Moments of Stillness

Writing a blog post has taken more than a back seat this week.  I have had a full head of things to think about and I am not able to focus on writing when life gets like that.  It is what it is.  Writing does not come easy to me, I have to focus hard to get the words in a coherent order and to get right what I am trying to say.  I love it though and know that writing in this space has given me the skills to find my voice, my early posts are testament to how far I have come.  

I have intentionally not written much this past week.  We make space in our lives for the things that are important to us and that nourish us wherever life is at at a given moment.  Even when we don't think we are doing this intentionally, I am willing to bet that this is what is going on.  When we tell ourselves that we don't have time for something is that what we really truly mean?  Some of the time I am sure that is true, but I also believe that we, on occasions, don't want to make time for things, particularly the hard things, or new things or those things we tell ourselves we can't do, but we haven't tried, yet.  

When my head is full, and writing is not possible I turn to things that are, for me, nourishing.  Other creative projects.  In those treasured moments of stillness I have been reaching for my knitting.  The rows are slow on this complicated pattern, I am knitting it instinctively, looking at my knitting to work out the stitches needed in each row.  A pattern as complex as this would have had me looking at the written details every few stitches, I do love it when you can see for yourself what you have learnt.  Although this requires concentration it is not so much that I cannot do it whilst chatting or watching something, I also love that I see any mistakes instantly which I don't always do when I am following the written pattern.  A lesson learned for me on how I pay close attention,  I look and see my knitting in a different way when I am in charge of the pattern rather than referring to the written instructions all the time, I wonder if this is the same for you, if you are a knitter?

In those moments when the knitting was too much concentration, Alice and I have been needle felting.  We are organising a fundraising day on Easter Saturday, we needed some craft items to sell and wanted it to be a quick to make, simple and sellable project.  We decided on heart garlands, three needle felted hearts on a thread.  We have made about 40 hearts so far and will keep going until we run out of felting wool.  We have a wee bag with some wool roving, felting needles and our needle felting brush which we take with us when we are out and about and have a spare five minutes to whip one up.

We started meeting up with some friends more regularly and intentionally last year.  We spend some of our time together creating and crafting.  We made the window star one week, it took all four of us to work out the instructions between us, each of us bringing a particular skill which helps us to make sense of it.  Our paper was a little smaller than that suggested in the instructions so maths was required to work out what size we needed, we ended up with a slightly different shaped star to the one in the picture on the instructions but we loved how these turned out.  They do look rather lovely on a grey gloomy winter day.

The embroidery is also from this wee gathering.  We each designed what we were going to sew, mine is the primroses above, Alice's design is mushrooms, we drew onto the fabric and have been slowly stitching these as we meet each week.  I have loved the close attention you need to pay to the colours and shading.  I want to add something around the flowers once I have completed the leaves, I haven't decided yet what that will be.  The last embroidery I completed I made into a bag, I think I will make something with my primroses too, probably another bag, you can never have too many.

If I haven't already I will be coming a visiting your blog soon, I am sorry I have been a little absent this week.  I hope you have all had a good week.

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!

Snapshots of a year

I have not been blogging much this year, being away from this space means that I take far less photos, I really wanted to do a roundup of the year post as a reminder to myself of what we got up to and I managed to find a photo of something we or I had done for each month.   So here are some of the things that I and the family have been doing this year.  

January bought us snow, lots of it, which meant that we were out sledging at every opportunity.  I love how the familiar world around you changes so much when it snows.  It becomes quieter and when the sun shines really sparkly.  The sound of snow creaking underfoot is unique to this time of year.   I do love a really cold sunny winters day when you wrap up warm and venture out.  

February is usually a grey, cold, wet month when I find myself wanting to be inside all the time, it would have been very easy to hibernate inside all month but as we were still in lockdown I was determined to get out, whatever the weather, for a daily walk somewhere.  We did have rare instances of sun, these were the only time the camera came out......

