Category: the shelves

yarn along

MarthaKimball3 Comments

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My pure shawl has been growing steadily as I knit it in between a couple of smaller projects.  It has been lovely to work with alpaca for the first time (this yarn, O-Wool local, is 50% wool 50% alpaca) although is it possible for alpaca to hurt your hands?  I feel like my right wrist and elbow have been bothering me lately while I’m knitting (minor tendonitis maybe?) which could be due to holding a baby often with that arm while going about my regular duties through the day.  I’m not sure, but either way knitting on the shawl is a treat.  It’s a gift for someone that the Lord put on my heart and I can’t wait to finish it and send it off.  I’m making it larger than the pattern calls for so that it’ll be a  really warm and cozy wrap, and I sort of wish I could keep it for myself, which is usually a sign of a good gift.

I’m still reading When Comes the Spring (affiliate link) and I have been dabbling in a few other books, but mainly reading this one while nursing the baby.  I’m close to finishing it and will probably slowly work my way through the series as I read other books as well.  It’s interesting and relaxing, and the northern territories is a nice place to retreat to at the end of the day when I’m needing something simple, happy and easy.

Linking up with Ginny of Small Things.  

 

yarn along

MarthaKimball3 Comments

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Well, it definitely was too ambitious to think I could knit this little cardigan before Easter and also with only one skein of yarn.  It has been really enjoyable to knit, and I’m waiting for another skein to arrive in the mail so i can finish it.  Sweet Wren wore her camilla babe sweater for Easter instead, which was really beautiful on her.  I can’t express how much fun it is and how satisfying to be able to make clothes for my children.  I am really wanting to learn how to sew, so I can sew them some dresses, too.

I picked up book two in the Canada West series by Janette Oke, When Comes the Spring (affiliate link).  It seems appropriate for this time of year, hey?  I remember my older sister reading the series when we were growing up but I don’t think I ever read it.  I read the first book sometime last year and have been watching the latest episodes of “When Calls the Heart,” which really seems to be nothing like the books.  Both are enjoyable, but I’m hoping the books are better, seeing how the characters and plot is really entirely different thus far from the tv show.  I’m finding little time to read, but am squeezing in a few pages when I nurse in the evenings.  It’s good to have a happy simple novel to read.

Joining with Ginny’s monthly Yarn Along, and Nicole’s weekly Crafting On today.

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I cast on for a Maile cardigan for Wren in quince + co tern, color way driftwood.  Would love to have this done before Easter but I’m sure that’s too ambitious.  May also be too ambitious to try to make this out of one skein of yarn.

Still re-reading Christie Purifoy’s memoir Roots + Sky (affiliate link).  If you don’t follow her on instagram, you should.  She is a beautiful writer and her account is full of beauty.  (And read her book!)

Also, I’m behind on a review of The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck (affiliate link) by Bethany Turner.  I had a hard time finishing this one a bit.  It wasn’t a bad book, per say, just a bit predictable and romancy and maybe a tad bit shallow?  Not sure, I just didn’t love it.  I did finish it, and it did get better toward the end.

Joining with Nicole’s weekly Crafting On.

Thank you to Revell/Baker Publishing Group for a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

yarn along

MarthaKimball4 Comments

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I’ve almost finished the baby blanket for Wren, but needed one more skein of yarn to finish the last couple lace repeats in the pattern.  I’m adding length and width to the blanket to make it a more substantial baby blanket.  I’m eager to finish it, block it, and wrap baby girl up in it!  It’s been slower to knit on because I can only work on it when I have almost no distraction around, which is hard in these busy days.

I finished reading A Circle of Quiet (loved it) and was part way through At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider but just couldn’t really get into it for some reason.  I am not feeling ready to be out and about yet so I haven’t made any trips to the library for more books.  Last night I was scouring my shelves for something to read in the bath, and came back to Christie Purifoy’s Roots & Sky.  I forgot how much I loved this book, but a few pages in and I am hooked again.  It’s odd reading it again, almost two years exactly after my first reading, and seeing my notes and thoughts in the margins.  I feel like I’ve changed tremendously in the last two years, and not necessarily for the better.  I read this book before we had bought our home but were in the process of looking and dreaming, and it felt quite significant to read this book about journeying to find “home,” in the midst of that.  Now I come to the book having lived in our first home almost exactly one year.  The reflections I have now are so different as I read Christie’s words about her experience of longing for, looking for, and making home.  I think I believed some of that ache for home would end once we had a place of our own, but I realize now that there will always be a sense of displacement and longing for something indefinable, for what I know to be that far country, that final Home.  Anyway, she is a phenomenal writer, and I definitely recommend this book.

