I’ve decided to skip The Airing of the Grievances because I think it will just cause me to get hate-mail and frankly I just don’t have the time to delete such crap. I have too many Festivus presents to not get.
So let The Feats of Strength begin!
Fesitvus. It’s my kind of holiday.
Uniforms. They're just so... the same.
So today my husband was herding the girls towards getting ready to go to school. This is always a frustrating and shouting-laden time and TLo in particular has taken it into her head that she Does Not Wear Sweaters. Actually, this isn't really a new thing. Even as an infant she would fuss if I put a sweater on her. Long sleeve shirt? No problem. Swaddle in a blanket? Easy. Add a sweater or jacket? All hell broke loose. Which was highly annoying since she was born in winter and we didn't have any central heating in our house (and just don't get me started on the whole "we don't need central heating in New Zealand because we're icicle people who can not feel the cold" thing). TLo. She started out annoying, she'll probably end annoying. Good thing we love her.
Anyway, the girls were being herded (rather unsuccessfully) towards getting ready to go to school. Despite the fact that I verbally told TLo and The Big One and my husband that The Big One's new school jacket was on the couch, my husband managed to stomp around for five minutes mumbling about not finding her pink sweater.
"Which pink sweater?" I ask.
"Her pink one," he grumbles.
"But I gave her the pink one, I don't understand which sweater you're looking for," I respond.
"The pink one," he mutters.
"They have about five pink sweaters," I reply. "That's not a helpful description."
"You know, the PINK one," he growls as he wanders into their bedroom.
"----"
"The pink one with the grey diamonds on it!" he snarls.
"But she can't wear that to school! They have to wear a solid colored sweater, it's part of their uniform."
It is at this point, gentle readers, that my husband is lucky I was late for work or possibly he wouldn't be my husband any more. Because it was at this point that he expressed complete disbelief and astonishment that the school does, in fact, have a sweater component to their uniform policy. The fact that I have explained this to him verbally and (I think) in writing is apparently not sufficient. The fact that I spent the past three weekends saying "I really really really have to make the girls some more solid-colored sweaters so they can wear them to school as per the uniform policy that I explained to you three months ago when school started" apparently did not penetrate my husband's consciousness at all. Nor did the fact that last weekend I spent much valuable time cursing, at volume, the inventor of Minky Fleece whilst making a new solid pink jacket that was way too small for me to wear and so could only reasonably be assumed to belong to the children, all while my husband was seated about four feet away from said voluble-cursing-and pink-jacket-making.
So off stomped my husband to find the missing jacket. And after all that drama, TLo had decided to wear it instead. The Big One was already wearing the green jacket I made last winter.
Seriously, if I don't need to be hospitalized in the next year I will be completely astounded.
So here is the new pink jacket that I made for The Big One.
I used Ottobre 3-2009-19, a pattern I've been eager to try since it came out even though I suspected (and was totally vindicated in believing) that the gathered yoke would be a disaster. I seem to have trouble with Ottobre patterns that require a gathered neckline to be held in place by stay-tape before applying a binding that is cut to a specific size. That particular sequence of events has never gone well for me and this case was no different. However, I managed to cheat (rather ingeniously, if I do say so myself) and re-gather the stretched-out back neckline by inserted some elastic ruching thread into the binding after it was sewn. It looks a little puckery on the table, but when it's worn you can't really see the extra gathering. Plus at this point, do I care? Exactly.
To answer a question:
I do not really like beans. Well. I like green beans, quite a bit actually. But I don't care much for other beans. I have been known, on occasion, to eat a small portion of baked beans. If the mood takes me. Which it doesn't very often.
I am also not from Boston. The last and only time I've been to Boston was the Christmas I was 5 years old. I do have some distant relatives in Boston because, quite frankly, I defy you to find an Irish-American who doesn't. I have only met two of these relatives and that was about 20 years ago. We are not what you would call "close".
I do not grow soy beans. I don't generally eat them either. I do eat quite a bit of soy sauce.
So. Beangirl.
We must go back, baaack, faaaaar back into the mists of the diiiisssssstant paaaaasssttttt…...
And here we are in the past: We have a family friend whom I’ve known all my life. He's the kind of guy who likes to make people laugh and likes to tease people. Especially little girls (both make them laugh and tease them). For some reason, known only to himself, he one day took it into his head to create this rhyme when I was about five years old:
“Kristine, Kristine, the Boston baked bean.”
Exactly. A poetic genius he is not.
However, as you can imagine, this little phrase stuck.
Jump forward to the not-quite-so-distant-past (relatively speaking): When I first got a computer at home it was a gift from my Dad. He set it up and then set up my online account (the irony of this is pretty entertaining, since I know a lot more about computers than he does now). Because he labors under the delusion that he is a funny guy, he labeled my Messenger account "Beangirl". I was too lazy to change it. Plus, it amused my dad to get IMs from “Beangirl” and I was indulging him. I’m not totally heartless. Just mostly.
And careening forward to the even-less-distant-past: when I needed a DBA for my work I liked the sentimentality of "Beangirl" so I kept it. This is also pretty ironic since I am not a sentimental person in any way. At all. (Ask The Husband. I only know what my wedding anniversary is because it falls on a major holiday. And even then I forget about half the time until the day before.)
But there you go. "Beangirl Design". Not the most brilliant of names. But at least it usually sticks in people’s minds. I did draw the line at making "Kristine, Kristine, the Boston baked bean" my slogan. Although there was a bean in my logo.
Well come on, what else would it be?
