TUTORIAL: Klimtchen Baby Blankets

I love making crazy patchwork blankets. Which is a good thing, because every time somebody gets pregnant - and I seem to know a lot of remarkably fecund people - they want one of these. You know, "the blankets that look like modern art. Like a Klimt painting!" So I call these blankets Klimtchen (little Klimts in German). If you'd like to make one, I recommend checking out the tutorial for the adult-sized blanket first (blog link here and a link directly to the PDF download here) because it contains a lot of advice about the general process of planning these blankets.

The link to the tutorial PDF is here.

The Mambag

Once upon a time, I used to have loads of handbags. As in, a heap of them. A veritable plethora. Big ones, small ones, gorgeously impractical ones. I didn't want to end up like one of those women that carted around a massive handbag full of rubbish (like my mother, if truth be told.) And why would I? Because all I needed to carry around in my bag was a notepad and pen, mobile phone and wallet - easily transferable between multiple bags.

Then I became a mother and my bag collection got whittled down to one - the bag that's big enough to fill with a bunch of random items but small enough to stuff into a stroller or sling around a neck while wrestling with a baby intent on escape. As to the contents of my handbag? Well, this happened:

Tipped out on to the coffee table, the contents of my handbag look like this:



There are many surprises, even for me - a lonely shoe. A sock. A rattle. Sophie, the hipster giraffe (it was a present, honest. I wasn't aware of how chic my child was, till someone informed me of the coolness of the toy then rammed into the chubby jaws of my drooling infant. Well, hello hipster me!). Wipes, nappies, coupons, a note from my Auntie Attracta with precise instructions about the type of yarn I have to buy for her. A lip gloss. Receipts.
And tissues.
Oh, my goodness, the tissues. There are tissues stuffed in my pockets, up my sleeve, down my bra - and not in the saucy way, but in the you-stay-down-there-till-I-need-to-spit-on-you-and-wipe-a-sticky-face way. When I undress at night, there's a snowfall of balled-up paper handkerchiefs. And the startling thing is, my mother is the exact same. Just like Hänsel and Gretel left a trail of breadcrumbs, she leaves a trail of ... tissues.

Which is why yesterday's Mothers' Day realisation was much less a realisation and more of a mental smack in the head, affixing a truism to my forehead that I know, but would rather forget: the older we get, the more inclined we are to become like our mothers. Because I now no longer have a handbag, I have - shudder! - a mambag.

Aaaaannnnd ... she's back!

 

I've had a tough month. We went home to Ireland again and once again came back with a bronchial infection (baby) and the 'flu (me). It has taken us a good month to get over it. Today Baby Gingerbread and I went out for a walk and had a look at the botanical garden:

Then we dropped by to our favourite bakery for some goodies:

Then we went home to share our loot with Papa.

And despite everything - maybe because of everything - I've been crocheting. Quite frankly, it's what has kept me sane.

Nearly finished! Then I just need to write up the pattern, have it tested, review and adjust it --- and publish it! Easy-peasy!

Detours and U-Turns

Happy Easter to all who celebrated it. We did, primarily with large amounts of cake:

"You know what?" my husband said thoughtfully. "They kind of remind me of Easter egg nests..."
Aw, man. So I won't be taking up a job as a professional cake decorator any time soon, then.

But I am getting somewhere crochet-wise and very soon I'll have something exciting to show and tell:

I will - 'scuse the pun - keep you posted ;-)

Nut Magnets and Handicrafts

I'm a nut magnet. Nutty people love me.
It's not - as we say in Ireland - off the ground that I licked it. My mother is a nut magnet par excellence, she's the Pied Piper of the Needy, Insane and Broken-hearted. My father will grumble that she gives off eejit vibes, attracting every nutcase in the county with her compulsive politeness, kind-heartedness and inability to just say No. And her children all have it, to a certain extent. Some more than others: as her blog will attest, my little sister Emily is brimming with bonhomie and she exudes good-natured eejitry. My sister Eithne has the ability to create a tow-tide of madness in her wake, managing to attract The Crazy without even trying.

It's a curse, I tell you, a curse.

'Course, I have it, too. But I tend slightly more towards my father's side - and he prefers people in small doses, as do I (which is ironic, because I have a very social job. I'm an introvert trapped in an extrovert's career) but despite my anti-social tendencies, I still attract my share of very strange people.

Let's look at exhibit A.
This was posted through my letterbox on Sunday. It reads - and I quote verbatim -

Hello!
I am in search of my identical twin-sister "Gail". She have darkbrown haircolour and have 3 childrens. Iam in search of her since 1986 already, through the german trial/court! We are halfblood's of native americans! We have a noble title! We are "sharemen-daughters". We work with the power of the nature! My twin sister "Gail" is making her own native americans jewellery! I saw her 2 time's in the USA/America. In 1992 and 1995! Why Germany and the USA/America didn't helped us? We are not allow to know the real truth? Did they killed her already? Only because they like to get our money and heritage? Is Germany and the USA - are they guilty?

Mr Gingerbread and I were - and still are - perplexed. The top of the page boasts two photos of the same woman, one is marked Princess Hope (darkbrown) and Princess New Hope (darkblond). Aha! It's not the exact same photo, oh no. They're identical twins!!! The note is handwritten in English (we're in Germany) and if one were not already questioning the sanity of the writer, the plethora of exclamation marks and underlining of random words seems to push you to a certain conclusion. At first we thought it was some sort of elaborate swindle, to be followed up by Princess New Hope looking for money to find the long-lost "Gail", but no such appeal came. She didn't drop by to heal us with the power of the nature and her shareman (presumably shaman) abilities.

More's the pity. My plants could do with a wee raindance.

Sadly, I think that Princess New Hope is simply a person suffering from a persecution complex, with a sprinkling of paranoia thrown in, to boot. This saddens me, actually, to think about what kind of mental torture this poor soul is going through - to feel the need to plaster the neighbourhood (we later found more of them in the neighbourhood) with flyers whose message is almost incomprehensible in its madness.

