It’s been a week filled with beauty, love, and plenty of challenges.  Like most weeks, basically.  Ella’s had a wicked chest cold for about two weeks, which wakes her in the night coughing (which wakes me int he night to comfort her).  I did manage to sneak in a bit of crafting while a babysitter was here (finishing a striped raglan for Ella and a Stella pixie hat – thank goodness I started them both long ago).  And I do think she’s almost better – at last.  I seem to have a re-occuring pattern that sickness lingers (in myself or my daughter) until I stop to ask myself what lesson this illness might have to offer.  Not just a complaining “Why me?” questioning, but a true wondering what the gift could be.

Today, I did not want to show up for work (meaning, life).  But I happened to reread Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa’s section in this article (it’s posted in my sewing room), and I thought, Of course.  I closed my eyes and asked to be shown how I could be of service.  I opened my eyes and there was a sick four year old, with all of her quirks and needs.  There was a husband with arms sore from erecting a huge hoophouse, who really needed a quick massage.  There were many chances to make extra cups of tea when I went to make on for myself, and endless chances to truly listen to someone talking to me, to offer a kind word, to ignore any unkindness.  I found myself singing This little light of mine, and tonight we lit two candles on our menorah.  I was so glad that I had truly been here today.

Wishing you wonderful holidays, and that the light we are all searching for finds you, wherever you are.  Blessings on you and yours.

It’s getting close to baby time now, and the days are both moving slowly and also very quickly.  After a few crazy days of doing too much, my midwife ordered me to do nothing, so I spent most of last week doing as little as I could.  I’m glad to say I’m feeling well again, and taking time, as always, to count all our blessings. On the farm, there’s a hoophouse going up, grains about to be distributed to our shareholders, insulation being slowly but surely added to every nook and cranny, and I did finally finish painting that hallway.  I swear, though, the hoophouse, insulation, and the grains are all Ben, and I’m mostly spending my days growing this big belly.  Really.

Joining Yarn Along: I finished all of the baby knits I most wanted to make, and even had time to do this sweet owlie sleeping sack.  I also have a hat secretly in progress for Ella’s Christmas present.   I’m really enjoying reading The 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting, recommended to me by Tonya.   I’m also loving the book Natural Health After Birth by Aviva Jill Romm.  The fairies brought Ella Phoebe’s Sweater, and also Hello Baby (great for homebirthers!).

It’s definitely feeling like time to turn inward for winter, and I can’t think what I’d like to do more than snuggle with a brand new babe (and my huge babe!) in front of the woodstove.  Ella discovered in my sewing room a waldorf doll-in-progress (originally intended for last Christmas) and got really excited about making it together.  I realized that would be a great project to work on together in those first days when I’ll be trying to stay in bed as much as possible, since it’s all hand sewing.  And then, of course, there will be doll clothes to make, which will stretch it even longer.  Excellent.  Time to put some soup in the freezer, rearrange the living room to make room for the tub, and make a few simple, simple gifts for the holidays.

(Ella eating chestnuts with her Nana on Thanksgiving.)

I hope these days find you well, friends.

Ben came along, as you can tell, and took a lot of photos.  He got a new lens for our camera last week, and I will admit I was skeptical (being generally skeptical of any gadgetry purchase), but what can I say?  He’s a genius, and it’s one of the best $100 we’ve ever spent.  All of a sudden, we can take photos inside.  Even in our poorly lit kitchen, where I have struggled for so long to get halfway decent shots.  Craziness.

I’m almost done with my Shalom cardigan – only one more sleeve to go! (And how fitting that this is called Shalom, since peace definitely seems to be a theme in my life these days). I am really excited about this sweater. Honestly, I would have finished one or even two months ago, but I had to rip out my first two tries, as they were too small. But at last, it fits, and this yarn (Beaverslide Fisherman weight) is so beautiful. I’m not sure the photo captures all the little flecks of gold, but they are lovely.
I’m re-reading one of my favorite books, Meditations from the Mat, by Rolf Gates. Truly, I think this is one of the best spiritual books ever, and even if you don’t practice yoga I highly recommend it. I’m also reading Hypnobirthing, which is really interesting and I’m excited about it.
It’s been so long since I did a Yarn Along post, I wanted to also tell you about some other good reads from the past few months:
Ten Habits of Happy Mothers - I really loved this, it was so thoughtfully and lovingly written, and doesn’t make you feel bad about all that you’re not doing, just illuminates a lovely path to follow.
Handmade Beginnings – this has such cute projects, I’m sewing myself the Mariposa dress right now, and hoping I have time to make the sweet hooded jacket for baby.

