Knitting, and, well, Knitting

I have been knitting a lot this week, but only little bits of different small projects.  I cast on Mary's Cardi which looks like a real faff but is so pretty I have decided to FORCE myself to knit it as written.  The Rico Poems is such a lovely yarn (I have to stop myself continuing to add "for acrylic" every time I compliment it), and is striping up beautifully in this little top.

And I'm still working on the little blue silk Aviatrix. (And the last scan showed that the expected baby is a new little NEPHEW!  So it will be just perfect.)  And I've worked most of a(nother) Little Coffee Bean in scraps.  I can't believe how far the scraps of that James C Brett Monsoon went.  I'll have more scraps soon as I'm starting a shawl that has some complimentary self-striping in it.

As for reading, well, nothing really.  A few more pages of Emma.  A few pages of yet another GPTaylor which I'm not even sure I'll bother finishing.  But no, not a lot of reading time this week.  I guess the yarn dyeing has been keeping my spare moments all booked up!  Pictures of pretty hand dyed yarn later in the week, I promise.  xxx

Dye and Stuff; Weekending and Weaning

We've had a wonderful extended weekend.  Spring is already turning to Summer before our eyes, and with barely a moment spare to pay it the proper attention.

We are getting along well right now, and pleasantly busy, and out of doors enough to meet our needs.  Bar one afternoon of fed-up-ness resulting from a certain grown up girl not wanting to follow instructions like "stay where we can see you" and "you must pass on this important message to your mummy", I am feeling pretty un-shouty.  I am shaking myself a bit this week though and reminding myself of what is age-appropriate and that there are so many more helpful responses than shaming.  *sigh*  I'm blaming the long month of illness.  ;)

Oh!  This little pixie creature!  She has started reading.  It just utterly shocked me when she started, I mean, this time it is SO unexpected.  She could barely recognise a handful of letters, and yet she sat down with me this week and started reading a book to me.  She did amazingly!  (Even though she still struggles to differentiate b/d/p/q and t/f!)  I do love it when I get a nice self-directed-learning surprise like that.  I was totally happy for Morgan to be a later reader, especially since early reading was such a mixed blessing to Jenna.  Yet here we are.  A little five year old confident beginner reader.

Martin and I have decided we must be amongst the most culturally out of touch people in the country.  On Friday night we decided to just up and take the kids out for a meal - on a Friday night, without booking tables, in town, yes.  We had to walk a bit to find a restaurant with a table!  Anyhow, when we came out, there were some fair ground rides lit up on the market place.

Morgan's face was priceless.

And then, really, the rest of my weekend was (bar a trips to swimming ad library), spent making magic and colour in my kitchen.  I still have a LOT of yarn to dye and orders to finish, but I'm very proud of the pretty colours we made over the weekend, almost everything went very much to plan.  :)

Meanwhile, the children made their own magic, as children do.




On Saturday morning, Jenna got through all of the things I planned to last her all week.  I can't decide if this is telling me to lay off planning helpful educational suggestions and see what she does next, or whether that means the planning is really doing something for her and I should do some more and see where that leads.  To and fro, back and forth, planning, no planning, Waldorf, unschooling.  Well, without repeating myself too much, I don't know what's best, but I do know she's happy and healthy and curious and learning a lot however we do it.





















What a busy, full, bright few days.

And this latest pixie baby?  She has started Baby Led Weaning at five months old, in spite of my *huge* misgivings about allowing her to take food so soon.

She was very determined about it, so now I am letting her play with some vegetable sticks and bits of fruit. I think on the whole I have to swallow down my panic and my ideals and stop fighting her!

Story Puppet Plays

Do you play acting out stories with your toddlers?  (Admission: it's one of those things I find really boring, that lights their little faces up, so I *make* myself do it, and find that their joy carries me and I start to enjoy it myself too.)

Here's Rowan telling The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

If I don't get the toys out and do floor puppetry with them very often, I find her sitting telling these stories anyway, using her hands as the puppets.  Admire that creativity!  In fact, I'm not sure the fancy toys add a single thing.  And hearing them retell old old stories in their own words and their own style, there's something astonishing and new every time, but the link to past generations makes my heart skippity (just a little bit).

And here's some creative little pigs in houses assembled by Roo.  :)

Go on, set up a story today.  Get out a game or a book you haven't had out in ages.  Do something different...

And if your toddler is anything like mine, you'll probably get a wonderful bizarre combined alternative story out of them: like how mummy goat came and kicked the wolf and mummy pig said that's not kind, use your words!  *beam*

Seven Days of Rainbows

1. Birthday candles
2. Small discoveries
3. Alphabet cards and Nature Top Trumps
4. Found in the garden... slightly worryingly!
5. The Odd Sock Game.
6. Saturday evening on my washing line.

OK, so the days keep on getting mixed up, and I never can decide if I want to run this Sunday-to-Saturday or Monday-to-Sunday.  Ah well.  You get six this week.

We're having a busy weekend here, an I'm feeling soo much better (finally).  Life is great, and there is lots to talk about.  And I am full of thoughts about weaning and play and I just can't find time to get those thoughts out and coherent.  Or even just on to paper any old how.  Well.  You get the idea.  Scatty is, after all, a good sign: this is back to normal as far as my life goes!  :)

Colourful

Well, life is never boring around here anyway...  These colourful little characters keep me busy.





Even when I'd rather be sleeping off my cold.  Or knitting.  Or trying to sort out the mess under the dining table.  OK, that last bit is stretching it somewhat.  I don't think anyone WANTS to know what might be lurking under my dining table.  But it's one thing I might potentially be doing in some alternative life where I have the time.  (Funny how I manage to find time to craft - though admittedly, that time is usually multi-tasking with breastfeeding Talia!)

