All Our Adoption Links

We're adopting!!!

(I think I might never lose the urge to put 3 exclamation marks after that sentence.)

I wanted to put all our links in one place so that when people want to know about our adoption and how they can help, I can direct them to one page instead of several different ones. As we have other news I'll link it back to this page so this page always (oh dear what a promise, here's hoping) has the most updated information.

For general information about why we are adopting, click here.
For details on who we are adopting, click here.
For information on our Love a Baby campaign and how you could win a hand-knit lace blanket, click here. 
If you'd like to purchase Rodan + Fields makeup and skin care supplies and have a portion of your purchase go to our adoption, click here. 

If you would like to be part of our prayer team, email derkiheeATgmailDOTcom with "ADD ME" in the subject line and I will add you to our email newsletter.

In August, we did a T-shirt fundraiser. If you are interested in us holding another sale, email me at derkiheeATgmailDOTcom with "I'd buy a T shirt" in the subject line. If we have at least 5 people interested, we will have another T shirt sale and I will email you the link as well as post it again here.
Here is what our T shirts look like:

"Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created."

To donate online, click here. This site takes out $0.30 per donation and 2.9% of the donation. This allows them to maintain their website and, particularly important, to maintain the online security measures that all you to donate your money safely. Please feel free to share this link on Facebook.

To donate by check, send a check made out to Bethany Christian Services, with "Fenn family" in the memo line to this address:

Bethany Christian Services
930 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37403

Thank you for your interest in our adoption! Check back periodically to see how things are going!

Knitting Through the Year - March

"Its shape is the simplest (straight tube for body; tapered tubes for sleeves, which are cast off straight and sewed into straight cut armholes) and the pattern is much simpler than it looks." ~ Knitter's Almanac, by Elizabeth Zimmermann

Sometimes, I knit like an idiot. Sometimes, I continue to knit like an idiot for a very long time. This is very frustrating when I discover it.

See that? I cast on the same number for both sweaters. I knit the hem, and then began the color work section. This (apparently) was a lot tighter than the hem and I just continued on for inches and inches, blindly believing that it was only a little bit small and that it would easily block out to the same size. If you look at the above picture, these are obviously two different sizes. There is no amount of blocking that is going to change that.

And somehow I had to knit that far before I figured it out. And this sweater combines cables and color work so it was a slower knit than usual. But still I didn't notice until I had knit half the body.

So I unraveled it. It was painful but I discovered something interesting.

Isn't that cool? Wouldn't it make a pretty lacy sweater? It would take a long time to knit, but unraveling the base color would be very thrilling.

Anyway, I unraveled it back to the hem, knit a round increasing by 20%, and then picked up the white and started again. Once I got to the chest, I added a few extra stitches on each side for steeks and continued knitting a color work tube. I sewed the sleeves to the tube and then turned the sleeves inside out to get to the steek stitches. I crocheted double line of stitches through the steek stitches and then cut down middle, creating the armhole.

Does this picture make things any clearer? No? Sorry.

This is a classic method for multi-color Scandinavian sweaters, because it is much easier to knit color work patterns in a tube, where you are always looking at the right side, than back and forth, when you are constantly switching from the right side to the wrong side. So just knit a couple extra stitches where you want the armholes and cut them later!

After the armholes were cut, I knit facings for them to cover up the raw edges inside the sweater. This is partly for security (my sweater is knit of alpaca and wool and alpaca doesn't stick to itself like wool does, increasing the risk of things unraveling) and partly for aesthetics. It was a long slow knit and I wanted it to be finished nicely inside and out. If I were selling my knitting (which I'm not*), this would be a particularly high-end sweater.

I'm very happy with how it turned out. It is a beautiful little 2T sweater, and the alpaca makes it sooo soft and the color work pattern on the body makes it extra warm.

When I first started knitting it, I found the slow pace of the color work + cable stitches to be frustrating. It's not hard, particularly if you have done cables before, but it is slow. But now I really love the bold effect of the white cables against the green-blue-lavender. It makes me want to attempt a Celtic knot pattern, maybe on mittens. Wouldn't that be lovely?

*If there are any people reading this blog who value quality hand knits and would be interested in $500 children's sweaters, I would absolutely be interested in selling my knitting! But those are the kind of prices you have to charge to make it work. 

