Little Mr – Page 4

More quilting

July 16, 2016 Marie Leave a Comment

harry-potter-quilt-web hp-quilt-detail1 hp-quilt-detail2

This season of motherhood… this not-quite-2 year old is so challenging. And so frustrating. And making it impossible to get anything done for more than 20 minutes, 30 max. But he’s so stinking adorable with how he tries to copy me. He tries to knit on his little dishcloth and he plays with the fabric and yarn and knitting needles and wants to touch the buttons on my sewing machine. He attempts to copy the noises it makes as I push the pedal. He spins my wheel (and I’ve learned to just leave the drive band off so he doesn’t ruin my yarn in progress). And he’s basically claimed my old Canon PowerShot for his own, grabbing it and turning it on and trying to take pictures of whatever I’m taking pictures of.

Pictures have been few and far between lately, it seems. We keep everything nice put up out of his reach, which means I don’t see my camera out and don’t tend to think about it. I’m missing out on some priceless moments and I need to rectify that. He’s growing up way too quickly – he always has. I feel like we never got that “baby” stage – it seems like he has gone from newborn to toddler in minutes. Sigh. I need to get behind my camera more. I need to get back in the habit of taking photographic evidence of all this. I know I’ll regret it if I don’t, but sometimes finding the energy to fight with a toddler over why he can’t touch the Big Kid camera is just too much.

I’ve been sewing more quilts. A baby one for a coworker, and another hexie one at that. As soon as I found out she was doing her nursery in Harry Potter I had to make one. Had to. I wasn’t planning on making her anything – I feel like I haven’t worked there long enough to really get to know her and, besides, time is limited these days and I’d really like to dedicate my time to making things for the Little Mr. But she had me at Harry Potter – it was fate or something. I found some awesome Gryffindor fabric at Joanns, and I carried the bolt around with me to find matches to make the quilt. I snagged some grey with white triangles (to symbolize horcruxes), some burgundy and gold, and some really amazing grey with silver deer heads on it to symbolize Harry’s patronus. This is what happens when you have quilting skills and you’re a Harry Potter nerd, too. :)

I have some more fabric I picked up Wednesday for a picnic blanket I want to make for myself/my family. I’ll write more on that later.

A January Spring

January 31, 2016 Marie Leave a Comment

Strange weather we’re having here – snow and ice, but then lovely 50-60° days thrown around. They’re lovely breaks from being indoors all the time, though everything is quite muddy so we’re not exactly getting outdoors every chance we can just yet.

But the Little Mr is getting more grown up and responds to questions more and more, so when you ask “Do you want to go bye bye?” and he nods his little head in that forceful, full-body nod that he does, well… you put on your shoes and your coats and you go somewhere. Today it was the zoo. It wasn’t overly busy, despite the warmish weather, but we also arrived early while everyone else was in church (my favorite time to go do anything on a Sunday, to be honest).

Fall tulips

September 21, 2015 Marie 1 Comment

Last week I bought myself some tulips, and my mom some pretty yellow roses. My tulips are faded and gone, now, but they were pretty while they lasted. I might walk down to the flower shop up the street and see what I can find there to replace them. I really do love having some fresh flowers at the table, especially since we’ve been actually using the table (whereas before baby we ate a lot on the couch – lame, I know).

The Little Mr is napping in his crib at the moment. I have mixed feelings about it. After a year of him napping in our arms, I’ve become quite attached to those afternoon snuggles. At the same time, though, he is becoming more and more his own little person and he doesn’t want to be held to go to sleep anymore. A lot of afternoons it’s a struggle of trying to get him to settle down enough to sleep in my arms on the couch and most times he just wants out of my arms only to turn around and cry and reach for me. It’s been… stressful. And I don’t have the patience to deal with this stage of wanting down but wanting up at the same time. It’s exhausting. So, crib naps are where we’re headed. He’s really, really awesome about going to sleep at night in his crib, so I’ve been trying to transition him to the crib for naps a bit more. So far, so good. But I miss those easy naps and snuggles together, and it makes me incredibly sad to know that they’re no longer happening.

