My sneaky little boy

Being the clever little boy that he is, Reza spotted an unattended box of bakery goodies, put it off the table and dug in! At least these are better than some of the things he's sampled from around the house. ;)

Real Estate

I've been spending much of my free time and nearly all of my internet time lately looking for a house to buy and a place to rent (for between when we get there and when we can actually close on a house) that's why I've been quiet lately. The housing market in Northern VA is expensive! For a 3 BR single family house the prices START at $450,000 and that is for houses built nearly 40 years ago on less than a quarter acre! We're considering moving further out but that would mean at least a 2 hour commute for dh each day, one way! Fortunately, he can work from home up to 2 days a week but still. I know that would be really hard on him. Not sure that a newer, somewhat bigger house on a bit of land is worth it for him to have to do that. (Although there are alot of people that he works with that have insane commutes. One guy drives all the way from Pennsylvania!)

I haven't finished June's blue mini or started on July's purple. It looks like both will have to wait. The heat (similar to what much of the US is experiences according to everyone's blogs) and the impending move have sucked away my drive to get much sewing done. Couple that with getting Mustafa working through some 2nd grade work so that next year's homeschooling will be easier and I just don't have much extra time. He repeated 1st grade here because we were worried it would be hard on him to jump into 2nd grade with his limited Farsi so now he gets to do 2 years in one. No big deal though since he was well above grade level in everything except language arts so we're really not doing that much catch up work.

So, instead of any interesting quilt pictures I thought I'd show pictures from the property that we bought here a month or so ago. The first is the property itself, then views to the right and in front of it. That's Mustafa trying to duck out of the picture. He hates to have his picture taken, hates to talk on the phone or write a letter but sit down with him and he'll explain all about solar systems, dinosaurs, air planes, or just about anything to do with science. And his Farsi is getting good enough to explain in either language. Ok, enough bragging.I'll try to post again soon as I'm hoping to hit more of the "tourist" sites before we leave and I'll try to get some pics to share. (Now, if only the heat would let up.)

Note: The morning we took these pictures, I thought we were getting up and out SO early, before 6:15 but wouldn't ya know as we were driving over to meet dh's parents we saw tons of people already out enjoying picnic breakfasts, many obviously having already been there for quite a while! 

Mother's Day

Today was Mother's Day here. I got these lovely flowers and a shirt.
Sarah wrote about her daughter's recent black eye so I thought I'd share a pic of Reza's shiner. This is a picture take a few hours after it happened. So far in my parenting life I've only been truly concerned when something has happened to one of the kids a handful of times and this ranks right up there at the top. Reza tripped on the edge of the carpet and hit his eye on the edge of our marble window sill. In less than 30 seconds the area around his left eyebrow swelled to the size of a walnut! Amazingly, he only cried for a couple of minutes. We got stuck in traffic trying to take him to a doctor, gave up when we couldn't find the office and instead took him to an eye hospital close to our house. We were in traffic for an hour when we could have been to the hospital in just about 10 min! DH had suggested the hospital first but it was his sister who insisted we take him to the opthamalogist instead. Fortunately, the doc at the hospital said it really wasn't that serious despite how it looked. It swelled almost shut during the night but was almost completely back to normal by the evening, except of course for the lovely colors. The really bizarre part of it all is that this was the third kid to get a black eye in less than a month! (None of our kids have ever had a black eye before.) Zahra was first; she fell on the stairs when she was goofing around because she was excited about going out to ride bikes. Less than a week later, Mustafa and Zahra were bugging each other in the backseat while waiting for DH to come back from the bakery and Mustafa pushed Zahra just hard enough that she hit Safiya in the face with her head. Fortunately, neither one of them was seriously hurt, just a little bit more colorful for a few days. :)

Note: I've been trying to post this for almost a week but blogger wasn't behaving. Reza is now back to normal. 

Flying Fish

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Mustafa wanted to make fish to decorate the house. Well, Safiya got into the act as well and here is the result of their collaboration.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but Bloggers not playing nice. 

Changes

Well, it seems there's never a dull moment around here.

It looks like we will be heading back to the states in the next 2-3 months. It's funny how life keeps you guessing. I figured we would be here for a good bit longer. The court hearing for the apartment resulted in another court date in a couple of weeks which will probably lead to another court date, so that's unresolved. My fil is not doing well mentally, and is now experiencing more frequent bouts of confusion. Despite various efforts, I never did get any more students. (I've actually lost one. Not a great loss since mom never managed to pick her up on time so I was often stuck "babysitting" for 30 min. or more.)

Despite all of this, I felt pretty sure that this was where we were supposed to be, at least for the sake of the kids. DH has actually been the one going back and forth about whether or not to stay. His indecision caused me to question my feelings as well. We decided that since we couldn't come to any conclusions on our own, it was time to ask what God's will for us is and that lead us to the decision to return. I'm a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of moving and starting over again. We'll be heading back to northern VA where we were before and where are friends are but we're still on the fence about buying v. renting and where exactly. I suppose the housing market will decide that for us.

