Best FO of All

In my last post I may  may have mentioned my hubs is coming home soon.  Guess what?!  He came home Tuesday!   There is no other place ypu can go on any given day in any given country where you can experience as much pure joy as a Redeployment  (AKA Welcome Home) Ceremony.  We waited around for an hour and a half to become reacquainted with our Love!  And we girls of course were dressed for the occasion.  I put a lot of work into the dress I made for Miss A.  There was no skimping out and wearing PJs, even if it was way past her bed time!  The dress was perfect and in glad to have gotten a few compliments on it as well.  It was the little cherry on top of the triple decker sunday!  And I promised pictures!

Soon is Never Soon Enough

Front

I may have been kind of sad on the knitting front lately.  Alas, I do have progress to show elsewhere! My sewing machine!  Honestly, I haven't been comfortable sitting lately.  It's making me feel like a bit of a lazy butt so the sewing involves being upstairs, not in front of my tv, and moving around a lot.  So it's where most of my creative outlet has been.  I really started the slew of sewing with Miss A's "welcome home" outfit.  A dress I wanted to make for her to wear to her Daddy's redeployment ceremony.   A dress she will be wearing soon, very, very soon.  But really when you've gone 9 months without your spouse or Daddy soon is never really soon enough, is it?  Maybe some of you know what I'm talking about.

Back

Back on topic though, I had a lot of this very patriotic material I bought when my JoAnn's was having a moving sale.  To me, it was a bit too busy for a whole dress though, so I wanted to combine it with other material and decided to use this pattern I had in my library.  It's called Paper Fan Dress and I printed because it was free and in my head that was too good to last.  I was sure it was a promotion but take a peek!  It's still free on Anna Maria Horners site along with some other cute free patterns!  I might be adding a few others to my library shortly.  I wish I could tell you how I found her page, but I honestly don't remember.  Anyway, I found some blue chevron to match with the material and I'm very happy with the result.  I'm sure I will share photos of it actually on the kiddo (along with Daddy!!) soon!

I did recently subscribe to a blog I love.  She has wonderful sewing tutorials.  I'm pretty sure I found her through Pinterest since I follow a great deal of sewing boards.  The blog is Make It and Love It.  I highly suggest checking it out.  Today I will be linking up to her weekly You Made You Love It post so click over and go read more posts like mine!

Work In Progress - Or Lack There Of

So I have a lot of projects I have yet to share.  But I definitely cannot chalk that up to actual progress and more to my lack of actually blogging.  This past week I have knit a whole inch on what was going to be a hat and pulled it out.  That's it.  That's all.  The week before put in an afterthought heel. That was it.  I obviously have not had all that much knitting mojo.  I sure see it.  I think about knitting and go "ugh".  This is NOT RIGHT.  No knitting should ever think that. But I do know why.  I have a few things on the needles, none of which are really at a good point for me.

I'm working on the Follow Your Arrow Mystery KAL.  That one is a knit I loved and still love.  I'm on the last clue though and I've switched charts and found myself a row off twice now.  Ripped it out twice.  It's just putting me off.  And it's going to take a lot of thinking.  I have too much on my mind to think.

Same with my socks of 2014 #1 pair - Hedera by Cookie A.  I knit the whole cuff.  Knit the whole heel.  While knitting the instep I seemed to have decrease way too much.  The top still has the right amount of stitches, but the bottom has half the amount.  And guess what?  They fit great.  So either I am knitting the wrong size and have to rip the whole thing out, I'm knitting on the wrong size needle and I have to rip the whole thing out, or I have to do a whole lot of math to figure out how to continue on correctly.  I really don't want to do any of these options at the moment, so it's sitting.  Waiting.  And apparently I'm waiting for it to figure itself out.  It would be nice.  It's least my knitting could do for me right?

Next up is my "Matchy Matchy" sweater.  Knitting the Owlet pattern by Kate Davies with some Cascade.  I have plans to make the Owls by the same designer in a different yarn for myself.  Hence the project name.  Well, The body is knit on US 10.5s.  I started the sleeve in the US 10s, don't have DPNs for the US 10.5s and I've been looking for a brand I want to buy.  Well I can't find any.  I can find them but it seems like they are all the expensive ones and the cheap brands don't make them.  So I guess I'm going to put the body on waste yarn and knit the sleeves in magic loop.  I was just looking to not have to do this, and a good excuse for a pair of needles.  But it's not worth it.  I know, relatively easy, just haven't had the energy or really the want.

I did get a single sock finished this week and I even ripped a hat that's been on the needles since before Christmas.  Progress.  Not much though.  Here's what I'm thinking.  The only way to cure this is to cast more on!  Just printed out the pattern for Sophia by Juliet Moody.  It's a mesh "sweater" cover up.  It might be perfect to get me back at it.  Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

Longer and longer

I'm seriously frustrated today.  I cannot even put my frustration into words.  I want to say I hate the Army right now, but how could you ever speak those words?  They are the backbone of our national security.  If I wasn't an Army wife I would still have every bit of respect for them.  And being an Army wife has provided me with so much more.  So much honor and pride for what they do for us and what they stand for.

