lulubeans

happy heart day

greta is four weeks old today!
i made her a hat using this recipe. the yarn is cascade 220 quatro.
hope you are having a great weekend!

a greta update

greta at three weeks:
-nurses a lot
-sleeps a lot (mostly snuggled up close with mom or dad, and sometimes her sister, and sometimes even by herself, in her basket, with her cozy warm blanket)
-makes a lot of funny new baby noises. often sounds like a little goat.  is a loud, gulpy nurser too, which totally kills me. 
-smells absolutely magical and amazing.  big accomplishment for someone who poops as much as she does.
-looks so much like her big sister did at this age that it freaks me out a tiny bit.  she has more hair than natasha had though.  then again, i think natasha was 2 before she had the amount of hair greta has now.
-still has furry little werewolf ears.  these also kill me.

greta at 3 wks, natasha at 3 wks. i feel like a baby cloner or something

and S is for 6!

My favorite girl in the whole wide world turned 6 yesterday.

 

  She's refusing having her photo taken these days, so I'm making do with some shots that date back a month or so.  At six, she is wild and full of ideas.  She loves snow, and kitties, snuggly stuffed animals, fancy things.  She is passionately in love with her close friends.  She tests my patience at nearly every possible opportunity, and she claims to hate getting love, and routinely wipes my kisses off with  disgust.  She loves writing in her "secret notebooks of things" and seems *this close* to reading all on her own (although she claims to not want to ever learn, and insists that we will still be snuggling each night so that I can read to her before bed, even when she's a teenager, even after she's a teenager, when she's a grown-up).  She is a complicated, stormy little thing with a loud and quick temper at home, yet she's known at school for being polite and kind and easy going.   I love each facet of her, even when she is making me feel completely bananas.  Happy birthday, sweet girl!  I know that six is going to be wonderful!   

first yarn

miss five-and-a-half decided that she wanted to spin "for real, by myself" today.

it held her interest for a good 10 minutes or so, and i was able to put aside my control freakishness long enough to savor the incredibly cute.

randomness

it feels as though there is so much randomness that comes along with parenting small children.
some of it is so maddening.   the sudden storm clouds of anger bursting out of what seems like nowhere.  the dramatically expressed disdain for previously beloved foods that materializes only after hopeful quantities have been purchases in bulk.
but there is the other kind of random too, the delightfully arbitrary, the stuff that's totally illogical and sweet. 
for instance:

 

a pair of child's purple suede shoes, soaked through with salt water, holding small handfuls of crumpled rose petals.  i love finding things like this.

the air is so soupy, muggy, salty and thick today.  humid enough to make a year old play dough cupcake all soggy and soft.  those shoes, worn while splashing though tide pools, have little hope of drying out today.   neither does my yarn, but we are doing our best.

 

 

hope you are having a great wednesday!

a super nice sunday

    we took a family walk to here this morning.   it was very, very nice.   sunday is the one day of the week all three of us get to spend together from start to finish.   needless to say, it's by far my favorite day of the week. 

    we came home and made some alphabet vegetable soup and biscuits.   it's rare that the three of us sit down and all eat the same thing at the same time  (n and i are vegetarians, she's super super picky, and joe is a total meat + potatoes + more meat guy but also super picky in his own way)  so when we make and all enjoy the same meal,  it is a very exciting and happy occasion.

 

    lastly, just in the interest of giving you a little bit o' yarn content,  here's a picture of the wrap-around-skirt yarn,  all plied and washed and ready to party:

 

    again,  i must tell you,  it is prettier in real life.   the photo just slightly mutes the colors.   i am so happy with the kind of color variation this yarn contains.   anytime i can dump pink and green dye in the same roasting pan and not wind up with a nasty run-together situation is good by me.     the yarn is going to erin's house, as my way of thanking her for the fabulous apron she made for me.  i hope she enjoys it!   i really loved making it. 

5.5

as of today, my girl is half way through her fifth year.
i know that feeling amazement at the incredibleness of how-fast-it-all-goes-by hardly makes me unique, but dang! 
it hardly seems possible. 

i embroidered a drawing that she gave me.
she claims that he is  "a goblin who lives underground."   she is suddenly excited about comics,  and i adore the little conversation bubble.  (is there a proper word for that?  anyone?)

