Seven Days in which the sun comes out

1: Stickering
2: Cereal and improvised private cinema
3: Heather yarn
4: Playground break during a board games marathon
5: This little guy was showing off so loudly!
6: Walking with my mum, perfect sunny Mothering Sunday

Seven Days of calm and lovely

1: A Zebra Bear who is roaring really loudly and causing an avalanche. Apparently.
2: Nature walk to find frogspawn, with friends of course.
3: That IS a parrot in a tree. He has a Facebook page.
4: Alphabet ordering.
5: Everyone piles on grandma for cuddles and then jostles for space.
6: Calm cooperative playing (doesn't happen every day haha)!
7: When all your weekend plans get cancelled because a child is sick at 2am, there's extra time for knitting.

Yarn Along: finishing the blanket, and starting new books

I cast off, today. If I gave it a twenty stitch border I think it would be roughly single bed size, but I'm still thinking ten stitch will be fine. I just have to decide what colour. I'm deciding between a greeny-turquoise, or a grass green, I think. I want to bring those colours a bit more into balance against the slightly dominant oranges.

This blanket has been my colour play and my meditation for two weeks now, so I'm at a bit of a loss! I plan to get at least one smaller project cast on by the end of today though and I'm pretty sure I've picked which ones.

I've not been reading much. I'm a third of the way in to The Mime Order now but I think it was a mistake not to reread the first book before attempting it, because I have struggled so much to make sense of such a busy landscape of characters and setting.

I started two other books last week and quickly put them both down again, so I don't know. Maybe it's just the same busyness sapping my attention. I might go back to comic books again for a bit!

And All is Well

Last week was exceptionally, blissfully, peaceful. This week is going the same way. Sometimes I feel like I'm really used to fighting everything, and I don't know what to do with myself when life is so entirely wonderfully good.

Also, I whine a lot about the rough patches so I feel I ought to capture this while it's happening.

I am so lucky.

These kids, this life, this feeling of home and wellness. The greening leaves. The spaces between us. Walking out of my house at night while Martin puts the girls to bed, and looking up at the stars. The sounds of chatter (constant) and laughter. These days that will never come again.

Seven Days of the best kind of everything

1: Just this Tali person and board games at Game Knight again
2: Rowan helping her best friend at his family's allotment (picture taken by the fabulous Emma)
3: Taking Harmony to meet grandma outside her school gates
4: Alternative uses for Ashleigh's Jenga bricks
5: Trying unsucessfully to capture the bright irridescent colours of the circumhorizontal arc in the cirrus clouds overhead (just below the centre of the picture!)
6: Wet hair, post swim play area; Talia shouting, "stand here mummy!" and then ignoring me!
7: Elvaston Castle has an abundance of places to get really muddy at this time of year

Yarn Along: American Gods and some marl

So, I started reading about a week ago and finished a couple of days ago. Proper book hangover this week! I read the abridged release a long time ago and wasn't nearly as taken as I have been with this. What a bloody gorgeous book.

I've been playing with the marled blanket a few days longer than that. It's getting huge now. Still at the fun stage of wanting to see the next colour change.

Between projects and the children and the odd excursion on my own, I've had a busy-peaceful couple of weeks. And now Martin is off work for a couple of days helping to Spring clean the house a bit. :)

Seven Days of oh so much chaos

1: I finished a long-hibernated project, a Hogwarts Express for Jenna
2: A dye day
3: Morgan plus stamps
4: Pretending to be an Easter Tree
5: A little block rabbit
6: Yeah. So, they pulled *everything* out again...

On first journeys

It's a cold, damp, grey day. I put Morgan on a bus on her own for the first time earlier, and my mum just returned her home. These gradual transitions to independence seem different the second time around.

Morgan is so much steadier than Jenna was, but less articulate, less suspicious, less spiky, more vague. I used to worry most about Jenna deciding to take on a teenage boy for his use of the word "gay" as an insult between pals, or trying to run up the down escalator. Acts of bravado and inability to walk away from a challenge. This time around I worry more about Morgan getting lost, or walking face first into a plate glass door and giving herself a concussion. (All of these scenarios have occured in the past year.)

It was bitterly cold on my walk back to the house. I brushed off the what ifs with the light first drops of rain. She didn't even turn around to wave goodbye. But she did hug me when she walked back in, just now, with a huge smile.