On a more positive note: we started feeding Baby Gingerbread some solids. He loves it - so much so, that he will lean forward and eat the bowl if the food is not shovelled into him fast enough. See the fear in his eyes? He thinks this might be his last meal. Ever.

We'll work on the table manners next.

And when I'm not brandishing a spoon, trying to get some puréed carrots into my child's greedy mouth, I'm crocheting. I need lots and lots of hexagons before I can figure out how to put them together. There is yarn everywhere. Ever.Y.where. It's a testament to the love of my husband that he doesn't complain when he removes a skein of brown yarn from the baby's cot before he puts him down. This is a man who has made his peace with life with an addict.

The slipper on the left represents the fact that I am taking a step in the right direction.
It was not a mistake, it was an artistic choice.
Of course.

Stained Glass Flowers

I've always loved the Cathedral Rose pattern, published by Annie's Attic. So much so, that I even bought a copy of it... but although the end result is always beautiful (and there are dozens to be seen on Google Images), the pattern is a bit daunting: lots of text, no photos or diagrams. For a visual learner like me, it's a little off-putting.

So I started thinking about my own stained glass pattern. It's what the Réalta pattern was supposed to be but didn't quite become. Creating a nice motif isn't hard, what is tricky is lining up the colours:

 I want to have the effect of light shining through the window, so the centre has to be the lightest, brightest point, with the colour graduating in shade towards the black frame of the window pane.
A little bit like this:

I'm pleased with the result so far. The first hexagons are lush with colour and I can't wait to add more. I've dug out every scrap of coloured yarn I have to line up shades and tones, just to find a nice colour sequence. Oooh, I like this!

Adventures in Ireland, Part III: Uncle Joe & Rummy

There's a thin line between lunacy and lucidity. Most people sit on one side or the other, others wobble down the middle, occasionally tipping to one side. My 85-year-old great-uncle Joe riverdances down this line, high-kicking on either side when the fancy takes him.
Is he eccentric, you say?
Is he what?
One day, when visiting my parents, he pulled my father aside.
"Listen!" he hissed and pointed out the window. "Listen to those pigeons: 'Cooooo! Coo!'"
My father made a listening face but he couldn't hear much through the double-glazing.
"It's that blasted MI6!" he growled. "They're spying on me again. Those pigeons are just decoys - they're bugging devices, they're tapping me!"
They didn't have to tap him - he's already tapped ... in the head, that is. My father didn't even try to explain why the British secret service really didn't need to go to the bother of installing remote-controlled robo-pigeons with listening devices in the trees outside our home. There wasn't a van hidden behind a hedge somewhere with three or four British agents taking frantic notes about Uncle Joe's dinner conversation. Her Majesty's Secret Service is not interested in hearing about his trip to Capri. If my father had even hinted at any of the above, Joe's eyes would narrow suspiciously, and he'd make his exit as quick as a flash, suspecting that the pigeons had already got to my father.

Despite the fact that his movements are being tracked by feathered vermin, he is brimming with (physical) good health and appears dapper and smart to anyone outside the family. We have just had to come to terms with the fact that while other elderly people have a touch of gout or arthritis, Uncle Joe has a touch of a persecution complex. The MI6 might be on his case, but it hasn't stopped him travelling the world. He literally - and I'm using literally correctly here, as opposed to any empty word for emphasis - walks into Dublin Airport, walks up to a ticket desk, buys a ticket to, say, Spain and ... flies there. He doesn't speak a word of Spanish - or any other language apart from (Dublin) English. And when the foreigners don't understand the elderly bald man in the three-piece suit, he just speaks more loudly. Even more loudly, that is. The MI6 don't actually need the pigeons at all, as he can be heard at a significant distance. My parents have a small pile of postcards from different destinations around the world: Jamaica (he felt like a cruise, so he went to the Carribean), Lourdes (nothing like an aul prayer now and again), Capri (he loves Italy) and, if memory serves me correctly, the Florida Everglades (don't ask.)

And when he's not travelling the world with multiple intelligence agencies on his heels, he goes shopping. Not in shops, oh no. He likes markets - flea markets, second-hand markets,  auctions and estate sales. We're pretty sure that he regularly gets fleeced - unbeknownst to himself. He triumphantly brings his purchases to our house, where he distributes them bountifully. Sadly, there are too many Gingerbreads for him to keep track of our ages or stages in life, so the presents are often wildly inappropriate. We've received close to a dozen second-hand lambskin coats, countless pieces of jewellery - real jewels mixed in with plastic-and-paste pieces - toys of every description and every state of disarray. A variety of electrical and mechanical equipment that either does not work or is long obsolete. As soon as he has left, they're gathered up and disposed of tactfully. I can't count the number of times I've arrived home in Ireland and spotted something bizarre - a CD player without a laser, a gold medallion with an anchor on it, a coffee machine without a glass carafe - lying around. I only need to point and ask, "Uncle Joe?"
"Of course!"

Hence Rummy, a Donald Rumsfeld talking doll.
I think he thought this was some kind of Barbie-esque action figure - maybe Barbie's new Sugar Daddy. Maybe Barbie had an internship in the White House and Rummy took her under his wing. Maybe Barbie and Rummy enjoyed a brief but passionate affair in the heat of war. So many possibilities! But none of the Barbie-playing target audience (my nieces) wanted an action figure of an old guy in a suit, so my mother gave it to my husband at Christmas.

I cannot tell you how happy this made Mr Gingerbread. We couldn't take the doll back after Christmas - we had no room in our cases for action figures, no, sorry - so I took pity on Mr G and brought him back his action figure after this trip. Every time he picks it up, he laughs.

Now the doll sits in its box on his desk and its beady little eyes follow me around. I fear I've opened the floodgates: before long, the house will be full of Uncle Joe's mad bargains. We'll be tripping over broken chess sets and African statues made-in-China.

