And finally the dishcloth

To prove that although I enjoy knitting I am not a great knitter, but what I understand is a process knitter. It soothes me.

Here is the pattern, one I am sure everyone has:

1. Cast on four stitches.

2. Knit one, yarn over, knit to the end.

3. Do the above row until there are 44 stitches on the needle (I love that I only have to remember one number, four, in this whole pattern).

4. Once there are the 44 stitches next row you start the decrease.

5. Knit one, knit two together, knit one, knit two together, knit to the end.

6. When all that is left is 4 stitches cast off.

You can make about one a day of these if you really need settling down.

My mutton dressed as lamb series

I loved the Ottobre dress (#9) I made for Christmas so much that I decided to make a few more for round the house wear out of some cotton and rayon leftovers I had kicking around. I wear these both with jeans and with some leggings I got on sale when Christmas shopping. I am too old for these I am sure but they are wonderful comfort clothes for housework, schlepping and sewing/knitting. Being tall I like the length of them, no exposed back when I scrub out the bathtub for instance. Of course it has occurred to me that doing some baby sewing I may be starting to dress myself like a baby, but I spend so much time in the adult world I think that is just fine. I won't be doing a lot of baby sewing, her dad's cousin has four little girls and the clothes keep rolling in, some still with the tags on them, and it seems to me that babies these days have so much more than my kids ever did. But I will make a few special things and some knitted stuff, like the thick mitts and boots from Icelandic wool I made last week. This country is just too damn cold in the winter.

Catch up on Christmas sewing

I felt better after I posted last night and appreciated the comments. I have decided that rather than wait until things settle down and are worked out for me that I should just do what I would do anyway.

So I am posting some pictures of my Christmas sewing. Here are some matching pj's I made for my daughter and grand-daughter. Being a mother of a three month old and tired a lot of the time, DD changed into the pj's half way through Christmas dinner. I am wearing a navy velour sort of smock dress from an Ottobre pattern that was very comfortable for the day and of course I made a sort of matching one for my granddaughter, pictured here with her five month old cousin. I also made her leggings, trimmed a onesie with stretch lace and knit her some little Mary Jane shoes.

Sorry for the delay

I am acutely aware that it has been two whole months since I posted. This really bothers me but I have had a lot going on. Too much work, non-stop company and some sad things to deal with. The death at 26 of a good friend of my middle son's from a congenital heart defect that finally caught up with him, the sudden illness of a favourite relative, who had her colon removed in emergency surgery this morning. I have had a few health issues of my own and am waiting on some tests in the next two weeks, could be fine or not, but the events of this month have reminded me that anything can happen to anyone at any time. Not real news of course and we all know that but always life reminds us. Pretty much you just have to do your best and whatever comes your way you just have to deal with it.

Whatever happens I will be simplifying my life from now on. There just hasn't been enough time for the things I enjoy lately and that has to change.

I did some interesting sewing over December and will post those pictures soon. With all the stress of this month though I have been turning more to my knitting. Some times when I have too much on my mind to focus on sewing I find that knitting is really helpful. It's good when you have some waiting to do. I finished some big cabled afghans for the boys, have been making felted mitts and call my crazy, I have been knitting dishcloths like a maniac. With DH out of the country every night he calls and says do you want me to come home, and I say no, I'm fine we'll see how this goes, well after I hang up that phone I sit in bed with Rascal and knit until I am tired. I actually really love knitted dishcloths in the kitchen and the pattern I use is so simple that I can just churn them out. The brighter the better. I have a feeling that when this winter is over there is going to be some big stack of dishcloths in this house.

I like small projects and knitted things make great gifts so if you find something you like to knit you can just make tons and someone is always glad to get them.

I don't want to post a depressing post, mainly just to let you know that I am still here, just on a detour, but will be back soon. I am a pretty buoyant person by disposition and to tell you the truth all this sadness and worrying goes against the grain.

