A writer's notes on family
Miss N. is suffering (and I do mean suffering) from her first case of chapped lips. I know this because the instant anything touches her lips she shrieks, “Ow! My lips!”
The horror.
I’m certain she would appreciate your fervent prayers.
Link Up!
As I type this, Nora is dipping a colored pencil in a glass of water and using it to draw pictures on my leg. The fridge is packed with food. We all get four days off together in a warm house.
Ben just woke up, walked into the kitchen and said, “Shouldn’t you be cooking?” He is the master of the verbal wink. Now he’s making fun of Nora’s cough.
It’s going to be a great weekend. And I am so very thankful.
Wishing everyone the happiest of Thanksgivings. May your day and the season to come be filled with love, laughter and gratitude.
I really want to make this sweater from the current issue of Knitty.
I love the stitch pattern in the cowl. Since it would be unwise to begin yet another sweater project, I made a stand alone cowl out of a heavier yarn just so I could test drive the stitch pattern. It’s a great project for a Christmas gift: it takes almost no finishing and uses only one skein of yarn.
I wrote up the pattern to share:
Trinity Stitch Cowl
Thank you, Instagram, for somehow making me look less tired than I was.
Yarn: Aran Weight (1 – 50 gram skein)
Needles: size 10.5 – 16” circulars
Gauge: Not too terribly important
(You could easily and successfully make this out of worsted weight in perhaps a size 8 needle, and vary the size by using more of less stitches when casting on, just make sure your total number of stitches is divisible by four.)
CO: 96 stitches, join in the round and place marker at the beginning of the round
Round 1: P all sts.
Round 2: *[P1, k1, p1] into next st (1 st increased to 3 sts), k3tog; repeat from * to end.
Round 3: P all sts.
Round 4: *K3tog, [p1, k1, p1] into next st; repeat from * to end.
Repeat Rounds 1-4 for Trinity Stitch.
Repeat until you have just a few yards of yarn left, hopefully ending on a round 1 or round 4. Bind off loosely. Weave in ends. Block with a steam iron.
Send me a photo if you make one! Or better yet, make the sweater and send me a photo of that!
Link up with @bellebeandog and @taminginsanity!
I’ve been on a crafting jag. A bender, really. Knitting or sewing all the time and finishing something every few days. Lots of chunky wool and near instant gratification.
You know those folks who hunker down on the couch when it gets cold and commence playing 36 hours straight of Xbox or watch a marathon of Sex and the City and eat nothing but delivered pizza and Doritoes? Well, I realized I’m fooling myself if I think I’m much different.
Blogs, husbands and housework are all being neglected. The Sunday after Veteran’s Day was the worst of all. Nora didn’t get outside all day, decent food didn’t get cooked, laundry did not get done, exercise did not get, um, exorcised. By the end of the day, Nora was bouncing off the walls, pretty literally. It was very tough and get her to sleep and she woke up at 3:30am Monday morning and could not fall back to sleep for all her pent up energy. My fault.
This weekend I purposely sought to restore balance. On Saturday, I did knit a cowl, but we also went outside and played with the chickens and did some garden clean-up and it did a world of good.
All a reminder that my life — and the life of our family — is better when I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Now, if I could just bring myself to do a little bit of laundry.
This parenting gig is tough. There are plenty of opportunities to question yourself. Should I have let her have that much extra honey on her oats this morning? Can she be trusted to thoroughly brush her teeth without a quality assurance check? Am I teaching her to be kind? Should we put more responsibility on her?
And then there are those moments when you know you nailed it.
Saturday I suspected that Nora was getting a cold. She developed a runny nose and sounded nasally when she spoke. Sunday morning, each sneeze brought a thick bead of snot and she had tell-tale purple circles under her eyes. She took a three and a half hour nap.
Later that evening, we had finished story time and she became upset that we hadn’t done our routine of yoga by candlelight. She cried hard, and a sharp intake of breath ran into all the mucus in her little body, she started coughing and caused a gag reflex. I knew she would throw up. I held my cupped hands in front of her mouth and the vomit poured into my hands. I called for Ben, who came running with a bowl and paper towels.
I had not spilled a drop. Clean bed, clean jammies. We brushed her teeth, got her a glass of water and snuggled her in bed.
Super mom. Bam.