Oh well. At least now I know why that pigeon has built her nest in the tree outside our front window.

Adventures in Ireland, Part II: And he made off with her coat!

Thank you all very much for your lovely comments about my last post. I'm glad I made some of you laugh. This post, however, is on a more serious note. It concerns CRIME. Brace yourselves!

My aunt Cathleen is a respectable woman of ... mature standing (we won't say her years because her youthful good looks and trendy style belie her age) and a well-known figure in our town. She is a lady. I have never heard her raise her voice, never seen her lose her temper, not even move at a speed that could be described as anything faster than 'stately'. All the more shocking to learn that she was recently the victim of a most dastardly crime. She was standing in her own driveway, outside her front door, when she was approached by a strange young man who wanted money. In her own driveway! She said she didn't have any money on her, but he proceeded to roughly pat her down - pat her down! (if you knew my aunt Cathleen, you would understand that she is not the type that should be patted down by anyone for anything) - then the bounder grabbed her purse ...
... and he took her coat.

Yes, indeed. The last thing she saw was "her coat flying away" as the gurrier absconded with her belongings.

Upon hearing of Cathleen's mugging, my mother reacted as she usually does in these situations: she gave an incoherent shriek, ran for the door, a cigarette already lit, and made for the car. Normally she'd leap into the car and drive away like a Formula One driver on crack cocaine, in fourth gear in about 12 seconds, but my father intercepted her at the back door and persuaded her to let him drive her as a favour to  road-travelling society in general. So my parents and a gang of siblings, another aunt and a family friend who happened to be visiting when my mother got that fateful call all hopped into their respective cars and drove in swift convoy into town to my aunt's house. While she was being gently interrogated by a member of the Garda Síochána (the police force), tea was brewed, threatening noises were made in the general direction the thief took off in and my mother flung homoeopathic pills into my aunt - who probably had had enough to contend with and now had to deal with my mother's flower remedies as well.

It was a crime that shook the town and, strangely, it was the disappearance of the coat that affected many people most:
"She was mugged? In her own driveway? And he stole her purse? AND HE TOOK HER COAT????"
My brother Michael wanted to round up a vigilante group on Facebook but, you know, it was February and reeeeeeaaaallllly cold and he had a bit of a cough and had to get up early for work and all, so it was enough to throw shapes and make growly noises on a social medium:
"I'm saying this now: the guy who mugged my auntie and stole her purse, took her coat and gave her a fright had better not cross my path..."
The reaction from other posters was instantaneous and to the point:
"He took her coat? Is she alright?"
"The fecker! What's the world coming to if someone gets robbed in their own driveway and has their coat stolen?"
"I can't believe he took her coat!!!"

Honestly. The coat could've set up its own Facebook page.

But some people were concerned about other things. The next day my aunt visited her cousin, a lady in her 80s with a heightened sense of drawma (and just as an aside: the last time I saw this lady, she was wearing a zebra-print coat with a mustard beret and matching scarf. Just to illustrate the colourful character I'm introducing here), and broke the news of her mugging to her, lest the cousin hear it first from another source.
"Dear God, Cathleen!" she wailed. "Don't tell me he pushed you into your hall and ... interfered with you!"
My aunt gawped - in a ladylike fashion, of course - and reassured her that, no, the junkie was more interested in her money than ravishing one of the town's premier dowagers.

Within a fortnight, the thief was arrested. The guards (that's what we call the police, by the way) could not recover her purse and the whereabouts of the coat have not yet been ascertained. My aunt remains - putting it in the local vernacular - a bit shook, but her driveway has been vagabond-free since then.

But the story does not end here. My mother met a woman who told her about a recent train trip to Dublin. She got into conversation with the passenger in the seat beside her - a lady from the neighbouring county - and when the other passenger heard where the woman was from, she said,
"I heard that some woman was mugged there outside her front door there a few weeks ago."
The local woman confirmed that this was true: "She was! And that in her own driveway!"
"Did he get any money?"
"He did indeed. Sure and didn't he take her purse and all off her."
The other woman tut-tutted and then leaned conspiratorially:
"Tell me this," she said, "Is it true that the pup ... made off with her coat?"

No word of a lie.

Adventures in Ireland, Part I: The Half-Thompson

Goodness me. What have we been up to?
Well, the Limpet and I headed off to Ireland for a fortnight to surprise my father on the occasion of a Significant Birthday. While there, I came down with a very, very nasty cold and a dose of laryngitis, which I passed on to my husband upon my return. He wanted me to bring him back something from Ireland, but I don't think he was reckoning on a full-blown headcold.

In any case, Ireland was ... Ireland. It's really quite a bonkers place to be. I always return to Germany with lots of stories, inevitably with a cast of dozens that my husband does not know. But never mind that - he's learned to smile politely and look interested, because every conversation he has with my parents includes enlightening information about the families of people he does not know.

You see, my parents come from a small town. My father's family have been there since the 18th century and my mother's family for much longer. For them, part of the attraction of living there is knowing who people are - their seed, breed and generation. Like most people living in rural Ireland, they possess a vast database of genealogical information and no story is complete without a minor detour into someone's stock. This information is often pivotal to the story. Very often, this information hijacks the original story and becomes the narrative itself. It's a massive, meandering, complicated web of births, deaths and marriages.