March saw the end of months of hard work by Cameron as he completed his Bronze Arts Award.  The final piece of this project was for him to run a tutorial based on the skills he had learnt for the other elements of the award.  He chose to run a tutorial on drawing cars which, as we were in lockdown at the time, had to be held online.  I wasn't sure how he manage running a tutorial, when he started this level of the award scheme he was nervous about this element.  He was totally ready for it and it was a great success, it lasted a whole hour and he had some lovely feedback from the children who joined him and their parents.  He did not dictate to the participants what kind of car they should be drawing, he just gave them tips and advice on each section related to different types of cars.  He chose to draw a vehicle himself at the same time, and the photo above is the car that he drew.

In April Alice was finally able to have the haircut that she had waited so long for.  She had mentioned back in November 2020 that she really want to have her hair cut short, at the time we were in a lockdown so I was not able to make an appointment.  When that was possible again, a few weeks later, the first appointment I could get was for January that ended up being cancelled due to another lockdown.  My lovely hairdresser who knew why Alice wanted this appointment contacted me as soon as she was able to start working again to make a date.  Alice had hair down past her waist and she wanted to donate it to a charity who make wigs for children whose hair has fallen out.  They particularly wanted donations over 30cm.  Alice donated a whopping 50cm/20 inches!  My hairdresser, who has been cutting my hair for over 20 years, would not take a penny for cutting Alice's hair she was so impressed with what Alice was doing for someone else less fortunate than her.

May was a rather chilly and blustery month with a fair amount of rain.  It is Alice's birthday month and she really wanted to camp with her friends this year.  She was not able to meet with anyone last year and was hopeful that she could get to spend time with friends whatever the weather threw at us.  It ended up being a very wet cold night but they still had a wonderful time.  They had a wonderful evening together cooking tea before the weather broke.  I am not sure that much sleeping happened as they all looked very tired when we went to pick them up!  Alice's best friend lives on a small farm and they were able to camp there, they had amazing views from their tent.  I am so glad that she got to spend her birthday with friends this year.

After a chilly blustery May,  June was much warmer and sunnier.  My husband had booked a weeks leave and it coincided with some lovely dry, warm weather.  We decided to make the most of the weather and the fact that the children are now much taller and stronger this year to take to the hills near our home for a walking expedition.  We planned our route to pass as many tarns (small lakes) as possible and packed our swimming stuff along with tents, provisions and other kit for an over night in the hills.  We managed to swim in three tarns over the two days, one right next to where we camped.  It was a beautiful spot well away from the crowds we had encountered as we set off that morning.  Whilst walking back to the car the following day we explored a few old mines and quarries, long abandoned but a reminder that the hillside would once have been a busy, noisy and bustling place. 

My husband had another week of leave in July, it was a wetter week this time but we still managed to find a two day window to do another walking expedition into the hills.  Again we started off from a popular place with tourists, we got ourselves ready the night before and set off as early as we could, once Cameron had finished work, to make sure we had a good spot to park.  We didn't see another soul until we returned to the car the following day.  We stopped to swim in the stream on our way up the valley reaching a high tarn where we pitched our tents.  We left Cameron to have a snooze (he got up really early to do his paper round so we could set off early) and headed up to the ridge above the tarn, the views were amazing from there and the photo above is taken looking down from there towards our tents which you can just see in the centre of the photo, above the tarn which we swam in to cool off after our ridge walk.  We woke the next morning to find we were in the clouds which was a little different to the beautiful sunny day the day before.  We swam in a tarn on the way down which was a really strange experience as it too was in the cloud and you could not see very far!  When we returned to the car there were so many people around, mostly enjoying themselves by the large lake in the valley.  We took the opportunity to swim in there too, it is a really deep one and we were amazed at how clear it was.  We wore wetsuits for that swim (we carried a basic swimming kit into the hills) which meant that we could stay in for longer, we only got out as we were hungry, the water was so warm we could have stayed in for hours.

August is a bank holiday month in this part of the world and often falls on a friend's birthday.  He wanted to go sea kayaking this year and ask my husband and I to join us as we are more experienced than him  and his wife.  We were blessed with glorious weather for most of the trip, the first day was rather foggy to start which made kayaking rather interesting as we could not see very far at all.  We were out for the best part of three days, paddling round two islands and camping in two different spots on the largest of the two.  We saw lots of seals and some birds species that I have not seen in years.  The wind picked up on the final day which made crossing back to the mainland rather interesting!  This was the first trip where we have left the children with friends and travelled so far away.  Over the same weekend Cameron also completed his expedition for his Bronze D of E Award which made arrangements for him rather complicated.  As I was writing this I realised that this is the only time I left the county where I live in the whole year,  I haven't travelled far in 2021!

