Sweater Love

Here's my latest sweater. The original pattern, the Neighborly, was designed by Jennifer for little girls. Larissa turned it into the Big-Girl Neighborly.

This used two skeins of Plymouth Galway worsted in this yummy raisin color, and two skeins of Noro Kureyon in a most delicious colorway (251, I think). This was the first time I've ever used Noro, and it was just so much fun to watch the colors change. Every time I sat down to work on this, I would rave to Rob about how much I loved the colors.

I finished it Monday night; washed and blocked it yesterday, and I'm wearing it today! I love, love, love this sweater.

A big thank-you goes out to the ladies who created and shared this pattern. This has me thinking...with Valentine's day coming up, maybe my little girls could use a little Neighborly love of their own!

Do-over

Well, that was something! Since I was here last, every member of the family--parents included--was leveled by this mystery bug. There were lots of naps, lots of quiet play, lots of ginger ale and saltines, and lots and lots of laundry. (There was also a little knitting and reading, of course.)

I'm calling this week my do-over week, because I really didn't get the whole "first week back" experience I was looking for last week. I got the house un-decorated and partially clean just in time for the patients to arrive. Yesterday was full of changing sheets and disinfecting bathrooms, and I'm feeling much better about the state of the house.

I did finish my last birthday sweater last night. I just have to wash and block it before I share. Caroline has a birthday party on Saturday, and I am behind on my last Sew Connected block, so I think this week I'll be bringing the sewing machine back out. I look forward to getting re-acquainted with my old friend.

Change of plans

Right as Bobby and I were sitting down to lunch yesterday, the school nurse called. Caitlin was throwing up. I took Bobby in for kindergarten and came home with Caitlin. Poor thing. Watching your child be ill and knowing that there is nothing you can do to make it stop is one of the worst feelings in the world.


She is home today--the vomiting appears to have stopped, and she's occasionally sipping some water. I'm hopeful we'll graduate to some toast before too long. The poor baby hasn't eaten since yesterday morning (and this is my grazer--the one who come through the kitchen every 90 minutes or so to announce, "I'm hungry!").

We'll be right here on the couch for today at least. I hope you are all well and warm!

Easing in

We are all easing back into our weekly routines. Not all of our regular activites are resuming this week, and that's a good thing, because the kids are having a tough time getting back into the day-long groove. The homework hour has been challenging--lots of meltdowns and distractions. Today the girls have dance, and I'm looking forward to breaking up the afternoon a little. I'm also looking forward to tonight's broccoli soup, but I may be the only one who is.

All the decorations have come down, and parts of the house feel naked. I put up fall decorations in September, so it really has been several months since the house was "normal." I like it though. It feels like a clean slate.

I want to thank all of you for your sweet and encouraging comments to my last post. I treasure them--and by all means, if you see something that I've done and you want to do it or put your own spin on it, please go right ahead! And one of these days, I'd love to have a real-life bloggy meet-up. Maybe I should put that on my "bucket list." You know, if I ever get around to making one of those.

In between the holiday madness, I decided it was time to knit another hat for myself. A hat that I would actually wear. The other hats I've made for myself are more of a beanie style--not the most flattering for me. So here is Felicity (free on ravelry). I used up some of the gray wool from my Mr. Greenjeans sweater. It's....okay. I'm just going to keep telling myself that I am cool and hip enough to wear this hat. It is keeping my ears warm, so mission accomplished.



But my neck is still freezing! So I'm cooking up something for this last ball of alpaca. Hopefully I'll have this done soon because standing outside the elementary school in the bitter wind is getting old real fast. I keep adding a layer every day, and every day it seems to get colder.
As a final note, Molly posted a tutorial on how to customize your blog header. I am very excited about this--I recycled a picture from last year to make the new blog header, but now that I know how to do it, I'm going to have lots of fun with this!

Stay warm, everyone!

Bloom Where You Are Planted

I've been thinking a lot about that phrase, "bloom where you are planted." To be honest, I'd never heard it until a year or so ago (whenever Erin made that wonderful quilt with the saying on it). But it's such a good idea, and it really rings true for me--mostly because I feel like I've not been blooming. Let me 'splain...

I live with my husband and our three children in Southeastern Pennsylvania. We have lived here for about four and a half years. For the six years before that, we lived in my husband's hometown. All of our children were born in the same hospital as my husband. Our house was maybe three miles from his mom; his two sisters were even closer. His grandparents were about two miles away from us; aunts, uncles and cousins--all within four miles.