Thus, conversations run like this: for example, my father might raise a finger to launch a discourse on the errant behaviour of some ne'er-do-well in our town and my mother interjects to supply his ancestry. My father corrects her and they get into an argument about the person's grandparents. Some of my siblings might chime in to further detour the conversation. Three hours later, we're discussing how the world might be if it were taken over by chimps and no-one knows how we got there. If it were a screenplay, it would look like this:

Father: ... And the guards caught him in the act, spraying graffiti on the church door. The little pup was standing there with a spray can in his hand when the squad car happened upon him. You have to feel sorry for him though, no rearing on him at all.
Mother: His mother was a Delaney from Leighlinbridge and her brothers were terrible troublemakers when they were younger. One of them even went to prison for a while.
Father: Was she a Delaney from Leighlinbridge? I thought she was a sister to Eileen Delaney from Ballylinan.
Mother: No, Leighlinbridge! Remember their father, Paddy Delaney? The man with a squint? He used to have a little Jack Russell and suck butterscotch in Mass.
Father: You're thinking of Eileen Delaney's father. He used to walk like this [stands up to demonstrate a man limping] and he drove a Morris Minor. He was from Ballylinan.
Mother: I'm sure they came from Leighlinbridge. My sister Maureen went to school with Eileen Delaney till she left to work in the shirt factory.
Sibling 1: I used to go to school with a Patrick Cullen and his mam was a Delaney from Ballylinan, they owned a sweet shop. Is that the one?
Father: No, they're different Delaneys. They were related to the O'Sullivans from Ballyadams, I think their father's mother was an O'Sullivan. Or did an aunt marry an O'Sullivan? Maybe it was the aunt. Now, the O'Sullivans were terrible tearaways but nothing like the Delaneys.

And so on. The fact that my husband is from A Foreign Land and I am generally clueless is really no defence. For example, my parents' dishwasher broke down before Christmas and they got a repairman in to fix it. He provided a short-term solution but, ultimately, the machine died a slow and painful dirty-dished death.
"This dishwasher is useless," I complained, looking at the inside of a cup that had just been "washed".
My father leaned in and said: "That's because the man who repaired it is ..." [dramatic pause] "... a Thompson."
"He wasn't a Thompson," my mother said, tsk-tsking.
And added: "His mother was."
"He was a half-Thompson," said my father, satisfied that his point was proved.
They looked at me, content that I'd understood what that meant.
"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked (and, really, you should never ask.)
They looked at me, incredulously.
"They're fierce rough," my father said. "Everyone knows that."
You see?

In any case, my father told the rest of the family the reason for the dishwasher's demise and, to his credit, it sufficed to only mention that the repairman was a half-Thompson. The fact that they're fierce rough went without saying - sure, everyone knows that.

My Limpet

This is my limpet:

He's in his favourite place, strapped to me, his head bobbling back and forth, trying to look over my shoulder at More Interesting Things (there are always More Interesting Things. And, sadly, More Interesting People - usually the person not holding him. But I digress.) From the beginning onwards, he's been the kind of baby that just likes being in the thick of things, and the purchase of a baby carrier (from the German company Storchenwiege - the Stork's Cradle) quite honestly changed my days, allowing me to do stuff with two free hands!

Alas, the little porker is growing and has now hit 17lbs - nearly 8 kg. Carrying him around is no joke, and while he endures time on his playmat or in his chair, they're clearly only second-best to mother. So while I still can, I lug him about. We talk while I wash up (badly) and we sing along to Dean Martin (neither of us knows the words, but still). At some point, he'll fall asleep on my chest and when I rest my chin gently on his head, it reverberates with tiny snores.

And despite the aching spine, I mostly don't mind it. Here's why:
When I was pregnant, Mr G and I visited another couple and their 4-year-old daughter. They were asking the usual questions: When was I due? Was it going to be a boy or a girl? Did we have a name picked out? And they started to tell me about their daughter, who - as a baby - was an incredibly demanding child. She clung to them incessantly. She would only sleep upright, on one of their shoulders, so they took it in turns to doze on the sofa all night long, with the baby nestled on their shoulder. And they did this all night, every night, for the first six months of the baby's life.

"So no matter how bad it is," the father said, "No matter how much he keeps you awake at night, just remember, it could be so much worse! It could be like us - taking it in turns to stay awake with the baby, sitting up on the couch!"
"For six months!" the mother chimed in. "Six months!"
Mr G and I looked at one another and, I swear, we shuddered.
The other couple laughed - oh, the naiveté of young parents.
"But look at her now," I said. "She's a lovely girl, so you must have done something right."
We watched the little one pirouette in a princess outfit, a perfectly nice little girl.
"And do you know what?" the father said. "I would give anything - anything - to go back in time and have one more night with her as baby on my shoulder till the wee small hours of the morning."

Awwww.



(... while his wife stood behind him, mouthing the words: "Never again. Never. Again. Never!")

Cookies and Milk

This post will involve chests.
But it will also contain biscuits - or cookies, if you will.
You've been warned.

Anyway, as my chesticles are no longer simply living rent-free in my jumper and are finally earning their keep in my new role as a Yummy Mummy, I find myself having to keep up enough supply to satisfy my little porker of a son. Up until now, I had been relying on obscene quantities of chocolate biscuit cake, but I thought I ought to do something a little less decadent to maintain production. In other countries, particularly the US, one would turn to a pill or tablet of some form with a very scary name - domperidone or motillium, an antidopaminergic drug (no idea what that means, just copied it from Wikipedia to look smart) - but here in Germany you are prescribed a tea.

Thus, I went off to our local herb store with a note from my midwife in my grubby little paw:

and picked up a bag of stuff that looks like it came straight from a café in Amsterdam:

It contains majoram, dill, black cumin and boxthorn. It tastes ... virtuous (= disgusting but good for you.)

So I decided to make lactation cookies. Now, if there were ever a name to put you off a foodstuff, then it's 'lactation cookies', but the idea is that these cookies contain galactagogues (substances to increase milk supply). I found some recipes on the internet but they were revoltingly sweet, so I twiddled a bit and came up with the one below. These cookies are very delish, and if you are not currently lactating (and do not desire to do so) never fear: they will not suddenly make you leak dairy. However, they are healthy - oh, who are we fooling? They take a nod in the direction of healthy - and would make a nice present for a new mother.

You need:

• 2 large (tablespoons) flax seed, preferably milled
• 3-4 large (tablespoons) water

Put the flax in a small bowl, cover it with water and let it soak and swell.

