The (First) Pibbow comments: 76

Have you ever done the quilt-as-you-go technique? I never had. I got this book the other day and decided to try it. I think it came out pretty cute. I used the 2" strips I had left over from Amelia's log cabin quilt. I have a whole basket of them. You can get a feeling for the whole technique from that first picture — you stitch the hearth directly to the batting, then add your first strip (log) to one side. Press that open, and then quilt it (I just stitched parallel to the seam, down the length of the strip a couple of times). Quilt (verb) after every added strip. Didn't think too much about the finished size, so there is one extra strip on two sides of the pillow (because I needed it to fit the pillow form). Mimi loves pillows, just like I do. We talk about pillows a lot, either for ourselves or for the dog or for the dolls. I think we talk about pillows every day. But she calls them "pibbows." Which works. We need some pibbows very badly in our living room. I'm going to make a few. I bought three new pillow forms. I like the bamboo forms. I like flat, hard pillows. I hate super-soft pillows. I HATE down pillows or any kind of pillow with feathers. They give me pillow rage. If I wanted to be jabbed in the face with a thousand little pins while also being smothered, then I would get a down pillow. But I don't.

By the way: The gingham chair (Ikea) is cute but lightweight. When she was smaller, Amelia liked to get up on that chair and essentially hurl herself against the back of it while peeking over the top at whoever was in the dining room. To stabilize it, we put a webbing strap with one of those tightener things around both of the front legs, and put several barbells — hand weights, I guess — on top of the strap. So if she pushed against the back, the weights counterbalanced and held the front of the chair on the floor. They also stay pretty neatly under the chair itself (and the slipcover). Anyway, I just thought I'd mention it in case you have a baby that does the same thing. Most chairs like this one are against walls, I would think, so it's probably not super common to have one like ours, in the middle of the room. But I just saw a little boy tip a dining room chair over backwards at the zoo cafe the other day, so I'm guessing it's pretty common with those kinds of chairs.

Drawing on a domino with a golf pencil (after silently, stealthily stealing my knitting-notions bag, and I'm not even sure why there was a domino in my bag). Wearing a doll stocking on her hand while holding an umbrella. I can't make this stuff up. I love this kid so much. I love her.

I want to make three or four more pillows. I'm not sure what kind I will make. Can you wash the quilt-as-you-go pillow cover if the batting isn't actually backed with fabric? I didn't really think about that. I kind of did, but then I just kept going, because I don't have any time. There's a back to the pillow cover, but not to the quilting part, do you know what I mean? I wonder what will happen when I wash it. We'll find out!

Her dresses: 2nd Birthday Dress (shown here, details in here), Lichen Woods (the Lichen Woods sweater, already way too small!), Lemon Layer Cake. Her sweater: My Cricket. I love this sweater. It fits perfectly and is such a pretty pattern. I love it. Her sleeves are rolled up in the children's museum pictures, but when they're down they are really cute. I must say that I originally got the NatureSpun sport only for my animal kits, but I have used it several times for Mimi-sweaters, and though I was worried that it would be a bit scratchy, it has turned out to be one of my very favorite yarns for her clothes, too. It gets soft and drape-y, it doesn't pill that much, it holds its shape really well, and it's got a really nice sort of rustic quality to it. I don't know. For a long time I was just so into alpaca. Alpaca is soft and smooshy and feels like a dream when you're knitting with it. In practical use, it's not my favorite. "Practical use" is not always my priority, mind you. My own knitting comfort is often the priority, quite frankly, and soft, delicious yarns like alpacas can sooth the knitters soul and the baby's skin. But it tends to pill like hell, and get really distorted with wear. I don't really care about those things that much, until the buttonholes stop working, or whatever. But I'm starting to appreciate the plain, straightforward, hardworking wools I used to pass up.