Wish us luck!

The picture has nothing o do with the post. It's the view of the rooftops across the street from our hotel room in Dubai.

Start 'em early

Hey, it's never too early to get kids helping around the house. ;) This is the same little boy who would cry and make me carry him every time I vacuumed just a couple of months ago. Now he chases after me and tries to "help". He also has started to help clean up after meals by trying to drag is high chair back to the kitchen, hands over his dishes and cup when he's all done and he even took out a tissue and "cleaned" the tablecloth after dinner one night. :)

I haven't posted much lately since there's just not alot going on. After finishing my May Project Spectrum I thought about finishing my blue one for my birthday, instead, I ended up not sewing anything for about 3 weeks. When I got around to pulling blues for the project, I realized I don't have nearly as many bright blues as I thought so it kinda took the steam out of getting anywhere with that. I've finally got the pieces cut and am sewing on it a little each day, but I haven't put that much time into it so it's no where near done. Oh, well, maybe by the end of the week.

I've gotten sucked in to watching the World Cup games. I'm not normally much of a sports watcher but watching these games has been quite interesting. At least on the international field, soccer players behave much better than other sports players I've seen both on and off the field. They also work alot harder. Can you imaging running back and forth over the length of a football field for 90 min. with only one 10 min. break in the middle. No time outs, no huddling, no waiting for commercial breaks. And the collisions that happen! I'm not pulling for any team though I was pulling for Ghana after watching them play their first game. Those guys just try so hard! They actually made it to the second round but ended up losing to Germany I think. I can't really remember now. It all kinda blurs together after the first few games. It's fun to watch though.

Other than soccer, the kids are keeping me busy just keeping up after them. Mustafa loves to make "stuff" so he's constantly roaming the house looking for usable materials for his next project. He even tried making a catapult after seeing one of the models that was made for "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King". But he gets frustrated easily too and just couldn't understand why his made with straws, thread and popsickle sticks didn't work the "first" time! He hasn't quite got his head around the whole trial and error concept. So we had a little discussion about how long it takes to get things right where we talked about Edison inventing the light bulb after more than 400 tries. Amazingly a few days later there was a cartoon that included Edison. It was one of the old Tennesse Tuxedo cartoons.

Safiya and Zahra hate to be left out of the mess making, er, crafting so they each made tissue box aquariums yesterday complete with hanging fish and sea horses. Mustafa decided he'd much rather make bigger fish and hang them from the ceiling...All over the house! I told him if he wants to decorate with fish then they stay in his room only.

Dh bought a lot a couple of weeks ago for an insane price. The lot's only about 1 1/2 times as big as our townhouse lot in VA. On a per acre comparison, it would have cost around $245,000/acre!!! But it's in a development where there is already water, sewer and electricity, paved roads, trees that are a couple of years old and even some playground equipment installed even though there are very few houses built. Right across the street from our lot will be a park, so that's another perk and future selling point.

If you got through all of this, thanks for reading. I'll try to post more often so that the posts will be shorter. 

Birthdays

It seems that I have more in common with other Bloggers than I already knew. Many of us have June birthdays. My 32nd was on the 4th. I had asked dh to pick up some cakes from a bakery the day before. He usually forgets my birthday or remembers late in the day so I didn't tell him why I wanted the cakes. I just said since he was heading that way on an errand he could pick up some cakes from this awesome bakery. :) Cake here is usually sold as slices by the kilogram. They also sell whole cakes but we usually just get the pre-sliced, that way you get more variety. Most bakeries sell rollete, which is a cream-filled jelly roll type or cream-filled two layer slices with various toppings. This bakery tops their cakes with fresh fruit slices trapped in flavored gelatin. It sounds odd but is really very tasty. Dh brought home a 2 kilo box filled with strawberry-topped cake, rollete and a flaky Danish type pastry that tastes a lot like doughnuts. And he remembered my birthday.

We didn't really have any plans for the day since it's a holiday here and we didn't expect much to be opened. We ended up going out to look at various pieces of land we are considering buying as an investment. Land here is not as cheap as you might think. Most of what we saw was about 40 minutes outside of the city with almost nothing on it except one plot that was part of a development that has 40 newly planted trees with drip irrigation on a 1/2 acre plot. That one we could get for the low, low price of about $11,000. Note that is without anything else on the plot, i.e. no electricity, no water, no phone, no nothin' except an excellent view! Most of what we've seen here runs about $10, ooo or more per acre. Just for a comparison, a couple of years ago, my mom bought 15 acres about 20 min. from Memphis for a whopping $3,000 an acre! Just recently, DH found a 3 1/2 acre plot, again with nothing on it but it does have access to water, electricity and phone. We're hoping the owners will take about $30K for it but we'll just have to wait and see.

Happy Birthday to all of the bloggers and loved ones out there.