Cream

• 225g butter
• 200g brown sugar (I use even less sugar and more cinnamon for the taste.)
  

Add

• 2 eggs

Sift in

• 200g flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• some cinnamon and ginger to taste

Mix in

• 2-3 large (tablespoons) Brewer's Yeast
• Approx. 150g - 200g oats (not oatmeal!)

and

• 150g dark chocolate chips (we're not martyrs, after all)

Drop in small balls on a cookie sheet, bake for about 12-14 mins at 375°F / 180°C, till they're reached the desired brown-ness (I like them golden, my husband likes them dark.)

A note about the ingredients:

• I love ginger, but be careful - it's apparently not the thing to eat if you've had stitches or other wounds, as it's a blood thinner.
• Brewer's Yeast can be both at a healthfood store. It tastes kind of salty but it's the thing that gets your ... um, juices going ... and you can't taste it in the finished cookie.
• Oats are filling (and breastfeeding mothers are often in a state of constant starvation), contain lots of iron and work wonders on the ol' digestive system. Need I say more?
• (Milled) flax seed - according to the Internet, unmilled flax seed just runs right through you, barely stopping to take photos. I use unmilled flax seed, I just use a bit more and ... here's the secret, Internet bakers ... I chew my cookies! Uh-huh! Unmilled flax seed makes the cookies nice and crunchy. But milled flax seed is good, too, honest. Just use what you can find.

For Hannelore

Today is the Memorial Day for the Victims of the National-Socialist Regime. As a foreigner in Germany, especially because I live so close to Nuremberg (which is known throughout the English-speaking world as the scene of the Nuremberg Trials), it's hard not to see traces of the Third Reich and its atrocities in everyday life. Germans have a difficult relationship to their past: many feel a burden of responsibility for what their grandparents may (and may not) have done, a kind of collective guilt for the horrors committed in the Second World War.

So how do you commemorate the victims of the National-Socialist Regime? Well, in our little town, there are a number of silent reminders. One is a photograph in our local library:
 

Overlaid on a glass wall overlooking the courtyard of the former town hall is a picture of the Jewish citizens of the town, who were rounded up as part of the Kristallnacht pogroms. It is one of the most chilling things I have ever seen: when you stand in the right place, the ghostly figures of the people below seem to come alive. It's not pretty, it's unapologetically harsh. It is what happened.

And every house that lost inhabitants to the Nazis has a small gold stone set into the pavement on the ground outside for each person that died. I read them compulsively, I can't help it. I won't step on them, I pause to look at them and remember the names. So this post is for my neighbour, little Hannelore Benesi, born in 1935, deported in 1943 and murdered in Auschwitz.

Away in a Manger

Today I used a few minutes of baby sleep to do whirlwind tidy-up, putting away a couple of errant Christmas decorations that had somehow managed to hang in there till now. And I came across a little gem that I wanted to post about before Christmas. Were this not such an important find, I wouldn't write about such an unseasonal item, but I think you're going to want to see this ...

My mother - who is, as we've already established, an All-Round Good Egg with a philanthropic bent - was much taken by a selection of Advent calendars, handmade by a Peruvian Women's Collective. The idea is simple, but particularly enchanting for children (and those young at heart.) The calendar consists of a landscape scene depicted in felt and 24 little pouches

each containing something that pertains to the Nativity, which can be attached to the scene by its Velcro fastening. So we not only have astronomical features like the sun, the moon and a very dashing star

but there are all of the people who appear in the story of the Nativity, many lovingly dressed in Peruvian costumes.

And there's also a plethora of mammals, reptiles and birds. This is where it starts to become a bit shaky, as it includes what looks like a zebra with udders, a lion, a dodo and another animal that might be a grizzly bear. The Peruvian Women's Collective have decided to eschew the traditional donkey and cow in favour of something more exotic. Good for them.

However, on the 12th December, things take a strangely political turn, as the Peruvian lasses decide to tackle hard-hitting Christian issues face on. I'm talking about Creationism, folks, as our South American ladies make the radical decision to include a stegosaurus in their Advent calendar.

Frankly, readers, I was stunned. While the elder lemons of various Christian churches grapple with the idea of whether Adam and Eve had to watch out for dino turds in their post-Eden world, the Peruvian Women's Collective bravely includes a dinosaur as part of the flora and fauna in suburban Bethlehem four thousand years later. Not since Galileo has there been such a barefaced challenge to accepted teachings. Did the stegosaurii graze there in flocks? Were they part of migratory herds? Was this one stegosaurus at the watering hole when he heard a commotion at the stable and wandered up for a gander? In any case, as the pouches for the later dates did not contain little bloodied limbs or a manger reduced to kindling, I think we can safely assume that the dinosaur cuddled up next to a shepherd and the zebra-cow and beheld the infant Jesus with a modicum of respect.

And thus, for their foolhardy decision to spit in the eye of science, I take my cap off to them.
Peruvian Women's Collective: I salute you.

Seriously: Parenting

You know it's been a long time since your last post when regular readers start to worry (hello to Cathy at Playing Hooky :-) Oh dear.

Two nights ago I found myself sitting upright in bed with Baby Gingerbread asleep in the armchair I'd fashioned out of ... well, my arms, actually ... while Mr Gingerbread snored his head off next to me. (In fairness, he had laid a sympathetic hand on my thigh, which is what he does to assuage his guilt at getting to sleep while I comfort a burpy baby.) I was exhausted. We'd just arrived in from a week at home in Ireland and even my bones felt tired. But whenever I put the baby down, he'd wake up, crying piteously, and no amount of back or stomach-rubbing would shift the burp that had got stuck somewhere in his little tummy. So we both sat upright, waiting for the gas to come up - or go down. In bed with two men. How very 'Fifty Shades of Grey ' of me.

Not.