***Details on my workroom? All here!

Color Kittens comments: 214

Oh, Mommy is tired. I've yawned about fifty times today. Once I start I can't seem to stop. Andy and Amelia are sitting on his skateboard and riding around the dining room. The house is covered in toys and books and blankets (so that makes it a bit difficult). The rain whips and the wind is whistling outside — last night, lightning and thunder! I missed them, because I was sleeping at 9:15 p.m. But still: stormy few days here, lots of inside stuff, very small house. The weather finally turned, and we have rain and rumpus.

I made a little painting on Sunday morning. Later we all went to the art supply store to get more paints and stickers and stuff. When I was finished with the little painting (which includes stickers:) I was excited because I thought it reminded me a lot of The Color Kittens, which we read almost every night. It's funny how these little books and their characters become such a part of your life. Our days and nights have a lot of books in them. They don't get photographed that much but they should, because I so don't want to forget them in the context of our sticker-covered, draw-on-your-face, pink-painted, Golden Book–filled days. I just don't ever have a camera when we're snuggled. "'Oh Angelina,'" I read, with great mama-drama, "'your dancing is nothing but a — '" "Nuisance!" yells delighted Amelia, not really able to pronounce the word, and not really knowing what it means, but maybe she does. Same with "arabesque." I'm amazed at the words it appears she understands. There are others. I need to think of them. I need to write this stuff down, and take some pictures of our little books. They're so good. I love these days.

I make the WORST chocolate chip cookies. Recipe straight off the bag, and they suck in a different way every single time, time after time, year after year. I make pretty decent broccoli and bow ties. But who can't do that. That's all Ina. Maybe I should see if she has a chocolate-chip cookie recipe. I can't imagine she does not.

Suddenly obsessed with making a toy boat we can actually float on the casting pond this summer, and having a portrait painted of Amelia (any recommendations, let me know?). Isn't it weird how you just get these ideas all of a sudden and then they're all you can think of, when you're daydreaming? When you have time to think of these things? I feel like I have a different idea about something or other every week.

Her squishy-yummy pink cardigan is here. :)

Winter Clean Up comments: 69

Grocery-store tulips and hot tea. The chores were piling up. We tried to clean up a little bit, but I still feel daunted. I think it's more perceived chaos than real. But I do have a punch list, and I need to get on it. I get frustrated when I let things go that you can't really get away with letting go, for very long. Wah. This happens to me every January. I want to rest, but the girls need their 1099s, or whatever they're called, so I have to do The Books (which I really don't do all year, in spite of the many, many times I have sworn that next year I will do The Books all year, every month, every day) and The Forms and The Files. And, you just have to do it. I get no better at it, nor more inspired, as the years pass.

The sky today is pale, pale gray. Andy bought tiny light-bulbs for my grandma's two pink glass antique lamps, so they are glowing. I had an idea about making a painting for the mantel, so I bought a cheap canvas from the craft store. I fussed a bit with the mantel — all the foliage on there is dried or fake, sort of a late-winter/early-spring bunch of bits, and (it being fake) I can just look at it and be happy and not have to do any work about it — and then I hung the blank canvas where it will ultimately go. I was very pleased, in fact, with the blank white. It felt like the only white space in the room. An open door into possibility. As they say. What will it be? I thought the three of us could paint on it and see. Maybe this afternoon. A family painting.

My dear Amy and I went to Kachka for dinner the other night. I had the best time. Cute place. Great company. She and I can talk about cross stitch for half an hour and get so excited we are essentially shouting. It was loud in there, especially with what sounded like Russian Tom Waits booming, but still. Dear Amy. xo

Mimi's crocheted dress is my Mina. I need to make more of these, or of knitted or crocheted dresses in general. They are perfect for winter days, and keep her core warm. Crochet. Andy's crocheting starfish because the dog ate two of our real ones. That's a sentence I wouldn't have thought I'd ever write, for some reason.

