Stitch Rabbit

Find Me Here

 

 

When I need to breathe a little deeper, you'll find me here.

 

When I am looking for something, you'll find me here.

 

                            When I want to show them that there is so much more, you'll find me here.

 

When I want to look a little closer, you'll find me here.

 

When I need to move my legs and pump my arms and climb and jump and feel breathless again,

you'll find me here.

 

When I need understanding, you'll find me here.

 

When I need a new perspective you'll find me here.

 

When I need to remember, when I need to believe, when it all feels so small and I need it to all be so big, and beautiful, and perfect all on it's own,

You'll find me here.

 

Come In Like a Lion

 

 

After what seemed like an entire river rained down on us this week, waking up to the sun and bluebird sky on Sunday was the perfect remedy to this cabin-fever Mama.

Our yard has been a construction site for weeks as we rebuild and relocate most parts of the garden, transplanting perennials to new corners, building beds and our very lovely new patchwork deck. All this plus pouring rain plus mud plus kids and dog has equalled a very trying time keeping all of the outside from tracking through all of the inside.

So this very sunny, very dry day was precisely what I needed to warm my back as I dug in the yard and warm the earth that is really truly almost ready for planting.

The seeds have been ordered, the tables are covered in garden books and pots of tulips and narcissus and seedling trays and pots are growing in numbers in my south-facing windows, ready to begin again.

Bring on spring.

 

The Beginnings.

The transition from winter to spring has begun. It can start with something as simple as a jar of tulips on the kitchen table.

The sun is warm and staying longer every day. The bins of mittens and hats by the back door are overflowing more than they are empty. My mind is turning from winter knitting to spring sewing. There is laundry on the line and smell of renewal in the air. We're about to head into a week of rain... but today, with the sun warming the floors, I am grateful for the beginning.

Picking Up Steam (Outdoor Dreams)

August is here and finally the weather is (somewhat) cooperating. Though it isn't the hot hot heat we should be having, at least some of springs hard work is rearing it's delightful payoff.

It's about time. And I'm finally feeling good enough to get out into the yard and do some work! It doesn't take long for the garden to become unruly, and I've spent bits and pieces of the last few days cleaning up the weeds, the overgrown and the desperate to be picked.

I love being in my garden. While the work is endless and it can behave like an unruly child, it is somewhere I love to be. I dream of the day (sometime soon, I hope) that we will have a bigger outdoor space, one in which I don't have to plan so carefully who is first in line for the sunniest spot and carefully guard my early spring beds from feet and balls and misguided two year olds with shovels. I'd like to have beds dedicated to singular plants, and it be enough to harvest and hoard over the winter, as well as share with neighbors.

I'd like to have a garden in the front so full of perennials that I could pick bouquets every day and fill the rooms of my house with the flowers I grow.

I'd like to use chicken wire for more than decorative purposes. I'd like to use it to keep chickens.

 

In the meantime, in our urban yard in this urban landscape, I am happy and dreaming for tomorrow.

 

Exploring The Great Outdoors and A Lesson on the Value of Life

Hiya - been awhile. I'm sure you've missed me posting pictures of my knitting and my sewing, but we've been busy exploring the great wilderness - and experiencing death-defying acts of super danger. I threw together a suitcase of clothes earlier this week and whipped the kids up to Whistler. The hubby's been up there on a photo shoot job, staying in a lavish hotel, and taking snowmobiles up snowy mountains, so I thought we better go up and get some of that fun.

I lived in Whistler for a brief period of my young life and have visited a handful of times since, and I have to say, it's not how I remember. Mostly because I don't really remember living in Whistler. I was twenty. Now I'm (almost) thirty and with a coupla kids, I find myself spending less time doing the wild and crazy and more time doing the knitty and sewy, mixed with some gardening. So spending time in Whislter, surrounded by young people who throw themselves off of cliffs of snow or dirt, on boards or bikes was, well - refreshing.

Which brings us to the death-defying part. As a young person I've spent a lot of time on mountains, at high elevations and on chair lifts and gondolas. So I knew I wanted to take the kids up the Whistler Gondola, to give them an idea of the vast mountain range, a peek at the tiny village behind us, and the actual size of the world around us. Show them the freedom that supernatural British Columbia can give you, a look into what life can be if you take it. Poetic right?

But why didn't I stop there?

The ride was great - not too high, not too fast. We saw black bears and mountain bikers, deer and at higher elevations, lots of snow. We got to the top, hung out, saw Daddy and the crew. It should have been enough. We should have just gone down.

But there's this new gondola.... I'm sure many of you have heard of it, it's very impressive. The Peak to Peak Gondola, in Whistler, BC. I'd never been on it, and it was right there...so, we got on. Just me and my two kids. Let me give you an idea of what this gondola is all about. It's written right there in the cabin, for all to enjoy and understand:

Translation: It's really freaking far in between these two mountains, and we're about to take you there, across a giant canyon.

