Vintage knits

Wow, I have not participated in Ginny's yarn along for such a long time. Somehow, this yarn along (and auntie Leila's {phfr}) keep me entertained and fascinated.  Glimpses into lives, sometimes filled with more order and wonder, and sometimes even a bit more chaotic than mine. 

But I feel quite proud of the latest outfit - a charming raglan  pullover, and tiny trousers, both from Vintage Knits for Modern Babies.

The lace detail on the sweater was just enough to make it special.  On the back panel I did it incorrectly - I did not slip both stitches together when the pattern stated sl2, but rather one by one (see below).  Turns out it does make a difference, but only if you know where to look.  I also forgot to make the third buttonhole, but the last one is luckily not that important anyway.

 This is just a little human interest story on the side.  He was carrying a battery for his dune racer when his brother ran into him from behind.  He fell forward, and you can see the line where his face hit the battery, the poor thing.  He screamed blue murder for about 5 minutes, and today he has a beautiful black eye.

I modified the trousers a little, by adding little eyelets and an i cord drawstring instead of sewing elastic tread into the ribbing.  I thought it would look nicer, and I had no idea how to sew in the elastic tread anyway.  I am quite happy with the result, all in all. Considering it took me only about a week to knit.  The outfit went home yesterday, to a friend whose baby is due in August.  (One day, I dream of having an etsy shop - don't we all? Except for those who have one already, I guess!)

I am reading "The Hidden Art of Homemaking", by Edith Schaeffer.
It is hard to describe, but I am learning as I read, agreeing with most of it, but not everything.  It helps that I know someone whose parents met while they were working for L'Abri in Switzerland, who then became missionaries in South Africa.  Visiting with them has always been a special treat, I have often felt they know something I do not, and I think I am starting to understand it a little better now that I am reading this book.

Here is one quote that struck home:

“Interior decoration is not just one's artistic efforts, but it is that which your home (even if it is just a room) is. If you are 'decorating' with clothes draped on every chair, with scratched and broken furniture- it is still your interior decoration! Your home expresses you to other people, and they cannot see or feel your daydreams of what you expect to make in that misty future, when all the circumstances are what you think they must be before you will find it worthwhile to start. You have started, whether you recognize that fact or not! We foolish mortals sometimes live through years not realizing how short life is, and that TODAY is your life.” 
― Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking

Also this one:

“It seems to me that whether it is recognized or not, there is a terrific frustration which increases in intensity and harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them. Always to dream of a cottage by a brook while never doing anything to the stuffy house in the city is to waste creativity in this very basic area, and to hinder future creativity by not allowing it to grow and develop through use." pg 66” 
― Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking

I highly recommend this book, to be read in small dosages, as inspiration.  I cannot read to much of it at once; she inspires me to put the book down and go do something.

Dit hang seker maar af van hoe jy daarna kyk...

Dieselfde toneel, maar elkeen heeltemal anders as die ander. Dis moeilik om te glo dat dit dieselfde dag, dieselfde huis is - nie ons huis nie, vriende het ons oorgenooi vir Independence Day.  Ons het hambugers gebraai en dit op papierborde geëet en water uit ou konfytbotteltjies gedrink, want dis hoe ons dinge hier doen.  Buite was dit lig tot na 9, en dit was warm. Regtig warm. Warmer as Komatipoort.  Maar die vuurwerke was die hitte werd.

Dit was nie 'n lekker week nie - ons was vir 'n klein rukkie swanger, en toe nie meer nie. Ek is fine, net hartseerder as wat ek gedink het ek sou wees. Wens ek kon die nuus met meer deel voor dit so hartseer geword het. Maar ek wil dit tog deel, en gelukkig kan ek maar praat, want niemand verstaan Afrikaans nie.

Ons nuwe huis is lieflik, al werk die elektrisiteit in Melva se kamer nie elke dag nie, en al is die boonste badkamer se drein geneig om verstop te raak.  Dis net lekker om ons eie plek te hê, om nie meer iemand se huurders te wees nie. Die simpel eienaars van die vorige huis - dieselfde mense wat op ons grasperk kom staan het met 'n karavaan, vir drie weke, twee keer, sonder om ons enigsins daarvoor te vergoed - het 'n spul onkostes van ons deposito afgetrek wat nie ons skade was nie. Nou ja, Jacques dreig om vir hulle 'n brief te skryf, en ek onthou hoeveel dit gehelp het die keer toe ons huis gebou het.  Ten minste hoef ek nie meer elke maand vir hulle 'n tjek te stuur nie.