And in honor of National Ice Cream month (whenever it is) here are some tips for enhancing this summertime treat.
Instead of tossing out the crumbs when you finish a package of cookies, put them in a baggie in the freezer for instant ice cream topping. I also use brownie crumbs. Cake crumbs could probably work too. I just put them all in one bag so there's lots of variety in every bowl.

Ever try making your own chocolate syrup? It's super easy and only takes about 5-10 min.

Stir together 1/2 c. cocoa and 1 c. sugar in a small saucepan until all mixed up. Stir in 1/2 c. cold water. Heat medium until it boils. If you want thin syrup, take it off now. If you want it thicker, let it boil up to about 2 min. I stir it occasional during this time. Let cool. Add 1 tsp. vanilla (optional). Pour into a clean, dry jelly jar and store in the fridge. Mine keeps very well for more than 2 weeks.

Enjoy! 

Waterfall trip

This is a bad picture of us but a pretty good shot of the falls. If you look just to the right of the falls there is a little cave like opening that people kept hiking up to to sit in a watch the water and the people below.

On June 5th, we head out at about 7 a.m. for a trip to a waterfall about 2 hours from us. Mohsen's mom, two of his sisters, a brother-in-law and two year old niece came along too. Because there's not always a lot on the road between one town and the next, people often go on trips with two cars just in case. Although, from what I've seen on our trips, there are plenty of other cars on the road with usually very helpful and handy occupants. We left early since 1) it was a holiday and we expected it to be crowded and 2) SIL said her car doesn't have ac so they didn't want to travel in the heat of the day.

The drive up was very pretty and cool since we traveled through the mountains. When we got close to the waterfall we had to go up a side street which cut through an older, poorer part of the nearby town to get there. Here, a lot of the houses were make-do affairs made with field stones and stripped limbs. It really makes you appreciate what you have. This road, like many side streets was narrow with barely enough room for two cars to pass. As we got closer to the waterfall, there were places where the road seemed even more narrow with a rock retaining wall on one side and the mountain's valley falling away to the other side and no guard rails.

We got to a point where it was clear that we couldn't drive any further since cars were parked on one side of the road and people leaving the falls were taking up the rest of the road so we pulled close to the valley edge of the road and got ready to walk the rest of the way. This was about 9:30ish. Mohsen's family hadn't eatten breakfast yet so that had an impromptu breakfast of cucumber and cheese sandwiches with tea next to the car. The kids and I ate before we left but lately they seem to have turned into hobbits and wanted "Second breakfast". We had brought food for a picnic lunch but decided it wouldn't be worth it to haul it up with us since we didn't know exactly how far we had to walk.

We wove our way through on-coming (though slow-moving) traffic, parked cars and other pedestrians, many of whom were loaded down with baskets and bags for their own picnics. It took us about 15 minutes to get from our car to the official parking lot for the waterfall. From the parking lot, you can see the top of the waterfall off in the distance over the tree tops but it is impossible to judge the distance. The path leading up to the waterfall was much like the road, narrow without guardrails despite a few precarious spots where someone could easy go over the edge and have a nasty fall. This fact didn't seem to bother anyone else though and certainly didn't bother the many people who had set up picnic sites off the trail close to the river complete with tents and even bedding in many places. At one point, the trail leads to steps carved out of the rock which were a bit steep. My MIL had bad knees so she opted to sit off to the side in the shade and wait for us to return. It's a good thing she did because the steps would have been quite difficult for her but the kids loved it. I think it lent the journey an added sense of adventure. On the way up stairs, one man was coming down carrying a complete Iranian twin size bed roll with blanket and pillow on his shoulders. (The mattresses are like tri-folded futon mattresses and pretty heavy.) We also passed other camp sites close to the river/mountain stream. The trail leads you right into the base of the waterfall where you have to pick your way across the rocks unless you want to get your feet wet. My kids were in heaven. If she thought she could get away with it, I'm sure Zahra would have tried to go for a swim in the icy water or at least splashed and jumped around enough until she was soaked from head to foot. She is most definitely a little waterbaby. :) I tried to stay relatively dry at first but gave up when Mohsen wanted to get a picture of us and I ended up standing right in the stream. This, of course, made it ok for everyone else to at least get their feet soaked by standing in the ankle deep water. It was very cool and refreshing with the canopy of trees shading us from the sun quite nicely. It was quite crowded with people climbing just about everywhere, enjoying themselves thoroughly. It reminded me of one trip we made to a waterfall in MD years before where a bunch of kids had made their way to the top of the falls, although this waterfall was much taller.

After about 15 or 20 minutes, we decided it was time to head back down. The trip down the stairs made me appreciate just how steep they were in some spots. A mountain goat probably would have felt quite at home there if not for so many visitors. After a potty and juice break, we started back to the cars. We didn't go very far before DH and BIL decided it would be better to go get the cars and have us wait with the kids where we were. DH had carried Reza most of the time and I think his shoulders were getting tired. We stayed in the shade while the kids entertained themselves by throwing rocks in a little stream just off the road.

