Just Call Me Grandma!

Thanksgiving was full of extra meaning this year. My first grandchild, Cora Diane Hutton, arrived with the sunrise on Sunday, November 20.

Neither Mr. Kathie nor I have any siblings, so our own kids have no aunts and uncles and no first cousins. In a family this small, a new family member is huge and exciting news. Delighted, overjoyed, thrilled, excited! All is well and little Cora and her proud parents are settling in at home, getting to know each other, and becoming a family.

We've been overdosing on Skype; cannot get enough. Yes! I'll be traveling to visit very soon.

And it all takes me back to another Thanksgiving week in the late 1970s, when we were welcoming Cora's mom into our family.

Family history is important to all of us. Cora is a name that dates to the mid-19th century in my family; Diane honors little Cora's paternal grandma. The wheel turns, doors close, windows open, new life sustains us and propels us forward. Welcome Cora...

Tweedy

OK--some project updating. Several projects lately have had baby, baby, baby written all over them. Here's one.

I have loved Jared Flood's Tweed Baby Blanket ever since it first appeared on the Brooklyn Tweed blog. It offered a nice big expanse of garter stitch knitting bordered with feather and fan lace. But most of all, I loved Jared's choice of non-baby colors and, as you can see, I didn't stray far from his color ideas as I made this one.

But hell's bells, it was a lot of knitting. I made the center square enough bigger to accommodate two more repeats of the feather and fan border, so I have no one to blame but myself for the ordeal of knitting that border, with its stitches crammed and jammed on the needle.

Also, that I-cord bind off was a new experience--knitting four stitches for every border stitch, and there were darn near 800 border stitches by the time the blanket was finished. But I was very happy with the detail of that border--kind of like quilt binding, and very flexible. I'll be using that technique again.

Jared's samples were heavily blocked, but who are we kidding here? A busy mom is not going to take the time to block this blanket when it's laundered. And with a high acrylic content, I'm not sure how well this would block at all. So it's as is, soft and cuddly. Very happy with it. And I hope Urban Hipster Baby likes it too.

Details:

Pattern: Tweed Baby Blanket by Jared Flood

Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Encore Worsted Tweed, about 9 skeins in three different colorways.

Needles: 9 US

Begun: August 15, 2011

Completed: October 22, 2011

It's a week of changes as I ease into a new lifestyle. One thing I'd yearned to do for a long time was to get back to a regular yoga practice. Hope springs eternal for better flexibility and agility...and I'd love to tap into the spirituality and centering aspects of yoga. I really feel I could use that now. So I headed back to class this week, after about a six year absence. I'm starting back from absolute zero, but I'm starting.

And OMG--I am sore. But it's good sore.

New Day

Hello friends. Sorry for my absence. It's been a busy and eventful fall, but my energies seemed to fall just short of sharing in this format. The truth is that I've been having a bit of a dark night of the soul. I've been grappling with big life-direction decisions, trying to gauge timing, and also to determine what I really want at this point in my life. But as it happened, good timing and thoughtful planning went out the window and events exploded in my face.

I have quit my job. I'd been quietly laying some groundwork for eventual retirement for some time now. But some events at work brought everything into focus, making it crystal clear that now was the time to act. With a heavy heart, I turned in my resignation in late October and worked my last day this past week.

Family and friends have been very supportive--they've long known the issues my co-workers and I dealt with daily. And state-mandated changes of a negative financial nature (Remember, this IS Wisconsin after all, and I was one of those parasitic public employees) were coming down the pike. Those changes were my main reason for contemplating an exit in the first place.

Putting one foot in front of the other during those last ten days was stressful and uncomfortable. I'm feeling a bit bruised, but excited and eager to move forward from a challenging situation. Now is my chance to spend time on the things and people that matter to me most. Excellent timing for that--a brand new family member should arrive in a matter of days. Whoo hoo!

Healing is at the top of the agenda right now. But the main thing is:

Done. And free. At last.