process/experience art love

It has been an arty sort of month so far.















Art with friends. Art with LOTS OF MESS. Art with several different kinds of paint and just as many different kinds of brush. Art outdoors and in. Art that was cut up to make other art. *happy sighs*

Simple Daybook when money is a worry.

Outside my window the sky is lightening blue-grey, and the daily sounds of cars starting and the rumble of the distant main road are beginning. It is very early, a few moments of peace before my day becomes full of young people and sound and busyness. I have a hot cup of tea. I sneaked out from besides the softly curled snuggly toddler to change over laundry and spend just a few moments alone.

I am thinking about meal plans and post office runs and somehow balancing everything today. No anxiety yet, just a lot of little things that must be done.

I am thankful for family and friends who don't judge us, or see us as hopeless stewards of money, but are just there when we need them. More thankful than I can say for the five different people who have made sure we are kept in bread, milk, fruit, cereal.

In the kitchen a loaf of fresh bread is waiting on the surface for hungry breakfasting children. Grains are soaking for soup for lunch. The washing machine is running already, I have so much laundry to get through - sometimes I think the sound of that machine is taking over my mind.

I am wearing a soft, long, steel-grey dress and a rust-orange cardigan. Bare feet. Copper skeleton leaf necklace.

I am going to make it to the park with a friend next week. I can't really predict more than that, other factors crowd in and make all the usual plans and wishes a little tricky. We wanted to go swimming at the weekend again, maybe visit a friend a little further off, but the car is out of fuel and posting parcels comes before swimming.

I am reading The Dragonfly Pool (well, I just finished it). I love borrowing books from my children! I really enjoyed it, interesting, quirky, light reading but my first completed book for a good while. 

I am hoping that our Tax Credits will finally be reinstated tomorrow, or if not, soon. The money Martin makes is what keeps a roof over our heads. Tax Credits feeds us. My earnings pay for dance classes and books. It has been that way for a while, and without the weekly income ("computer error" they tell us, and "it may take another week or more") we are struggling.

I am looking forward to reading stories with Talia, and kissing her little soft toddler cheeks, and laughing together. She's a sweet little pixie with her own comfortable little rhythm and a generous laugh. I may sneak out of bed to spend a moment alone, but my heart is still there with my babiest one.

Around the house: Here in the living room there is a scattering of toys and a pony castle in the middle of the floor. When I got up, I told myself I would tidy a little in here before our day starts, but as yet I have only looked at it. A doll crib, a hair brush, a discarded pink shoe, a drum. Some kind of flyer that has made it through the door only to be snatched up by little hands and used in some game. This is my life; ragged around the edges and yet creative and full and mostly content.

Yesterday I spent hours sorting out the children's rooms. I woke up from a sleepless night thinking, "Of all the things I worry about not being able to give the children, I can give them at least the gift of uncomplaining service in this one thing." So I set to work picking up the pile of clothes, the strewn dressing up things, the books and pieces of paper piled high by the bed and on the desk. It was more of a mess than I thought it was, but they joined me one by one to say, "Wow, thank you mum! What can I do to help?"

One of my favourite things is changing the season table over to Autumn. 

A few plans for the rest of the week: family time at the weekend, Jenna's dance class (mercifully pre-paid for the term), more science experiments because we found the instruction booklet for the chemistry set (!), and hopefully getting some of the laundry actually put away. Oh, the glamour!

A peek into my day:

Prompts from The Simple Woman's Daybook.

PS: I'm sorry if you don't like to hear me talking about money. I am *incredibly* grateful that we are able to freely make the choice to live with less so that one of us can be at home. I am even more grateful for the generosity of friends and family that has tided us over until our income returns. But if you feel the need to tell me why it's my fault or that I shouldn't be open about the impact money (or lack) has on us, then sorry but I'm not sorry (and I won't publish your comment). :p

PPS: Last time I spoke about our finances, I didn't add a post-script, and had to remove some "helpful" judgement.

My Life In: the contents of my handbag

Here's my current bag - smaller and lighter than the giant mustard yellow one (which, much as I love it, is a little larger than necessary now that I'm rarely carrying cloth nappies around day to day).


I didn't pre-tidy the contents or sift out the junk, this is actually what was in my bag this morning when I came to grab my project bag out of the top.


Contents:
- One emergency nappy and a complete change of clothes for the newly-out-of-nappies Talia.
- Another pair of toddler socks, slightly too small for her.
- Three pairs of toddler pants.
- Two sets of babylegs (rainbow branded babylegs and a pair of cheap long socks with the foot cut out after Jenna wore them into holes).
- Half a packet of non-eco supermarket wipes, bought on holiday.
- A cloth shopping bag, my keys, wallet, and camera.
- Knitting project bag.
- Pacifica vanilla perfume.

