Being Grandparents

 After I posted some photographs of Jim with Jamie on Facebook, one of Jim's high school classmate wrote, "Is it just me, or is it hard to believe that we are now grandparents?"  His reply: "It is not just you...but isn't it wonderful?" In the span of one week, we managed to have that wonderfulness threefold, fillings our days with all three grandchildren, the ones far away in North Carolina and the one much closer, still south from us although yet in the same state.

This week, Jim accompanied me for my Rosemary day.  Rosie, now a six-month sitting up sweetie was her normal enchanting self.  I dressed her up in a Christmas present to me from her dear mama.

 Because last post, I featured Alex, I include his brother in this post. Now all three of our grandchildren are here with us on this page, just as they were in person during the past two weeks.

Grandparenting really is the greatest thing...

Our Crazy Eight

Alexander turned eight on Friday.  Eight years old!  All boy now, he is growing and changing in delightful ways.  Possessing his own developing sense of humor, he appreciates a good joke, Grandad's sense of humor, and even Nana outsmarting him in Connect Four.  

He delights in discovering new worlds through his microscope and the pages of the chapter books he now reads silently to himself. He independently walks the short lane from the school bus to his house.  He is making a car for the pinewood derby.  Even though he wrote out the valentines for his classmates in record time (all 22 in 10 minutes he claims), he sustains lengthy telephone conversations and composes sweet and thoughtful thank you notes.

 His drawings are detailed and imaginative, summoning Richard Scarry comparisons in some of the scenes he creates.  He knows how to negotiate the iPad and Netflix with greater ease than the rest of us. He makes models and can assemble hard ones pretty quickly with only just a little help. He is a good speller, knows his math facts, and is conscientious about completing his homework. He has friends and loves to hang out with them. He is a really good big brother...

He loves surprises, even though it is still hard to wait for them. He remembers things.  He is gentle. He is loving. He is kind and loyal.  He is our first grandchild, our first grandson, and he is quite adored...

(He also generously indulged his nana by modeling, posing, and mugging for pictures with this hat, her most recent knit!)

This day

I thank you God for this most amazing day, 

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, 

and for the blue dream of sky 

and for everything which is natural, 

which is infinite, which is yes.  

--e.e. cummings 

Creativity

"Nothing feeds the center like creative work."

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

This photograph represents some metering work with my camera. The image was made with a spot evaluative setting at 0 compensation.  I never even knew my camera could do this, nor did I know that I could also adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.  I didn't know either that all these adjustments make for better photographs in certain situations.  Can you tell I am taking a photography class?  

I have been wanting to study photography, primarily to illustrate this blog, capturing images more clearly representing things I knit and sew and the ideas I write about.  Especially during this monotone season of grey, the ability to focus on some creative pursuits is soul filling and spirit lifting.   

This week I did a little sewing and finished a prayer shawl for our church's Nicaragua medical mission team to take with them.  I attached a little gold cross to one of its tassels... 

(and here is my shawl, presented to a woman in Nicaragua on the Mission trip!)

 And, I have been reading a lot about the why and how of keeping a spiritual journal, preparing for a workshop at church today.  Snapping pictures, knitting coverings, writing in journals, and this blog all feed the yearning for creative expression and offer different ways of ordering and making sense of the world and life.  I need that.

LWR Quilting

 In less than a week, I made this quilt…

When I took my first quilting class well over a year ago, I learned how to quilt in the contemporary way—choosing from a bounty of beautiful fabrics, cutting with a rotary blade, sewing together many, many pieces, using store- bought batting and yards of fabric for backing, and then machine quilting...and quilting... and quilting.  It took me about a month of fairly focused effort to produce most of the quilts I have finished thus far (I have three still remaining in stages of pieces).

I decided that in my retirement spare time, I ought to join the ladies sewing circle at our church.  I like ladies. I like sewing. I love my church so the combo made sense .  