Alice and I had a lot of adjusting to do in September when Cameron left us both to start college, after twelve years of home educating this was a big change for all of us.  We found things to do, her and I, including going out to a spot a short walk from home to do some nature study for a Scout badge.  We live in an area rich in geology and right where we live we have limestone and granite side by side.  She chose this limestone escarpment to focus on, we found a rich variety of flowers and learnt a few more names for grasses.  We visited a few times and were there for the Autumn Equinox, we had a small ceremony together and a short eared owl joined us for a fly by as we were pausing at the end.

October saw me completing two jumpers for myself.  The green one I started back in August pausing in September to knit up a smaller version of the pattern for my nephew as a birthday present.  I loved it so much that I bought some more yarn and knit another.  I have no idea how I have lived without these jumpers I wear them all the time, they are cosy and warm, fit me perfectly (I have long arms and bought jumpers are never long enough) and go with everything in my wardrobe.  This bought my knitting tally of the year to four jumpers and two cardigans along with several hats socks, mitts and cowls, the other jumper was for my mum who although a knitter herself is not very quick, I was very honoured to be asked to knit for her.  One of the cardigans was for me, the other a birthday gift for a dear friend who turned 50 in 2021.

Back in September Alice and I started going to a newly created home ed group, like all new groups it took a while to feel settled and established and is now a lovely, welcoming and friendly group of all ages.  Someone suggested that we do some knitting as a group (having watched me knit whilst there) and we came up with the idea of knitting squares to make a blanket to donate.  It has been a lovely social activity with upwards of 20 children and adults, some weeks, all sat around knitting and nattering.  Some could already knit, some were rusty and needed reminding of the skills and others were complete beginners.  The blanket is growing slowly and we now have 27 squares.  We are hoping that this will be an ongoing project and once one blanket is complete we will start on another.

A few years ago I started the slow transition to wearing a different kind of shoe, some call them barefoot shoes, I would call them super comfy and totally transformational.  This kind of shoe has an ultra thin sole (to mimic walking barefoot), are totally flat with no heel at all and have a lovely wide toe box to allow your toes to spread and sit as they need to without being squished.  The slow transition has not been because I don't like these shoes but because they are expensive (but worth the expense) or I have been searching for second hand pairs which don't come around in my size and a style that I like and works for my feet that often.  I am slowly replacing each type of shoe I own and for my birthday I received a new pair of walking boots.  These have been used a lot in December as we have been out for many walks especially during the Christmas and New Year holiday period.  I am loving these boots which are super comfy and have completely stopped any pains in my knees that I used to get after long walks.   I am now totally confident about crossing the many streams we have in this part of the world as it is so much easier for me to find my balance, my foot moulds around the rocks as I cross.  I got a second pair of shoes from this company for Christmas, the fabric of which is made from recycled coffee grounds!

Thank you for all of your lovely comments when I started blogging again recently, after a year away.  It was so lovely to be welcomed back into the lovely blogging community with open arms.  I have been really touched by your kind words.  I am looking forward to reading along with you and sharing more of my own adventures in 2022.

Sustainable Living October

This blog has always been about living life in a mindful and intentional way, for me this means that most of the decisions we make have been thought about carefully, even if we decide to continue as we are a decision has still been made.  When we take a product from a shelf in a shop or tap a button on a screen, should we stop and think about how it has got this point before we do so?  It can be hard to make decisions over many aspects of our lives, we are often far removed from the means of production and it can be hard to find out how this operates.  Maybe we shouldn't be thinking is there a more sustainable replacement for something, rather do we really need it at all?

To help me keep on track I have come up with some words that I will be using to keep my decision making mindful and intentional, and my life in general as sustainable as I can make it.  If you you want to join me you would be most welcome, either using the same words for inspiration or your own that are more meaningful to you.  These are the words (you can read my thoughts behind some of them here and here) that I have been using in October: 

Nourish

I bought a new to me cookery book this month, one that I thought would be perfect for the autumn and winter months.  I have made several dishes from this book this month and they have all been delicious.  Some are a meal in themselves some you need to cook a little something extra, well I do here with my teenage son with hollow legs!  I love that you put everything in one dish and put it in the oven where it does its thing.  

