This morning we went for an appointment with Rose, this tiny Sicilian woman who does tailoring, to have my dresses and Sean's suit altered for wedding season.  She had an old black Singer that reminded me a lot of my grandmother's machine, which she bought from the sweatshop where she and all her sisters worked when it was closing down.  It was so powerful, she could whip up a dress for my doll in about five seconds flat--and she also had the scars on her fingers from where the needle had gone right through.  My grandfather designed this super-cool desk--the sewing machine could actually be folded down underneath so it would just look like a regular desk.  I don't know what happened to that, after she died. She made lots of dresses for us when we were children, beautiful ones with sashes, even though she was overly fond of puffed sleeves.

 I'm always really impressed with people who can make things with their hands.  I was in Brooklyn this past weekend and was reminded of my awe of Sara's abilities in this vein--I remember going to her house one day in high school and her showing me this blue skirt (with a swoop of some other, shiny fabric on one side) that she had sewn, and being so impressed that she had just made it, with no pattern or anything.  Once upon a time I was decently capable of using my mom's sewing machine--Jen and I were actually forced to take lessons on Saturdays from a woman in Pocquonock, back when we were in 4-H.  When I was 10ish I sewed a skirt and top for myself (though my mom had to do the buttonhole, which was beyond me) in which I participated in a 4-H "fashion show"--God, the fabric was rainbow tie-dye.  After that period, though, I mostly shunned the sewing machine, and I definitely remember disdaining the clothes my mom sometimes made for us, since 'cool kids' did not have homemade clothes.  Today I wouldn't know the first thing about how to operate one.

Seeing Heather's place, where she has dozens upon dozens of plants arranged in storage-tub planters along her driveway and in the backyard (all kinds of plants, her Meyer lemon, passionfruit, mint, bamboo), also reminded me of another kind of hands-on knowledge that I don't have.  She was showing me how some plants grow best in straw, and these ones are forest-floor plants so she has a covering of dry leaves in their bins, and  I'm thinking that the most research I did for our little garden patch was an Amazon search for "organic bug spray" once something started nibbling our basil!

That said, I am proud that I've been making more of my own stuff household-wise.  Some of it is super-basic, like Sean making his own peanut butter, but my hummus delights me because a) I can add super amounts of fresh garlic and b) it is crazily cheaper than what they sell in the store.  I think they want 5.99 for a small container of Sabra at Stop-and-Shop.  The most expensive ingredient is the tahini, which is $8 a jar but which I can use for 6 batches; lemon juice lasts forever, and chickpeas are cheap.  I bet each batch costs me maybe $2, takes a whole 10 minutes to make, and produces twice as much as a store container.

I was inspired by some delicious blackberry peach ice pops we had at the Brooklyn Flea on Saturday to make my own--I had picked up a Jelly-Belly branded popsicle set a few months ago.  I liked the result (Sean would have preferred a bit of added sugar) but it wasn't quite as "meaty" as the one in New York--I suspect they didn't puree the peaches as much as I did.  Yesterday I also experimented with making a chia seed pudding--we've had the chia seeds sitting on the fridge for months, courtesy of Sean's aunt, and his cousin mentioned that they'll turn pudding-y if you soak them, so I soaked them in milk, threw in some berries and Truvia, and this morning it was indeed like tapioca!  Sean wants to give up yogurt as part of his regular lunch, since the basic kind is pumped up with sugar, the low-cal with aspartame, and he hates Greek.  I'm hoping this can be an alternative.  I even have a small jam jar saved that he could use to take it to school for lunch!

Sean also made our first homemade loaf in bread in months the other day.  We stopped buying bread altogether when he was on the dysglycemic diet, but we'd stopped making our own before that because it was just too tempting, for carb-lovers like us, to have delicious homemade bread sitting around all the time, mocking you from inside the breadbox.  Now that he's doing Weight Watchers, he can have sandwich bread again, but we're back to the same problem--do we make our own bread, which is healthier, since it doesn't have all the crap Arnold's has in it (I read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food last week, in which he suggested avoided foods that have more than five ingredients, or any that are unpronounceable; I think it's a good sign that we have so few processed foods left in our regular diets, but bread definitely falls in this category.  So too, sadly, do things like veggie burgers, which are full of all sorts of weird stuff) but possibly then eat more of it?  Ironically, this loaf turned out misshapen and dense--which was another problem we were having with the machine--so it hasn't been that tempting, after all, but not that successful as sandwich bread, either.

Cleaning products are another area where I've been using a lot of homemade stuff (I even have my own brand name, "Puff's Own"! Haha. Carla for some reason used to call me 'Muff' in college, and told Sean he wasn't allowed to use it, so he adopted 'Puff' instead).  It definitely saves money, though it's been hit or miss in the effectiveness department.  I read a book called Green Clean which had some truly frightening things to say about what's in our regular cleaners, plus lots of useful recipes for homemade versions.  The all-purpose cleaner works pretty well, though I think the vinegar-based one would work better--Sean hated the smell, unfortunately.  Laundry soap has been OK, though we both wish there was a way to make it scented--it's hard to adjust to having no smell at all, when we've been taught to associate certain smells with "clean".  Same goes for the floor cleaner--I fucking love the smell of Pine Sol, chemical though it may be, and adding a few drops of lemon essence to the homemade version does not do the trick.  Making detergent for the dishwasher was a total bust, though I liked the suggestion of running an empty wash once a month with vinegar to clean it out.  Another fail was air freshener, the recipe for which was water, a bit of vodka, and essence--it smelled great, but it didn't actually last or, you know, freshen anything!

One place where it seems chemical cleaners are a must?  Our brand new bathtub, which gets alarmingly gross and dirty but can't be scrubbed with anything abrasive because of what it's made of.  I was using my all-purpose cleaner, but it was definitely not doing the trick, especially on the caulk, which was already getting a sort of pinkish mold.  Luckily, we had to have the window recaulked, and the guy who came recaulked the whole tub and told me a) we need to not let water sit on it, so now one of us just quickly wipes it down after we're done showering, and b) we need to use Clorox Cleaner with Bleach.  What do you know, it cut through the tub grime like nobody's business--and I only realized how dirty it had been once I used that.  I would never really recommend Bathfitters for this reason--no bathtub of mine has ever accumulated muck quite like this, and being bright white doesn't help. On the plus side, it looks super nice, and it is a damned sight better than the peeling, pink monstrosity that was in there before.

Making things, even in my limited way, makes me feel good--even though I feel like a ridiculous failure in other areas of my life, hey, I can make my own hummus, right? Right? Mm.