Twilight hours

Life is very early mornings and very late nights, this week.  Life is mist and twilight hours and dew and feeling fuzzy around the edges.  Life is soft-coloured and frost-tinged.

Talia is taking inconveniently long naps and sleeping painfully few night time hours since her horrible cough just over a week ago.  The day/night reversal isn't getting any better.  I foresee an exhausting day of trying to keep her from napping ahead of me...



Outside my window... there is a washing line filled with naturally dyed yarn, indigo tones dripping with dew.  The garden is dishevelled and cold rain drips down my kitchen window.

I am thankful...  for regular updates from Jenna as she holidays without us, and for the kind of friend who comes and folds my laundry for me.

In the kitchen...  the dishes from last night are still piled up, and more yarn sits on the draining board with a rainbow of tiny naturally dyed silks.  I ran out of room to hang things up last night!  The colours are soft and sweet; the morning just *feels* those soft greyed peaches and blues today.

I am wearing...  new jeans that won't stay up, and a scruffy old olive green tshirt with tiny colourful buttons.  I wish I were back in my nightie...

I am creating...  Christmas gifts.  Always with the Christmas gifts right now.  I don't know if Jenna's cardigan will ever be done, but mostly I am knitting hats one after another because I am in mortal terror of not being finished in time this year.  This is the danger of taking on several commissions all at once and forgetting about the Christmas knitting.

I am going...  to take my sweet Morgan out for hot chocolate.  All by herself.  This may be the first time in her life I have ever been able to take her out on her own.

I am wondering...  why my toddler is hiding behind the airer...  mystery solved - she is colouring in her face with red pencil.  Of course she is.

I am reading...  some more historical fiction - S J Parris was annoying me with the first-person arrogant pretentious Bruno, but I am enjoying Suzanna Gregory's gentle murder mysteries.

Oh and I have "Loving our Kids on Purpose" on my e-reader, which is sitting uncomfortably.  I have the feeling the author has a different definition of punishment to mine, and the idea of a two year old only allowed to be with their parents if they are "being fun" just frankly pisses me off.  His heart is in the right place though, and I'm persisting - I will have teenagers some day and he seems to have a real love for young adults.

I am hoping...  for enough sun to dry the indigo wool and take some pictures of it all.  Oh and some sleep would be nice.

I am looking forward to...  tomorrow's planned walk and yarn shop trip.

I am learning...  to speak softly.  It is the work of a lifetime for me to be able to return a gentle answer.

Around the house...  Morgan has a pile of rainbow alphabet cards and is making words out of them.  She is sitting up in the window, behind the curtains, with them in her lap.  Rowan is standing on a stool with a bowl of cereal, wearing a pink beaded necklace around her head like a crown.  Talia is stacking bricks and knocking them down with some glee.  

Papers litter the mantle, and every shelf in the house needs tidying.  The doll house stands empty with its wooden furniture in a heap on the floor in front of it, abandoned in some kind of game.  The picnic basket is in the middle of the floor with a selection of books inside it.  The airer is drying silk bunting and knitwear.  There is chaos and colour all around.

One of my favourite things...  Talia's left dimple.

A peek into my day...

Simple Woman's Daybook

Seven Days (ish) - busy but good

1.  Journalling with friends
2.  Exploring a pigeon shed - and meeting the chicks!
3.  Baby the wrong way round in a Pizza Hut highchair
4.  Painted oak leaves on the working surface (blanks from Waldorf Mouse on Etsy)
5.  Rowan "writing"
6.  Morgan arranging things (as always)
7.  Talia enjoying the trolley my grandad made for me when I was a baby

It's just been a busy week.  We're happy and well and enjoying life, but we've barely seen home some days. These children and their social lives!  We have found some new friends, and importantly for Jenna, some friends who *also* don't go to school.  We have had visits with friends, planned and unplanned, gone to our usual library and museum days, had two free Films for Schools trips, and seen a fair bit of Ashleigh.  :)  Next week is going to seem very quiet in comparison!

An adventure for my Jenna

Today this little one took another of those tiny steps away from us and out into the world.  She has gone on holiday with grandma for a week, eight days without her family, and how hard it was to wave goodbye and give her all of my joy and none of my grieving.

She had a little cry this morning and clung around my neck whispering miserably how much she would miss me.  But the excitement won out - of course it did - and she is going to have a wonderful time.


This child, whose love language leans heavily towards gifts, she is really easy to show affection to in a way that she can actually hear.  And when that part of me that receives her asking for things as greed and uses words (inside my head) like "spoiled" and "entitled", well, I just have to be reminded that she is just as delighted with a love note or my remembering to pack her favourite snack or making a friendship bracelet for her or offering her a candle to light at bath time.  (I also need to remind myself that if she often seeks concrete signs of affection, she is also generous to a fault and loves to make and give gifts.  I can barely persuade her that she doesn't have to spent the whole of her income from her art work on things for friends and family.)  If only I could always remember to put my energy into filling up her cup rather than judging and fighting to meet her needs how I *think* they should be met!

Yesterday I helped her to make a beautiful holiday journal to draw and write in while she's away.  I let her loose on all of my stash of pretty papers and ephemera, and sent my best pens off with her too.