I really am looking forward to sewing more again. My amazing husband did an amazing thing when he was home at Christmas. Under the tree was a big package and in it was 5 yards of the most beautiful wool in my colour (red) and a beautiful Burda pattern for a suit with it. I found it astounding that he actually went into fabric store, found fabric and found a pattern. He told me the Burda patterns just drew him and he knew the kind of suit I would like. He was right which makes me feel good to know that a man who to be frank has no taste himself in clothes and has to be told that no brown shoes don't go with black pants actually has noticed what I like and  what I wear.

I want to get started on that suit. More later, and thanks.

One of my Christmas cooking dresses

Last weekend I had an urge to make something asap. I had only a few hours and my soul needed something done from start to finish before I went to bed. So I grabbed some weird black velour with some white line designs on it (think it was a Fabricmart extra) and pulled out a basic T shirt pattern with those little gathering things at the centre front neckline and cut it out long enough to be a sort of an A line dress. Not going out Christmas wear, but Christmas Eve cooking wear that can get thrown in the washer and dryer once it has cranberries all over it (I need some bigger aprons.)

It is what it is, and it filled several needs. The only slow part was fiddling around with my Pfaff 5 thread coverhem which does a great job if you are willing to spend 40 minutes setting it up and waiting for it to start working right. I gave up actually and finished the job with my wide twin needle and decided I am going to get myself a dedicated coverhem that doesn't get me down to my last nerve every time I have a simple hem to do. The machine works great as a serger so I think I will leave it at that and make my life easy. I sew a lot of knits and am planning on investing as much of my precious time as I can in expanding the sewing space in my life and so this seems to me to be a sensible thing to do.

Any suggestions for good ones?

Aren't these pretty?

I have been making quite a few earrings and went so far as to borrow a book from the library on big beads. It's due back tomorrow so I took a few pictures of some necklaces that caught my eye and really don't look hard to make at all.

Imagine the dresses you could make to go with these.

What turns out and what doesn't

Of course not everything you intend, or expect, to happen does. That is probably the hardest thing about being the mother of adults. You know that and they don't. Not yet. And part of you doesn't want them ever to find out.

I have been very happy in my life but that has taken a lot more work than I expected, and some of the help I was expecting didn't come through, but what didn't happen easily I made happen. But it has been a lot of work and it still is.

Just turning 56 has made me think though how much work I want to keep doing. How many years do you go thinking there is not enough time in the day? Is this the pivot point where you realize its not about so much about not enough time in the day as time in the life? Is there a time that you think, hey wait a minute I keep investing in this career but now that the long term is the short term is it over investing?

I am not talking about fading out, but engaging in fewer things and most importantly letting those who are still trying to make it do that. One more academic year and I am going part-time.

It is worth thinking about aging and what you are going to do or how you intend to do it.

I have two stories.

When my former mother-in-law was exactly my age she made a strange announcement. She told us all that she had decided that she figured she knew all she had to know or in fact wanted to know and that she was just going to go on from that point working on what she had stored up.

As I write she is now being treated for dementia.

The other story is about my 82 year old current father-in-law. Some time last spring he announced that he was going to build a new house. Didn't like the old one, knew a nicer part of the countryside. What he meant was build his own house, like sit at my dining room table and draw it, drive around in a truck with wood and borrow an excavator. I was completely against this whole idea. For a start he has had several little strokes and this is a man who freely admits he doesn't remember last Christmas  "So tell me anything interesting happen?" I did a great job nagging my DH to put a stop to this crazy idea being planned by a man who was likely to kill himself and a few other people in the process and that if you couldn't remember Christmas it was not a sure thing that this new house would be some place he and my saint of a mother-in-law would be living in for too long.

My husband did what he is good at which was not argue at all with me and go help his dad make this happen. To my spouse it wasn't about common sense but about that fact that this was what his dad wanted to do.

Thing is, it's done. They moved in today and are planning a new garden and landscaping and to my father-in-law his future is just as large as anyone else's. Reminds me when the doctor told him to stop going into the woods fishing with his heart issues in case he had another stroke. "Don't care about that at all" he said "I love to fish and if I die fishing at least I would be fishing."

So this is what sense I am making of all of this. Keep doing what you love to do, keep trying to learn new things about it. Keep new ideas coming into that head, and never stop starting.

Never stop starting.