Knitting Sandwich

Blanket Bonanza

You might remember my first ever quilt for my sweet neice Zoe. (Please use your imagination to read her name with an umlauted e, and if anyone knows how to do that on a pc, please let me know). That was actually just one of three blankets I sent her.

The second blanket was conceived at the family baby shower for Sarah. We used fabric paint and got footprints of all the kids who attended to make a cousin blanket.

Isn't Zoe darling on it?

The last blanket was inspired by Melissa's and Claire's mitered cross blankets. I could not resist the mitered bandwagon.

I love this picture of Zoe, it looks like she is saying "GO MITERS!"

I am SO excited that I finally get to meet her in person next week.

How about you? What is your favorite baby blanket pattern (or medium)?

-Lindsey

Score!

My awesome Aunt Pat cleared out a bookcase and invited Sabrina and me over to see if we would like any of the children's books up for grabs. Pat is a retired elementary teacher and book lover. Lucky for us her grandchildren are too old and/or have a house full of books. We had a great time reading and playing and literally came home with a trunk full of books.

And puzzles and even some new paint brushes. Sabrina loves to paint so she insisted we use the new brushes first.

There is only one thing she loves more than painting with brushes.

That is painting with her hands.

Thank you Aunt Pat!

-Lindsey

i made a hat... who knew?

this weekend lily and i met my sister and her family for a hotel overnight in the middle of iowa half way between mankato and omaha.  i was able to deliver the little vest i made for their baby-on-the-way in person.  

henners got a hold of it and it turns out it also makes a charming hat!

aside from ridiculous 2 year-old fashion shows there was swimming:

more swimming:

cousin snuggling:

sister snuggling:

and general hotel room shenanigans:

a whole lot of fun packed into 24 hours!  

-melissa

the end of the rainbow

Hello all-

I am sorry that I have been so absent from the online world for so long.  Truth be told, I am missing you all terribly but have been feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the changes I’m adapting to at the moment with the new country/apartment/marriage/language/food/etc. etc.  What’s more, every time I sit down to attempt a blog post, I find that I just freeze up.  In truth, there is a story I’d like to tell but am not sure if it’s too personal to share here.  With time, I’ve come to realize however that my voice can’t find any other words until I share these which are still overwhelming my heart.

 

You see, it turns out we came back from our honeymoon with more than just a marriage certificate.  Completely unexpectedly, I was pregnant.  And with our shock came absolute joy and excitement.  We came back to Munich and began the crusade of finding the right English speaking OB/GYN (ridiculously difficult, but that’s another story), and in order to ease my early days of exhaustion and nausea, I had a perfectly soothing companion. 

 

 

Melissa and I joined all these rainbow swaps on ravelry ages ago, in attempt to get more yarns for our blankies.  What ended up happening to both of us though is that we realized the yarn was just too gorgeous and precious and thus it merited a project all its own.  Melissa made an absolutely stunning rainbow blankie for her nephew Henry, and I saved mine for that special time when I one day became pregnant.  I had even brought this precious yarn cargo personally to Germany months before my actual move, just so it’d be safely stored with Georg and I wouldn’t have to put it in a stale moving box.

For my blankie, I chose the zig-zag pram blanket pattern (and thusly got totally addicted to rippling right along with Melissa) and happily knitted away with my precious yarn.  I got almost to the end, with only a whole pile of ends left to sew in, when in my 10^th week, we lost the baby.

 

Of course there aren’t enough words to describe our devastation, I won't even try.  And the strange thing about miscarriage is that, perhaps because it’s so indescribable, you find that friends and family, despite their best intentions, often don’t know what to say to you either and thus it's just not talked about.  Perhaps it’s exactly because of that strange taboo that I feel compelled to share with you here.  Or perhaps it’s just because I needed to say out loud:

 

I had a baby inside me.  I saw its heart beat.  We loved it dearly.  And even though it wasn’t able to arrive, we will always cherish it and it will always be a part of our family.