Spot those stickers made from pictures of her?  I couldn't resist adding them to the hundred free business cards from Moo.  Ohmygoodness I was so excited to get these.  Silly-excited.




How quickly the years are going by...  It astonishes me almost daily.

This week has been very very busy.  I have had moments of feeling the fear of all the spinning plates coming crashing down.  I have had, well, whole days, of feeling anxiety about the mess and chaos and not knowing what I'm doing.  The cure, right now, seems to be riding it out and keeping moving until the whoosh of all the things I'm juggling drowns out the judge-y voices.  ;)

Autumn treasures - and loss

Oh my lovely daughters...




They fill my cup to overflowing.






There is so much joy and beauty - and the touch of sadness, remembrance, grief, death.  This time of year fits it so perfectly, the inward turn to memory and melancholy, the evidence of beautiful decay and the cycles of life all around us blazing golden and dulling to brown.




Today, please join me in the International Wave of Light at 7pm, to remember and cherish all of those touched by infant loss and miscarriage.

I am guest posting over at Crafty by Nurture too, on the subject of baby loss, if you would like to pop over and see.





So many Autumns now, remembering loss, and holding all of those who share in grieving close.  Love to you today, all of you.  xxx

Seven Days: colour and shadow

1. Spotted on the sand...
2.  Rainbows on the line in the dusk.  (There is something about photographing silks that I am simply never tired of!)
3.  Spinners from melty beads.
4.  Night time walk with little cousin (who is as big as Talia already)!
5.  Morgan's project time.
6.  Shadow puppets.
7.  Busy baby.

Awesomeness round-up

So...  This is just a list of gloriously fun, beautiful, inspiring, online everything.  Enjoy!

Acorn bells craft.  Glitter is not optional in my house.

How to harvest Aloe Vera gel.


Ancient Egypt colouring pages.

How to make a dragonfly from maple seeds.  :)

I actually dreamed about this baby vest I'm so obsessed with it - the pattern, the colour, everything.  I think I actually *have* to knit it.

Wet felted leaves.  These are just SO pretty.

Fruit juice sweets with all-natural ingredients (and they don't even take long to make).

Free printable journalling cards.

Physics lectures in cartoon form. Love.



An incredible cob mermaid sculpture.

Another knit from my queue of lovely things on Ravelry.  Chevron scarf loveliness!

And printable Chocolate Frog boxes!

Not enough hours in the day!

Views from Autumning

We met some lovely home-ed friends at Calke Abbey this week, and when the delights of the large play area (and a den in some nearby bushes) had been exhausted we all wandered around the house this time.  Where the children were polite and interested and I had my first of four conversations this week in which a person who began with the opening gambit "Not in school today then?" has turned rapidly to "good for you!"

When we got to the tunnels from the cellars to the brew house, the children as one body decided the only thing for it in that dark and eerie place was to tear along whooping and howling as if the very fiends of hell were after them.  We had the tunnels to ourselves, and it was pretty tempting to whoop along with them!  Unfortunately the crazy was hard to switch off, and when they realised that we were walking over a grille in the floor of the courtyard passing over the heads of some poor unsuspecting people coming through the tunnel after us...  Well predictably they made ghostly howls down at some folks who took the game in very good grace and *probably* didn't start any new rumours of haunting...

They did quiet right down to have a look through a big fence...



...at these majestic individuals...



After our swim session the next day we spent a couple of hours making leaf rubbings (Rowan's current favourite activity) and colouring Celtic designs (Morgan's project of choice) and then went out for the evening to see my brother, his lovely wife, and their gorgeous baby son.  The babies stared at each other a lot, and generally found each other very funny.  It was great to spend some time with them, have a nice meal out, and see them thriving so beautifully.  :)

Today we walked my mum's dogs.  Lucy apparently doesn't usually willingly walk in daylight hours.  She's quite shy still and getting used to us slowly.  It was gratifying to see her tail wagging at us, and she was very protective of the children.  When they went out of sight in the woods she kept trying to go to them, and when they came back into view she made a huge happy fuss.  :)

































It's so gloriously Autumn this week.  :)

Yarn Along: rainbow stripes and classics

I am knitting not one, or even two, but FOUR small bags this week.  One has just been cast off and is awaiting embellishments.  One is now totally finished and has been made off with by my Ruby Doodle.  One is only ten rows in and taking most of my knitting attention right now.  And one is just needing ends sewing in (THIS one is my favourite, for obvious reasons)!

I got most of it done at Calke Abbey yesterday in the chilly play park, and on the way home in the car.  I might need to knit another some time, though I have used up my lovely bright red now.  Time for another order from Yvestown methinks!

The reading has been almost as prolific, and almost as thematic.  I have been picking up free classics and enjoying the e-reader while Talia has a bit of a cold and is sad and snuffly and nursing a lot.  Father Brown stories, The Invisible Man, A Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Man Who Knew Too Much.  I have finished the former three and am half way through the latter.

Life seems so sparkly and bright, surrounded by these wild children, out and about plenty, time as a family and chatting with friends, journalling, dyeing silks, knitting, reading - all sparkly.  I think this is the effect of gratitude - of spending the days counting off all the gloriously good things.  :)