cloth.paper.string

warm fuzzies

This morning, my girl put on the sweater that has been waiting patiently in her drawer for over a month.  I finished knitting it in February, but she took no interest in wearing it until today.

As she put it on she told me, "now mama will be with me all day".  My heart got all melty.  It was worth the wait, even if she wouldn't let me take photos of her wearing it. 

However, taking photos of her riding her skuut is fair game.

The sweater has a top-down one-piece yoke construction with some double moss stitching that creates a bit of a smocked look at the yoke and edges.  Yarn and pattern details are on ravelry. 

Unrelated, but almost as exciting, J and I took apart our dryer tonight and somehow fixed it by removing the decade's worth of dust bunnies and putting it back together.  The tried and true Fix It Yourself Manual came to the rescue yet again.  

weekend sewing

Inspired by Erin's interview and emboldened by a pair of tobacco brown t-shirts found at the thrift shop on Friday, I began a version of Alabama Chanin's bloomers skirt this weekend.  There's a bunch of experimenting going on here... the biggest being that the thrifted jersey on the inside is a poly-cotton mix, instead of the recommended cotton.  I like the combination of the two fabrics too much to not give it a go.  I also made my own decorative pattern of randomly scattered circles in various sizes, stenciled onto the jersey with that magical freezer paper.   My fingers are crossed (and pricked by sewing needles) that this first attempt at hand stitching an entire garment will work out; but so far, I'm happy with the progress. 

koi mittens

Lately I've been without words and without images.  But I haven't been without the knitting needles and inspiration from ravelry.  The latest knitting obsession was these little goldfish mittens. 

They're really quick and so very cute (and already much loved).  See here for the free pattern.

stacked coins

Many, many moons ago I started a quilt for Rowan's bed - she was moving from our bed, where she had slept since birth, to her own.  Somehow the notion of swaddling her up in a mama-made quilt made the transition easier for me (I see now that I struggled with this change probably more than she did). 

The actual making happened in fits and starts.  But finally, in the last few weeks, I pulled it together and finished it up.  One afternoon of piecing, one of quilting and a bunch of movies worth of hand stitching the binding and suddenly it's done. 

The stacked coins are made up of vintage and new fabrics, scraps from a swap, gingham from a friend, and bits from some of her clothes.  As usual, my ever-opinionated girl has a different idea about just how the quilt should go on her bed:  the quilt top faces down, and the back - made from a thrifted yellow floral pottery barn sheet - faces up.  Yellow is currently her favorite color, after all.

With a year and a half of mostly restful nights having passed, I'm glad I didn't actually wait until the quilt was finished to send her off into her own bed.  Believe me, I was tempted.

I've been making...

...End of May mittens, knit up for a friend's birthday.

...Leya's granola with puffed corn, dried cranberries and goat milk yogurt.

...a quilt for the girl.

Now I need to get making Valentines...
Hope your weekend is great, my friends.

hope

Tonight, on a long dark highway, I was brought to tears by a religious hymn.  The World radio program ended with the a psalm that survivors in Port-au-Prince have been heard singing as they walk through the devastated streets.  The verse reminded me of the resilience of hope even in the darkest of times, and lifted a bit of the heaviness I've been carrying since hearing the news of the earthquake earlier this week.

Another reminder of hope is the surge of support for earthquake recovery efforts seen around the handmade community.  So many talented makers are sending a portion of their sales to organizations helping on the ground in Haiti.  And Craft Hope has opened an etsy shop and filled it with donated handmade items with all of the proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders.  I just added the last of my limited edition cottonwood leaf journals to their effort.  It's a small bit, really, but one of a growing collective.

May hope abound.

habitual

You put your camera around your neck in the morning, along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.  The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.  -- Dorothea Lange 

One thing I carried with me everyday in 2009 was my camera.  I set out to take (and post) a photo a day from the winter solstice to the next.  The photo taking was accomplished, but the uploading of images got away from me during those long and full days of summer. 

My intention was to take some pictures, but I ended up with some unanticipated results.  I learned a bunch about one camera, and then another.  I dusted off my film camera, experimented with a variety of lenses.  A little documentary project of my housing development work was born from the 365 challenge.  An image was featured in a magazine, and later, the publication's calendar.  My favorite images from each month of the year are here - many of which would not exist had I not set out to take a photo a day. 

I'm at it again this year.  I wasn't sure about it initially, but my time at habit in December reminded me of just how poignant the capture of small moments can be.  Like today.  The round table in the corner around which we sat.  The tin ceiling above.  How over the course of an hour, the funk I've been in all week evaporated.  A simple thing, but one to celebrate.

one of the many

It's cold.  Layers are in full effect.  I'm grateful that my friend included me as one of the 'friends and family' who could take advantage of the crazy deals her status as Smartwool Pro affords her.  Cozy knee socks and tights ($15!) today. 

One of the six layers I donned on my upper half included the sweater I finished up in November.  I gushed and gushed about it here, knit it up faster than I have any other project, and then got swept up by other things and didn't share the results.  Not that I haven't been constantly reminded, as the sweater is practically my uniform these days.

It's a fantastic pattern.  All went smoothly until I got to the buttons.  As I was finishing the sweater I found these and knew they were the ones.  They arrived just as the blocking was finished, but I sadly found that they were too big for the buttonholes I had created.  Since I historically have such trouble with finishing things, I knew that my momentum would be lost if I went back to rework the buttonholes.  I looked in my stash of vintage buttons and found two that were a perfect match to the color.  The look is completely different (I even thought about giving the sweater to my nana, as the buttons are a style I've seen her wear time and again), but it's growing on me.  Melissa's lovely buttons will surely adorn an upcoming sweater.

I still need a solution for my forever cold feet.  I'm seriously considering a pair of these - they're probably the smartest footwear choice for this climate and my current lifestyle, even though I much prefer the look of these and these.  But really, the cute factor is difficult to achieve when the windchill dips down into the negative teens.  If only it were possible to just stay inside and knit.

holiday knits | baktus

One of the first things I remember knitting was a scarf for him.  A patient woman at the needlework shop in Santa Fe taught me how to cast on, knit and purl, commenting that my hands were going to cramp up permanently if I didn't learn to work with looser stitches.  I recently happened upon a photo of an apartment we rented that winter and on the coffee table was the big hank of kettle dyed yarn, some wooden needles and the beginnings of the scarf.  It took over a year of fits and starts to knit that thing - the result was somewhat scratchy and bulky - a result of both the yarn and my inability to bind off. 

This winter I decided I'd make a softer, more streamlined scarf for him.  I followed the baktus pattern, using blue sky alpaca.  The simple elongated triangle is perfect for layering.  The yarn is soft as can be.  The photographing of the scarf proved to be the most difficult part of the project, so you have a blurry image of me wearing the scarf (and a very wrinkly sweater).  I'd knit it again, but would shorten it by a few inches length-wise so that the tails aren't quite so long.

I have one other knit to share -- one I finished in November but have neglected to post about since I've been busy finishing up these others.  Tomorrow.

new year's promise

I can feel the potential of the year to come in last night's rising moon;

and in the budding paperwhites.  I hope you can feel it, too.

Happy new year, friends!