Words and Wool

It was another wonderful week at my Homeschool Craft Class last Thursday! Several girls finished their fingerless gloves, and a few had time to start on the valentine heart bookmarks!

I love these orange with cream and a hint of sea glass mitts! It is so rewarding to watch girls that don't have the opportunity to do much of this kind of thing come in and create something beautiful!

And check out these flower-power mitts! Complete with coordinating nail polish! How cool is that?!

This morning I finished another baby hat -- my song that never ends. But, they are so easy to knit and no one seems to get tired of them.

I spent some time getting ready for our next craft adventure tomorrow. Will post pictures next week!

As for reading:

Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes by Shauna Neiquist. This was my second time through the book and I loved it just as much! I'm hosting a dinner party book discussion of this book tomorrow and I can't wait! This book is just full of the topics that make my heart sing!

Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way by Shauna Neiquist is the book she wrote before Bread and Wine and is also filled with engaging and easy-to-read thoughts on life and how it is a mixture of good and hard all at the same time. Definitely recommend!

Longbourn by Jo Baker. I finally had the chance to spend some serious time with the novel and ended up very caught up in the last part of the book. I think it is very well written and the author was wise to go at the Pride and Prejudice story in such a way as to never detract, or really add to, Jane Austen's classic work. Longbourn tells the story of the downstairs staff at the Bennet home.

Time for Tea: Tea and Conversation with Thirteen English Women by Michele Rivers was recommended by my friend Brenda. Oh this is a fun book!!!! I love the idea of interviewing 13 different English women about what tea means to them and how they take it in their everyday lives. The book has lovely photos and recipes for each chapter. It is now twenty years old though and I would love to see a modern version! (Actually, I would love to write one myself!)

That's it for this week! You can find more knitting and reading ideas at Ginny's Yarn A Long.

Please note: this post contains affiliate links.

Christmas Birds

I've made "a million" felted birds this fall to sell as Christmas ornaments.

They are so sweet, and I enjoy sewing them.

I'm so glad that I love sewing the products that I sell. I get so much joy from them and I think about the person that will end up with them and almost feel like I'm making them a present (except for the fact that they have to pay for it).

This plaid color is my favorite:

I spent about 13 hours in the car sewing while on our OK trip. Most sewing is done while killing two birds with one stone (schooling, driving, listening to something, visiting).

The snow has finally hit. I haven't felt the Christmas spirit yet, but snow falling outside my window and the vintage red wool sweater I'm wearing just might bring it on.

PS: Birds can be found for sale at the Village Yarn Shop in Zionsville. Or, you can special order them directly from me for $4.25/each.

Where Is the Time Going?

Somehow it is becoming harder to blog......Homeschooling is taking a very large chunk of time and that is leaving less and less for homemaking, small business-keeping, and computer time. At least I'm still living life, just not blogging about it. :)

Several weeks ago I even uploaded pictures for about 5 posts but then I never even had time to write those posts. Oh well.......

This little owl was made for a friend some weeks or months ago now. A new way to use up felted sweaters and create something out of very little.

Near freezing temperatures have finally come to Indiana. I still haven't gotten the clothes switched over (poor kids) but am trying to dig my way through our finances and new financial software.

I've finished some knitting and can't wait to show you my very own "Greta" (Christina's new sweater pattern) as well as a baby shawl for Laura. And Rachel has a few things to show as well. All in good time......

Purse Love

I'm so happy with my new purse. I've been dreaming about the sweater it's made from for a long time -- it's been sitting in the stash for at least a year and a half. I was getting more and more desperate for a purse as the one I was using was falling apart. A few hours in the sewing area and I had my new one!

This time I tried adding some stiff interfacing on recommendation from a friend. It made such a nice difference. And, I can change the color of the flower to go with a different season. Hopefully it will last a long time!

Patches and Billy Bones

Last week I took some time to do a few projects with the kids. James decided he wanted to make a cat like the cat Daddy had when he was a boy. Thus, here is Patches:

I suggested a fish to Andrew, since I had seen one recently on another blog. Out came Billy Bones:
We're receiving more snow here! I think snow in winter is our new normal! Otherwise we are keeping busy with company, school, and chores.

Laura has had two long appointments at Riley this week. Fortunately, most of the news is good and everyone is very pleased with how her heart is functioning. She's being weaned off the two heart meds! She'll continue to have regular checkups and we pray that her cardiomyopathy will remain stable and not worsen over the years. That is the only concern as far as her heart goes, but as I understand it, the chance of it worsening is there, but only slight.

Everyone is also pleased that Laura is nearly 14 pounds now and catching up on her development! We have to keep up with the round the clock feeds and not let her go more than 6 hours between feeds, so that is a bit tiresome, but understandable. We're just waiting for the date for her nasal cyst surgery and the only "bad" news is they want a g-tube (direct port to stomach) inserted at that point so she can keep up with her feeds post-surgery.

And now I must go get my little pumpkin dressed for the day.....

Felt Goodness

While in the hospital with Laura, I took a walk one day to a local Barnes and Noble and found Fa La La La Felt. I normally NEVER buy books brand new at these kinds of places, but a second look and I decided the book had to come home with me.

