like "let's knit something!"

The one button cardigan is just the way I wanted it.  Just look at her - I cannot believe that I did not want any pink gifts when I was expecting. Of course my friends gave me only pink clothes for my daughter, and ever since she has not wanted to wear anything but pink.  This simple pattern leaves a blank canvas for embellishments... I am anxious to finish it, but also slightly distracted.

See, I want to finish this blanket.  We are all crocheting squares, and I hope to finish it before the grandmothers leave in about 3 weeks.  I should add, my mother-in-law will join us in crocheting as soon as she finishes the mittens she is knitting.  She says she cannot crochet, but I do not believe her :) 

She whipped up this mitten in one afternoon.

My mother discovered cowls.  She finished this one in the time my mother-in-law finished the mitten, and is now moving on to her next one, in signal red. (She is cleaning up the leftover yarn from the stripey sweater.)

And on top of that, I know of four little babies that will join us soon, and they all need something hand knit.
This picture appears as if it was photoshopped and something went wrong - I promise, I did nothing.  Neither the yarn nor the grass is that bright, it just appears to be. I will probably be able to show you the finished product next week, since babies are so ridiculously small.  By then I'll have done something to tone it down, I promise, don't worry.  I know all about overstimulated babies, I've been an Occupational Therapist ages ago, I'll handle this.  (If you suspect you are the recipient of this, and you hate it, just e-mail me.  Keep in mind that I will simply say: "No, of course this is not for you. I knew you would hate this.")

Reading?  Not this week.   Just knitting and drinking way to much coffee and catching up on three years' worth of visiting.  And of course, joining Ginny's yarn along.

my big brother

Today I remember my big brother.

 

Artist at heart, farmer, carpenter, clown, philosopher.

 

He was born on 16 March 1966, and he went home on 21 December 1998.  Just weeks before that day, he visited my mother.  I was getting married, and we were all missing my father who passed away early in 1996.  He told her that he was sure that we should really not be sad anymore, that Dad is with God, and that there is no better place to be.

But I am sure that he would be okay with it if we were sad just a couple of days a year. Because we miss them.  Happy birthday, Martiens.  We will light a campfire on this side.

Pondering the meaning of "project"

Maybe I should redefine what "a project" is.  Maybe it should include finding German side tables at consignment stores, on rainy days, with four children not dressed warmly enough.  And then finding the perfect spot for it.

I know, how did they figure out it was German?

Or it could be having fun with my camera, finally starting to capture the elusive beauty of everyday life.

I should rather say - the abundant beauty, that is so elusive when you want to capture it.

 This one was even more elusive than the other two:

I guess a project could also be starting our mud pie kitchen, the one Ginny described in a Rhythm of the Home online magazine, that led me to her blog and all the yarn along people...

Or buying and planting the long coveted strawberry pot.

There is still so much to be done.  I should have been cleaning more today, since our guests will be here in fewer than 48 hours. We are still not sure whether or not this house will  be available for rent after May, so I should not be working in the garden. But today the weather was just perfect.  It had been raining for three days, the soil was soft and friendly, the sun was warm and the breeze was cool. 
And look at who I ran into at church:

Dietes Grandiflora - a fellow South African.  The Fairy Iris.

It was so strange, the first year in Texas, to keep looking at the trees and flowers, waiting for their names,  remembering nothing about them at all.

But today I did not pull up a weed in one of the garden paths, because I thought that it might be a bluebonnet.  I noticed that the black butterfly visited the Mountain Laurel, while the orange ones preferred the yellow weeds. I know that "oranges ones" and "yellow weeds" will be filled in, eventually, and I will be able to say something like "look at this, it is a dietes grandiflora.  They are wonderful landscaping plants, their common name is the Fairy Iris - don't the flowers remind you of fairies, especially on the slender stems among leaves? And the amazing thing is, they actually react to barometric pressure, or so I have been told.  When the flowers open, there is a good chance that it will rain."  And if you are not a plant person, you will be bored to death.  Sorry.  But if you are, I will listen to you with as much interest as you listened to me, and we will spend a lovely afternoon.

So I guess I will clear all of this away.  (This is only half of the fenced in vegetable garden, I have pretty much cleared the other half.)

And I will plant these strawberries.

Now that would be a project.

A white cardigan

I did cast on something new, but it is impossible to photograph white yarn at 11 pm if you really did too much already and should be getting your priorities straight.  I guess like many who join yarn along, I feel slightly lost if I do not have something to sit down with when I want to sit but still "make progress."  I remember that when I had only one baby, I discussed with a friend how incredibly efficient my mother must have been to be able to manage with four children...

I do not mourn free time the way I did when there was still a fresh memory of it in my mind.  And I have the privilege of reading the beautiful blogs of mothers who have survived this phase, and are now in a season where they look back and enjoy, and have some free time again.  They inspire and sustain me.  I know this precious time will pass.

I am knitting a one button cardigan for Melva.  I am not reading the catalog.  I am looking at it, wishing that my sewing skills were so much better than they are right now.  It is from the aptly named shop:  Cute, Well Dressed Kids.  I will probably make some alterations to the cardigan: I might give the sleeves a slight flare, increasing a bit instead of decreasing towards the cuff.  Maybe a simple lace pattern near the cuff, or a picot edging?  But the best thing of all is that I will be doing it with the help of my mother and my mother-in-law, both experienced knitters, both coming to visit for a month!