- Rescue remedy.

- A large chunk of rose agate.

- Turquoise felted brooch for pinning up shawls.
- Cinnalou's glass bead bracelet.
- A few bits of general paper rubbish, gathered nature, some loose change.
- Plasters.
- Hair bobbles (three).
- Jenna's copy of "Wreck This Journal".
- Two of my large selection of notebooks; one journal I have not written in for at least three weeks and one scruffy general notebook with most of the pages missing and toddler scribbles on the front.
- A small yellow plastic Octonaut (Tunip) which Talia grabbed as soon as she saw it (hence, not pictured).

And inside the knitting project bag:

- The shawl I'm working on.
- Plastic pouch with interchangeable knitting needles, a crochet hook, needle gauge, and a couple of stitch holders.
- Small metal tin containing tape measure, scissors, sewing needles, thread, a couple of buttons, and a selection of stitch markers.

What do you always carry? :) (And, am I the only one who is totally incapable of clearing out the random paper bags, receipts, and occasional clothing tags? My wallet contained several money off coupons which were over three months out of date!)

(Some) Days (a not very sparkly post)

When I want to take pictures, sometimes it's because I see something overwhelmingly lovely in our ordinary moments or in our adventures. More often, the habit of picking up the camera regularly pushes me to go and FIND something sparkly. It's a way of documenting gratitudes. My creative self saying, look around you - on each and every average and extraordinary day - THERE IS MAGIC HERE.

This week hasn't felt particularly anything-much. It has had its ordinary ups and downs. I just haven't picked up the camera and gone looking for the beautiful and the magical. I hadn't even realised until I came to write this post. Resolving to take more pictures this week (I don't think that will be too difficult, as we have *lots* of adventures planned)! Anyhow. Not seven days, but some pictures from my week.













1. I do love how these two snuggle up together, each doing their own thing!
2. Soft play
3. A stray bluebell
4. I am NOT sleepy, really I'm not. (I am.)
5. Mrs Chickens
6. Snuggly

Bluebell Woods (and unrelated words)

The year is really flying. The words are coming slowly, mind like treacle, the tiredness constant. So much *everything*. I want to write about the changing seasons and the garden, projects and ideas, the children and how they are growing, everything. Perhaps I'm just too busy living it - or perhaps more that the wakeful toddler is getting past the point of "just a phase" and on to a new level of maternal sleep deprivation. Breathe. Follow the joy. Love. Repeat.

Good Enough

When I'm succeeding with my small business, I know about it. I get feedback from customers, and people want to stop by and tell me that my new uploads are gorgeous, or that the rainbows on my line made them smile. I have sales, I can point at the numbers and say, "See, I'm doing well!" I have a big stack of orders and assorted hand dyed yarn, and I can see where I am up to, and where all the hours went, and there is a provable amount of work "done".

Mothering isn't like that. Unschooling isn't like that. Being a stay at home parent isn't like that.

There's no set of easy-to-measure standards. Nothing I can point to as evidence that any work actually got done. Nothing is ever completed. Getting it right is an exactingly high hurdle which even on my best day I catch with a foot on the way over; if there *is* such a thing as a perfect parent I've never met one. I've met a lot of brilliant parents. A lot of people I would call my role models. A lot of people better than me in some areas, and worse in others (if it were a competition, which it isn't).

If I could only say for sure, at the end of each day, that I did enough. Something always gives. Is it better to shout and apologise once or twice, and yet make cupcakes and help with a science experiment and breastfeed on cue and patiently wait out an hour long screaming fit? Or is it better to sink into disengaged, get on with my own thing and not facilitate well but also not yell even once? Or is it better to have a "great day" then melt down the moment another adult comes into view, and potentially have a little one overhear me wail that I can't do it - am not good enough - not cut out for this?

Is there a scale, a degree of "good enough"?

This is where the rubber hits the road, in a life with ideals. When you are faced with choosing - which ideal is more important, what internal resources do you have left at eleven o'clock at night when someone isn't sleeping and someone else comes in to say they had a scary dream? When you want to know, am I done yet? Did I do enough today?

It isn't always like this. It isn't always an uphill climb.

Even when it's beautiful, and gloriously fun, and interesting, (and the light and the love and the peace are always there to be found, somehow) - there is still no end in sight, no way to say, "I KNOW I'm getting it right." Just, on those days, I don't usually ask the question. I can feel it, palpably, in the air, there is a flow - a sense of contentment.

If I take the happiness of my children as my ultimate goal, and my measuring stick, what kind of a mother am I when they are not happy - when life throws them things they would rather not deal with, when they have difficulty coming to an agreement, when they are ill or tired? Am I a failure if they are not happy? What kind of ratio is still within the limits of acceptable mothering? Every other measurement comes with its own drawbacks, and many are even more ephemeral and inconsistent and indefineable than simple happiness.