Once DH and BIL returned with the cars, the real adventure began. Getting down from the waterfall was a major test of patience and logistics. Remember this is a narrow road with more people coming every minute. It turns out that at one point, not far from where we had parked, people had taken it into their heads to park on BOTH sides of the road! In a way, I can't blame them since their other options would be trying to get by the cars coming down or directing everyone behind them to go in reverse down the road until they could find a spot. At one point we seemed absolutely stuck with cars on each side of the road and a few more trying to come up. There was one spot where no one had parked so we were eyeing that until a carload of guys swooped in to park there. Then two of them hop out and start directing us to just come on through. The space here was so narrow that I could (and did) touch the car parked next to me with my forearm resting on my car door and I'm sure dh could do the same! I'm still not sure how we made it but I praised dh profusely for his excellent driving skills. I probably would have just parked myself right there in the middle of the road and refused to move until the other cars did. This was probably around 11:30-12. We thought it was crowded when we got there but by the time we left people were parked all the way down the road, probably a mile or more away from the falls with plenty of others trying to make their way up the road. Now, before you go getting the wrong idea, I've heard that places like the Grand Canyon are like this too during the summer months. Bumper to bumper and going no where fast.

We thought we'd try and find a place to have our picnic lunch somewhere on the way back but as I've said before, Iranians love to picnic and anywhere there was even a remotely suitable spot was already occupied. So, after trying several different spots we decided just to head back home. We ended up not getting home until just before 3:30. We had eaten some snacks in the car but it was a good thing we had the picnic food ready to go because everyone was hungry. I just had to pull it all out and set it up inside.

It was a nice day but I'm not sure we'll be making that trip again. The road up the falls was just too crazy for my taste and stressful for dh too. I think we'll leave it to the more adventurous souls.

Picture redo

Here are the two pictures I blogged about before but didn't show up in the posts. The first is from the mountain road we were on coming home from the waterfall and the second is us at the waterfall.
 

Waterfall teaser

I don't have time at the moment to write about our adventurous trip to visit a waterfall last week but thought I'd post a teaser photo, if Blogger cooperates this time. The kids are begging for breakfast so I have to keep this short. The picture is of me, Mustafa and Reza standing in the water at the bottom of Morgan waterfall about 2 hours north of Shiraz. You can't see our feet but trust me, we were in the water. My feet were purple/black for most of the week because the dye ran when my shoes got soaked. :D

Making blogger behave

It seems that sometimes Blogger behaves better if I post directly from Blogger every now and then so here is a boring little message and a picture of the mountains we were driving through on June 5.

Mountain traffic 2

Here is a little bit better shot with the shepard looking pointedly at us to get moving already! What's not that uncommon in this shot is that cars had to go single file to pass this particular road obstruction. You tend to come up on quite a few places where only one car can go at a time. I'll write more about our adventurous trip to the waterfall tomorrow to explain what I'm talking about. 

Mountain traffic

I thought you might all enjoy a picture of the traffic we encountered on a trip to visit a famous waterfall here. Now, to be confused. This is a rather unusual sight which is why I took the picture though we did encounter a herd blocking the road both going and coming back. (This is coming back.) We were way up on mountain roads seemingly in the middle of no where but saw these sheep as well as other herds grazing on distant hills, farmers plowing fields with yolks of oxen, and lots of boxes of bee hives set up along hills and valleys.

I'm sorry the picture's not better. It's a bit difficult to get a good picture from inside the car with a sleeping baby in your arms. (Carseats are a rarity here.) I don't know if you can tell but there are about half a dozen babies in the back of the herd. The shepard on the donkey was an older man and apparently a bit annoyed with us that we wouldn't just go around like everyone else, but hey, I had to get the shot! :) I'm grateful for:
the abundance we've been blessed with
cool mornings with the windows and front door open
getting my morning started with a fun walk accompanied by music from Sting 

Comments on comments

Recently, Patty posted a blog about comments to what she writes. I know exactly how she feels. Even though, in theory, this blog is just for my musings and to keep friends and family updated with what's going on in our lives, I just love it when I get a comment to something I've written. It's a bit like getting a little surprise note in your mailbox. I have to admit that I'm not always good about leaving comments myself. A big part of it is how I use the internet here. We use cards that are much like phone cards with only about 10 hours or so of access time for about $3. The dial up is often slow so I tend to open multiple pages at once then open other pages after those on the same browser page without reading the first ones. A lot of times I will go 7 or 8 links on 3 or 4 browser pages then log off so that I can read them without it costing anymore time. This method, though useful for saving money, isn't very conducive for leaving comments. I do read a lot of blogs every day (probably way more than I should) and I rarely comment on more than a few every once in a while. I promise I'll try to be better. On a different note, they just showed an old episode of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. Does anyone else remember him? He was this super serene man who does all these landscape paintings with lots of Prussian Blue. It used to be on PBS all the time. You never know what will turn up on tv here. There was a really great Japanese movie on the other night. I think it's called "Afterlife." The premise is that when you die you have to chose just one memory for your entire life and you will forget everything else except that one memory. If you can't or won't chose then you're stuck being a kind of civil servant helping other people chose. I thought it was a very interesting premise.

