Free Fabric

I’ve been haunting Sew Mama Sew for months.  How can you beat a chance to win free fabric–really nice free fabric?  This past week, I entered as I have been, and I didn’t bother to check to see if I had won because I haven’t for months, and I’ve felt awful this week and haven’t checked my email at all.  Of course Murphy’s Law being what it is, I actually DID win (YIPPEE!), and was two days late in letting them know which fabric I wanted.  Thankfully, they were gracious and decided to send it to me anyhow.  I picked this:

It’s supposed to be teal (and it looks so on Sew Mama Sew, but the image wouldn’t load in WordPress so I looked elsewhere), and I hope it is because I’ve had this apron pattern sitting in a pile since February that has not been made because I have not been able to find a fabric that matches the fabric that I originally bought with the apron in mind.  If it doesn’t match, I’ll use it for the apron anyhow I think.  It looks aprony to me.

In other news, there’s 3 other women at church that I know that are also pregnant!  Two of them are on worship team with me which will be so so so much fun and the other is a really neat girl in our small group.  What a cool thing to be able to have a support system beyond my awesome family!

Cornelia

Cute pink girly thing #1 for my niece comes in the form of a sock elephant made from this book (which I love–it’s so sweet and easy to do.  This would be a good place for little hands to start sewing).  Why Cornelia?  Why not?  Usually I name all my animal friends with alliterative names (Tilly the Turtle, Bacon the Bear, Jehosphaphat the Jackrabbit [my personal favorite--especially when sweet little first graders try to say it], Phileas Frog etc), but Cornelia insisted on something different.  I feel like she needs a silk jacket or perhaps a tutu, but I’m sure my niece is not concerned about such things being only 3 days old. 

 Here we find our American Elephant in her natural habitat, among some of the many cookbooks in the house and near a spool of quilting thread, which has lately been used to make buckets of yoyos.

In other news, Nathan was here last weekend:

There is so much snow already!  My skiing friends will be excited.

Yeah!

I’m an auntie again.  My sweet sister-in-law gave birth to my niece early this morning.  Now my nephew is a big brother.  It’s so cool.  This is the FIRST girl that anyone I know has had (well, actually, I made my first yoyo quilt for a friend who had a girl, but they promptly moved away)–and even better, we’re RELATED!!!!  Boys are great, but if I was being honest, I’ve been kind of hoping for someone to mix it up a little.  I get to make cute pink things (maybe not all pink) and no one can stop me!!!!  I’m so excited.

Martha Stewart and Yoyos

This has to be one of my favorite moments from the classic Martha Stewart show.  This is from an April Fool’s Day episode many years ago.  Unfortunately, this video doesn’t have the best part of this clip where Martha is INDIVIDUALLY dyeing each muslin circle before they get turned into yoyos.  Yes, it’s nutty, but my color-loving mind was totally charged by the idea of having a color palette of yoyos so perfectly matched.

My Baby, the Vegan (well, mostly)

So right now, the only things that don’t make me nauseous are grapes, salsa, corn chips, tomato soup, marinara, noodles of all sorts, and pho (I can’t eat the beef though).  Other than the beef and chicken broth that I’m getting through soup, I discovered I’ve been eating this sickly version of a vegan diet.  Here’s for hoping that nausea goes away sooner than the first trimester (can you see my crossing my fingers?!).

While I’ve been sitting doing much of nothing trying to rest and not think about being nauseous, it occurred to me that I haven’t yoyo’d seriously in a while.  I love yoyos.  I always have.  When I was in 5th grade, my Mom made a huge yoyo quilt for me that I still love (some of the yoyos are covered with a layer of lace…so much love in that quilt), and subsequently oversaw the creation of a quilt bordered with yoyos for my elementary school’s 10th year anniversary (Mom’s yoyos looked the best–I’m not even biased).

A few years ago, the first of my friends had a baby.  Wanting to give yoyoing a true go myself (I had made some before–like the vest that I made for myself in junior high…I never wore it), I created a quilt big enough for a twin bed (1500 yoyos total in that one).  I think yoyo quilts are AWESOME for babies because they have so many colors and the texture just has to connect little neurons in their heads–shoot–they do that for me and I’m an adult.  I loved that quilt…but it moved away…a long way away.

Since then, I’ve made a quilt for my brother (with 3 different sizes of yoyos, built in blocks of 9–over 2000 in that one) and one for 3 out of the 7 women in my Monday women’s Bible study.  Eventually I imagine I’ll make it through all of them.  It is happy seeing my quilts in their homes–especially my friend Lisa’s…it’s all in blues.  Just before I got engaged, I started one for another one of my precious sisters.  2 years later, not being able to do much but sit and watch Britcoms and read, I decided now was the time to finish it.  Her birthday is in November…I should be able to finish.  I’ve finished 4 out of 50 rows (they are 30 yoyos wide)plus a ton of chains of the 1200+ yoyo’s I’ve sewn so far.  I can write about my process of chaining yoyos that saves me some time if anyone is interested.

Susie at Hearth and Home passed this award on to me for my blog.  So sweet!  I feel honored.  I will pass it on to others when I have more time to write.

I will try and relate this without falling over…

The Lord has decided to bless us with a pregnancy.  I’m 5 1/2 weeks along and we couldn’t be more excited.  And I couldn’t be more tired.  The “morning” sickness set in the past couple of days and it is less than pleasant.  My sewing machine has set patiently waiting for me to have enough energy to do anything.

Accordion, when I’m not too tired seems to be an effective retreat from the nausea.  I just need a lot of prayer.  I only work part time, which is good, but when I’m at school I HAVE to be “on” and when I’m not feeling up to par, my kids suffer every time–at which point I put myself on a guilt spiral.  I just want to feel well enough to get through my classes each day.  

I’ve known for a long time that getting enough protein was going to be very very difficult for me.  I usually only eat 3-4 oz. of protein at a time (less if it’s beef because it makes me sick), and I recently discovered that dairy in my diet (my traditional cure-all for my protein needs) has been a big culprit in keeping my teenage “acne” alive well into my 20′s.  No dairy=no ultra-painful acne lesions.  I tried eating canned salmon (which I love–I make “crab” cakes out of it and they’re delicious) a few days ago, only to be met with really painful reflux.  So where does that leave baby?  I’m going to try and drink calcium-fortified juices (baby seems to demand apple juice which is funny given I haven’t had any in literally 20 years), and see if a hemp shake can jump-start my protein needs.  I make a lot of soup to take for lunch at school, but the idea of bean soups is not particularly appealing to me (even though I made some chili for myself this week which, while being very tasty I’m kind of having to force myself to eat).

Right now, I think I just need to be nice to myself.  I just want potatoes, corn, and tomatoes.  Actually a cup of my alphabet soup with an ear of corn on the cob and a baked potato sounds like the best thing in the world.  My poor husband.  I don’t know how we’re going to make it through this first trimester.