Swirlywhirl, and Slow comments: 89

January. What would I do without you, specifically your frowsy second half, after the holidays and the birthdays and the outings? Because there are the lights . . . and the burnt-out lights and the only-half-put-away decorations and the only-half-put-away presents and all the things, things strewn here and there and everywhere, things that only appear here in the second half of January, somehow, and somehow my normally compulsive tidying impulse just drifts away like a little piece of fluff on the sodden winter wind. Bye-bye. There it goes! Instead I settle, and heavily, into the downy puff of calico on our sofa, let Amelia watch too much Peppa Pig (but she's so soft and snuggly, tucked under my big, soft arm where she fits so perfectly, when she's watching!), and cook giant batches of things to freeze for three more dinners, or twelve more breakfasts, all to minimize my time away from needle and thread. Because when I get an idea, especially in January, make way, all you other things I should be doing (cleaning! taxes! grocery shopping!). I must sew.

Could anything be more antithetical to my life right now than making tiny cross-stitches on 32-count linen? Oh my stars, it is slow, so slow, and so small. I couldn't decide if this was a good or a bad thing. For sure, it is stark relief against the background of days with a whirling, twirling toddler, who once again has started dragging the chair all over the house and getting into everything on every surface: the basket of punch cards and keys and stray coins we keep by the front door; my dish of extra buttons from new clothes, and jewelry, and random push pins (?) I apparently (though I had forgotten it, until she found it and strewed the contents around the room) keep on my dresser; the houseplants that are (leaf by leaf) being denuded of leaves; the Lenox wedding-china teacup she brought to me, holding it up in both hands as if presenting a rare bird. I gasped to see it and r u s h e d — you know the oxymoronic slow rush you must do so as not to completely freak her out and cause her to just wig, and throw it? — out of the kitchen to pluck the cup neatly from her little hands and try to determine how she managed to (silently) finagle the elaborate system of ponytail holders we have holding the china-cabinet doors closed (since the attempt at installing the baby lock on that door actually broke the door frame, etc., etc.). When her hair slides loose from its braids, and she is rushing from one of her work stations (the mail basket!) to the other (the dining-room lamp cords!), she looks like Animal from the Muppets (Andy's favorite childhood character, conveniently) in the midst of an epic drum solo. Our house is only so babyproofable. Not babyproofable enough, right now. Winter in Portland: You don't know what raining means until you have a careening, ambitious toddler that can't go to the park every day.

Nevertheless, oh my darling girl, how I love the torrent of language that is flowing from her lips. Almost constant chatter, and much of it starting to make sense, and the sense it makes is so sweet and so funny and so fascinating to me. Wow. The babble, the questions, the songs, the pretend noises (dinosaur! kitty!), the shouts, the calls, the exclamations (yuck-y! mine! no! yes!) the thrilling sentences ("I want to play with this one!"). A jumble of expression, numbers and colors and songs and letters like a burst of confetti thrown into the air every minute. How could I not make an alphabet sampler for my tiny love who is just learning, right at this very moment, the ABCs? I couldn't not. I have never had such fun designing anything, or done it in such a real-time way.  Amelia takes the half-finished sampler from my hands, and names her world: apple, boat, kitty. Egg. Umbrella. Zebra!

I did the designing part quickly, like I do most everything else these days, rushing to finish plotting out every stitch on every single letter and image in one free afternoon. But then the stitching part — oh, that's the slow. And, well, now that I'm committed, it's a lovely, lovely slow. I had forgotten how lovely embroidering can be. I let myself completely settle in. It happens at night, after baby bedtime. Every night this month, by the white light of my hideous full-spectrum lamp, I stitch a motif, and a letter, and maybe half of a next one, drawing the thread through over and over again, finding it restorative after a season of so much activity — holidays, parties, events, trips, hikes, presents, people, etc., etc., etc. — and days of so much swirling, twirling toddlerness.

