A Happy Weekend

Last night, I arrived home at my parents' place to see these two munchkins at play:

These are my cousin's daughters, Elizabeth and Caroline. Elizabeth just celebrated her first birthday and Caroline is turning four in a month. Notice how Caroline is trying to help her mother by separating the lettuce heads while Elizabeth is mimicking Caroline? Not a coincidence. Caroline wants to do everything her mother does and Elizabeth wants to do everything Caroline does. Today, we had a grand feast for Elizabeth and then Caroline serenaded us with a karaoke rendition of children's songs. Elizabeth tried to steal the microphone whilst drooling over her very lovely pink dress.

I brought home flowers for my mom. There were white roses, daisies, black-eyed Susans, gerber daisies, and hyacinths. Stupid me forgot to take my camera home.

Plus, I gave my mother this:

I finally finished the durn thing. I love how needlepoint looks, but I don't know if I can become a huge fan. It just takes too long. I gave her the Veronik socks as well. The actual name of the socks is "Socks for Veronik." Well, now they're "Socks for Mom." They fit her perfectly, but she says no more socks for a while since summer is upon us. She wants a cardi.

I have to pause here and say a bit about my mother on this lovely Mother's Day. She was the middle of five children and a pastor's daughter to boot. But when push comes to shove, she can be pretty fierce. I once had a mean boss who was abusive and said horrible things to me. When I called my mother and cried, she released a torrent of curses against that boss. It would have made a sailor proud. That was the only time I've ever heard her swear.

My mother really truly believes that I can accomplish anything. It's hard for her to watch her Ivy-educated daughter struggle through freelancing while trying to write stories, but she bites her lip and lets me do my thing. When I get discouraged, she talks me out of it. I can only hope that when the day comes, I will be half as good at mothering as she is.

She keeps wondering how her mother's love of knitting passed right by her and into me. Here are two sleeves, brown and green:

The moss stitch on the cabled coat was getting to be too much for me. So I had abandoned it for a while. Then, voila! I learned how to knit and purl continental-style and am now breezing my way through the second sleeve. In the meantime, I have to find a cardi pattern for my mother now that she has specifically requested (nay, demanded) one.

Birthdays Galore

The gals in my family apparently like to get pregnant during a specific two-week period. There's an overabundance of Pisces in our family and I'm one of them. My cousin (mother of Caroline) has her birthday this Saturday. My mom's is on Monday. Mine and my cousin Joseph's birthday is on Wednesday. My brother's was two weeks ago, but he was two weeks premature, so you do the math. This makes for a happy and celebratory Sway with no money at the end of February.

This striped pullover I've been working on went into overdrive because I realized my parents will be seeing Caroline this weekend. This is a present for her and her mom. The pattern is from Rowan's Story Book of Little Knits, which is a beautifully presented pattern book with lots of gorgeous, wearable children's clothes. No Rowan 4-ply cotton anywhere close by, so I settled for the very very similar Dolce Amore from Filatura di Crosa.

One sleeve left to go and then seaming. I think I've become addicted to stripes. Stripes are fun! They're easy! Perfect combo for my poor overworked brain.

Also, Annie's has a wonderful relationship with Iris Schreier at Artyarns and she keeps sending us lovely colors of yarn. I don't know if this is available at other places, but it's the first time I've seen this color:

It's Ultramerino 4 and the color is a bit off here. The grays are right, but the "red" stripe is actually a deep hot pink/fuchsia. It makes me want to rock out.

Also, it is not a good thing to be in the vicinity of people who do other crafts. It makes you want to do them, too.

Instead of jumping into any crazy needlepoint and getting confoozled, I opted for this small makeup bag to stitch for my mom. She likes ladybugs. I don't think I'm very good at this (you can sort of see the canvas through my uneven stitches), but it's fun trying.