(My mother is leaving her farm in Namibia on Monday.  My sister who (coincidentally) also lives in Tsumeb will be driving her to Windhoek.  She will fly to Johannesburg, meet my mother-in-law from Nylstoom, and together they will fly for 26 hours with one stop in Atlanta to Bergstrom International here in Austin. We cannot wait.)

I am reading "The Elements of Style". (Can you tell yet?)  It is very dense; I wish I were taught all of it while I was still at school.  I also read "Absolutely Normal Chaos", by one of my favorite authors, Sharon Creech, this week.  A journal of 13 year old girl, not very much like the 13 year old girl that I was, but a very likeable girl nevertheless.  Sharon Creech inspires, or rather, rekindles a love for writing in me - with "Love that Dog" and "Hate that Cat" she introduces young readers to poetry, in this book she intertwines the story with short summaries of chapters out of The Odyssey.

And that is that for now.  I wish I could get to this blog more often, but I am actually putting plants in the garden, decluttering and cleaning for all that I am worth.  Everything has to be done and just right by Tuesday!

Big brother

Yes, I finished it.

Really? He gets a sweater, and then she swings him and takes loads of pictures of him? When is it my turn?

Boys are so easy to please.

All you need are two brothers and a tire swing.


I also finished  "A Canticle for Leibowitz."  I ended up crying through the last couple of chapters - I do not want to give anything away, but the ending was very emotional (and then became very weird.  But not too weird.)

And let it just be on the record that I did not like the part about Abbot Zerchi's cat.

Walter M Miller Jr. does not shy away from difficult questions such as euthanasia, or the tension between science and religion in general.  I homeschool, and one is confronted with the question of religion in science every time you choose a textbook.  I cannot remember that being the case in South Africa, not when I was at school, neither at college level, nor when my daughter started school there.  But it is the case here in America.

"The esoteric gulf between Christian monk and secular investigator of Nature would surely be narrowed by a free exchange of ideas, he felt...  More communication, not less, was probably the best therapy for easing any tension."
 -chapter 19

I am still reading Understanding Exposure.  The photos on the swing was taken in snapshot mode on my camera, and color corrected and sharpened in Photoshop.  The one below was taken in manual, with manual focus:

1/100s at f/5.6, ISO 100, 22mm

It does make a difference to just turn the dial to M, but I could never capture them on the swing with the camera in manual mode.  I cannot praise this book enough, I have gone back to some of the other photography books I have been reading, and now they are starting to make sense.  Brian Peterson has a way of explaining it so that I can follow, teaching me the language so that I can understand the other sources.

I am now also listening to Simplicity Parenting on my iPod.  It is very soothing to be able to listen to Kim John Payne while you declutter.  (Or perhaps I should say, it is very stressful to read about decluttering while you should be decluttering!)

I am excited about Wednesdays; I love seeing the different projects and books.  I will soon cast on a white cardigan for Melva, and the twins need new vests...  Happy yarn along Wednesday!

 

Some progress

 

Now would you look at that!  I managed to put the button onto my blog, thanks to Lori's advice to Emma in the French Alps.  I really like these people who yarn along.  Not that I really know them, I know.  But still, I have reason to believe they are pretty neat in real life too.

Now, about the henley... No, not done yet.  But I have something to show:

The first sleeve is done!  I actually like it.  Coming home from watching "The Secret World of Arrietty", I felt inspired to make something pretty, and it felt very good to sit down and work out the color patterns for this sleeve.

I am still reading A Canticle for Leibowitz and enjoying it.  The problem is, I do too many things at once, and therefore I do not finish enough of them.  I am also reading  "Free Range Kids" -  I feel vindicated while I read it.  But it is a bit like politics and church denominations: I think if you agree you agree, if you do not, nothing will convince you.

That is all for tonight, I am late with my yarn along post as it is and the grandmothers are both coming to visit in 20 days!  Which means I have to go to bed right now so that I will be fresh tomorrow, to start the cleaning.

Pajama pants and pets

I  originally intended to post on a Saturday about the weekly finished project, but now I think Sunday nights are perfect for that.  Sunday nights are really perfect for phoning your mother or sister, but if it is 9 pm here, it is 5 am there... and I don't think anyone wants to start their week with a phone call at 5 am.  No matter how much they love me.

This week I made Melva pajama pants.  It is not the best picture to demonstrate my sewing expertise, I know. But you get the idea - knee length flannel shorts, made using this pattern.  I loved the print, and it was on sale for $2.50/yard at JoAnn's.  Not that I am frugal or pinching pennies or anything like that.

(I also convinced her to cut her hair a bit shorter, a project in itself, and we are both very happy with the result.)

That is such a typical facial expression for our cat.  He is actually a big softie, and despite his apparent dismay at being touched he loves the children and regularly sleeps in their beds. I love him.  If he has water but wants milk, he will attack anyone who passes his bowl from under the kitchen table.  He scratches the door, pretending that he needs to go out but when you get up he runs to his food bowl and looks starved. And he is just a domestic tabby, but he is beautiful.  His name is Patrys (Afrikaans for partridge, named so that the twins can practice rolling their r's), but we all call him Cleo, because a small part of us cannot seem to remember that she stayed home with family when we moved here...

Have a lovely week, friends (and family.  Okay, so maybe only my family will actually read this. In that case, why am I speaking English?  And why are we whispering??)  Oh, and the stripey sleeved henley is almost done, cannot wait to show you on Wednesday!