It's been a long time since I've designed a cross-stitch sampler, and I wanted to make this one a kit to use up the pretty substantial overstock of floss (from ornament kits, embroidery kits, and animal kits) that Stacey recently catalogued. There is a lot, and the palette is so pretty, I think. Most of the other cross-stitch pieces I've designed (and there have been quite a few that I never talked about here, because I did 1/3 of my second book on cross stitch, and none of those could be shared while in progress, which doesn't suit me) have been on 28-count linen. I thought it was my preferred. I do love it. But I couldn't get the color I wanted — Stone Gray, this sort of clay-colored, rosy gray — in 28-count (Cashel linen), only in 32 (Belfast linen). (To refresh your memory about cross-stitch counts, my tutorial on counted cross-stitch is here.) I pouted. I whined again about the cross-stitch industry (oh, fun!). I looked at and tested out about ten different colors. But I wanted Stone Gray. So I grudgingly started stitching on the 32-count, and I worked a few motifs on other colors of 28-count just to torture myself. And what happened was (you saw this coming, I know), I fell in love with the 32. Smaller, yes, but not even appreciably more "difficult" than stitching 28-count, and the motifs wind up looking tighter and brighter and more saturated, and that just feels right for this (rather large, in fact) piece. So now I love the 32! This almost never happens, but it did this time. Then the distributor called and said that Zweigart would custom dye, in Stone Gray, the yardage that I wanted for the kits in 28-count linen. And I said no. Now I'm sticking with the 32. So that's how that all went. And let's hope we can get this fabric.

Did you need to know all this? Probably not. But such is the exciting life of a cross-stitcher. I could hardly keep it to myself! And who else could I tell but you???

I love the design process so much, especially when it's not for a book, where there really isn't time to tweak the colors of the design. When I design on my own, I get to take my own time, and redo stuff until I'm happy. You don't know if colors are really "working" (that's relative) until you've stitched them. And they totally change depending on what background color (and, to a lesser degree, what count of fabric) you're using. I love all of that. I love working it out, and balancing it, and shifting it. I love obsessing about one color over another, changing the placement of an eye or mouth, or just swiftly rendering something to capture the feeling of energy that can't be belabored. You're seeing the first draft of it all here — these are not the final motifs or colors, but they're close. It's a funny life, in a way, to care about such little things in my few quiet hours of the day. It must provide some sort of weird balance, somehow. I don't even know. But it gives me something. It always has.

These are January thoughts, in the year that my baby girl is two.

***Answers to some questions here (more or less copied from the next post): The muffins were made from this recipe, and the Mammagetti is an old family recipe that came from my mom's mother. I think that's my sister's handwriting on the card. My mom said that when she was little she would often have ice-skating birthday parties and then everyone would come back to her house for Mammagetti. It is kind of a strange recipe — I made it for the first time last week in about ten years. There is an absolute ton of vegetables in this thing, so use a huge pot. My mom says that you really do HAVE to add the cheese. It totally changes it. And you really do have to cook it that long, I guess. As far as the "cheese container" size goes, I think the one I added was 8 oz. Re: the line in the recipe that says "fill to almost with water" [sic]: My mom says to just add 2 cups of water. Obviously, you can substitute fresh grated Parmesan or your own favorite spaghetti sauce for the Ragu, but this was the way we always made it in our family. It's a nostalgia thing. I love this but, ironically, my sister doesn't (anymore). I serve it over thin spaghetti with a big blob of ricotta and a big glass of milk. Sunday-night winter dinner. Yummy stuff.

Into the Woods comments: 122

Enchanted forest. This is the west end of the Old Salmon River Trail. It's just outside of Welches, Oregon, in Mt. Hood National Forest. I think it's our favorite walk (also pictured here and here). I'm hard-pressed to find an easier (it's flat and wide), more beautiful hike, fairly close to home. My hiking abilities are about on par with our two-year-old's (and here's her sweater, by the way). I don't care how far (not far) we go, just get me to the quiet sitting-down place and I can stay for hours, listening to the river, watching for birds or slugs, making stone soup, smelling the evergreens and the moss and the mud. It's a wild, twisting, silver-greened, soft-floored forest, so different from the upright, oak-filled midwestern woods I grew up walking in. I never liked to go very much, then. We were required to, and I balked at being made to go. As an adult, I'm much more sympathetic to my dad's intentions. But for many years I wanted nothing less than to go into the woods. I walked — oh how I walked! — but only ever among the houses, in the neighborhoods, and for miles and miles and miles, everywhere. Anywhere. But always in town. At some point, when I started living with Andy and we moved to Montana, I let the woods back into my life. Not long after that, I was run over by a truck and my left foot was destroyed. They put it back together, but it's a patchworked, fragile, frustrated thing, protected with gel pads and compression stockings and the special silly-looking orthopedic shoe I wear with every step I take, even just when going across the room. It usually hurts. But in the woods I do not care how it feels. I just feel happy. We wander and amble, stop and sit. She prances and talks. She sings and babbles, pointing, chattering away like a little bird. She cooks in puddles and throws sand. She is always carrying something — a stick, a leaf, a flower, a handful of rocks. She squats to look, or does her funny, swaggering walk, like she owns the place. She gets carried on her dad's shoulders when she's done. He carries me too, in our own way. I want my girl to love the woods. And I think she does.

