Knittymama

July 19, 2010 · 11:58 pm

Summer Studio Tour

So I know I promised the first post in my Simple series, but today was one of those days, which means the photos I wanted to take weren’t taken. Poor Spinner was having a rough morning and was only happy when seated next to me reading books. The alternative was to let him follow me around, screaming “read” at full volume while trying to bite my leg. He is the king tantrum thrower of all three boys and I’ve learned over the years that when your toddler is in such a mood it’s best to just cuddle up. So Simple will follow, but I still have a bit of a preface to it by joining up with the Summer Studio Tour over at Beauty That Moves. (I’m a bit late but couldn’t resist).

There is a neglected (and nearly finished!) quilt sadly lounging on the table, but the real work in this room is the studio itself. See the cracks?

This is what happens when your house get’s a nice shove by a tornado. We’ve let the place settle over the winter and in a few weeks we will be visited by the plasterers/painters who will be giving our place a makeover. Studio included.

New fabric for new curtains awaits:

Any guesses on the paint color I’m going with? No more green, that’s for certain.

I have big plans for this room. Simplification is not just about the kids, it’s about making my life better as well. I often feel lately when I go into this room that I can’t get any work done because there is too much stuff all over the place. My sewing table is usually a mess, the ironing board covered with fabric, baskets of yarn and fiber everywhere, as well as whatever junk the boys dragged in. So I’ll be rearranging, adding more shelves and figuring out what I can let go of…the toughest part. It’s easy for me to get rid of toys, not so easy for me to get rid of MY stuff. So we’ll see where it goes with this room. My hope is that I’ll be able to just come in and work, rather than spend half my time moving around clutter and feeling overwhelmed by project ideas.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a smoother day and I can get back to the post I promised!

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Filed under home

July 17, 2010 · 6:56 am

Care to join me?

As you’ve probably guessed, the book Simplicity Parenting has really changed how I’m viewing our home and family life. The subtitle says “Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise to Raise Calmer, Happier and More Secure Kids” and I truly do believe it. It’s been a long time since a parenting book has influenced me so much. And even if you’re not a parent, I believe that the ideas put forth in blogs such as Zen Habits can make a profound difference in the quality of a person’s life.

There will still be plenty of knitting, sewing and spinning around here, but I’ll also be adding a post each Monday on how I’m using the ideas put forth in Simplicity Parenting to improve life around our household. And I really hope you’d like to join me!

So, if you’d love to create some calm in your life, please grab a button and leave a comment to let me know. Blog about it and share what ideas you have to add some rhythm and some simplicity to your life.

You can dive in head on or take it in baby steps. Either way is fine. Maybe you want to simplify things for your entire family, maybe you need to simplify your creative life so you can be more focused on what you do. Just don’t be afraid to give it a try. I think you’ll find it’s worth it!

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Filed under simple

July 16, 2010 · 4:15 pm

Super Motorcycle Gloves!!!

Need a quick project?

Grab and old t-shirt. Cut off the bottom and wrap it around your favorite small persons hand with about a half inch extra. Cut a match. Stitch it up the side and cut a hole for the thumb about 1.5 inches down. Grab some fabric paint (I like Jaquard) and paint your design on the top.

Now the hard part. Try and convince your small person that no, they cannot wear them yet because they are not dry. Hang them on the line for a whole five minutes before your small person can’t bear the wait any longer and finally retrieve them, hoping the paint will not smear on anything. (It didn’t).

Now go feel like the coolest mom/grownup in the world and watch your small person at their make-believe finest!

1 Comment

Filed under crafting with kids, tutorial

July 13, 2010 · 12:35 am

Simpler?

I’m sorry, did I say the end of June? Because I really meant sometime in July. I’ve just been enjoying the blissful simple life so much that I just couldn’t take the time to post.

And now those of you who are regular readers around here are splitting your sides because you know there is no simple around this house! Despite my efforts at Simplicity Parenting these last couple of months, we are still living on the wild side. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have much to share; I have a lot to share! I’ve learned so much, but I’m also realizing that although some of these changes can be done overnight, others will take months, and some I will likely struggle with for a long time. But the big change is in attitude. I feel like taking this blog break (both writing and reading, I miss seeing what you all are up too!) has helped me clear me head a bit and focus more on the things that matter the most for me.

