed my iPod into it.  It would need to dry out for at least a day, and rice was the most common way I've heard of assisting the drying process.

I waited three days while that iPod sat in the rice, also surrounded by a heating pad to gently heat it and hopefully aid evaporation.  Initially, I was sure it would be okay.  I grabbed it out of the water quickly, dried it off as fast as I could, and threw it in rice without hesitation.  But when I started Google-ing "dropped my iPod in water", my hopes were quickly fading away.  There was story after story of completely ruined iPods, and of course, water damage isn't covered under warranty.  There were repair services online, but they were almost as expensive as buying a new one, depending on what needed to be replaced.

At the end of the three days, though, I still felt a glimmer of hope that everything would be okay - I would take it out of the rice and turn it on.  It would be okay.  It would work again.  After all, hadn't I rescued phones that had been sucked on by babies?  A good amount of drying always worked.  This had to work, too.  It had to.

So I sat down.  I took the iPod out of the rice.  I turned it on.

It didn't work.

At least, it didn't work right.  The backlight wasn't working at all, so all that was visible was the faintest hint of a "charge battery" symbol.  I couldn't seem to do anything with the buttons or touch screen to make it work and further than that.  It was broken.  Definitely broken.

My hopes were dashed into pieces at that moment.  And I began to feel terrible.  Just outright, completely, insanely terrible.  Three days of drying - more time than most people suggested!  I did everything right. And it still didn't work.  I set my iPod down, and walked away.  I went on with the rest of my evening, but this stayed in the back of my mind.

Over the course of the next several days, I experienced a deeper despair and hopelessness than I've felt in several years.  It seems silly, maybe, to get so upset over a little electronic, but I think I found out why it bothered me so much.

At the end of the evening when I first discovered it was not working, I broke down into a puddle of bubbling tears while Jesse held me- it was the most uncontrolled crying spell than I'd had in probably more than a year.  And when we went to bed, all I could do was lay there and feel miserable, until I finally ended up in another long crying spell.  I cried and cried, all the while berating myself for losing it so badly over a thing.  When the tears finally ran out, I found myself lost in thought until I finally fell asleep.

The next several days, as I already mentioned, left me far from feeling healed and ready to move on.  I was stuck in a constant state of depression.  I would cry on the way to pick Melinda up from school, or when I sat down on the bed while getting dressed.  I didn't want to do anything.  Not cook, not clean, not exercise, and certainly not avoid sweets.

There was a swirl of thoughts constantly running through my head.  But the main underlying idea was that I felt like my iPod:  Broken.  I felt broken!  I thought to myself, how could this happen?  It was my one nice thing!  I'm living my life the best I can, I'm doing all the right things.  I've sacrificed so many luxuries to take care of my family while we struggle with unemployment.  Everything I own is a hand-me-down or inexpensive, or if it was once nice, it is aging and showing it in really frustrating ways.  I'm almost 30 years old, and I have nothing nice.  The one nice thing I had is GONE!  RUINED!  And why?  Because I was slightly forgetful and dropped it in a toilet as a result?  It wasn't fair!  My iPod did good things for me - it allowed me to enjoy music more often.  It was the reason I was able to finish reading my Book of Mormon in under 2 months, while I laid with Alex in a dark room while waiting for him to fall asleep every night.  I could listen to an audio book while I sewed.  I could take it with all my scriptures and lessons to church, and have one less big thing to tote around with me.  It had my contacts in one nice tidy place, and gave me easy access to maps.  It let me access the internet when I had to spend hours at Jesse's family's house while we did laundry.  It even gave me motivation to exercise when I found an application that helped me do interval running/walking while I listened to my music.  All of that was GONE!  It felt absolutely devastating.  One single object had such a good role in my daily life.  But at the same time, I wasn't obsessed about it.  I never treated it like it was chained to me.  It only left the house with it if I knew I would need it.  Still, it did a lot of important, good things for me.

