Busy (Gently) Doing

We are now seven weeks into the year and my hopes of early last month that we would soon be able to get back into our rhythms did not materialise until last week.  A month of illnesses put paid to that.  We finally managed to find our rhythm again last week which was lovely, it is like wearing really comfortable clothes.  It is a school holiday here this week so Cameron is home with us, which I always love, coupled with the fact that most of our home ed activities also stop has meant that our restarted rhythm has stopped once again!  Perhaps it is going to one of those years?

I mentioned in that same post about words that I had written in my diary to hold space for me between each of the festivals that we celebrate here as part of the wheel of the year.  Now that Imbolc has passed I have a new set of words to carry me through to the Spring Equinox, Cleanse, Sow, beginnings, inner voice and rising energy.  I look in my diary several times a day as I use it for so many things, I have these words written at the top of every page for the weeks up to the Spring Equinox, as a reminder to myself.

My intention for the year of getting outside and walking somewhere every day has been mostly happening, there have been a few days when it has not been possible to fit it in but I am not beating myself up for that.  I have been out in all weathers, snow, wind, horizontal rain and sunny days which I do so love in the Winter.  The deep blue of a sunny Winter day is always so beautiful however cold the temperatures are.  It takes a lot of effort to go out when it sounds like someone is hosing down the front of your house, but when you come home to a warming fire and a glow in your cheeks it really does feel like the cobwebs have been blown away.  Time outside is just the thing when you need a break from work staring at a screen.  I tend to stay in the village during the week, usually walking on my own, venturing further afield with the family over the weekend.  It has got us out exploring places that are not far from home that we have never been to before.

I am really loving my other intention to declutter somewhere in the house each week, this seems to be happening each week on a weekend.  One Saturday I started tidying my cosy corner of the sofa as it had become rather overflowing with stuff and was not feeling very cosy anymore.  You know how it goes when you start with one corner of a room, I moved on to clearing next to the sofa, under the sofa and before I knew it I was over by another corner and clearing and cleaning that too.  Alice had joined in by then and as we moved around the room we were joined by Cameron and my husband too.  By the time we had finished going through every shelf, nook and cranny we had four big bags of books, DVDs and games that were looking for new homes and a shiny clean living room.  I have also since been through several kitchen cupboards too.

I managed to break a very small piece off my food processor which means that it no longer works.  It is the bit on the jug lid that slots it in and switches the motor on to turn the blades.  Without it the whole thing is, well, useless.  It is old, I inherited from my mother in law, so despite it being immaculate from hardly being used by my in laws I have searched everywhere online and no one is selling spare lids for that processor anymore.  I reluctantly accepted that I was going to have to buy one to replace it.  I love having a food processor in my kitchen and have struggled without one for a couple of weeks.  I realised that the new one is the first one I have bought in my life, my previous ones have all been gifts or passed on to me as unwanted.  I am going to be ultra careful with this new one.  I now have a large box of bits on the hall floor which I plan to sell on as parts, I am sure someone will want the rest of the bits, some have been barely used.  I really don't want to send it to landfill.

When I was sorting through the my cosy corner I went through the two bags I keep knitting stuff in and found a pair of socks that were nearly finished, they just needed the toe closing on one of the socks.  I am not sure how long they have been sat there waiting for me to complete that small task but it took me a few minutes and now I have another pair of hand knit socks.  That same bag had an almost finished pair of mittens for Alice in it too, they too only needed a few minutes of work.  She has been glad of them these past few weeks as it has been so cold and windy.  It was a bag of very nearly completed projects!  I am guessing I put them there and cast on the next thing thinking I would finish them off at some point and forgot about them.  My jumper is growing, I have passed the point where you divide for the sleeves (for non knitters this means putting the sleeve stitches onto scrap yarn or similar to hold them whilst you knit the body, you then knit each sleeve once the body is complete) and am now knitting down the body.  I have completed about 10cm/4'.  I am enjoying this pattern and loving the fact that I can see how my skills have improved when I knit a pattern like this.  When we reach this stage with anything we do it is always good to notice these things isn't it?   A reminder of what we have achieved and learnt.