My family? We're a little more scattered. I grew up in South Carolina, in the same town where my parents grew up. After I finished high school, my family moved to Tennessee, and now my brother and my parents are still in Tennessee. I have one grandparent and an aunt and cousin still in South Carolina, but I haven't lived there since 1988. I don't really keep in touch with anyone from high school (facebook...eh, it just doesn't do it for me), and I don't really feel like I have a "hometown."

So for over four years now, I've been feeling a little lost. I've been trying to make a home for us--not just a house that we live in, but a place in the world for us where we feel that we truly belong. The hard part, for me, at least, is that making a home requires building connections and relationships with other people--people in the neighborhood, in the community, in the schools, etc. And I have really resisted this part of putting down roots. I don't know why. When Rob was unemployed last summer, he looked for jobs back in New Jersey. The idea of moving just filled me with dread. Transplanting whatever shallow roots we'd created here in Pennsylvania seemed awful.

But living here with only shallow roots hasn't been especially rewarding for me either.

So I made a decision--to bloom where I'm planted. To encourage my roots to grow deeper.

Ironically, one of the places where I feel I've grown the most is right here online. The blogging community has allowed me to find endless inspiration and to "meet" many wonderful women. I hope it's okay that I consider you my friends. I feel a sense of community here, and I want to put more of myself out here. I hope to write more thoughtful pieces here this year in addition to sharing the crafty fun and the perennial laundry struggles. I want to learn more about you, too, so I'll be commenting more instead of just lurking.

Don't worry, there is plenty of interaction with actual, real-time people going on, too. I'll share more of that later. Right now, I have a little story for you.

It's about family heirlooms.

My mom's mother passed away a few years ago. Last April, we went to South Carolina to visit my grandfather. While I was there, my mom gave me some of my grandma's old books.


Not only are they useful, they are full of treasures. Grandma liked to tuck things away in her cookbooks. Here is the program from my elementary school's Christmas show when I was in the third grade.


My mom has claimed Grandma's main cookbook for herself, and rightly so. It has the most treasures hidden in it. But over Christmas, Mom brought me this:

It was written by eight-year-old me. I immediately put it in one of my favorite cookbooks.

And then I showed my mom one of the treasures that I had tucked away into that same book:

I love that my family has generations of women who stash away letters, programs, even scraps of paper from everyday life. I hope that my daughters will do this one day. To me, this is the making of a family heirloom. It is the "putting down" of roots. It is the beginning of blooming--wherever we may be planted.

A New New Year's Tradition?

It's brand new for us this year; hopefully we'll be able to continue this every year. I had originally wanted to do this as a stocking stuffer for Christmas, but I found myself running out of time.
But it made a perfect gift for the new year! It's a coupon book. Each child gets a coupon a month. Each coupon has an activity to do with either mama or daddy--work on a puzzle together, go on a bike riding date, bake cookies together, etc.

And I put each coupon book into a stuffed heart. It's the Family Heart from Soulemama's second book.

The kids were really excited about the different activities--most of them are ready to cash in January's coupon today!

And Happy New Year to You, Too!

Last night we let the kids stay up to watch the ball drop. The kids donned their glasses and their pajamas and got ready to party. We played some fortune-telling games and Apples to Apples Kids. We tuned in to Dick Clark. Bobby fell asleep on the couch some time after ten, but the girls made it all the way to midnight.
In the morning (or late morning--we all tried to sleep in), I made buttermilk biscuits (and bacon and eggs, but the kids were most excited about the biscuits). We went bowling and grocery shopping--loads of fun! Now the kids are ready for naps.

The mailman brought me some goodies to read over the weekend. This will give me something to do while the bowl games run non-stop.

And it's a new year...so naturally I think about resolutions. I don't really have any beyond the usual--try to be more patient, try to eat better, try to improve at meal planning. One special project I'm going to try this year is a 365 picture project. I feel pretty confident that I can take a picture a day--it's the uploading to flickr on a daily basis that I'm more likely to fall short on. Since this is my challenge, I'm making the rules! I'll take a picture daily, but if I'm only able to upload to flickr a couple of times a week, that's okay. The whole point of the exercise will still be satisfied. And maybe my photography skills will improve!

The kids go back to school on Monday, and I want to enjoy these remaining days together. I'm sure I'll be back here after my post-holiday cleaning frenzy early next week.