A baby update is coming soon (he's crawling as of this week!), but for now, I wanted to tell you about a crafty project I just finished--new covers for our couch pillows! After having good luck with my starburst floor pillows a few months ago, I decided that I wanted to try making a chevron pillow top, and with a little help from our old friend geometry, that's just what I did! (I also put some bears on the backs of the pillows for good measure)

I've outlined all of the steps for making the chevron pillow tops below. The approach is hard to explain in words, but hopefully the pictures will help.

Like I've said before, I'm a novice quilter, so there may be an easier way of accomplishing this (using striped fabric, for instance). My pillow tops didn't end up particularly flat--probably a combination of cutting the fabric on the bias and stretching it to make all the seams line up. You might get tidier results if you use quilting-weight cotton; I used Kaffe Fassett shot cottons, which are beautiful but not very structured.

1. Select the two fabrics you'll use for your pillow top. Cut eighteen 1.5" x 18" strips of each fabric (straight across; not on the bias). I bought a half yard of each of my fabrics, which made it easy to cut my strips, since my fabric was already 18" long.

   

   Note: These instructions will yield a chevron block that's about 15" wide by 19" long. If you'd like your finished block to be wider, make your strips longer (for example, if you use 1.5" x 20" strips, you'll end up with a ~17" x 19" block). If you'd like a longer block, cut more than eighteen strips.

2. Sew together your strips (I used a 1/4-inch allowance for all seams), alternating colors, and staggering the ends of each strip by about 1/2". Stop when you have sewn together 18 strips. Press your seams to one side.

   
   
   
   
   

3. Repeat with the remaining strips, staggering them by 1/2" in the other direction. You'll end up with one right-leaning 18-strip parallelogram and one left-leaning 18-strip parallelogram. Babies find these very interesting, FYI.

   

4. Using the markings on a cutting mat (or a protractor, I suppose), cut the ends off one of your parallelograms at a 60-degree angle from the bottom.

   

5. Line up the cut edge of the parallelogram with the 0-line of the cutting mat, and cut 1.5-inch-wide strips until you run out of fabric (I was able to get 8 strips from each of my parallelograms; if you're lucky, you might get 9 strips).

   

6. Repeat with the other parallelogram. You should end up with 8 strips with left-leaning stripes and 8 strips with right-leaning stripes.

   

7. Take one left-leaning strip and one right-leaning strip, place them right sides together, and sew along the left side, lining up the stripe seams as you go. Do this for four pairs of strips. For the four remaining pairs of strips, do the same thing, but sew along the right side instead of the left side.

   

8. Press open. When you line up the strips with all of the V's pointing in the same direction, you should have four strips that have color A at the top and four strips that have color B at the top (shown here alternating, as they will be in the finished block).

   

9. Sew your strips together, alternating your A-top strips and your B-top strips and lining up your stripe seams as you go. Press open. You're done!

   I ended up with a 15" x 19" block. I cut this down to a 15" square and then added a border to make the top big enough for my pillow.

   
   
   

I made my finished chevron blocks into zippered pillow covers using this handy tutorial.

The pillow backs have bears on them, in case we get tired of looking at the chevron sides.

The first pillow has two appliqued bear silhouettes. To do this, I enlarged this image, printed it out, and traced it onto freezer paper to make a pattern. I ironed the freezer paper pattern onto some leftover blue fabric and then placed that on top of a piece of white fabric (though in retrospect, using more blue fabric as the applique backing would have looked neater). I sewed around the bear outline on the freezer paper (using a short stitch length so the freezer paper would be easy to tear off), leaving an opening for turning the applique inside out. Then I tore off the freezer paper.

I trimmed around the bear outline, leaving about 1/4 inch of fabric and clipping the curves. Then I turned it inside out, ironed it flat, and sewed it onto the putty-colored backing fabric. I repeated this for the mirror-image bear and for the heart. The fabric silhouettes don't look quite as crisp as the original image, but I think they still look pretty bear-like. By the way, this lined applique technique is based on Anna Maria Horner's Love Emblem pattern. I like it!

The second pillow is freezer-paper-stenciled with the Greenland coat of arms. We have no affiliation with Greenland; we just thought their coat of arms was pretty cool-looking (sorry, Greenland, for appropriating your cultural symbols for our couch cushions!). Man, do I love freezer paper stenciling! I should do it more often.

I used the stenciled fabric as the center of a rectangular sawtooth star block. Not as easy as making a a square-centered sawtooth star block, it turns out, but it all worked out in the end.

Yay for new couch pillows!