I’m excited to pass this on to all of you, and I’m looking forward to seeing what changes you might be inspired to make as well. I’ll be posting every week with some basic information about the book and sharing what changes we’ve been making. I’m going to try for posting on simplicity every Monday.

And let me know if you’d like to join me. I’d love to have some fellow companions on this journey. (Maybe I’ll even make a button).

Until then, I’ll leave you with a few before shots:

(Don’t get too excited about that kitchen yet. We’re not even close on that one!)

And no worries to my knitting and sewing friends. I’ve got lots to share with you as well!

3 Comments

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Tagged as simplicity parenting

May 17, 2010 · 10:24 pm

Balance

Oh dear. I really wish I was going to show you pictures of my latest handspun. Or maybe the quilt top I am so close to having put together. Or perhaps the cute little knitting kits I have waiting for me in the closet, yarn and patterns all ready to go. (Don’t worry, that will all be appearing again, just not today). Instead, I am here to talk a about the search for balance. And why I’ll be taking a little break.

This is the problem:

You see here approximately one third of the boys books strewn across the living room floor. And yes, you also see one boy on the bookshelf and one trying to join him. And of course a fight did ensue, as well as much wailing about the picking up of the books. All while I was trying to make supper.

Now, if you take the above example and multiply it by, oh, let’s just say 10 or 20 a day and you can see how I’m feeling just a wee bit overwhelmed these days. Add the fact that the kitchen is ripped up (remodeling, good!), we have to have the whole house cleaned out and ready for re-plastering in a little over a month (last of the tornado repairs) and the fact that Little Man Math Boy is on an elimination diet of no wheat, soy, dairy, eggs, nuts or fish, which leaves me cooking constantly and well, that makes me feeling really overwhelmed.

But wait! It’s not all doom and gloom here. Life is a challenge right now, but I also know that these early, crazy years are but a blip on the radar. The boys will learn to fold their own pants, wash their own hair, find their own shoes and stay asleep once they go to bed. They will learn how to make their own lunches and do the dishes. They will learn how to not break down into a sobbing mess every five minutes when they are tired. I know this is going to get easier. But I also think I that even though life will be busy, and messy and shall I just say… energetic, I don’t think it needs to be as crazy and chaotic as it feels right now.

Here’s why:

Simplicity Parenting

Rhythm of the Home

Zen Habits

Calm and Compassionate Children

(And yes, you should click on all those links. If you don’t have time now, be sure to do it later.)

The basic question is this: what if there were only ten books on that shelf rather than the sixty plus books I picked up?

Now apply that question to every other nook and cranny of my life, and you’ll see where I’m headed.

Because I realized that the stress in my life, the craziness, the lack of time and energy is pretty much caused by the large amount of stuff, stuff and more stuff. I want the focus in this house to be on our family and not trying to trudge through and clean up the stuff that’s all over this house. It’s time for the stuff to get cleaned out.

So I’m taking the next month or so to get started on this new journey of ours. I’m going to follow the ideas lined out in Simplicity Parenting, and use the other links/books as further inspiration. I know I’ll just be making a dent in what I want to do this month, but the break from the blog will be one less thing for me to worry about as I get started. I’ll try to take lots of photos, and my plan is to return in late June and do a five week series on what I’ve been working on and some ways that you can do the same in your life. My hope is that as the stuff leaves, we will find more time in our house for each other as well as for the things we really want to be doing, rather than the daily drudgery of wading through the stuff.

In the meantime, take some time to read the above books or visit the sites. Let me know, what do you do to bring more calm into your life? How do you make sure you have time for the people and things that are really important? This isn’t just for frazzled mamas like myself either. I think we all can benefit from looking at life this way.

Wish me luck! I’ll see you in June….

7 Comments

Filed under family, home, Uncategorized

April 29, 2010 · 9:11 pm

There is a reason.

There is a reason that the Skeptic and I don’t sit down often in the middle of the day to have a conversation. At least we don’t sit down for more than five minutes. But after a long day at work we were a bit delusional and thought we could. Math Boy and Knittykid were playing in their new fort in the back yard. Spinner was toddling around the house minding his own business.

So we sat. And chatted. And had a very nice conversation, uninterrupted until the two boys came inside, Knittykid saying “happily, look what we painted!” While Math Boy hid his hands and tried to run upstairs. Their hands were purple. Their clothes were purple. And outside?

