Catching up

Little Heaume

Eviepants

Treefort Jacket

Kumfy™ Schlüttli 

Tutorial here

Yeah, I think it's safe to say I've been a little busier than usual. Finishing up sewing and knitting projects, stitching on buttons, hand dyeing yarns- it's all go here right now! We're on the final countdown to the birth of baby Reeves, and OhmygoshIhave14weeksleft.

Ahem. Not that I'm panicking or anything. No, I have everything under control. Sort of.

So I'm making baby clothes, panicking like hell keeping calm and cool, and beginning to turn my thoughts towards the birth. I've been looking at birth pools for our home birth and I'm very excited that this will be our first home water birth. 

I'm breathing deeply, slowing things down a little and trying to relax. Everything will be fine. I'm loving feeling my baby boy wriggling away inside my belly, indulging in some very tasty, healthy foodstuffs and smiling through the pelvic pain. Everything will be okay.

Loving the sunshine.
Sleeping in.
Smelling my sweet babies' scent as we snuggle more and race around less.
Finding patience in solitude.
Respecting my body's limitations.

Oh yes, everything is just fine.

After a Pregnant Pause...

I've been away for a long while. I'm sorry about that. The thing is, we've had a rough few months here in our home, and I haven't been able to face blogging at all. I didn't know what to say, or how to say it. And frankly, I've been putting on a brave face and pretending everything is fine.

We were wonderfully blessed to find out, not long after Christmas, that our family is expanding once again. After a recent loss we were anxious and excited at the same time. Everything went smoothly for a while, and then I started haemorrhaging. Badly. I bled continuously for months and didn't know from one day to the next if we'd lost our precious baby.

We hadn't, but there was a bitter twist to our happiness: we'd lost a twin. I didn't know we were having twins (they don't run in either of our families) so I'd never even considered that we'd be blessed in such a way. But I can't begin to tell you mamas how much my heart hurt at the loss of our child. It's a strange feeling to wrap your head around, finding out at the same time that you're pregnant with twins but one of them didn't make it.

I spent a long time blaming myself. Was it something I did wrong? Did I eat the wrong foods? Did I stop doing sit ups too late? Did I over-exert myself? The blame game was seemingly never ending. And all the while people would say "But you didn't know... how can you be upset?" I get that. Sort of. Truth is, it hurt like hell, and nothing made that pain go away. I didn't fully understand my grief and I started to feel silly for feeling sad. That's when things got worse, really, because I just stopped telling anyone that I felt sad. I pretended everything was fine.

It wasn't.

But then I stopped bleeding. I started to dare to hope that our surviving baby would be okay. My wonderful friends sent prayers and thoughts and love and eventually, we began to heal. We began to hope again. I am now 24 weeks pregnant with a baby BOY! After four girls, we have truly been blessed with a tiny, weeny manchild. I am so incredibly excited to meet our boy, oh the things he'll teach me about this life! I get to see the world through a man's eyes- how incredibly awesome is that? I can't quite believe it, I still grin every time he gives me a kick. My boy, so healthy and strong, my little fighter. How he hung on in such hostile conditions I don't know, but he's a trooper that's for sure!

In sixteen short, sweet weeks I will meet my little man for the first time. I am truly very melancholic about what could have been; what should have been. But I will never forget our baby that almost was. And I am so truly grateful that our precious boy was strong enough to soldier on.

Now things have settled down we're in that exciting period of choosing the perfect name! We've never had to think about boy names before and it's proving to be much more difficult than we anticipated!

Yeah, my kid has mucky fingernails. I had noticed. What can I say, the child likes gardening! She does not get that from her mama ;)

Happy New Year!

Did you enjoy your Christmas? We did! We had so much fun playing Charades and watching Christmassy movies and stuffing ourselves with festive home baking! Christmas dinner was rather magical this year, we decided to wait until the evening to eat because none of us really wanted anything at lunchtime. We ate by candlelight and twinkling tree lights. We shared our favourite stories from the year, and expressed what we were thankful for the most. It was a fantastic day and we enjoyed every minute of it.

I made a Waldorf doll! Well, I made four, actually, but this is the first and the only one I've managed to sneak from the children to photograph! She's jointed so she moves like a teddy bear, and her hair is made from handspun blue faced Leicester, dyed with coffee and tea. Here's a few things I've learnt about Waldorf doll making:

• An ordinary embroidery needle does not have sufficient length, and I absolutely must buy one of those large, purpose-made toymaking needles.
• The inner part of the head is made from what we in the UK call "Tubigrip" (it's medical gauze). Next time I think I need a little more widthways stretch.
• Embroidering the eyes is definitely the hardest part.
• I'm far too much of a perfectionist to use regular dolls clothing patterns.
• If you're not careful, like, really careful, you'll end up with a doll that has cellulite on her arms and legs. Again, wondering if I should purchase the specific toymaking 'stuffer', for now I'm making do with a knitting needle.
• Overall, Waldorf dolls are fairly easy to make.

Seriously! Once you get over the cellulite problem and master your fear of embroidery (if you have one, like I do) they're so simple to make. In fact, I promised a couple of my friends that I would post my makeshift tutorial here so they can have a try for themselves. I have a couple of books that I've used for reference here, but, like always, I modify the heck out of most things that I make. And so, I'll be working on a tutorial at some point this month. Why not try one yourselves? I promise (scouts honour) they're not difficult AT ALL.

So there you go. I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas and new year festivities!