made with love

About two weeks before Cora was born I realized that I hadn't made her a baby blanket yet, so when I put my son down for a nap I spent some time cutting out enough squares to make one of the 5 square by 5 square baby quilts that I love so much. I pulled out my collection of Anna Maria Horner fabric that I'm also using for my Dream Punk quilt.

So much fun!

The fabric with the flying bird print is a JoAnn purchase that I've been saving - just hoping that I would have another baby and that I could use the squares I saved to make it. I love the free spirit of the flying birds and the fresh blue color.

I didn't have enough of the magenta fabric to make a complete border, so I used two different fabrics for that. I love the scrappy feeling of this quilt. It just came together and I know the story of how it all worked out.

The pretty baby sweater is called Korrigan. This one took a little bit longer to make than the quilt. I used hand painted yarn from Rivers Edge Fiber Arts. The colorway is Lilac. This pattern takes a fun twist on cables. It's knit from the top down, so you do the most difficult knitting at the start of the project, then the rest is stockinette. I have a feeling I will be making a few more of these for Cora as she grows. I just love this pattern.

xo Jill

bloomsbury sweater

It has been a very busy and full week.

Last Sunday night Logan had a fever - probably because he's teething - but that meant that my husband and I had to keep him out of daycare for twenty-four hours past the time that the fever broke. We both ended up taking time off. My schedule got hit the hardest and to make up for it I had to go into the office today and work a full day.

I'm home now - yay!

Part of the time that I was home with the baby I was knitting on this Bloomsbury sweater that I just started. I have been admiring this sweater for a long long time and I finally cast on. It's been an addicting knit so far. The pattern is well written and the lace and cable repeats are easy to understand - even intuitive. I've been trying this on as I go, really crafting it to fit my body. So, I'm super excited to get it complete and wear it this fall when the weather cools down. This knit is a part of the 2016 sweater challenge that I'm doing with my cousin, Ashley. Basically, we challenged each other to knit one sweater for ourselves this year on top of everything else that we have going on in our lives. We got together for a weekend this spring and dyed the yarn for our prospective projects together. 

Hopefully, we can each add one more hand-knit sweater to our wardrobes.

(Inspiration for my Bloomsbury sweater comes from Froebelina and GreenCamijo on Ravelry.)

:) :) Jill

hope

"Hope is one of the most important virtues that can be instilled in our soul. Many people think that hope has to do with the future, when in reality it has to do with the past. We develop hope as we experience pain transformed into comfort. When this happens enough, we begin to have faith that our pain will not do us in and that comfort is on its way." 

Cloud & Townsend

 

 Busy mornings and afternoons run into jamb-packed evenings spent with baby and husband. The kitchen sink is overflowing with pots and pans and weeds are peeking up beneath the straw in the garden - but all is well!

 

 Strawberries are appearing too, and tiny bean sprouts that the bunnies like to nibble on. Ten percent of all my garden plants either get trampled by the dog as she gallops for her frisbee or munched on by rabbits in the wee morning hours. That's a pretty good harvest. 

The peonies have blown, but they were gorgeous and fragrant for a stretch of ten days as May turned into June. Pretty rings of colorful fabric are appearing on bed in my studio. Now I need to find a backing and pick out the binding for this little quilt. 

I started a new little sweater made from my mom's yarn. The pattern is: Little Coffee Bean, so far it's an easy and fun knit. The aqua stripes really pop. 

I read this quote on hope earlier this week and it really struck me. It's so very true. 

xo Jill

sweet little hat

All done and already given away! 

This sweet little hat is still a little too big for my (almost) four month old's head. I love this pattern and the stripes keep the knitting interesting. I'm going to make another one, because I want one for my son to wear. Pattern available here.

Nancy Tillman is one of my favorite children's book authors. The messages in her books are so sweet and moving, the illustrations are beautiful. "I'd Know You Anywhere, My Love" brings tears to my eyes as I ready it to Logan. (I am such a sappy mama.) I gave a copy of this book away as a shower gift to the same girlfriend I gave the hat to. Now that I understand how special the book is it's a lot of fun to give it away. I hope she has a similar experience with it. 

Well, it's the weekend. I'm heading up to the family farm. I'm almost halfway through sewing the binding on the quilt in the previous entries. If I finish in time I want to get some help snapping pictures of it up North. (I better get sewing!)

Cheers!

Jill 

P.S. Joining Crazy Mom Quilts Linkup!

my favorite part

"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, 

and creates a vision for tomorrow. "

Melody Beattie

I'm so grateful for the time that I've had home with baby - sixteen weeks! With the birth of my first child my life has been completely transformed. I was joking with my husband the other day that this change in my heart and head has been so drastic that I hope I still remember how to do my job when I get back to the office. I know most parents understand this feeling of transformation. All of my priorities have shifted toward a new focus of keeping my family safe and secure and raising a healthy child. 

And somehow squeezing my creative projects in . . . 

I'm almost finished with my star quilt. I've got the binding on and I would be sewing it to the back of the quilt, but I only have polyester thread that matches it and I don't want to use that. I read somewhere that polyester thread lasts longer than the cotton material and ultimately it will end up "cutting through" the weaker fabric. We can't have that happening after I put so much effort into this project.