Currently, we’re deep in the midst of making her Halloween costume, which I am ironically trying to sew as slowly as possible so that I don’t finish it before the big day.  But in the meantime, we’ve made quite a few other things, which I thought I’d share.

We’re working on making a big pile of baby wipes – made from old t-shirts and flannel pajama pants.  I simply cut out a rectangle (two layers), and for the t-shirts, I just sewed a zigzag stitch around the edge and called it done.  So simple, and so satisfying to use old soft clothes to make these.  For the flannel, I turned the right sides of the fabric together, did a straight stitch all the way around except I left a 2″ opening.  I turned it right side out, folded in the 2″ raw edges and then did an edge stitch all the way around.  (I could’ve just stitched the hole shut, but Ella insists that it looks prettier this way.  What can I say?  She’s right.)

This is the dress that seems to have kicked off the sewing frenzy for Ella.  She wanted to make a dress for the baby (no, we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl), but when we got into the sewing room and started looking at fabric, she said, “Actually, Mama, can we make a dress for me?”  So we did, using Simplicity pattern #2684 (which I used to make this adorable shirt year before last) and some vintage reprint fabric that I adore.  It was nice using a pattern I had done before – much smoother the second time around!   I think she’s finding it really reassuring to have me making something for her.  So, while I’ve been mixing it up with a little bit of projects for baby or myself, we have mostly been sewing for her, which I think is pretty great.

We made this “morning bag” to hold her pajamas.  (I used the pattern for the bedtime bags in The Creative Family.)  In the morning, I’m usually downstairs when she wakes up, and in the past months she’s changed (without any sort of prodding from us) from waking up crying for me to waking up, putting on clothes, and coming down the stairs to greet me with a huge, proud smile on her face.  At least, she was until the cold came, and then last week she was coming downstairs naked, shivering, and wicked crabby.  So, a morning bag, which hangs on the doorknob waiting for her, with cozy warm pajamas so that she can climb out of bed, put on the warm pajamas, and come down.  So far it’s worked great, and she was super thrilled by the bag, wanting to show it off to everyone who came to our house.  I told her I was making a surprise, had her choose the fabric, and then sewed it right up – that was fun.

I made myself some new pajama pants, too.  I was really bummed at first when I realized this year that all three of my pairs of flannel pajama pants had huge rips in them.  I sewed the holes shut, but they ripped open again.  Then I realized these pajamas were at least ten years old, and I didn’t feel so bad.  I ordered some organic cotton flannel, and traced my old pairs for a pattern.  The first pair came out too small (forgot to leave enough seam allowance), but I think they’ll fit once I’m not, you know, 7 months pregnant.  The second pair fits, hooray!

Phew, and I think that’s it!  Oh wait, we made this shirt together.  It’s from Meg’s fabulous new book, Growing up Sew Liberated, which I received as an early birthday present.  The reason I got this one (instead of just checking it out from the library) was because it includes several basic knit patterns like this.  Which is just so awesome, because they’re the sort of clothes that you know you’ll be making over and over for your kids for so many years.  The only bummer is that even though I measured Ella and thought I was tracing the right size, it’s way too big – it might fit her next year.  Oh well, back to the sweatshop to sew the right size . . .

For nighttime, it’s so wonderful to have a waterproof mat for the bed.  With Ella, we had some but they were too small, plus they were plastic on one side, so they made awful crinkly noises all night long.  Not so great for, you know, sleeping.