I have not done much sewing this month at all, apart from the gift I made a friend for her birthday.  I made several birthday cards and started on some embroidery.  I haven't done any since making this bag back in 2020.  That was from a tutorial I found online, this time we drew our own designs onto the fabric, Alice did this straight onto the fabric, I drew onto paper first and then traced it onto the fabric.  My design is primroses, Alice chose mushrooms.  We are now using a painting with the thread technique that some friends introduced us to, it is so effective and makes you really look at the detail of the colours, it is amazing how many colours there are in a primrose flower and its leaves.

We had some exciting news here last month.  There were moments when I didn't think it was going to come to be. Back last year Alice decided to put herself forward for something and was accepted on a selection weekend last November.  Sadly this had to be cancelled as storms had closed most of the roads in our county, trees preventing anyone driving through.  The selection process was changed to one of two stages, with a two pieces of work to be presented in December either as videos or written documents as stage one.  She got through that stage, one of 36 out of 70, the date for the second stage was in January, on the Wednesday before she tested positive for COVID.  This had been considered and she was offered a virtual selection with two others which lasted an hour, the face to face was over a day and half with an overnight.  I was a nervous wreck waiting to hear, I kept thinking about the one hour she had to prove herself compared to the day and half the rest of the group had.  We found out on the Sunday of that weekend that she had been selected, Alice is off to South Korea in the summer of 2023 on a World Scout Jamboree, she is part of a Unit of 18 Scouts from our area and will be joining 4,000 other young people from the UK and thousands from other countries all over the world.  A trip of lifetime.  I am immensely proud of her putting herself forward for selection and gaining a place.  This is really special for my extended family as my brother also attended a World Scout Jamboree and unbelievably he also went to South Korea.  We now have the herculean task of raising a very large sum of money to get her and her fellow scouts from the area to South Korea.  We are doing it as a Unit rather than individually which makes it feel like a rather large sum of money, but we will all be supporting each other which I feel is a better way of organising things.  I think I will be living and dreaming about fundraising for the next 18 months. 

It has been quite a month!

Clocking up the Miles

Thank you to all of your lovely comments on my last post, wishing me well after my recent illness.  I am completely recovered now.  My husband who was unwell at the end of last week went into work on Monday morning feeling better, a work colleague had tested positive for COVID over the weekend and as he had been working closely with her last week thought it wise to do one himself.  It was positive too so he came home for the rest week.  I took several tests last week when I was unwell which were all negative.  I was due to take Alice to her music group on Wednesday and got her to take a test which was also positive, she has no symptoms and apart from her day on the sofa last week she is has been fine since and has tested negative today.  Cameron has to take a test several times a week for college, his have all been negative too.  All rather strange.

My husband being at home, meant that Cameron needed taking to college this week.  They normally go together, his campus is handily a fifteen minute walk from Dad's work place.  I have forgotten what it is like to do so much driving.  In the time before COVID I was doing over 200 miles a week driving every day to home ed groups, classes and meet ups all over the place.  They never really got going again before Cameron started at college and Alice and I have chosen a more sedate pace to our week with two whole days at home each week.  I have driven everyday this week clocking up nearly 200 miles this week never more than 15 miles from home,  I am not used to this now and I am ready for a quiet weekend.

On one of those journeys to pick up Cameron I was thinking about all the driving I had been doing this week.  I was reminded of driving to my Grandparents who lived exactly 100 miles from my childhood home.  We didn't own a car until I was in eleven or twelve and I remember the first time we drove. it seemed so exciting to be driving there rather than taking all day to get there by train.  It still took three hours to do that journey, there was only about twenty miles of motorway on the route at that time, the rest was on slow winding roads.  That excitement did not last long.  The train was much more appealing than three hours squished into a car, you couldn't get up and walk around when you wanted to.  We would think nothing of driving 100 miles nowadays, I am sure you could do that journey in a fraction of the time now.  Life has sped up in ways that are not always totally positive.

My complete change of routine this week has meant another week of not doing very much housework apart from the bare minimum (laundry, changing beds and a cursory wipe down of surfaces in the bathroom).  I found a routine at the beginning of 2020 which has been working really well for me (my routine is a little different to suit my house/other routines).  Over the Christmas holidays the routine kind of stopped and truth be told it hasn't really got restarted what with one thing and another.  I know that once I get going again it won't be long before everything is how we like it.  I am not after a show home but there are a few too many cobwebs and dusty bunnies for my liking right now.   I am really hope that next week is a more normal week in every way shape and form and I can get back into my morning groove again.