Hmm, somehow it has been three weeks since I last posted. Arlo turned 10 months old on Friday! I have lots to share, including three weeks' worth of orange chair pictures:

First, the State of the Baby list:

• After some consideration, we night-weaned Arlo a few weeks ago (prior to this, he was waking up once a night to eat). Our sleep books all said that this was a good time to cut out night feeding, and it seemed like he wasn't really hungry; he was just waking out of habit. We spent a few weeks reducing the duration of his one remaining middle-of-the-night feeding, and then the weekend before last, we just stopped feeding him when he woke at night. We take turns with nighttime Arlo duty, and Patrick graciously agreed to take the first two no-feeding nights. The first night, Arlo was pretty mad and cried for a while before going back to sleep. The second night was better, and since then it has gone pretty smoothly. Most nights, he either sleeps through the night, or he'll wake up and cry for a few seconds and then put himself back to sleep. There have been a couple nights when he had more prolonged crying periods and we had to go in and comfort him, but overall things have gone very well.

  I got a little weepy when I put him back to bed after his last night feeding. I'll miss holding my sleepy, contented baby in the middle of the night, his head nodding on my shoulder. But, on the bright side, we're finally getting to sleep through the night, after 10 months of interrupted sleep. Woo! We're living the dream :)

• Arlo has figured out waving in the past week. It's super cute! And since he has mastered that skill, we're now moving on to high fives. He hasn't quite figured those out yet, but we're working on it.

• Arlo is so, so close to crawling--I really mean it this time! He gets up on all fours and rocks back and forth like he's revving up his crawling motor, but he hasn't actually propelled himself forward yet. It's only a matter of time now...

  He also hasn't figured out how to pull himself up on things, but once he's up, he can stand around for a good long time. Sometimes I stand him up in his crib after a nap. It's probably not a habit I should encourage, but he looks so cute in there!

  
  
  

• We got the results back from the household lead test, and they weren't too bad. The swab from the dining room floor didn't have any detectable lead, and the swab from his dusty bedroom windowsill (which I have since cleaned) had some lead dust, but it was below the freak-out limit set by the federal government. So we don't need to move out or mop twice a week, but we should be mindful about keeping the house clean and washing Arlo's hands before meals. I can do that.

• As we head towards toddlerdom, Arlo's moods have started getting a little more mercurial (or maybe that's just the sixth tooth that he's currently cutting--upper left canine). When he's happy, it's pretty awesome, but he's also doing the outraged crying thing a lot--who knew that getting set down on the kitchen floor was so awful? Luckily, it's pretty easy to stop the crying, either by picking him up or distracting him with fun cooking utensils (turkey baster!).

  

• Every so often, he'll wake up from a nap, and he'll look so much older. His hair is getting long enough that it curls at the nape of his neck. I have mixed feelings about this.

  
  
  

Next, general life updates:

• Patrick did lots of garden work the weekend before last. Most notably, he took out our third raised bed and planted two dwarf Montmorency cherry trees in its place. Sour cherries can be hard to come by in the summer, and I'm looking forward to having our own backyard supply (assuming the birds don't eat them first). And now when we read Pie in the Sky to Arlo, it will be extra relevant.

  

• We spent this past weekend at an awesome cabin near Mt. Hood. Susan recommended it to us, and it was great! I especially liked the kitchen, which had big picture windows looking out on the forest. It made me want to remodel our kitchen.

  
  
  

  We stayed in and cooked for all of our meals, since Arlo's nap schedule makes it a little tough to go out to eat. To entertain myself, I decided that I would use as many of the cabin's gimmicky kitchen appliances as possible. I was able to use five of them while we were there--the quesadilla maker, Mickey Mouse toaster, pancake maker, George Foreman Grill, and farm-animal waffle maker. That's a lot of hot, non-stick surfaces for one weekend!

  My favorite appliance was the pancake maker. For some reason, I have a hard time making pancakes at home no matter which tool I use in our kitchen (electric griddle, cast iron skillet, etc.). I can never get them to cook evenly. The pancake maker made the process easy and quick. I don't think I'll be able to convince Patrick to get one of our own (our appliance storage cabinet is all full!), but I'll certainly look forward to using it again the next time we're at the cabin.

  

  Patrick and Arlo had lots of good father-son bonding time on our trip (and I got to take two blissfully long showers and do lots of knitting!). Every morning, they bundled up and went out to say hi to the little creek running next to the cabin, and on Thursday they went on a nice hike together in the rain.

  
  
  

  Patrick had to go back to Portland during the day on Friday because he was called for jury duty, so Arlo and I got some alone time too. The weather was actually nice that day, so we went on a little walk on a nearby trail. Everything was so green and mossy. The next day it snowed, so I'm glad we went exploring while the sun was out.