Fa La La La Felt is filled with 45 terrific ornaments and decorations for Christmas, all using felt or felted wool. I'm in love with just about every one of the designs (it's unusual to come by a book where you love almost everything). I've been thumbing through trying to decide which one to try first. I don't have a lot of crafting time this year, but we are planning one day devoted entirely to making ornaments. I think we'll all be picking something from this book.

Irresistable

Today I had the luxury of doing school with just my two "little boys." The older two were off for the day at a park for a series of nature classes. That left James and David and I to read books about spring, ducks, and robins, and to spend time making things together.

We decided on some nests with eggs and robins. Aren't they cute!!! The boys seemed to have fun helping pick things out and watching me put it together for them.

And then they could play with them (the eggs come out of the nest and the birds are on their own too):

James even cut up some string later on and placed it outside in hopes that a real robin will make a nest in our little tree. :)

Working with felted wool is so fun. I think I need to give up all other types of sewing....

I'm very thankful for a good, and somewhat relaxing, week. Life is about to change in a major way, any day now.

Checkbox Diversion #1

My attention was diverted from my checklist last week by these sweet little Easter baskets. I could not resist making them.

I made several versions:

And it was hard to choose a favorite. Each of the bags was lined in a different fabric that coordinated with the flowers on the outside.

Saturday we took them up to The Village Yarn Shop where they will be waiting for owners. :)

And this morning I'm back to quilting the baby's quilt. But, as soon as I put in my day's worth on that I'll be working on my other diversion.....to be posted soon.

Mouse Love

My mother likes to remind me that I was one of those all-or-nothing children that could never stop with just a handful of flowers but wanted to go on until the whole field was picked. :) Sigh. I'm still like that.

So, when I discovered how fun it was to make cashmere mice, I couldn't just make one. I had to make 15. But, they were so easy, and the kids enjoyed making some with me, and then I decided my sister needed one and then I needed 10 for valentine decorations and favors. It was worth the time spent, I had so much fun.

I found the pattern here, and made my own adjustments with the tail and ears. I think I added whiskers too.

They made the cutest little table decorations:

And I had enough pink leather from a felted sweater to make all the tails. Just perfect!

We had so much fun at our valentine Sunday lunch. I'll post more about it soon....

Too Cute!

This little "Easter Basket" is my favorite thing I've worked on this week. It just evolved from the neck of a sweater I was making my own spring purse out of. Having nothing else to sew at the moment, and lots of schoolwork to help with, this little purse just created itself. Maybe next year I'll be making one just like it for my baby girl. But for now, this one is over on Etsy.

Christmas Presents -- Homemade

I feel like we made more things than I have pictures for, but probably that's because the children were busy with their own little projects and I didn't capture them all.

I think I did already post a picture of James in his hat, but this was definately homemade:

Andrew worked hard to design and sew this quilt for his cousin, John. He laid out all the pieces in the right order and then sewed each row of squares. I put the rows together and he helped to tie all the little knots in each square corner.

One of the kids made this shield for David out of cardboard and tin foil. :)

This is a terrible picture of the felted bag I made for mom.

And I just loved this little mouse ornament -- can't remember if I already posted him. Anyway, I made felted bird, after bird, after bird during December. It was my month off of flowers and so the birds took over. Lots of fun.

And now I'm back to flowers -- wait until you see them. They are so pretty!!! And there's some knitting going on as well.

Thoughts, Ideas, Goings On

I've finally finished with all the gift, stocking, food shopping and can hopefully stay home for the rest of the week! I'll need to because the laundry, house-cleaning, baking, cooking, present-wrapping and some present-making still has yet to be done! :)

Michael took the children to the Children's Museum -- two this week and two last week. It's always fun for them around Christmas-time.

Had a lovely phonecall from Scotland this morning. It's always nice to hear from dear people far away.

Enjoying memories of Christmas' past: Christmas Eve service in snow-laden Vermont with candlelight; "making Christmas" in tropical Africa; quiet Christmas' in Scotland, my Grandmother's Forgotten Cookies.

Cookie baking has been going on here for about a month. I haven't baked this many in quite a few years. And there are still 15 dozen or so to turn out before tomorrow! Sometimes this holiday "fun" becomes a bit more of a chore.

Many people I know are in difficult circumstances this Christmas: ill health, struggles with cancer, relationships, finances, emergencies. I've been pondering the balance between the burden I feel for them and the responsibility to enjoy the lovely things God does bring into one's life. I think part of the balance is using that burden to pray for our friends as these situations come to mind, to think about practical ways to help, to remember God is in control and then to show our trust in Him by then enjoying the beauty, pleasure, and joys of the season as appropriate.

You know, cooking at the Children's Museum involves so much less mess than at home!

I was up at the Knitting Shop yesterday and guess what I saw? This GREAT idea for using felted sweaters. Anne came up with this and you can see more examples on her blog (scroll down to the end of the post).

I've been enjoying my break from sewing felted flowers. Check out this cute mouse I sewed last week!!! He's off to a new home, but it was definately tempting to keep him!

All right, it's now time to take myself off to the sewing closet and make some progress on the last gift before hitting the kitchen, the cookies, and the MESS!