Festivities

Yule came and went, with Christmas hot on its heels as always. This month has left me with the impression of a beautiful blur of festivities. :)





This is the first year ever that I have not prodded my children awake excitedly at around 8am - I heard them awake at around 6 instead and stood in the doorway marvelling at the sheer pleasure they derive from such small surprises as new socks (every year), pencils (every year), and a book (every year). :)





Jellybeans and hand knits!!





Christmas dinner, and in spite of having eaten kosher for a couple of years now I cooked ham for the children who requested it.



And we're already almost at the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, our giving quests all small ones this year, at least one little action a day to share the wealth of blessings we have. Yet another year where I'm wondering where twelve months has gone, and how all this time is just racing past!

Seven Days - my quirky daughters

1. Favourite outfits
2. Outlines
3. Museum activities
4. Pirates
5. Making gifts (and my awesome Jenna home again!)
6. Rowan's birthday blanket
7. Boxes!

Yarn Along - Boxing Day blues

This tiny toddler who so frequently is just too busy to let me love her, she is having a miserable sleepy Christmas.  They all had the cold and sick bug combination a week or two ago.  Then a week of first one then another being so tired and sad all day.  With the lingering cough, just for good measure.  Talia has had three days now of just wanting to sleep in arms.  Today, we can raise a smile, and she wants to toddle around a bit again.  Still, this is where Talia and I spent most of our day:

In bed, with a stack of fabulous Christmas gifts to read.

We ventured out for a walk in the rain with my mum, which really ended up not being much of a walk at all as the paths were all flooded and the rain was still coming down.  A cuppa, and some different adult arms to cradle little miss sadness for a while.  And this one feeling too miserable to even bother fighting to remove her hood!


Attempt to get out of the house, not much of a success, but at least I saw something other than my house today.




I'm finally past halfway on the cable and lace of Jenna's foraging hoodie.  I know she was forewarned that it would be finished after Christmas, but yesterday I started feeling a mite guilty for spending so much more time on commissions than on the gift she asked for.  I reckon it'll be done in the next few days, just to assuage what maternal guilt can be soothed at this late stage.  I'm feeling a heck of a lot less zen now that Christmas day itself is actually past and life on the other side has to resume its normal course...

And mothering this little ill one, not an experience which is exactly guilt-free for me.

A lot of breastfeeding, at least two warm baths a day, and lots of cuddles...  I'm starting to worry about her temperature rarely coming down for long; it isn't panic-inducingly high, just high enough for her forehead to feel constantly slightly too warm.  Maybe tomorrow this thing will finally break.  If not, it will be time to resort to paracetamol.  My trust in self-healing lasts just up to a certain point and no further, and it's sufficiently sad to see such a baby feeling so rotten that I start to doubt my instincts.  Well, we'll see what the morning brings.

Yarn Along: wherein tidying takes the place of reading...

Adult socks: finished!  The pooling has made these look rather like melted candy cane - which the consensus is rather in favour of liking, but I find annoying.  Hmm.  Well they are a really neat plain pair of warm comfy socks, anyway, and the unintentional stripes are kind of funky!

Now I have no commissions at all, I am determined to get on with some Christmas knitting and have cast on both Morgan *and* Jenna's Christmas knits.  :)

I haven't had my usual late night or early morning reading times, because Talia's sleep is still all over the place after her nursing strike.  I did manage to write morning pages both yesterday and today though, which is amazing and has been on my self-care wish list for years.  :)  Plus, I am attempting the "if not now then when" approach to de-junking and sorting the messy areas of the house.  First on the list, the old microwave (evicted) and the fish tank (newly scrubbed and with very much happier fish)!

On my draining board, well, I was planning some dyeing tomorrow but the pot just happened to be out already, so...  :)


Joining in with Ginny for a weekly peek at current projects and reading.  :)

Seven Days of...

Finding the joy...


















