A collection of R's all time favorite books (at the moment).
Creature ABC . Andrew Zuckerman
Hug . Jez Alborough
Good Night Gorilla . Peggy Rathmann
I Want My Hat Back . Jon Klassen
First 100 Animals . Roger Priddy
Runaway Bunny . Margaret Wise Brown, Illus. Clement Hurd
The Fire Engine Book . Little Golden Book Classic / Tibor Gergely

Whew. What a week. R woke up sick with a fever on Saturday morning and E threw his back out in a pretty serious way Saturday afternoon. I've spent the week trying to help them both back to health by day and have been hit with a bad case of insomnia by night. In my sleepless haze last night, I browsed through my unjustifiably large collection of Japanese sewing books and picked out a few to-do projects for better days, hopefully soon.

Idlewild just opened a store in our neighborhood selling the most amazing selection of foreign language books. E is dedicated to teaching r Spanish, so we've bought a few things for her there, but on our last visit, I just had to buy this one for myself. I love the colors and illustrations. I used to speak a little bit of French, but most of the names of these fruits and vegetables are lost on me, though I have to admit that they probably would be in English too. But, that doesn't stop us from enjoying it. 

The sweater for r is coming along. I had a minor set-back this weekend when I realized I had flubbed my seed stitch pattern about 6 rows too late, but still making good progress. I'm worried it might be a little big for her to wear this spring, but she'll grow into it eventually. Does that give me permission to further procrastinate my needlepoint with another sweater project for this year?

The pattern is modified from this one in Lovable Hand Knits, another used bookstore find. I love that big yellow duck. The styling in this book is really great. It's worthy of a post all it's own.

We went to the main branch brooklyn library today with a couple of friends. I finally got a library card and checked out a stack for little r. So far, Babies is her favorite.

Like most moms-to-be, in the weeks before little R was born I got hit with a serious nesting urge. Most people talk about cleaning their house top to bottom, scrubbing bathroom floors, dusting corners that never see the light of day. I am not a cleaner by nature and though I did get a little twinge of it in those final weeks, my nesting manifested itself mostly in crafting. In fact, I think about half of the current to-do projects I have were started in those final weeks (still languishing almost a year later). 

One thing I did manage to finish before R was born was this little cross-stitch sampler for her room. It was one of the last things I started and I thought for sure I wouldn't get it done in time. Luckily she was two weeks late and I had it finished & framed before she arrived. 

The pattern is modified from the E. Zierener sampler from 1885 that I found in this book I picked up at a used bookstore years ago.