{this moment} - A Friday ritual. Photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.
Outside My Window
Today is bright and beautiful, but cold. It won't hit 70 degrees today and the wind is blowing.
I am Listening to
Nicholas and Katie discussing Tangled versus Rapunzel.One thing is certain: Nicholas is sure that Tangled is not a princess movie. "It's way better than that."
I have to agree.
I am Wearing
Jeans, ruffled neck t-shirt, embroidered cotton cardigan.
I am so Grateful for
~my optician, who has been on a quest for nearly ten years to find me a pair of glasses that fit.
~glasses that fit. Worth every penny I saved to buy them.
I'm Pondering
“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.” Bl. John Paul II
a review copy of Kate Wicker's new book. Good stuff.
I am Thinking
about asking some small businesses and Etsy crafters if they'd like to sponsor this blog. Let me know if the thought appeals to you.
I am Creating
On my iPod
a little Cinco de Mayo earworm.
Towards a Real Education
Nicholas has been challenged to read his way through every picture book we own--aloud, to me. We have a vast selection of historical, science, saints' and other biographies, geographical, and just plain good stories. If he meets this challenge, he will have a wide and varied (and fairly deep) knowledge base and he will have an appreciation for good art and language. Sounds like a plan.
{The extended time on the couch with mom is not to be underappreciated, either.}
Towards Rhythm and Beauty
We've begun a new school term and so far the rhythm is lovely. Our afternoon knitting and crafting begins in earnest when Gracie arrives around 2:45 every day. Mornings are productive and academic. Chores are getting finished. Outside time happens when the weather permits. Evenings are for soccer and dance. Lots of reading. All good.
To Live the Liturgy...
Playing this song over and over these days.
I am Hoping and Praying
for Elizabeth deHority. She is constantly on my heart and in my prayers. She needs you now. Please, please pray with me.
for the soul of Ty Lewis and for his family and for the countless soccer families who grieve his loss.
for Sarah and her family as they grieve the tragic loss of her sister-in-law.
for Mike's dad and for his mom and for his medical care.
In the Garden
Snap peas and spring lettuces. Observation: we have a very small square foot garden. There's no way it can a feed a family this size. For instance, I can't begin to gather enough lettuce at one time for a dinner salad for us all. We really need a bigger garden. One at least three times this size.
Around the House
I fixed the washing machine. It's been taking ages to get through one load of laundry--seriously, four or five HOURS. I dreaded calling our very nice repairman and having him tell me that someone's pocket treasures were clogging up the works. And I dreaded even more writing him a $200 dollar check. So I googled. And I found this. We bought a set of Torx screwdrivers ($8). And I fixed the washing machine. When you subtract the $1.75 in quarters I found in the pump, the whole thing cost me $6.25. And made my whole day.
Furthermore, I learned a valuable lesson: it really does matter how well my appliances work. No matter how organized I am and how disciplined I am, if the washing machine doesn't work well, I will get behind on laundry. This principle can be applied to other things. More on that later, perhaps.
From the Kitchen
Tea without sugar. I gave it up for Lent. Now I don't want it any more. Go me.
One of My Favorite Things
the smell of the craft store
A Few Plans for the Week
~May Crowning at the mission church tomorrow with our girls club
~State Cup on Satruday
~Mother's Day: game in Maryland (and hour or so away), pickup at the airport close to home, game in McLean, drop off at the airport close to home.
~ballet on Monday. and soccer
~and Tuesday
~and Wednesday....
~I'm speaking at the women's group on Ft. Belvoir Wednesday morning:-)
Picture thoughts:
{{Comments are open. I have been terrible about responding to mail. Please forgive me? I do read every single note and I do pray for you. But, I don't always answer promptly. I'm hoping that having comments open on occasion will give me a chance to answer the more common questions for several people at once and will give you dear ladies an opportunity to talk with each other. They are moderated, so if you don't see yours at first, it means I'm busy knitting; it will appear shortly.}}
Last week, I did a little experiment. Elizabeth sent me five "mystery fibers." They were each labeled, A-E, in their own bags. I didn't know which one was which but I knew I had llama, yak, merino, cashmere, and alpaca. The idea was to play with each of them long enough to see if I would react.
