Spoons & Stitches

A friend of mine is having her first baby girl anytime now. She has picked out the beautiful name, painted the nursery, and is ready to be a mama! Her baby shower was a few weeks ago, so I can finally put out the pattern I used for her baby blanket. I got this idea from the beautiful hooded blankets that my mother made for my boys when they were due. My first confession is that this is not a hooded blanket nor is it nearly so intricate as my mother's work. I wanted to design something that would be reasonably quick, easy for beginning knitters, and could be made with the yarn I already had. I picked up some lovely ivory and peach yarns at the thrift store, so I wanted to use those for the blanket. I agonized over what to make for ages! Like, the entire summer until almost August! I finally decided on a wide stripe diagonal baby blanket. Due to my limitations in needles (can't find my circulars), I was limited to what I could do with the needles I had. So rather than a full-si...

What? Two blog posts in one day? Yes, it's a special day. That and I couldn't figure out any other way to show what I'm about to show you. My oldest son LOVES to draw. He's an artist at heart and he has been saying for years that he wants to be a cartoonist when he grows up. (I asked him why he wanted to wait that long.) So here is the card he made for me, which is actually more like a book. If your kids are as much into Minecraft as mine are, then you probably recognize this as Steve from the game. They like to play in creative mode, just discovered this week. At least one of my men gave me diamonds for my birthday. :) But Minecraft hasn't completely dwarfed his love of Yoda or Origami. Particularly together. And he likes giving out the real thing. Finger puppet! He's always been funny, but this made me truly laugh! He asked me a few days ago which was my favorite of his comic book characters. He made a few for me.  Some are tou...

My dad. Not looking much different from 40. So today is my birthday. If you are my "friend" on Facebook then you probably already figured that out. Today I'm reminded of a picture that used to hang in our finished basement den in Summit, New Jersey when my folks and I lived there. It was a picture of my dad, in his U.S. Navy athletic shorts, sitting (leaning really) on a balance beam. Underneath he had a caption posted: "Forty isn't over the hill." I'm also reminded of a poem that my dad wrote (to his little brother I think) that used to be posted in my uncle's old bedroom at the grandparent's place. I can only recall the first line, but that has always stuck in my head with its own little melody, like a song. "Forty, that mystical imaginary borderline..." I think the reason that my dad comes to mind when I think of the age of forty is that it was a big deal to him. He had something prove at that age--that he was still in his prime ...

Today I want to share with you a post I read from Women Living Well. If you've ever been so lonely you couldn't eat or too afraid to let someone in, this is worth a read. Women Living Well

I don't know about you, but I get bored with the same old birthday card every year. Today was my beloved husband's birthday and just a few days ago I was drawing a big blank for what to do. All I knew is that I did not want it boring. As usual, everything got in the way. My schedule was beyond full with elementary school meetings, church meetings, class assignments, cooking meals, and oh, yeah, my full time job. As I got home from picking up the kids from school Thursday night, I told them to go inside and make Daddy a nice birthday card. Do you remember the little origami fortune tellers, sometimes called cootie catchers, that we folded back in childhood? I remember having hours of fun with those things. We folded them in Sunday school, Girl Scouts, and all the time at home. Created by Ian Moore Right now, my sons are going through an origami phase, though theirs is more of a Star Wars origami, based on the series of books that started with The Strange Case of Origami ...