When I was sorting out using a new site to manage the blogs I follow I realised that the settings on my own blog were not right.  After many hours searching online disappearing down several rabbit holes I managed to fix the problem.  I also discovered how to fix a different problem I couldn't seem sign into my blog properly on Safari which meant I couldn't comment without it being anonymous.  So for those of you that use Safari, have a blog hosted through blogger, and you have the same problem you need to go into Safari > Preferences > Privacy and untick the box website tracking: prevent cross site tracking.

I dusted off my sewing machine over last weekend.  I did not do very much sewing last year at all which is not like me.  A friend had a birthday this week and we always make gifts for each other.  I had been thinking about what to make her since the beginning of the month and had not been able to come up with anything.  I tried all my crafting books for inspiration but nothing seem quite right.  I resorted to the rabbit hole of Pinterest which I have a love/hate relationship with, one thing I do love is the ideas for this board facility which shows similar pins to those that you have on your boards.  After a few minutes of viewing those that came up on my sewing board I found what I was looking for.  I always completely underestimate how long things take to sew and thought this would take all weekend.  The only place I have to sew is on the dining room table which has to be cleared for meals and I need to take time out to prepare them too.  You can see why my sewing projects takes so long.  I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to get this all made in a one day, a major achievement.  Perhaps that is where I have been going wrong, I need to reframe things and think that a project will take a long time, equally that could completely back fire!

Now that I am fully recovered I have been enjoying my daily walk once more.  My intention to make this happen every day at some point is really working for me.  Wednesday is Camerons half day at college and I didn't want to come home after dropping him off, I filled the time he was in college with a lovely long walk around the edge of the town.  I love that you can leave a busy main road and within seconds be in a completely different environment, in this case a delightful river walk.  I was amazed to find a huge pool in the river round the back of a busy industrial estate, there were so many birds feeding it made me wish I had bought my binoculars with me, it felt like a hidden oasis.  I have also restarted my morning yoga practice which sets me up for the day, I didn't feel up to it when I was ill, it has been good to get that going again.

The yarn I ordered last week arrived really quickly,  I came back from a walk on Saturday to find it had been delivered.  The colour was perfect which I was really relieved about, it is always feels like a bit of a lottery ordering yarn online when you are looking for a particular shade.  I cast on straight away and have been busy knitting, it has been the perfect antidote to all the busyness I have had this week.  I was delighted to find a new, to me, yarn shop in the town where Cameron goes to college.  I only had time for a quick look round so I will have to go back and have a proper look, they also do fabric and had some wonderful sewing patterns too.  I am thinking that it could be a place that is rather dangerous for the wallet!

I hope you have had a good week, bye for now!

Busy (Gently) Doing

We are now two weeks into this year and I hope that it shapes up to a more settled one than the last two.  One where the plans you make can get beyond the planing stage and become a reality. 

I loved the two weeks over the festive period when my husband and Cameron were at home, when we can put all the rhythms of our life on the shelf for a short while.  We were eating meals when we were hungry, deciding when we woke each day how that day would be filled.  It was slow, unhurried and a lovely pause.  It was good to get back into our rhythms once more, I thought that would happen in the first week of January but it didn't take me long to find out that most of the things we do would not be starting until this week so we have had a really gentle start to the year.  It is Winter, so that is how things should be.

I spent some time that first quiet week thinking about the shape our lives would take over the coming weeks, to the time of Imbolc at the beginning of February.  I read a lovely idea on one blog which in my usual way I have run off with in my own direction.  I write everything into my diary, I cannot manage with more than one place to write things.  I love the idea of words for a month, I decided I wanted words for six weeks rather than a month, to fit in with the wheel of the year,  so to take me to the time of Imbolc I have Reflect, Declutter, stillness, calm, rest and peace to hold a space for me.

