needle & thREAD

I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo and a brief description of what you're up to? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much. Tell me about it in the contents or leave a link to your blog. I'll be happy to come by and visit!

You can get your own needle & thREAD button here in your choice of several happy colors.

Not much to show this week. I got up ridiculously early (3:30) yesterday morning, so I could sew a little. I realized that I need more fabric for my intended project. So, I put that aside. I pulled out some always inspiring Anna Maria Horner voile to make a couple more of those light and airy (but pretty warm) scarves. I have acquired quite the collection and they make fabulous Christmas presents. I think that so far it's the only successful sewing I've done for myself. But, who needs anything else? These scarves take jeans and a T-shirt into the presentable, put together realm. And they make a simple black dress look all grown up and fancy. 

So there you go. A picture of beautiful fabric.

And another picture.

Because this is as far as I got. Some life and death things happened yesterday and the sewing machine sat silent.

I intended to read for two hours straight at soccer practice last night. Those hours in the car are usually my writing hours, but I was too tired to put three words together coherently. In the end, I read a little bit and then took a nap. There's a first for everything I suppose. I think this was my first parking lot nap! I'm reading To School Through the Fields. It's a sweet, light memoir of a childhood in rural Ireland back when life was simple. Perfect for the not-so-simple day that was yesterday. 

So tell us all about your reading and stitching!

needle & thREAD

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I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo and a brief description of what you're up to? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much. Tell me about it in the contents or leave a link to your blog. I'll be happy to come by and visit!

You can get your own needle & thREAD button here in your choice of several happy colors.

Katie’s Book Report Dress is nearly finished. All it needs is cuffs and a hem. So cute: color blocks, sweet pockets, darling pleats. She thinks it's adorable. I so loved sewing this dress. It’s been pure magic to just be in my sewing room and have this creation come together. More and more, I am convinced that there is something about that room and fabric and just, well, all of it, that is essential to my soul at this point in life.  So, yes, magical dress.

 

Except it doesn’t fit.

It’s entirely too narrow across the shoulders. I’ll finish it, I’m certain. Then, I suppose it will sit in the closet three years or so before Karoline can wear it. Katie is bummed because it seems to her like Karoline ends up with quite a few pretty wonderful things that don’t fit her. I still have fabric for an adult Lisette Market Dress pattern that might just fit.

My fiction was delivered to Christian’s apartment instead of to my house (I’m sure he was bemused). So, the whole plan to immerse myself in light fiction was most definitely thwarted. Instead, I’ve been reading back issues of Welcome Home magazine. Welcome Home has long been out of print. Once upon a time, I edited the magazine. Then, I realized that somehow this wonderful opportunity to work from home, in the margins of my life, was sucking the life out of my days. The irony was not lost on us. 

I’ve been pondering a lot lately how the decision to be a mother at home and to make mothering and home the primary focus of my days is a decision I have to make over and over again. More on that later, I think.

So tell us all about your reading and stitching!

needle & thREAD

.

.

I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo and a brief description of what you're up to? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much. Tell me about it in the contents or leave a link to your blog. I'll be happy to come by and visit!

You can get your own needle & thREAD button here in your choice of several happy colors.

I have been working on Katie's Book Report Dress. It's coming along (slowly) and I'm enjoy both fabric and pattern. 

I got a beautiful gift box in the mail last week, so beautiful that it inspired me to read ahead of season a bit. My friend Ann sent me a goodie box with a copy of her new advent devotional The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas. Isn't it just so very pretty?

So tell us all about your reading and stitching!

needle & thREAD

.

I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo and a brief description of what you're up to? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much. Tell me about it in the contents or leave a link to your blog. I'll be happy to come by and visit!

You can get your own needle & thREAD button here in your choice of several happy colors.

I haven’t much sewing nor reading on which to report. I’m definitely yearning for some quiet morning hours in which to sew and some quiet evening hours in which to read. They are not presenting themselves just yet. I promised a picture of Sarah wearing her flannel Class Picnic Blouse. There she is, playing with helicopter seeds. Don't you love those?

I did begin to craft a dress for Katie this morning. I’d love to work some more today and finish it tomorrow. We shall see.

 

In the reading department, I’m still very slowly working my way though Living into Community. It’s great book, one that makes me want to reach for the highlighter incessantly. But I’m learning something about myself in the reading: my reading habits have been affected by my internet habits. I’m much more distractible than I used to be. I read a quote and have to fight the urge to Google the person who said it. I’m restless and can’t settle in to do the work of reading something so meaty. Needless to say, this observation about myself greatly disturbs me. It also makes me want to persevere—because it is a worthwhile book.

My friend Linda asked me to David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell (interesting thoughts on conversion in link). She asked me to read it because she wants to talk about it. That’s a guarantee I’ll read a book. Any book Linda wants to talk about is a book I’ll read. I’ve just begun. It’s my downstairs book. Living into Community is my upstairs book. Last week, when I was resolving some long lingering doubts and wonderings, I resolved to change some habits. One of them is “internet reading.” I’ve always been a voracious reader, but until recently it was “nose in a book” reading, not internet reading.  I think the “nose in a book” me is more peaceful. Peaceful is good.

So tell us all about your reading and stitching!

needle & thREAD

.

I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo and a brief description of what you're up to? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much. Tell me about it in the contents or leave a link to your blog. I'll be happy to come by and visit!

You can get your own needle & thREAD button here in your choice of several happy colors.

 

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Very little needlework is happening here this week. I actually wish I had an excuse to do more. I really want to be in my sewing room. Really.

I pulled this jumper from my giveaway pile on Monday. It was too short for Sarah. Upon further reflection, I decided to trim it with some butterflies and let her wear it to the funeral. She chose a bright pink cardigan to wear with it. Granddad would totally approve. Did you know that when your fingers are tired and your brain is mush, "butterflies" gets keyboarded "butterlifes"? I think that's what they will be henceforth.

My father-in-law was over 40 when my husband was born. It's extraordinary that we had him with us to see Sarah born when Mike was 43. Truly extraordinary. I'm trying really hard to hold tight to the gratitude I feel for that time. He was so integral to our lives, so tightly woven into the fabric of who we are. 

But I'm sad for my little girls. I'm sad that they get far fewer years, far fewer memories. He was very frail in the past few years--to frail to play with Sarah on the floor the way he did with all the others. I'm trying to see the upside, the silver lining, in being the littlest. But today, I'm not having much success. 

Thank you again for your kind words and your prayers. My family is very grateful.

Please tell me what you're sewing?