The picture is of a tree growing about 15 feet to the left of the picture of the orchard I showed before. It's quite an unusual looking tree with no extending branches any where; just this tight little spiral of leaves going up, up and away. 

Green finish

Yippy! I finished a green mini for May's Project Spectrum. I'm glad I decided to do this project. I know I never would have chosen to do an all green quilt in any size on my own, but I like the way this turned out. The picture makes the hsts look off a bit but I think that may just be the way the colors are showing up. The lighting's not great since it's 2 a.m. but I just finished it so I wanted to share. ;) I've decided to do my best to continue with the Project Spectrum challenge only I'll be doing minis instead of full sized quilts since for me that's much more managable right now. It looks like I may be adding another 2 classes soon. Charging less than originally expected but hopefully it will create some word of mouth for future classes. There's a verse in the Quran that says "He plans and you plan and He is the best of planners." Basically it means that God knows what is best for us and doesn't always give us what we want or "plan on" or as I tell my kids "Just cuz you want it doesn't mean you're gonna get it." I've been trying to keep this verse in mind whenever things don't go quite as expected. A great example is the rental house with the pool. Well, a realtor convinced us to go check it out anyway and we're really not missing out on anything. The house was fairly nice but very low on privacy as there was only a half wall separating it from the house next door which looked as though both houses had once been a single unit that got separated over time. The pool obviously had not been used in quite some time and the only water in it was overgrown, brackish rain water that had collected over the winter. My guess is that it hadn't been used since the people across the street decided to build a two story house that looks right into the yard with a pretty good line of sight to the pool. This would eliminate the ability to use it without putting up some type of privacy screening. And the available yard space for the kids was not much more than what we have now, which was one of the main reasons we were looking to move. So, we're staying put for the time being. 

A back door

I figured out yet another way to get around and into a blog when Blogger is refusing to play nice. I just type a keyword into the search bar and hope that a recent post has one of the words I choose. For Patty's I managed to see as recently as the 20th by using fabric. :) I haven't found anything usuable for Sandra's blog yet. I can still only seen till the 15th. So, if anyone has any wonderful ideas of keywords I can use please let me know.

I'm grateful for:
a nice cup of hot chocolate and a brownie or two for breakfast
4 healthy, active kids
a nice cool morning
the smell of fresh baked zucchini bread
time to explore back issues of BHG and Coutry Living magazines that I had given to my SILs and that they were kind enough to share back with me

Ack!

Ok, it's time to fess up. I looked in the mirror today and got a very unsettling look at my stomach. I knew it wasn't what I wanted it to be but today it looks very scary! I don't enjoy the sensation of feeling either my belly or my butt jiggle when I walk but I've felt both move seemingly of their own volition lately. It's time to get moving! I don't have a scale right now but that is definately on my list of things to buy. In the mean time I'll guess that I'm pushing 20 lbs. over what I consider my highest acceptable weight and I'm nearly 20 in. over ideal measurements. (I do have a measuring tape.) Dieting isn't always the best choice while nursing and hey, I've never exactly been good at cutting out sweets. So that leaves me with getting more exercise. I know from past experience that the more I exercise the more energy I have which is always good to have with a house full of active kids. My plan is to start with 15-20 minutes twice a day of walking, aerobics, conditioning or some combination of the three. As I get more accustomed to exercizing again, I'll increase the time.

I started on my goal with a plan to walk 15 min. which turned into 20, more than half of that time carrying a 20+ lb. Reza.

Getting Started

Ok, once again please ignore the hyper links. Picasa hates to import from Word I guess.

Many others around the quilt blog/block have written about how they got started quilting so I thought I’d share too. When I was about 5 years old my maternal great- grandmother died, and my mom and grandmother brought my sister and I each a quilt from her collection. I’m not even sure you could call mine a quilt as it had no batting and only a single piece of fabric each for the front and back, but it was tied. It was probably a lap quilt with a lovely pink flower print on the front with a plain pink back and I loved it dearly. I kept it on my bed until I went to college than passed it on to my niece who lived with us so she would have something special to remember me by. (We were very close. She used to come a sit on my head in the mornings to wake me up. :D ) Neither my mom nor my grandmother quilted (except for one class my mom took where she made a single log cabin block) but my mom would occasionally make us some clothes. One year I got a sewing box and started sewing Barbie clothes and accessories. No instruction, I just did what worked and kept it simple. After that I didn’t do much more than make the prerequisite pillow for home ec in 7th grade.

