Love

I love my girls.  I will love them even more when they go back to school tomorrow!  Out of 11 school days so far in February, Brynn has attended 2. Between snow days, teacher professional days, school conferences, and the stomach flu, she has been home 9 of those days. S.t.i.r. C.r.a.z.y.

I have tried to squeeze some fun into our February, and despite a cranky 5-year-old, we have gotten some crafting done. :)

Starting on February 1st, I surprised the girls with a heart on their bedroom door that says "I love you because..." and each day of February I am adding another heart and another reason why I love them.  Brynn is fairly unaware of what's going on, but Rowan thanked me right away and within a couple days I found these on my bedroom door...

Yep, made me cry. Then a few days later Brad was having a tough work day and I mentioned to Rowan that she might want to be extra sweet to her Dad that day.  As soon as she finished her lunch, she made these for his office door...

Yep, he cried.

We kicked our month off right by having my mom come for a long weekend visit, so Grandma got to post some door hearts as well.  Rowan also taught us the technique of Imposto (sp?) painting, which she learned at school.  We picked up some sale canvas at Michael's and got to work. Mom's is my favorite, but she took hers home so I can't share it.  Here's Rowan's and mine:

I also bought myself a set of semi-decent paintbrushes, because I discovered after a night with friends at "Grapes & Paints" in Overland Park, that I totally dig painting!  You bring wine and snacks to share, and the instructor walks you through the steps of painting a sample they have chosen for the night. It was really neat to see how different the paintings were - even with the same color palette and design. Here's how mine turned out - I gotta say - I rocked it, dude.

(You'd think I could hold the camera straight to take a dang picture of it, though! Sheesh.)

But most of my crafting this month has been in the form of knitting 7" x 9" blocks for an afghan my Knotty Knitter group is putting together for Warm Up America. I am on FIRE! I have been pouring over books and designs and having the most fun pulling yarn from my stash to create a serious of individual works of art. It might be more than a little hard to give them away.  It is a walk down a knitted memory lane for me, remembering where the yarn came from.  It feels good to use up the bits of stash that have been sitting dormant in a drawer.

I kicked the project off using leftover yarn from a scarf I made my brother-in-law years ago. I was in the mood to cable, and chose these to start with.

Next, I used leftover wool from one of the first bags I felted about 8 years ago. I remember how much I loved the color, and how tangled and frustrating it was to attempt Intarsia for the first time!  So far, these are two of my favorites blocks. And now I can say that I've knitted a tree.

The next set (and I did these in sets of two so that there would be at least some coordinating colors in the patchwork afghan) uses leftover Malabrigo wool (heaven!) from both my mom's stash and mine.  We made a bunch of striped scarves last winter and ended up with a bag full of little bitty leftovers. Kinda funky, but it will add some pizazz! 

And I will leave it at that for today (I'm such a tease), although there are 8 more blocks to share another day. There's a little person in the next room who is NOT happy I'm within sight but out of reach.  Time to go squeeze a little girl. :)