The Mother of All Projects

Here it is: my crowning achievement!! Over two years in the making, it is everything I hoped it would be when I started it. It took about 3 months of real work after I picked it back up, and I enlisted my grandma, who crochets, knits, and quilts daily, and my mom, who recently retired and was able to help cut and wrangle little people so we could work.

Cover: match the letters to your name

Put your hands in the mittens

Mirror

Lift the flap and a photo of you is there

Weaving

Match the shapes to their names

Buckle the belt

Match the balloons to the correct colors

Fire truck and police cars go on the track

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head

Count the train cars

Put the coins in the piggy bank

L'aig was so excited, I could barely get the photos taken before he wanted to play!

Ribbon pulls

Open the barn doors and hay window

Help the frog catch flies

Count the beads

Put the mail in the mailbox

Feed the monster

Unbutton the flowers

Lace and tie the shoe

Help the cars through the tunnels

Kite puzzle

Peel the banana

Feely page

Dedication page

Finger maze

So there it is. It took me forever to complete 3 or 4 pages by myself 2 years ago because I hand-sewed everything (including all the small pieces for the Potato Head pages). And that was when I was only making 2 books. Since Blessing came along, and I was going to have help, I decided to go ahead and make him one too.

Once I figured out that fusible web works great with felt (wish I'd known that 2 years ago!), we made swift work of it. I would draw all the shapes on the web during the week, then when we went to Grandma's on Fridays, I would iron it to one side of the felt, then have her or Mom cut out the pieces, and then iron everything onto the page. We still had to hand-sew on buttons and snaps and things, but Grandma enjoyed doing that during the week while she watched TV. I also invested in the Babyville Boutique snaps and snap device, which made it even quicker to finish.

All in all, I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. The last two pages were made possible courtesy of my new Cricut, which I'll tell more about in another post. Almost all of the pages were based on ideas I saw online (after much research), but the patterns themselves (with the exception of the Potato Head pages) were drawn by me. I link to all of the pages on my Pinterest board.

That's it. Now I'm working on many, many other projects, and I'll share about more of them later on, but I just wanted to get these on here for tonight. I might post again tonight (depends how sleepy I get after the baby goes to bed) with some of my other completed objects. Until next time, happy Easter and God bless!

A week's worth of projects

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get any work done on Sam's sweaters as I hoped, but I did have a productive week.

I have a friend whose husband works for the local railroad, KC Southern, and they have a little boy that the twins have enjoyed playing with on occasion. We unexpectedly received an invitation to his 2nd birthday party yesterday, so I was trying to figure out what to get him earlier this week, when I realized I still have some extra Lily Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn leftover from the boys' 2nd birthday train hats. So I spent a couple of days this week making a hat for him, although I misplaced my G hook, and instead used the H. I left out the last increase round, but the hat still turned out larger than I expected, and is huge on the little boy, but hopefully he'll grow into it soon.

Train conductor hat in Sugar n' Cream in Denim with H hook; per pattern, except last increase round, and adjustment to brim to compensate

Storm says, "All aboard!"

The other project that consumed my week was an announcement from our church. In honor of our new music minister, who wears bow ties for Sunday morning worship, the church leadership asked that everyone wear bow ties to make him feel welcome. We don't own any bow ties, but I wanted to participate, so I thought, why not make some with all the extra yarn I've got? I went through all the yarns (Red Heart, very old skeins I got from my grandma) that I didn't purchase but had picked out from my grandma's stash a while ago, but this gold was the only one that wasn't a special blend (some wools and alpacas I wanted to save for special projects), so I used it.

I made little knit bow ties for my hubby, the twins, the baby, and myself. They are all different, although not too creative with the stitches, but I think they turned out cute. I crocheted bands for all the men, and if I'd had more time (I finished these last evening) would have added buttons to attach them. Mine I attached to a hair tie, so I could wear it with a messy bun.

Here we all are, wearing them.

It was a fun little project, and we got lots of cute comments from the church members this morning. I tried to find a semi-fancy bow tie pattern (for free), but everything I found was basically a tutorial for a rectangle (knit or crochet) gathered with yarn in the middle. I doubled my husband's and mine, so they actually look like bows, but I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

That was my week in pictures. I will try to get more done on the sweaters this week, so I can hopefully post the finished photos next week. I also need to tell you about the new needles and how I am faring with them. Until then, happy crafting!

Thanksgiving fun

It's Thanksgiving, and I finally finished the project I wanted done by Thanksgiving, a few days early even! I called my cousin last week to let her know I should have her sweater done by the end of the week, and we arranged for her to come by to try it on Thursday. 

This forced me to really work hard for a couple of days, as I still had the finishing touches to do, like making the tabs for the sides, sewing them on, weaving in ends, and blocking. I got it done in time though.