First Snow comments: 113

Late on a foggy afternoon we drove out to the woods. Had dinner at the Skyway and spent the night at a little cabin. The next morning we went up to Timberline Lodge for breakfast and spent the day playing in the snow. Her first time. I will never, ever forget it. Man, what a great day. My dream come true.

(Other trips to Timberline are here and here. [Josh and Keels have little kids now, too, but next year I think we should all go up together again and stay at the lodge — there's just nothing like sleeping up there.] Mimi's sweater and hat are on my Ravelry page, and her mittens [when she would agree to wear them!] are on Gillian's.)

Autumnglow comments: 78

At around four o'clock on several afternoons this week I've gone racing home from wherever I am to grab my camera and then careen back out to the east side of Mt. Tabor to try to catch the alpenglow on Mt. Hood. It's short-lived but so worth the race (I only have a 50% success rate in catching it so far). I've already got the sled, the toddler snowpants, the toddler snow mittens, the toddler snowcoat, all ready for when we actually go up there. Up there, to where the snow lives.

This week has been cold and blustery, nevertheless. To warm up, I made chicken curry and these things we always made when I was a kid, from one of my mom's Pillsbury cookbooks — we called them apple babies:

Apple Babies

Take a can of refrigerated crescent-roll dough and cut the triangles lengthwise so you have sixteen long, skinny triangles. Peel and core two apples and cut them into eight slices each. Starting at the fat end of the triangle, wrap each apple slice in dough. Put them in an 8" x 8" baking pan. Drizzle about 1/4 cup melted butter all over the tops of the babies. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (don't skimp). Add about 1/4 cup apple cider or orange juice or whatever you have to the pan, pouring it around but not on the apples. Bake in a 350-degree (F) oven until nicely browned. Serve plain or with a bit of cream. Try not to inhale all sixteen before other residents get home.

My curry was based on this recipe, though I used the shredded meat from a roasted chicken (I've been roasting or buying one every week, then making stock), didn't add the tomatoes or tomato paste (I'm not super keen on tomatoes), and did add a diced sweet potato, a diced Yukon gold potato, a bag of peas, and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar. Oh, and I used Dean & Deluca yellow curry powder (my favorite). If left to my own devices, I would probably eat some form of chicken and rice every single day. I should have a board for that. I'm still working my way through your suggestions for soups. There are so many amazing-looking ones; the comments on that post are like their own cookbook, I'm so excited. I made this potato-leek soup (photo above) and it was delicious (thank you, commenter Amelia!). You can't imagine how much this inspiration is helping me get back into the kitchen! Thank you all!

Today it's errands and a few chores, and haircuts, and getting a new binder, and getting some magnets, and taking the hose inside for the winter. Yesterday I bought candles and fake autumn flowers for the table (toddler-proof). I got placemats (toddler-proof), and made an appointment to have the windows measured for wooden blinds. A little bit of everything, and not too much at all, just the way I like these days. Slow and cold outside, warm and wooly in.

Have a good weekend, dear friends!

***Yep, that's the water room in the toddler area at (and the view from) our science museum, OMSI; Mimi's crocheted dress pattern is here; and she's showing you her thrifted prairie-girl dress, which I absolutely love and wish I had a pattern for (it's clearly homemade).

