Even though the yarnalong link up isn’t happening just now — if I remember I am still sharing what I’m reading and knitting— it’s a nice practice to keeping a record.
I’m knitting Joanna’s cozy knee socks in a casual knit along for February ~ it’s a lovely free pattern that you can find here. I’m going quite slowly but I can tell they are a quick knit – if only one would decide to pick up the needles.
I finished reading and sometimes listening to Bless Me, Ultima which at first I loved and then decided wasn’t my style. I loved his familiar voice. I’m not sure what turned me in the end, it wasn’t the murder or magic, I think it was the gross boys he wrote. I’ll keep it on my shelves because of who wrote it and what he means to me personally as a New Mexican and a writer.
This week I am reading cookbooks, looking for inspiration. I’ve picked up the beautiful poems by Levi Romero again. I love his voice and it fills my brain and my rooms like music.
I’ve gotten half way through A Promised Land by Barack Obama. It’s really good and I’m glad to make my way through it however slowly I go.
I wrote before that the mostly quarantine calm of our Holidays this year were to us, “a kind of soothing balm to all of our scrapes and wounds that this strange year has brought us.”
But what I did not say, perhaps because the thoughts had not yet been processed, is that – the mostly quarantined calm of this last season of Holidays and weirdly even big days like this last Sunday’s Super Bowl left me with room for sadness and mourning.
I suppose this is another gift given by this pandemic. The unexpected quiet gives us space and time and to see and feel all the things that busy life didn’t leave us room for before. Just one more surprise, a sort of small grace. One more hard thing to be thankful for.
Winter is back. Although New Mexico isn’t the most Wintery type of place. I’m hungry for Spring and Summer. I’m letting myself begin to think about gardens and chickens and clothes hanging on clothes lines. I’m eager for sunshine and hot days. For bare feet and slow walks, trampolines and lazy afternoons.
I sure hope we get there. I hope you get where you long for too.
I finished Gilead by Marilynne Robinson yesterday. It is beautiful and seemed to speak so much so me. I started reading A Promised Land By Barack Obama before Christmas and I have loved it as far as I’ve gotten although this is not very far at all- maybe 7 chapters. I plan to pick it up again soon.
I am knitting a wee scarf for 13’s teddy bear (that he requested for his birthday) and am attempting a doll or a stuffy or a something that I am a bit unsure about as yet for a purpose that I am just as unsure about (my normal process).
Christmas week we managed to catch planets aligning just so and took what some had dubbed the Star of Bethlehem as a promise that Jesus is with us still. Of course we know that, of course we do- but planets aligning just so the week of Christmas was such a sweet and delightful happening that I took hold of it as such a sign of goodness and hope after this year. I made sure to say it again and again to all of us.
Our Christmas was quite quiet this year. Goodness it was nice. I would have loved to visit family and have a house full to brimming and meet new babies and all that but it was, to us, a kind of soothing balm to all of our scrapes and wounds that this strange year has brought us. I’m not even really speaking about Covid-19 as much as a ton of other really difficult things that happened as well as the wretched virus. We had a lovely Christmas and I am thankful.
We went away to the mountains for a few days after Christmas – very carefully and we were completely on our own. It was such a good break from our house. I did not take any yarn or needles or a hook with me which must have been the very first time since I don’t even know when, and this was a much needed rest for my hands after so long Knitting for Others (HK edition) and all the normal Christmas Knitting.
Three kids asked for socks and three asked for fingerless mitts for Christmas which was nice and easy. I used this sock pattern, and this one– both slightly modified. For the Mitts I used a few patterns (maize, honeycomb and paddle to be precise) from Tin Can Knits – also slightly modified. I made myself a pair of socks and hubby too and knitted several Christmas wash cloths to go into gift baskets but I made those up as I went.
In my journal I wrote that my goal for a certain profile description might someday read, “In between books and work I knit and make.” I don’t feel that the last year had enough completed books or making which is what I call creating things of my own design – in whatever medium I chose- to be able to use that description as yet. Perhaps at the end of this year those words will prove true enough to my heart to use them. I’m half joking but I think that maybe mostly I am not.