It occurred to me again how hard parenting can be. And I realised that only when I had a baby myself could I fully comprehend how hard my mother and father had worked at raising me and my brothers and sisters. I mean, I was lucky to have kind and caring parents so it would be utterly churlish of me not to recognise their effort, but it's only at 3 a.m. in the wee small hours of the morning, tired to my very marrow, rubbing a 3-month-old baby's back in the black silence of our bedroom do I understand fully how much effort being a halfway decent parent requires, much less a good one.

My own mother has taken to informing us that she "might not live very long". She's trying to prepare us for her eventual clog-popping - statistically seen, most likely to occur with a cup of tea in one hand, a cigarette in the other and the phone jammed under her chin. She said this again over Christmas and my youngest sister - who has the delicate sensibilities of a barracuda - told her to shut up and stop looking for attention. I don't care how much she "prepares" us with these portents of doom, nothing could prepare me for the loss of either parent and the mere thought of it rends my heart asunder. A bit of my world would die with them; it doesn't even bear thinking about. So Mammy Gingerbread -  I know you're reading this, and possibly already sobbing into one of the many tissues you store on your person - please stop. You've read enough Louise L. Hay to know the power of thought.

In all, I've learned that it takes a while to learn to be someone's parent. And I think you do it best if you're still someone's child.

Ahglooba!

I am terribly sorry, my dears. Such a long time since my last post :-( I really enjoyed reading your lovely comments and they certainly helped to cheer up some very tiring days and quite a number of sleepless nights. Life with an 8-week-old is certainly challenging, mostly because a lot of it takes place with afore-mentioned 8-week-old in your arms. They don't like being parted from their parents, did I mention that? And as typing is generally a two-handed job, it can be quite difficult to blog.

But Baby G is starting to charm us with his antics. Yesterday morning I passed by my bed, where Baby G was getting some shut-eye (on a side note: I never, ever wanted to co-sleep. Never. But the baby had other ideas. He sleeps best with a fistful of boob and his feet tucked under the flap of fat left when he vacated the premises a month ago. I sleep curled around him like a crescent moon, one arm stretched out above his head, the soles of his feet resting on my thighs. Before he was born, I tossed and turned in bed about three dozen times a night; since his birth I sleep like a statue, waking in the morning with stiff limbs and scratched bosoms.) In any case, the child was asleep with one arm up the air, a tiny fist clenched. Startled, I realised he was doing the Black Panthers' salute. While I watched him, his tiny body did a Riverdance of flailing limbs and resettled into something equally uncomfortable-looking but much less political.

Motherhood. Ahhh.
Right now, I'm at the point where I'm pressing my nose up against the windowpanes, watching people outside in the fresh air, doing exciting things like going for a walk or buying bread. Simply leaving the house involves a lot of planning - I have to get the baby in an Ahglooba period. Yes, that's right: we've started to speak his language. We have two words so far: Nnnnngah, which expresses general displeasure - you know, when you decide you're hungry but food doesn't appear magically in front of you straightaway (this works best if you beat someone's chest while you're howling "Nnnnngah! Nnnnnnnnnnnngah!" And maybe do some kicking, too.) Ahgloobah is a general sound of contentment, doled out to parents deperately trying to please you. Both words are quite excellent. Missed the bus? Nnnnngah! About to tuck in to a cup of hot tea with a chocolate biscuit? Ahglooba! It's great fun. And, considering that the little chap will have to grow up bilingually, we're probably doing irreparable damage to his language-learning skills. Oopsie.

Anyway, here's a gratuitous baby picture for the first Advent Sunday. What does one have a baby for, if not to dress up in ridiculous holiday hats? (Note the look of pained tolerance in his eyes. Poor child.)

"Help! Help! Am being held captive by lunatics! Help!"

Seven Bags O' Sugar

Thank you all very much for your good advice, kind wishes and finger-crossing! I'll be in touch in person when my new boss decides to sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time ... xxx

Awwww!
(Don't be fooled. He's plotting something.)

Oh. Emm. Gee!
You are not going to believe this, but soon after publishing my last post on the 5th October, I went into labour! Clearly, the one method I had not tried actually worked: write miffed blog-post about resigning oneself to one's fate. And bing! The contractions start.

So: childbirth. Not a walk in the park. Not entirely pleasant. One becomes familiar with practically every bodily fluid one can produce - and that in a 24-hour period and in front of total strangers. And one is so physically overwhelmed, one resigns oneself to one's messy fate. Having said that, though, childbirth was no better or no worse than I'd expected and I managed to accidentally do it naturally, because by the time I'd decided that it really did jolly well hurt, goshdarnit, it was too late for an epidural. (Before I get applause and a rubber medal for my bravery, I would like to add that once the baby had been born and I'd enquired about his general good health and had been reassured that all of his appendages were in place and good working order, I turned to my husband and said, "If I ever do this again, I WANT AN EPIDURAL!" A martyr I am not.) And at 3.5 kg he was only seven bags of sugar after all.

In any case, four days later, Mr Gingerbread and I were sent home with a very small, black-eyed stranger that we named John. We both have blue eyes, but newborns - being pigmentally-challenged - often have darker eyes. Our young 'un has little black button eyes that swivel around the room, trying to follow us. It's quite disconcerting. I've also learned a lot about babies and thought I'd share - for the benefit of those of you who are thinking about a smidgen of reproduction.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED ABOUT BABIES
(There are only three things because ... well, babies only do three things at the start.)
1. Sleep
It doesn't matter how nice the cot or bassinet is, it doesn't even matter if you've toiled for hours over his handmade blankie and coordinated his bed linen in a fashion otherwise unknown in your household, babies want to sleep ON you. Oh, and it doesn't even matter if you're grotty and unwashed, if your hair looks like a bird's nest and you're still wearing the same pyjamas you've been meaning to throw into the laundry hamper for the past two days but when night-time comes, you're too worn out to open the wardrobe and pull out a new one - no! Babies think there is  no better place to catch a few zzzzs. The uncurl their little claws hands with their teeny-tiny claws fingernails and clamp them into the delicate flesh of your chest, digging their tiny claws feet into your stomach for a good hold.

