when we bought this house 5 years ago, we had big gardening plans.
each year, our garden plots have expanded, adding new ones, enlarging old ones.
each year, we plant more and different and we hope and plan and tend as much as we can.
we have lots of failures.
we have lots of successes.
i am so grateful for the fresh quality food we have been able to grow each year.
"inch by inch, row by row, were going to make this garden grow."
five days of thankfulness links:
this post will come to you with very few words.
it is the last post in my series of things that have been knit lately but i am just not getting to remember to share.
the handsome man in the handsome sweater.
finished BEFORE his birthday, in an unlikely manner....
buttons from the mystic orb store on etsy.
i love this sweater and this pattern.
it was actually a pretty quick knit.
so handsome.
one problem: i may have created a situation for myself in that now, cody will know the power of a handknit merino wool sweater.... i fear (hope) that more requests will come soon for another handknit.
into the woods- and baby needs another warm item, what do you do?
pull out last minute knitted gifts and start knitting.
finished this sweater a few weeks ago before we went camping and just now blocked it- it has been a well worn item already just like the pebble vest. this yarn seems to hold up very well- but it has been discontinued unfortunately. it is knitpicks shamrock.
i love this sweater. it is from more last minute knitted gifts and is the perfect gift for someone who is having a new babe- and would be perfect with a hat in the same yarn.
next up for warm weather items for crosby is a tomten. anyone else get the elizabeth zimmerman bug when it turns cold????
a small gift for our best friends little girls first birthday: the owlie.
i finally got around to making this pattern.
i changed it from a pullover to a cardigan.
i used my favorite buttons, and favorite color combo- red and teal.
i used swish worsted from knitpicks. worsted superwash merino. perfect for a babe.
i think this colorway is fired brick.
i was so obsessed with the pattern and outcome of this sweater i wanted to keep it for if/when we ever have a girl baby, but i refrained- considering we have not an inch of space to store such beauty.
i started this sweater on thursday, knitted the arms on friday during a naptime, and finished up the body and finishing on friday night. you could consider this a 6 hour knit.
oh my oh my adorableness at its best.
that explains our weekend.
(above: second 6 hour sweater from more last minute gifts, quick scarf for myself, and infinity scarf)
this past weekend, i pulled off an epic surprise for cody. we had plans to go camping for the weekend with two friends of ours and their baby. what he didnt know, is that for months now, i had planned on several more people joining us in the mountains for the weekend for a camping birthday bash complete with chocolate cupcakes with salted caramel icing.
it was a lazy daisy weekend with lots of cast iron dutch oven cooking (new for his birthday) and delicious micro brews.
it was a weekend of big fires, short hikes turned long by multiple treacherous creek crossings that claimed the life of a pair of sunglasses, and wool..... lots and lots of wool. especially for the baby.
and leaf eating in the sun of course.
finally i am in a place in my knitting life where most of my warmest clothes were made by me. of course, as i have camped for years and years, i have loads of "name brand" warm outdoor gear from all the best outdoor stores. but there is no warmth like wool warmth that was made yourself.
heck, even the above shirt that crosby is wearing is an old merino wool icebreakers shirt of mine that i downsized to make into a long sleeve merino shirt for him. it was the perfect next to skin wool layer for him, along with some merino wool nappy pants.
i actually took no pictures the entire weekend. all of these pictures were thankfully taken by my good friend carah.
the above hat is a new little hat that i made with some leftover spud and chloe outer that i had laying around. it was the shroom hat pattern and it was free free and free.
oh! and did i tell you i finally put some buttons on the adorable and awesomely warm levenwick??
i promise myself i will photograph those buttons. vintage. glass. multi colored. need i say more?
what a good weekend with good memories. and good people. and good food. and good beer. and most importantly good wool.
after a long week of a sick baby, i then became very sick with a downright mean cold for an entire week.
(read: home with a baby who just came off of a week of sickness and had a weeks worth of pinned up energy waiting in the wings, therefore feeling like worst mom in the land for wanting to lay on couch and not move a muscle.)
that means 2 weeks of sickness.
(read: now you know why i havent posted or written a single word to signify my existence.)
while hosting last weeks visitors: aches, chills, and no sleep, i found myself with a 7 1/2 month old who decided to start only taking one nap a day.......