But then there are weeks like this.  Weeks where the days seem like they never end.  Because the end, it's coming.  The end of that deployment.  When things are starting to wrap up.  So naturally time can't progress just like it always has, when really you want it to speed up so your soldier can be home!  But no....days just get longer and longer.  They are long enough.  But then when your soldier tells you...no, it's a later date now.  Once.  Twice.  I could handle.  But everyday that date he is supposed to come back to you.  Supposed to be in your arms.  Supposed to complete your family once again and the powers that be change it again and again and again.

It's not the extended time.  If they originally said, "hey ballpark--  this date is when they are coming home"  and maybe, just maybe they were there a day or two earlier.  Or that date.  Is fine!  Even if that date is farther away.  But no, they try to go earlier, but can't and just push it day after day after day.  People are trying to make flight plans around this day.  People are trying to plan surprises.  And when it changes so much you can't do this.

Now don't get me wrong here.  I get things change.  Especially the closer they are to being home.  Travel times take longer than expected, or shorter.  There are maintenance issues.  Just like flying anywhere commercial times are never  a guarantee.  But when you and all your friends get that call with "the date" and in some cases you are even making that call to other families - then the date your husband and only your husband flip flops like crazy, well it can cause anyone to go crazy.  So that's where I'm at.  If you need me, look me up at the local loony bin because that's where I feel like I belong right now.

Deployments are supposed to always get shorter.  Never longer.

A Simple DIY Headband

So I chopped my hair.  It's not a cut I never had, but it's a cut no one I really know here has seen me with.  Its short.  I love it short, but it definitely takes a bit of styling time.  I wanted something I could do with my hair on laid-back "i don't care" days.   I started looking up ideas for head wraps on Pinterest.  Made a few and came up with an idea of my own.

Do you sew? If you've sewn with knits you will know that when cut in thin strips the material curls up on itself.  This is also known in the DIY world as t-shirt yarn (except I didn't use an old t-shirt). I had two long pieces like this.

My immediate thought was I could braid these strips and make a headband, but braid - with two pieces?  Doesn't exactly work.  So I dug into my memory of old school boondoggle days.  Remember that stuff?  I spent hours at camp every summer with it.  I remembered something called the butterfly stitch.  I treated my strips just as they were pieces of boondoggle. They twisted here or there since they don't have a flat side like boondoggle, but I'm not s huge perfectionist so it didn't bother me.

Once the "braid" was long enough I wrapped it around my head and marked where I wanted the ends to join.  I'm not crazy about tying and having ends hang, so I opened the curl up of all 4 ends, stacked them on one another and sewed.  This headband has a nice stretch to it and stays on my thin hair.  I really like it and plan to make more.  Share with me if you make one!!

Just Keep Swimming....

I tried posting earlier this week and I just didn't feel it. It's been a common theme in my life lately.  I decided to look back at my blogging during my husbands deployment.  I really thought I only had five or so posts.  To my surprise, I had 20.  Most are from before October.  You can pretty much guess that's when all my issues started.  Some stress related medical issues along with a toddler whom is drastically increasing her terribleness every day.  I've felt down, naturally, because half of me is deployed.  I've tried to keep myself and my daughter busy for both our sanity, but that doesn't mean I'm enjoying it.  We've done some traveling but I sometimes feel guilty doing it without my husband.  Even if is needed to break up the monotony of the boring everyday life we have here in Kansas.

There are times where I feel like I have no excuses.  I have so much time in the world and don't get anything done.  But there are also the times I feel like I don't have any time.  Like my world never stops.  I think it's more accurate to say my daughter never stops.   And I've come to a realization that this blog isn't for anyone but me.  I can make all the excuses I want and I don't have to apologize.  I don't have to stick to a schedule and I don't need to feel guilty about spending time on other things or even the lack of things.  I only blog to share things because I want to.  No one is going to get mad or yell at me.  I'm not worried about readership since I'm not a designer or author or making money in any way off the blog.  So I can do what I want.  When I want.  And I'm ok with that.  From now on when I go weeks without posting I'm not going to be overly apologetic.  I'm not going to make it the subject of the post.  I'm going to get straight to the point of posting.

Right now I'm starting to see a lot of things with a better perspective.  My emotions are still all over the place which can sometimes be greatly overwhelming, but its more positive emotion as of late.  This whole deployment thing is coming to an end.  I'm not going to tell you how many days are left, and not because I'm not allowed.  But because I just plain don't do countdowns.  It's hard enough and time has slowed enough.  I can't imagine counting every day, meal and minute I have left.  I just keep telling myself to just keep swimming and soon I will be able to come up for water.  Very soon, but never soon enough!  Next post will be craft related, I promise!