Step Into My Thimble

Hey!

We are leaving for a week in Seattle. It is going to be awesome. I have great faith in my child to be a good traveler on our flights, and to deal with the time change gracefully. She can, don’t you think?

I think it’s lame when people apologize for not blogging more often, because who cares, really. My posts these days are few and far between due to a few things, namely the great time-suck of taking care of a one-year-old, and the weather is way too nice to sit inside at a computer that doesn’t face a window. Also, my camera’s memory card melted down so there haven’t been many good pictures to share. Oh but there will be…the backup card was found, and I’m sure we’ll make a whole album from our trip. Plus garden plants are growing, there may be strawberry freezer jam to brag about in the next few weeks, and Maeve will have corrective eye surgery on the 13th. Plenty to discuss in the near future.

Go out and have some fun! Eat something fresh and local! Hug your kids and pets! Do some crafts! Catch you later!

Last year I kept track of what I did for a whole day. Maeve was only 1.5 months old. I decided to try that again this year for comparison purposes. How things have changed! I could barely find the note pad I was using to keep track, never mind finding time to make notes on what we were up to all day. Here is my best reconstruction. I probably forgot a few diaper changes and breastfeeding sessions.
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Thanks to Liana for the box of good things recently received! The little top for Maeve is perfect right now…not too long to make crawling difficult, but not too short to flash the tummy on a cooler evening. Looking forward to trying the strawberry jam, as our berries won’t be in season for a while yet, and the green pot suits my collection perfectly. The thoughtfulness exhibited in that package is a true art, and it’s honestly appreciated.

I have finished my Rusted Root sweater, but my camera was missing until the light grew too dim for a decent picture. I find myself in that strange place at the moment in which I do not have a knitting project I really want to do. I have lots of yarn, and lots of patterns, but no one thing that sticks out as “next.” I did just get Stefanie Japel’s Fitted Knits, and on first glance there were many many temptations…as I look at it again though, I’m not as confident, at least in the warmer-weather items. Anyway as a long time reader of her blog, I think it’s so cool she finally got a book out, and I think she certainly deserved it.

Probably the true “next” will be sets of (sewn) bean bags for all the kiddoes in my life, just as soon as I can find my bag of plastic pellets. I’d use real beans, but the thought of them being chewed on is a little too gross. We already have enough gnarly cat toys to fill that niche under our couches…

Oh to have life’s great joy be getting to drink out of a “real” cup!

I have some joy lately too, and that is getting to have a “real” model for some of my craft projects. Here’s one that has been in the works for probably six months now??? It’s McCall’s 4421, a cross-back summer top. Last night I finally got a chance to finish it up. I had planned on a larger size, so it should fit for a while.

Tonight we’ll be enjoying a bowl of rhubarb tapioca, courtesy of my parents’ rhubarb patch. Yum!!

What follows is a bunch of selfish whining, says the “guilty mother” voice inside my head. I’m not looking for advice, just trying to record a few thoughts…

I’ve been a mother for a little over a year now. It’s truly the hugest change I’ve experienced in life. More intense even than living in rural Japan for two years. I spent some time last night while dad and baby had dozed off trying to summarize the challenges in this new phase of existence. In the end it comes down to one thing.

The thing that I struggle with the most is never being able to sit down and do something, start to finish, any more. This blog post has already been interrupted three or four times to feed crackers or pick up spit-out crackers, to get electrical cords out of little hands, to practice walking laps between rooms, and to hug as needed. As a person whose primary free-time activity has always been crafts, this is so frustrating.

Ever since I got pregnant I have felt more full of ideas than ever in life. There are so many things I want to make and do. I have a pile of clippings and printouts and even recipes that were destined for an “idea wall” but there hasn’t even been time to organize that. I’m kind of afraid that once Maeve’s big enough to not need me so much, that’s exactly the time I’ll go back to a “real” job, and then this weird period of extra imagination and desire will go away.