I’m not bothering this year with anything even slightly resembling a New Year resolution. I really want to, out of habit perhaps. But nah. Not this time. I’m cherishing my kids and doing my best to give them what they need right here, right now. I’m clinging to my husband, my very best friend ( for real though) as we both struggle – a lot – but not enough to lose faith. I’m shoring up all my edges with only the most necessary. Also cherishing sweet friends in chats and zoom calls and phone coffee dates. I’m biding my time until the day that I can visit family far away. I don’t know what is coming but I do know that He knows. God, I mean and that is a great comfort.
There is yoga in my bathroom and walks at the trail I love and the treadmill although not as often as I should but oh well! There is the sense that I just might use some of the hundred and twenty-seven thousand healthy recipes that I have collected over the years. There is a note in my back pocket (it actually hangs above my desk but I think you get my meaning) that says, “start and don’t stop until you finish.” Also there are quiet times and prayer and I won’t lie, probably too much crying but none of that is new. I don’t spot a resolution in there at all.
All this to say that we are good here. Struggling, hurt, wounded, afraid, anxious, unnerved maybe- probably, for sure. But we are together. We are loved and comforted. We are seen and heard, known and that is huge. We are prayerful and full of hope even in our doubt. I think we know each other better which is a lot, maybe everything. I hope that you are well where you are. I pray that you are comforted when you need comfort and strengthened when you need strength and loved. All of it really. Not to sound too preachy but you are not alone, I hope that is something that we all can know deeply when it matters.
I must confess that the photos I stole from my Instagram while the house sleeps are from June and not July. Our five kids and two wee visitors, hubby, the two dogs and the cat are all still, amazingly, asleep. So I type with the phone held above my head in the dim morning light now, unable and unwilling to fetch all my projects and find some lighting and a spot to take real July pictures. My apologies.
I was doing that thing I do in the early hours of the day where I slide my phone from the night stand / desk and check all the places that I check before the world around here gets moving too fast. Email. Facebook. Instagram. Bible App for the verse of the day etc. I saw that Ginny had posted on Instagram her July Yarnalong was up and I felt I should join her.
I have been slow with the blogposts this past Spring. Weeks of sickness and then recovery left me unwilling to do more than the basics in life. I’ve been fairly productive on the crafting side of things though now that I’m feeling more myself. So here goes it.
I finished The Path Between Us by Suzanne Stabile and picked up (again) Becoming by Michelle Obama. Both are tremendously good books of differing sorts and I recommend them to you and to everyone.
I’m knitting socks (not pictured here) that I started in the Spring. I might add a picture later. I’m also knitting a sweater which is pictured that I started several years ago. Recently I decided that finishing things long left unfinished might be a good practice for me, a doing repressed four on the enneagram. We. Will. See. So far just working on the long neglected things feels really good. Feels like needed progress.
I did also start a wee hand quilted… something. I started out thinking it was a baby’s Summer quit. I’m not too sure of that anymore. As I work with the fabric bunched up in my hand and move the needle up down and over with my other hand I feel such deep joy in it’s making.
When the fabric is pulled taut in my quilters hoop and my eyes and fingers can run over the stitches in their varying lengths and colors, it feels less like a quilt and more like art. I wish every project felt this way. Maybe this is just because it’s a new kind of project for me, I don’t really know yet. It really is so lovely to work on though.
Thanks for stopping by and happy knitting or crocheting or crafting and reading!
I knit a bunch of radiator mittens for the kids in December and started another crochet sock yarn blanket. This is the place where I found a pattern that I’m using as a guideline.
I cast on 294 + 2 and this blanket will be twin size. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with it yet. Of course I want to keep it, but it feels like something to gift.
I haven’t read much of this book at all in the last month or so. I’m only half way through it. It is a beautifully written book but all the pain in its pages lands a bit too close to home for me.
I’m starting this one today for a fresh start in the New Year and I think when it’s not so gloomy outside my windows or inside my rooms I’ll finish the other.
I didn’t make any resolutions this year. I did write something a bit broody and poetic about 2018 and made a list of longing for 2019 but I have no tidy New Years resolutions to share. It just isn’t that kind of ending/ beginning this go around and that’s okay by me.
Did you make resolutions? Set goals? Have plans for 2019? Do share!
I pray your year is filled with hope and peace for you and yours. And please remember that God is for you.
all the grace 