Joining with Nicole’s weekly Crafting On.
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Spring must be here.  There are buds and blooms forming on the trees!

I’ve cast on a flax sweater for our baby girl (my due date is today!!) in the newborn size, though it doesn’t look very newborn-ish to me, and I can’t say for sure if she will need a wooly sweater with all this warm weather here lately.  I’m about to bind of the bottom ribbing and start on sleeves.  We’re all hoping she comes soon!  For now, I’m trying to carry on with life as usual.  Thankfully, three children keep my mind very preoccupied.

Phoebe and I started reading The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street last night for our next read-aloud.  Too soon to say if we like it or not, but she seems intrigued.

yarn along

MarthaKimball1 Comment

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This cozy little scene by my bed currently bringing me joy.  So I’ve been knitting on a few different projects this week.  It’s funny how a project can sit neglected for awhile and then suddenly you have the desire to pick it back up and finish it.  That’s how it has been with my featherweight cardigan.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that I thought I would run out of yarn for this project and I went ahead and ordered another skein but, of course, the dye lots are drastically different.  As you can see above, the skeins I did have were already pretty different.  I started alternating skeins just toward the bottom of the cardigan where it looks pretty stripey in the photo.  I don’t really mind how it’s looking, but I don’t think I’ll keep alternating skeins on the sleeves so hopefully it turns out ok and not too odd looking.  I’m almost done with the ribbing on the bottom, and then will move on to sleeves.  I’m sort of hoping now to not need to use the extra skein I ordered and just make 3/4 sleeves with the two balls of yarn I have currently going, because the new skein is a much brighter purple.  Maybe I’ll knit a little baby cardigan with the new skein of yarn?  I’m sure I’ll find a use for it.  😉

I finished Francine River’s new book and have been back to reading A Circle of Quiet in the evenings before bed.  I’m really enjoying it.  I so appreciate her thoughts on writing and creative work.

Linking up with Nicole’s weekly Crafting On.
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yarn along

MarthaKimball2 Comments

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Its a cozy rainy day here in NC.  Rose is sitting on the windowsill watching the rain drip from the eaves, Phoebe and I are having tea while she practices her cursive.  Noah and Philippa are off playing cars in his room and we’ll probably be spending all day cozied up in here with books, warm mugs, maybe even a movie later on.  I think nesting is in full swing for me, so I’m busy cleaning nooks and crannies that have been neglected for some time, and making unreasonable goals for what I want done before baby arrives.

I cast on a pair of newborn baby socks this past week, hoping that some hand knit socks will stay on better than the store bought newborn ones that always seem to slide right off.  I’m knitting them with the same yarn I used recently to knit my own pair of socks.  They are tiny and cute and the kiddos can’t believe we will have a baby with feet so small.  I still have a few other projects on the go, and I’m starting to feel really ancy about finishing that baby blanket but have so little time to work on it!  If it’s late, I know the baby won’t mind but I imagine snuggling her right up in wooly goodness when she’s at the hospital.

I’ve been reading Francine River’s latest book, The Masterpiece, (which just released yesterday!) and have been staying up way too late in the evenings reading it.  It is everything I love and enjoy about River’s writing, and so fun to have a new book of hers in my hands again.  I’m already almost finished with it.  As with most of her books, this one tells the story of brokenness and redemption, romance and the turning of hard hearts to God.  It’s definitely worth reading!

Joining up with Ginny’s yarn along and Nicole’s weekly Crafting On.

Affiliate links included in this post.
Thanks to Tyndale Publishers for a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my review.

yarn along

MarthaKimball1 Comment

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Yes, another yarn along post.  I’m sorry to you readers who are non-knitters!  I do hope to have a more “regular life” post up sometime this week.  Lately I’ve been busy working on a baby knit for a loved one, so I can’t show much of it here.  It’s been sweet to knit and mostly mindless, at least on the body section.