They wanted to paint their fort. (You’re looking at the logs from our poor maple tree, lost in the tornado last summer and waiting to be cut up for either firewood or backyard play materials.) It’s not much paint; I think they stopped before going too far, realizing that this was probably not as good an idea as it sounded. What blew me away was how they got the paint out of the cans. Got a guess? Go ahead, think of a good one. If you’ve been reading this blog long enough you should know by now it was not with a paint can opener.

Got one?

Ready? A pitchfork. Bet you didn’t guess that one, did you? Makes perfect sense, right? Because, “We couldn’t get the top off Mom, so we just used a pitchfork!” (To poke a hole in the top, of course.)

I am thankful for their creativity. I am grateful for their innovation. I am in love with their spirit. I am blessed with an “idea guy” as the ringleader for my rowdy little trio. And that is why I don’t sit down for more than five minutes, as least not until they are all asleep.

And tonight we will remember to take all the paint out of the garage.

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Filed under kids, outside, Uncategorized

April 21, 2010 · 11:54 pm

Knitters

It’s been a knitterly few days. I’m lucky to live in Minneapolis. Not only do we have scads of wonderful LYS’s but we get Yarnover, the Knitter’s Guild Spring knitting extravaganza along with an amazing line up of knitters to bring and share their skills. The list was long but in the last few days I was able to hear both Cat Bordhi and Franklin Habit speak and take classes with Meg Swanson and Cookie A.

Yarnover started with a sweet and funny keynote by Cat Bordhi. She spoke eloquently about knitting and what is was that made it so magical.

After Cat’s speech it was time to take my first class of the day: two color knitting, taught by Meg Swanson and Amy Detjen. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect. Sixty knitters in one room? But I was amazed by the information she shared. Not only did I leave with a mile long list of knitting tips, but the stories she shared about her mother were priceless. The artistry and talent were amazing, and the sweaters she brought…..gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. I feel like I want to spend the entire year knitting nothing but Schoolhouse Patterns. Maybe time to do that intensive EZ study I’ve always wanted to do?

And the best part? I can finally knit with one color in each hand as well as easily trap my stitches. Time for some Armenian knitting, perhaps?

After lunch I had a class with Cookie A on resizing stitch patterns. Unfortunately, half the class thought they were going to learn how to resize actual patterns, not stitch patterns. Poor Cookie! However, she did her best to teach everyone what they wanted to know and I did gain the skills I wanted. The best part was that the class broke up a little early (I think they all wanted to hit the yarn market before it closed) so I had the chance to sit down with Cookie one on one and take a look at how she would resize a complicated pattern from one of her socks. Not only did I learn how to resize but I also learned about the design process, stitch patterns and charting. Talking through it with Cookie was very helpful.

Cookie’s sock and pattern; my attempt at making it bigger. I was waaaaay off track. The trick is to start with the biggest lines in the pattern, not the smallest.

Knowing that Shepherd’s Harvest was coming up in a few weeks, I restrained myself and bought only one thing I’ve always wanted, the Wild Apple Bohus hat kit from Fairy Hare Yarns*. It was quite a splurge ($50 for a hat? really, $50 for a hat? the Skeptic kept saying…) but I did have birthday money I had been saving for the occasion. So yes. $50 for a rare hat kit; totally worth it.

I had two days to soak in all this knitterly goodness before the grand finale of this long weekend, Franklin Habit.

Franklin was the guest speaker at the Knitter’s Guild and he was fantastic. His presentation was all about historical knitting. Now, I knew he had his column on Knitty but had no idea that he’d been doing so much research into how knitting went from something passed on from one person to another to something written down in instruction form. He was funny and extremely knowledgeable about the subject, and made that old and forgotten history major in me perk right up. Considering that written patterns began with absolutely no standardization whatsoever, it’s quite amazing today that somehow we’ve managed to come up with a cohesive language for knitting at all.

Not only did Franklin share the history, but he brought samples of the historical patterns he’s worked up and I had the chance to take a look. He made an excellent point about going back to these historical patterns. We’ve lost some useful things over the years. The baby hood? Padded around the edges for extra warmth and protection. And the nightcap? Why did we stop using nightcaps? I live in an old house and I freeze at night. And the orange? Well, you know how we knitters all like knitting fruit just because we can. That’s always been around.

Franklin was kind enough to let me snag a few photos……

Wow, that’s some wild, escaping hair I’ve got going on there…..can you all tell I barely managed to escape the 3 boy tornado to get out of the house for this event? At least you can’t see the muddy hand print I discovered on my pants during the talk….

