Patching Up the Blankie

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If you have a child who carries a blankie, you’ll totally understand the necessity of tending to whatever injuries the coveted item encounters. Rabbit’s blankie has had this ouchie for a while, but then it caught on something the other morning and tore some more and she seemed rather distraught about it–so I decided to do something about it.

I located some random pink gingham flannel (which isn’t too terribly random when you consider that this a house with three young girls living in it!), cut out a heart, hefted the sewing machine upstairs and started some intense blankie surgery, while Rabbit anxiously looked on.

End result:

Cold Evening Musings

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The evenings of early winter are one of my favorite experiences. Darkness approaches at an earlier hour, and somehow, it becomes easier to turn my energy inward and keep it contained within my family.

The girls got their second round of flu shots this evening and I allowed them to have Burger King drive-thru for dinner as a reward. As we drove home, I found myself basking in the comfort of the early darkness–how it seemed to separate us from everything else and made it feel like we were our own little world, encapsulated in our warm vehicle, with only our thoughts and feelings to worry about. I like feeling that feeling–that we’re all that matters in a particular moment.

The earlier approach of night empties the streets of bikers and walkers; when I’m at home on a winter evening, there are fewer distractions outside my window to remove my focus from my precious brood. I love to stand at a window and not see anything outside–only the reflection of my home behind me in the glass in front of me. It seems to sum up what really matters in such a simple way.

Add in the glow of twinkling lights and warm traditions of the winter holidays, and it’s no wonder why this time of year enlarges our hearts and magnifies our desire to spend time with our loved ones. Perhaps we love harder in order to feel warmer and counteract the chill in the air?

Thank goodness for winter. If life was one summer day after another, there would be no time to slow down and ponder when the shortened days of winter keep us close to home. This is a special time, a time to sit still and really see and feel what matters most–our families, our homes, warmth, love, peace and contentment.

Peach Butter

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4-4.5 lbs peaches
4 cups sugar
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
  1. Wash and blanch peaches. Put peaches in cold water. Peel, pit and slice peaches. Combine peaches and 1/2 cup water in saucepot. Simmer until peaches are soft. Puree in food processor.
  2. Combine peach puree, sugar and spices in a large saucepot. Cook until thick enough to round up on a spoon. As mixture thickens, stir frequently to prevent sticking. Ladle hot butter into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 10 minutes (20 for Spanish Fork) in a boiling-water canner.

For a couple of years when I was a young girl, someone in my family made apple butter and gave us a couple jars. I absolutely fell in love with fruit butters then. This was my first time attempting to re-create some of the magic on my own and I’m very pleased with the results. This peach butter has great flavor and the spices make it absolutely wonderful.

Cable-y Goodness

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Indeedidly doo, el Aran Scarf es finito. I love this scarf. Hopefully my pal does as well. It won’t be going out in the mail for a while yet, as this weekend is Birthday Weekend for me and I’m thinking that I’ll have to wait for our next paycheck to pay for the regional goodies and shipping. Or not. And then I’ll be completely done.

I’m going to take a break from knitting for a while.

And I have a hungry baby crying for her dinner. (Or eightsies after dinner.)

Slow and Steady…

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Can I just say that I totally love this scarf?

Seriously, this has been a great knit. I love cables…it’s so fun to watch them appear as you knit.

For those of you who are interested, you can find the pattern online for free! (Thus proving that this scarf is even cooler…free patterns are so nice to come by.)

We’re at forty percent completion. It would be fifty percent if I had been able to find time to knit on it in the past two days. (That’s why I aimed to finish this a month early; I knew there would be days where I could not knit.)

I might knit another one of these. That’s saying a lot because I’ve never knitted the same thing twice. Ever.

Aran Scarf, you rock!

(Even if I’m kicking myself for signing up for ISE6. Really? A scarf exchange? With a newborn and two other little ones? While making three baby quilts? And after my husband has been newly diagnosed with kidney disease? I’m a flippin’ moron!)

(But then I look at this beautiful concoction of yarn and think that it’s worth it to have had the opportunity to discover this pattern and work with it.)

Yee Haw, Movin’ Along…

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Well, the Cowboy Quilt is officially pieced. All that stands between it and completion is a couple of trips to the quilting shop; one to pick out the fabric for the backing and binding, another to drop it off with its backing and batting to be quilted and one last trip to pick it up to take home and sew on the binding. (I’m going to have it professionally quilted because I don’t like to machine quilt and, truthfully, their quilting just plain looks better than mine.)

Rabbit thinks the quilt top makes a swell picnic blanket. (Too bad she dumped that cup of water on it about five seconds after the picture was taken.)

Yes, the blanket seems small; but, in my experience, it’s the smaller baby blankets (24 x 36 inches or so) that become children’s favorites. I’ve made some 36 x 48″ blankets, but that size seems to be too cumbersome for little people to tote. Both Bluebird and Rabbit have adopted “blankies” that are about 2 x 3 feet, so I started making my gift blankets that size as well.