  I'm still coming to terms with the fact that our vacations are going to be different now that Arlo's part of our family. No more sleeping in or going out for fancy meals, at least in the near term. At times, I found it a little frustrating that we still had to be mindful of Arlo's nap schedule and prepare three healthy meals every day, even though we were on vacation. It wasn't so bad though--we just saved our ice cream eating and movie watching for after Arlo was in bed.

  This vacation made us want a cabin of our own, full of moose- and bear-themed items, with our names on a carved wooden sign out front. But until then, I'll happily go back to this cabin every winter (and maybe every summer too--I don't want to wait another year to go back!).

• We got back to Portland on Sunday, just in time to go to Powell's for Susan's book signing. Her new book, Modern Log Cabin Quilting, is full of beautiful projects. I'm excited to try a few log cabin projects in the near future!

  

  The signing was at 4pm, so Arlo and Patrick were able to come too. They got lots of compliments on their matching shirts. I'm so lucky to have these two good-looking guys in my life :)

  
  
  

And, finally, a little recent recipe roundup, somewhat short on pictures:

• Indian-spiced lentils with mizuna, served over rice. This was pretty good and would be worth making again, but as a side rather than an entree.

• Fettucine with lima beans, peas, and leeks. I added some pre-cooked crab, and I was really happy with the meal. I guess it's hard to go wrong with pasta + cream.

• Steak teriyaki, white rice, sauteed mustard greens, and cumin-ginger carrot coins (recipe from Hungry Monkey). A very enjoyable meal! Arlo was especially fond of the steak (cut up into little pieces) and carrots.

• Marcella Hazan's pasta with leek sauce, sauteed Brussels sprouts, and wild mushroom and sweet potato gratin. When Patrick took out the third bed in our garden, he had to harvest all of our overwintered leeks, and this pasta recipe put them to good use. Super good! The gratin was nice too, but the pasta was really the star of the meal.

  

• I opened a can of pumpkin to make pumpkin and ginger pancakes (not bad, a little heavy on the nutmeg), and I used the remaining pumpkin to make pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins to take to the cabin. I'm not sure how I feel about pumpkin and chocolate together, but these were pretty awesome. I reduced the sugar by 1/4c, and they were still very good.

  

Babbling!

Arlo at Nine Months from Caitlin D on Vimeo.

Here's Mr. Arlo sharing some wonderful toothy grins! (Tooth #5 showed up a couple days ago, much to our surprise!)

• He had his 9-month checkup a few weeks ago, and it went just fine. Patrick and I smiled at each other when our pediatrician told us that we could start feeding Arlo yogurt now, if we felt comfortable with it. Since we're doing baby-led weaning, he's been eating yogurt (and everything else he can get his hands on) for a few months already. So far he hasn't shown any signs of food allergies or any other negative effects from eating so many kinds of food right from the get go. Hopefully things will continue going well!

  We mentioned to our pediatrician that he isn't crawling yet, but she was unconcerned. Our baby books say it's nothing to worry about either. But I'm still worrying a little--just a tiny bit.

• A week or so ago, Arlo started grinding his teeth a lot, which made me cringe. What a horrible sound! Luckily, it lost its novelty quickly, and he stopped doing it after a couple days.

  Now that Arlo has teeth, our pediatrician suggested that we start giving him fluoride supplements, since Portland doesn't fluoridate its water. I made the mistake of searching online for information about dye-free fluoride supplements, which of course led to reading comments about how fluoride is poison, etc. Ugh. I had been hoping to avoid reading that kind of information, since I knew it would just give me one more baby-related decision to feel unsure about. We're still going to give him the fluoride supplement though--we both grew up in areas where the water was fluoridated, and we turned out okay.

• And in related worrying-about-elements news, I picked up a free home lead test at Mother Nature's and sent it in for analysis last week. Since we live in a 100-year-old house, it seems inevitable that the samples will test positive for lead dust. It's stressing me out, but it will be good to know one way or another. It won't be the end of the world if the test comes back positive--there are things that can be done to minimize the impact of lead dust in a house. The problem is that one of the main mitigations is mopping the floors twice a week, and that just sounds crazy! That's way more mopping than we do at present. Anyway, I should wait for the results before I stress out about it too much.

