Erik left yesterday to go back to Camp Lejeune, and I headed back to work today as well, after taking all of last week off. The weather cooperated beautifully, and we were able to get mostly moved into our new house (yes, we signed–it’s ours!). We love the house. It completely feels like home. The kids have their own rooms now, and they both like it. I was worried that Gavin would be lonely without Olga close by, but he seems quite happy.

I have to say, despite all logic to the contrary, I got really used to having Erik home. Gavin, who was still pretty little before Erik went to Iraq, really got to know his daddy well this trip, and now he’s wondering where his big buddy went. Olga understands the situation a little better, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Luckily, we’re expecting much more frequent visits from him during the next year.

On Thursday, Erik flew home to us. It’s like someone pushed the “resume” button, or like I’ve been holding my breath for the past eight months, and now…

…now we’re all finally home.

Erik is back from Iraq.

My husband is finally back from Iraq after seven months. Life is so much simpler now.

It will still be another week and a half before the kids and I see him. We can hardly wait.

Happy Birthday, Honey. We sure wish you were here.

Little Red Hen and Little Brown Rooster

That’s me a few days ago, just a stones throw from home.

Erik has been in Iraq about two months, now. I got a phone call from him the other morning, and he’s doing well. Olga and Gavin each got to talk to him, and Olga told him it was high time he came home. She has really been missing him. Yesterday Erik missed the first of several family holidays he’ll miss in the coming months.

Well before he left, I made a conscious decision to be okay through this deployment. Erik always tells me: if you can’t change it, don’t worry about it. I certainly can’t change the fact that Erik is deployed, nor that he’s in danger, or that he’ll be gone so long. So I decided not to worry about him at all.

Instead, I’m devoting all of my energy into doing something constructive for our family, which in turn always helps out Erik in the end. Because the less he has to worry about us at home, the better he can concentrate on the matters before him, and the more likely he is to come home to us safely.

One of the things I do while he’s away is shoot a few targets now and then. I got a nice confidence boost from shooting a decent group at 50 yards with the AR-15 the other day. That’s essentially the same rifle Erik uses in Iraq. The one I shot doesn’t belong to me, but I like it so much that I may end up getting one. All that confidence gets lumped back into that constructive energy, instead of withering into worry, and in the end, we’re all better off.

Here’s a photo that the wonderful Freeport Flag Ladies took of Erik while he was waiting in the Bangor, Maine airport for his flight out of the U.S. These ladies are amazing–they see off as many of our cammy-clad Ladies and Gents as they can, take their pictures, and give them a little gift to send them on their way.

P.S. I don’t know if you can see them in the photo, but Erik is wearing pink earphones. I have the khaki set here at home, and we were going to trade, but he worried that they might “go missing.” He’s pretty sure no one will “borrow” his cute pink pair.

Even though most of my fun stuff is packed away already, I do have a couple little projects stashed around the house to work on. Erik wanted a new beanie and neck warmer thingie (I don’t know if it is spelled gaitor or gaiter, so thingie it is). I love a man who can’t go to war without some tactical hand knits. I’m using Wool-Ease yarn, because it’s so perfectly suited to the harsh abuse I know it will get. It is easy to wash, and the wool helps the garments maintain their shape and loft (fluffiness) much better than acrylic alone. It is also less sweaty than all-acrylic.

I tried something new for the top of the beanie. Instead of fastening it off like normal, by drawing yarn threw the last few knit stitches, then drawing it up and weaving in the end, I grafted the last 12 stitches together using Kitchener stitch. It made a nice flat secure top. It will be comfortable under a helmet, and I don’t have to worry that a hole will form.

The thingie is just a simple tube. It can’t be tight, or it will be uncomfortable, and the edges need to have a bit of stability or they’ll curl and be bulky. A knit in hem seemed to be the best answer. I have a few more inches to knit on this, then it will get crammed into Erik’s sea bag with the rest of his couple hundred pounds of gear.

We are full on into packing mode, deadline mode, and getting ready for deployment mode. On the one hand I’m feeling a little bit insane, and on the other it’s a bit of a blessing–there’s no time to slow down and feel bad about the upcoming deployment.

The kids are taking all this excitement very well. Olga was a bit concerned that the storage unit was like a giant trash compactor, but now she understands that we’ll get all of our stuff back eventually, so she’s helping me sort through toys and blankets to pack. Gavin still lives in Oblivious Land, so as long as he can climb in and around, and drive his cars over the boxes, he doesn’t really care what else is going on.

I hope you’ll join me with your own mending basket by your side over the next few weeks as I do my best to make things do.

Day 1:

The Manly-Man brought me his sweat pants today to see if I could fix them. These are the sweats he has to wear for PT (physical training) at work most mornings, and they’ve seen many miles. I’ve repaired one of the ankles before, but it was so long ago that I didn’t even remember until I saw the blue thread in the seam. (Fixing Erik’s work stuff is usually a good opportunity for me to use up odd bits of bobbin thread. Nobody is going to see it, and Erik certainly doesn’t care, as long as it’s not visible from the outside.) These tears are probably from trying to quickly pull the sweats on over size 13 running shoes. It just doesn’t work, honey! I zipped this up quickly on the machine, using an over-edge stitch.

The next repair is a little tricky. It’s a hole that has started to run on the back of the sweats. The hole is about 1/2" wide, and the run is about 2 1/2" long. I’ll do this one by hand. I happen to have some slightly brighter green jersey (aka single knit, or teeshirt fabric) in my stash that I originally got for $1/yard. I’ll only need a tiny scrap for this.

I held the jersey "patch" in place and prick stitched around the edge of the hole. A prick stitch is a bit like a back stitch, but the stitch on the visible side of the fabric is very short, only a thread or two long at most, so it is fairly unnoticeable. In the photo above, I’ve already stitched down the right side of the hole, and I bet you can’t see the stitches.

After stitching the patch in place, I trimmed around leaving about 1/2" allowance.

Jersey doesn’t fray, but in the interest of making this laundry and Marine proof, I folded under the edge of the patch and whip stitched it to the pants. There’s no need to stitch all the way through the fabric, a couple fuzzy loops are enough to keep things in place and still look neat on the outside.

I’ve whip stitched all around the patch, and secured my thread ends with a knot.

Next I’ll stitch through the loops of the run, to make sure the run won’t "run" any further. I’m not sure you can see it here, but this run is comprised of three rows. The top row runs from the hole, to the end of the run. The middle row goes from the hole to just a little past the mid point of the run, and the bottom row is only about 1/4 the total length of the damage. At the farthest right point of each of these rows of running stitches, I’ll take a stitch right through the loops where the fabric is still good. This stitch has to be in the same row as the running stitches in order to check the run.

I’ve stitched the patch to the pants. Now it’s time to stitch the hole to the patch. I don’t want anything to catch on the hole and make it bigger, so I’m whip stitching it to the patch all the way around. This will hopefully keep dirt and filth from accumulating in the space between pants and patch.

And there you have it. A fairly invisible, but quite secure patch. I know the green is a little bright, but I think it will tone down after a few washings. If it’s still noticeably different in a week or two, I’ll try coloring it a little with a permanent marker. That ought to do the trick.

Since The Man was in the field all week, it was a perfect opportunity for me to work on his “big” Christmas present–Argyle socks. (I can safely tell you about them, because I know he doesn’t read this, and he knows, vaguely, that I’ve been working on them anyway…) I have one nearly finished. Erik came home last night, finally, only to reveal that he had duty today. Sooo… I’ll spend this morning unknitting a few rows from the toe of the sock, since I got a little carried away. Then hopefully I’ll have a chance to get a good start on the mate.