I am back at work after a two week break over the festive period.  I love that I can do this from home, it is so flexible for me.  I recently took another role with a similar number of hours.  I heard that several key members of that new team left in December whilst I was ill, it was a bit of shock to open my emails and read that.  I am not sure if I am on a sinking ship at the moment, I have no contract yet, nor a work email so I am not doing any work until that is sorted.  There is so much to do so it is all rather frustrating.  I cannot believe that I have been in my initial role for nearly two years, I started a week before COVID put us into lockdown in March 2020, I have yet to do a face to face meeting.  I have only met a handful of my colleagues and volunteers face to face.  It is going to be very strange when we can go back to that, they are all folks on screens who only have heads and shoulders!

Many blogs I have read as we started the new year have talked about intentions.  I rather like this as a holding word rather than feeling that you have to do something.  Life often gets in they way of things that we want to do so if we make it an intention I feel like it changes things and reduces that pressure.  I have intentions to get outside and walk somewhere every day (which I have managed on all but one day when I was unwell) it doesn't matter where, or how far it is just about getting out.  I am loving occasionally wondering up the village after tea.  It is dark and so quiet, it makes it feel like a very different place to explore.  My walks have taken me mostly around the village so far, I have had snow, ice, sunshine, pouring rain and blustery winds.  I have travelled a little further afield but mostly when I have company.  After spending all day inside on a training course it was good to get out for a short while to blow the cobwebs away before cooking tea.

I also have an intention to declutter somewhere in the house each week, I was going to make this a daily thing but decided that was not going to achievable, there are two days in my week when I knew that would just not happen, especially if I was going to walk as well.  I don't see the point in setting myself up to fail on those two days.  I went through Cameron's clothes last week and found three t-shirts that he had out grown but were all in perfect condition.  Whilst I mulled over what to do them I had an email from the company I bought them from which included information about a new scheme they have started where they buy back items in good condition.  I love this kind of synchronicity, although I realise I would have read and scrolled on if I had not found those t-shirts that week.   I ended up sending back five items which is five less things in the house. 

At the end of each day I am enjoying time on the sofa with the fire gently warming the house and my knitting needles clacking.  I sometimes listen to music, a podcast or watch something online at the same time, depending on who is in the room with me.  I have a spot that I like to use, next to one of the tables that cleverly attaches itself to our futon sofa.  It held our 'christmas tree" until a few days ago.  Nothing got taken down on twelfth night does that mean I am in for a year of bad luck?  Our tree was a few small branches cut from our willow with handmade decorations on the branches.  It rather overhung the sofa restricting my space so I have now removed it.  The cards are down but the bunting and my 'tinsel,' not really traditional tinsel mine as made of coloured woven dried grass/plant of some sort, are still up.  The tinsel is rather old and delicate now, and is fiddly to put away, that sounds like excuses doesn't it!

My crafting is all about blanket squares at the moment, both knitting and sewing, both made with yarn or fabric from my stash.  I am confident that I have enough fabric to complete the sewn blanket, the yarn project I am less sure about.  I have measured that I need about 60 squares, I am twenty down and am running out of small balls to knit with.  I might just have to have a trawl of the charity shops and find odd balls of yarn.  These are both slow projects not because I cannot be bothered but that is the intention.  I am not trying to finish them quickly they are there to be picked up and worked on when the time is right, perhaps in between other larger projects.  I am debating on yarn to knit myself a jumper and haven't found the right one just yet.  It is hard when you can't see it for real isn't, not just to touch it and feel it but to get the colour just right.

A gentle start to my year that I really hope is a little more, dare I say it, predictable?  I hope your year has started off as you wanted it to.

Falling down rabbit holes

I have loved reading all the round up posts that folks have been blogging in the past few weeks.  So many inspiring, amazing and interesting things that people have been doing and making.  I have been amazed by the number of books that some have managed to read in a year, most lists seemed to be equivalent to what I would manage in a decade.  I hadn't made a list of books I read this year and when I did I was unsurprised by the fact that they were mostly non-fiction.  I rarely buy fiction these day, any fiction I do read is borrowed from my local library and as I have not set foot in there since March last year, not many books of this type made it on my list.   My total was 11, in case you are interested, but I also had a further 10 half read books on my bedside table.  