Soms kyk ek by die agterdeur uit, en moet myself herinner dat ek dit maar mag geniet, daar is nie 'n goeie rede om te vrees dat dit binnekort gaan verbygaan nie.  Die laaste jaar in Suid Afrika was so lank, en elke keer as ek opgekyk het en die tuin, of die wolke, of die son gesien het, moes ek myself herinner om nie te geheg te raak nie.  Ek is dankbaar dat ek weer so begin voel oor 'n plek. Nou wens ek ek kon dit vir almal van julle wys, maar nie in Julie nie.

Yarn Along

A cat on a bag.  Austin passed a law to forbid plastic bags a while back.  Since South Africa did that a long time ago, I did not really mind.  What irritates me is that they no longer offer paper bags, you have to ask for one if you forget your bag.  Which isn't the worst thing in the world, I just think you should not be made to feel guilty about forgetting you reusable bags.  Ugh.

And now I am crocheting my own shopping bag, one that is truly reusable, as you can wash it too.  The reusable ones you buy at the store gets very filthy, don't they? I will have to crochet more than one, but it is a beginning, at least.  I bought the yarn on sale from Craftsy, it is Cascade Cotton Rich Worsted, and how I wish I bought more! Cannot wait to go shop at Whole Foods with this one, perplexing the hipster cashier with my handmade, recyclable shopping bags and four children (and minivan).

I am reading "The One and Only Ivan" aloud to the boys.  I started to cry so much that I could not read any more, and now Jean is finishing it by himself, and reading little bits aloud to me.  It gets happier, after a while, but if you are someone who does not even like to go to the zoo, and who would not consider going to a circus, beware. It is pretty sad. Yet, I still recommend it, especially for little boys who are reluctant to read.  I found Jean last night at 12:15, reading under his covers.
Joining with Ginny again.  I wish I could get this move behind me so I can catch up with all the knitters - and oh, I almost forgot! I bought one of Lori's Yarn Along project bags.  It is as perfect and beautiful as you would have imagined.

Writing Home, S.1 : Ep. 2

How about a post without any pictures?

That sounds dreary, but the laptop's screen is broken, Lightroom is only on the laptop and I have not taken any nice pictures with my iPhone. I'll go through them later, maybe one or two can work.

The topics were, again: 

The weather

The weather is still gorgeous, surprisingly and mercifully.  It has rained one day during the past week, and more rain is predicted for tomorrow.  The day temperatures have been ranging between 25 and 30, very similar to South Africa now, but the nights are colder over there.  All this rain makes me worry about how we will mow the not-lawn at the new house.  It is grass, and we will be expected to mow it, but it is not a level surface you can cut with a regular mower. I think they had a little ride-on-mower, and we will not be able to buy one of those now.  Should we get a landscaper to mow it now and again with his ride-on-mower?  Which makes me start to think about illegal immigrants and the whole immigration debacle and I just do not want to go there right now...

Our house

Yes, it is officially ours now.  Wow.  I love it, although I promised never to love a house again.  We go there every Saturday night for a barbecue (the boys call it camping), and I go there every afternoon to paint, since we decided that the shade of beige was unacceptable.  We are not painting all the rooms now, but we will, eventually.  I am painting Jean's room grey (Winter's Day and Schoolhouse Slate, by Martha Steward).  Our room will be Flagstone and Sandpiper... All neutral, desaturated colors.  We have decided to paint the wood paneling too. I will try to take a picture of the den with its floor to roof paneling.  I feel sorry for the man who installed it, but he has passed on, and we cannot live in such a dark space.  Or let's rather say, we would prefer a surface that reflects more of the natural light, since I am sure we could live in about anything.

 I think I should say we will move when we must.  Although I am packing, (I have taken all my yarn there already, and a lot of the boy's toys), by far the most of our belongings still have to be packed and moved to the PackRat.  And then there will have to be a day that we move the PackRat.  After that, we will have to get another crate for the rest of the things...  I do not think we will get professional movers this time, it is very expensive.  Everyone at church offers to help, but I feel uncomfortable accepting help with a move - it is so unpleasant, I would prefer containing the damage to one family? Who knows what my reasons are.  All I know now is that I should not slack, I should just keep on packing, and by the end of the month it will be over, because we have to be out by the 31st.

