Two more pilot hats, a brown one for my nephew Simeon Tolmie, and a blue one for my Miriam Anna, who has decidedly grown out of her pink one (really, she grew out of it before it was even finished, but she’s been wearing it every day anyway). Both modeled by Miriam, since Simeon lives far away in Washington state. Both in 50% wool/50% alpaca. I’ve made four of these hats now, and still make several mistakes on each one. I’ve switched to a different pattern for my nephew Canyon’s hat, and if it works out, I’ll make another for James, since I don’t like how his pilot hat turned out at all.

I also made a Christmas tree skirt a while back from this tutorial. My mom was nice enough to do the binding when she came to visit, since I had no idea how to go about it. It sat at the base of our tree unbound until after Christmas. I didn’t want the big bows on it like in the tutorial, so my mom put two snaps on the opening to keep it closed. I really want to make curtains out of the red fabric with the larger pattern, but alas, I can’t find it anymore.

On the second day of Christmas, we gave James beloved squirrels and birds their Christmas treats. I thought this was such a great idea when I saw this family’s Christmas for the animals, and thought, “Someday when we live out in the woods and have chickens and goats, we’ll do that.” But then remembered that we do in fact have animals here in Lansdowne, and James wakes up every morning and talks to the squirrels outside his window. So today was their Christmas feast.

After a lazy morning snuggling with his new doggy…

James and Mama got to work making an animal feast. Papa popped us some popcorn, and James handed the popcorn and cranberries to Mama to string (although he seemed to have a “one for you, three for me” kind of system).

After stringing our popcorn and cranberries, we made a terrific mess smearing pinecones with peanut butter and rolling them in birdseed. Mama filled the suet feeder with leftover suet from the plum pudding.

Merry Christmas, squirrels and birds! As Paul and I were sitting here in the living room, there was quite a ruckus outside as the squirrels hung upside down to get to the pinecones and fought over the nuts.

Christmas Eve was spent mainly at church, first at Christmas Eve liturgy at a church nearby in the morning, and then Christmas liturgy at our home church (an hour north) from about 7 pm to 10:30 pm. The kids were very good, despite it being way past their bedtime, although Miriam got a little cranky. I don’t know why our kids won’t sleep at church. Both of them stay awake for multiple hour services, late at night. James has stayed up through two Pascha services (which go from about 11:30 pm to 4 am). Three- and four-year-olds were dropping like flies and my seven month old and two year old were wide awake. Anyway, it was a beautiful service, and James just laid down with his blanket whenever he got tired, and then popped back up when he wanted to participate. At the end, when we were filing up to kiss the cross, our priest said the traditional greeting of “Christ is born!” to each person as they came up. James beat him to the punch, marching up and exclaiming “Christ is born!” to Fr. Noah. He’s been saying “Christ is born!” or “Jesus born!” to us ever since. He said the traditional response, “Glorify Him!” a few times but now settles for just “Glory!” It seems he is a Baptist now. Since we spent most of the day at church, I don’t have many Christmas Eve photos, but here they are in their Christmas outfits.

The kids didn’t go to bed until 11:30 pm. Sadly, that didn’t mean they slept in much. So we woke up to what has become our traditional Christmas breakfast (because if you do it twice, it’s a tradition) - poppyseed sweet rolls, sausage and egg casserole, coffee, orange juice, and prosecco for the grown ups.

James and Miriam played with their new stuff while I made breakfast. James is showing off his new trucks and Miriam is after her new spoon.

The house looked like a bomb hit it.

After all that food, it was time for a walk.

This is James’ favorite rock-throwing place. He just calls it “water,” as in, “Mama, go water?”

Miriam didn’t quite make it all the way home.

Miriam woke up to play with her new things - a new bowl and spoon, since she will start eating big people food soon-ish, and a felted ball with a jingle bell inside that Mama knit her. She’s so adorable. Even though she’s very bald :)

She loves her Papa.

Christmas dinner was kind of a bust. All the side dishes (leek gratin, roasted carrots, shredded brussels sprouts with bacon, cranberry-almond-goat cheese salad) were good, but the roast lamb smelled TERRIBLE. After lots of investigating and calling my grandmother, it seems that the smell did not mean it was bad, just that some lamb is smelly. But we’ve both eaten lots of lamb and none of it smelled like this. Arielle couldn’t eat it. Paul made a valiant effort. No one got sick. But Arielle went out and bought a ham to eat with the other leftovers, and we’re tossing the lamb. But it was made up for by a dessert that we got to set on fire! Arielle’s first steamed plum pudding, which we doused in flaming rum after the kids went to bed.

Merry Christmas!

Last night we set out our shoes…

And when we woke up, St. Nicholas had been here!

(gold coins, oranges, nuts, pomegranates, owl ornaments, and a couple of knit hats)

Saint Nicholas, Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra, defender of the faith, and patron saint of children, pray to God for us!

In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,

an image of humility and a teacher of abstinence;

your humility exalted you;

your poverty enriched you.

Hierarch Father Nicholas,

entreat Christ our God

that our souls may be saved.