I have been doing a little bit of decluttering every day so far this year, I am not aiming to keep that up for the whole year, it is the time of year when I like to clear out, part of my winter routine.  I have reduced the pile of unread books to six, not a great reduction but a start, the other four have been been shelved to be read in full another time, or placed in the charity shop bag as they are not for me.    I like the idea of doing a little every now, inspired by this post rather than getting overwhelmed by trying to tackle it all at once.  I have a tendency not to start things at all when it gets to the overwhelming stage, procrastination is an art form in itself isn't it, but it doesn't get you very far if you never get started on anything.  So little and often it is.

I learnt a new, to me, phrase reading those round up posts, actually it is an acronym really, SABLE, have you heard of it?  Apparently it means Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy.  I should quantify that it was a knitting thing in the context that I read it, a stash, in this case, being a collection of skeins (or hanks or balls whatever you call them) of yarn.  My stash does not meet this definition by any stretch of the imagination, it is a rather random selection of remains of balls of yarn from my knitting projects over the years with a small collection of complete skeins which were inexplicably left over from projects.  I buy yarn when I want to knit something.  So it got me thinking.  About SABLE that is and why and what people knit.

The creative process is a very personal thing is it not, why we create and what we choose to create is unique to each and every one of us.  It is interesting to me as someone who buys yarn with a specific project in mind why people would buy yarn because well, I don't know, I am guessing they like it.  This is not a criticism by the way, it is pure curiosity.  I am more likely to create a SABLE for fabric than yarn, perhaps I should rephrase that to I am well on my way to creating a large stash of fabric.  I have a wonderful fabric shop in my local town and it is rare for me to visit and not walk out with some lovely fabric that fell into my basket.  I can't help wondering if I still had a local yarn shop to visit, whether yarn would be falling into my basket each time I visited there too, when you buy it online it doesn't have quite the same appeal for me.

Despite my large fabric stash my sewing projects last year amounted to a bag for my nephew for Christmas, I could not remember making anything else.  I am sure that I had my sewing machine out a few times I know that involved repairing things and I sure I made another batch of cloths as I usually do each year at some point.  I did start one project in September but I am still working on that so I cannot claim it as a finished project for 2021.  Thinking about what sewing I had done last year, and not coming up with anything made me wonder why.  I cannot explain why the gift sewing stopped other than I was not inspired but that is not all I sew.  I have made myself a few items of clothing in recent years but thinking about my wardrobe, from a sewing point of view it is enough, I don't need anything new right now.  

In that wonderful way that synchronicity can occur, as I was pondering this a new episode from a podcast producer I love, popped into my podcast app, you can find it if you click on documentaries.  It was a one off called Stitched up about fast fashion and amongst other things the lack of transparency within the supply chain which makes it nearly impossible to make a considered purchase.  Like so many things in our lives we are so removed from the processes it has been through it is hard for us consider this when we are browsing in shops or online.  The label telling you where it was made?  That is where it will have been sewn together by the time the fabric has got there it may have been half way round the world from growing, to processing, weaving, dying and whatever else needs to happen to it before it can be sewn into a garment.  

It would be so easy to feel overwhelmed, to worry about the current contents of our wardrobes, our stashes of whatever it is we like to buy to make things or whatever else it is we like to buy,  but it is not about that is it.  We cannot unknow what we hear, see and read, what we can do is think about it and be mindful in the future, what that looks like will be personal to each and every one of us.  I am not standing, or writing here in judgement.

So I have loved all the roundup posts I have read not just because they were inspiring, amazing and interesting but because they sent me down rabbit holes and got me thinking too.

Silent Connections

When I was seven I was given a key to a door.  You might be thinking that is rather a young age but I am not talking about a door to a building, it was a membership to the RSPB, to what was then called the YOC (Young Ornithologists Club).  I got a magazine every other month which I remember reading from cover to cover each time it arrived through the post.  That membership opened a door to a world that I loved and have continue to love to this day.