At school this week

You can imagine, just doing the core: math, reading and writing, Latin, and some history through reading. And Spanish, which is not really the core, but would make finding illegal immigrants to help easier. (Just kidding!)  Jean finished Meet Robert E Lee today.  He was in tears.  General Lee had difficult decisions to make, it explains the complexities of the American Civil War on a level that children can understand.  Jean deeply identified with the character,  and it exhausted him.  Finding him crying in the kitchen, reading aloud the last two pages to his little brothers to share his agony with them, was one of the sweetest things I have ever seen.  

Melva is pretty much immersed in her Math, finishing Pre-Algebra in 5 weeks and starting Algebra in 3 (oops).  She did well in the last in-house math competition, improving her score from a year ago by more than 50%, and jumping several spots in the ranks.  All of that aside, I love the people I meet at math team.  One of my friends will teach a little group Middle English starting in the fall, and another friend from math team offered to lead a book club for middle school girls where they would be free to discuss worldview questions. 

An interesting observation that Jean made this week:  "Bilbo Baggins did not believe in God and Jesus, mamma". "Why, Jean?"  "Because you cannot believe in Jesus and not talk about it. Not for as long as that book is."  Well, except maybe if you grow up in a place where everyone believes?  I was asking myself, because I cannot remember speaking much about God when I was young.  Says the Christian who does not mention her faith in her "about" profile anywhere.  The trick is to tell the truth, though. (Not the truth about whether you believe or not, but the truth about Jesus.)

What I am reading

Which brings me to my book:  The Screwtape Letters.  I have listened through the whole book last week, and now I am listening to it again.  An older, more senior demon writes letters to his nephew, instructing him on how to lead his subject, a young man, safely home to their father, the devil.  CS Lewis is brilliant when it comes to making things clear, and pointing out stumbling blocks in the life of all believers.  This is a book I should reread every year.

One before and after

 This is cheating, actually, since I have already posted these on Facebook.
Move four q-tips to make 3 equilateral triangles:

Clever, isn't it?  We love Beast Academy.

And one terrible picture of the upstairs bedroom and media room, that were connected:

but no longer are... (This was after the first coat of paint, a second coat today made a big difference.  It is so dark, I think I will have to do another coat to cover the beige completely.)  The lighter gray covered the beige much easier (the wall on the left hand side).  Jean loves it, and I am trying to think how I can sneak yellow accents into the room without losing the masculine feel of the room...Yellow battleships, maybe?

Writing home

The phrase "something to write home about" becomes real when you live many miles and eight time zones from home.

I have been trying to think of a format to make it easier, something like "7 quick takes Friday" or a day book, like some others do, but I find that I usually would come up short when I have to fill out their empty spaces.  So I think I will make something up as I go along, using some of their ideas hoping that they will not mind, and aim to write home once a week.

Because I write these posts specifically to keep my family and friends back home up to speed with what we do, you might find this a bit weird or personal if you stumble upon my blog.  I decided that I can live with that.

The weather

Everyone has been going on about the great weather we have had in Austin (if you misspell that, spellchecker throws out Rasputin - that's funny).  I must say that a spring like this would have made our transition here in 2009 much easier.  For almost two months now, temperatures have been between 24 and 27 degrees most days (Celsius, of course!), and at night temperatures drop below 20.  We even had quite a bit of rain, and the grass is green, the flowers are out, and we know that we should appreciate this while it lasts!  In future, I will try to be more specific.  Especially if I do this every week, then I could come back and read my blog for gardening purposes.

During one of the rainstorms, a huge branch broke off one of the trees in our backyard.  Two of our neighbors came with chainsaws to help us clear the branch away. I love that about America.  While they often publicly complain that they are all so self centered and that there is no sense of community, we have been surrounded by kind and caring friends and neighbors from the day we landed, much like we were in South Africa.

Our house

While I write this, we will be closing tomorrow. Finally.  They have been promising that we will close "tomorrow" for about a week and a half now, but this time I think they are sure.  The move will wait for a bit, we have paid rent for another month (signed the contract one year ago), and I am planning on moving slowly, and doing most of it by ourselves.  The house is as close to our "American Dream" as I could have imagined: Two story, wrap around porch, big lot, big trees.  It is in a pocket where there is no homeowners' association, yet the homes around us are beautiful with tidy yards.  We are on a dirt road, there is electricity but no water or gas from the city.  That is part of the reason why it took so long; the owner had to drill a well to ensure water supply to the house.  I will miss my gas stove, but I can live without it. Best of all is that we are still close, we are not out in the country, and most of our friends live within 15 minutes' drive. As much as we complained in the beginning, this city with its quirky neighborhoods is really starting to grow on us.

