A Sweater for Me

I haven't been knitting at quite my usual pace this fall.  The move, other projects, and, well, I've kind of been enjoying my own little sabbatical from teaching knitting.  So I was sort of surprised the day after Christmas when I finished up all the knitting I'd brought with me on our travels.  Needing more yarn gave me an excuse to stop in at Fiber Nooks and Crannies, which is a fabulous yarn stop, online and off.  And I should have picked up a ball of sock yarn or the makings of a simple hat--but the after-Christmas make-something-for-me bug had hit, and there was a beautiful display of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool.  And I am sucker for silk yarn.

So, as of tonight, I am halfway through a sweater for me.  A whole sweater, knit on size 3 needles.  Crazy.  But pretty.  The first half of my progress happened in those last days of travel after Christmas, I've slowed some since then.  I'm struck by how January brings out the craving for miles of stockinette.  More time indoors, more time in the dark.  Time that I want to curl up and just knit without thinking.  Or knit while watching the whole first season of Downton Abbey in one week, thank you Netflix.

There's a fun cable detail on the yoke of this sweater that will be a bit of a challenge, I think.  But I've still got another sleeve to go before I get to it, and there's a lot of plain knitting in the round in that sleeve.  This should keep me in a stockinette fix through the rest of January.

At the MLK, Jr. Memorial

From the opening weekend back in August.  If we're going to fill the Mall with monuments, then thank goodness there is one for MLK Jr.  The main statue looks as if it is coming out of the stones at the entrance, and it is surrounded by King's words.  That opening weekend there were 20-somethings discussing the usefulness (or lack thereof) of a big statue and older men and women with tears in their eyes.  Aside from the controversy over the misquote, the site is beautiful and powerful, inviting contemplation, pride and hope.

Visiting encouraged me to introduce Dr. King to my son. And while there is a lot of time for him to learn the complexity of history, we found Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport to be a simple, captivating and beautiful introduction. 

The Only Snow You'll See Around Here

Painting snowflakes a muddy, watercolor blue doesn't really make them pop in the window against the gray winter sky.  But they do make for beautiful shadows when the sun comes out.

Pirate Treasure: A Giveaway

It's a crazy week around here.  My husband is out of town for over a week (which never happens, and we haven't been apart this long since well before kid), and I decided that it was a good time to circle the wagons and give potty learning a go.  So it's been an intense few days of mama & Toby time.  Thank goodness that I participated in a busy bag swap just before Christmas.

This is the best idea for a swap ever, and yes, there is an e-mail list over at Kidlet Occupation to get notified of the next swap.  30 people each make 30 bags filled with some sort of activity that will keep a preschooler occupied.  And a few weeks later, a box appears in the mail with, holy smokes, 30 different activities to keep my son occupied!  There are matching games and play dough mats and felt pieces to move around and letters & numbers.  A lot of the ideas are taken from printables or tutorials around the web--the sort of thing that you look at and think, "my kid would like that," but then your printer is out of ink, and you only have two bottle caps instead of the 10 the activity calls for, and it gets filed away in the someday file of Pintrest.  I've got 30 of them, or rather, about 25 left, just perfect for pulling out when one or both of us is about to go stir crazy.

My contribution to the swap was a little pirate treasure counting game.  If kids are feeling mathy, they can line up the flat marble treasures by the numbers on the map.  Or they can pack the treasure up in the little sack, bury it, and use the map to find their way back.  Either way, I ended up with 32--that's 2 extra if you're feeling mathy.  Two prototypes that are just a bit different from what you see here, but still ready to pass along to a kiddo.  So, if you're reading and you have or know a kid who would enjoy this, leave a comment.  In the event that there are more than 2 comments (hey, it could happen), I'll draw numbers.  I'll leave the comments open for a couple of days, and try to get these in the mail early next week.

And if any of you are coming by after finding me through this swap, I'd love to hear how your kids are playing with this little bag.  We're just taking out one bag at a time, so I don't even know what all is in my box, yet.  But as they come out, I'm sure I'll be taking some pictures and sending out some thanks as we go.

Explorer Notebooks at Artful Parent

I'm very excited to have a guest post up over at The Artful Parent today.  I'm kind of giddy, because I've been following Jean and her family since before I even had my own kid to play with.  She's introduced me to Twistables and liquid watercolor, and inspired our own local Art Playgroup.  It's pretty exciting to share a project with a larger audience, too, and I hope y'all have as much fun making these little Explorer Notebooks as we've been having with them around here.

So if you've made your way here from there, hello and welcome!  Thank you for clicking through and taking a look around.  You'll quickly see that I'm pretty new to this blogging game--so I hope you'll stick around and join me as this space unfolds.

And if you manage to make up an Explorer Notebook of your own, I'd love to see it!  I'll try to share a few more pictures of what we've been up to in our books around here soon, too.

Saying Thank You

Before Christmas I had a coupon to use up at VistaPrint and no time to format photos and whatnot to use it for a fancy project.  So I quickly ordered this self-inking stamp.  They've got different templates available, and I just used the most basic one I could find.

This is the first year Toby has sort of understood the idea of thank you cards.  The stamp appeared in his stocking, and once we got home from our Christmas travels, I set him up with some blank cards, his favorite Twistables, and the stamp, with the suggestion that he could make a card for everyone who gave him a gift.

Although he's now got a good dozen pages in a notebook filled with this:

His thank you notes all looked exactly like this:

Not exactly, I suppose, he was very certain which card went to which relative.  But all with blue on colored paper.  Any encouragement to use the thank you stamp on the cards afterward was met with a blank stare.

Whatever, he's having fun with the stamp, he understands that the cards are a way of saying thank you.  And slowly, as his interest in printed words grows, it will be nice to have a way for him to add words to his pictures before he has learned all the spelling and dexterity of writing himself.

Adding Some Color

I'm prettying things up around here a little.

And soaking in the sunshine on a crazy, 60 degree day in December.