Natural Environment comments: 64

My dear Meems in her lopapeysa. Special guest appearance by the incomparable Mt. Hood.

I forgot to say thank you most sincerely to all of our veterans and military servicepeople and your families for your tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our cherished freedoms. Your efforts and trials do not go unnoticed. We are so grateful for you. Thank you.

Same Old, Same Old comments: 185

I'm still trying to cook. Remember when I used to cook? Oh, those were the days, those were the days!!! My fragile mojo for cooking has left me again. This is getting to be a thing. My people need to eat. I think I feed them pretty well, but I'm not inspired. I don't seem to care so much about what I eat. I slurp the dregs from Amelia's discarded mango-peach pouches, eat the second half of a toddler-handled banana that I catch in midair as she hurls it toward the table, and lick raisins off my hand — that's breakfast. Lunch — I don't even understand what people eat for lunch besides pad Thai. Dinner: Okay. I like dinner. I search the archives of my mind, remembering that I used to cook dinner, and if not cooked then surely I assembled it, at least. Roasted chicken from New Seasons, shredded and turned into tacos with avocado and black beans. Swedish pancakes for Sunday breakfast, with most of the pancakes saved to make spinach crepes for dinner. Vegetarian mushroom sauce? I can do it. Serve over pasta with a small mountain of ricotta cheese.

Mushroom Sauce

2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, thinly sliced
4 cups mushrooms, sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey

In a large pan, melt butter and saute onions until soft. Add mushrooms, garlic, and spices. Cook until mushrooms are soft but still have a bit of bite to them. Add tomato paste, tamari or soy sauce, and honey. Simmer ten minutes. Add pepper (and salt, if needed) to taste.

This was my friend Ann's recipe, and I've had it for over twenty years. Very simple, very tasty, not very tomato-y, just how I like it. I'm quite sure it probably came from a cookbook but I don't know which one. If you recognize it, please let me know.

Rainy days, rainy days. Rain in the forecast as far out as I can see. It's soup-making weather if ever there was, and now I'm on a mission to pull together a freezer-full of it. "Don't touch Daddy's phone, Amelia; it's very, very important to him and he loves it more than anything," I say as she reaches for it sitting on the landing railing, about to throw it down the stairs. "That's because I don't have an iPad," says he, wryly, scooping the phone out of her reach as I (in the dark, in my nightgown) surf Pinterest on my iPad like a hungry bat, looking for good soup recipes. Ha! Well played, sir! It's 6:00 a.m., a rainy, still-dark morning, and I'm seeking inspiration in pictures of steaming soup bowls and crusty bread. My new plan is to plan better. I'm actually going to plan dinner before dinnertime. No, really, people actually do this! It's like a real thing that people do! Today I'm going to make black bean soup. I've decided that, and it's only 10:30 in the morning. Winning.

What's your favorite soup? Would you link me to an actual recipe so I can put it on my soup board?

I'm setting the TiVo to start recording a season pass of Barefoot Contessa. I used to watch this all the time but not for cooking inspiration, necessarily. It was more of just a general stress reliever. Cooking shows in general, but especially Ina's and Nigella's. Ubiquitous but so appealing to me. They are the right pace for me. Their voices and methods sooth. Even the way Nigella massacres things with that mezzaluna (the woman will not cut even the simplest things with a knife, I swear) I now find charming and encouraging. I have so many of their cookbooks. Perhaps I should start reading them instead of Anderson Cooper's memoir, which is (I'm only halfway through) unbelievably depressing (though, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of AC).

Knitting: Knit knit knit. For that, I'm onto this garter sideways sweater (that photo is the sleeve — see where you fold it down?) which I should get cracking on as Amelia could be wearing it right now (though I can't resist buying her Zara coats — ack). I plan to line it with some Liberty, or something lightweight and flowery. The sweater-coat I made her last year turned out to be an awesome thing, and it's too small now (sniffle). Also, very pilled. (Alpaca.) That's okay. Clothes too small? Music to my ears! I'll make more!

