Step Into My Thimble

During the road trip to New York a couple weeks ago, and over the Thanksgiving weekend, I found a little time for a few more Dear Jane blocks.

M10 Hopscotch

19 pieces, handpieced. This uses a vintage English print (repro of course), so it’s the first instance of breaking my plan to use strictly Civil War reproduction fabrics. I made the entire thing while driving across Ontario to New York. That is one boring stretch of road, let me tell you. Though maybe Hamilton has more going on…it’s hard to tell when just passing through.

D3 Jason’s Jacks

Needleturn with freezer paper on top. I really like how this one went. After I did A3 Hunter’s Moon with the melons a while ago, with freezer paper on the back side, basted edges, etc., I wanted to try this other technique, and I found it to be a lot easier. I also did this one in the car, this time on the way from New York back across Ontario to Michigan.

K3 Seven Sisters

Handpieced, a lot of pieces. This is my favorite patchwork block so far. I did all of it except for the muslin border in the car too.

H6 Pie Sale

Another needleturn, for the quarter-circle pieces, on a base of patchwork.

I have finished the two blocks of the month for November, with a few days left to go. I still have four other blocks prepped so I’ll probably do one of those next, maybe Grandpa’s Chickens! I can’t resist doing the ones with funny names, it’s true.

To back up a bit…in 1995 Rodney spent a semester in Nepal with the Naropa Institute. He made some good friends, and one of them lives on an old family farm outside Rochester, New York. Rochester is a place we’d like to live someday, and when Rodney decided to organize a mini-reunion of Nepal friends, Rochester seemed like the most convenient place to have it. Lucky for all, dear friend Barbara was willing to host it on the farm!

Getting there involves a trek across Ontario into western NY, and all together about eight hours in the car from Kalamazoo. I was paranoid about the baby as she’s never had to drive more than 2.5 hours anywhere, but she did great. She was awake for much of it, but was willing to be entertained with various toys, made up syllables, tickly things, and songs. It really went very well, both going and coming. She does feel the need to sleep through the immigration points though, and we now say that Maeve does not believe in borders. A child of the future, she is.

I discovered that the back side of a car seat makes a wonderful quilting design board/pin cushion on this trip. I had prepped seven Dear Jane blocks to bring along, and I managed to finish three. (I didn’t work on any of them while we were actually at the farm; too many other things to do there.) I also finished my Meathead for Larissa.

We visited the local Tibetan Buddhist center (appropriate since the reunion was for friends who met in Nepal), which was having a little holiday sale. We also got to go to the gigantic Wegman’s market to enjoy their fresh lunch options and observe the madness that is their huge Pittsford store. Delicious, but not pretentious. And something for all. We also made it to Stever’s for some locally made sweets…just in time to contribute for Thanksgiving dinner! Per my edict in the previous post, I’m not making anything this year, but instead we’ll be sampling the Ultimate Malted Milk Ball, chai candy, and a bunch of other interesting things.

Finally we got to see the Strong National Museum of Play, which has an interesting history as a collection. It started out as one woman’s personal collection of all sorts of everyday things, including toys. The toys became the foundation for a whole other kind of museum, but what’s so delightful is that most of her original collection is on display in a kind of “open stacks” arrangement. The vintage dolls, stuffed toys, and dollhouse furnishings were the coolest.

Specific posts for Meathead and Dear Jane blocks coming soon.

Lately I am trying to do too much. The thing is, I like all the things I do. It’s just that with a baby they’re not really possible any more. I think that the more I resist just taking it easy and focusing on my child, the more my mind wants to generate creative ideas. I read something once about how a baby shower could also be looked at as a funeral for your former life. I think it’s true, except for me the mourning process doesn’t want to end.

I don’t know, I’m torn. It seems like the days when I have nothing to do, nowhere to go, no visitors, I get so wrapped up in my own mind that I get in a funk. But when I am busy, I get worn down really easily. I have not found the right balance yet.

The answer of course is right before me: better quality sleep. That, I am afraid, I cannot have, except every now and then. So in the meantime I struggle to find the right balance.

And that brings me to the edict of today: until the end of 2006 I am not taking on anything extra in the craft department. No new knitting projects, no canning, no “yes I’ll edit your 10,000 word essay”, no reorganizing all my online photos, no new items for Etsy (not like I’ve done that in months anyway), nothing like that. All I am going to do is the Dear Jane quilt, a Meathead for Larissa and now and then, a few rows on a sweater for Rodney. No Christmas cookies, no felted stockings, no more handmade ornaments, no giant neighborhood open houses, no onesie modifications, no mitten knitting, no tailoring or alterations, no jewelry-making, none of it. Only those three things, and lots of time with baby trying to get good naps for both of us and better nights of sleep. That is all.

That is all.

It’s a knitting F.O.!

I made up this pattern for Briar Rose Fibers, just a simple but very fitted 2×2 ribbed turtleneck. I let the yarn do what it wanted instead of alternating balls, because I didn’t want bulky seams. The variation is much less obvious in real life. This finished sweater is the beta version of the pattern, which will be tweaked a little bit (better neck, longer sleeves and torso). I’m happy to say that Chris will eventually have this pattern for sale.

I hurried and hurried so I could finish it by the open house last weekend, and I just made it. Yay! Of course, for the second year in a row, I missed Lynette by about five minutes. One of these years we’ll get it together, I promise.

In kid news, well…nobody’s sleeping still. I’m not sure if she is reacting to something I ate, or if it’s developmental (lots of pre-crawling activity going on), if she’s getting a cold, because her nose is a little stuffy, or if she is just trying to deal with things in daily life like irregular naps, different people coming and going, etc. Possibly, she is dreaming, because one time I checked on her last night and her breathing was really irregular, and she was kind of twitching like people do when they dream. Is that a milestone…learning how to dream? Or are we born with the ability? Or maybe all the waking is “normal” and caused by nothing, I don’t know.

Before this phase, she would wake to nurse and then go right back to sleep, usually without crying, but now she wakes up and howls for a few minutes until I can get her resettled. It is very frustrating. Last night I had to go out on the porch at 4a.m. and get our swing, drag it upstairs, and plunk her in it for a couple of hours because I didn’t know what else to do. The rhythmic clicking put me to sleep, at least, and now at almost 9a.m. she is still dozing. That is pretty late for her, and I suppose it will mean no morning nap.

Dear Jane progress is on pause at the moment, though I am prepping blocks when I can. This weekend we are taking a road trip through Canada to Rochester, New York, to see some of Rodney’s old friends. I’m hoping the drive isn’t too stressful with the wee one (it’s her longest ever), and that Tim Horton’s takes debit cards so I don’t have to change money, and that I can get a few of those blocks done along the way. Strangely enough, I don’t feel like knitting. Even though I have about 7,000 knitting items I want to make, and a few that are already half done, I want to do something else on this trip. I’m sure I will bring yarn, but I’m a little bored with it right now. How weird is that?

Well anyway, wish us luck on the road trip.

For this year’s ornament swap on Get Crafty.

These are hand-dyed wool felt (purchased as such, I don’t have time for that too!!) with DMC3 cotton for embroidery. They are stuffed with polyfill. I used a child’s plastic cup and some chalk to trace circles on the felt, so they’re about 3″ in diameter. Just enough stuffing to give a little dimension.

In another time I might have used dried lavender, but the way I chose to sew the two halves together it would have been falling out all over. I do like a naturally scented ornament that you can hang in your closet for the rest of the year. These are last year’s in case you forgot.