Baby and I will be making a trip to the store either today or tomorrow, so it will have to wait until then.

I've already decided on my next project after I wrap up this quilt. It's going to be a pretty pink baby sweater. The yarn is wound and waiting. I think this soft pastel color looks so pretty on babies. Their skin is so fine, it just seems to glow in soft colors. So I can't wait to get started on this project.

My husband found an orchid sale and brought me home two plants. I have one in the kitchen and one upstairs in my studio. I love their friendly and exotic blossoms.

xo Jill

P.S. I can't decide what my favorite part of a project is - finishing it or starting it. What's yours?

turning circles

All I can say is that I'm so glad I made a practice swatch and practiced! This turned out a lot better than I could have imagined. There's some puckering here and there, but what really saved me was taking the time to baste it together with close attention to detail.

I learned so much making this, it was a lot of fun. Now I have to make the binding and sew that on. It's going to be magenta and it's going to align with the tips of the star. I still need to trim this top down about an inch, but I wanted to give myself some wiggle room. Lots and lots of wiggle room.

I will never forget sewing this quilt together on my maternity leave and listening to the baby's music toy playing classical music with "bubble sounds" in the background as I worked. I'm going to gift this quilt to someone who's having a baby girl. I think it will make a good rolling around on the floor quilt or a good laying out on the grass quilt. I always imagine my quilts being used at picnics. Strange, but true.

Hope you are all having a good start to your week.

xo Jill

P.S. Joining Nicole at Frontier Dreams.

my boy and my girl

Awww. I snapped these photos yesterday when I turned and saw this situation unfolding on the floor in front of me. 

My two babies. Bree came into my life during a real low point as we were struggling to build our family and meeting hurdle after hurdle. She was just this warm furry - joyful - creature to come home to at the end of the day. At first, when we got her, I would cry at her happy greeting at the door because she was so positive and I was not.

Slowly, she drew me out of my shell and we started to explore the neighborhood. We went on so many walks I can't even count. I can remember one night when we got really bad news that I was so sad that I couldn't even sleep, she crawled into bed and laid on top of me. Her head on my chest. (My husband beside me.) Her warm, gentle, furry weight and the rise and fall of her breathing finally pulled me under into sleep. I felt so protected and loved by this creature.

She knew my sadness and just laid with me.

Fast forward a year and a half and our two people one dog (one cat) household has been transformed by this cooing, jabbering, laughing baby.

Poor Bree! She's been a little depressed, I can tell, but now as I get more of a handle on motherhood and we start to get our rhythms down there has been more time for our sweet girl. She got a bath last week and I've been grooming her soft, soft fur. (Otherwise it's every where in our house.)

The weather is warming up, so soon Bree, baby and I will be out and about on our long, long walks. Hang in there, girl.  Summer is coming. My heart is so full of gratitude for the gifts that I've been given. Baby cries at three am and a warm furry nose and four paws always beside us.

I finally cast off on my tweed baby blanket. Just in time for my girlfriend's shower this weekend. The blanket is soft, pliable and - most importantly - machine washable. Logan got a crocheted blanket as a gift that is about this same size and we love it. It fits perfectly around him in his carrier and bassinet. Project stats here.

Happy Friday everyone. Joining Amanda Jean for Finish it up Friday.

xo Jill

knitting interlude (for more knitting)

This past Sunday my husband had to do some school work, so I stayed home with the baby and stared chopping, mixing and sauteing in the kitchen. This is a recipe that I've had pinned on my recipe board for a few weeks - red lentil soup. I subbed sweet potatoes for the regular potatoes, otherwise I pretty much followed the recipe. It called for smoke paprika, cumin and fresh ginger. Really yummy.

My knitting interlude is this little baby cap. This is my third one. I just love the pattern, it's so simple once you get the hang of it. Just increases and decreases and it looks so cool once you've knit a few inches. The white yarn is some fingering weight yarn of my mom's and the variegated yarn is something I picked up a few years ago for the barn raising blanket that I'm slowly making out of all of my leftover sock yarn. (The third photo from the top shows how that yarn knit up into one of the squares for my blanket.)

I love the contrasting stripes in the baby cap. I'm giving this one away so the next one I knit will have to be for Logan, because it's really striking.

I'm hosting book club this month, so that means I really need to read the book we selected. It's got a sheep on the cover, so that's a good start :) :) So far I'm liking the narrator, he has a humorous voice. The book seems to be part memoir, part travel writing (set in Spain), part mystery. It's also about artisan cheese, so I'll be learning something new. I think this is going to inspire my cooking and make me want to have a good piece of cheese and a nice glass of wine.

Hope you are all having a good week. The outdoor photos are from a walk that my husband, Logan and myself took with my mom (Grandma Julie) when she came down to visit us this weekend. The temperatures were in the 50s on Saturday.

I felt like I'd been turned loose after being confined to the house with a newborn since late November. I forgot there was an outdoors. The air smelled beautiful and the sun felt great.

Looking forward to more mild days.

xo Jill