Crazy Quilt

Garter Stitch Stripe

This is a Reverse Stockinette Stitch.

I finished two more blocks this weekend for my crazy quilt, and today I decided to count all the blocks I'm getting out the book I'm using it has 49 different stitches. I was planning to make a quilt with 42 blocks...so I'll just make all of the stitches in all the book and make one quilt with all of them. The only stitches I won't use will be more open stitches and combine them with the crocheted blocks and make them as a summer quilt. So I'm happy with the book that I'm using and how much I'll be able to do with just it.

Trust and friendship

So the last two weeks at church a students of the class I'm just started teaching gave amazing talks that over subjects that have been on my mind. The first student talked on friendship which he said that friendship and charity are interchangeable, and this week was that trust and faith are interchangeable. I realized that two years ago I made more friends and in the past two years I lost probably the same amount of friends...and just have more acquaintances than friends.  This week made me realizes that if I don't trust my family then how can I trust anyone else. If I don't have faith in my family then can I have faith in anyone else???

Homemaking skills

In my first post I told you that my ex-boyfriend told me that I didn't have the skills to qualify me to be a stay-at home mom. This weekend I had baked a batch of brownies, and taken them up to the boat to share with our friends. After many people turning them down, our closest friends and boat neighbor, got together for brownies and someone else's snack. We eat and talked about my knitting, when one of the women there said, "You bake well, your knitting is amazing, you can cook, and do dishes." As I listened to her talking I realized she was basically telling me that I really do have the skills I need to be the stay-at home mom I want to be, I just hate to clean house. I didn't ask for it, she didn't know what he had said, but she was just honestly telling me what she knows to be true. I'll admit cooking and dish aren't my favorite, cooking because meals are expected and needed, baked items are treats and rewards, therefore; you get more gratitude for them than all the other food you make, and dishes because it's never ending. When I get married I want the household rule to be you cook, I'll do the dishes, I cook, you do the dishes. I don't feel that the person who has already spent so much time in the kitchen should have to turn around and do all the dishes.

Jonah and I

Last night I realized how much I was like Jonah from the Old Testament, he had been called by God do a special work that only he could do. Instead of going to Nineveh and preaching repentance he gets on a boat and heads completely in the opposite direction. Once the boat leaves port, God causes a tempest to come upon the sea, the sailors do everything to save the boat, the throw their cargo over board, the captain tells everyone to pray to their gods, and then the captain goes to find Jonah, (here is an interesting part of the story,) the captain finds him sleeping despite the tempest (which Christ does also, later.) So Jonah realizes that God is causing this tempest because of him, to bring Jonah to REPENTANCE, so Jonah tells them to toss him over board, they try to get him to shore or at least closer to shore...but they can't so the finally throw Jonah over board. As soon as Jonah is in the sea two things happens a) the water calms, and b) a whale comes and swallows him. He spends three days repenting and praying to God forgiveness. Then goes about doing the Lord's work, granted maybe not as happily as he should have been, he still was wanting God to destroy the people of Nineveh, instead of rejoicing over the fact that the people have repented and a city saved.
So what does this have to do with me??? I feel that instead of doing what God's will, I've been running in the opposite directions as far away as I can get. I have been in a tempest of the sea for way to long. So it's now the time to be thrown over broad and enjoy the calming of the sea, and spend days praying, repenting, and trying to figure out what God will is for me instead of going about doing my will or at least wanting do my will. I also just realized that for my repentance to be a true repentance I most also rejoice over other people's repentance, I can't stand by waiting for their "city," to be destroyed. I have to allow them the same joy of being truly forgiven and know that God is a true and just God, who atoned for everyone sins all everyone have to do is accepted it. And I can't wish and want them to pay the price of their sins and the pain they have caused me, Christ paid that price already. And me holding onto it only continues to make Christ's pain longer, stronger, and harder.

My Crazy Quilt

When starting looking into knitting I bought the book Teach Yourself Visually Knitting by Sharon Turner. Within the pages of the book I found three chapter of basically just different stitches and I felt the best way to really learn to knit would be to start with those patterns and learn them...but I got started with my Homemade Pay-It Forward. Now that I've completed all of those projects and had a broken needle which prevented me from working on my other project, I needed something to do. So I open that book again and realized with all of the different patterns I could basically create a crazy quilt out of these different stitches, and since I want to also take up crocheting I could add those block into this quilt.  I am a person who loves different textures and I know that this quilt will have so many different textures to it.

Garter Stitch

Stockinette Stitch

Now I know it won't be a true crazy quilt since that is made of  fabric scraps, different textures of fabric, but to me it will always be my crazy quilt. My mom then made a comment that with Intarsia knitting I should use those blocks to a baby quilt or toddler quilt, and I then added that I could learn to knit the alphabets and add that to my child's quilt. And with some of the more lacy blocks won't knit well with more solid of the blocks so I can then make a summer crazy quilt, and add more crochet blocks to that crazy quilt. I making my blocks 7x9 and some other book suggested 42 blocks of that size...so this will be a work in progress (wip) for a while, especially if I'm going to be making three and doing other projects at the same time.

Emotional space

I just realized I'm doing it again, when I know that I'm leaving or that others will be leaving. I start putting space between them and me so that it will hurt less when I actually leave. Right now I'm using packing up my room as an excuse to avoid people, have I accomplished much pack, no but that isn't the point the is that I'm creating emotional space so it 'hurts' less when I do finally move out. I did that with my sister last summer, and with my family at Christmas...maybe I should work on that.

Why Did I Start Knitting?

I started knitting because I was told that I didn't have any skills that qualified me to be a stay-at-home mother and wife, by my ex-boyfriend. So I thought about all of the things I could do to improve my qualifications: expand my cooking and baking skills, create housekeeping skills, take up sew (which I have always wanted to learn, and figured would be useful skill to learn.), but none of those ideas really thrilled me. I was stressed out because I was VERY behind in one of the two last classes I needed to graduate and needed something that would relieve that stress. I found some triangle shawls I had started years ago, for my sisters, mother, and myself, and just started knitting. To prove to this guy that I did have homemaking skill...they just weren't going to be used in his HOME.

I enjoyed knitting the rest of the school year, which was like 2 or 3 weeks, then a friend of my started this Homemade Pay-it Forward gift exchange at the beginning of this year. I had already been talking about continuing knitting and looking for sales to buy more yarn, needles, other knitting supplies, and knitting books. At the beginning of the year I found about every large craft store in the area was having knitting things on sale, so my mom and I went shopping for knitting supplies. By that time I know who the first 3 people I would be knitting for, and I had very easily come up with the perfect project for each of them...and what can I say now I can't stop knitting.