Iris’ balance bike came with a hard plastic bicycle seat. She complained about its oochiness from the very beginning, and it was preventing her from enjoying the bike as much as she might with a comfy seat. After lots of searching, I determined there was nothing I could buy that would make the seat better, and there was no soft seat sold in the right size. So I decided to sew a soft shearling seat cover. Her bicycle seat is now the envy of all the girls in the neighborhood. Iris loves it!
The sweater pants I sewed for Iris nearly a year ago are getting mighty short. Yesterday I sewed Iris a new pair of pants from a sweater I’ve gotten bored of. It was a nice pink silk Ann Taylor sweater. Because I wanted the legs to be long enough, I had to go above the length of the arms to get enough length for Iris’ legs. This made it so that I have some fancy stitching on the front and back of the pants from the sweater’s shoulder seam.
Dan came for a visit. We walked in the woods. I took some photos, but I liked how the woods looked better when it was pouring rain out. These ones are just blah.
Papa & Iris solve some drainage issues at the southeast corner of the house.
Last Tuesday, I made Iris a soft-structured buckle carrier for Dolly.
It has a big hibou (owl) pocket on the back. She loves it.
Today she took Dolly on our walk to the river.
Before we left I told her, “Remember, Iris, if you carry Dolly in her carrier, I won’t be able to carry you.”
She was okay with that.
She does everything with Dolly on her back— just like she would if Dolly wasn’t there.
Just like I did when she was tiny.
The first time she wore Dolly in the carrier,
she asked me to play music so she could dance around the room and put Dolly to sleep.
Then she swept the kitchen a bit with her Iris-sized broom. She especially swept under the table.
On the walk home today, Dolly woke up.
Then Iris wanted the carrier buckled around her waist, off her shoulders, like I wear mine when she’s not in it.
She wanted help Dolly learn to walk.
My little girl is a sweet, sweet Dolly momma.
Heather was a preschool teacher before she started having children of her own. Being mobbed by toddlers, she is in her element.
We took a quick trip to the farm. I took some photographs on the tractor ride back to the parking lot. Between the light shifting every 5 seconds and the bumps of the dirt road being greatly exaggerated by the trailer, it was impossible to get a methodically composed photo. However, this gave me the opportunity to work on my post-processing skills. I developed a new Adobe Lightroom preset I call “HDR creamy for bright days.” When there’s lots of burned-out brightness in the background, making hair disappear into the sky, it brings back a bit of detail. Under the right (or wrong) circumstances, it also happens to make people look rather pasted into an image. Here are a few photos:
This sort of recovery is only possible if one shoots RAW image files. For comparison, here is the first photo straight-out-of-camera:
I handed the camera to Martin.
One of two survey markers that triangulate the highest point on the mountain.
Iris & Mama.
We sit on a rock.
The summit was densely populated.
Cars filled the parking lot and stretched in a line nearly a mile down the mountain road.
It was difficult to crop all the people out and still get any scenery.
I like this one.
— says Iris, as she sits on the sheep footstool in front of the chalkboard easel.
“This, Papa’s name,” she explains, pointing to the portion on the right,
and “this, Mama’s name,” while pointing to the bit on the left.
Like all good authors, she writes what she knows.
