A Sweater, a Shawl, and More Fermentation

This week has been productive in terms of knitting.  I am 99% finished with the Baby Surprise Jacket.  I just need to finish weaving in the ends and to sew on some buttons.  Just a word of advice, if you find something you really like on etsy, don't pin it on pinterest; it's almost a guarantee that someone will buy it before you do.  This is what happened with the buttons I was hoping to get for this sweater (and on several other occasions); I think I have finally learned my lesson.


This morning I started working on my next project.  I am knitting a Lacie Prairie Shawl.  I wanted a warm and practical shawl and this pattern definitely fits the bill.  Lets hope I finish it before all of the cooler days of early spring have passed.  It'd be a shame to have to wait until autumn to try it out.

Reading wise, I am still reading and enjoying The Art of Fermentation.  I am getting more and more excited about fermentation.  I just need to figure out what I want to ferment; I am drawn to the idea of pickling lemons so perhaps that is where I will start.

Want to read about what other people are knitting and reading?  Join Ginny over at Small Things for her weekly Yarn Along!

Letters and Numbers

Little Ish learned all of his uppercase letters by the time he was 19 months old and then spent almost a year refusing to believe in the existence of lowercase letters other than a and q.  It wasn't until Christmas when he received a Melissa and Doug See and Spell from his cousins that he started believing in lowercase letters.  I decided to copy the Alphabet Egg-Stravaganza idea that I found on this blog to help him learn all of his lowercase letters (not just the ones that came with his See & Spell).  I did have to wait a couple months until their were Easter Eggs at the dollar store, but it was well worth the wait.  Since the eggs came in packs of 18, I had 10 eggs left over from making his alphabet game so I made a similar one with numbers where I wrote the number on the top half of the egg and the corresponding number of dots on the bottom.  Both games have been a big hit!  On one morning Little Ish decided to add an extra element to his number eggs; he filled each egg with the correct number of Cheerios.

Fermentation, Vikings, and a Sweater

Since getting back to knitting after my long hiatus, I have cast on what purportedly will turn into a baby sweater.  I have been meaning to knit a Baby Surprise Jacket since before Lily was born.  I actually was talking to a friend to help me make sense of the pattern a couple of hours before I went into labor with Lily.  Not so surprisingly, I never made one for Liliana.  This sweater, provided that it doesn't turn out to be a failed attempt, will be going to my newest nephew.  Unlike the name of the sweater, it is not intended to be a surprise that I am knitting it.  After knitting baby blankets for his older siblings, I decided to deviate from tradition.  So far, the pattern is fairly easy almost to the point of being boring as it is all in garter stitch with 2 double decreases every other row.  I really like what it is supposed to look like when it is done though. I have started a search for the buttons for the finished product.  I am thinking wooden ones, but I am still not sure.

Aside from my knitting, I have been reading a lot.  I finished reading Enchantment earlier this week and found it to be both charming and well crafted.  I have now moved onto reading The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz.  I had been stalking amazon for a reasonably priced copy for well over a month and was very pleased to come across one last week.  I already am enjoying the writing and I am looking forward to putting some of what I learn to practice.

Little Ish and I are currently enjoying a longer read aloud together.  This week he pulled Voyage with the Vikings off of the bookshelf and asked me to read it to him.  The book is historical fiction and is part of the Adventures in Odyssey Imagination Station series.  So far we are really enjoying it.  I am not sure how much he is retaining of it from day to day, but since he wants me to keep reading, I figure he must be following it somewhat. I think after this book we might move onto something a little more classic though such as Winnie-the-Pooh.

To hear about other reading and knitting adventures, feel free to visit Ginny over at Small Things .

The Lily Phanatic

For those of you who are baseball fans,  you most likely have heard of the Philly Phanatic; for those of you who are not, I'll fill you in. He is the mascot of the Philadelphia Phillies.  When my Dad and one of my brothers visited last spring, they went to a Phillies game and brought back a somewhat ridiculous hat for my children.  It was neglected for months, but in the past few weeks Lily has grown attached to it.  She often runs up to me, hat in hand, yelling, "Hat! Hat!" until I put it on her head.  Little Ish has taken to calling her the Lily Phanatic.

And just in case you were wondering, we're still Red Sox fans through and through.

Back to my needles...

and  my reading.

