Only phone pictures this week. I'm almost finished with the body on Equinox. One of Mariam's presents is finished, and I have one or two to finish for her birthday. Still plugging away, but slowly, on Jerome's present (I'm further along than the picture and stats show, but not by a ton).

Interweave Knits has put out their themes and submission guidelines for Summer 2015 and I am going to try to submit three design proposals to them. By September 5. While preparing for school, finishing the test knit, making birthday gifts, and going to family memorials. One of the designs I'm going to propose to them is Cirrus, which will probably go through a name change and means that all my begging for test knitters will be for yet a further future date, since they don't want me working on the pattern much until it has been accepted and revisions are discussed.

I took a break from Christ in His Saints and The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, though I'm this close to finishing on both. However, last month while I was away with Rich, I read Girl to Girl: Honest Talk About Growing Up and Your Changing Body, to see if it would be an appropriate book to offer our girls, as we discuss this topic. Except for the use of the word b00bs in one place, that was quoted from a girl interviewed for the book, I think it was fairly well done. Obviously, it still requires a discussion with me on our faith's and family's beliefs and practice, but overall, it covered the necessary things, without trying to introduce topics that were either inappropriate, or more appropriately handled by the family. In that same vein, Rich and I read Theology of His Body / Theology of Her Body, which is more appropriate for older teens. Or at least, in our house that is the case. Our kids are not exposed to much in the way of popular media, and since they don't get it from school fellows, they are pretty informed about the reality of human sexuality, but are still innocent in the licentiousness and lewdness of the world. I would think that if your children had more exposure to pop culture or were in school, this book would be appropriate at around 11 to 13. In our house, it it more like 13 or 14 for the girls, and 15 or 16 for the boys. We were very impressed by how the book handled this delicate topic, and except for one reference to the "stain" of original sin, we did not feel like we had to address any differences in theology. (We, as the early Church, and the Orthodox Church, and Eastern Catholics, do not believe that the stain or guilt of original sin is inherited. We do not believe that babies are born sinners. We believe that in the Fall, all Creation Fell, and therefore, all humans have concupiscience, which is the tendency toward sin, but that no one is a sinner simply by his existence. It is in his acts of sin that he becomes a sinner. The nature he inherits is not a "sin nature," but a nature that has a tendency to sin. It may seem like a slight difference, but it makes a big difference when it comes to the ideas of God's declaration that Creation was good and Man, very good, how we are created in God's image, and therefore are good, the nature of salvation as a substitutionary atonement as a rescue mission rather than a penal satisfaction, that there is no wrath of God to be satisfied in the Crucifixion, how Mary could have been sinless without requiring her to be immaculate - which is a solution for a created problem, and so on.)

Labels: Blessed Virgin, Books, Design, Faith and Morality, FOs, Homemaking, Homeschooling, Knitting, Theotokos, Yarn Along