Knitting Through the Year - February

If there is one fact on which all grandmothers agree, it is that no daughter-in-law knows how to wash wool. This may be true, but it is no reason for the grandmas to stop knitting. Do they expect their handmade offerings to be carefully preserved in layers of tissue paper and never worn? They have perhaps forgotten how often baby things have to be washed. The baby surely doesn't mind if they do become a little shrunken and yellowed. Let the grandmas keep up the supply of soft woolies and avert their mind's eye from the ultimate fate of their knitting - at least it is being used. ~ Knitter's Almanac, by Elizabeth Zimmermann

Knitting for babies is delightful even when you don't have a baby to knit for, which I currently don't. When I find a pattern I like I just knit away and stash it for future use. I generally try to knit at least a 12 month size, if not larger, which insures that my sweater will probably be worn more than once.

In true EZ fashion, I set aside her very good instructions and attempted to make the arms and chest at the same time, with extra stitches to make into steeks later on. (Steeks are where you take scissors to your knitting, cut it into pieces and then sew it back up again. It's crazytown, but a very useful technique.)

My reasons were very good. The yarn I was using (Crazy Yarn left over from the kids' Baby Surprise Sweaters) has uneven stripes, and it would be very difficult to make the stripes the same on the sleeves and the body because there are different numbers of stitches in each.

I used the crochet method of securing the steek edges, which was very easy if you are already familiar with crochet. You can also use a sewing machine if you prefer.

I think that somewhere in the process I misplaced some stitches or ignored something crucial because the sleeves are a lot skinnier than I was intending. Knitting stretches, which is good, but this might be recast as a full length infant sweater instead of a waist-length toddler sweater.

Ah well, I'll be more careful next time.

We're Adopting Again!!!

Yay for siblings! If you are new to this site, these are our three kids, aged 5, 4, and 6, respectively.
We are excited to add a fourth! (Picture by Rachael Kulick.)

WHO: A boy or girl who is younger than our youngest (at the moment 4 and a half), born in China with the same special need as our daughter, Congenital Melanocytic Nevus. We feel very comfortable with this special need and have a good relationship with a wonderful pediatric dermatologist at Emory. And it's not just about comfort level and familiarity: objectively speaking, we will be considered a good match for a child with this special need, because of our experience, which (we hope) will lead to a fast(er) match.

WHAT: Um, this seems obvious. Unless you missed the title. ADOPTION! Yay!

WHEN: Not soon enough. The process will probably take at least a year from now until we are bringing our child home, maybe longer. There are two different paths with a Chinese adoption:

1) after a family has finished their paperwork they wait to be matched with a newly listed child whose file matches their openness. (This is not a mandatory match: the parents can pray over the file and consult with doctors if desired before making a decision.)

2) at any time during the paperwork process the family can ask to be matched with a child who is on the Waiting Child List. Children on the waiting list are kids who were not matched with families when they were first listed with the adoption agency, either because they have special needs that no families were specifically open to, or because they are older (four years old is considered "old!"), or because they are a boy and the families at that time specifically requested a girl. (Side note: There are SO MANY boys in China who need families!)

It is my personal hope that we would be able to race through our paperwork (ha, ha ...) and as soon as we are done, the child that we are meant to adopt would be newly listed with our agency and we would be matched to them. This hopeful scenario would mean the shortest wait time for everyone. When we were adopting Mei-Mei, we saw her picture on the Waiting Child List, asked to be matched with her, and then we had a year's worth of paperwork and waiting before we could go get her. This time around, if we get all our paperwork done first, then our child has the shortest possible wait after they are listed, although the timing is about the same or a little longer for us. (Clear as mud? All of this is pretty confusing.)

WHERE: China. Our first experience with Bethany Christian Services' China team was stellar, and the Chinese language, culture and food are wound into our hearts and our family life.

WHY: Because children need families. Let me repeat that. Children. Need. Families. This is not about my husband and I wanting more kids. (Although, to be clear, we do!) This is not about a fun cultural experience. (Although we have been enriched by the addition of Chinese culture to our family!) This is about kids, growing up in foster care or an orphanage, never having anyone who is committed to them for forever. Sometimes never having anyone who will tell them: "You have value. You are loved."

That is why we are doing this big, crazy, time-consuming, expensive thing.

HOW MUCH: $31,000. *Gulp* Let me break this down a bit.

Agency fees (Home study, Adoption fees, Post-Placement Reports) $13,950

Foreign Country Program Expenses $2,810

Translation and Document Expenses $3,685

Program Development $1500

Immigration fees $985

Travel and Accommodation in China* $8,575

Total: $31,505

*This number is the most flexible, as it will be affected by the tourist season, strength of the US dollar, and the specific province in China that we are traveling to.