I have been baking more this month as a result, the oven is on already so why not?  I love the smells that waft through the house when you have something baking in the oven, I have realised that I am an autumn and winter baker.  I seem to have had a lot of bananas that were in desperate need of eating up this month, getting to that almost black stage which is perfect for baking.  We have had several loaves of Banana bread and I found a delicious banana and cacao granola recipe in one of my recipe books too, each batch does not last long!

Lessen

A few years ago we were given a piece of furniture by a friend who was moving house.  It is one of the few pieces of furniture we own, so much we have built into our house.  It sits in Alice's bedroom and amongst other things it houses my yarn and some of my fabric.  It was always a pain trying to find anything in there, I always want the things that are at the back!  I knew that whatever I bought would not fit the space in such a way to make the best use of it so I have long wanted to make something, I think this project has been on a list in the back of my diaries for the last three or four years!  The cardboard box that held the fabric in was slowly falling apart, I had to be really careful each time I took it out as it was in danger of falling apart completely.  I bought the outer fabric for these storage boxes, the lining was from my stash, they are also lined with a iron on interfacing which stiffens it slightly (although they collapse inwards when they are empty).  I sewed handles on to the front of the boxes to make them easier to get in and out.  I originally had the left and middle parts of the cupboard and I measure up to make boxes for those two parts.  When I came to put them in I had failed to notice that there was a post right in the middle of the middle part of the cupboard - oops!  Alice had a few bits in the right part and she has kindly taken over the middle.  As a trade off she has most of the small shelf which you can just make out in the rather dim photos (it has been really dark here this month), as I was able to put most of the stuff I had stored there into my boxes.  I am pleased with the way these have turned out and it makes it so much easier to get to my yarn and fabric now.

Thankful

We were due to fly abroad at the beginning of November for a month.  We have been waiting to find out what would happen with our flights this month.  They were finally cancelled about ten days before we were due to fly.  We had already made the decision that we would not travel, even if the flights went ahead.  The cancellation meant that we were entitled to claim a refund should we want to which is what we decided to do.  The company that we booked through have been amazing, the customer service has been fantastic, I cannot fault it.  Our advisor has kept us informed with what they were doing throughout the process, even when they had no information to give us they still contacted us to let us know they were keeping an eye on things, I always felt I was in safe hands.  It would be lovely to be able to travel again at some point in the future, when that time comes we will be using this company again.

Create

I finished my hat that I started last month it has become my new favourite.  I am still not sure about the very pale pink, I ripped out the initial colour I used (that is also in the middle) as it just did not show.  The section above this where the decreases start was rather confusing in the pattern.  A search through other projects suggested that others had gone their own way at this point so I did too.  I am not sure how I managed to knit the pattern from this point, when I thought about it too hard I made many mistakes!  There is a part of my brain that just knows when something is right but if I was to try to explain it to anyone else I would be hopeless.   The light colour of this hat was the remaining yarn from my shawl, I still have lots of it left, so I will be looking for other projects to make with it, maybe some mitts?

Grow

My garden has become pretty dormant this month.   I have not harvested a single thing.  The leeks are nearly ready to eat and I am pondering whether to leave them other the winter in the hope that they might grow a little fatter come the Spring or to eat them now.  My cabbages and broccoli are well established and will now over winter in the garden also ready for the Spring.  I really need to get into the polytunnel for a tidy up and to pot out the kale and pot choi that I have in pots as it will more than likely continue to grow over the winter and hopefully provide me with some greenery over the winter months.  I have been neglecting my garden this month!

My sunflowers waited until October to flower!  One is in the photo at the top of this post.  I have never known them to flower so late, I thought they were not going to flower at all this year.  By the beginning of last month they had finally started to grow small flower heads, I think the warm spell we had in September was just enough to give them the energy to flower.  They were a cheery sight as the temperatures started to drop.