About 20% of the population reports being "allergic" to wool. Most of them are actually just sensitve to wool's prickly fibers. Truly allergic people have respiratory symptoms--wheezing, sneezing, running nose, itching and tearing eyes. Every one of those bags caused me allergic symptoms, though the cashmere was not nearly so bad as the others.
This fact made me exceedingly sad. My visit to the yarn store had shown me what amazing yarns were out there. It had also been heavily skewed towards wool. It's a part of the knitting world that will not be a part of my world.
I made an order to WEBS shortly after completing the experiment. I ordered several cotton yarns, just one skein each. The plan is knit gauge swatches and find a yarn I really love so that I can browse patterns (one of my new favorite pasttimes) and know that I can find an alternative to wool. So, I'm knitting lots of squares again:-). I never would have thought I'd purposefully order yarn to just make swatches, but now I'm seeing that I need to just knit with a few options before I get over my head with yarns that aren't going to work.
I'm still reading Organized Simplicity. And I think its principles are affecting my knitting a wee bit. A friend laughed the other day when she saw my well-organized knitting pattern book. I guess I've started enough new crafting hobbies the wrong way that I'm determined to be organized and careful from the get-go with knitting. The day after our knitting "Momcation," there was yarn on the living room table and I found needles under the couch. Someone had already torn a label off a bright pink yarn, only one of its kind, leaving me the first mystery yarn in my stash. I know enough about how to keep things organized after all these years with all these kids to see that this was a disaster in the making. So, I determined to do this right, right from the beginning.
I have two notebooks. One is for patterns. I like to print right after I download, so that I don't need my computer to knit. Knitting has been a wonderful way to pull myself away from the computer and I like it that way. All the patterns are filed, according to age and gender, in page protectors.
The other notebook is for gauge swatches. I slip the knitted gauge swatch into a page protector with the band from the yarn and a note reminding msyelf what needles I used to knit the swatch and what my gauge was. A zippered pocket holds buttons behind a clear plastic window and sewing needles and notion behind the buttons.
I really didn't want a "yarn stash." It seems counterintuitive to so many things: battling clutter, avoiding overbuying, finishing what I start...After the "momcation," I had several skeins of yarn. I had no idea whatsoever what I was going to knit with them. Come to think of it, I had no idea how to knit;-). I also learned that knitters like to gift other knitters with yarn. So, there were several skeins there of very nice yarn, some of it so nice that it's still waiting for me to deicde what is worthy of its knitting. The stash --since apparently there was going to be a stash-- needed a home. I have installed it in the cabinets of our antiquated TV hutch. [Yes, my husband is a television executive and our TVs are all turn-of-the-century boxes. I figure if he ever decides we need a flat TV, that just gives me a much bigger space in the cabinet for knitting books.] The yarn is there, with mine on the top shelf and the girls' beneath it. And I have the girls trained to keep their projects on their yarn shelf when they're not working on them. I'm going to help them sew project bags this week.
I have a basket with all my Harmony needles in a small bag. The cables not currently in use are also in the basket, along with a tape measure, stitch markers, needle gauge, and some straight needles. The little green triangle from my first knitting lessons also lives there, inspiring me with warm memories.
I keep my current project (and I try to have just one) in a drawstring project bag. There is a tiny pair of scissors in there, my current yarn, a page-protected copy of the pattern with the numbers for the proper size circled, and any notions I may need during that knit. When I'm home and not knitting, the project bag goes in the basket and the basket goes in the cabinet.
Our growing collection of kntting books and pattern books are in the cabinet, too. A place for everything. I don't want to ruin the relaxing effect that knitting has on me by turning into yet one more thing that has us scrambling and searching so that we can relax and create.
