So, I've given myself a few new projects! What's the point of having free time if you're going to whitter it away on TV and playing games on the internet? What do they produce? What do you have to show for them when you're done?
I'm learning how to knit, something that is definitely very unusual for me. While I never disdained knitters, I always looked on it as something your great grandmother would do in HER spare time, and not something a modern woman would do. Thanks to my sister-in-law(ish), I've had that assumption turned around. I'm practicing by making a rather ugly, gappy, but love-filled scarf for the baby. It's a bright, spring chick yellow... and I have more dropped stitches than I care to count at present... but once it's done, it'll be something for him, from me. And I'll keep working until I can make something more complex (out of prettier yarn!) and he will have his own mommy-made mementos.
I'm also working on making him Waldorf toys. While I am very gung-ho Montessori when it comes to learning and the practical aspects of life, I have always, ALWAYS had a wonderful imagination. A bag full of $1 plastic farm animals and a sandbox were my favorite playthings from the warm days of spring until the leaves started falling in the autumn. Flashy, blinking toys weren't necessary, and I could get a lot of joy out of just making up intricate stories about the various animal factions of my plastic creatures and their humped sand-hill homes (think "The Lion King" meets "Days of Our Lives").
So, in that vein, I'm handmaking a few simple toys for the little man, hoping that he can learn the joy of simple toys made from simple materials. And that he, like me, will end up with a lot of love for the outdoors.
I've only just finished making him a little yarn chick, made entirely out of cotton yarn and a little tiny beak of felt. It wasn't a labor-intensive project, but it was the first major crafting project I've undertaken in a long while, so it pleased me to no end to finish it and be able to offer it to him. Imagine my chagrin when he had only a passing interest in it! Perhaps as he gets older, once he's seen a new spring chick peeping away.
I am progressing on his Waldorf soft-body doll. It's made of natural materials (cotton, wool, cotton toweling) and is lovingly (and sometimes frustratedly) hand-stitched and stuffed. I keep reminding myself it will look infinitely better once it's alpaca-wool-innards aren't falling out... and it has hands and hair.
Although my main project right now is poor Jacob's croup. I wish he'd clear up, and soon. There are few things as distressing as the labored breathing and whooping cough of a sick baby.
Here's hoping everyone else is doing as well as we are! And here's doubly hoping Jacob will be even better quite soon.