I began to feel like God was testing me somehow, so I began to analyze it.  I've been doing relatively well with this whole unemployment, move-across-the-country, leave-your-friends-behind, try-to-live-with-barely-an-income-at-all thing.  On top of it all, I've been dealing with some really crappy, persistent eczema that plagues me worse every day, but I try to not let it get to me.  I've been mostly happy, looking forward to the future, hopeful that things will turn out they way they should.  I've been so grateful to be near a good, loving, supportive family.  I've basked in the joy of the big blue sky, the abundant sunshine, and the gorgeous Rocky Mountains.  Sure, sometimes I really get around to missing things and people in Maryland, but mostly I know that this is where I need to be now, and I deal with the hard things fairly well.  But when I suddenly felt like I lost the only nice possession I had, all of that came crumbling down.  It was like the last straw on the camel's back.  It was one thing I just couldn't handle the stress and loss of, and it led me into despair.  I couldn't even talk about how I was feeling with my friends and family without getting embarrassingly teary-eyed and whimpering like a fool.

I thought often that maybe I should just use some of our savings, bite the bullet, and pay for a replacement.  Some people eagerly supported me in this idea, saying I deserved it, maybe even needed it.  But I was constantly warring with myself, also:  I couldn't even justify giving $30 to support Melinda's school.  How could I justify almost $300 - almost a month of groceries!!! - just to replace a silly little iPod?  What if Jesse didn't get a job for a very long time?  I would really regret such a purchase when we had no food!

What could I possibly learn from this experience?  Did my Father in Heaven want to see me absolutely debased and humbled?  I mean, I know we're poor in the income sense of the word... but at least I didn't feel poor.  Aside from just the general friendship and love around me, it was nice to know that I had something nice in my life.

I was just beginning to start to convince myself to try to let it go, and live life without it, when Jesse decided to take it apart and see what he could do.  A week after it had broken, he gathered up some tools and started disassembling my iPod.  He followed along with some online guides, and once he had it taken apart, he swabbed everything down with rubbing alcohol, and then put it back together.  Lo and behold, it started to work!  The battery was just about dead, so we plugged it in and let it sit overnight.  The next day, this past Saturday, when we tried again, it was fully functional.  Everything worked normally - the touch screen, the speakers, the earphone jack, the accelerometer, everything.  I was thrilled!!!  Life was good again.  Jesse was my hero.  Again!  It really felt like he honestly saved my life... he pulled me out of a really dark place just by fixing an electronic that one might argue I enjoy a little too much.

And then I started wondering about the "lesson" in all of this.  I don't have an answer to this one.  I thought that I would need to learn to live without even one thing I really enjoyed having, but it turns out that I get to keep on enjoying it.  It honestly leaves me feeling a bit confused.  What do I take away from this?  I don't know!  Am I supposed to take something away from it?  Or am I just assigning eternal meaning to something that is just a nonsensical part of life, and was never meant to "teach" me anything?

Maybe I can better appreciate what Jesse might be going through right now.  When I confided in him about feeling broken, he told me that he pretty much feels the same way, just by virtue of not having a job, and not having anyone even talk to him after applying for job after job after job.  My heart broke a little more, hearing that.  It hurt enough to feel broken the way I did.  Imagining Jesse feeling like that for so long was just too much.

I got an easy fix, with him working his magic while I just sat and watched.  Jesse, though, feels like a failure.  He's far from it, though.  Like I said, he's my hero.  He's fixed so many things for me in the past.  He's fixed me.  Always there for me when I need him most.  He continues to do what he can to keep busy and feel productive.  And he'll be an absolutely fantastic employee once someone decides to give him a chance.

I suppose maybe all I can do is pray that I can be there for him like he's been there for me, especially now that I've experienced a little of what he feels probably every day that his unemployment continues on.  I love him dearly, for everything he does and for everything he is.

We'll get there.  Somehow, some way.  Sometime soon, I hope.  Jesse deserves it.