Hello, dear and long-suffering readers! I come to you from my kitchen, writing while standing and eating chipped beef dip straight from the container.* If your dishwasher was smaller than Barbie’s, that’s how you’d eat it too!

These past few weeks, I had been frustrated, challenged to find those little moments of joy in my everyday surroundings, mostly because my surroundings were a still life of all the chores I could not get to. Let it be known that I am a haphazard housekeeper at best. But when the dishes begin to conquer the counter (see above re: dishwasher) and fluffies from dismembered dog beds begin to intermingle with the dust bunny population, I am ready to take things in hand. Unfortunately, the Peanut usually isn’t. He has learned how to be bored, this adorable development dooming any attempts to keep house to failure.

This morning, I very nearly freaked out thinking about the polyfill-dust bunny hybrids and the dishes and the compost, and then I looked down at the baby to remind myself that caring for him is the most important thing to do every day…and I realized he was sleeping.

So I promptly began rushing around like a whirlwind tackling all the things sucking joy out of my everyday. The compost. The dishes. A fraction of the laundry (if anyone knows of a laundromat for sale, I’m interested). This sweater. And also checking every two minutes to make sure the baby is still breathing, because usually he knows the second I am being productive and dirties his diaper or whips up an appetite or both.

The sweater is Miss Suzanne, by Kephren Pritchett, knitted in Less Traveled Yarn DK in the colorway Turning Leaves. I began it shortly after Peanut was born and finished it over a week ago, but was waiting to blog it until I could get someone to take pictures of me looking fabulous in it. The pattern is lovely, and the yarn is lovely, and I enjoyed making it so much I wanted lovely photos that would show you how nice both designer’s and dyer’s work is, so you would want to make it too, but here we are.

Headless selfies in the baby’s room, which, ironically, is the cleanest one in the house. I am wearing a clean shirt and you can’t see the state of anything else, so we’re good (also two pair of jeans got lost in the move so if I mentioned something about packing my jeans away in a totally random place that is not where any of my other clothes are stored, please remind me where that is). I wanted a basic, seamless cardigan that would not compete with the colors of the yarn while letting me painlessly stripe colors from two skeins to blur the transition from skein to skein, and it did just that. The yarn has happy pops of brown and cerise over purple and tan, just a little out of my comfort zone but not too far. I am itching to try another one of Sarah’s color ways. The finished product is easy to throw on over whatever, the perfect comfort blanket sort of sweater.

Now it is time to wake the baby, who I know is still breathing because I checked six more times, change and feed him and figure out how to make peace with the rest of the mess in my house. Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, and even if you don’t, may the week be filled with things that bring you comfort and joy.

* By the time I was done with the post I had finished the dip and moved on to Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Stars