Sanctuary

Despite the very wet weather this month I have managed to get out at least once a week, sometimes more for a walk.  We have had a beautiful display of autumn colours this year, so often we will have a blustery storm early in October and all the leaves will be blown off the trees before they have had a chance to put on their wonderful display.  This year the storm waited until the end of the month.  There have been some days when getting out of the car or the house has felt like a rather crazy thing to do as the rain was coming down so hard, but get out we did and we have had some wonderful walks.

Learning

I have been listening to many podcasts about the election in North America, I cannot profess to fully understand how the election works but I feel that I understand more than I did at the beginning of the month.  I would like to extend my thoughts to all my North American readers as you enter into this time of election and uncertainty.  I hope that whatever the future holds it is brings with it the certainties that so many of you have been writing that you need to have in your lives as this tumultuous year draws to a close.

Fun

It was my birthday this month, I am going to post about that in a separate post, but it has been a month of celebrations for me.  I realised early on this year that my plans to have a big party were probably not going to happen, so I sent out an invitation to a handful of friends to ask them if they could spend some time with me to help me celebrate.  I have been out on walks, paddle boarding (new to me) and had some lovely phone conversations with friends who live far from me.  I have not quite managed to organise all the meet ups yet and this latest lockdown will mean that they will have to pause.  I have loved this intentional time with my friends, uninterrupted conversations with lovely people what more could I ask for?

Thank you once again for reading through this very long post,  I realise that it may seem that I do an awful lot, I suspect you do to, if you were to write it all down like I have here.  You are most welcome to join me, either use the same words or your own which mean more to you, let me know in the comments below and I will head over and have a read.  I will post my Sustainable Living November roundup on Wednesday 02 December.

It was worth the wait.......

 

Way back at the beginning of September I shared a peak at the shawl that was off the needles and waiting on buttons.  I had bought the twenty five that were in stock at my local sewing shop and they were going to get some more in, so I could purchase the five that I needed.  When this has happened in the past it has been a couple of weeks, but we are not living in normal times are we, several weeks later and there were still no buttons.

They were having great difficulty getting any more stock, compounded by the fact that most weeks that I went in the staff did not really know what was happening, the owners of the shop were not around on the day I visited for over a month.  When I finally spoke to the owners, a week later she had got hold of some.  She was very worried that they were different and I would not like them.

I prefer them to the original ones I bought, which were yellower and not so interesting.  These are slightly stripped and are a much better match to the yarn.  I am told they are made with olive wood, I love that no two are the same.  I had to remove the twenty five that I had already sown on, very carefully so as not to damage the yarn.  At one point I thought I had pulled a hole in the yarn, but I was looking at the buttonhole band not the button band, oops!

I could of course have bought some buttons online but I like to look at them, feel them and check them for size.  I also love my local sewing shop, it is a treasure trove of fabric and notions, I am so lucky to have such a good shop in my local town.  They also only charged me for the extra five buttons and trusted me to remove and return the twenty five I had previously bought.  I love that I am a valued enough customer that I can do that.  

My shawl is slightly longer and narrower than the suggested finished measurements, it is almost long enough to be a blanket at 160cm (63") x 66cm.  I bought the yarn at a local -ish yarn store, it is their own yarn.  Its is wonderfully soft and has the perfect drape for this shawl.  I had quite a bit of it left and have already knit a hat and am now pondering what to knit with the rest.

The buttons that I waited so long for are on one of the short sides and halfway down one of the long sides, the other half is button holes.  The other short side also has buttonholes along its length.  There are many ways to wear this shawl, I love buttoning it up and making it into the poncho, I have also been experimenting with draping round my neck, I am sure I will find many other ways to wear it.

Pattern: Everyday Shawl

Yarn: Methera in Natural Grey

Joining Kat

Replenishing and Nourishing

Thank you all for the lovely comments on my last post,  I am glad that you all enjoyed the photos of my part of the world.  My cup is still full from that adventure, it has been further filled by another swim on Sunday, this time with my whole family.  The weather forecast was even better than we expected, once again I swam with the sun on my face the whole time, it makes such a difference, that little bit of warmth, especially when the water is so cold!