• Arlo has started making this great scrunchy face at mealtimes. I totally get a kick out of it. The best part is that I think he's doing it because he knows it makes us laugh :)

  
  
  
  
  

• Arlo has been doing some great babbling lately. He has progressed from "ma ma" and "ba ba" to "da da" in the last week. It still doesn't quite seem like he's saying "mama" or "dada" with intention, but we can pretend he is :)

• We're still bathing Arlo in a tub that fits in our kitchen sink, but I think it's about time for us to transition to the big bathtub, since he is getting very splashy, and he likes to put the sink sprayer in his mouth. Here he is trying to grab his comb so he can put it in his mouth (a recurring theme these days).

  

• We're in the middle of some fun family visits at the moment. Arlo's Auntie Li (my sister) is visiting this weekend, and his Grandpa Rick (Patrick's dad) and Sunnie visited last weekend. It took Arlo a few days to warm up to Rick (I guess Christmas is long-forgotten at this point), but by the end of the weekend, he was hanging out with him, no problem. It was sweet :)

  

  Rick and Sunnie were nice enough to bring along Patrick's old rocking horse, which was made by his grandpa when he was a little boy. Arlo loves sitting on it and holding the handles and trying to chew on the pointy ear. I love that Arlo will get to enjoy the same toy that Patrick did when he was a little boy. Yay for quality woodworking!

  

Meal planning is still going well, though it can be tiring getting a nice, baby-friendly dinner on the table at 5:45pm every night. I think it helps if I look at my homemaker activities (grocery shopping, cooking, washing dishes, laundry, etc.) as a job. Sure, maybe I'd rather take a nap or watch a movie some days, but as far as work goes, this is a pretty cushy setup. I feel lucky to be living this life.

So, food! For breakfasts, we've been having a lot of oatmeal, yogurt, bananas, and stewed prunes. I put together a slightly fancier breakfast on Wednesday--shirred eggs, toast fingers made with crunchy wheat bread (recipe from Cafe Beaujolais), and cardamom citrus fruit salad. I made the bread and fruit salad in advance, so it didn't take too long to put together breakfast in the morning. The bread was tasty, and the recipe made two loaves, so we've still got a loaf in the freezer for future breakfasts. The fruit salad was pretty good and was a nice change from the bananas and dried fruit that we've been having with breakfast this winter. The eggs were kind of a dud. I think this is the second time I've tried this recipe, and both times the eggs have been undercooked, even though I've left them in the oven longer than specified. I think it must be because I'm using them straight from the fridge instead of letting them come to room temperature. The nice thing is that I was able to put them in a pan and turn them into scrambled eggs without much extra effort, but it's still frustrating to be confronted with undercooked eggs on a weekday morning.

We had two tasty, meatless, and quick-to-prepare dinners recently: (1) pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, ricotta, and peas and (2) sesame broccoli pasta with Papa G's sesame tofu added (the latter was even vegan!).

And we had two nice, ham-tastic, somewhat time-consuming dinners: (1) crepes with ricotta, ham and spinach filling with braised butter-glazed radishes and (2) black beans with ham hocks and dry sherry on fluffy white rice with sauteed mizuna. We ate the leftover beans for breakfast, on top of some green chile grits from the crockpot (recipe from Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker), topped with queso fresco and poached eggs. Yummy! And then I refrigerated the leftover grits, cut them into slices, and fried them up for dinner, topped with kale with bacon and black-eyed peas. It makes me happy when I can turn leftovers into a whole new meal :)

We also had one fishy meal: sauteed cod with coconut red curry sauce, rice and peas, and sweet potato wedges. It was a little tricky coordinating everything so it was done at the same time, but I was happy with the finished product. We got the cod from Flying Fish Co., and it was really nice--firm and moist.

I've made a couple desserts lately. Yesterday, I made a batch of butterscotch-banana pudding, which is so good, but very rich (even using 1% milk instead of whole milk). We weren't going to eat the pudding right away, so I layered it with the bananas and refrigerated it, and although the flavor is great, the texture of the bananas got a little strange in the fridge. I'd suggest making the caramelized bananas right before you're ready to eat the pudding.

I also made a lemon meringue pie (recipe from Baking Illustrated) as an early birthday dessert for Patrick (and if you count his Negroni as a birthday present, then I actually did a decent job celebrating his birthday this year). Lemon meringue isn't my favorite kind of pie (though I happily helped put away half of this pie in the span of a few days), but I love the toasty meringue smell that fills the house while the pie is baking.

Happy first day of Spring, by the way! Daffodil season is in full swing, and it makes our neighborhood walks much cheerier.

A new post is coming soon! I've been feeling a little quiet lately, given the news from Japan. Writing about lemon meringue pie and posting cute baby pictures seems a little silly at the moment. But I'll do it anyway--it's nice to have a little something to smile about after reading all those sobering news stories. For starters, how about a little staticky Arlo head?