Limbo

If Limbo does exist, it must touch the physical realm between Christmas and New Year's. Those six days of no man's land where all the loose ends of the current year get tied up but nothing for the next year can officially be started. It's either a time crammed full of high speed stress or a lazy daisy wandering... or a little of both.

It is in this time of instantaneous yet delayed change, that my house is a mess. It seems this happens every year after Christmas. The onslaught of presents causes the need to find new spaces for everything, which triggers the need to go through closets and chuck what we're not using. Our dinning area/entryway is currently storage for piles of recycling, donations, things that need to be returned to their proper owners, and stuff for an 'out with the old, in with the new' clothing exchange. I suppose you could say it's the blessing and the curse of a small space that we can't just cram everything in.

The good news is, all this craziness made my husband realize that we really do need to figure out a workable, defined, maintained use for our spare bedroom (instead of just letting it be the catch-all room that functions as guest room, crafting room, office, library, attic, and garage). It still does most of those things but we've shifted the primary purposes around. I claimed it.

I've been trying to let it be mostly Dustin's room. Since I stay home during the day I feel like the rest of the house belongs to me and I feel it's important for someone who has to face the working world everyday to have a space in their home that is a kind of personal haven. That led to a room covered in electrical wires that may or may not be connecting anything and, bless his heart the man can be organized when he wants to be, tools everywhere but mostly just inside the door. Why they always ended there, I don't know, maybe because that's close enough to his side of the closet that they were quasi-put away. It drove me nuts, but I tried to just shut the door most of the time.

When Dustin expressed a desire for the room to be reorganized so that it wouldn't be messy all the time, I was thrilled. We finally moved the computer into our living room entertainment stand (hey, it's entertainment) like we've been meaning to since we moved here, which moved the 'office' out and freed up the desk. I asked Dustin if I could have the desk. He said yes. I asked him if he could not put anything on the desk at all, or on any of the shelves. He gave me a funny look but said yes.

I spent most of yesterday going through all my crafting stuff (yarn, fabric, thread, patterns, tools) and chucking all those odds and ends I've been saving 'just in case' but know I'll never use and reorganizing everything into boxes. It freed up about a quarter of the space in the closet and I now have a very sweet and darling space. My sewing machine can sit out and with the love seat tucked into the corner and the new lace tablecloth from Belgium my mother-in-law gave to me for Christmas, it makes me giddy happy whenever I glance in the door.

It is pretty girly. Which is what I was trying not to do, but the boy seemed pleased when he saw it, so I guess it'll be alright. Now, if I can just get my dinning area back...

Contentment

I ask a lot out of life. I ask that it be simple. I ask that it be fun. I ask that it be full of love. I ask that it have a rhythm. I ask that it be fulfilling. I ask that it be full. I ask that it run in my time line. It does all those things at some point or another and it doesn't do any of them at some point or another.

What Life asks out of me is that I be content with what I am given when it's given. I am, at some point or another.

Right now I am knitting. I love it. It's not something I would have expected to ever love. I have always preferred crochet. The more I knit the more I find it hard to be content. I read several blogs of women who live on small farms or just run a small home that includes live stock and a garden, who have 3+ children running underfoot, who have yarn and lots of it, who show pictures of kitchens covered in flour and a pot of soup simmering on the stove, of art crafts strewn over tables and cats perched in windows. I wish these were my pictures. But they're not. Sometimes I look at what I have at this moment and think, 'yeah, this is pretty good' and sometimes I can't wait to have all those things that I think I really want.

Knitting does that, it calls me out of what I have into what could be, perhaps because it is one of the first few steps that get me there. Knitting allows me to create, it allows me to transform yarn into a garment, a blanket, a hat, slippers, a decoration, anything. It gets me more involved in providing for my family. I love that I can pour hours of time and love into an item and then just give it away. I can give my love away in an item that a person can have close when I am far away. I must learn to be content with that and wait patiently for the chicken.

December

Do you want the good news or the bad news first. Well, I'll just assume you're like me and always want the bad news first...

I've lost my camera. It's gone. Poof. Nowhere. I suppose it's somewhere but it's keeping that location to itself. Which means no more pictures until I scrounge up the money to buy a new one... which will be a few months. Which is very, very sad because it's December, which means presents, which means projects, which means lots of stuff I would really, really love to post pictures of.

The good news is, it's December, which means presents, which means projects, which means I am very, very busy.

