I'm not dead.

Despite the neglect that my blog has seen for the past several months, I'm still very much alive. I haven't been in a terrible accident that had me in a body cast or been abducted by aliens, either. But I have a really good excuse for not being around. And for not posting (or even officially finishing) my 29 days of giving. And for not having picked up my knitting since October. Oh, and also for not fitting into my favorite pair of jeans anymore. Yep, I'm knocked up.

This is a first for us and after the experiencing the first trimester, let me say that it might be very well be the last. However, I'm out of the "I'm going to puke 24 hours a day" phase (whoever named it 'morning sickness' was clearly a man...) and into pants with insane elasticity (why, oh why had I not discovered maternity clothes earlier?!) and I am happily crafting again (after having the rugs in the craft room removed since my cats thought that the fact that I was never in there meant they could use it as a litter box). That was a lot of parentheticals, but that's basically been my life for the past few months: I would have done this or gone to that (but there's this whole baby growing thing that's taking a good bit of my energy right now)...

As for the 29 gifts, I continued to give during my 29 days randomly to folks and most notably to The Turnip (so named this week since that's its current size according to this website); to whom I gave such precious things as my omega-3 fatty acids (thus beginning the shrinkage of my brain), 12 hours of sleep a day, and the health and well being of my teeth and gums, of all things. So I think, when you add it all up, I completed the task.

Now that I'm feeling better and the reality of all of this craziness has actually set in, I'm starting to craft for The Turnip more. OK, mostly I've been buying handmade crafts, but here's my first official made-by-me baby craft: the mobile.

I've loved mobiles for ages and ages. Partly it's due to my love for Alexander Calder, but mostly it's because of the fact that mobiles are a pretty perfect object. They can be made with just about anything, can be simple or complex, they fit in with my (currently nonexistent, thank you Turnip) yoga practice as they are all about balance, and maybe it's because I'm an only child but I can spend a pretty long time looking at one without getting bored. Making mobiles has been in the back of my mind for a while, but I never had the right inspiration until I realized that a baby was coming and I didn't really want it looking at a plain ceiling for the first year of its life. Also, I'm planning on birthing a baby without the ecological footprint of Sasquatch (I figure this will be better for everyone involved), so I'm trying really hard to not buy lots of machine made, toxic plastic crap. Oh, and also I really wanted to make some felt balls.My original intention was to use the wire from clothes hangers, but I found it very hard to manipulate, so I bought some wire that was malleable, but not too much so, at the hardware store (minus 10 points for having to buy new materials). However, I did restrain myself from buying a bunch more wool roving when I felt that the 28 different colors I had in my stash just wasn't enough (plus 10 points for using what I've got). I found some inspiration from a bunch of websites including this one and discovered the rule that you make mobiles from the bottom up from this site here; and in the end, I'm pretty happy with the product. When you look up close, you can see that there is a pretty big learning curve illustrated by the difference in balance and proportion on each side of the mobile, but I don't think The Turnip will mind. In the meantime, I think I've found a new project to make for future baby showers...

Day 4, 5, 6, and 7 (hello. procrastinator over here!)

Here's the latest giftie update. I must admit that I took last weekend off as I was laid up with a pretty bad cold (I decided that my goal that weekend was to NOT give anything away...ie, my germs) but I picked back up again with the following:

Day 4. I gave a smooth, round stone I found on the beach in Maine this summer to one of my students. She and I are working on helping her through some tough social times and I decided to give her something that I cared about (it was one of my favorites from this summer - - all black, smooth, but not too smooth so that you can feel it when you rub it, and nice and round) and something that would remind her about what we were working on and that I was in the room with her when things got tough. Not sure how it's working out yet for her, but it's one of my favorite gives so far.

Day 5. I brought some really cool seed pods with super-pretty seeds in to my metals teacher. She is as fond of the amazing things that Nature can do, so it's fun to give her earthy stuff. It was a ton of fun watching her unwrap the dried and shriveled seed pods and then opening them up to find these amazing black seeds with white stripes down the middle.

Day 6. I tried to give our friends on the other side of the country a call to end our horribly long game of phone tag, but ended up talking to their daughter who, I'm sad to say, is old enough to be less excited about a phone call from me and more excited about finishing the episode of Full House that she's watching. So I guess in the end, I made the conversation quick since I knew what she really wanted to be doing (even though I had a million questions about school and life that I wanted to ask!) and therefore gave her the gift of, um, the Olsen twins.

Day 7. I gave my mom a call. She's on vacation but I still should have been calling her more this week as there is important family stuff going on. It was super-good to touch base with her.

♥

Day 4

Made some brownies for my metals class. Not much brings a group of women together like a plateful of warm chocolate goodness.

Day 3

A little late in posting!! Day three was a little bit of a blur.

Today I gave a good friend my ear when she needed to vent. It didn't feel like a real give, though...because I would have done it for her anyway. But maybe the lesson to learn is that there are lots of times when I'm giving that I don't always give myself credit for. I know I spend time beating myself up over stupid stuff more than I should, and so I probably should spend more time focusing on the little things that I do well throughout the day...like trying to be a good friend.

Day 2

Today's give may have been slightly cheating. I had my metals class tonight and a friend of mine had been talking about wanting sea glass to play around with. I believe I've waxed philosophical about my love of sea glass/ sea glass hunting on this blog more than once, so I told her that I had plenty of it and would be willing to give her some. This was a few weeks ago, so I decided to make good on the offer. I picked out two rare colors for her (green and blue) and then brought a bunch of brown and white since I have a lot of that and just let her pick some. I have to say, it was a hard give. While I have tons of sea glass, I can get quite hoardy about it. I think it's partly about the fact that hunting for it is something that I do with Andrew; but in all honesty the other part is that I'm an only child and I have issues with the concept of sharing. There, I said it.

I DID give a little less self-consciously today as well. I visited my dad after school and he had collected a bunch of guinea hen feathers in a cool wicker box for me. He had gone to take the chickens from the farm to be processed and there were also guinea hens meeting their maker, so he grabbed a bunch of really cool feathers. If you've never seen a guinea hen, I kid you not when I say that their feathers are polka dotted. It's the nuttiest, coolest thing. So I brought the box to class to show my teacher (she loves cool nature stuff maybe even more than I do) and spontaneously gave her a feather. Again, something that I definitely could have gotten hoardy about, but I knew she'd appreciate it.

So today was about tamping down my only-child impulses and beating the hoarding habit. I'd say it was a success:)

Day 1

Bear with me. I'm going to post each day to record my gives for the 29 day gift challenge and so there may not always be a photo involved (my apologies to all you visual learners out there).

Today's gift was probably one of the louder ones I'll make because I was trying to drum up support from the kids in my school. Since the goal is to have 2000 people signed up here by today and they were only 200 and something away from that goal last night, I figured I could tell the kids I work with each day to go sign up! So I announced at morning assembly today that for anyone who gives me a high five, handshake, or hug throughout the day, I'll donate 50 cents to the annual fund of our school.

Some nice things happened - kids I don't usually interact with sought me out to give me a high five, I posted the sign that you can print out from the 29 gifts website with those little rip off thingees that people can take - - and people took them, and in one class, a few kids actually gave me a few extra bucks to throw in. Plus, as an added bonus, I got lots of hugs today:)

Donation to the annual fund: $38.50