(read: i was looking forward to those two naps to catch a little snuggle and shut eye myself.)
and then i found myself with a baby who decided that now would be the perfect time to start crawling!
(read: snot dripping from nose, but trying to enthusiastically find the video camera or any device that might capture the moment.)
and of course it is the type of crawling that could be described as human dust mop. it is full on army crawl.
(read: totally stressed about how dirty my house is. and therefore how dirty crosby's whole front side is because of it.)
this week, we will have an 8 month old. an 8 month old who loves to eat food, dirt, sticks, leaves, dog hair, tiny bits of who knows what from the ground.
(read: i am becoming busier than i ever thought i could be with one little tiny human.)
this past weekend, as i felt happily recovered, i started happily preparing for winter.
(read: our house was built in the early 1900's and is always cold. very cold. we thankfully have a woodstove. but we still dress extremely warm around the house. like thermals people.)
i started on some baby socks THAT STAY ON to go with these new woolies.
(read: where do people find socks that stay on babies? scratch that. where do people find WARM socks that stay on babies???)
here is my best attempt to get a picture of these on the baby in question.
it turns out that baby feet move faster than the camera lens can focus even in the best situations.
i finished these socks in about 2 hours while sitting outside watching cody stack firewood.
(read: a fast knit considering the multiple stops to clean out the mouth of a baby who *might* have found a stray stick outside to chew on)
i immediately casted on another pair with more modifications for fat little baby feet.
i used alchemy temple yarn. the best washable yarn around. totally worth the money, since you can get 2 pairs of machine washable merino wool socks out of it.
this week, i am writing up this pattern for you.
this week, i will host no visitors of the sick kind.
amen and the end.
ps. could i have chosen better colors for the mums i planted outside? i think not.
this is a post from a little place called honesty. beware.
yesterday was one of those days that i couldnt get enough fresh air in my lungs to keep me calm and sane and all of those things you need to be.
if i am correct in reading into my senses of being a insightful, calm, and thoughtful mother, (which judging by yesterday that description could be a long shot) then i would say that crosby is hitting a major developmental growth spurt and that explains his current frustrations.
being inside a house with nothing but cold rain going on outside and a babe who is currently occupying a major pair of fussy pants (fussy being an understatement) can bring out the worst in any personality, and it did for me.
once i got through the day and put on my going out of the house clothes and got into the car, i took a big deep breath of fall air and made my way to my weekly knitting group while happily listening to trashy pop music on the radio. yes, trash pop music at its finest.
yes, it took me about 6 months after crosby was born to attend my weekly knitting group, but once i was ready, it was like a little breath of fresh air for me. i am only gone for 3 hours at the very most, but it is 3 hours of perfectly perfect knitting, chatting, coffee drinking, sometimes wine drinking, and most importantly relaxation.
on my way home, i remembered the way prior to my re-entry into my knitting group that i would take a breath. i remembered how i would nurse 2 month old crosby in our bed while reading my newest issue of the new yorker, slowly making my way to the fiction section, which of course was the crowning jewel in my advanced new yorker reading. after crosby was alseep i would slowly creep out of the bedroom and cody and i would go sit outside and stare at the garden with an ice cream cone or a cold delicious beer.
so last night, i took a lot of breaths:
on a dark, gloomy, rainy, cool night, we sat chatting, knitting, cross stitching, and enjoying a very appropriate hot toddy and cured olives at a local bar.
i worked on my new baby sock pattern, and also on cody's secret but not so secret birthday sweater that is inches away from being finished.
and there was also a finished object to be seen. my friend emma is responsible for this fine embroidery.
all in all, i came home, chatted with cody, made a plan for the rest of the week, and took another breath.
throughout these last 8 months, i have had several ways of taking a breath. all of these little moments have soothed my soul when the soul needed soothin if you know what i mean.
to inquiring minds: i never really outwardly "lost my cool". its possible that i had a major temper tantrum in my imagination, but that is neither here nor there. so yeah.
so this week, we had a first sickness in our house. i am sure it is the first of many to come.
but a baby who cant breathe scares me. and one that has a cough that sounds like a barking seal scares me even worse.
we spent a lot of time outside in the night air this week. and a lot of time in a bathroom with the hot shower on full blast, sucking up all of the steam.
we doused our life in eucalyptus.