I would love to finish this rambling with an answer; easy, comforting, maybe a little over-simplified. I would like to comfort myself. My children are bright and busy, curious and usually healthy, mostly happy, learning all the time. I like them. I love them. And some days leave me empty, poured out, spent. The more tired I am, the more low, the more I try to wrap words around this experience - the more I long to understand it, and be understood. The harder I try the more words fall short.

I want to be enough. I want to be enough.

Is that enough?

Simple Daybook

Outside my window - the sun is shining brightly on a garden strewn with the children's loose building supplies, laid out in their usual configuration of something between an obstacle course, magical creative play structure, and warehouse yard. Earlier they were playing pirates, and the pallets connected by boards were boats sailing on a distant ocean. Telescopes in hand, the wild daughters sighted enemy vessels and evaded capture, and pulled the drying bedding from the line for goodness knows what nefarious purposes. (I suppose that latter is my fault, as I seem to have misplaced ALL of the pegs again, so everything was merely draped rather than firmly pegged down!)

The sky is such a blue. Changeable and often chilly English Spring still comes in the most perfect colours. The blue of this sky is saying, "Summer is not so very far away, you know."

I am thinking - of dye combinations and colour and the sheen of silk. My mind is full of plans and lists, orders and inspirations. It is a day for doing, for turning the kitchen upside down with dye pots and mixing colours and a sink full of steaming-hot yarn.

I am thankful - for my dad buying chicken feed for us and my mum offering a box of cereal for snacks. For always having an abundance, even when we have so struggled with lack. For healthy happy children, and all the time I get to spend with them - for the friendship between us, for being so comfortable with each other. For the strength in my arms.

In the kitchen - there is yarn drying everywhere. I dare not hang it outside when the children are so liberally spreading dirt everywhere they go! There is a sweet potato curry made and ready to warm through for lunch, and the table is stacked with piles of packaged-up books I am clearing out. Challah is rising in a large ceramic bowl, in the sunshine.

I am wearing - a turquoise flowery tunic which Ashleigh bought me when she was treating my children to hooded jackets and new shoes just before we went to London. Brown trousers. Comfy battered boots. My yellow amber and rainbow glass beads. Unruly unthethered brown hair damp and wavy from the shower.

I am creating - a slouchy black garter stitch hat is still in its ribbing stages, and I have almost finished making leaves for an enormous turnip (which comes with its own - also completed - brown textured knitted "dirt" drawstring bag). I have rainbow silks and some yarns drying, and more yarn in to soak. Lots more rainbows to do this afternoon! :)

I am going - to a community gathering on Saturday after Jenna heads off to Comicon and Morgan goes for a sleepover with her friend, E. Next week the friendly little AP group is meeting. We are hoping to see the new Muppet movie at the cinema after Martin gets paid.

I am wondering - where all my laundry pegs went to. Seriously, now.

I am reading - Winning Parent, Winning Child by Jan Fortune Wood. More Mysterious Benedict Society with Jenna. Fantastic Mister Fox with Morgan (AGAIN)!

I am hoping - the living room stays relatively tidy this morning so that a small crawling visitor has space to baby around... and that Martin is home nice and early tonight. And that the challah rises a little better this week!

I am looking forward to - seeing the sea again (so soon)!

One of my favourite things - is the glowing golden shafts of light that fall through windows and doorways on bright afternoons.

A peek into my day -

Simple Woman's Daybook

A Garden/Chicken Post

It's that time of year again already - my willow tree is fuzzy around the edges with softest green budding leaves. :)


Our garden flock is very happy and settled, there is less squabbling already, and they are laying around three eggs a day on average between the five of them in this warmer spell. June lays almost every day, as does Cinnamon. The youngest two Legbars seem to take it in turns. Bluebell lays about twice a week. We just started on our second bag of chicken feed (already). So our home-produced eggs were costing £2.60 per dozen at first, now down to more like £2.10 per dozen as the laying picks up (and as we have moved the feed bag to the top of the cupboards, so that the children can't keep sprinkling it all over the garden)!

(The pastel blue-green eggs are from the Legbars, Cinnamon's are usually slightly pointier and greener in colour. The huge pink one top left is from Bluebell!)

They've very soothing, and amusing, to watch. I only seem to get pictures of them in the run, and then half of my shots are always of June trying to peck the camera. They go a bit crazy when I let them out to free range, but they run back in here when something frightens them (like their rain canopy flapping too much, or a dog barking a couple of houses away).


Talia watches the chickens from as close as she can get, often with her nose poking through the bars. She comes back in saying, "Duck, nose, me!" and giggling, clutching her nose. I thought she'd soon figure out that it was better NOT to get pecked in the face, but alas. We learned by the end of the first week that we have to cable tie the large easy-access door closed, because it's just too tempting for the youngest three to let the chickens roam, and I'm determined to protect my vegetable garden!


