Our dear friends JLD and HFD recently welcomed a baby boy into the world. So, of course, some knitting was in order.

Hat

Legwarmers!

No, HFD did not give birth to a Sesame Street character. (Although he does totally have hair like Ernie - jet black and spiky.) Grover is just modeling the ensemble because he's the only baby-sized thing I have. But he clearly lacks the fat baby thighs to do those legwarmers justice.

This weekend we made pasta from scratch. This is what married people without kids do. We make pasta. From scratch. Because we can, and also because there's nothing else to do. Someday if we have kids we'll barely have enough time, between helping with homework and keeping the peace, to throw some boxed spaghetti into a pot of boiling water. And we'll look at each other and say, "Remember when we used to make pasta? From SCRATCH?!" And while we may be a tad nostalgic, I'm sure we won't feel resentful because raising a family is incredibly fulfilling, even if little Robbie just dumped the jar of tomato sauce on the kitchen floor.

But this was pretty fun, too.

To make the noodles, we used a KitchenAid attachment that I borrowed from a co-worker. It was SO COOL - like Playdoh! To make flat noodles, you could also just roll out the dough and slice it with a pizza cutter.

I used the dough recipe that came with the attachment. Just flour, eggs, and water. And it can be varied in so many ways. Next time I think I'll make whole wheat pasta, and I'd also like to try spinach or tomato.

The recipe made oodles of noodles, so we dried a bunch to use later.

The difference between fresh homemade pasta and the boxed stuff we usually buy really was significant. It was much lighter and softer. We also made homemade tomato sauce, which we'd never done before.

All in all, a delicious date night!

Call it creating space or making a clearing or shifting priorities or what you will, we all do it. And I've been doing it for some time now in a way that affects klog. Blogging has become a less important priority to me, and as such it has sunk to the bottom of my to-do list. Really, the fact that blogging is on my to-do list at all means that the nature of this has changed. For awhile, blogging was an integral part of life for me. Now it's something I sometimes aspire to and then feel bad about not doing. And that's just silly, especially since this blog has always, first and foremost, been for me. And since the space I've created by not blogging has been put to very good use. I'm spending my time in ways that mean more to me than being here does, and that's okay.

February marked five years of klog, and I did note the occasion even if I celebrated it in silence. The truth is, I'm not ready to shut it down. I cherish the snippets of life I've captured here, and I still have moments and projects and thoughts that I want to document. The difference is that our original online community has dissipated to a large degree (or shifted to Facebook), and so there's less incentive to post because so few are still out there reading.

And then there's the reluctance I'm feeling, for the first time, to share some of my more personal, reflective writing. The past two months have been a time of real struggle and real growth for me, and the experience feels sacred in a way that should remain private. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, and I've forfeited that release recently because I feel like any writing I do should be here.

So really, this post is about giving myself permission to change the nature of this place a bit. To accept the evolution and to temper expectations. I'd like klog to continue to be a collection of travel tales and project photos and the occasional story. Whether anyone reads or not, at this point, doesn't matter. You're welcome here, always. But this place is for me and I need to reclaim it, in my own mind, as such.

Namaste, klog. I bid you both a fond farewell and a welcome back, in a way that honors what you have been and what I need you to be.

chess and knitting inside