2. Poo
There will be a lot of it, and it will go from being something that's rarely discussed as a matter of delicacy, to something that you and your partner will openly speculate about at the dinner table. For there is a lot of it and it comes in a range of colours. More astonishingly, it gets everywhere. How a person (albeit a very small and wriggly one) can simultaneously have poo on his nipples and on the soles of his feet whilst encased in a brand-name diaper is beyond me. I wouldn't have thought it possible till yesterday - but now I know it's true. And small babies don't like being naked. Who'd have thought it? You see all of those Anne Geddes photos and presume that there's nothing a baby likes more than lounging about in the nude in a flower pot or whatnot - lies! All lies! They don't like it at all and they scream their fluffy little heads off in protest as soon as you undo a couple of buttons on their trousers.

3. Eat
Rather than being the beatific vision of Madonna-like contentment, suckling babe in arms and a halo of hazy sunlight around my head, my breastfeeding endeavours resemble something from the World Wrestling Federation: my baby is a very enthusiastic and greedy eater. And my boobess are delicate flowers. The combination is fatal. To start, I have to hold down baby's frantically waving arms while he tries to claw my delicate flowers and sideswipe the nipples. He roars in protest (because he does not like being restrained) while I pin down his flailing limbs and shove the nipple in his mouth. Everyone says you ought to bring the child to the nipple and not vice versa, but bringing the child to my bewb requires a level of foolhardy bravery that I do not have. When he finally latches on, he'll maul me contentedly for a while, detach himself and then after a couple of seconds of confusion, roar his head off at me for starving him so cruelly.


People, this is strenous. The child is a hard taskmaster. Just when we think we've got him figured out ("Aha! He likes to take long naps in the afternoons!"), he does the exact opposite, leaving us bewildered and confused.
"He's flippin' lucky he's so darned cute," I growled at my husband at 4.30 a.m. this morning, as I disposed of a reeking Pampers and wiped a dimply bottom (while my offspring screamed his head off because I exposed his buttocks to the fresh night air.) And therein lies the rub: babies are cute. It's hard to hold a grudge when they roll their little black eyes in your direction and slurp sloppy newborn kisses on your face.

Eight Bags O' Sugar

A card my sister made for me. And spookily
accurate, to boot. Except for the shoes - I
couldn't get my swollen feet into those.

You've probably noted the silence on my part and thought, "Oh, the Gingerbread Lady must be enjoying the delights of her newborn!" - cue Hallmark-esque visions of me snuggling a tiny infant wrapped in a carefully crocheted baby blanket, enveloped in the hirsute arms of my loving husband.

Bwoahahaha!
Not at all. Baby Gingerbread is quite happy inside, it would seem. He's in no hurry to exit the premises whatsoever - his due date has come and gone and he, if anything, is just getting comfortable. This has left me in a kind of limbo: I can't wander too far from home, just in case something happens. I can't make an awful lot of plans for the near future, because something will happen. So I've turned into a kind of crafting hermit. My biggest challenge this week has been to make a similar blanket to one I've done already - similar, but different, because the recipients are twins. In my other life (the one where I'm more organised), I would neatly record all the yarn I use for a particular project - and I try, I do, honest - but the original blanket was a scrapghan and when I tried to recreate it, I discovered that a couple of the yarns had been discontinued and one or two more were of unknown origin. So the second blanket is ... similar. But quite different.
As I planned all along.
(Shhh. That's what we're going to say.)

Expelling one would be a challenge - but eight!Eight!

I was getting a bit miffed about still being pregnant, mostly because my rotundity is the talk of the neighbourhood (all of our neighbours are senior citizens; this is exciting stuff). Whenever I leave the house, I am subject to a barrage of tired witticisms ("Don't worry - no baby's remained in there permanently yet!") or advice ("Have you tried eating a curry?" Yes, daily. Or: "I've heard a bit of wink-wink with the husband gets things going!" A very disturbing thing to hear from a geriatric neighbour with a zimmerframe) or plain old despair ("Oh no! Don't tell me you're still here!" Yes, I am. Thanks a million - now I know how Typhoid Mary felt.) But then something changed. A doctor at the maternity clinic told my husband and me that baby's estimated weight was 3.4 kg (8lbs 4oz, if you'd like it imperial.) Mr Gingerbread gasped aloud - gasped! - and clapped his hand over his mouth.
"An 8lb baby isn't that big!" I chided him. "That's in the normal range!"
The doctor confirmed it. Babies are sometimes 9lbs. Or 10lbs. Or more.
Husband sat down on the nearest chair.

But I didn't quite get what had bothered him - till we got home. Then we made a pyramid of foodstuffs on the kitchen counter - coffee, flour, sugar, oatflakes - and I realised that I have something as big as EIGHT BAGS OF SUGAR INSIDE ME! This was the point when I decided that I was going to cross my legs quite firmly and implore Baby Gingerbread to stay put. Like, forever. I've gotten used to him in there, and he's clearly quite happy. It sounds like an ideal solution for everyone.

Right?
Right!

The Pregnancy Train

(This is another pregnancy post. Feel free to click away if you came for the crafts.)

I'm now in my 39th week, i.e. 38 weeks plus small change. That means - as all my healthcare providers take gleeful delight in telling me - that something can happen at any time, tee hee! Sadly, nothing seems to be happening at the moment and probably won't any time soon. This medical diagnosis is based on the fact that Mr Gingerbread needs two hours and two alarm clocks to get out of bed in the morning, so I can hardly hope that his offspring is going to exit my innards punctually or, indeed, early.