1. First blackberries
2. Worksheets and folders
3. What happens when Rowan has stickers
4. What happens when Martin gets up early
5. A little girl in my wedding dress
6. In the pet shop
7. A finished Christmas present
8. Games at breakfast time on the (finally clear) dining table
9. Picnic and park peacefulness

The Impossibility of Focus

aka a tiny fraction of the projects I am currently working on...

Oh look, I finally put buttons on some baby knitting.  Baby was due yesterday, so perhaps this will be worn soon!  And I did some Christmas knitting.

It's not much, but it was a quick knit when I couldn't decide what else to knit.  I have a long list of Christmas knitting that I'm barely starting on.

The summery cardi is ready for me to work on some sleeves.  The big shawl is making steady progress.  I'm loving the colours, and the mama whose shoulders this will warm is always in my thoughts.

I can't stick to anything much at the moment.  My head is a bit full.  A bit of this project, a bit of that, and at least I can keep my hands busy.  Really, what I need is to take a long walk in the fresh air, but alas that will have to wait until next week when I don't have a billion other things calling on my attention...

Knitting and Reading

First ever pair of knitted socks!  Oh yes indeed.  And a promise fulfilled, after two years...  Socks for my darling husband, for his birthday.  :)  I was terrified of attempting socks, but I really didn't feel I could get away with putting it off any longer.  For goodness' sakes, I've knitted my first cable, I can do lace, I've taken a commission for a huge shawl...  No more excuses!

They are the Broken Rib Socks from Designer One Skein Wonders, and I am still really loving that pattern book.  In fact, the library have kindly renewed it the maximum permitted number of renewals and I'm finding myself thinking I need to buy it.  It's on my wish list.

The short rows for the heels were different to short rows I've worked before though and, well, if I hadn't been so determined to keep my promise...  Patterns for turning a heel are the word of the devil.  I suspect I may make socks again, but it won't be for a while!

Still...  Martin was a very happy husband.  :)  Even if I did only finish the first sock in time for his birthday morning (the second was cast off just before I served up his birthday tea)!  First thing on his birthday, he was handed a Sock IOU and I sat in bed feverishly knitting heel rows while he ate chocolate and drank his first cup of tea of the day.

I have been reading more Star Wars novels.  They are going to leave a little hole in me now that I'm up to date and waiting for the next book to come along - don't you hate it when that happens?  Of course, aforementioned lovely (and very patient) husband will be glad to have me back...  Well, I blame him for buying me the last three books in the series a week ago...

I have switched my attention to yet more "books that may be suitable for Jenna" bought in charity shops for hardly any money.  The Fire Thief is a book you mamas will want to get hold of for any child who loves Horrible Histories.  It's fantasy fiction based on Greek myths and set partly in the Victorian era.  They are witty, human, bizarre, and not very nice.  And they poke fun at grown-up ways of looking at the world.  In short, there's not a lot not to love if you're about ten years old (or wish you still were).

Personally I'm enjoying the Edge Chronicles books a *bit* more, but think it will be longer before Jenna is ready for them.  They're almost on an age-range with the Eragon books - a little easier, mostly because they're shorter, but I make the comparison largely because they are the complex-detailed-fantasy-world type of fiction - and perhaps on par with Discworld books for readability (plus; they have young heroes and heroines... minus; no clever humour to carry the drier plot points).  If you're a twelve year old boy, you might want to nag your mum to get you The Last Sky Pirate and see what you think.  But read the Mortal Engines series first, because it's funnier and faster-paced.

Reading is, for me, like any other activity I love.  I obsess for days, sometimes weeks or months.  I devour twenty books in a row and then barely read a thing for the rest of the year.  Only this time, this current reading spree is lasting and lasting.  Perhaps it's being able to alternate it with knitting - a few pages, a few rows.  Someone asked me the other day how I get the time to knit, with four small children.  I said, "two words: benign neglect."

It's true - it's just not possible to helicopter parent with knitting and a book in your bag.  :)  Jenna will attest to the truth of this, as she got herself caught under a playground roundabout this week and skinned the top of her foot. I realised what had happened right at the point where she limped over to me...  My excuse is that there were lots of other trusted adults around!  And I knew exactly where the toddler was:  Trying to get on the zipwire by herself.  Health and safety, be damned!