After a 6 month hiatus from all things knitting, I finally picked up my needles again this past week.  I  have a larger project to get working on before its recipient outgrows the size of the pattern I have, but I knew that I wanted to start back to knitting with something quick yet interesting.  I settled on an Elvish Leaves Dishcloth.  It is a fairly simple yet beautiful lace pattern and it has the added benefit of practicing lace techniques on larger needles with a heavier yarn.  After finishing the dishcloth, aside from weaving in ends because my darning needle is among the missing, I finally chose a yarn from my stash for my next project and wound it into a couple of balls. 

Another one of my hobbies that has taken a nosedive since having children is reading.  I probably read more than the average Joe if you consider that I am reading picture books to Lily and Ish for a good portion of the day everyday.  My own reading, however, has really fallen by the wayside.  I have made efforts since January to read more and it is going well.  I am not reading as much as I would like, but I am well on my way to completing my fifth book of the year.  Right now I am borrowing a friend's copy of Enchantment by Orson Scott Card.  So far I am enjoying it.  It is nice to be reading a carefully crafted fairytale retelling; the last one I read was a train wreck--one of those books I finished because I had already gotten so far into it that I couldn't not finish it. Enchantment is definitely a breath of fresh air in comparison.

Want to see what other people are knitting and reading?  Join the Yarn Along over at Small Things. 

Following Lily

A little over a week ago, I decided to follow Lily around with my camera.  Little Ish was still napping and she was ignoring me and my camera.  Seeing as she usually runs at me and tries to touch the lens of my camera the majority of the times I try and photograph her, I couldn't pass up this chance to capture her at play.

Playing at the workbench...

Taking a break to read...

Taking a few deep breaths...

Trying to figure out the top...

 Playing trains...

 A few more breaths...

Showing Momma that birth balls make excellent drums...

Burying Oliver

I have wanted to write about this for weeks, but I have been having a hard time getting started.  I have been afraid of not getting all of the details straight.  While I was lying in bed last night, I realized I needed to write sooner rather than later as all the specifics were starting to blur.

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The Monday after finding out that Oliver had died, I called The Birth Center so that I could ask all the questions I had about miscarrying.  Sarah Grace, the midwife on call, fielded all of my questions.  One of the things she mentioned to me was that since I was so far along in first trimester that I might see the baby when I finally miscarried. She told me that there was the possibility that the baby would come out whole but that he may also come out in parts.  I was also told that I might never see my baby at all during the miscarrying process. 

This news precipitated a question that I hadn’t thought about prior to calling; what was I supposed to do with the baby? I was told that some people flush their baby, some put the baby in the trash, and still others bury their baby.  I couldn’t stomach the idea of the first two options, but I also had no clue how to go about burying the baby either.  Thankfully, Ish and I had several days to figure it all out.

Part of our concerns when it came to figuring out what to do about burying Oliver was that we weren’t sure if there was a prescribed way of doing things in the Catholic Church.  We of course knew that burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy, but beyond knowing that we would need to bury our sweet baby, we were pretty clueless.  I mentioned this concern to Little Ish’s godmother and she very graciously offered to have her husband research the matter for us.  During the time that he was researching, I was reading Karen Edmisten's book .  Between the information our friend found for us and the information in Karen’s book, we knew that we could bury our baby on hallowed ground and we were fairly sure there was some sort of funeral rite for unborn babies.

Since we knew we were going to bury Oliver before I delivered him, I took the time to figure out how I was going to catch his little body; I did not want to be fishing his body out of a toilet.  I got the idea of miscarrying into a scarf/thin piece of fabric by looking at what the Elizabeth Ministry included in their Miscarriage Delivery Aid kits.  I had considered purchasing one, but I had the feeling it wouldn’t arrive by the time I needed it. 

After we figured out how to catch Oliver, we simply stopped worrying about what we were going to do.  When I finally did miscarry, Ish called his mother because we didn’t really know how to go about getting the whole burial process started.  It turns out I still don’t know how to do that, because Ish’s mom very kindly worked out all of the details for us so that Oliver could be laid to rest beside his great-grandmother and his uncle.

On the morning of January 10^th, Fr. Ambrose presided over a gravesite burial service for Oliver Innocent.  Under a small tent with our baby sealed inside a beautiful inlaid wood box, surrounded by a group of about 35 friends and family members, we prayed for the soul of our sweet boy.  I can’t adequately describe that morning except to say that as hard as burying Oliver was, the overwhelming love and support from friends and family was a testament to the fact that he lived even though he was never born.