"Are you nervous about the birth?" my little sister asked.
Let me tell you about my attitude to pregnancy and birth, young 'un:

Imagine you're taking a train journey to somewhere really nice. You're looking forward to being at your destination, everyone has said it's quite lovely. And the train ride is very interesting - some parts of it are very beautiful, and although other parts of it might cause motion sickness, all in all it's really quite an experience. So you hop on the train and off you go.

The only problem is, you know this train is going to derail. At some point, there's going to be a great, big crash and the train is going go careening out of control. There's be blood and gore and confusion and chaos.  In the grand scheme of things, it won't last long. It'll seem like forever when you're in the middle of it, but afterwards you'll realise that it was just one day. And you know that, in all likelihood, everything's going to turn out fine and you'll still get to your destination and, chances are, it'll be every bit as nice as you were hoping but ...

you're still going to be on the train when it goes flying off the rails. So no matter how nice the journey is and how pretty the landscape looks, you have a sense of foreboding that sometime, sometime soon, that thing is going to happen. If you're not me, you can get into a place of zen and say, "It'll be an empowering experience! I'll feel enabled in my role as a woman!", or you can take my standpoint and view it with the same resigned dread as a root-canal treatment (of which I've had four and have survived to tell the tale.) I don't care if it empowers the living daylights out of me, I would look forward to it a lot more if it were called "slight inconvenience" or "mild discomfort" instead of "labour".

In the meantime, I'm going to distract myself by looking out the window and watching the nice scenery.
Not long now.

September

Oooh, it's September. Even though the sun's shining and it's warm, there's a chill in the air and the sunshine is slightly ... diluted. The first sign that September's here - apart from the stacks of Christmas cookies and gingerbread already in the supermarkets - is the proliferation of pumpkins. Ooh, I love pumpkins! As soon as I could, I got a nice, big butternut squash and made a crockpot (yes, this crackpot has a crockpot) full of vegetable soup:

which Mr Gingerbread and I ate with gusto. And a couple of slices of wholewheat bread.

The Summer Daisies is being tested by a group of nice women, whose eagle eyes will spot any mistakes in the pattern (I am numerically-challenged, so this is not an easy task.)

But in my head, I'm thinking about what I could do next. The Cathedral Rose pattern has fascinated me for a long time. But I don't want to do that one, I want to do my own pattern based on another cathedral rose window, namely the north window in the cathedral in Chartres:

beautiful photo by Eusebius (Guillaume Piolle)

So I lined up my yarn and looked at it.

And did some thinking about how you change a complex image of a mediaeval stained glass window into a crochet pattern ... why-oh-why did I not pay attention in geometry class? If I had known twenty years ago that all of that stuff Sr. Francis used to torture us with in maths class actually had a practical usage in the Real World - why, I might have actually listened! I might have done my homework!
Or not.

Too late now. I have to use my geometry set from the Euro Store and work things out on my cheapie calculator, with no guarantee that I'm actually doing it right. But I persevere!

My Potential Life of Crime (and How Karma Strikes Back)

This was a gift from my friend, Pat.
Sadly, I am not this graceful and lithe
in pregnancy. But we can pretend.

In my state of With Childness, I am now quite round. Positively rotund - in fact, a bit like a roast chicken: with a huge midriff and little spindly legs and arms. However, pregnancy is not without its interesting aspects.

For example, did you know that, as a pregnant woman, you are a natural target for beggars, chuggers*, buskers, punks, sellers of homeless magazines and fresh-faced young American men from the Church of the Latter Day Saints, sweltering in dark suits in the hot German sun? With the exception of the latter - whom I would really like to take home and give a glass of ice-cold lemonade to, bless their freshly-laundered socks - they descend upon me with expressions of fake-suffering plastered across their faces, waving magazines, clipboards and paper cups, looking - inevitably - for money. Because I am an expectant mother, I am clearly a soft touch: the ol' hormones have made me daft in the head and loosened my purse strings. My only defence is to steam down the pedestrian zone, waving them off with a "No, no, thank you. Not stopping. Nine months pregnant, thirty-degree heat, you don't want to talk to me today. Thank you!"
It usually works.

With the exception of one young man, who tried to block my path and get a euro off me. At least, that's what I figured he was looking for: hard to tell, because he was smoking a cigarette and swigging a Starbucks coffee. He got a ruder version of my standard tirade. He even got my Evil Eye, the look that withers house-plants, which made him shrink back into the shade and take a stiff gulp of overpriced coffee.

On a more positive note, I've also discovered that my roundiness seems to make me immune to all suspicion of crime. I could probably kidnap a bishop and escape in a stolen car, mowing down the swing-set in a children's playground along the way, and no one would even suspect me. Somehow, being pregnant has made me a better person: shop assistants no longer follow me around snooty shops, keeping an eye on me in case I'd filch some of their merchandise. Instead, they smile at me benevolently: "Ach, look at her, with her big bump and little skinny chicken legs! How could someone as pathetic-looking as that poor pregnant woman possibly swipe anything? Impossible!"  As a pregnant lady, I am clearly above all of that kind of thing; I radiate innocence and good-will (or else it's the thin film of sweat I acquire whilst waddling around on my heat-swollen pins.) I mean, if I were criminally-inclined, I could wait till the baby's arrived, then make a fake pregnant stomach with a little pouch inside and go on a shop-lifting spree throughout Gingerbreadtown.

I won't, of course. But it doesn't stop me wondering if I could.

Epilogue
 I must sadly report that my wonderings about crime set off a wave of negative karma in the universe, as I myself was a victim of a heinous crime this morning -  someone stole the geranium out of the basket in front of my house. In broad daylight. Let me say that again, in a more outraged tone of font: someone swiped my geranium! So I've decided to stop contemplating a life of crime in case karma sends the thief back to rob the heather plant that's now sitting forlorn and alone outside my front door.

* chugger - in case you didn't know - is a brand-new word that entered the English language in 2002 and it refers to "charity muggers": the attractive youths paid to aggressively accost you with their clipboards and tales of third world woe in an attempt to get you to sign over your bank details and your first-born child.