 

Translation: Every 49 seconds some new sucker is going to get on this thing and we're going to take them across a giant canyon, really fast.

 

Translation: This is really f*cking high. I can't believe you brought your kids on this thing.

 

I don't know why, because I knew that the Peak to Peak gondola would do essentially that - take you from peak to peak - but I just didn't comprehend the height. I didn't study the brochure close enough. And truthfully, I'm not much of a heights kind of gal and I don't like airplanes so why I mixed the two together into "Mommy's Zany Wild Ride Across the Canyon" I don't really know. But here we were, in the cabin of a Whistler Peak to Peak Gondola, just the three of us.... and off we go.

 

At first, it was really really great. Stunning actually.

The kids were into it, and I was doing my best to completely ignore what was coming next.

The edge of the cliff.

The forest floor just starts to drop down underneath us and I realize that we are not following anymore - we are travelling across the canyon and we just keep getting higher and higher.

 

There are a lot of things that run through your mind right before you die. I'm not going to tell you what was running through mine, but I will tell you this. All three of us immediately sat back on the bench in the middle of the cabin, the one meant for people like us. This way we couldn't see the valley floor. Only sky. I then slouched down in the seat, grasping onto my children's rain jackets and preceded to happily talk about how the cables were "so big and strong, look there's THREE of them!" and "Gee, aren't we lucky we're travelling in the CLOUDS?" I did absolutely everything in my power not to lose my cool and completely destroy my children's ability to climb anything higher than our porch stairs. The only other thing I was able to do was occasionally hold my camera up in the air and blindly shoot photos of what was assumed to be the only way we would truly experience the Peak to Peak, once we were safely at home and downloading them onto the computer. If we made it.

Pretty, right?

Now we made it across to Blackcomb Mountain from Whistler but guess what? You have to go back!! Ha!

This time though, I manned up, perhaps due to the adrenaline rushing through my blood. I felt that I could do anything - I was laughing in the face of danger. So I boldly got to my feet -  and then immediately dropped down to my knees, and crawled across the cabin floor towards the bench at the front. If there was a camera installed, somebody would've You Tubed that stuff. My children stared at me from the bench in the middle, and I smiled weakly back at them, pretending all the while that it was completely normal for Mommy to be crawling around on the floor, five million feet above the ground, looking like she was going to barf. They got down and crawled to the front as well. White-knuckled, we peered over the padded bench.

The blue machine to the left is a giant crane. It was about this time that I started practicing deep breathing and made my peace with the world. On my knees, I prayed to the mountain gods that my children would live to get off them. I didn't stop praying until we were coming into the bay back on the peak of Whistler Mountain. I didn't get off my knees until I figured somebody would see me.

*   *   *

Prying my arms from around my two beautiful little babies, I strapped Charlie back into the stroller and held Frankie's hand in mine. I smiled at the liftee attendant as the doors swung open and we stepped out onto the sturdy concrete platform. I don't know how easy it was to tell that my legs were shaking, but I knew I looked a wreck. White in the face and sweating, we strode through the bay and back into the world on land. Sweet, solid land.

 

So Whistler was fun, and the Peak to Peak was.... hands down the most frightening thing I have ever done. I think when you have kids, you begin to understand how fragile and beautiful life really is. You basically turn into a sucker, and what is thrilling to one is Mommy's worst nightmare. Would I do it again?

I think I'm going to sit here and knit on that one a while.

 

 

 

 

 

Willing On Spring

I am willing on the spring, I am ordering seeds. I'm not foolish enough to plant them yet, not even indoors, but I will finger the packages and draw plots with a pencil and dream of sugar peas and sweet corn and sprinklers.

I'm cutting back on the piles of scarves and hats and mitts by the door, washing them and drying them and packing them away. Too soon you say? Maybe. Maybe we'll freeze, and other mothers will look at my children with their brightly colored sneakers and light sweaters and will shake their heads - but they will be envious on the inside. Of our brightly colored outfits.

I am buying pots of flowers and placing them in the windows, refusing to look at the dismal grey outside, and instead focusing on the beauty of the petals, the smell of the dirt. I'm digging my fingers into the dirt of these early spring flower pots and humming and pretending I am in my garden. This is weird, maybe, but I'm doing it.

I dislike February.

I am willing on the spring, I am sewing spring dresses. On a dark and stormy night, rain beating on the window. My feet are cold, my tea's gone cold and I have to make bias binding, but sewing spring dresses will bring on the spring. I swear.

 

What Makes The World Go 'Round

Wild children running free in the woods.

Tiny handknit hats for tiny beloved heads.

Friendships sewn together with hand holding and laughter.

The desire to learn and discover, forever around you.