I know that wild swimming is not everyones cup of tea, it is good to make the time in our lives for those things that replenish and nourish us isn't it, whatever that looks like.  In recent years I have come to realise how important these things are in my life.  There is a pressure in society to always be busy and productive but this isn't helpful or useful if that leaves us feeling tired and worn out all the time.  I am still holding onto hope that COVID will slowly start to turn the tide on this pressure and we will start to value those things that can't be measured.

So onto another pastime that fills my cup up, knitting.  My shawl is not ready to share more than this, I am still waiting on buttons to come into stock at my local sewing shop, I have sown on the the 24 buttons that I have, I bought 25 but one has mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the house....I need another five, I just need to be patient.  The weather has warmed up here a little so I am not in need of this right now, but I do hope they come back in stock in time for when the temperatures eventually start to drop.

In the meantime I have a whole skein of this wool left over.  I think the amount I needed would have taken me a few metres over the skeins that I used, so the fifth was a just in case skein.  I have been ratching through my stash and found some small balls of yarn, mostly left over from other projects, that I think will work to make some kind of colour work hat, I am still looking at patterns.  I also need to do a few swatches to work out which colours and yarns would be suitable and work together.

My hat is now off the needles and finished and I have been stash diving again and found another yarn for some mittens.  I actually had the ball band from this yarn so I could work out how much I had left without resorting to guesstimating with my, not terribly accurate for the job, weighing scales.  I have a set of traditional kitchen scales, you know the sort with weights.  When I was weighing the yarn for the hat I realised that the scales are not terribly well balanced which is fine for cooking as long as everything is wrong together it won't matter, but for weighing yarn to work out how much I have left, well it is a best guess.  These mitts are a really quick knit, for me, I am sure some people could do them both in a day!

So my knitting is all about small projects at the moment, Alice needs a new cardigan, the last one I knit is now too short in the arms and she has worn it so much she has worn through both elbows!  She is really reluctant to part with it, I need to see if I can get the same yarn and knit the next size up.

I have some birthday knitting to do for a friend, it was my present to her, to knit her a cardigan.  Covid has made it difficult to sort this, but we have finally chosen a pattern, now onto the yarn......it is a 4ply knit so I am keen to get this on the needles soon as I am really slow knitting up in such thin yarn.

What replenishes and nourishes you?

Joining with Kat this week.

Sew Happy

One of things I thought I would have lots of when we were in lockdown is time.  Oh how wrong I was.  I thought this might be, because we didn't have to be anywhere by a certain time, I was not using my time so efficiently.  So many of the jobs I do still need to be done, the house needs cleaning, the laundry bin needs emptying, food needs thinking about, buying and cooking and of course there is the education of my children.  We have done this from our home for years but now we found ourselves at home, and rather than their needs being fulfilled in part by me and in part by classes, groups, and playdates on every week day, now it was just me and my husband when he was on furlough.  

My time to do the things that I wanted to do was in small pockets, dotted throughout the day, much as it always has been.  I have become the master of breaking projects down into small pieces, choosing things to do that are small enough to be achieved in the time I have or things that can be picked up and put down easily.  It has been a long time since I shared anything I have made or am working on, so grab yourself a cuppa and somewhere to sit comfortably this is a long read!

Way back in April, remember then?  No me neither.  I found a lovely free embroidery pattern online.  I have always loved embroidery, and would love to improve my skills, but am not drawn to kits nor have I found any patterns I would like to purchase. My sewing has always been fairly freeform and that is the kind of embroidery I wanted to do too.  This pattern seemed like a good place to start as it gave advice on what stitches to use, and videos of how to do them.  I didn't however want to do the embroidery for the sake of it, so I did what I always do, I let it sit in my thoughts and waited for an idea to come to me.  Eventually it did whilst the children were sitting knitting with me, they both have me made drawstring bags to hold their projects in, I have made lots of these bags as gifts but I have never made one for myself.  I would embroider onto the fabric for the main panels.  As this was the time of total lockdown I had to make use of what was in my stash, I found some linen which would be perfect to embroider on, the lining is also linen, light green.  I also found a small piece of green fabric with cream flowers which was a perfect match.  The tape for the draw strings was more difficult to lay my hands on.  I have a drawer of ribbons and tape and it is rather messy so diving in there is always an interesting activity, perhaps I should tidy it?  I am rather pleased with the finished bag, I am currently using it for my sock knitting.

