The Great Sweater Challenge

After finishing the quilt for the bed, I was well into the seriously icky first trimester. I had a sudden urge to embroider (something I hadn't done since living in Vermont years ago). I picked up some pillow cases and started a pretty flower and paisley pattern. I found out I was pregnant around the time I was finishing the first pillow case in the pair. It stays untouched in the bottom of my crafting chest.

Yes, I have an entire chest (an old toy chest) and closet filled to the brim with materials for nearly every crafty whim that overcomes me. The room that holds said chest usually is overrun by yarn and fabric during one of my, "does this go together?" rampages. The fact that this room must become the nursery was a fact I faced early in my pregnancy...thankfully!

Since I wasn't feeling very well at first, but have a difficult time doing nothing I gave myself a few...ummm..let's call them challenges...to keep myself occupied.

Challenge 1. An oldie but a goodie, go back to the Well-Educated Mind and finish the books on the first reading list (see previous entry). So far, I'm not doing too bad. I'm finishing up Crime and Punishment (number 11? out of 30), which I really like so far.

Challenge 2. Read the entire King James version of the Christian bible. Since my husband is Christian, it only seemed like the right thing to do...and it seemed like a) a great literary feat, b) something completely outside my comfort zone, and c) I might learn something. I think item "c" is the primary reason for taking on this project. The reason? I was once eating at a tasty Indian buffet for lunch with 2 friends. One is Jewish, the other Catholic. I turned the my Catholic friend and asked what a traditional Passover feast with like. She turned red and said I don't know. Then I turned to my Jewish friend and said, doesn't it have something to do with Lent? They both burst into laughter...there were tears... thankfully they knew I was seriously ignorant and not intentionally trying to be insulting. I have tried to educate myself about world religions ever since. For some reason, Christianity has been a difficult one for me to tackle. Mark has been very informative and I'm starting figure out why I've been so confused by it for so long...there are endless "versions" of Christianity. They all believe different things...well, not the major premise of course, but there are differences. Reading "The Year of Living Biblically" by AJ Jacaobs (one of my favorite authors because he's into weird life projects like myself) helped me jumpstart the great bible reading project. I have finished Genesis and Exodus. I think the rest will have to wait awhile.

Challenge 3. Ok. Back to the crafty stuff. For this project I decided that I had way too much yarn, fabric, etc. I also recognized that I would need to get rid of this stuff to make room for baby. There is no way I was going to shove it into a box in the basement. I also knew that the baby would be born in the fall (perfect sweater season) and would need clothing. My task was to find free patterns on the internet and make tons and tons of baby clothes using the yarn already in my chest. I have made quite a few baby caps and sweaters (most of which are so ugly I would never in a millions years put them on my child..I blame it on yarn limitations). There were a few cute successes though.

This is a little hoodie I made from a free pattern my sister gave me. Some of you may have seen pictures of Mark knitting this one. He only finished one row, but I say that counts as helping make one of our son's first sweaters. Aww!


This is probably one of my favorites. It's a little striped cardigan.




Here's an itty bitty v-neck. Another favorite.


These things are adorable! They are actually made to be handwarmers. The little bottom opens and you can put rice-filled bean bags inside, which can be warmed in the microwave for cold nights. I thought this would be nice if we go camping, or if we are outside of the house for a walk on a brisk night.