Beautiful Baby Vest.

I should have posted about this before, but I forgot to. I'll blame it on pregnancy brain--a convenient excuse to have at times. :)

Back in August I won a giveaway for this beautiful baby vest, knitted out of hand-spun wool by Tonya at Plain and Joyful Living.

Isn't it just gorgeous? And the colours are so soft and dreamy. Of course you can't tell from the picture, but the feel of the vest is very soft as well.

Funnily enough, I had entered the giveaway thinking that if I won I would give the sweater to my sister, who has a baby girl. But when the vest arrived in the mail, I had just found out I was pregnant a few days before. So, it felt to me like a little message that our little one was meant to be. :)

Tonya's blog is one of my favourites. She writes with a wonderful combination of simplicity, honesty, and optimism about her family's life on their homestead in Vermont, where they grow their own food and work with their hands. She also creates a hand-written newsletter about simple living and homemaking that readers can subscribe to and have mailed to their physical mailboxes. In this day and age, doesn't this seem like a revolutionary idea? I have really enjoyed the past few issues of this charming newsletter--it seems strangely more real to be reading words that were written by hand than that were typed on a screen.

Tonya also has compiled Handmade Holiday list of bloggers who have chosen to make handmade gifts this season, and has a series of posts sharing tutorials and patterns for homemade gifts, which is worth checking out if you're looking for gift ideas. Which reminds me, I need to get to work on my own homemade gifts--time is running out quickly!

In the meantime, I am gazing at this snuggly little vest, sitting next to my computer, and dreaming of the day when it will be filled with a chubby little belly. :) (Which, for those who are curious, will be sometime in late March of next year!)