African Flower Blanket

Ta-da!!!! The first blanket that I made for myself (and Matthew) is finally finished! It took over a year, but I did make about six other blankets in that same time 😁 I should've waited for better light to take pics, but I was too excited. 378 flowers -- each of them unique, done pretty randomly, and I just happened to have the exact right amount as I was finishing my last row -- so serendipitous! Can't wait to cozy up in it, haha! Perhaps in the fall?  









I first saw this blanket on pinterest linking to a blog in the Netherlands -- I'll include it here:  (african flower blanket) and I was distressed to find no information on a pattern or colors -- not that I usually include those sorts of details in my posts either, haha!  But I'll turn over a new flower petal and include some of those specifics.  I found a pattern and tutorial at Heidi Bears and just did the first four rounds.  I decided to used Lucy's hexagon join as you go method so I saved the gray section for the joining stage.  All of the yarn is Stylecraft from Wool Warehouse and I used these colors:

✽ sherbet ✽ turquoise ✽ empire ✽ grass green ✽ petrol ✽ violet ✽ spring green ✽ duck egg ✽ lobelia ✽ cloud blue ✽ aster ✽ bluebell ✽ aspen ✽ lemon ✽ teal ✽ white ✽ silver ✽


I did it all very haphazardly -- more organized people would probably cringe at my method, or lack thereof.  For a while I would do a pile of centers of one color, and then change the next rounds and then I did piles of using only two alternating colors instead of three... pretty random.  And then with joining I never even figured out ahead of time how many I would need in each row!  I just had all of the flowers in a bag, pulling one out at a time and only putting it back if the colors were too similar to what was directly around it, hoping I wouldn't get to the end and have only bright green left!   I joined them by doing a sort of herringbone pattern back and forth while the rows got longer in each direction.  I thought I might have to go back and do a few more, but as a mentioned above, I miraculously ended up with the exact right amount!  How freaky is that?  I love magical things.  I first thought I would have a curvy edge, but then decided I liked the look of straight edges better so I did have to hurry and do some half hexagons in the silver before I could start the border.  I used the border from a blog called dover and madden.  I did the first five rows wrong at first!  It was so frustrating!  At first I couldn't figure out why it didn't look right, but by the time I did realize I was very far along -- this blanket is humongous!  But I knew that I would be happier if I started over and did it correctly and it is true!  I always have to tell myself that it is not about finishing a project -- it is about the PROCESS!  So, it is fine if I have to spend a little more time.  It's not like I had a deadline hanging over my head. I think it is one of my favorite borders ever.  There you have it!  If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them!

Yoga Friends

We're finally getting into the swing of things in our kids yoga class!  I think at first they didn't know what was expected of them.  I always joke that secular homeschoolers are the worst -- they haven't learned how to sit quietly at church or school, haha!  I am just kidding, I love them, of course, but sometimes our math and yoga classes get a little rowdy!  Anywho, back to saying that it isn't going so badly!  We start by getting settled and then go over some of the poses we've learned in past weeks, then we learn some new poses.  I'm still using the ideas from the Bodhi Yoga manual, and the theme for this week was friends.  We talked about ways to be kind and acted out some scenarios.  We read a book about friends and then we did some partner yoga poses, because you can't do those alone!

Kids Yoga II

Once wasn't enough punishment so we came back for more!  I shortened the class this time, so that made it a lot better.  Using the ideas from the Bodhi Yoga manual, we started with the kids doing a tug of war with scarves.  It started out okay, but very quickly got out of hand!  These kids just aren't sitting there docilely like the pretend children in the example lesson!  I pretty much had a non stop running reminder that there is no talking in yoga and we have to stay on our mats... It might sink in eventually?  

My friend snapped a picture of a calm moment.  Is a picture worth a thousand words?  Or just a lie in image form?

Kids Yoga

This morning I started a kids yoga series held over at the Crossroads Church. They're trying to create a neighborhood community center, so a pay what you can/want yoga class seemed like a good fit -- and I can get my hours!  I'm also going to do an adult yoga class there in the evenings.  

In the Bodhi Yoga manual, Syl had put together a whole four month yoga series for kids and it is so cute!  I roughly followed the outline this morning, but with kids you never know what is going to happen!  I am used to going slower, but soon realized that they lose interest in things so quickly, so we would quickly jump to the next thing.  I also planned on using a whole hour, but that is simply too long to keep their attention!  I scheduled it for daytime and posted it on the homeschool site, so we had quite a large age range, which might have made it more difficult, too.  All in all, I feel like I learned a lot, but I'm not so sure about the kids, haha!

What Does a Leaf Know

Does a brittle, prime 
past leaf, plucked
from its cozy life

by an errant breeze,
wonder why it is
somersaulting precariously

through the air? Does
it question where
it is being tossed? Or

when it might once
again tumble jarringly
to a stop? Would

knowing change its
capacity for delight?
Or change the fact

that, in the end, we are
all inexpressibly, unalterably
alone?

Sunday Speculation

Matthew has a new calling in the High Council at church.  Our stake is quite large so this will require some traveling, both to weekly stake meetings, but also to visit different wards and branches.  His assigned ward is one that meets in our building, which is very nice, but yesterday he had to visit and speak at a branch in Kewanee, Illinois.  It is about an hour and a half away and their meeting started at 10:00 so I accompanied him.  When we arrived, we were pretty much ignored by everyone, but then right before the meeting began they asked Matthew to play the piano and me to lead the singing!  I don't know what the plan was otherwise... so Matthew got up and down a few times for that and then gave a wonderful talk about gratitude.

It has been so sunny and warm, it was a perfect day for a long drive.  We chatted about our future, so I have some new adventures up my sleeve, and then we listened to the best On Being podcast about love!  I always love them, and always think the last one I heard was the best, but we were laughing, I cried a little, it was cathartic.

I was in a very very bad mood yesterday, but the little trip was helpful -- it is always good to get out of the confines of town and see the  countryside!  Matthew adores getting his picture taken, so I make sure to oblige as much as possible

Today is President's Day!  We were going to go clean the CYFS, but I think they're closed for the day.  Now we're going to meet some friends at the park for an early lunch, some other friends for a little play date, hopefully I'll find some time to exercise, and I still really want to tackle that garage!  It's eating at me...

Why So Warm?

The weather here is being absolutely bonkers for February!!!  Judging from the reports I'm seeing on facebook, it is unusually warm all over the place.  On Friday it reached 70˚ so we went to the park with friends and had such a great time.  The wind was blowing... because we live in Illinois... but otherwise it was lovely.

On Saturday the boys both had basketball games in the morning so we got those under our belts, I went shopping with a friend, and then we totally chilled the rest of the day.  Matthew and I both had headaches, so our grand scheme of finally cleaning out the garage was set aside for yet another day.  Another warm one is bound to show up again, right?

After dinner we watched an episode of "A Series of Unfortunate Events."  Matthew told the boys that if they got ready for bed within 7 minutes then he'd give them a piggy back ride from the basement to bed.  They both did it!  So he tried to follow through with both of them...

That lasted just about long enough for me to snap a pic!  So I carried the lighter one.

As much as I am relishing the summery reprieve, I can't help but be slightly alarmed by it.  What does it mean over the long term?  Will we have a sweltering summer?  Will the bugs be enormous?  Because it really isn't worth living here if we start having to co-habitate with gigantic cockroaches.  Seriously.