We will also be giving our child's orphanage a gift of either money or supplies, both as a culturally significant gesture of gratitude, and also to improve the lives of other children in the orphanage. In previous years this was a required part of the adoption fees, adding approximately $6000 to the cost of Chinese adoption. Praise God that the adoption officials in China have made it this much easier for children to be adopted!

HOW CAN YOU HELP: 

If you would like to know about our continued prayer needs and financial progress, sign up for our (probably monthly) newsletter by emailing me at derkihee@gmail.com with "Add Me" or something else self-explanatory in the subject line.

If you would like to contribute directly to Bethany, send a check made out to Bethany Christian Services with "Fenn Family Adoption" in the memo line to this address:

Bethany Christian Services
930 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403

If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation, send a check made out to Highlands with "Fenn Family Adoption" in the memo line to this address:

Highlands Presbyterian Church
1211 North Main Street
LaFayette GA 30728

If now is not a great time for you to contribute, but you'd like to at some point, keep an eye out for future updates! We will be doing a T-shirt fundraiser in a few months.

Thank you for walking with us on this journey! We're very excited to be on this path and excited that you want to travel with us on it!

(Picture by Rachael Kulick.)

Knitting Through the Year - January

"It is a cold and snowy January. The holidays are done with, and Twelfth Night will be any day now: what better time to embark on a long and lovely project?" ~ Knitter's Almanac, Elizabeth Zimmermann

EZ, dwelling in the cold and snowy north, suggests an Aran sweater as the perfect January project: all-white and decorated with cables and knit-purl stitch patterns. However I, who have never seen a white winter, but only the very occasional white weekend or white couple of days, chose a more colorful winter project.

The fact that I had intended to finish this project for Christmas and failed to do so may have also been a factor. Knitters beware: five year old boys take very poorly to a promise and a bagful of yarn as a Christmas present.

Mei-Mei, Twinkle and Munchkin, all with varying levels of enthusiasm.
The green in Twinkle's sweater is more prominent than this picture shows. 

This pattern is also an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern, the Baby Surprise Sweater. It is one of the more iconic knitting patterns out there. (To the non-knitters: Yes! Famous knitting patterns! Whoda thunk?) It has only two seams, which means that you kit a shapeless blob that looks nothing like a sweater, just blindly chugging along making increases and decreases as directed. And then you cast off and sew along the tops of the sleeves and suddenly you have the cutest little garter-stitch cardigan.

This yarn is called Crazy Yarn and it is made from the leftovers from spinning solid colors. Crazy Yarn and Baby Surprise Sweater is my favorite yarn/pattern combination. I have made it two other times before this little trio, once as a 12 month size and once as a 3T, and I can probably say that this won't be my last time with this combo. There's just no version of this sweater and yarn that's not awesome.

The sweaters were finished in January, but photographed later, hence the green grass.

I love it - and them - to bits.

Knitting Through the Year - December

Christmas projects!

I love them. I dive into them with joy and abandon, only to realize, mid-way, that my project to-do list really isn't reasonable or particularly possible, not if the young ones continue to demand to be fed on a thrice-daily basis and the husband continues to hope after a non-destroyed house and an underwear and sock drawer with at least a few clean items in it.

EZ knows the dangers of ambition and vision at Christmas time:

Embarking on a sweater at this late date smacks of madness, but it can be done, and done without using up too much f your precious December-time. The main thing is to make it very thick. The thicker the knitting, the fewer the stitches; the fewer the stitches, the sooner finished, right? Not finished as soon as mathematics would tell you - the fingers are not quite as agile with thick wool as with thin - but still, finished with surprising speed. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann, The Knitter's Almanac

And so it was. Finished with surprising speed, that is. One week of knitting in the evenings and during the occasional naptime and it was done. Just like that.

I know.

Crazy town.

I had to resist the urge to cast on additional sweaters for my father, husband and brother. (You get a sweater! And you get a sweater! And yes, you there in the back! You get a sweater, too!) As soon as I expressed this urge, fortunately, the madness of it penetrated, and I backed away from the ledge. Close call, though.

