Yarn Along ~ Baby Blanket, White Lily and a Beloved Book

Mr. Husband surprised me with an
after Catholic Easter Lily!
(Orthodox Easter/Pascha is late this year - May 5th!)
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My baby blanket continues to come along!
I had great help with it at church this past Sunday ~
I am so new at this,
I did not realize that to knit the yarn has to be behind
and to purl the yarn has to be in front.
I learned other things as well,
it was great!
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I have doubled it in size since last time I posted it.

Funny riding back from church story:
So after all the great help I got on Sunday
I knit more of the blanket on the way home.
I was tired but determined to get more done ~
I am eager to learn and have more things I want to make!
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So I was telling Mr. Husband how I learned
more about how to keep the stockinette stitch going well
(I have been getting confused on what I just did,
whether knit or purl and would repeat a row instead of
doing the opposite of what I had just done).
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Then I said,
since the blanket is rather spontaneous,
unstructured and creative,
a bit here-and-there/all-over-the-place,
at least it is true to who I am...
Mr. Husband,
who is much more structure and methodical than I am,
heartily agreed. :)
Later I told my Mom this conversation and she laughed ~
as she knows me full well and knows this to be true of me,
all she could say was 'poor Mr. Husband' :)

So the blanket is very much one of my
creations.
I may eventually learn to do this better,
but for now I am enjoying the process and not
worrying about keeping perfectly to a pattern...

I am rather liking it!
And I am getting a bit better at it
and I think of the instruction I was given on Sunday
all the time; it really was helpful...
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And it is exciting to be on my third section already ~
I am back to the mix of blue bonnet and pear yarn ~
the next section after this will be all pear
and then mixed again.
Then we will see how long it is getting. :)
Mr. Husband assured me that my nephew,
who is the cutest ever
and who I saw with a darling family picture
with him wearing a baby-bow tie for Easter!
Too Cute.
Anyway, Mr. Husband says the cute nephew will not
mind the imperfections and creativity
in the blanket.
And it's made with love,
and that's the best part.

I am loving the sunshine and Easter Lily.

I suggested that when this one is done flowering,
that we plant it downstairs in the little garden patch
in the courtyard.
So we hope to do that.

Of course I had to include a new picture of my Cleo Cat!
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So, since Novice K. died and I wrote on how
his copy of Christ is in our Midst
impacted my life so greatly back in 2007 or so,
I thankfully found the book,
with Novice K. handwriting in it...

 

and I have started reading it again;
I have come back to this book so many times;
the pages in the front are falling out and need to be reglued.
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As I said in 2008:
Fr. John is a monk who lived in the Valamo monastery and then New Valamo in Finland; he died in 1958. This book is a compilation of letters he wrote to his spiritual children. It is very accessible and has deep wisdom. 
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This book is so wonderful ~ full of love, of light, of a deep simplicity ~
it can really show us how to live on a new level
and at the same time consoles us in our times of
struggle and weakness.
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I truly could never recommend this book enough! 
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What are you creating, crafting and reading?
Yarn along with us!

Memory Eternal ~ Christ is in our midst ~ Books, blessing and prayers for the departed

Years ago my spiritual father
and I were talking in our church hall,
near to our church library
and I asked what book I should read;
I remember my spiritual father getting me a book
Christ is in our midst;
I blogged about it, with the cover of the book,
years ago.
*
He gave it to me to read with a sense of
love and that he was giving me a book
that was specifically for me
and that would be a great discovery.
And so it was ~ this book is the first place
I read and was captured by the Orthodox
understanding of humility.
It is real treasure of a book.
*
I still love this book and I gave a copy
of it to Mr. Husband when he was still my
newly loved Orthoman.
*
The copy I read was donated by Novice K. of our parish.
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Novice K. was,
by the time I came,
an older man, large boned, needing a walker to walk.
He had a very deep voice, white hair
and pale blue eyes.
He was sick a lot in later years,
even being in a coma for a long while,
from which he recovered.
*
This afternoon I got an email from a good friend
from my Ottawa Parish that
Novice K,
who my friend visited faithfully at the nursing home,
had passed away.
*
I remember talking in person with my friend
last time I was there that Novice K. was declining.
*
Grief and loss ~ always different and always the same.
The shock, the sudden tears,
the awareness of Mr. Husband's love
as I emailed him the news.
We had just been talking about Novice K. the other day;
it was his book on St. Luke that my friend who visited
Novice K. had borrowed and then later lent to me to read
some years ago.
*
As I have been re-reading the book,
in it's second edition,
I have been telling Mr. Husband about it and Novice K.
And about the first time I read it,
when I newly in a job that I lost,
the first one I lost that I loved and so many people
in my blog community rallied around me...
so it was quite a shock to learn of Novice K. passing
after just talking about him to Mr. Husband.


I immediately took one of my
special monastery candles,
a thicker one,
that I knew would burn for some time
for Novice K.

I emailed people, prayed and
thought of the newly departed Novice K.

 

I had not personally seen Novice K. in quite a while,
though I remember the years past when he
was able to come.
How slow he would walk,
how he had to depend on others for everything,
how he always sat at the same table at coffee hour
and I would say hi to him there.
The book that he donated changed the way
I saw life and gave me my first glimpses of what
having a spiritual life means.
The book on St. Luke that I read that was his
was a great blessing to me in a time of great trial.
And so Novice K. really had a deep impact on my life
though he never knew it.
*
It is the first funeral that I will not be able to go to
in my Ottawa-home parish.
That is hard.
But I remember how when my Oma died and
how Mr. Husband and I prayed for her.
Knowing that I have Mr. Husband to pray
 with for Novice K. is a great comfort.
*
In the end the title of the first book I read that
Novice K. donated is the greatest comfort of all:
Christ is in our midst. 
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Memory Eternal!
Memory Eternal!
Memory Eternal!