As I write this, my daughters and I are visiting relatives in MA during my girls’ Montana spring break. We’re nearing the final few days, and I’m trying not to blink.
Whenever I go on a trip (heck, sometimes when Hubby just drives us to church), one of my must-haves is some kind of knitting project. Something simple that doesn’t require too much attention, so I can use that attention for socializing. 😉 This time, I’m working on re-knitting my daughter’s blanket that she’s had since her first year of life. She actually has two identical blankets, but I unraveled her favorite one (full of holes and stretched stitches and looking like it would fall apart in the next wash) so I could knit it into something sturdy again. Four rows are constantly repeated throughout the blanket’s length. Boring to knit when I’m home alone, but a perfect no-brainer for when I need to concentrate on something—or someone—else. 😀
Friends of ours are expecting twin girls in late May/early June. They already have a two-year-old son (who’s going to make an awesome big brother), so back in February, I found this pattern on Ravelry.com and knit up a trio of bunnies for the children.
They were quick to make, and I love how it didn’t involve a lot of sewing. You knit the legs, arms, ears, and tail first, stuff the pieces, then perform a three-needle decrease (closing the top row but not binding off), and keep the remaining stitches live on extra needles.
When you start working on the body from the bottom up, you incorporate those limbs and such as you go via more three-needle decreases, so that once you’ve closed the hole at the top of the head after stuffing it (the safety eyes are attached before stuffing), there’s just the nose to embroider and loose ends to sew/weave in. A fast, cute project to make, either as a gift for someone else or to grace a little nook in your own house. 😉
My eighth grader received her first smartphone this past Christmas, and since its measurements were nothing like her “dumb” phone, I needed (okay, really wanted) to make her a new phone carrier. She loves blue and eventually wants ombré walls in her bedroom, so I thought an ombré carrier might be a fun place to start. She loved the zipper feature on her old carrier, thus her new one couldn’t be without. The blossoms and branches were needle-felted after the carrier was felted in the washing machine.
I confess I was enamored with the result, and since most of my iPhone 5 carriers don’t fit my iPhone 6S (I was forced to make the switch this past summer when an update ruined my 5—snarl, grr), I figured it was a good excuse to knit a new carrier for me. One of these days, I’d like to change what I use for a handle, but for now, the chain is a quick, efficient, and reliable option.
Remember this travel bag I made the other year? I’m itching to make another one—smaller with different colors and a different flowered pattern. I found the flowered pic below on Pinterest and spent a good hour or more translating it onto graph paper. I had only knitted about seven or eight rows into it, however, when I remembered something very important about the knit stitch: it’s wider than it is tall…but I had used normal graph paper (i.e.: equilateral squares). If I continued knitting, my flowers would turn out looking squashed!
Sigh. So, I ordered knitting graph paper from Amazon, and while I waited for its delivery, I ripped back the intarsia rows. Not an easy feat when you’re dealing with different colored yarns twisted together (so there are no holes in the end product) and knotted at the beginning and end of a color. That was not a fun hour. At. All.
After transferring the pattern onto the knitting graph paper, I was ready to begin again—but my schedule wouldn’t allow it, as I had too many errands to run and packing for this trip to do. And because it would have been too much of a hassle to bring it with me to MA (myriad skeins of yarn requiring too much of my attention when I’m supposed to be visiting with people), I left it at home. Ah, well. Something to look forward to when I return, I suppose.
I pray the rapid approach of April finds you starting to thaw out from a frigid winter and able to enjoy some more pleasant days (although I heard MT got dumped with more snow yesterday). Any spring projects of your own you want to tackle soon? I’ve got a painting project up my sleeve (furniture, not canvas!), but it needs a string of warm days so I can work on it outside. Sounds that will have to wait a little bit longer… 😉
Discipline in writing. After a year in which my old and new WIPs (works-in-progress) saw very little forward movement, my creative juices have begun to flow again—praise the Lord—and I must shift writing back near the top of my priorities. You see, it became easy this past year, sometimes necessary, to forgo my laptop in lieu of my knitting needles or a book or allow errands to swallow my days. Now I sense some internal resistance when I come to the laptop, even though ideas have begun to blossom in my mind. Traces of fear niggle at the back of it all. (Still? Yes. Ugh.) “What if I can’t get the words out?” “There’s an expectation now. What if my next book isn’t as good as the first?” “Um…will there even be a next book?” I’m trying to quell these little doubts; to keep them, well, little. I want, instead, to cling to what the Lord has shown me over the last six months—His love, His approval, His blessings—and move forward with confidence.
Discipline in maintaining a healthy body. I’ve been fit much of my life and have a high metabolism, but I am in my forties now, and it’s become harder and harder over the last few years to motivate myself to go for a run or workout. And, sigh, I still don’t like my vegetables. 😉 But slacking off now is the last thing I should be doing if I want to see good health into my fifties and sixties. So…discipline. To get up at 5am to squeeze in a workout. Or put on those running shoes after I take my youngest to school in the mornings. To reach for that apple instead of the pretzels (c’mon, let’s be honest: the chips and salsa). Not much fun in the process—when is it ever fun to tell yourself “no” to something?—but I’ll be thanking myself later.
Discipline in keeping house…and prepping for dinner. *embarrassed chuckle* Really, who wants to vacuum and mop floors, fold clothes, dust furniture, scrub bathrooms, and all the other nit-picky stuff I can’t remember at the moment, when I’m just getting back into a writing groove and there are new projects to knit and friends to hang out with and books to read and…and…and… And am I forgetting I wanted to be a mother and housewife? Hello! These duties are part of the job I’ve wanted ever since I was a kid. (Why, then, do they become more trying and annoying each year?) And while I might not enjoy cooking day in and day out, there are things I could do to make it easier on myself…and show hubby that I love him and appreciate him going to work day in and day out, providing us with a warm house and money for food and all the extra amenities we take for granted here in America. So, I’m pulling out my dusty copy of Sink Reflections, by the Fly Lady (anybody else remember that gem?), and I plan to implement her suggestions as I had done once before, years ago, to mild success. (Don’t ask me why I stopped, if it was a success. I don’t know!)
Tinsel and Niklas, at long last adorned with shoes and coats to keep them warm this time of year, want to wish you a blessed, Merry Christmas and an amazing New Year. I’ll “see” you again in 2018!
Paperback copies are actually available now online at 
