About Me

Hello. Welcome, and thank you for stopping by.  This is my journal, about a life treading lightly and enjoying it, if we can make it, we do, but we don't make do.  Nature, the seasons and being outside is at the core of our lives, home education is thrown in the mix too. I take the threads of our life and weave them into stories.  The threads of a life outside the mainstream not looking in and wondering how to get there, but treading our own path.

Why sustainable?  Because I believe that we should try to be sustainable in all areas of our lives if we can.  Of course I fall off the cart, don't we all?  But as I pick myself up and dust myself down, I find ways to stay on.  As a mama I need to look after myself as well as my children, that doesn't mean that I come first, more that I need to fit my needs into the picture, otherwise I am not sustainable!

If you love to read about ways to make mindful decisions, how to embrace the seasons, being creative with wool and cloth, gardening, cooking up a storm in the kitchen or parenting in a gentle way then you are in the right place.  I hope I can inspire you and you me.  I believe sharing experiences is so important and helps us to grow and learn, writing online is bringing the world together and making it a smaller place.  It is creating a new society of people who live miles apart but who have the same beliefs and instincts about how to bring up our children and live simply to ensure the world is a good place to live for future generations.

So who am I?  I am a mother, it is what defines this time in my life.  It is an immensely fulfilling and hugely rewarding job, the toughest I have had to date.  I am married with two children (born November 2004 and May 2009) and we all live simply, within our means, in a small rural village in the North West of England.  I started a very part time job in March 2020, working entirely from home a small number of hours that I could fit around my family life, I have gradually increased my hours in November 2021 and January 2024 to the equivalent of a day's work a week.  I am also an Explorer Scout Leader a voluntary role which takes up a fair amount of my time.  You can read ten random things about me here.

We parent in a gentle, loving way hoping to raise caring and compassionate children, we home educate, you can read more about that here, our eldest started college in September 2021 after twelve years of home education. We grow vegetables and fruit but are by no means self sufficient, we do not have enough land for that, but we do grow enough to buy very little extra in the summer months.  I love to cook and use as local ingredients as possible, we eat seasonally no strawberries in the middle of winter here.  I share the occasional recipe which you can find here.  I am a vegetarian who has a health condition, crohns disease, which is thankfully very much in remission.  I used to exclude certain foods from my diet which is how I managed this condition, lately I have managed to rebalance my gut and now there are only a couple of foods that are off limits.  If I have any 'spare time' I fill it with reading, knitting, sewing and a multitude of other crafts which I blog about occasionally.  Until February 2015 I referred to my children as youngest and eldest, after then I refer to Alice (youngest) and Cameron (eldest), not their real names.

Thank you for visiting, I do hope you enjoy reading my stories and will return again in the future.  You keep up with new posts through one of the following

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You can find me elsewhere online here:

Ravelry        Pinterest

Or you can email me