I’ve been flipping through and enjoying these two homestead-y type books from the library.  Welcome to the Farm and Homestead Kitchen have been informative and fun and somehow relaxing for me to flip through, being that I’m basically a wishful-homesteader, and don’t you just love the library for having fun, current resources like these?  I’m thinking just the teensiest, weensiest bit about spring (I’m really a winter/fall girl through and through) and about our little garden space, what we will grow, and if I’ll have much energy for it with a newborn.  I hope so–I was so sick all last summer with this pregnancy that the smell of the garden itself was a total turn off, as well as all vegetables.  I’m hoping for a better experience this year.

What are you reading and making/knitting lately?

Joining Nicole’s weekly Crafting On.
Affiliate links included in this post.

 

yarn along

MarthaKimball2 Comments

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I’ve been knitting this baby blanket for our little girl, coming the last week of February.  I’m not a great lace knitter, I don’t think, in that I don’t really have much practice knitting from charts and in order to follow of line of instructions I really need total focus.  I’m not to the point where I can memorize lace.  Thus, I must have quiet to work on this blanket!  Sometimes I can do more mindless knitting while I do school with Phoebe.  This project is something I can only work on when the kids are in bed at night and I’m not watching something I’m terribly interested in.  That being said, I absolutely love working on it and wish I had bigger chunks of time to do so!  I am adding one extra lace repeat on the side and bottom to make the blanket a bit bigger.  I already love how it’s looking and can’t wait to see it block out when it’s done.  Knitting with Quince & Co. is always a treat!  (Brandon graciously let me indulge on yarn for this project.)

I’m reading A Circle of Quiet for the first time.  Just a few pages in, really, but enjoying and commiserating with her reflections on motherhood and creativity.  Often find myself craving my own little circle of quiet.  These days, even though I attempt to rise earlier than the kids, Philippa’s little ears seem to hear my coffee brewing on the stove and she always creeps out with tousled hair to snuggle with me in the dark while I read.  So few moments truly quiet + alone.  I ache to spend more time writing, as I used to, but feel like there is so little time in these busy days, and my brain is going in so many directions that the work of focus has become quite a labor.  I know that there are seasons of producing in our lives and also seasons where seeds are lying dormant in the soil doing the necessary work of waiting in the dark.  Good things will grow eventually, and we must be patient with the process and not always ancy for the fruit.  Each day and season has its own gifts to be enjoyed and thorns to handle.

Linking up with Nicole’s weekly Crafting On.
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I cast on this featherweight cardigan probably close to a year ago, and haven’t touched it since the summer, when pregnancy sickness set in, I suppose.  Suddenly the other day, it just popped into my brain that I probably hadn’t ordered enough yarn.  I couldn’t even remember what size of the sweater I was knitting, but suddenly I had that feeling of dread that I won’t have enough yarn to add length to the pattern like I had planned.  Since this is indie hand-dyed yarn by madelinetosh and she often discontinues colors as she comes up with new ones, I had a mild panic checking to see if this color way was still in stock (it is).  When I checked the pattern I realized I hadn’t even ordered enough yarn for the size I was knitting, let alone to add length to it.  What was wrong with my brain and why did this suddenly come to me now, almost a year later?  I have no idea.  It’s so strange how the brain works.  I suddenly needed to pick it up again, and have been knitting on it the past few days, now rotating skeins as I should have up until this point.  Hopefully the new skein that I ordered will look fairly similar and I won’t have to rip out and totally start over?

Phoebe and I have been reading A Wrinkle In Time, without any impetus from the forthcoming movie, which someone told me about after the fact.  I have never read the book before and Phoebe has the series on her shelf from one of her aunties, I think, and for some reason I’ve been interested in reading Madeleine d’Engle lately.  I don’t know if I’ve read any of her books!  I’m interested in reading  A Circle of Quiet next for myself, I think.  Any favorites of hers?

Joining up with Nicole’s weekly Crafting On.
Affiliate links included in this post.