After Lindisfarne

During our holiday we went back to Lindisfarne. I love Holy Island, it's one of those places that has great spiritual significance for me, more for its part in my happiest childhood memories than for any religious reason. The small round-bellied stonewear jug I bought there with my icecream money one year. The taste of mead, sipped cautiously to much face-pulling (I still don't like the taste of alcohol, so this is just as true of me now as at nine years old). The anticipation of driving across the causeway where silt sprinkles the road and wading birds idly observe our passing. The remote island otherness.

The tiny (relatively recent) packed-full museum is beautiful. We came home with some more colouring sheets and a bundle of rubbings, stampings, and tracings done by the children, for me to stash in cardboard folders (my go-to organisational tool for collected "potential future projects, interests, etc").



Today, Jenna pulled out some papers and started trying to design Celtic knotwork and illuminated letters. She grabbed a book about the Lindisfarne gospels, another about knotwork, and another about form drawing, and sat down to work at it.



The others wanted to colour some patterns, and I went looking in my envelopes of interesting things to see what else I had. Celtic knotwork inspired boxes. Yup, that'll do. Morgan remembered Secret of Kells, and Jenna put that on the laptop for them. Rowan tried to read the Gaelic verse of Aisling's Song. I pulled out some more books to see if there was anything they were interested in.





We don't often have a day that looks much like school learning, but when we do we REALLY do (and it's never the things I *think* they will want, in the order I suppose is logical, if I had suggested this it would have met with "no thanks" all round)...

(To make this a halfway accurate day in the life I also have to add that there was a couple of tile games, chicken feeding, soup making, beading, rough and tumble, Minecraft, nit-checking, crisp eating, sitting in cardboard boxes, and running up and down the garden shouting something about the tree chasing them!)











Yup, let's just call our ordinary life "eclectic". :)

Yarn Along - the holiday knitting and reading

Second hand book stores, and holiday time to actually finish books, are a dangerous combination. The pile on the left are what I came home with, and the pile on the right are those which I finished before we even got back.


I had read a few dismissive reviews of The Codex, but I enjoyed the first couple of Magicians books so when I stumbled across this earlier stand-alone story I picked it up anyway and loved it. It is disjointed, yes. Parts of it have no connection to anything else, and are just left dangling there tantalisingly. The writing is mostly deceptively simple, but entirely stunningly poetic in places. Lev Grossman certainly has a gift for writing fairly unlikeable young male protagonists (and I do love a book in which we are not *meant* to fall unquestioningly in love with the main character, and mainly would like to give them a good shake). The story is uniquely strange, desolate, beautiful, raw, and frustrating. I finished it in a couple of happy sitting-by-the-fireside grey and chilly evenings in the cottage. *bliss*

At least fifteen years after I read Maya Angelou's first autobiographical stories, I finally finished. A Song Flung Up to Heaven made me cry, as did every one of its predecessors. Maya Angelou's poetry has captivated me since my early teens, and her life story likewise is lyrical, devastating, wise, and perfect. I have so much admiration for this powerful beautiful woman. Her books really are a must-read.

Last but not least, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell took me a good deal longer than many other books of a comparable size. That is mainly due to its painstakingly furnished world and incredible level of detail; every paragraph is exact, and fascinating. No period flourish is ignored, no element left to chance. It is the kind of book that takes what would be in other hands merely an interesting fantasy story, and transforms it into the utterly believable. (But the footnotes drove me a little insane. This is not a book to easily read whilst constantly distracted by children.)

I also managed to finish the crocus-coloured Coffee Bean for Talia (though I cast off the sleeves after we arrived home):






I think she likes it.

Seven Days of Holidaying

1. Discovery Museum
2. Knight's Quest
3. Farne Islands
4. Tardis Tshirt
5. Lindisfarne quilt
6. "Can I keep him?"
7. Beach play

Bliss. What a week of adventures!

Yarn Along - portable projects

When I'm going to be in the car for a while, I need knitting that does not require me to either keep my place or look at my working very often. So, another Coffee Bean it is. :) (Of course if I'm saving a project for our little trip to the seaside and then do more than half of it before we even get in the car, that's less helpful...)

But, well, Talia needs more cardigans, right? ;) (It's my Arwen Makes hand dye as usual. Experimental colourways which definitely deserve larger batches next time. Also, the tropical blue/orange is going to become socks.)





Also, I REALLY love this book. :)

That plus planning beach walks and adventures, well, I'm a very happy mama right now! Oh, also, I have new project bags, look! Dark Star Designs and The Yarn Tree obliged with pretties, and now my projects don't get tangled in the change bag. :)

(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

Un-Wild Places and Nature Walks

Many of our wanderings are in and around urban housing estates and the city centre. Our walk to the post office takes us past new terraces being built, green-painted metal fences, neatly cut hedges, front gardens overgrown with a profusion of broad green nettle leaves, spider-webbed fences.







