Thanksgiving Pilgrim Couple to crochet

I get emails from most of the yarn companies with project ideas and these patterns arrived today. They are just too adorable not to share. I will likely make a set of them using regular worsted acrylic yarn instead of cotton because dollars to doughnuts I have everything I need in my boxes of worsted acrylic yarn, and not cotton. Gotta save those pennies, right?

Presenting Lily and Billy Pilgrim:

Image Credit

Click below for the free pattern:

Lily Pilgrim

Billy Pilgrim

Have fun!

When God gives you a special child

This is a re-post of a post I did in 2008 on my original blog.

When we lived in the Houston area, one of Gregory's therapists gave us this story (for lack of a better word). It was soon after Gregory's formal diagnosis of autism, and she knew we could use some inspiration.

"The Beauty of Holland" by Emily Perl Kingsley

"I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability----to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip---to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, 'Welcome to Holland.'

'Holland?!?' you say. 'What do you mean, Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy.'

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you never would have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say 'Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned.'

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a significant loss.

But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland."

We keep a copy of this on the refrigerator. It's our inspiration on bad days. A reminder that Gregory is, indeed, a very special child.

What to do with Christmas fabrics

I have loads of Christmas themed fabrics. I have collected them off and on for many years.

Now, I just don't know what to create with them. One can only have so many Christmas quilts, so I need ideas for other things to make with these glorious fabrics.

I have these in mind.

Tutorial for these are Here,  here  and  here.

But I could do 100 of them and still not make a dent in my fabric.

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I found these neat Pomander looking ornaments using Yo-yos.

The tutorial for them can be found here.

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Here's one more-

Image credit and tutorial link on this post.

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What ideas do you have to share? Quilts, place Mats, napkins, ornaments. What about some out of the ordinary ideas? What do you do with your Christmas fabrics besides making quilts?

Let's see what comes up...we may all get inspired.

It's a...

...new name for my blog! Also, a work in progress for a week or so.

This will be the last change of names. When I changed over to blogger and created Our Own Village, I liked the name, or so I thought. The name just never *felt* or sounded right to me. But this one, Heritage Homemaker, I LOVE! It's perfect and I don't know why I never thought of it before now. Everything in the right time, eh?

I had planned on having my original blog, Crazy for the Country, printed and then taking that site completely down. I haven't gotten it printed yet, so I've decided to copy all of the posts (yes, copy and paste, one by one) from both Crazy for the Country and Our Own Village over here. That way, everything back to May 2008 will be here and together. It will take a bit of time, but will be worth it in the end.

The post dates may look a little weird while I am moving old ones over, but once they are done, it will all be great!

Welcome and be sure to follow me here. I promise no more changes :-)

October 31