On the bright side… I get time to post here. Or knit. Or clean. Or whatever I want to do because I don’t have someone at my heels 24/7. Today I’m cleaning. Or will be after I finish this post up. We’re looking at houses, though we’re not quite sure if we’re going to actually put ours up for sale. The sweet little place in the country I mentioned before has issues so I think it’s officially off the list. I can deal with drywall and floors and a bathroom needing finished, but there’s standing water in the corner of the basement. You can’t really have a basement here without having water at least occasionally (our own basement has been known to flood in bad storms when the city’s storm drains get overwhelmed) but standing water in a corner when there hasn’t been any rain for a while is suspect. Anyway, I’ve been trying to purge more and clean up more things around the house just in case. It needs done if we’re going to have people coming through our home, and it definitely needs done if we’re going to pack all of this up to move. The less to pack and move the better, and since I’d like to downsize our square footage that means getting rid of some bigger things, too.

Let’s see… what else have I not had a chance to write about…

My annual knit group trip is coming up and I’m much more excited this year than last. That’s probably the lack of postpartum hormones, mostly. We’re going to dye yarn again, and I think that might just become an annual thing, too. I placed our Knit Picks order for it but I didn’t get any yarn; I did get some of their Full Circle roving in the Wolf colorway, though. I want to play with dyes over the grey color since everything else is always on white.

The Mr saw the Atwood cardigan on my Knit Picks catalog cover and kind of casually mentioned that he wouldn’t mind wearing something like it. So, of course, I had to immediately order the pattern and yarn to make him one. I’ll have to start it ASAP, though, if I’m to get it finished by winter. Maybe if I’m super fast with it I can get it done in time for us to get a family photo done and we can all wear the hand knits that I’ve made for it? That’s probably being overly ambitious, though.

I’m a sleeve seam away from being done with my Solaris cardigan. It feels a tad snug in the arms, but blocking might help. If I can be bothered to block it, I mean – most knits I just seam and wear unless they absolutely need soaked/blocked.

I think that’s it? I have sewing to share but it’ll have to wait until later. I need to go clean while I have time and the kid is asleep!

One.

August 8, 2015 Marie 3 Comments

A year ago today this kid made his grand appearance. This last year has been rough with many highs and lows, but we survived. We’ve all survived. But I’m especially proud of myself and that survival thing.

This kid is officially one and we celebrated with Peter Rabbit and carrot cake. I’ve promised the husband that I won’t go so overboard on the future. I really couldn’t help it, though – Peter Rabbit is just about my favorite kids book ever and Declan really loves the bunnies in the books we have and the one I knit him. And, truthfully, I didn’t really go THAT overboard – I had probably 100 different ideas for food and whatnot and ended up keeping all of that simple. So, really, he should thank me for not doing all the things I wanted to do.

Peter Rabbit will be making an appearance from now on every Easter, especially since we don’t celebrate the religious aspect of the holiday, so I can’t wait to dig all these decorations back out next Spring (see, it can’t count as going overboard if you’re going to actually re-use the decorations every year for a holiday, right?). The bunny cake was… eh. I don’t understand how to bake with these fancy pans – the instructions say to make the sides of the cake higher than the middle… but, hello, gravity called: they’re breaking up with your silly directions. I don’t know, maybe I’m doing something wrong? The one half of the bunny had broken ears, and there was no way I was going to be able to shave the sides down to piece this thing together to make the 3D cake I imagined. But, you know? I don’t even care – it looks damn adorable sitting on a bed of kale on my cake plate regardless.

Summer, finally

July 20, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

With so much rain and dreary days it hasn’t much felt like summer on the days I’m home. Today, though… today is different. Today is officially a summer day. Hot, sunny, with the sun beating on your back. Finally I could blow up the baby pool and go outside with the Little Mr and play. He wasn’t much interested in sitting in the pool, and that’s probably my fault because I didn’t fill it up this morning for the water to warm until now, but it turns out he really wanted to play in the sprinkler setting on our hose attachment. So we sat there while he ran his hands through and picked up the hose and waved it around, splashing himself in the face and then getting angry about it and throwing it back down on the ground. Then it was back inside for something cold – frozen pureed pear in a mesh feeder for him, and coconut cream pie ice cream for me.