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!

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. :)

Yarn Along: January catchup

Ash inspired me to knit socks again. I've completed a (lovely deep orange) pair for Rowan and a (rainbow stripe) pair for Talia too. As well as finishing the Sockhead I cast on just before New Year, and making myself a pair of mittens.

I think I'm on a knitting roll.

Baby socks for my nephew next, I think. Then perhaps the Barley hat from Knitting from the North in really tasteless clashing jewel colours.

Not that I'm avoiding Jenna's Hogwarts shawl at all...

Meanwhile, I've not been reading all that much. I finished the Storm Siren series and *whispers* found them really predictable. I've re-read Earthsea alongside them though which is probably horribly unfair and would tarnish a lot of writing by comparison.

I also picked up The Darkest Part of the Forest, remembering quite enjoying the dark fae stories as a teen. If you like a slightly more dangerous breed of fairy, these are good solid diverting fiction with a good take on the alternative fairytale. I enjoyed this not-Snow-White almost as much as I liked Ash by Malinda Lowe. 

In the same dark-fairytale vein, this just arrived. Always one of my favourite short stories by Neil Gaiman, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this new format has changed it if at all.

Seven Days during which I sort of start to kick anxiety's behind again

1: Doctor Who Club snuggles
2: Cinnamon playdough
3: Blue skies walking to an Into Film showing of Kubo and the Two Strings (following tears and anxiety getting out of the house)
4: Dissecting owl pellets with a friend
5: Knitting, Star Trek, general background adorableness
6: Board game cafe again, as an extra large extended family
7: Fireworks party

We saw friends every day this week, usually several friends a day. There has been much general Getting Out of the House. And it has been a lot of hard work. But after a fantastic and really busy Friday and then a restful evening, I woke up on Saturday feeling full of energy again. Just in time for monkey bread for breakfast at mum's, shopping with dad, and a huge fireworks party.

I do sometimes wonder if I genuinely just need to stop charting the ups and downs of my mental health. Where does noticing a pattern become reinforcing it? But then again, that could be the same old "it's your fault you are this way, you should snap out if it, you deserve to be depressed" that I can't remember ever not flinging at myself in some form. I don't believe my own inner monologue. It's not very reliable.

It's such a relief to wake up not feeling anxious though. To actually want to get out of bed and not think that things will probably be shit and pointless.

*free pixie hat pattern this weekend*

Just a quick note to say I've set my Leafy Pixie Hat pattern as a free gift on Ravelry until Monday night. If you add it to your cart it will show as completely free to download.

It's not much, I just wanted to spread some love because the world seems so horribly broken in ways I just can't do a thing about (and probably frequently participate in, no matter how hard I try to make things better).

Happy knitting, lovelies.

It's still Autumn until my birthday

The cold weather has floored me, a little. Our boiler has stopped working twice now for no real reason and I'm at the wearing-mittens-indoors stage of the year already. My mental health is like a pendulum. I'm sort of trying to ignore it, actually, the general anxiety increase from examining these fluctuations is worse than the unpredictability.

Still, it's Autumn until the end of November, the trees are still colourful, I'm not yet feeling dragged down by the greyness. It's not all that long until my birthday and the start of Advent. I have a good stack of books to read and cinnamon candles and so many more plans before the Christmas season.

I haven't been making very much. My knitting mojo has vanished and I'm just plodding on methodically with orders and not feeling enthused about any of the potential next cast-ons. I did tie some shiny bark leaves to some yarn for the window. This totally counts as crafting, and is sufficient adulting to negate the need to clean the windows. Right?

Yarn Along - Polkadot and Dominion

This week I had to set aside Jenna's Hogwarts Express as the tiny cables are tricky and need my full concentration. I've switched to a Polkadot for Talia, who picked out the yarn herself. Big yarn, big needles, speedy progress. Just what I needed!

I've started reading Dominion by C.J.Sansom but it hasn't pulled me in just yet. I loved the Shardlake books though so I'm willing to give it a fair chance.

Yarn Along - Sockhead(s)

Knitting: I finished my Sockhead, and had just enough left of the rainbow tie dye blank to attempt a tiny one for my smallest bean. I don't know if it will be slouchy, but it will just fit her. That's yarn economy for ya.

Reading: Weeell I'm still bitting and bobbing really, but I did read a couple of good entertaining Agatha Christie-esque Sherlock fanfics today. Neither of which I'm going to link to, on the grounds that they're incomplete (rather than, say, for example, that you might all look at me differently if I admit to shipping Mystrade). If you have no idea what that means, I would caution you against feeling the need to find out. Though of course, if you have a teen or tween in the house you probably already speak fandom to some extent or another. I could pretend that it's Jenna's fault, but she sadly got most of her embarrassing internet speak from me.

Just, okay, go back to looking at the pretty knitting now, thankyouplease?

Yarn Along - miles of stocking stitch and some childishness

For some reason I am totally wiped out and exhausted today, so it is definitely a knitting and reading day. All of the children seem to be doing similarly too. Jenna has Neverwhere. Morgan has Matilda. Rowan has Minecraft on the laptop. Talia os snuggled up next to me with a huge book of Star Wars technical drawings. And I'm sitting here alternating chapters of Earth X with a couple of rows of the Sockhead hat.

My autocorrect doesn't like me typing "Sockhead" and I have to keep correcting its correction, which is causing childish sniggering here. I'm easily amused when tired.

After knitting 2:2 ribbing until I was sick of it, I am now going to knit the slightly more soothing stocking stitch until I start to hate this hat. I mean, the goal is "love in every stitch" but sometimes vague loathing of the project is just as helpful, an easy target for mild frustration that I can whine about and notice my own ridiculousness. Doing the small things with love. Patience. Impatient muttering. Persistence. One of those.

I'm pretty sure when I finish this I will choose something with the same sort of mind-numbing characteristics, because I need all the car knitting and projects that otherwise don't require my full attention.

There's similar logic in the graphic novels too. That and poetry and fanfiction are where I'm at for interruptibility and emotional energy. I'm taking my self care in snippets. :)