We bought ourselves a new bed at the beginning of the year, it didn't have a headboard as the old one did and sitting up reading was not very comfortable and giving us both a crick in the neck every evening.  I needed to make some cushions.  My husband wanted something plain and his was made using an old cushion cover from our futon sofa, I was able to make use of the zip so it was an quick and easy project.  I fancied something a little more patterned and thought I would do some random patchwork using pieces of fabric from my stash, we were still in full lockdown.  I didn't have any suitable zips in my stash so I used an envelope method where the fabric overlaps at the back.  I once again made use of the linen I used for the bag above for the edging and the back.  In fact the fabric at the top right is the flowery trim at the top of my bag too!  As both of these cushions covers were made to measure I had to make the cushions to go inside them myself.  I had a bag of sheeps wool which a friend had given me years ago, I had made use of some of it but luckily there was still some left.  I washed it, carded it, made a cover and stuffed it.  I had exactly enough wool for both cushions.  Reading in bed is now a lot more comfortable.

A dear friend of mine had a birthday back in May.  I wanted to make something to send to her but it needed to be light to keep the postage costs down.  I have made many of these fabric baskets as gifts and for us.  They are so useful for keeping things in and fold flat for easy postage.  The basket on the left was sent to my friend, along with a small green felted bowl.  This was made by knitting on large needles to create holes in the knitting then you wash it on a hot wash to deliberately shrink it.  It makes a lovely tight, thick strong 'fabric'  which is perfect for a little bowl.  The basket on the right was made as a gift for my friend's daughter who has been finding life during lockdown hard and also because I love to make things to gift to people for no other reason than it brings us both pleasure.

A long time ago, I think perhaps last summer?  I bought a metre of purple linen fabric with the intention of making myself a skirt.  I had washed it and it sat in the bottom of my ironing basket, waiting patiently.  Back in January I finally got round to ironing it and cutting out the pieces.  I don't have a dedicated sewing space so I have to be creative storing my work in progress, I found a suitable hanger and hung the pieces in my wardrobe, a ingenious solution I thought except it was out of sight, and out of mind.  When the weather started to warm up in April I discovered those pieces amongst my summer skirts!  It is now all sown up and being warn a lot, hence the creases in the photo above.  The pattern was a free one I found online, however it was unlined,  I don't think linen hangs very well unless it is lined so I adapted it to make it a lined skirt.  Luckily, as I had bought this fabric so long ago, I had a zip and thread otherwise it might have had to sit there for a lot longer waiting until my local sewing shop could open once again.

It hasn't always been about sewing these past few months.  Alice and I tried out needle felting for the first time back in December last year, we made some felted stars using biscuit cutters to help with the shaping.  We have become rather hooked, excuse the pun, and had a go at some other shapes which we felted together and attached to some blank hair slides that I had in my sewing box.  Alice made the one in the middle and I the other two.   A girl can never have too many hair slides.....

Alice loves needle felting so much that she requested a couple of books that we had looked at online for her birthday, along with her own needles and felting wool.  One of the books was full of ideas and tutorials to make dolls and fairies.  When she sat making her first one, I couldn't resist having a go myself, they are fiddly but such fun to make.  The tutorials are really easy to follow with lots of photos which makes it easier for me to follow it, I don't do well with only words.    The fairy in the middle was sent to my friend's daughter along with the fabric basket above.  The other two have been added to our collection of things we have made for our seasonal table, for Spring and Summer, they sit in the little driftwood tree that a friend made for us.

I wouldn't be without my knitting, ever.  I always have a project on the go.  This is the cardigan that I made for Alice for her birthday.  She is still wearing it a lot despite the fact that it is on the small side, she loves it.  The buttons are a little on the large side but they were the only ones she liked that I had in my stash, once I am able to take her shopping with me again we will look for some that are a little more suitable.

This is turning into a year of making socks, I am not the fastest knitter so this is my fourth pair this year.  They match rather nicely with my sock project bag too!  I made a mistake in the first pattern repeat, one that does not effect the overall pattern, it was creating a twist.  I decided to leave it in rather than rip out many rows to get back to it.  I just need to make sure that I do the same with the second sock too, otherwise they won't match!