Flash way forward to 1996. My soon to be dh and I moved to MD where he got a summer internship. We were close to PA and I was inspired by the proximity to Amish quilters to try my hand at a quilt for my 2nd niece’s 1st birthday. I knew nothing about making a quilt and never actually went and saw any quilts so, true to my nature I hit the library for a book that would help me along. I found a simple hst star pattern, hit the local JoAnn’s a picked fabrics I thought would work and got busy. I finished the top, sandwiched and bound it and felt quite proud of my accomplishment. So I started in on a quilt for niece #1 for Christmas, this time a mix of hst stars and 4 patches. (I think the pattern is called Milky Way.) I finished the binding the morning I gave it to her. Now here is the important point that you might have missed. I didn’t actually quilt or tie either one of these quilts! Being completely self taught, I didn’t really “get” the need for quilting or binding them. I thought making a pretty top was more than enough. Duh! Well about a year later I went to visit my sister and saw the condition of both quilts. One of the fabrics in quilt #1 was not suitable to little kid wear and tear and had given way at many of it’s seams and the batting in both quilts was all bunched up. Lesson learned! I started quilt #3 while pregnant with ds #1-more stars with 6x6 1” finished postage stamp centers. A lot of the fabrics in this quilt were clothes that were in the give-away pile at dh’s uncle’s house where we were staying until dh found a job. With no job and me expecting buying tons of fabric for a baby quilt was not an option. (Hey, if it was good enough for our fore-mothers, it would work for me too.) What was purchased was sale or clearance stuff. (Being a newbie I did end up buying WAY too much yardage for the backing/background fabric.) The squares were cut using a 3x5 card cut to size and a pair of scissors used for everything. I learned my lesson and actual did some quilting on this one. After washing a few times, I decided to add more just to be safe but probably by most quilters’ standards it’s not much. Now nearly 7 years and many washings later, only one of the clothing fabrics has proven weak and come apart at a few seams and one of the cheap purchased fabrics has faded a lot but it’s still in pretty good shape.

I’ve only ever taken 1 2-day quilting class and until finding quilting blogs I never talked to other quilters, read about their experiences or saw many quilts. This has allowed me to see what I like and do it how I want without a lot of shoulds or have tos. I’ve learned from my own experiences which fabrics will likely be too thin. I rarely prewash or iron anything unless it’s been clothes. I’m awful at guessing or eye balling a ¼” seam so I use a ball point or gel pen to mark nearly all of my seams since I hand piece everything. I don’t wash or dry my quilts any differently than the rest of our clothes. Remember, women were quilting a LONG time before all of the special soaps for quilts were introduced using fabric with presumably less stable dye and much rougher washing methods. (Think about lye soap and wash boards.) Now that I’ve started reading about quilters like Tonya, I’m more confident to do what works for me and not sweat it when things don’t look quite right. My seams may not line up just right but I haven’t gotten a single complaint yet, so why worry. ;)
Here’s a pic of ds #1’s quilt. Despite the few places where the fabric has given way, I still use it at night sometimes. (The extra background fabric for this quilt was enough to work as a sheet for my current 75"x79" bed. The white with big black polka dots is the weak fabric. DS decided he’s much rather have a new and bigger quilt which I have to agree is necessary since he’s now nearly 4 ½’ tall.

Sewing machine

I've decided that there are just too many projects that I want to get done for me to do them all by hand so I'm going to break down and by a sewing machine. Janome seems to be the main top brand here so that's what I'll probably get. The trick will be shopping for one with all of the kids since school is done. :) Does anyone have experience with Janome? I'm just looking for a simple model. I generally don't use any fancy stitches even the time or two when I've made clothes.

I'd also like to say that Blogger has not been too nice lately about letting me read current posts. I often have to click on May to get the latest updates and sometimes that doesn't even work, like for Patty's Morning Ramble. The latest I can see of her's is the Tie Dye quilt update but I know she's done more than that. I did catch one quick glance of the beautiful fabric that was choosen for the bride's maids dresses but couldn't comment. :( Oh, well. Hopefully Blogger will work out the kinks. 

Berry season

One of the cool things about living here is that there are fruit trees all over. There are persimmons, pomegranates and grapes growing in my in-laws yard. My yard has limes and grapes and on the other side of our privacy wall is a large, lovely berry tree. One friend said that these are mulberries but I thought mulberries grow on bushes. This tree is at least 15 feet tall. It's a favorite climbing tree for my kids and their neighborhood friends during the year but for the last 3 weeks or so it's become a favorite tree for alot of people. Why?
Because it's FULL of plump, juicy berries that are fairly sweet. Mornings and afternoons it has been filled with boys on their way to or from school just down the street, who eat their fill every chance they get. My students beg their moms to get them some after every class and my kids have filled their bellies more than a few times on these sweet treats. They make tasty additions to muffins or quick bread but sadly they don't freeze well, otherwise I'd stock up for the rest of the year. You would think with all the picking this tree has seen that the berries would be completely gone after the last 3 weeks, but No. It's still bursts with freshly ripened berries every day. I guess we'll just enjoy them while they last and look forward to more next year. Sadly, our next door neighbor has asked us to request that the tree be taken down because of its popularity. DH refuses to ask the landlord but she might succeed in getting him to do it anyway. The only downfall of the tree is that the kids had been using the berries to graffiti our wall. Most of it was just names or pictures (some quite creative) but someone decided to add a curse word to the mix so out came the bleach and garden hose and 20 minutes later we have a plain white wall again.
Here are some pics of a very happy boy enjoying a batch of berries a couple of weeks ago.
 