You can find the patterns for all of these items on Knitty in his column, Stitches in Time.

Now, it’s 11:43. A wise woman would realize she has to be up in six hours and go to bed. The unwise would head over to Ravelry to dig around in the Historical Knitting group. Or maybe go knit an orange.

7 Comments

Filed under hats, stuff to love

Tagged as Cookie A, Franklin Habit, historical knitting, Meg Swanson, yarnover, yarnover 2010

April 14, 2010 · 9:15 pm

About Hats, Part Three

So I’ve had this little hat series plotted out for the last few months, since it seemed that all I could manage to knit were hats. Hats with problems. That makes for good blog-fodder. And it’s Minnesota in spring; still too early to put all the hats away. (Although the way this spring has been, it won’t be long…)

I fell in love with Shroom over on Knitty but wanted to keep with my pledge to not buy new yarn. The trouble was that the pattern used a very specific yarn and recommended you stick with it. But my spinning skills were improving so I thought I could take it on. Kind of.

I did end up with a ball of Navajo-plied bulky in the colors I was hoping for (remember the blue coat saga?) But I was short on yardage. Again with the knitting, the tinking, the knitting. Add in a stray ball of bulky white and brown and you get this:

Sadly, I’m not sold on this hat either. I love how it looks when I’m holding it. I love it at certain angles. The side is good. But from the front it’s not quite right. The drape is off and I kind of feel like I have a giant piece of popcorn on my head.

Do I rip it all out? Give up on the Shroom? It might just be that this hat isn’t going to work on my head. Or maybe I do need to buy the right yarn. But this yarn is so pretty, I love it. It needs to be worn, not hidden in the bottom of the woolens basket. What would you do?

You’ll notice that the Baktus is also finished. I am completely, totally in love with it. The fact that I spun the yarn, that it was perfect for this project, feels perfect, drapes beautifully. It makes up for the misguided Shroom.

See how lovely it all looks together?

I’m just not quite sure about it on my head…..

Keep your fingers crossed that About Hats, Part Four will able to be published. Because the hat in question is missing. The perfect spring boys hat, complete with new pattern, is lost. And I know it’s a hat you’ll want to knit, if only I could find it.

P.S. Little Man, ahem, I mean Math Boy (he settled on that nickname) says thank you for all the birthday wishes! So kind of you to take the time!

4 Comments

Filed under finished objects, handspun, hats, scarf

Tagged as Shroom. Baktus

April 8, 2010 · 11:46 am

Not So Little….

Yesterday, Little Man* turned seven. Seven.

It’s amazing to me to even think about that fact that my little guy is seven years old. Happily, he still needs to crawl into my lap at least once a day for some cuddles, and he still asks me for “mama time” when he needs it. But this little boy is growing up. I can start to see the picture of who he might be emerging. As hard as it is to let he baby in him go, it’s so exciting to watch him grow and emerge into this person.

So happy birthday to my little man, my boy. You bring curiosity into our lives. Questions. Ideas. You are full of excitement and energy. You are passionate and full of life. Every day you make us think, and think hard about something or other. You remind us to be sensitive, to be caring, to love. To take the time that little boys need to grow, learn and feel loved. You are patient with us, because you’re our first born and we’re learning right along with you. Happy Birthday!!!

*We’ve decided it’s time for a new nickname, since he’s such a boy now! HIs faves? Cannonball, Math Boy and Mad Scientist. We’ll see what he narrows it down to…

6 Comments

Filed under family

April 3, 2010 · 9:43 pm

Assignment #2

This week’s assignment from C &C Photography:

#1 Take one image, as the “eye sees it”-straight ahead/straight on #2 Stand on a chair and get a birds eye view- one image.

#3 One close up or a different angle all together.

#4 Shoot off center using negative space and see how that plays in with the overall composition.

#5 E xtra “Un focus”- that’s right, make sure you DO NOT have the still in focus….it can create painterly impressionistic feel (also this is harder to do than you might think, the eye is trained to see everything in focus)

I love the photography of Franklin Habit and Jared Flood. But yarn and fiber is tough to photograph. The texture, colors, lighting….I really struggle with it. So I chose some silk fiber this week to play with in hopes I’ll get some helpful suggestions.

Sadly, some of my files wouldn’t transfer from my camera to computer. There were a couple shots I liked more. But a couple of these I’m pretty pleased with.