 

The First Signs

While most of Canada is covered in snow and ice (and I am often jealous, believe it or not) we live in a much milder climate in Vancouver. I often yearn for quiet snow falling outside my window as I knit by the potbellied stove (the fire is purely imagination - we don't have one, pot-bellied or not) The children would play quietly beside it, playing finger games and doing puzzles (also purely imaginative, they would be more likely banging on a pot and breaking things) Instead, in Vancouver, it drizzles. Drizzles and drizzles and is grey and sometimes the wind picks up off the ocean. No snow, not much at least.

Though I love the winter hibernation that is my home, all warm and slow (rain or snow) - I couldn't help but feel the heartbeat of spring when I discovered this in the frozen ground that is my yard. The very, very beginnings of spring. Is it really coming already? I have barely started the spring dresses - and that new patchwork beach blanket... how can a girl ever keep up with Mother Nature?

An Afternoon At Maplewood Farm

In spirit of the extremely wet and cold weather outside my window today, I would like to be reminded of the beauty that was last week, possibly the last of the sunshine we will see in awhile... a beautiful day at Maplewood Farm, just me and my kids.

 

The Gourd Family Craft

Yesterday we made some wee gourd guys..I saw an idea similar to this in a magazine once, and has been on my mind as a Halloween craft ever since. So cute, and so fun to make. And all the supplies (except for the hot glue) come from nature, which of course, is way cooler than glitter and sparkles in my books.

Introducing the Gourd Family...

We made the bodies by stacking and gluing tiny pumpkins together, using leaves for hats and scarves, sticks for arms and different seeds and buds for facial expressions. Frankie chose the placement of everything while I manned the glue gun. Charlie helped by eating some of the eyes. (Gogi berries)

They're sitting on the shelf over our kitchen table, and I think I'm going to go get some more gourds today - they were so fun to make.

 

Busting Out!!

We're on our way to Nelson tonight. It's a long drive, just over nine hours.. but we're going to do the drive while the kids are sleeping and I have a bag full of knitting so it can't be that bad, right?

Can't wait to be in such a beautiful, inspiring town! See you next week! (Uness we find the house of our dreams, which is possibly, maybe, very very likely...) 

 

I Need Some Land in My Life

I want a horse. I really really want a horse. And some donkeys. And just about all the things you find on a farm - I want and desire and dream.
We live in the city (for now) but we know it's not forever. We want a different life for our children and for ourselves. One that includes land and mountains and fences that don't hold in kids. I want to wake up in the morning and pull my boots on and work outside, where the children roam free and lunch comes from trees.
I don't know where this magical dreamland is yet, though I have a few good ideas thanks to MLS. ( I must drive Gabriel crazy, I find "the one" about once a week)
The wheels are turning and our hearts are roaming. The city has been good to us, but I want a horse. And I don't think our landlords would let us.

A Natural Remedy

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut. An "every morning for the last three mornings, we haven't gotten out of our PJ's yet and there are still no groceries in the house" kind of rut. Toys are strewn from room to room, the dishes are piling and the furthest we've ventured is the backyard.

Then you start feeling the guilt. The "I am stunting my children of the experiences this world has to offer, oh god we're eating Annies noodles for lunch AGAIN, what are we, shut INS?" kind of guilt.

I'd like to believe these ruts are for a reason. A re-energizing period for our bodies and our souls, often after a busy weekend, busy week or busy month. A time of reflection on what has passed or even a time of preparation for what is about to come.

Sometimes, I think it's a way for me to focus completely on my family and their imminent needs, like meals and cuddling and what stories we should read next. I feel it from my kids too, that some days they would much rather spend the afternoon on puzzles or play dough than outside socially. And we all get to know eachother a little more, have more time for eachother, less hurry.

Nevertheless, after about day three of our homebound state, I start to feel like it's becoming a rut, and perhaps the sun shines a bit brighter that day, or the changing season beckons us to come outside and explore. And so we get dressed and pack a snack and some tea, and with a new sense of recharge, my family and I step outside, ready again to be with the world.

The other day that was Cate's Park. A beautiful trail along the inlet, and at the end is a crumbling stone structure that the children are convinced is a castle.

And the adventure begins again.

What I Love To Do

I thought I ought to give you a peak at some of the things I love to do. While I make mostly for myself, my kids and as gifts, I am on the brink of beginning to sell my wares as well. It's terrifying. Will people like my work? Is it good enough? Well-made? Original?

A learning process in confidence, I am sure. What I do know is that I do it with love. Handmade anything holds so much value to me - and to a lot of you out there too! When something is created with a little bit of invention, a little bit of vintage, a little bit of found pieces and a lot of stitches it becomes a piece that is sentimental and special. It tells a story.

Here are some of my stories.

 

 
* Please forgive the blurry photos. I am only working with the camera on my iphone and the photos only look pretty on the phone, not in a larger format. My first lesson in this process is " It's time to buy a new camera".

Any suggestions?