 

may all your goblins be this sweet and cute, my silly little imp girl.  i sure do love you!

a weekend worth of pictures

    Despite the perseverance of family-wide Colds that Just Won't Go Away, this weekend was a damn good one.    You can see the evidence in the current state of my kitchen table:

 

    As you may be able to make out,  fiber was dyed,  a little knitting was squeezed in,  Natasha got busy with her prized bottle of sparkle glue and my button collection,  and I even did a little bit of non-yarn related crafting!     Not pictured:  the fun Friday night visit we had at the new pad of one of our favorite people,  the hectic morning I spent at work on Saturday,  or the fabulous mini-road trip we took to Boston on Sunday.    Oh, wait.  I can picture the last:

 

    My little crumbcake at the Children's Museum.  I am so proud of that girl.  She constantly inspires me with the way she is growing, in both body and in spirit.  With the way that she is learning to express herself, in words and in pictures.  These little collages are by far my favorite objects to come out of the weekend's creating.  She worked so hard on them, liberally employing both sparkly glue and her incredible negotiating skills when it came to haggling with me for more and more of my button stash:

 

As far as my non-yarny crafting, I made some of these for fun:

 

  I stumbled upon this great yo-yo tutorial the other day and got inspired.    I like them a lot and I'm thinking of bringing them to the little craft fair that I am doing in twenty (but who's counting?) days.     Speaking of which,  I should really get some work done before it's pick up time!    Happy Monday, friends!

and now we garden

 

    Earlier this summer,  I applied for a plot in one of our city's community organic garden plots and was prepared to wait for at least a year for one to open up.   At the garden closest to my house, the wait list can be several years long.   I was so thrilled when the director of the gardens called me on Tuesday and asked if I would like to take over an abandoned plot!   I got to meet with her yesterday,  and I got to "meet" my new garden.  The space had been used as a classroom project, and the kids had planted sunflowers, beans, tomatoes, marigolds, peppers, cukes, strawflowers,  chives, strawberries.  And tomatillos.  So many tomatillo plants!   Even more the tomatillos than weeds, of which there are lots and lots and lots, even after I spent two hours pulling them up. 

 

 

    The really ripe ones in the bowl are going to get roasted later today for salsa.  I am hoping other families at the preschool or some of co-workers and neighbors are interested in taking home some of my tomatillo bounty,  because I can only think of a few uses for them.   Maybe roast and freeze?  Any ideas? 

      Now, this is Maine, and frost could be setting in any moment now,  which I sincerely hope does not devastate my assistant gardener,  who has appointed herself Pruner, mostly because it is very exciting to wield scissors all willy nilly-like, and also, I suspect, because she thinks the word itself is silly, what with its association with the prunes you eat and all.   My kid is Excited, with a captial E.    She has added "gardener" to her ever growing list of things that she will be later in life, and insists that she is not a gardener now, just  Pruner.   To give you a good idea of just how excited she is, she forewent picture books before bed last night (for the first time in her almost-five years!) and instead chose to snuggle up with Johnny's Selected Seeds 2006 catalogue.    It was heartmelting, yes.

           I am feeling abundantly fortunate today.   We are probably going to miss The Common Ground Fair this weekend,  which is kind of breaking my heart a teeny tiny bit, but hopefully I'll be able to plan better next year.   It looks like a cozy rainy Sunday awaits us here in the Northeast, and that is honestly my favorite kind.   Happy weekend friends! 

First day of school!

Today was Natasha's first day of preschool for the year.  I failed to get a nice, posed picture of her in her Dorothy-esque get up.  She was not into having her picture taken, so all I have are these grouchy girl shots from the walk to school.

Now that school is about to get back into full swing, my goal is to catch up on the crafty odds and ends. For instance: 

There will be The Weaving in of the Ends!  This is the back of the rocking chair in my bedroom (I have conveniently cropped out most of the pile of clothing below).  There are piles, some big, some small, all over my apartment.  Piles of things that I set down, always with the intention of returning soon to whatever half  (or, in the case of the above pile, very nearly) finished project I have going on.   Apparently, I have a hard time seeing things through.  I won't even show you the UFO tub.

In the photo above, you are seeing mostly freeform stuff knit with my handspun.  As a Playground Knitter (TM), I generally have been knitting in the quick and mindless vein of things this summer.  My style involves heading out of the house with the US 11 circulars and  ball of handspun that I don't want to sell for one reason or another.  Getting out of the house usually involves panicked scrambling to find keys, shoes and something to knit.  Not necessarily in the order.

Perhaps because of this devil-may-care, swatch-free, row counter-less, wanton outdoor knitting spree, I have been craving lace lately.  Craving!  I though it was interesting to read Boogie saying much the same today.   Lace craving is not just for spring.

The navy blue scarf to the left in the photo above was a really nice compromise.  Lace for the Playground Knitter!   Easy to memorize YO repeats, at least once I stopped carrying around the envelope   that I'd written the stitch pattern on.   Pretty mindless, yet pretty.  I knit it with mercalized cotton, for no reason other than the fact that it was easy to grab on my way out the door. 

Now, have you seen my keys?