Lost Season

I wrote last week about how strange it seems that fall is here, how summer disappeared without our notice and now I have to say that I think this whole season may be lost too.


I don't think I've really taken pictures in several weeks, aside from a few clicks here and there, and while the boys are just as busy as ever I am down for the count. Thirty hours or so in the studio every week, homeschooling in the mornings, and the necessary appointments for eyes and teeth and baby add up to very little time to just be... and evenings are lost too, for as soon as I am home from the studio I am into bed to try to be ready to start again in the mornings. This pregnancy has certainly been the most tiring of the three. Thank goodness it will end with a new baby!


So thankful that...

:: Brian has taken over dinner for this season (since I am teaching every night in order to be more available in the mornings).

:: I can start a load of laundry in the morning and it is dried and folded and put away by day's end without any further work on my part.

:: Ender is reading all. the. time. Allowing him to stay up for 30 extra minutes as long as he is reading has paid off big time.

:: The second trimester isn't that far off... and hopefully this morning sickness and fatigue will ease up a little around that point.

:: Our family has been blessed with another nephew over the weekend - that makes the count 6 boys to 1 girl. We need more girls! (***hint to the baby***)


There sill isn't much new knitting, but I have been trying to be really diligent about sleep and water, which will pay off in a bigger way than new stitches.

I was sent this video by a friend, and thought I'd share here too:






My husband watched it, looked at me and said, "Why don't you knit that fast?" I thought about trying to explain to him that she knits continental and I knit English and that there are speed things that English knitters just can't do even though I'm a pretty fast knitter... but I know that would have just led to his eyes glazing over.

Anyway, I know this season will pass and while it probably won't be the most well documented, we'll still enjoy it and learn a lot and grow together through it.

Yarn Along

{Yarning Along with Ginny...}

I finally got a chance to block my Omelet shawl. It has been done for weeks and weeks,

but I just hadn't had time to get a good blocking in.

I have a really fancy blocking system where I spread out towels on my living room floor and then pin right into the floor. High tech, huh?

And for those of you who fear for the straight lines where my (yo k1 yo) is, I took these pics when I originally pinned it to try out different edges- I promise I blocked them straight!

And the full pic- I took several pictures during the blocking to try to decide exactly how I wanted to curve the bottom edge, and this one was really uneven... I went through several options before really settling on how I wanted those edges worked out.

It's settled now and drying... I'll get unpinned pictures up soon.

I have to say that watching lace bloom feels like magic every.single. time. I know I knit it and at the same time it seems like the lace just appears out of that blob of yarn.

And this is why I'm now a lace knitter.

Because it's MAGIC.

There hasn't been any baby knitting really yet. I'm still so nauseous and tired that I'm pretty much schooling the children in the morning, then working in the afternoon and evening and falling into bed so that I can get up and repeat it again the next day. Oh, plus having to eat a small meal every two hours to keep the nausea under control. Keeps a girl busy.

But I do have serious baby plans thanks to your contributions last time around- thank you so much!

There are so many great baby knits out there.

In reading news I've been working my way through Michael Grant's Gone series. I just finished #3 last night (Lies) and need to pick up #4 from the library. I'm sure I have a pretty impressive holds stack waiting for me there because I just ordered all of our October and November school books also... I'm also waiting on a copy of the newest biography about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I studied him and his writings very seriously throughout high school and I am so excited to have yet another great biography to explore.

So what are you knitting and reading?

Welcoming Fall

We must really be into fall now.

It's in the changing trees, that increased desire to knit warm things, the crisp air when we step outside to feed the cat and check to see if there might be one last tomato or pepper... and it came with a sneakiness we don't usually know.

I'm trying to think of where summer went. This is the first year since the boys have been part of our family that we didn't have a big celebration to welcome fall, making a big deal about that last trip to the pool and trying to squeeze out another few days wearing shorts and flip flops before jeans become a necessity.


We got it together in time to make a last camping trip over this past weekend with family and aside from one scary encounter with a rattlesnake (thank goodness for a quick-thinking uncle with a canoe paddle!) it was just what we needed for a low-key celebration to end one season and begin another. A little bit of fishing and canoeing, cooking hot dogs over the fire, little boys pretty much rolling in the dirt all day and *loving* it, and playing lots of board games into the wee hours made a perfect welcome to this new season.

Yarn Along: Baby Knits

So, now that the cat is out of the bag (or the bun is in the oven or whatever you'd like to say),  I can finally talk to you about all the baby knitting I am not doing. Morning sickness all day sickness has pretty much taken over, but I'm now on day 2 with my new best friend Zofran and have begun again to think fondly of repetitive motions such as knitting.


Since it's hard to share pictures of non-knitting, there won't be pictures, but there are a lot of links to yummy baby knitting.


Let me first say that I did nothing crafty when my boys were born. I learned to sew the summer Ezra turned one, and then to knit that fall. So I'm not one of those knitters who has woolens to pull out from previous babies. This baby is going to have to be freshly woolen-ized.


Second, I have to say that gender-neutral sweaters and cardigans are kind of a joke. It is just not as easy as picking a "girl color" or a "boy color" and going for it, because the little details can scream one gender over the other.


{And as a side note on gender: My 4-year-old thinks that if the baby is a girl she'll have pink or purple hair (being a girl and all) even though all the girls he knows have normal colored hair. And no- it doesn't matter how many times we point out that he wasn't born with blue or red or green hair. He has his own little universe where bizarre genetics play a big role- like how he thinks his "blonde" cat is his long-lost twin brother.... because they're both blonde, you see.}


I've lined up a few favorites that I think can go either way in a "babies don't really care" kind of way and I have ideas for neutral colors- a soft heather gray, a creamy beige, perhaps even something white...

Puerperium Cardigan

Sweet little Kanoko Pants

Milo (which I think breaks the afore mentioned gender neutral joke)

Garter Stripe Baby Socks

hats, hats, glorious hats...

And a much longed-for knit: the Hemlock Ring Blanket. I have loved that blanket for a long time and now there is finally a baby to receive it.

So two questions for you:

1. What is on you "absolutely must knit" list for babies?

2. What are your favorite baby yarns to knit with?

I'm looking at superwash for some things, but that is not a necessity- super comfy and soft is key.

{Yarning Along with Ginny even though it's been a few weeks and this is not my usual type of Yarn Along post. As long as the Zofran continues to work there WILL be knitting to show next week.}

Here and Back Again

First of all, THANK YOU. Your comments, your emails... Just thank you.


The memorial was held at the end of last week followed by a trip to bury her ashes in her hometown where she wanted to be buried. We are glad to be home and I think we're all glad to be welcomed by a "normal" week this week. We'll ease back into school a bit, and Brian and I both go back to working our full schedules.


I'm catching up here and there. I spent yesterday afternoon revising our homeschool plans to account for very little "real" schooling in the last month, and I opened my google reader with the intention of catching up, but with over 1000 new posts in 2 weeks, that isn't likely.


And there hasn't been a lot of knitting or reading these last few weeks with all that's been going on. It's partly because of recent events, partly because of having to commute to work for the first time in 4 years (a time suck that I'm trying to rectify with listening to knitting podcasts and sermons), partly because of trying to put our priority on being present with the boys, and partly because I'm totally exhausted all the time.


I thought the exhaustion thing was normal at first- all the hospital time, driving a lot, and being worn out emotionally made sense. But after having some other pretty obvious symptoms I'm happy to report that the current knitting drought is for good reason- we have another little one joining our family this spring. I can't even begin to tell you how excited we are, though feel a little curiosity at the timing. What an interesting expression of God's tender mercies poured out on us just when we need them most.