Proof

Remember a while back when I talked about Reza's "high fiber" diet? Well here is proof. There are some of his latest victims.
This is just one part of his crib. Every reachable part of the railing has teeth marks all over but here it's the worst. You can't really tell from the picture but there are chunks taken out of the wood here. He managed this damage in 2-3 sessions of less then 10 minutes in the crib. And here is proof that I have a baby beaver. He's taking out another chunk as he continues to work on this escape from "baby jail."
 

Chaos

*Warning: This is a long post completely unrelated to quilting, so feel free to skip it if you like.

Note: I had originally decided not to post this but info contained here explains other things I’d like to post about, so what the hay! I hope you don’t mind the reading.

Sometimes life hands you things and you just don't know how you feel about them.

This whole trip to Iran has been meet with denied expectations and lots of life's little surprises. We are in the process of having apartments built on the lot that used to hold my in-law's house. They have been in a smaller house that we bought with his sister a few years ago while we are in a rental. The apartments were supposed to be finished a few months after we arrived, however, they are still basically a three-story shell with exposed pipes, sil didn't get any receipts for money given to the contractor for the job, he walked off the job and now there is a lawyer involved. So this has definately NOT met expectations.

The kids are doing well in school academically but some of the lessons their learning I would just as soon not have them learn, especially Mustafa. He's been in lots of fights and been picked on in large because he is bigger than anyone else in his class, believes in following the rules and has stepped in to stop a few fights so other kids try to prove themselves against him or retaliate for things he's done. During the course of the year his teacher has hit him at least once and his vice principle has twisted his ear at least a few times but we don't know exactly how many because he's a very reluctant talker. After the incident with his teacher early on, dh and I talked about pulling him out and homeschooling him like we did in the US but he felt we should wait a bit longer. Over the course of the year, he's seen that yes, we really can teach our kids as much or more and better than what they learn at school so that option is on the table for next year. I've also been frustrated with the amount and pointlessness of the busy work that his teacher assigns. For the first half of the year, ds had to draw and color a picture at the end of each night's homework. It did not have to be anything related to what they had learn but it had to be colored. Mustafa hated coloring and his teacher tried to suggest there was something wrong with him since he wouldn't color his pictures. Now she has them doing math workbook pages but then exactly copying the pages they've done into their homework notebooks and rewriting them without any kind of correction. How pointless is that! Dd has faired a bit better in kindergarten but she's had her share of annoying behavior from other kids such as pinching, hair pulling and knocking her snacks on the floor. Also, the tend to pop movies in for the kids to watch while they are playing with playdough and on more than one occasion she's told me they watched movies I would never let them watch like "Spiderman". When dh asked his teacher about the movies, she showed him a room were they have the movies and said that was all the showed but dd told me that kids also bring in movies. Grrr! Now don't get me wrong, I let my kids watch movies and they've even seen most of "The Lord of the Rings" but I don't think 5 years should be watching whatever happens to be on hand in the 4 hours they're at school.

I was told that I'd have no problem finding students to teach English to but except for 1 woman I tutored for 2 weeks, I've only had a class of three students this year, all of whom are Safiya's classmates. So, I've only made about $500 in the last 7 months. Definately NOT what I expected.
On the upside, the kids only have a week and half of school left and both have done very well considering they barely spoke any Farsi when we arrived one month before school started. And as far as teaching goes, at least I’m getting experience for handling future classes.

Pool dreams

Please ignore the fact that this is all hyperlinked. I cut and pasted this from Word into Picasa and don't know how to unlink it at the moment.

First, Thank you to everyone that gave me feedback on my book question. Everyone I’ve spoken with seems to have the same view that this should be my take on life here with exploration of the domestic sphere, so that’s the direction I’m headed in. Now I just have to find time to write.

Ok, so why did I need to post that last long one. Well because of the half finished apartments, we are renting and the lease is up soon. I don’t particularly want to stay in this house because it has various flaws that are starting to get on my nerves like impossible to vacuum carpet and plaster and paint that keeps coming off the walls in different places. As long as the apartment situation remains unresolved, we will be in Iran, and in particular, Shiraz. In-laws just aren’t up to dealing with the crooked contractor and all of the court issues, so Mohsen has made that his #1 job. So we’ve been looking around the last couple of weeks for another place to rent. A few days ago, SIL mentions that a realtor told her about a 1000 sq. meter house with a POOL! Problem is is that it rents for about 3 times what we are paying here. *sigh* The rent alone would almost equal our current monthly expenses. It was, however, nice to fantasize about swimming again and getting the kids started back on swimming lessons only with me as their teacher this time. With the approach of summer, the opening lines of Dr. Suess’ “Horton Hears a Who” keep running through my mind. “In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool” Ah, well. As much as I think we’d enjoy it, I really can’t see a justification for spending that much money when neither of us is really bring much in. There’s just not a whole lot of other single family rentals available so keep your fingers crossed for us that we find something good at a reasonable price. We have to let our current landlord know by the end of the week if we are going to renew the lease!