A few weeks ago my husband and Cameron went on a bike ride one evening, whilst they were out they saw Short Eared Owls hunting, a bird I had never seen.  A few days later Alice and I went up to the same spot with my husband to see if we could we could see them too.  We were richly rewarded.  When I spotted them through my binoculars it was one of those moments when we feel what we are seeing inside, words will just not do.  There were four birds in all, possibly two adults and their young hunting.  One of them flew incredibly close to us, near enough to see them without using the binoculars, we realised that we were watching them from a spot that the owls themselves use for regurgitating their pellets.  They were so beautiful, flying in the setting sun, the rays catching their stunning markings.

One of Alice's friends had a birthday recently, she was able to have an outside gathering of friends.  It was a gloriously hot day which was spent in a beautiful place amongst the trees on the side of a hill. A wooden platform built in the trees provided the perfect place to soak up the beauty of the woods, lying on my back watching the fluffy clouds slowly drifting across the sky, so relaxing! We had a walk up to a nearby tarn (a small lake in my part of the world) for a lovely swim to cool off.  The views from up there were hazy but magnificent and wonderful to drink up.

We have spent time in other lakes and rivers swimming, the view of the water giving a totally different perspective of the world.  I have been amazed at how long I have been able to swim without stopping, often in deep water, it is so so different from swimming in a pool.  The beautiful scenery makes all the difference too, not quite like the clinical walls of a public swimming pool!  It is so relaxing and calming.

The heather is in full bloom here now, in all its purple glory.  There are places where it looks like a sea with the wind blowing and creating ripples, the contrast with a moody grey sky was stunning on a recent walk I did with two dear friends.  We sat in silence in a stone circle, a really special place, surrounded by the heather, soaking in the beauty of the surroundings being held by it all, circles within circles entwined and supporting each other.

Yesterday was my shopping day.  It was so busy in the town, tourist season is in full swing bringing people to the beautiful area that I call home.  I do find it exhausting navigating my way through the sea of people, playing a game of dodgems where few people are concentrating.  I collected a special item which has been for a repair.  At the beginning of lockdown, whilst working in the polytunnel, I managed to snag my gold rope necklace.  I realised it was caught on something just a second too late, as I stood up it snapped.  I have been without it for weeks, months, a necklace that is always round my neck day after day,    I am so happy to have it back with me.  It was my granny's, a necklace that she too wore every day, a 40th birthday present from her husband my grandfather, she would have been 101 this year.  The necklace is a reminder of her, she is with me all the time, I have missed that comforting presence.

Some thoughts

When I was looking back at last year to write my last post I realised that lovely as it is to be reminded of what you have been doing from photos there are so many other things that we have done that are no photos for either because there was no camera to hand or we were too focused on the moment to consider taking one.

I have also been reading old posts from the past few years which reminded me of some of the things that I have shared on here.  I am writing posts once or twice a week which seems to be sustainable for me, this adds up to about five posts a month, I have realised that if I am to write about more of things that we are doing I need to be compiling more roundup type posts that cover a broader range of things rather than those that focus on just one.  I used to join a lovely link up focused on slow living, there were nine topics to write about every month suggested by the host, they helped you to focus on taking things slow, my kind of living.  Inspired by that link up, which is no longer running, I have come up with my own seven words that I will be inspired by and write about each month, like keeping an online journal.

Nourish what we have been cooking and eating using as seasonal and local ingredients as possible, maybe sharing recipes and tips.

Lessen our attempts to lessen our impact on the world inspired in part by the ideas of a circular economy of reusing, repairing or recycling by making something else, of buying less - especially packaged items, buying in bulk and decluttering.

Grow what is growing in the garden, what we are harvesting to eat/preserve.

Thankful what we have been grateful for this month, it could be many things or just one.

Create anything we have created be it with wool, fabric, wood, metal or words the list is endless.

Learn it is never too late to start learning and discover something new and it is always good to share this with others.

Fun saving the best and perhaps most important till last, we all need to have fun and enjoyment in our lives lets embrace it and share.

I would love it if you would join me.  If one or many of these words don't inspire you feel free to leave them out or come up with your own that do.  If it is not your thing I hope you will still visit here and read along with me each month.  Either way I could do with your help.  I have been trying to come up with a title/name for these monthly posts and can't find the right words.  I have thought about using the month name with conscious, mindful or focusing but they are not quite right.

Any suggestions?

I shall be posting my first monthly roundup on Tuesday 4 February.