 I went to my first meeting on Tuesday and I learned a lot.  I went prepared, because that is how I have learned to appear for my quilting classes/gatherings. I brought my mother's Singer Featherweight, 48 patches I had precut from my stash (plus few extra yards I picked up) and a copy of the Lutheran World Relief quilt pattern because I knew our sewing group made mission quilts and I did my reading!

When I arrived, Judy, the head of the circle, was setting up the room, arranging long tables for hooking up sewing machines and for unfurling quilts to be pinned or tied.  These ladies quilt old school, piecing together the remnants of  donated fabric, using long spools of batting and backing quilts with donated sheets. They pin backing, batting, and front of quilt, stitch and turn.  No binding.   I am learning other ways.  Good!

So I pieced while others pinned, sewed batting on, and tied quilts together.  I took my pieces home, finished the top, tied it together and made my binding by turning the backing onto the front (I read about that from the LWR website).

Simple. Easy. Quick.  And most all durable, functional, and lovely.  This time, I made one all by myself, because I wanted to go through the process completely on my own.  Next time, I will be a better team player, assuming whatever position is needed to contribute to the whole effort.

The 2013 Lutheran World Relief  Quilt Campaign  has set a goal of making and donating 500, 000 quilts this year to send around the world to people in need. Half a million quilts is an ambitious goal.   On the LWR Quilt Campaign website, it says:

"When you make and send a Quilt, you are not only comforting someone you have never met, but providing an object that is useful in ways you probably never imagined. In addition to being a cozy, clean new bed cover, it can be:

•   a baby carrier, tied around a mother’s back;

•   a market display, spread on the ground and piled with vegetables;

•   a sack for transporting those goods to market;

•   a sunshade;

•   a shawl; and most importantly

•   a constant reminder that someone, far away, cares a lot."

When I was tying my quilt the other night, I began imagining where this quilt might end up and I said a prayer for the woman whose hands will hold it, this quilt traveling from my hearth to hers. 

A Winter's Quilt

It's finished, just in time to cover up during these single-digit days.  Winter is blasting its full force into Central Pennsylvania, blowing in snow, icy roads, and frigid temperatures.  Even with the best intentions to get out and get moving, we hibernate, catching up on TiVo and inching the thermostat up a few degrees. My sewing machine, however, has been getting a rather significant workout lately.  After giving away all the quilts made so far,  I finally finished one for us..a midwinter present for these cold winter's nights. 

(A Key to My Heart pattern using Holly Taylor Christmas Spirit fabric.) 

Hand Me Downs

One of the perks of being the second-born is hand-me-downs.  Recently, my daughter sent me a photo of our Jamie stacking paint in her studio (pretty amazing tower, you must admit!), and in addition to reveling in the utter cuteness of it all, I noticed he was wearing a sweater I knit years ago for his now much bigger brother. My knitting heart delighted in seeing this obviously much loved sweater back in use again. 

When my children were growing up and out growing their clothes, I would announce I needed to take a trip to the "magic attic" where hand-me-downs awaited, packed in neatly marked boxes, gifts from the Dinsmore family who conveniently had children a boy and a girl just enough older than ours to make us the beneficiaries of their outgrown clothes.  Between the magic attic and my mother, we rarely purchased clothing for our kids during those younger years.  And we passed them along as well.  I think every Campbell child on our branch and Jim's brother's branch of the family tree wore these unisex OshKosh overalls.

Hand me downs affirm that we are part of something--a family, a tribe, a circle of friends, the proverbial village it takes to raise a child.  When our son and his wife gave birth to their daughter, his sister, the mother of two sons, packed up toys and clothes to ship to her niece.  Rosemary now wears the same striped socks that once covered her cousins' feet.  

 When Alex was just about Jamie's age, my daughter saw a sweater I was knitting for Knit for Kids, a charity that sends sweaters to children in need all over the globe.  Barbara liked the straight simple lines of this easy-to-knit pattern and she asked me to make one for Alex, so I did.  Because it is an easy on and easy off sweater, he wore it a lot and it shows.  I am tickled Jamie is wearing this sweater, but I thought perhaps he needed his own.  Last week, I knit one up just for him; maybe someday, his little cousin will wear it too!