On a quilty note, I’ve been slowly working on Reza’s quilt, haven’t gotten anything done on the challenge quilts and am contemplating making a green mini for Project Spectrum. In the mean time, here is a picture of Mustafa’s little quilt. He’s sewn the binding on but he says he wants to do diagonal quilting on it as well. It’s a morphed bowtie quilt.

 

Questions

I'd like to answer Jeanne's question about the orchard as well as ask everyone who read this a couple of questions.

First, Jeanne's question was wether the orchard was privately owned or a public space. The orchard in the pictures is privately owned by one brother and all of the improvements were made by another brother over the last 10 years or so. It's such a beautiful place that their mother choose to spend the last few months of her life there.

It just so happens that the day Jeanne posed her question we made a trip to a public orchard that is about 700 years old. Unfortunately, this was an unplanned stop on a trip home from the airport so we did not have our camera with us but I'm sure we will be back since this is a beautiful spot. A three story "summer" house of sorts stands at the center of the orchard. The house is in disrepair now but it is at least 200 years old, probably more. The view is amazing. I can't wait to get some pictures to share. Iranians LOVE to picnic, so any green space is often filled with families at all hours of the day and frequently at night. We visited in the orchard in the early afternoon on Thursday and there were 3 separate groups of women out picnicing with at least 10 women per group.

Now for my questions-My husband suggested tonight that I try my hand at writing a book since I am in the somewhat unique position of being an American woman in Iran. I can understand his point and thinking about current events and rhetoric gives me the idea that it might even be timely but I want to know if others would really be interested in reading it. He just suggested it about an hour or so ago and I've only had a little time to let the ideas simmer but I was thinking about either writing about my impressions or about Iranian women or perhaps even a mix of the two. What do you all think? Anyone think there would be interest in such a book? I found one book on Amazon similar to the idea of writing strickly about Iranian women but it was published 4 years ago and much has changed in Iran during that time.

I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone and everyone that has any ideas or opinions on this.

Thanks.

Orchard

I thought you might like to see an example of an orchard in Iran. This is a different one than the one we had our No Ruz picnic at but we've been here several times. Each side of the path is lined with rose bushes; some up to about 15 ft. high. The paved area extends about 20 or so meters on either side of the picture. At the end of the path, to the right, they've built a little one room house for relaxing in or as a place to go in case of rain, complete with a mini kitchen, fireplace, bathroom and shower. Here is one of the many rose bushes along the path. There are a few others this color but most are white, yellow or red. The red ones are the ones that are about 15 (or more) ft. tall.
 

Orange done...

kinda. The top is done for the April project spectrum wallhanging. I had read someone's blog that said there are 3 finishes to a quilt. Well, this is finish number 1-the top. I know 2 of the borders a bit crooked. I guess that will teach me to sew by the light of the computer screen. :) The little white spot about a third of the way down was dust on the camera lens. For now it will be moved to UFO status probably until June. I'd finish this now but if I'm going to participate in the Middle East Quilters' Challenge, I need to get moving on those projects. 

Top 20

Ok, Jeanne listed this probably at least a month ago but what can I say, I'm slow!

Here is a list of the Top quilts I'm either working on or want to do (except for 1st four, not in any particular order):
1. Belated orange April Project Spectrum wall hanging. Almost finished with the top.
2. Reza's 1st birthday quilt-Road to Jericho. Making sure and steady progress. Will post a pic when I get to a point that is photo worthy.
3 & 4. Middle East Quilters' 2006 challenge- Mini quilt ~12" sq. and ~48"x36". Theme "The 4 elements" I've got ideas for both down on paper, most fabrics pulled but haven't cut or sewn anything. We'll see if I can get anything done by the deadline sometime around the beginning of next month.
5. Strippy Twist quilt ala Bonnie's Quiltville site
6. Mini Amish Churndash
7. Wonky Animal House growth chart for kiddies
8. Chicklet quilt with sashing similar to Forest Jane
9. Bargello
10. Mini Trip around the World
11. Log cabin
12. Bear paw
13. Something with Flying Geese
14. Irish chain
15. Drunkard's Path
16. "Shape of My Heart"- applique in planning stages, inspired by a Sting song on "Ten Sumner's Tales"
17. Depression block
18. quilt for Mustafa-his choice
19. stars and ribbons
20. a couple of non-wonky house wallhangings

Ok, that's all I can think of for now. At the rate I make quilts, the kids will all be grown by the time I finish this list. ;D