Woke up early today. I have a love/hate relationship with waking up early. I love the time to myself, but I hate the actual waking up early part. I'm so tired by the end of the week when I do it every day. Then I have to play sleep catch up.

I've been lacking in the posting crafts department lately, so here's a necklace I made recently. It can be worn long or doubled up and worn shorter. As a bonus, babies could pull on it and it will probably not break. I can guarantee nothing though because you might have an unusually strong baby. I don't know.

My model is Jeni G. She may be willing to work for you, but you'll have to pay her.

knitted uterus

It doesn't need any words.

Madsen Monday

I LOVE the bike. We rode to the post office, library and lunch today. These are from the weekend. Even Husband fits in the bucket (his dad was riding the bike at the time).

new

It's so hot out right now that I'm not even sure how I can think about biking, but I do. A lot. I love biking and since having two children it's made my biking life a bit tougher. I've been doing research on it since I got pregnant and fell in love with those Dutch cargo bikes called the bakfiets, but at $3000 I had a hard time justifying it to Husband. Especially since we found a bike trailer for $15 at a garage sale. So, currently I have an Ibert seat on the front of the bike for Son and a trailer in the back for Daughter.

I hate the trailer. The trailer isn't expanded for two children so it's not as wide as most trailers, but is still wider than the bike. I find that cars come way too close to it (because it would just slow them down to wait until a car isn't coming in the other lane and pass me then) and it's too wide for the sidewalk. Then there was the time I got stuck in the middle of the road because some asshole didn't let me go first even though I was there well before him (I was turning left out of the library he was across from the library and decided to turn right as I was turning left). Anyways, I'm stuck in the middle of the road with a semi coming feeling like I can't get my bike straightened out. After that I kind of freaked out and got really angry at my town and the drivers in it because why can't they have bike lanes and why can't drivers learn to share the road? It isn't that hard.*

So after a lot more research I was down to the Xtracycle Radish and the Madsen. The Madsen won my heart and I only read one poor review of it, but they also seemed to be wildly in love with their Dutch bikes and had older children. Yet, even they recommended it for families with young children.

So this is the bike:

Things that made me purchase it over the Radish was that Daughter would have a seat belt and that she would be more protected in the bucket over riding on the deck. I also heard that the lower cargo load would make hills a little easier. If I find that I can't handle hills there is an add on from Cycle 9 that would turn it into an electric bike. I'll put that off until next summer though as we might be moving to a city with no hills. This review was also incredible as was their follow up.

We ended up buying the bike from Handy Bikes in Columbus and it shipped today. I should have it next week and then I'll be taking photos of the backs of my kiddos heads and telling you all how I love it. Or trying to sell it to you, but I think I'll love it.

*I will also freely admit that there are some very bad bicyclists out there. I've seen them not stop at stoplights or signs, weave in and out of parked cars, and not signal. I do not do any of those. I follow all rules of the road and "take the lane" when at a stop sign or stop light. I also try to make eye contact with drivers so that I know they see me. They guy in the story above totally made eye contact with me and indeed even kept it as he pulled out in front of me. In full disclosure I called him a lot of nasty names that my children should not repeat unless they are in the same situation.

vacation mode almost over.

My mind was still in vacation mode last week. I'm kind of back now. Kind of. I made this for Daughter because she doesn't have a lot of tank tops. She loves it because it has Disney princesses on it. That Disney company is full of marketing geniuses. For now she likes Sleeping Beauty (even though she thought the movie was scary) as opposed to Cinderella and I'm trying to decide which is worse from a feminist perspective. The maid who doesn't stand up for herself and waits for a prince or the one that just lies there waiting for a prince. In her defense she was under the spell of a witch who just happened to be an old spinster. I'm not sure how much of a defense that is.

I wish she'd like Princess Tiana more. That girl had a mouth on her, stood up for herself, and figured out it's what's underneath that matters. Plus the prince learned a lesson to boot. Daughter's just scared of the bad guy, but really, she's scared of everything. I love her.

About the pattern:

It came from Making Children's Clothes (I know, I use this book a LOT). There are supposed to be buttons covering snaps down the back, but I just used snaps. On this shirt I used white covered snaps from the Snap Source. I once had a snap grommet and they stopped making parts for it. I love the Snap Source stuff. It's easy to use and sturdy; very good for the occasional use. If I were using snaps all the time I would probably want an industrial snap press, but those are expensive and I have a cargo bike to save up for.

Last week in photo form

I took a very nice vacation with the family last week. There's something about road trips that I love. The kids were great in the car and we saw a ton of stuff (283 photos worth).

Hayes was a President in case you didn't remember that from History class. He was one of those that tried to "educate" the Native Americans. This is in Ohio somewhere. We weren't even aware of it until we drove past a sign for it.

I seriously left my heart in Pittsburgh I loved it that much. I'm not sure if it's because we were only there for a day or because of the next photo.

Fredosaurus Rex! Seriously, that's his name. We got out once for photos and Daughter made us drive by like 3 more times after.

Lincoln with a tourist in Gettysburg. I'm a huge Lincoln fan and a huge fan of kitschy things so this was perfect.

In Philadelphia there's a public art display called Your Move. It fits into the kitsch category I talked about above.

The reason to go to Philadelphia: The Mutter Museum. I spent too much at the gift shop.

In Baltimore. Lincoln's assassin is supposedly buried in an unmarked grave in his family's plot.

The Capitol. We didn't go to the building, but this tells where we're at.

Julia Child's kitchen. This falls into the category of I love cooking.

James Buchanan. The only President buried in Pennsylvania.

Taft got stuck in a White House bath tub once. It took 4 men to pull him out. And no, I'm not making this up.

Bloomers!

From Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing for Baby. Next time I wouldn't use binding on the legs and instead would just fold them over leaving an opening for the elastic. The binding looks nice, but it's a pain in the behind and with the elastic bunching up the fabric you can't really tell it's there. Otherwise, the pattern is great and only took about an hour to make. I'll definitely be making more and adding it to my pile of patterns for baby gifts.

Happy 4th of July if you're into that sort of thing. I've been having tons of fun with the family and seeing old friends (not old as in age wise, but because I've known them for a long time). I'll be sporadic this week and probably not a lot of photos.