My girlies are learning to knit, and loving it. I tend to be very liberal with creative materials. My children have unfettered access to paints, paper, crayons, clay, magic markers, chenille stems. Our craft room is always on the brink of disaster. (The things Christian has done with duct tape and cardboard and paint are astounding.) While I want to continue to be unabashedly enthusiastic in all their creative pursuits, I have learned a thing or two. They have freedom within well-defined limits with the knitting supplies.
And I am still committed to very limited UFOs and a very small stash of yarn.
Psst, I started my Baby Surprise Jacket. My life is going to be a little crazier than usual next week, so I wanted to get a head start. Very fun knit! Won't you join us for a knit-along? Look for a post announcing prizes by the end of the week and sign up to start by May 9th!
{comments open}
Counting feminine blessings, today.
~Sweet, giggly sleepyheads ever so excited about strawberries, cream, scones and tea and a chance to watch a real live princess walk down the aisle to her prince.
~Sighing and smiling and countless requests to watch it again on Youtube.
~A full day of playing wedding, each of them taking turns being the princess bride.
~An evening spent with Mama's and Daddy's wedding album: Mommy looks like a princess, too. And see how Daddy is smiling at her? That's because they love each other.
~Her insistence that they show the album to Daddy when he gets home and that they make him sing all the songs from his wedding.
~Fifteen hand-painted notes for him, stacked on the office desk, awaiting his return.
~The way they refer to themselves as "the girlies."
~And the way the littlest one refers to the others as "my girlies."
~About a million hair bows.
~The way her hair makes tight ringlets in the rain.
~The way the others love her curls (and wish they had them, too).
~Laundry separated into lights, darks, and pinks.
~Monday ballet afternoons and the outrageous noise level of fifteen giggling, dancing girls.
~And the three little ones all want to grow up to be just like the big sister.
~All five of us knitting together--and teaching Gracie and Mel to knit, too. That way, as Gracie so aptly put it, "We'll all have something to do when we're old."
~Utter delight in the first meal of the season taken out of doors.
~Them begging to go back to the bluebells.
~Littlest one reaching over all the other pretend cupcakes so that she can have the chocolate pretend cupcake.
~An afternoon of dressing up, posing for the camera, and somehow blurring the line between props and real life, so that they are sure they just had a fancy tea party in the woods.
~The tender care they take of their rather large family of baby dolls.
~The way they don't play "House" (as I did), but they play "Babies" and the favorite game of all, "Babies and Friend Moms."
~Sweet smelling bathtimes, pink fingernails and toenails, rub-rub after the tub.
~Long, curly eyelashes on barely pink cheeks in the glow of the hall light when I kiss them goodnight one more time.
~My heart filled to the brim with my sweet girlies.
{all photos courtesy of the amazing Lori Fowlkes}
As we get ready to knit together a Baby Surprise Jacket, Elizabeth has put together some answers to frequently asked questions. I've posted those below. Even if you are a new knitter, come and knit with us. If I can do it, anyone can--with Elizabeth to help along.
Let's take a look at questions you may be pondering and see if we can get you off and knitting.
From Elizabeth:
Here are codes:
<a href="http://ebeth.typepad.com/reallearning/2011/05/baby-surprise-jacket-knit-along.html" target="_blank"<img src="http://ebeth.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c543553ef015432080c41970c-pi" width="400" height="280" border="0" alt="Baby Surprise Jacket KnitAlong" /></a>
If you're going to join us, please leave a comment, and then leave a link as well, so we can find you. (If you don't have a blog, join anyway. You can post pictures to the Flickr group.)
I'm Elizabeth. I'm a happy wife and the mother of nine children. I grab grace with both hands and write to encourage myself and others to seize and nurture the joy of every day. I blog here with my daughter, Mary Beth, a wholehearted young lady on the brink of adulthood.
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