Here is a photo of the original design:

Here is a closeup of the cable pattern:

This is the blocking process:

And this is the finished product! I forgot to take a photo after it was done drying (blocking), so I had to run out to the car and have her hold it up before she drove away...

Here is the sweater on, as she intended to wear it:

Blocking the sweater was fun. As you can see, I got a little creative with the process. I didn't have any T pins, which were suggested in the article I read, but I had just enough of the boys' little trains to cover the whole garment. They were the perfect weight to keep the ends flat. I just used a spray bottle and dampened the edges, not even the whole garment. If I had more time, I would have blocked it before sewing it together, and done the whole thing, but she was only available on a certain day, sooner than I planned. 

My cousin loves it! I am so pleased with the way it turned out, and even more pleased that she likes it too. Even though it was essentially a large rectangle, I am excited to have my first knit sweater completed. If you remember, I made a crochet sweater quite a while ago. I think I am ready to attempt a baby sweater pattern for Samuel out of yarn I've had since the twins were born. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought, which is the main reason I've never tried before. 

On a more personal note, my Dad is not doing well. It seems like only a matter of time before the cancer wins, due to an infection it is causing, which is hindering chemo treatments. Please keep our family in your prayers. We are still praying for a miracle, but at this point it's not looking very promising.

Thanks for your time and happy Thanksgiving. I hope you get to spend it with loved ones, and that you never miss an opportunity to tell them how much you love them.

Time to tell...

I wish it weren't always 10 pm when I have time to myself to collect my thoughts and write. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only time I have to get anything done that isn't laundry, dishes, nursing the baby, taking a shower, bathing the twins, or breaking up arguments between them. By the time I get to this point in the day, it's always a battle over the things I know I should do (spending time with my hubby, reading and praying, sleeping) and the things I want to do, like putting my thoughts down in print.

I have a little time tonight, so I thought I would share what's been going on that is consuming most of my mental and emotional energy right now.

My dad has always been a big guy. Not just tall (he's 6' 2" or so), but large. He's always been over 200, and in the past 10 years since his parents died, his brother died suddenly, and he had two major injuries that kept him from working for months at a time, he has put on many more pounds. He got up to just under 500 last summer and injured his back from carrying all that weight around.

Last October, after he had lost about 15 pounds preparing for his surgery

We prayed, prayed, and prayed some more that he would seek help for his weight problem, because they refused to do anything to help his back due to how heavy he was. He couldn't stand to be on his feet, which is what his job requires him to do every day for 8 hours, so as soon as he got home he would plant himself on the couch and only get up to go to the bathroom and bed. He couldn't play with his grandchildren because he hurt so badly.

I had mentioned to my mom several times about bariatric surgery because I knew at least 4 people who had undergone the procedure and had amazing results. Finally, my husband and I got up the courage to talk to Dad about it, and even brought over some brochures to share with him from one of my friends. He was thinking about it, as a last resort, and decided to look into it.

Praise God, in February (the day after our first ultrasound for Samuel), he had gastric bypass surgery and everything seemed to go great. He lost over 200 pounds between last summer when he went to the informational meeting and started making changes and when we moved in July. Then he started having trouble keeping food down.

He had a minor procedure done to stretch his muscles, which is somewhat common after bariatric surgery, but after the 2nd time having it done, he was still having the same problems. It got so bad that he would vomit even after having just water to drink. This went on far too long (nearly a month) and he was becoming dehydrated, so he finally admitted himself to the ER at the beginning of October. After a week of being on IV fluids and running a few tests, they started looking for other causes of his vomiting and found his white blood cell count was high.

We learned a few days later that he has stage 4 stomach cancer, which is apparently treatable but not curable or operable. He started chemo yesterday and is going every 2 weeks for 6 months to fight it.

This has been heartbreaking, especially after all that he's gone through to live healthier. He looked so good this summer, better than I can remember him looking since I was little. He had energy, he walked with his head held high for the first time in many years, not shrinking back because of his weight. He played with his 3 grandsons and most importantly, was not in pain. After the month of failed attempts at rectifying the issues, now he looks almost eerily thin, his muscles are weak and deteriorating and his skin just hangs off him.

One year later, just after learning about his cancer

My mom is barely hanging on. She is so strong, because she has to be, but I know it's killing her inside to see him go through this. She is a Christian, so she has her faith to help her through, but we are still not sure whether Dad is truly saved or not. We have presented the Gospel to him many times, have prayed with him and for him to know and have an eternal relationship with the One True God, but we have never gotten reassurance that he is in fact saved.

If you are the praying type, please say a prayer for my family. For my dad, for complete healing and for his spirit not to be broken, and for his salvation; for my mom, that she has the energy to keep encouraging him and to help him get through this. Thank you so much and God bless.

I will post about the boys' birthday soon, but I just had to get this out there. Thanks for reading.