(Oh, and that blue silk is finally destined to be an Aviatrix hat for my brother's soon-to-be-born baby.  Hint: don't try winding pure silk into a ball.  It ties itself sinuously into unknottable knots and then sits there looking at you insultingly reminding you how much you spent on it.  Use it from the skein.  It's easier.  Even with a house full of children.)

Knitting Reading Loving Quirky

I *love* knitting for babies.  My middle brother is going to have his first baby soon - well, of course, my sweet sister-in-law is - and I have finally started knitting baby things for them.  I'm trying not to get carried away.  I thought a nice little short sleeved Puerperium in neutral mustard yellow would be nice and modern and plain, bright but easy to wear, and most importantly NOT only appealing to my insane jaunty-rainbowish tastes.

That was all very well, until I found... The Buttons.

I was innocently looking at buttons on a stall in Wirksworth market place, when some little resin honey bees caught my eye.  I pulled out my knitting, and compared the colour, and...  I stood and debated for a while with myself (and hubby, and the stall keeper).  Too quirky?  Too ME?  Oh, what the heck, it would look gorgeous, and if they don't like it then they're TOO tasteful by far.  Hmph.

So Paul and Maarja, sorry.  Baby is now the (embarrassed?) owner of this.  Which is now my favourite *ever* baby knit.  I'd keep it if Talia was not now too round about the middle to wear it more than once.

(Oh yeah, reading.  This week I have read the entire Anne of Green Gables series.  Another Star Wars Fate of the Jedi book.  And The 1001 Arabian Nights.  Somehow I am also finding time to eat, put laundry through, and walk the grumps out of my recovering-from-colds children.)

Hard Work

This crawling business is really hard when your skinny little baby arms refuse to support you!

Nevertheless, she can get to where she wants to go, whether I like it or not.  And has every one of our hearts wrapped around her delicate fingers.  Or is that just our poor abused hair?

Slow but determined...  This is how independence begins!  Nothing for it but to move all the interesting but inedible stuff out of her way now...  She ate part of a sheet of drawing paper yesterday.  Sorry, Leanne.

(PS: Bat Snake was hand-sewn for us by the lovely Chris, a couple of years ago.  This is the first film he has featured in.)

More Ordinary

As with anything I have held in too long, it all comes out in a rush of words.

Martin gets most of it, as is right and fitting I suppose although when I'm feeling clearer-headed I pity him for it just a little bit. I'm telling myself he knew what he was getting into when he married me. ;) Yesterday was much better. This morning I had already burst into tears before he even left for work. I referred to myself as insane, and he kindly said if he thought I really was insane he wouldn't be heading off to work. Then he offered to call in and take the morning off if I was truly feeling that bad. Hmm.

I try to be balanced and open here about the ups and downs, but I have to say I'm feeling a little vulnerable and paranoid that I seem to lose a couple of followers every time I am honest about the painful stuff... Ack and now that IS self-absorbed! Deep heartfelt thanks to the encouraging words from so many others. :)

The big feelings, wow they really got their space this time after being somewhat bottled up, but... I can't dwell in them. They aren't a healthy place to live. Somehow the intensity can't last, even if it doesn't burn out and leave me completely. Basically, life goes on.

The Good Things get their due attention too. Friendships and fellowship and digging for worms.



Board games.

Other games.


Building lego pyramids and beeswax modelling=clay boats.



Making papyrus (with less than spectacular success!) and telling yet more stories. We are up to Abraham in the Story of the World book (and what happened to my baby's handwriting? - she is changing so fast).


And time for me to crochet a bit more, too.

We're off for a long walk somewhere after lunch today, and I have to say, I can't wait. Plenty of cobwebs to blow away, and I'm in need of a wide sky and grass under my feet, looking on beauty, and knowing that nothing I can feel or think is too little or too much to take to God in prayer.