Coming Out of Hibernation

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It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? She’s earmarked for a special little person and I’ve already finished with the tying, which seemed to suit her better than machine quilting…I don’t know why, but I went with it.

Just some binding and she’s good to go.

Aran Scarf

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This is the scarf I’m making for my International Scarf Exchange 6 (ISE6) pal. I’m rather surprised that I ended up going with something as involved as this is going to be, given the time frame and my obvious time shortages for anything extracurricular. My pal mentioned that they liked cables and hadn’t yet tried the technique themselves…so I figured that since I like knitting cables so much, why not spread the love a little bit? Anything worth doing is worth doing well, right?

This is a shot of half a repeat. I plan to do about ten repeats and am aiming for half a repeat a day. I never have time for knitting on the weekends, so I’m looking at 2.5 full repeats a week, which should take me about a month to get this done. It absolutely must be finished by May 26th, so my proposed stitching schedule will definitely keep me ahead of the game, which is good.

The Little Lamb Scarf

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I’m going to estimate this as being about 40% done. There’s nothing special about the patterns, just a 2×2 ribbing; but I love the yarn and just wanted to show it off in something simple. The scarf is going on hiatus for a while as I channel all available spare nano-seconds into the Aran Scarf for my ISE6 pal, so I thought I’d post a little picture…because it’s pretty.

Creativity…the lack thereof…the need for completion

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I’ve lots of theories behind the need to be creative on a regular basis. One theory of mine is that God is a creator, we’re here to become more like Him…therefore, the need to create and be creative. Another theory is that we (women especially) spend our days doing a lot of repetitive tasks–picking up toys, doing laundry, washing the dishes–that will need to be repeated every day and never are really “done” because you’re just going to do them again tomorrow. But having projects that have finite ending points…that’s where you get some peace in your heart at having finished something.

Whatever the reason is, I have a tremendous desire to create. It really starts to wear on me if I don’t get some creative time every few days…like right now. I finished the knitting on the Backyard Leaves scarf the day before Little Lamb was born and now it simply awaits some steam blocking and sewing of the two halves together. (Funny aside: I finished the knitting and thought to myself, “There. Now I can have this baby.” And that night my water broke!) Since I didn’t want to lug out the ironing board in my humungous pregnant state to block Mr. Leafy, I started another scarf with some yarn I had in my stash that evening…I even worked a row of it while I was at the hospital. And I worked on it for fifteen minutes when Little Lamb was two days old. Those were my last moments spent on a creative pursuit…more than two weeks ago. I’m getting fidgety.

I’m getting this antsy feeling to unearth my sewing machine from beneath all the whatever is hiding it from view down in the craft room and start sewing like a crazy person. I’ve seen some of the cutest patterns for tote bags, hats, quilts and little girl dresses lately…oh my goodness, would I like to spend an afternoon sewing without interruption! I know that I’ve got three quilts in progress that I’d really just like to scratch off the mental list of unfinished projects…

And the knitting–I’ve got yarn and patterns for three baby cardigans that I would really like to see my girls wear before they get too big, the argyle scarf (the book is in my possession!), a reversible cabled scarf for the Backyard Leaves recipient’s significant other, the scarf I started right before Little Lamb was born (perhaps I will call it the “Little Lamb Scarf”?), and a desire to make mittens. (Mittens in March? I blame it on Elizabeth Zimmerman and her “Mittens for Next Winter” chapter for the month of May in Knitter’s Almanac…and I blame it on Piecework Magazine’s emphasis on mittens in its latest issue.)

Perhaps it’s not a desire to create, but a desire to feel like something is finished; and I’ve just demonstrated the mountain of unfinishedness that’s lurking in the basement…bad Feng Shui indeed. Hmmm. Maybe I just need to grab the projects that are closest to completion and just finish the silly things. (Dare I even say that I cannot start another project until I finish a set number of In-Progress works?)

That’s it. We’re doing some creativity housecleaning. I’m not sure of what just yet. Off the top of my head, things that aren’t finished:

1. Backyard Leaves Scarf
2. Cheerful Baby Quilt
3. Blue & Yellow Quilt
4. The Ugly Baby Girl Quilt (I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish this)
5. The Little Lamb Scarf
6. Monogrammed Throw Pillow (oh, the calamity that it has turned into…it pains me to look at it and try to figure out how to make it all better again)
7. Patriotic Braided Rug (no motivation as I do not have a patriotic room to put it in until the basement gets finished)

Except for the last two items, I really could get all those done with relative ease. The quilts are pretty near completion, although I’m not exactly sure how far along the Ugly Baby Girl Quilt is. Perhaps I’ll shoot for finishing up the two scarves and the two non-ugly quilts.

But that brings me back to the original dilemma of finding time to do it all…

*sigh*