Between the nutty children and the nutty chickens, there are daily cries of "help! help!" from the garden, and it's always a toss-up between it being a child stuck in the willow tree, one sibling chasing another with assorted toy weaponry, or a chicken loose. It's always when I'm right in the middle of something - like the housing inspection (which went really well, and they're now officially leaving us alone again for another year), or when I'm up to my elbows in washing up, or lifting a huge batch of yarn out of the dye vat. I need to replace my bench so I can sit outside with my knitting a bit more, I guess! (Such a hard life, haha.)



Maybe this year will be the year I manage to grow vegetables for more than one season. Maybe this year I will not kill half of everything I plant. Maybe this year I will finally buy a new bench. Maybe this year I will succeed in saving seeds from my veggie plants instead of buying more every year. I am nothing if not ambitious. So far at least is IS the year that I order from Real Seeds, and start off my first batch of seedlings in time. And it IS the year we finally get chickens again. And it IS the year that I plant some more soft fruit bushes.

Yeah, we'll get there. :)

(slightly unwilling) Spring Clean

Landlord's inspection again. Tis a very good anxiety trigger, especially since they're the council and think that poor people can't look after themselves have a "greater duty of care". Ie they object to mess. And four kids produce a lot of mess.

Because I'm anxious and struggling with feeling overwhelmed at allowing someone into my home for the express purpose of judging me, I have been doing crazy things like cleaning door frames, organising the tops of the wardrobes, and going under the kids' beds to see what they've stashed under there in the month or so since I last pulled everything out. Anxious cleaning is a near miraculous thing. I can't actually remember the last time I cleaned inside the air vents (I probably never have in ten years in this house).



Parents who do not lift their sofas to look underneath? I understand. Folk who don't ever buy products to whiten their tile grout? I'm on the same page. Adults who have roughly their own weight in laundry to get through? I feel your pain. I am not naturally neat, and neither are any of my children (so far). I love our warm colourful welcoming friendly home, but I have plenty of little piles of junk that I don't even see on a day to day basis - I'm really rather clutter-blind.

Anyhow, two days to go, and the house is under control. A tiny part of me says, "It's nice, let's keep it like this!" - A bigger part says, "Yeah RIGHT!" - And the biggest part still says, "We're happy, healthy, and busy living our lives and learning and DOING things, and it's nobody elses's business if there is a pile of dishes on the sideboard or clothes on the floor." No part of me is going to manage to say that during the inspection, though. I might be rather cross about the whole rigmarole, but the anxiety is still in charge as far as challenging policy goes.



(And if you think this means that I have Done All the Laundry, then you have never seen the size of my laundry pile...)

Oh look! A tour around my almost-but-not-quite-tidy house (yes, my carpet is always that colour... this is as good as it gets around here, friends! If piles of dirty dishes, and general clutter offend you, look away now!):

Seven Days

1. Klimt-style tree
2. Walk to the post office
3. Blue skies
4. Minecraft
5. Peanut butter chocolate cake (again)
6. What happens when Connor and Rowan find the chocolate spread...
7. Space Centre trip
8. Our new flock!

So, well, lots of ordinary busy peaceful days, and a very mad weekend! And yes, we have chickens again. I have missed their homely chatter and silly feather-brained exploits. The run is still sort of half-built, but for now they are secure and comfortable and we have plenty of time to get the arrangement right as they settle in. They are quite a flock of characters!

And Talia calls them all "duck".

Two weeks-ish: darker days at home

1. Reading
2. Super baby
3. LOOK MUMMA!
4. Sensory play
5. Poorly baby
6. Sorting shells (I can explain neither why she looks so miffed about it nor the sticky state of the table top she is sitting on!)













7. Emergency chocolate raspberry cake
8. Toddley sweetness
9. Mandala puzzle by Morgan
10. New dyeing challenges
11. Random acts of kindness - presents for me!
12. Pirate ship Rowan

We have all been ill and grumpy and tired and blah. The days are long and grey, and we have been mostly house bound for weeks at a time. There is always some light, something worth documenting, even if some weeks that's colourful yarn more often than picklesome mess-making children (yesterday they accidentally ruined three hours' work, and I did full-blown screaming). I want to share all that, all the little ups and downs and the normality and the striving and the failing and the trying again. I just haven't much felt like documenting anything at all, I have not felt the urge to write.

I'm back. I'm leaving a bit of a gap, and just starting from today. Today there are friends over to play, and wrapping presents, and popcorn all over the floor (again), and stripy rainbow tights, and shortbread, and dressing up, and Smurfs, and washi tape, and leaf poems. It is what it is. We're looking forwards. Spring is just around the corner.