dare i say, we are feeling remarkably better today?
dare i say that i soaked in every sick memory that i could this week? trying to store it in my brain permanently so that i could remember the three of us laying in bed breathing in eucalyptus- the three of us standing in the bathroom and after i simultaneously realized that not only were we wasting hot water but i was also in dire need of a shower (i will spare you how long it had been)- jumping in the shower, talking through the curtain, and discussing how the steam was most definitely ruining the millionth repair job we had done on the 70 year old walls, but totally worth it- listening to the sound of two plastic bath cups banging together for the first time since he started coughing- standing outside in the middle of the black night, confronting my fears of a definite boogie man who lives outside of my house when it is dark, and looking down at a runny eyed runny nose little babe while trying to wrangle all of the sick poop diapers for an extra soak and wash.
i am looking forward to remembering these events.
i want to remember every first.....
and every last.
these guys above are some friends of the little guy.
i sewed them into the 2 pairs of shortalls that i made for crosby at the beginning of summer.
i actually made the above plaid one twice, because the first time it *might* have fit a newborn or a premature baby.
he wore these to my best friends wedding.
i spent the two days prior to leaving for the wedding sewing these two. in true fashion for a person that could win an award for successful procrastination.
they are super wrinkled. they were washed and thrown in the drawer, and warn, and washed, and hung up, repeat.
i enjoyed putting these little outfits on him. they were lightweight, and sturdy, and adorable.
and they no longer fit.
i remember the last time he wore these.
it was a mass for cody's grandmother- before the burial of the ashes.
words cannot describe to wonder and greatness of such a woman.
and just like that, a season is over.
i hope that i can remember the sweet firsts and lasts of that season as clearly as i remember them right now.
a large majority of our recent camping trips have been spent by crosby's side assisting him in his rock explorations.
read: clearing his mouth of any and all pebbles and leaves.
(he does enjoy a good mouth full of tiny pebbles and sand, that is for sure. he is that age.)
knowing that it was going to be fairly chilly on our nc trip, i cast on henry's pebble vest. It seemed a quick knit and i knew i was going to be able to finish it on the drive there or at least the first day. i had also planned on crosby wearing his 6 hour cardigan and his little cotton cardigan that i had knit for him before he was born. that however turned incredibly laughable when i tried them on him and the looked like 3 quarter length sleeve bolero's. luckily i had a few fleece jackets in his closet and the almost finished pebble.
as i neared the end of this little pebble on our first day, and after a long day of cody and i taking turns making sure he didn't ingest an entire tree, we resigned to playing an incredibly intense card game of phase 10 in the tent.
the buttons ended up getting sewed on, and he has been wearing it every time i feel a chill in the air, or even just a small breeze, cause i love it that much.
i might make a few more of these. so adorable.
while i am still reading through to the lighthouse by virginia woolf, i have been flipping through this canning for the next generations book. i scored this copy from the library, and had intended on copy a few stellar-have-to-make recipes out of it for my personal recipe book. i do have about 100 canning books, after all.
after perusing this book for a little while, i simply have to own a copy. there are so so so many delectable treats of recipes in this book that i cannot pass up. eeeekkkss.
i also have this book, this book, and this book added to my wish list. apparently, i have an epic canning year in my future.
in knitting news, i am finishing up the last sleeve on my levenwick. the above yarn will soon be turned into a sweater of perfection for cody. i am swatching this yarn today. i purchased this yarn at my lys, and it really is dreamy. and milled in the us. score and score. this is a project that i am vowing to dot every i and cross every T. complete with making, and BLOCKING the swatch and all that type of stuff that good knitters do. because in the end, 1200 yards of yarn for a big man size sweater is a lot of time to spend on a sweater that you wonked up here and there to get it to fit. for a change, i will follow someone else's directions.
in preservation news, i have a few pounds of peppers to chop and freeze and a 5 pounds of cucumber to turn in to freezer pickles. (of the dill variety...)
oh, and before i go, here are a few pictures of another being in our house who finds much fascination in yarn and a metal bin that is easily banged on for maximum sound pleasure. (and sometimes chewed on, if you are into that sort of thing.)
oh the blurry quality of the photos? yeah, that is possibly a result of a certain small being who enjoys licking and touching the camera lens. yeah, maybe clean the camera is going to be added to the todo list for today.
