Blocked

{Knitting Along with Ginny, unless she has her sweet baby today- 
and then I'm just sharing my latest knitting and reading. Will you join?}

I knit all of these pieces last year, but they were tucked away waiting for these days when I need a little something around my neck to keep the chill away. I pulled everything out over the weekend to re-block.


Ignore the scattered debris in the background, would ya? I let the toddler run free during this particular blocking session- as long as she wasn't eating crayons or destroying property I was okay with whatever she wanted to do for the 20 minutes I spent blocking. Sometimes a mama *really* needs to block a shawl so that a sort of sour weekend doesn't devolve into despair. Yes. I said it. Blocking a shawl totally restores your perspective on life.

I sort of forget the magic that blocking works on lace until I block (or re-block) a finished piece. One minute it's a blob of yarn that looks fine if you sort of stretch it out with your hands and look at it with your head tilted, and the next minute it's wet and growing and you can really see the pattern that you put all your time and energy and muttered curses into. And love too, of course. It's really just like raising children.

This red was really hard to capture. The background fabric is jet black so you have an idea of how difficult it was to be accurate. It's actually a very rich variegated red sock weight that I really really love.

Blocking with an 18-month-old around is an adventure. She finds t-pins to be a delight. And shockingly, she doesn't poke herself. I never would have let the boys hold a pin at this age, but she's the third child and I might have finally relaxed a bit. What a blessing- to me and to my kids.



I'm reading Emma (Jane Austen!) and the boys and I finished up Farmer Boy yesterday. We have had so many great discussions over this book- I'm a little sad to see it go, though tomorrow we will start Jungle Book. I listened to a wonderful audio recording called Nurturing Competent Communicators from Andrew Pudewa (recommended by the wonderful Sarah at Amongst Lovely Things) and goodness- it certainly put my brain back on track about reading out loud to our boys! It's so easy to think that they don't need us to read to them anymore because they can read to themselves now, and that is simply not the case. We need to keep reading aloud, listening to books on CD, discussing and writing. I especially appreciated the connection he made to the method behind Suzuki violin study, as I am a Suzuki violin teacher myself (and a student since the age of 4). I'm looking forward to listening to more of his recordings.


For those of you waiting for my KCW results, I will get them posted tomorrow. My husband hurt his back over the weekend (he will be fine, but back to physical therapy) and working through that and the accompanying appointments changed everything around. Back to regular posts today, and KCW post tomorrow.