I have mentioned here, many times, that I am knitting myself a shawl.  By sheer coincidence it has the exact same pattern on it as the cardigan that I knit for Alice.  I am knitting the stocking stitch part at the moment so this is very easy to pick and put down, I can also knit it whilst I am reading or watching something.  I bought this yarn in a local-ish yarn store, it is spun from locally bred sheep and is wonderfully soft and a delight to knit with.  It was, as you would expect, expensive to purchase (I used money I had been given for my birthday and Christmas, the perfect present) but I can see why as it has the most beautiful drape and is creating a wonderful 'fabric' if you can call knitting that.  There is a narrow edge strip all the way round this shawl, some of it has buttonholes knitted into it and some will have buttons sown on.  This enables you to wear the shawl in a endless number of ways, something that attracted me to this project in the first place.  I am hoping it will be in use year round, as a extra layer of warmth in the colder months and as a means of keeping off the cool that we have in the evenings in the spring and summer.

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Embroidery tutorial here

Drawstring bag pattern and tutorial here

Fabric Baskets are in this book 

A Line skirt pattern and tutorial here

Needle Felted Fairy book is this one

Cardigan Pattern here

Sock Pattern here

Shawl Pattern here

Left and Right

It has been a very long time since I knit a pair of socks.  I have some on the needles, the second sock of a pair which I think I cast on about two years ago they have been slowly growing year by year.  It is a complicated pattern which makes it difficult to knit whilst I am sitting chatting with friends and completely impossible to knit whilst watching something or reading, the times that I do most of my knitting.

When I was shopping for wool to make Christmas gifts late last year a ball of sock yarn fell into my shopping cart too.  A few weeks after it arrived, whilst I was knee deep in Christmas knitting I discovered a knit-a-long (KAL) where you could knit anything you like, taking place in January to keep us all going through the month.  I didn't need any motivation to get these socks on the needles but I thought it would be fun to be knitting along with other people and have a date to complete them by, I really didn't want these socks to be on the needles in two years time too.  It has taken me two weeks rather than two years to make this pair assisted somewhat by a long train and car journey the perfect time to be knitting.  I have realised what a great transportable project socks are, I can see me knitting more socks this year when I have a long journey to make.

It is really important to look after our feet.  I have made some huge changes to the shoes I wear over the years, now my main shoes are all of the barefoot type.  This means that they have very thin soles (a few mm), no heel rise at all and a toe box that allows my feet to sit in their natural shape without squashing my toes, foot shaped shoes.  I wear no shoes at all in the house and rarely wear anything unless it is a really cold day, we have no carpet downstairs, but my feet don't feel the cold like they used to.

I know that there are many people that use supports of some sort in their shoes, there is a huge industry out there selling many different types.  I have to admit I find this quite baffling. If you were to break a limb what would you do after the bone had set, would you continue to support that limb and not use it?  I suspect that you wouldn't, using supports in your shoes is the same thing, the longer you use them the weaker your feet get.  I am not advocating that you throw out your supports and stop using them completely but try walking a little without them and build up that time to longer and longer each day, building up those muscles in your feet to strengthen them.  You may find if you have pain in other joints that slowly starts to lessen too.

You might be looking at those socks above and thinking, especially if you are knitter, that they look a little different?  Well you would be right on that.  All the sock patterns I have ever come across usually have toes that look like this:

Now I don't know about you but my feet are definitely not that shape.  My big toe is in a straight line with the rest of my foot not tapered inwards.  If I am going to go to all that effort of making socks for myself, socks that are made to measure, I thought it would also be better if they were made to fit the shape of my foot too.  To shape a sock you decrease stitches by knitting them together, in the picture above this is done on both sides of the sock, this gives you a pair of socks that you can wear on either foot.  The socks in the first picture, however, are only decreased on one side giving them a more foot like shape.  This is my first attempt to make them like this, they are not perfect but I am happy with them and all my socks will be knitted to this shape in the future, another way that I can look after my feet.  Now there is no putting my socks on any foot as they will feel rather odd, it is a good job they are foot shape as I am hopeless at knowing which is left and which is right!