Also: The sweetest bunny mittens, made for Meems by my dear friend Gillian. Amelia would not take these off this morning, though it made it hard to pick up every leaf and stick on her walk as she likes to do. No matter, such cuteness is worth the extra effort. She was delighted. Man, I love age two.

And: Wee Chickadee. My first Ysolda pattern. Inspired by kimlynn's version. I love the single color against the blue. I'm using a very, very pale pink (though it probably just reads as a rosy white against this blue). Fingering-weight yarn, am I nuts? Once I finish the yoke, though, it's just gobs of stockinette, so I think it'll be fine. I always think that. Until, of course, I get to the sleeves. By the way THANK YOU for all of the bind-off suggestions. After reading through them, I think on my next ribbed bind-off I'll try a tubular. I'll let you know how that goes. I did wind up finishing the second sleeve of the Bloomsbury, so thank you so much for the inspiration to get that done. I needed it.

That Second Sleeve comments: 86

Is there a stretchy cast-off that doesn't flare? Lately I have been making stuff that doesn't fit over anyone's head. Paranoid, I'm now stretchy-casting-on and -casting-off, though I find the look of it quite inelegant. Am I right in thinking the wrong side of a Jeny's stretchy cast-on looks better than the "right" side, or did I not turn it properly? And I don't like how the cuff is flaring (on my Bloomsbury Kids sweater, the terra cotta one above, which was inspired by this pin). That's too big, and I went down a needle size, too. If I weren't so lazy I'd start the second sleeve and get it over with. This sweater's construction is pretty rad. There's a lace panel down the center of the back, too. I think everyone says, this but I am so in love with Quince and Co.'s Lark yarn. I used it for the Dogwood Lottie (the pale pink sweater, also above) and it's just so squishy and soft and yummy and bouncy and makes you feel like you could knit all day (and night?). Until you get to the second sleeve, which not only is the second sleeve but also has a lace panel. . . . Bah. I watch Gilmore Girls on Netflix (yippee!) and knit as if in a trance. The lace isn't hard but it's still . . . lace. How awesome is it that a new season of Railroad Alaska starts on Saturday? I'm tempted to re-watch the entire season of Ice Lake Rebels. Now if I could only stay awake past 9:00 p.m., just think how much more knitting and TV-watching I could get in. Alas, now that the cold, dark, rainy nights are here there's so little incentive to stay downstairs and not crawl into my wonderful, lovely bed to wait for Andy to get home from work. At least I've limited myself to one mini-Snickers per night. That's one of the only things I like about Halloween. Mini candy.

Garter stitch is more my night-time speed, and night-knitting is all I have these days. Garter stitch also just . . . what's not to love. Knit knit knit. Then knit knit knit. Then knit knit knit. Etc. That's what I can handle. We've talked about this. When will I learn this? Apparently never. I finished the pom-pom flaps hat (which was inspired by this pin) by actually making and attaching the pom-pom. A couple of people asked me about the pattern that I used, which is in French. I used Danielle's translation, and I'm sorry I didn't put that on my Ravelry page initially. I'm not very good at adding notes to that thing. The hat was knit with Rebecca's gorgeous, gorgeous acacia-dyed alpaca-merino-silk yarn from Camellia Fiber Co. You've gotta be fast to get this stuff before it sells out. Her yarn is such a delectable treat. I spoil myself.

Clover Meadow had a very hard day yesterday. Thunder, pouring rain, and then later, once she had finally settled down, fireworks. The trifecta of canine misery.

Do you like caramelized butternut squash?

I'm on an organizing tear. So far I've gone through all my clothes, all of Amelia's clothes, all of the books in the master bedroom, the living room toys, and I'm about to hit the hats, gloves, and scarves next. I donated a lot of clothes and books. Now I have nothing to wear. I'd like several of these dresses and tunics, particularly this one and this one and this one. But they're too expensive. I went to the fabric store and bought some similar patterns and fabrics. I also got an idea for a gathered calico skirt. Now, I actually have to make the effort to sew. And start the second sleeve. But there's time. There's time now. I'm glad it's October. I feel much more like myself than I ever do in July.