I remember someone saying a year or two ago that they had felted down a wool blanket from the thrift store to make a water-resistant sleeping mat, and I thought, Aha!  I’ve never found a wool blanket (who are these lucky thrifters?), but I did have a pile of sweaters that were worn out/shrunken, and a few I got from the thrift store just for this.  I cut them apart, felted them (on hot in the washing machine – it took two cycles for some of them), then squared up the biggest body pieces, and sewed them together.  Viola – a water-resistant, absorbent, not-crinkly sleeping mat for baby.  Nice and big, too.  (A quick aside here – when we started ECing with Ella at five months, we really focused on the nighttime, and it was amazing.  Within a week or two she stopped waking to pee in the night, and would only pee while sleeping when she was coming down with an illness.  We used, and I highly recommend, the book Diaper Free.)  I’ll use the sleeves from those sweaters to sew some wool pants.

Lastly, these booties have nothing to do with being diaper free, but that’s alright.  This is the fourth pair of these I’ve made, but the first for my own baby.  I’m in love with this colorway, it makes me think of raspberries.  Yummy.

Some of you might remember that Fair Isle yoke I was adding into the Hourglass Sweater.  Well, it turns out that I can knit Fair Isle, and that the pattern is every bit as beautiful as I hoped.

It also turned out, when I tried the sweater on, that the whole thing fit perfectly right up to the yoke, which was about 3 sizes too small.  In meshing the two patterns I got my decreases wrong, and so there was nothing to do but rip it out.  I put in the fair isle because I was worried that I wasn’t going to have enough yarn to finish the sweater (the first I’ve ever made for myself!), but after ripping out all those stitches, I found one last ball in my yarn basket.  Hooray!  And now, I’m just three rows and some sewing away from being finished.

I’m super excited.  I already ordered some yarn from Beaverslide (mule spun!  How could I resist?) for my next big project.

Oh yes, and for books – I’m reading (and really enjoying) Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, plus A Journey Through Waldorf:  Kindergarten as I prepare ideas for the year to come with Ella.  Her plans, apparently, include covering herself with bandaids, “to look like a fierce cat.” Awesome.

Mama, she said, can I mop?

Not a question anyone would ever say no to.  She thought she’d mop the fridge, too, just in case.  (The mop, btw, was made by Tonya and her lovely family.)

Also, a few weeks ago I made this handtowel (on the right) for the kitchen.  We needed a new one, and this was possibly the easiest, most satisfying thing I’ve ever sewn.  Just a fat quarter my mother sent (thanks Mom!), with two strips cut from another, sewn together then hemmed all around.

It’s definitely the season for new in the kitchen.  The fiddlehead ferns and asparagus are here, and we’re doing our best to stuff ourselves until they disappear!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone.  Enjoy the tidings of spring.

Notes to self:

Next time you want to do some sewing, declare it your Only Goal for the day. It will happen.

For that matter, having one goal is always helpful. Don’t panic, other things will happen, too.  Or they won’t.  There will be another day.

Next time you wonder how so many dirty dishes multiply, even in this small family, the answer is this: We live here. We actually live in this house, and make three meals a day here. That means dishes. Take it as a blessing, a sign that you are living the life you want.

Eggs from your own hens never grow old, never get less beautiful.

Also beautiful: naps. Especially on rainy days.

Also beautiful:  inspiration like this.  And this.

Note to self: beauty is everywhere.  Take the time to see it.

Most exciting of all, the winners (chosen by random number generator) are:

#20 Amy said:

I’d love to win the copy of Fix Freeze Feast

# 14 Caroline said:

Wow, what a wonderful book giveaway! I’ve been really wanting to learn to knit two-at-a-time socks, so I’d love to be entered into the drawing for that book.

I love reading your blog – checking for new entries is one of the highlights of my mornings.

#23 Katie said:

Wow, that looks to be rather complicated knitting. Good on you for tackling it! I’m hesitant to try Elizabeth Zimmerman.

Thanks for the chance at the giveaway! If I am one of the lucky chosen, I would love to have Toe-Up 2 at a time. Thanks so much!

Thanks for entering everyone!  Winners, please email me at wheatberryma(a)gmail.com with your mailing address.  Katie and Caroline – we may have to toss a coin to see who gets the sock book!

Have a great week, everyone.