the little lady is four months old now!

My wooly babe. Her sweater is the Baby Surprise Jacket, and her hat is a simple pattern found here. When we got back from a lovely walk today, I realized what a wooly walk it had been:
I love covering my babe and myself in wool! (I did not knit the sweater I'm wearing.)Here she is with a bit less wool on. Funny thing about having a new baby - it surprises me when I'm confronted with the fact that there are babies younger than her.Here is her and the Dad at grandparents' house. We love lounging in front of the fire.

Were you outside today? In the Pacific Northwest? Because it was a perfect crisp early spring day. Perfect for gardening. I am working on a project - building raised beds! It feels fulfilling to be focusing on that now. The last several years have been a challenge. Not knowing how long we'll be in one place, and letting that prevent us from pursuing some of our dreams. I do have an established herb box in the back, and I did plant garlic that we harvested this past summer (and continue to enjoy!), but beyond that I haven't gardened much here. Well, we've been here for a year and a half now, and Hal gave us the go ahead to do what we will in the backyard. So, here we go! Let's see what we can do for the gardening.

Okay, back to the baby. Here's a video of the best I could get. She just started copying us when we blow raspberries. Oh my goodness it is the cutest thing in the world to have a little baby copy what you're doing. What is it about me that loves that? So weird. Yet adorable. Check it out!

Okay nevermind, I let Blogger try for 2 1/2 hours to post that video and apparently it lacks the ability to follow through. Anyway, trust me, it's stinkin' adorable.

Oh my goodness.

Way back in spring of this year, I cast on for this beautiful little project in a natural wool tweed. Before we knew Marie was Marie, and actually, before we knew the baby was a she. I love this little vest, and knew from knitting it once before that I wanted my babe to be wrapped in it.
But oh my, how can it fit her so perfectly already? Seeing her in it is so precious, and I can't resist even more cuddles of that warm little belly and baby-scented neck. But it fitting her means she will grow. Bigger and older and wiser.I must keep reminding her to take her time growing.
Do you think she will listen?

Why you haven't heard from us

We have been taking advantage of summer!
*Aweing at North Cascades Highway
*Loving Washington State, our home
*Making strawberry wine to be ready about the same time the baby will be :-)
*Eating more and more and more vegetables from our CSA
*Camping. Lots.
*Beaching it
*Nesting

Have we mentioned we will never again complain about the weather here?

Some more early Christmas photos

Check out how awesome my Grandpa is! He is so classy. And I like to think he passed on his financial sweetness to me too - he got this $500 hat for like $3 at a store closing sale decades ago.Some of the hats I knitted for Christmas presents this year:
You can see more photos if you join Ravelry!

Kitty Kneading

My parents' kitty, Loki, loves to knead our sheepskin rug. You can hear him purring some at the end. It's the only time he purrs. All other times, he is living up his namesake, causing trouble by attacking ankles, jumping on my grandma's back, and eating long strings of my wool.
(I know the video is terrible quality, but hey I figured seeing a cat kneading a furry rug would make up for anything lacking)

The most promising knitting results so far:

This is a matching hat and bootie set that I knitted for Scarlet, the baby girl due to arrive any moment now to our pastor and his wife here in Glasgow.
The hat is this pattern. It's simple and fast (the joy of knitting for babies!), and I love how it turned out! The ribbon weaves in and out of the little eyelets around the hat.The booties are Saartje's Bootees on Ravelry. These are pretty simple, I had a bit of trouble with the straps, but worked through it somehow. Whether or not it's how it was meant to be done is fairly irrelevant, as it turned out fine!

The wool is 50% wool, 50% alpaca and several mothers I asked thought it would be soft enough for a baby. The photos don't do the wool justice, it really is beautiful. A dusk purple, with the most subtle little pink here and there, if you are actually looking for it.

What do you think? I'm quite proud of them!

Sewing!

I made this! This afternoon! I used this pattern. The fabric is heavy duty cotton, really thick, I think some sort of upholstery fabric or something. It made it a nice, thick bag that has some substance.

The inside fabric is the same weight. The lighting is fairly atrocious, but I don't think the pink stripes are quite so garrish in real life. I dunno, I'm not into pink anyway.

As you see below, it's reversible! So if one liked garrish pink stripes, they could turn it inside out. I don't think I would.

The bag has a flat bottom - which is pretty cool, considering I'm not a master seamstress.

Our sewing machine was given to us by Christine, our Glasgow friend who moved to Boston last year. She's German. She gave us odds and ends of extra fabric too, which is what I used for the bag! So, this was free to make! Amazing. I love free. We pulled out the sewing machine last week finally, and repaired some clothing. This bag will be filled with some basic essential oils, some natural cleaning recipes, etc and given to our friend for a bridal shower I'm going to next week. She's been wanting to learn some more natural cleaning from me, so I thought I'd put this 'starter kit' together for her.

Now all I need is some more fabric, and I could make more! It'd be a great bag for keeping knitting odds and ends in, or even a beach bag, if it were bigger.. (and if there was a beach).

Title here

Wow, look here.

Knitters go overboard.

That's pretty cool, but I can't really imagine ever coming to a point where I've knitted so much for friends and family that I can now knit for lampposts. Although, come to think of it, maybe I should be knitting primarily for inanimate objects until I actually start to turn out some decent work...

Thoughts on Winter in Glasgow

Here we are, continuing to plod along through the winter.
It's currently snowing. Lovely, yes. But it's still not really snow. It's more that teasing kind of snow, that whispers in your ear, "you can look at me, but I won't stay. I'll disappear almost as soon as I hit the ground. And you'll be left merely with a wet face/coat/sock/trouser leg."

I think I still prefer it to come down and visit Glasgow.

Life, work, studies continue, in the unmagnificent way it tends to happen during winter. We have been having lovely saturdays. It tends to be a day to get caught up in the kitchen, in ways. I bake a loaf of bread for us to eat through the week. I bake other things. Last week it was flapjack. So magnificent, I must share that with you at some point. Energy bars. More mayonnaise. Ketchup. Muffins. Etc.

I'm looking forward to soup this week.

Enough with the food, I suppose.

Did I tell you, in January I decided the start of a new year was a wonderful opportunity to start a new skill. I've started knitting. I tried my hand at it a few years ago, but this time I am really going to learn it. I've got the basics down, and must show you the hat I knitted Joel. It's 50% wool, 50% alpaca, and it's soft and brown and warm. Before that project, I accidentally knitted a hat for a deformed baby head, so if anyone knows a baby that has a weird lump on the sideish-top of his head, let me know.

When we came to Glasgow, I thought, "Wow, I'll spend the winters learning how to play my banjo, and developing my Spanish!" Neither of those things have come through, but I have learned to cook some, and now am knitting. I also got into aromatherapy a bit, which enhances our life and cleaning in ways. Knitting is my current absorption, but please don't expect anything grand for quite some time. I knit in my spare time. So not as much as I would like. I knitted last night while watching a french film, which is quite admirable considering I can't understand french and had to read subtitles while knitting a new (and weird) pattern. It went pretty well. I have the start of a knitting project, and new knowledge of french knife-throwing circus acts who have suicidal tendencies.

In other news, I cannot seem to get my mind off of this:


I made it last summer. It's a rhubarb crisp with honey and vanilla, and it is divine. Joel doesn't like rhubarb, so I get to eat the entire thing myself. Waiting for rhubarb to come into season...

How is your winter going?