Our walk from soft play sling meets back in to town takes us past bluebells growing madly in a tiny patch of soil, corners of wild growing things, fenced in shrubs ringing the blocks of flats. So much beauty in the seed head of a dandelion and the glory of butterfly bushes left to assume sprawling tree forms where abandoned buildings slowly decompose.


Nature does always find its way, somehow.


There is always something to stop and examine, always a new plant to learn, a new creature to observe. Snails on a wall. A sprinkling of cherry blossom. Puddles to splash in. A leaf boat to make. Trailing sprays of bramble escaping across the path to disentangle from our skirts.


We find what wildness we can, right here where we are.

Simple Daybook - while the toddler naps

Outside my window the grey clouds are drizzling, leaving puddles on the grey pavements. The garden is muddy again, and the chickens are resenting the reduced dust bathing opportunities. The apple tree is pink with blossom, and the willow has its delicate green leaves back.

I am thinking of the to-do list without end, and basically ignoring it all in favour of knitting projects. There is laundry and more laundry waiting to be folded and put away. This afternoon has been a peause, a quiet in-breathing before we are off adventuring tomorrow. Almost none of the jobs I wanted to do have felt all that important after all.

I am thankful for a life filled with the laughter of children.

In the kitchen the shelves are a little bare, as we need to do food shopping tomorrow. I have something along the lines of tomato pasta planned for tea, but the children thankfully don't mind. They are in a hungry playing-in-the-garden-all-day phase and the happy side effect for me is that whatever I present them with at meal times is devoured with impressive speed. The down side is the cost in fruit and cereal!

I am wearing purple trousers and a green tshirt, with the thick squishy red lace cardigan. Hair pulled back out of my face, as always. Rainbow-and-amber beads.

I am creating another Coffee Bean, because Talia has grown out of so many smaller knits recently. I'm only making size 12 months, but she just about fits the 6 month size still so the extra room in the arms will be just fine.

I am going to see the sea! Really soon! (I can't wait. True soul food for me, and fun for the children too. *happy sighs*)

I am reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - I just started it in fact. It's really very good so far.

I am looking forward to a few days with the whole family together, nobody rushing off to work, and perhaps time to finish my book (and my knitting).

Some of my favourite things; a scruffy little willow star hanging in my window, puddle jumping with a delighted toddler, broken egg shells used in collage, bright floral skirts on a skipping five year old, and cups of tea on a chilly afternoon.

A peek into my day:

Yarn Along - Stripes, Fairytales, Sleep (lack thereof), and Sick Days

Knitting: these blue organic hand dye scraps were begging to be used for something lovely. I turned them into a Little Coffee Bean cardigan and am now on the hunt for the perfect buttons.

Another Coffee Bean required casting on right away to make a cardigan for Talia in some lovely pink, turquoise, and mint green, dyed just for the purpose. I won't be striping this next one, as I just wanted an extremely easy no-brain-power-required piece of aran weight car knitting for a jaunt to the seaside! How could I have left it so long before knitting this cardigan again? I'm starting to realise that between patterns I want to knit someday and patterns I love and know I want to knit again, I may never finish all of my imagined future projects in one lifetime.

Reading: Some Kind of Fairy Tale. Well, wow. I finished this today and it was another intense, lyrical, resonant, dark story with a lot to say about family and love, and the nature of the mind, and human kindness. I wouldn't say I *liked* this book all that much, but I found it compelling and it left me feeling satisfied and uncomfortable at the same time. More adult than The Book of Lost Things, but similar in themes. Similar to the Golem and the Djinni in the ambiguous but pleasing resolution in the final chapters. More positive and affirming than The Magicians, but more believeably nuanced and shadowed. (I am on a distopian fantasy binge... Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is next on the list!)

Shall I write another, "I am so darn tired," post for you all? No? Go ahead and fill in all that with your vivid imaginations, empathy based on your own parenting experiences, and randomly chosen phrases from previous posts whinges mmkay? ;) Oh, also, we're ill again. So you can imagine some whining about that, too, if you like. I'm starting to feel a little better today, so throw in a little something meaningful about life still being sparkly even when we don't feel so much like noticing.

Aw, thanks, look at that - you practically wrote the rest of my blog post for today for me, in your head. :) Here's an illustration of my day, in the form of Morgan with a cold pack on her hot little head (this seven year old spent almost the entire day asleep).



I think while this illness plays out I might get a lot more knitting done...

Joining in with Ginny and friends to share another glimpse into our current knitting and reading.

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.

Week in Pictures

1. Cherry trees in Spring
2. Pony Venn diagrams
3. Two year old nursling
4. Extremely proud of the dress Ashleigh made for her
5. Seder meal
6. Dance show
7. Easter egg cake