Three

Thanks to an amazingly creative craft blogger at www.applehead.typepad.com/applehead , I made a neat full smock apron for Merilee’s birthday present. I planned to make smocks for the twins because they are frequently mixing paint in front of their easels at grandma’s house . . .
but I jumped on modifying the child size pattern for an adult in time for Mer’s b-day. The pattern is a free pdf you may download here: (Coming, please check back for now) Making the pattern is a bit laborious (drawing a grid and plotting the design) as is hand sewing down the 5 yards of bias tape but it was all accomplished in one weekend. It is a rewarding project because the smock is cut out in one piece so right away you see the finished product, no mystery if it is going to come together as planned. It fits very trim since it has hidden ties for the front and a back tie. I added a small snap to the edge of each sleeve to make a smaller, less floaty cap.

Out of the scraps I made matching hot pad holders too. It definitely has a great 70’s era feel. I remember my mom having an apron with a now-retro green owl print. I’m on a little quest to find such a print and make myself a smock. I’ll post a photo of that apron if my mom can find one. (It’s a hoot!)

I’m pleased to have finished knitting Snowden’s fall dress. It is the companion dress to the blue and cream knit dress I made earlier this summer. I made a 12 month size and it’s a little big now, especially for her to try crawling around in but I am happy with how it looks with the brown onsie I bought (Scout brand, organic cotton) in Bellingham and the thick cotton Hanna Anderson tights. The tights are also too big right now, and a little awkward to put on but they sure look cute and cozy.
One thing I’m not happy with on both dresses is the neckline. I had to pick up stitches and crochet a trim. All the stretchiness of the neckline and armholes is gone with the trim so once again I had to leave a shoulder open and add snaps to get it on and off her easily. There are gaps in the tension of the picked up stitches too. Overall, I need better finishing techniques for knit clothes.The crocheting was fun, these dresses are my first crocheting attempts. Last night we went to the Kinokuniya bookstore at Uwaajimaya and I browsed the amazing Japanese craft books. I’ve got too many projects going right now to take up crochet in a serious way (seeing as how I purchased three of the above mentioned craft books! Happy birthday me!) but wow, there’s more than lace doilies being made out of crochet. Just google Japanese crochet books if you need a little inspiration.

This may not be the most appetizing looking food post but I want to put it up for anyone making baby food. Inspired by Cynthia Lairs excellent book “Feeding the Whole Family” I sought out dulse flakes to add to Snowden’s baby grain cereal. Unfortunately, flaked dulse proved difficult for me to find at my local grocery stores. I did see partially dried dulse in its whole form in many places so I picked up a packet and tried to grind it at home. The seaweed proved too soft to be ground so I put several pieces in a low heat oven on a cookie sheet to try and dry it further. This worked really well. When the strips were sufficiently dry, at 300 degrees for about 20 mins, I was able to crumble the seaweed into little flakes between my fingers. Dulse is tasty on its own, a slight sea taste and pretty salty. When crumbled, I added 1/4 tsp of the flakes to mixed grain baby cereal-3 Tbs of ground grains=about 1/3 cup cooked cereal (brown rice, sweet brown rice, quinoa and millet toasted and then ground in a coffee grinder). The cereal with the added dulse did not taste like seaweed, in fact, I didn’t notice a taste at all but I did leave out the pinch of salt when cooking the cereal.

Apparently adding seaweed to the cereal makes the meal naturally fortified with iron. It is controversial whether or not babies that are breastfed need iron fortification and I feel uncomfortable feeding Snowden an artificially fortified cereal at this time in her life. The dulse makes me feel confident that she is getting some additional iron plus there are many minerals in sea veggitables that are beneficial to everyone’s health. Don’t let the difficulty of finding flaked dulse deter you from trying this method of adding iron to food. I found further drying the strips at home to be an easy solution (and probably cost effective too. The package cost around $5.00 and will last us a very long time when used 1/4 tsp at a time.)

I also tried adding another seaweed to our diet; I added a strip of re-hydrated kombu to a pot of soaking, then cooking, mini navy beans. Kombu, according to Lair, helps to tenderize the beans, speeds cooking, aids in reducing the gassy effect of beans on the digestive tract and adds vitamins and minerals. I made an excellent white bean hummus from the Pasta & Co. cookbook that will become a standard in our house I’m sure. (The above link doesn’t show the hummus recipe but there are many recipes displayed–everything in this book is worth trying.) The beauty of the recipe is that I only needed to cook one pot of beans to make 6 cups of hummus and it freezes perfectly in 2 cup portions. I also pureed some of the plain cooked-with-kombu beans with some breastmilk for Snowden and did not notice any extra gas in her little system. I reserved some whole well cooked beans for her to practice picking up and eating at the end of her pureed meals and she is very interested in the challenge.

Now I just need to cook with the sea vegetables a few more times and, voila!, a new healthy kitchen habit is born!