We are getting 7 gallons/minute, they say that is as good as it gets in Texas.

A view of the  fenced-in backyard

At school this week

I have succumbed to another new curriculum:  Beast Academy.  At the moment they only have a third grade curriculum, but since we finished Jean's Singapore curriculum for third grade and I prefer to go deeper into the topics rather than rushing through them, I ordered this from The Art of Problem Solving website.  Melva is currently doing an online course in pre-algebra through their website, and Beast Academy is in a way a curriculum to prepare younger students to approach math from a different angle.  The guide books are written in comic book style, while the practice books have a more regular format.  I highly recommend these,  the problems are challenging but fun to solve, and the child walks away knowing what an acute angle is just as well if not better than one that had to repeatedly label angles either acute or obtuse.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Jean can read the smaller font if the material is interesting enough! What a little skunk, if that were a regular story he would have said that he cannot read it.  He prefers his stories to be read to him, he will read non-fiction.

I also started to read to Jean from "The Story of Science" by Joy Hakim.  It is a secular text, but it states openly that origins belong to the realm of philosophy rather than science, and treats religion with respect. It describes the development of science and different theories from the earliest times - I believe there are 6 books in the series, and I once again recommend them.  I am influenced by both the Classical Model and by Charlotte Mason when I choose curriculum, and I like the way science and history are combined in this series of books.  Somehow Jean recalls history facts better when he has fun science related facts to pin to his  history facts.  Melva read the book on her own, I should order the next one in the series for her.

What I am reading 

I add this to hold myself accountable.  I am currently not reading "The Paris Wife" and looking forward to the day I will stop watching silly programs on Hulu, and start to read.  I have seen all of Downton Abbey and it exhausted me, but at least I am not ashamed of watching it. (I know that I am not the only one!)  I am ashamed to say that I also watched all 8 seasons of Bones in 3 months, every single episode.  It is just so much easier to watch a TV program than to pick up a book; it is absolute poison.  I guess that is what I have been doing while I wasn't writing home. Sorry.

One "Before and After"

I am getting good at cutting their hair.  I like doing it myself.  I feel that, by now, I do it as well as a rushed Good Clips trainee does it, and it saves me $13. (Doesn't he have great hair?)

And that, in a nutshell, is what we have been doing, more or less.  I have been knitting too, of course, but more about that tomorrow.

Yarn Along: Kid's Color Block Cardigan

I am in bed with something that could be flu, but I don't want to miss Ginny's yarn along again.  I have been knitting quite a bit, but I am just sharing my Kid's Color Block Cardigan today.

I used Billow, KnitPick's new thick and thin, bulky weight cotton yarn.  I love it, it is soft and the colors are beautiful. (I also entered a photo contest on ravelry with this project and another baby blanket that I crocheted)  I am surprised that the boys love this so much. They are taking turns wearing it, but officially it is Christian's sweater.  When Martinus tried it on the first time, he loved it so much he asked me if he could sleep in it, as it was soooo soft.
When I am not sleeping, or trying to sleep off this horrid flu like cold, I am reading a children's history book by Genevieve Foster.  I am sure all of the homeschoolers know about her, but she is new to me, and I love reading the history the way she writes it.  They call it horizontal history, or something like that, meaning that each book spans only a short period of time, but tells about what happened around the world. At the moment I am reading The World of Columbus and Sons.  I am sure we did this when I was a child, but I seem to have forgotten most.

And now I have to lie down again.  I am sure I will get around to most of the wonderful people that link up, but maybe a bit later this week. Happy yarn along!

Preparing for Easter

I have never decorated for Easter.  Growing up, I think we tended to roll Easter and Christmas up into one and celebrate both over Christmas.

But this year I decided to knit eggs and a nest.  I have knit a couple of prototypes, and I like this combination best - a dove grey egg in a straw colored (sisal rope) nest.  To remind us of the new life, Christ's Resurrection, and the new life we have in Him.  Easter is my favorite celebration.

Every year we remember the terrible events on the Friday night.  Yet, we know that it ends well, that it was all part of the Plan.  On Sunday, the women will find the tomb empty.