 

And hopefully someday I’ll still manage to get to the end of that rainbow.

 

Thank you so much for listening.

Love to you all,

-cmvs

perpetually behind

these days i'm feeling perpetually behind schedule...

i'm behind in replying to comments and emails.

i'm behind in reading your blogs.

while i'm not behind with knitting, i have a backlog of finished projects i'm behind in photographing and posting about...

how do y'all do it?  how do you find/make time for keeping up with this wonderful online community that i feel so blessed to be a part of?  

while you mentally compose your replies, here's a couple photographs from this past weekend when my parents and my sister and my nephew came to visit.

just staring at his sweet little face makes me feel better (it doesn't help me catch up with my computering... but it does make me feel better).

aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!  enough with the staring!  get back to work!!  

-melissa

the big oh-seven

well i did finish lily's birthday sweater in time for her to wear it to school on her actual birthday.  but i finished it only the night before and therefore was unable to block it.  

she wore it to school, no problem, but y'all are going to have to wait for an official photoshoot until it's been blocked.  but you can have a little sneak peek... lil's big present for her 7th birthday was getting her ears pierced.  i've had a few requests for photos, so here you go:

isn't she grown up?  (and see how the neckline doesn't really lay flat?  it's much better if you wait to see more until it's been blocked.)

she also had her birthday party last weekend.  as per her request it was a wolf themed party, which mostly meant i made wolf hats out of newspaper, there was a lot of howling, and they ran around outside like a pack of wild wolves.

fun times.  especially for miss lilllian.  which is how it should be on ones birthday!

-melissa

longterm bunny love

hey clairey - remember that bunny you knit for lily almost seven years ago?

well it's still being loved and played with to this very day....

i'd say that makes it one very successful and well-loved gift!  thank you!!

-melissa

the tradition continues

it's been a couple years since my last post, but the tradition of lily and brian putting the star on top of the tree has continued.

2010:

2011:

happy december everyone!!

-melissa

a stocking for isaac

continuing with the tradition of making my niece's and nephew's christmas stockings i just finished up the stocking for my newest nephew isaac.

here it is pre-felting:

the pattern is ella's felted christmas stocking by mary kennedy (pattern or rav link) and i modeled my stripes after a project i saw on ravelry by starknits.

and here it is post-felting... i'm quite happy with the results, but the real question is - what does isaac think?  luckily i was in omaha for thanksgiving and was able to give it to him in person so i could gauge his reaction.

he looks pretty happy with it - wouldn't you say?  

-melissa

ps - want a littlepeep at some cute cousin fun?  of course you do.  here they all are in their matchy-match jams:

 

the trifecta sister craftaganza!

when i was in omaha last weekend my two sisters and i sat down for some good old fashioned sister crafting.

meghan had been obsessed with all the gorgeous yarn-wrapped wreaths she'd been seeing around etsy and pinterest.  first she got me hooked, then all that was left was to reel in the baby sister.  (which is harder than it sounds.  she professes to have no crafty talents.... she's wrong, but anyway... we cajoled her into playing with us, that's the point.)

it was a craft-o-rama of fun, we had all the little cousins running around trying to help (except for baby isaac, because, well, he's a baby) and everyone got just a little covered in hot glue.  (but no one actually got burnt.... don't worry we are very safe sisters.)

it was pretty amazing how differently the three wreaths came out, especially when you consider we were working with only 5 different colors of yarn and sharing a single, albeit large, felt pool.

(top left: meghan, top right: ashley, bottom left: me)

of course lily wanted in on the felt/glue gun action.  (what sane girl wouldn't?!?)  here she is proudly displaying her creation:

there were also a couple of stray flowers loitering around, we couldn't have that so meghan turned them into hair clips for the girls:

this was a really fun project - and not just because i have fun and fabulous sisters.  if you want to give this project a whirl, i recommend this tutorial (it's what i used to figure out how to make the flowers).  but you'll have to get your own sisters, i want to keep mine!

-melissa