New FO - baby booties

Finally, a new finished object! It's another pair of the baby booties from Knitting For Baby. I love this pattern. It's really easy, and you can get two pairs out of a skein of Koigu. It is so easy that it is worth doing, even if you're not sure your effort will be appreciated. I've been burned before; can you tell? However, I have also had friends who were so grateful for what I made them that I would happily knit for their children any time.

I used the new Cherry Tree Hill dyed Louet Gems yarn for this (I can't remember the colorway), and I have to say.... I like using the Koigu better. The yarn is thinner, so the booties are floppier (I stuffed them with kleenex to get them to stand up for the pictures). I think I would knit on size 2s instead of size 3s like the pattern calls for. I knit the booties in size 3s, but did the i-cord in size 2. Also, the colors are pretty, but I really just like the Koigu colorways better for baby gear. I think the Louet Gems would be great for actual socks, though.

I have enough yarn to do another pair of booties, though, so the next time someone has a little girl, they're going to be getting a pair of booties. These are for a work colleague of my husband's- his wife just had a baby a few weeks ago. I am going to use them to decorate the wrapped package of books we're giving them.

Postsecret

One of my favorite, must-check sites is Post Secret. In case you've been living under a rock, people create postcards with their secret written on it, send them to Frank (the Postsecret administrator), and he posts 20 of them every week. This week, instead of new secrets, Frank has posted a Postsecret movie.

I find this site very moving. The pain that some people are living with is just incredible, but many of them are living with love as well. Of course, some of them are just funny.

So to everyone who has ever shared a secret with Frank, thanks. We all have our secrets. Mine aren't especially salacious, but reading the secrets of others makes me feel less alone in the world.

Anniversary

Today is the sixth anniversary of the death of my friend and his girlfriend. How can it have been so long? I didn't even realize it today until I saw the date.

For the first few years, maybe through the fourth anniversary, even, I was painfully aware of the anniversary coming up, and it brought everything back and made the grief seem fresh again. For the last couple of years, though, I was aware of the anniversary coming up, and sad about it, but the wound didn't reopen, and the actual day of, I didn't even realize it until late in the day.

My friend had just graduated from college with a degree in architecture a few months before he died. He worked for a local firm, and one of the last projects he worked on was featured in the AIA magazine, Architectural Record. It was a church called St. Peter's By The Sea in Gulfport, MS. I was going to link to their website, but discovered that the church was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. When I saw the pictures, I started sobbing, because the church looks exactly how I feel- still standing, but with the bottom knocked out completely. It makes me so sad to know that my friend's last project, that gave him professional recognition (he would have been so thrilled to see his name in Architectural Record), has been destroyed.



Here is the whole collection of pictures of the Katrina damage of St. Peter's By The Sea. They are rebuilding; the same firm is designing the new church; it is going to look very similar, but it won't be the church that my friend worked on.

To my friend, please know that I miss you, and I wish you were still here. Every day, I wish you were here.