The secret of this sweater is the simple, stylish shaping and the large gauge. This sweater is knit at 2 1/2 stitches to the inch, with extra bulky yarn. This was a little hard to find. My brother-in-law, the recipient, lives in North Carolina, where winters are certainly cold, but don't warrant 1/2" thick, 100% wool sweaters. That amount of wool would be very warm indeed. Also, my sister put in her bid for a sweater that couldn't be accidentally shrunk in the wash. My initial goal was a bulky superwash wool, which is a wool-acrylic blend that can be gently machine washed without tragedy. However, this proved very difficult to find. Eventually, I ended up with Lion Brand Hometown USA, which is an all-acrylic yarn, in charcoal. I used just under 10 skeins, to make a men's size medium/large.

Done like dinner.

Knitting Through the Year - November

"Plans for this chapter have been scrapped in favor of describing the project on which I am currently and most actively engaged. I can think of little else. 
"The item, hot from the griddle, which I now unveil is the Moccasin Sock, the Breakthrough Sock, the Not-To-Be-Ground-Down Sock; The Eventually Totally Re-footable Sock. Call it what you will; all the above tentative titles apply." - Elizabeth Zimmermann, The Knitter's Almanac

This enthusiasm may bewilder. I will endeavor to explain.

This month's project, the Moccasin Sock, has a very unique design. Here it is, modeled by my lovely husband (who will happily comply with all manner of photographic nonsense if it gets him closer to a new pair of hand-knit socks):

Mustard and Light Gray Heather

Do you see the brilliance? No? How about this one:

See that gray sole? (Practically) every sock ever knit before now has been knit in the round, which convenient because human feet are 3 dimensional, requiring a tube-shaped sock to cover them and humans generally dislike trodding on seams. Thus, knitting in the round, whether you did it with 4 or more double-pointed needles or with two circular needles or with magic loop, was deemed to be necessary.

This Moccasin sock, however, is knit another way entirely: the leg and the top of the foot are knit back and forth, and then using gray, the knitter picks up stitches all around the edge of the foot and knits in the round on a circular or their preferred method, knitting towards the center of the foot, decreasing where necessary so that everything will lie flat, and then, when the sole is big enough, the stitches are sewn together with Kitchener stitch, which makes everything flat and smooth. The back of the leg stitches are likewise sewn together.

But why would you do this, when the traditional method of socks (knit in the round until you come to the heel, make a heel, knit in the round until you come to the toe, decrease for toe, sew closed) is so much simpler?

Here is why:

1. If you are intimidated by or simply dislike knitting using double-pointed needles.

2. If you don't have more than one circular knitting needle, or your circular needle is short. (It has to be long to use the magic loop method.)

3. If you prefer knitting back and forth to knitting in the round. Note that you will have to do a bit of in the round, but it's much less than if you were to use the traditional method. (This can be done with a circular needle if desired.)

4. If you want to use a different yarn for the sole and the top. This was, in fact, EZ's inspiration for designing this pattern: she wanted to use reinforced yarn for the sole of the foot but not the top, where it would be wasted.

5. If you only have one skein of special yarn and you still want to make a pair of socks.

Let me elaborate on that last one. If you are using sock yarn*, an adult-sized pair of socks requires at least 400 yards of yarn. Sock yarn is often sold in approx. 200 yard skeins. This yarn, Valley Yarns Huntington, a merino wool blend, was both lovely and economical but these descriptors are not often paired. If your heart is set on a yarn too expensive to buy two skeins, or if you simply have found an odd ball that you'd like to use up without making mismatched socks, this method will let you do that. You don't see the sole of the foot at all when wearing shoes, so it could be a cheaper color that coordinates, a color you want to use up, or even a series of scraps.

These are approximately men's size 10 socks, in a short crew style, and the yellow part used up nearly every bit of the 218 yards in the skein. As a side note, I would like to congratulate myself on finding such a cheery color that my husband will consent to wear. It's a great color, and almost perfectly matches a ginkgo tree in autumn.

Very difficult to get three children to look at the camera at once, particularly when you are on the way to get ice cream.

*Using sock yarn, or "fingering weight" yarn will produce socks that are "normal" thickness, suitable for wearing under dress shoes. Using worsted weight yarn will produce chunkier socks, more suitable for wearing under thick boots or as house slippers. The thicker the yarn, the fewer yards you will need.

 In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that the reason that there is only one sock in the photograph is that there was only one sock finished in November, as I was much consumed with a Nanowrimo project, Thanksgiving, and a sinus infection. However, I did finish the other sock before Christmas which was their actual deadline. I intended to photograph both of them today, using my own feet, but 'Stache wore them to work.