I'm attempting a handmade Christmas this year. I started out thinking of making one or two things but once my hands started making they just couldn't stop, so the handmade Christmas was unintentional. I've really enjoyed it. I've been learning new skills like hand embroidery and pattern making. It's amazing all the things you can do at home.

I know lots of people talk about making things 'in house' as a cost saving measure, less money spent, more in your pocket. That's somewhat true. While it does cost less money, it takes way more time to make everything than to walk into a shop and buy it. I ran the numbers for the Christmas apron I made based off the pattern I drafted (see last post). If you paid me minimum wage for the time it took me to make the apron (not to mention create the pattern) it comes to $41.25. That's pretty much what Mary Jane's Farm was charging and I didn't include the cost of materials. I would argue that if I was really good at this sort of thing, it would take me less time. I would also argue that the value of learning that I could draft a pattern and learning how to work out all the kinks through the production process was more than the value I would have received if I had just paid $40 for the apron and had my five and half hours of time. But that's just me.

I've also been learning how to host people. We've invited several people to celebrate Advent with us in our home every Sunday this month. It's exciting and kind of intimidating. I'm a quiet person, I don't like being around a bunch of people. But I love Advent. I love the waiting and the daily reminder of what Christmas is about and why it's the best time of the year. I really want to share that but to do that I have to get over this whole 'I don't really like being around lots of people' thing. I'm trying to keep it simple: people come over, people share a pot of soup and talk, we all move to the living room where the Advent wreath is and read the official Advent scriptures, light the candles, talk about the subject of that particular week's Advent candle and why it's important, then do whatever fits the mood: sing, talk, sit in contemplation, leave in silence, whatever. I need it to not be stressful... Christmas shouldn't be stressful. It's God's work, all He asks is for us to come and see. If our houses aren't perfect, that's okay, if our cookies aren't perfect, that's okay, if our hearts aren't perfect, that's okay, if we refuse God, that's not okay. Hm... I'm vaguely reminded of something I thought of in the car on the way to Thanksgiving but I can't remember what I wanted to say, I can only remember the feeling and mood, something about how the verse says that Jesus stands at the door and knocks and we always think about this polite little man politely knocking at the door... but maybe He's standing at that door and pounding... perhaps it will come to me later.

In any case, I've been trying to put my heart into Christmas. To be gracious and open to others, to make my gifts personal and full of effort and love, to craft and create. To put Christmas in my heart where it belongs.

I'm alive, promise!

Hello.

Long time no see. Actually, that's not true. I do visit my own blog every other day or so to look at all my 'Blogs of Note'. I just don't always publish my own updates. Sneaky, I know. But, I find myself in need of some mental organization, which comes best when I am writing.

Right now I feel like I have a million projects going on so I should list them out:

Cat cross stitch (1/3 completed)
'For Emily' written book (70 pages completed)
'Gifted' comic (5 pages completed)
learning how to keep house beyond cooking and cleaning which includes:
learning about nutrition and applying it in tasty manners
learning to decorate
learning to be economical in my purchases (something I am not good at AT ALL)
baking bread for others
...

Hm, that's not a million. In fact, now that it's written out, it looks fairly manageable. Although, it does amuse me that I wrote them out in the exact opposite order that I would choose to pursue them. C'est la vie. I suppose that shows that I think the most about what I least want to do which probably added to the 'I have a million things to do' feeling. FYI, that doesn't mean I don't want to write and draw, it just means it's low on my wish list.

Alright then. Today is Monday, which means it's laundry and grocery day. I think I shall work on 'For Emily' today. See if I can't knock out five pages or so. Maybe the long break will have jolted my creativity. I think I'll work on the cats as well, I'm hoping to finish them in time for Christmas.

Socks

I just finished my first ever pair of crochet socks! See and admire!

A Christmas Present

This was one of my projects yesterday:

I hope its intended receiver will like it. :)

The Dress

My morning's work (and half the afternoon, too!):


I'm very pleased with how the dress turned out! Although, I'm pretty sure my hands are going to permanently smell of metal if I continue to crochet at this pace.

History As It Really Was

I finished! Between you and me this didn't actually take too terribly long but it's also not the greatest coloring quality. But, it's just a cover-up for normal pictures in my parents house that don't fit the fantasy theme of our Halloween party, so quality may be sacrificed.