Pattern: Mostly made up, with Wee Legwarmers by Ginny Sheller as a starting point.
Yarn: Rabbit Ridge Designs handpainted alpaca
Needles: US 6 double pointed

Is it just me or does Miriam often look concerned when I’m taking her picture?

Really, this entire post is an excuse to take pictures of baby feet.

We gathered lots of fall leaves on our walks, then heated up the scraps from our beeswax candles that we’ve collected in a jar. Dipped each one in beeswax and cooled on waxed paper before stringing on quilting thread and hang. I had lots of extras so I made James a little nature table with more leaves, shells, a basket full of acorns and his little pumpkin. This project made the whole house smell good! Idea from here.

Warning: this could be a very messy project. James did not dip the leaves, as it was too hot and messy for a toddler (he handed me the leaves to dip, and helped me stack them after they were cool), but if you want to do this with older kids, I’d read the link above on how to minimize mess. Don’t expect to use the container you melt the wax in for any other purpose.

One of the things Miriam wears almost every day is a pair of babylegs. They are great under dresses when a wool diaper cover makes tights look ridiculous. I also put them on like legwarmers under her pants to cover the gap between the pants and socks. She wears them almost every day, so I decided to make her an extra-warm pair out of hand painted alpaca. My first project on double pointed needles! They are very relaxing to knit, just round and round and round, with a few rows of ribbing on each end. I’m just about to cast this one off and start another. I used Ginny’s tutorial to get started, but cast on 32 stitches (and increased to 36 by the end) since they are for a little skinny baby and I made them long, so they can cover her entire leg. I also did it in stockinette stitch instead of all ribbing, partially because I screwed up the ribbing in the beginning and didn’t want to fix it, and also because I thought this pretty yarn was shown off best with stockinette. Hopefully the three or four rows of ribbing on each side will keep them in place.

I’m finally reading Simplicity Parenting, which I’ve been hearing about from others for ages. Much of it is about things I’ve been aiming toward for a while - less stuff, simple toys, not a lot of scheduling, and very little “screen access” for James. But it’s nice to get even more ideas and learn more about the “why” of a simpler childhood. I already culled James toys quite a bit and have chosen out just four books for the week, which we read each night, rather than having 30 books to choose from, which, truth be told, mostly meant I picked them all up off the floor three times a day. We have a nice evening time of reading those four books on the “big bed” while I nurse Miriam. Next week we’ll choose different books, although I’m trying to always have one of them be a book of poetry. We are reading Eloise Wilkins’ Poems for the Very Young currently, along with Where the Wild Things Are, Hand Hand Fingers Thumb (James favorite book of all time), and Goodnight Moon.

See Ginny to read about what others are knitting and reading.

I finally finished something that is not flat!

Pattern: Pilot Cap by Little Turtle Knits [Ravelry link]
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran
Needles: Size 7

Miriam needed a warm but lightweight hat she could wear inside and out, with ties so that it would stay on in her carseat and when worn on my back. This pattern was perfect, and was so easy to understand and cleverly written, I’ve already started a navy blue one for James, and since this one is really quite small for Miriam (I did the newborn size, and my gauge was a little tight), I’m going to knit the next size up for her as well. Jury is still out on whether to do it in the same pink yarn, or a natural/undyed yarn. I like the pink, but undyed would go with all of her clothes. I’ll keep this one for another newborn girl, as it would be perfect for those first couple of months.

I did the last part of this pattern totally wrong - I was supposed to knit one i-cord tie, and then keep knitting it directly onto the back of the hat, and then knit down the other tie, so there was an applied i-cord bordering the entire back. I didn’t get this AT ALL from the directions, and didn’t have any clue what to do until after I’d emailed the designer. By that point I had already knit two separate i-cords, so a friend knit one directly onto the hat, and I just sewed the other one on. Next time, I’ll know better! I also think I messed up the kitchener stitch join, so I’ll have to practice that a bit too.

A few minutes after I took the above photo, she flipped herself over and was very upset about it, so she had to snuggle with Papa for a while to recover.

When you’re the big brother and you sit up for the first time, you get the limelight all to yourself.

When your the little sister and you sit up for the first time, there’s a big brother doing his very best to steal your thunder with his antics.

(He’s trying to sit on her pillow).

Doesn’t she look so proud of herself? LOOK WHAT I CAN DO, MAMA!

And then she tipped over. Oof.

I didn’t notice until after I had picked out all these pictures that they are wearing the very same pants! Those monkey pants were too cute to save just for boys.

Look, I sewed something!

We make our coffee in a french press every morning, so to have a little practice project before the bigger project I hope to do next weekend, I made this little french press cozy from a recent Martha Stewart magazine. I ignored all their directions though, because they were supremely stupid. But I actually made this cozy twice, because I made a supremely stupid mistake on the first one (the ribbons ended up on the INSIDE!)

And here is a recent thrift store find:

I was about to store away all my teacups, because I had no good place to put them. But then I walked past the thrift store on the way to the library last week and saw this in the window. I walked right in and bought it, which is very, very unlike me.

Here is a bonus picture of my cute kids in their PJs. Because pictures of cute kids in PJs are never gratuitous.