it has been a wonderful weekend of nonstop togetherness and creativity with sabin. we had signed up weeks ago to attend the stitch café at our local yarn shop so that sabin could learn how to knit using a knitting loom. and learn she did. she finished two beautiful scarves and has started on a third. so if you're related to us, you can guess what you'll be getting for christmas this year. and it won't be one of those presents that you wear for show when you know the child is going to be present. we bought gorgeous mohair yarn in jewel tones and it has been transformed into soft, luxurious, beautiful scarves by a child consumed by a new craft.

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while sabin took breaks from her knitting loom work, we made invitations for her upcoming halloween party. we clipped and glued and stamped and drew spider webs and drank countless cups of sweet, milky tea. did i mention that husband was attending his quarterly port wine evening on saturday and so it was just me and sabin at home together? tho' we love having him around, it was quite wonderful to have time together, just the two of us.

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#72 - halloween invitations

we also came up with a new idea for a plushie design (inspired by the fabric i got last week in panduro). i helped sabin cut it out, but she's making it all herself and he's gonna be cute. we couldn't finish because we had run out of stuffing, but here's a preview:

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at the yarn shop (very dangerous kind of place for me, despite the fact that i can't knit - i adore yarn anyway and they also have all kinds of embroidery things and quilting stuff), i bought two Drops knitting pattern magazines. tons of beautiful, gorgeous patterns for only 10 kroner (that's under $2). apparently the patterns are available for free online, but it seemed worth it for the pretty photographs.

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doesn't it look worth learning to knit or crochet to be able to make such beautiful things? that beautiful sweater on the left above is only a knit stitch and variegated stocking yarn. i could do that. i'm sure i could. so i came home and got out my crochet bible book that i bought in singapore and gave it a whirl once again. of course, with the idea of making a little outfit for a stone. this one of some fine silky gorgeous decidedly mermaidy blueish-green cord.

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i didn't get far enough to assign it a number in the year of creativity scale countdown. but i'm going to go to the wednesday evening edition of the stitch café at the local shop and get some hands-on lessons.

and speaking of hands-on lessons, the other activity the weekend was taken up by was sabin's riding lessons. she rides on both saturday and sunday and she's doing brilliantly.  here, she waits her turn to go into the ring, holding onto felix, who is quite a big larger than she is (and i realize she's a bit out of focus, i managed to do that with a lot of horse-photos this weekend - i was playing with my settings a bit in an attempt to learn something. which worked, tho' it meant i got quite a few pictures that weren't as in focus as i may have liked).

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and starting today, my new project together with the divine bee. domestic sensualist. not your run-of-the-mill cooking blog. we hope you'll stop by and check it out, we've got some fun planned this week. and it's already been so inspiring to me that i just ordered three new cookbooks from amazon!

happy monday one and all!