We're doing a murder mystery that pulls well known fantasy characters and slightly changes their stories. According to the game, Merlin is King Arthur's father and King Arthur is kind of a bumbling idiot. So I though it would be fun to create a picture that depicted the famous King Arthur and sword... with his dad helping him out...

This was fun, huge, but fun.

Note: it's 16''x20''

Embroidery is by far the most time consuming project ever. This 'S' took all day yesterday (10ish to 5ish). ALL DAY. But it was so much fun :) S's are the most difficult letter for me to write, much less embroider, something about making the curves equal and even just doesn't work for me. C's are much easier.

The Sew Beautiful magazine that came earlier this week had a few hand embroidery stitches in it and they looked fun. So I went online to find more, which is how I found Needle 'n Thread. She is amazing, I may never to aspire to her level of embroidery. She stitched the back of a (I assume Catholic) vestment. Wow. Amazing. It's 11'' by 11'' and took her five weeks, 380 hours, if I remember correctly, and she did it BY HAND (and using 2% gold because it's 'ecclesiastical' work). I strongly encourage you to read through the process of how she put it together, it increases my awe of this kind of work a hundred fold. Next time I'm in an orthodox church I'll better appreciate their clothing and all the effort that could have been put in them. I don't know what she does for a living but she mentions a job and it's not this *shock.

I'll be doing this again in the future, perhaps after I've bought floss, I'm still using the leftovers from that cross stitch.

A Side Note: I was afraid when I started looking for the old crafts (heirloom sewing, embroidery, lace crocheting, etc.) that I wouldn't find them, they're not very 'contemporary'. Although knitting and crochet seem to be making a come back in the younger crowd. I was very happy to find Sew Beautiful, a magazine devoted to heirloom sewing. I was surprised, but then realized I shouldn't have been, to find the editor's note strongly indicated a Christian background for the magazine. I hadn't even considered a religious tendency in crafters, but after consideration, it makes sense that strongly traditional crafts would be continued on by the strongly religious.

Sew Beautiful... out of skirts.

This was yesterday's project. I just got my first Sew Beautiful magazine in the mail and couldn't wait to try out a pattern. It's just a little girl dress with two front pockets but it was more complicated than some of the dresses I've made for me.

I really like this dress (besides the fact that it's cute and about a foot and a half tall) because I made it out of a skirt. I just picked up the skirt at the flee market (actually, Dustin's aunt bought it for me). It was a really cheap skirt, both in price and in quality. I didn't even have any twinges of guilt as I cut the skirt up because it was so poorly made it really didn't even deserve to exist.

The blue bow at the front and the 'ribbon' around back is the draw string from the original skirt. It feels like it should be elastic but has all the stretch stretched out of it. The red pockets are made of leftover fabric from one of my fall/winter dresses, my first sewing project, in fact. The purple see through trim at the bottom of the skirt, on the pockets, and where the yolk meets the skirt are leftover ribbon from our wedding decorations. :) The binding over the 'ribbon' is thread from a huge cross stitch I finished at the beginning of the summer.

So it's a 'leftover' dress but I think it turned out really well. There are a few mistakes in it (the frill isn't sewn on correctly all the way around [but you can hardly tell], I accidentally snipped a small hole in the skirt while trimming a seam, I cannot for the life of me tie the shoulder bows at the same spot) but I am happy with it. Now I just need a baby to go in it :P In a couple years, maybe.

Spontaneity

I was bored, hubby was at SPR, I was tired of cross-stitching so I created this:

It's just a square of afghan, crocheted in the standard baby-blanket pattern (I don't know what the official name for the pattern, it might just be baby-blanket :P) I found it on The Handmade Dress. All the instructions were explained with photographs (yay! crutches for us visual learners :)).

I had the sudden urge to learn it but didn't think I had any yarn :( But then I remembered that my old roommate gave me a leftover skin of teal yarn about a year or more ago that I stuffed into the bottom of my sewing box. I figured I'd never use it because teal is about my least favorite yarn color. But voila! I had yarn. When I pulled it out I discovered I also had leftover yarn from my de-stressor afghan project from my Cluster Quarter (whew, glad that's over.), which is the green/brown yarn.

I think I'm going to be one of those crafty women. You know, the ones who always have half finished quilts and sewing all over the place :D Well, okay, not all over the place because that would drive me crazy, but one of those women who have always got a project going.

Okay, back to dishes xp