Of course, for all the lovely toys in the house, a cardboard box is still the best thing ever.  A little someone has learned to splash in the bath, stick out her tongue at people, AND had their first explore of an old box.  All these milestones!

Yesterday, we found bones in our garden.  Very clean very large bones.  That I was unable to categorically place as non-human.  So we called the local police out and they took the bones away, because they weren't sure either.  Hmm.

The officers who came out to us kept trying to get the children to go back inside.  I was trying not to find it hilarious - but they kept saying, "Do you mind going inside?"  And, "Would you like to go back in, please?"  To which my literal-minded children say, "No, we'd like to stay out here, thankyou."  Well if you *will* phrase it like a question..!

I'm taking delight in this small disobedience now, anyhow, because on their way out the younger one said, "HOW do you FIND anything?"  Thanks eversomuch.  Clearly I invited the police round to tell me my living room is a tip.  *rolls eyes*

I wouldn't trade this for anything.  All of them really are, well, colourful.  I love them.  :)  I would love this rainbow house to be a bit tidier...  But I guess I just can't sacrifice the time to make it so when there are so many more important things.

My messy crazy quirky babies are growing up in a house where dinner is sometimes leftover pizza, and breakfast is sometimes icecream.  They are growing up in a house where there are sometimes no clean clothes.  They are growing up in a house where their choices are taken seriously, and they don't get only half a vote just because they are small.  They are growing up where there are adults who have passions, and who believe that the world is a dizzyingly beautiful wonderful miraculous place.  I think they'll get by.  ;)

This is our plan for the weekend:

Someone will end up with blue hands.  At least one someone.  Quite likely a child will get purple feet again.  My kitchen floor will puddle water as yarn hangs to dry on the door.  My washing line will be in constant use.

We will dirty every towel in the house.  I will forget what I'm doing, and felt something eversoslightly by leaving it on the heat too long.  And there will be rainbows EVERYWHERE.  Even if some of the yarn didn't arrive yet!

Home View

Confessions time again!  Hey, look, mamas!  Your house isn't too bad!

Can I just say, that invitingly clear space in the middle of the floor?  That's because I just picked up a towel and a blanket from there, because the towel was wet and needed washing, and the blanket was required by Rowan who was tired and curled up on the sofa again.

And from my living room to my laundry pile...

Yep.  About time I did something about that, don't you think?  *sigh*

In other news, I am so incredibly sick of being ill.  Am I sounding like a broken record yet?

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.)

Her Own Words

What's your favourite colour?
Turquoise.

What are your favourite things to do?
Swimming, monkey bars, eating, painting, Lego, playing with Talia.  And that's it.

How about your favourite food?
Jelly!  And roast dinner.

In that order?
Yes!

Do you like mama's cooking?
Yeeess...  I like everything.  Except vegetable stew.

Do you like being unschooled?
Yes, I get to teach myself.  And I get lots of time with my family still.  And I don't have to get up in the morning, I can wake up whenever I want.  I don't think I'd like uniforms, either.

What have you been learning about?
I've been watching Horrible Histories today.  I have been doing lots of experiments and finding out - floating science and how water gets bigger when it is frozen.  I can touch the bottom of the really deep end in the swimming pool now.  Tali has been learning lots of things, too, look - she can sit up now, and she likes to jump about like this!

What's the worst thing about being homeschooled?
I wish my friends could come for sleepovers every day.  That's all.

Is there anything you would change about your life?
The lack of plastic.  I really want plastic dollies, that you can feed with bottles.  I don't know why!

What do you do all day?
Watch TV.  [laughs]  Play, really...  Have baths.  Hold Talia upside down.  Read stories and interesting stuff.  You make me tidy up sometimes, don't you Mum?  Sometimes I get snacks when we're hungry.  I be cheeky and play with the camera, and make films of Talia crawling. I love being outside, climbing trees, things like that.

What is your favourite toy?
The camera.  [laughs again]  Did you put "laughs again"?  Why are you interviewing me?

I thought it would be interesting!  Can you tell me about your favourite games?
Star Wars, Harry Potter, and any games where I get to play with my friends.  I love poi dancing, and I want to do a show with Sophia.  I like writing plays, and pretending to be different people.  I play the spy game a lot too.  It's a made up game where we watch people!  We use sunglasses as spy gadgets.

What kind of books do you like to read?
Again, Harry Potter.  I like reading In the Night Kitchen to Roobanna.

What is one thing mama always says to you?
I love you, probably.

Anything else I say all the time?
You say sorry a lot.  Because you get cross, but then you think it over.

What is mama good at?  And what am I not very good at?
Lots of things.  If I had the pick the best things you're good at, probably knitting and cooking.  You're not very good at drumming, and you can't drive.

What are *your* biggest talents?
I was going to say painting, but that's probably not my very greatest talent...  Being friends.  Monkey bars.  Playing with babies.  I mean, entertaining people!

What do you find hard to do?
Knitting.

Is there anything you don't like learning about?
No.  I can't think of anything.

Is there anything you have to do that you don't like?
I don't always like being kind to my sisters  I'd rather not clear the dishes away, but I like washing them.  And I don't like going to bed, even when I'm falling asleep.

What is the most wonderful thing about being Jenna?
Having the best family in the world!

Now what would say if I wasn't interviewing you?
[laughs]  I can't think of anything else.  If someone else was asking me questions, I'd still say the same thing.



interviewing Jenna, age 7

I want to remember you forever.  You are awesome.  :)