This morning I wanted to put a button on that cute little pink sweater I made for my baby girl so maybe she could wear it once before she outgrew it. She was sitting beside me happily on the bed and I was thinking “well, it’ll just take a couple of minutes, so why don’t I do it now?”
I hurried off to my office (across the hall), grabbed a needle out of the pincushion on my bookshelf, the sweater off the filing cabinet, and opened a drawer to get my grandma’s stash of plain white buttons. There happened to be a spool of thread in there, too, so I picked that up as well. The scissors were on my desk. I was in and out in less than a minute.
As I sat there sewing on the button, it occurred to me that this was a rare chore that I could quickly and easily pick up everything I needed for. I know that for a fact because I actually lost all of my interchangeable knitting needle sets in my office earlier this month.
There’s yarn everywhere, and I know that there are certain yarns available somewhere that I might want to use for particular projects, but I don’t know where they are. There are finished projects, and unfinished projects, all over the place, not to mention books, fabric, the remnants of the holiday decorations, magazines from months ago, a huge pile of those pillows of air that come in shipping boxes these days and can be recycled if you mail them back to the manufacturer but I’ve never gotten around to mailing them back…
Something needs to be done.
I’ve known this for a long time. My office has never been the haven I imagined it would be when I moved in, what, almost two and a half years ago.
There have been times when it’s been relatively tidy, by which I mean I managed to stuff everything that was messy into the closet and closed the door. But the first time I needed something it would all get strewn out again.
This time it really needs to happen because there’s not even room for my baby girl to play in here. I couldn’t lay out a blanket and let her kick around on the floor if I wanted to (and I do). Let’s not even think about the fact that in a few short months she’ll be crawling, grabbing things and putting everything in her mouth, and this room is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
I’ve vowed I’d get this place fixed up for a long time, and I hope it really takes this time. Maybe because it has to. I could somehow find five or 10 minutes a day to work on this until it’s done, couldn’t I?
Maybe I should get off the computer and find out.
Instead of the zodiac sign the pattern called for, I used a maple leaf motif from
To celebrate getting that done (well, admittedly it still needs a button) I knit a carrot:
This is from Amigirumi Knits. I plan on knitting the whole bunch of vegetables, and probably some of the other patterns from this one (
These are my
My little girl, Anna Catherine, was born September 5, a full six weeks early. So, actually, this has been my life for the past five weeks or so, because we spent the first week of her life in the NICU.
which already doesn’t fit her, but I wanted to have something to remember how small she was when she first came home. I’ve also knit one leg warmer, which actually still fits even though it took me about two weeks to get through it. I’m hoping to have the other one done soon and will show them off as soon as they’re available.
I think I’ll be knitting more of these in the bigger sizes, and maybe also one in some wool for the winter. Quick, easy and it should be really useful as well. What could be better?
This one I finished Sunday, but the bulk of the knitting was done by Friday; I just stalled a bit on doing the leg ribbing. This was a pretty fun and easy project, and it comes in a good range of sizes so I may end up knitting more, but at this point I think I’m going to make one of a variety of different patterns and see which ones work out best in reality before knitting more.
I can’t even remember when I started this, but it was for the About site, and I only knit enough of it so I could estimate how long it would be using the amount of yarn that I had. Not having any girl babies in my or anyone else who I knew’s future, I set it aside.
