Art Every Day

During the Summer, I participated in Daisy Fellow's Index Card a Day. Every day, one piece of art on an index card. No holds barred, no worrying about perfection, cheap card, go for it. This year's felt amazing, I never got stuck in that feeling of duty and enjoyed every piece.

And yet since then I haven't continued to create every day.

I intended to. Kept my little art station set up by the kettle and all. Every morning I get up, take my supplements, drink a glass of water and wipe down the surface, put the kettle on for a cup of tea. In the Autumn that minute seemed to be for spacing out and staring at the willow tree. End of Summer weirdness.

Over the Winter I have painted again. Not every day, though that would be a good aim for me eventually I think.

Right now there is a lot of knitting to do. And a lot of facilitating for the children. So much to learn and do. Still, maybe today I'll pick up a brush again.

Catching up: Picture Dump

There's a London road trip in there, and a week of guests. Christmas, and New Years. I've been in quite a good place. Too busy to wallow in the difficult moments. Making, doing, seeing people. Not fitting in everything I want to, ever.

Sometimes it's really great to stop and think that these adventures are getting easier, that at some point I've stopped forcing myself to say yes and started leaping at opportunities. (Sometimes, sometimes the leaping is harder and more coaxing and handholding is required.)

I've felt some resistance to writing, and have been painting instead. I'll probably try to drag myself back here a bit to document more of these days before they're gone.

This morning I was woken early, to the sound of my button box being dropped in the kitchen (the shelf collapsed "for no reason" apparently "we weren't touching it!")! I'd stayed up until midnight to pay our internet bill and get services turned back on, and then had weird dreams I can't quite remember clearly.

It's still dark outside, mist softening the houses opposite. The cat is sitting in the middle of our season table, clouded in blue silk and purring smugly.

I feel like I'm running behind with everything, not keeping up with myself, playing catch up with my life.

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?

Seven Days of extended holidaying

1: Talia fell asleep like this early on Monday evening
2: Chicken-whisperer Morgan
3: At my mum's house for tea, blue sky through her sycamore tree
4: Making friends
5: Another visit to the Stardisk (spot the Lego!)
6: Fox production line for a dear friend's due-December Peanut
7: Post-swim, wet hair, holding hands on the way back to the car

Martin had the entire week off, post-weekend-away, with our main aim being to pootle around at home a fair bit and get some household chores done to the point of me being less stressed out. At the start of last month when I was feeling quite down and under pressure, I asked Martin if he could take a day so we could work together and get on top of the house chaos. The next available day was this week, so he took the whole week off. Yes the house really was that bad. And a week hasn't improved it all that much. But I'll take what I can get. I'll miss this Mister next week.

Weekish? Who am I even kidding, though. Some pictures.

1. Somebody who woke very early then fell back to sleep, I probably blogged this already (I'm sure I did!) but the days are really blurring together at this point okay?
2. Birthdaying with Connor
3. Some puddle jumping in pyjamas
4. Lego and a house full of people (three guests all week and three extras that day)
5. Birthday party dino tattoo for me, courtesy of Morgan
6. A full washing line of colours
7. Cracker
8. Talia and Rowan had a glitter fight in the garden two weeks ago and there is still evidence everywhere
9. So much adulting (I am trying really hard to be more organised)
10. Okay, so, more yarn, because I worked really hard this week *and* had guests staying *and* slept on an airbed *and* Martin has been doing 4am starts for two weeks

I'm happy and exhausted and peopled out and my brain is melted. But today I have home made cake from my mum, and happy children, and orders, and all is well. :)

Week (ish) in pictures, dirty feet and wild places

1: Roo, living room chaos, dirty feet
2: Silk den
3: Dragon Tree
4: Socks!
5: Torin and Jenna
6: Littles at the nature pond again
7: Attenborough walking with Ash (and babysitting the borrowed toddler)

I can almost predict which week each month I won't manage to write anything. The anxiety is so up and down the past few months, I think the return of broodiness has sent my hormones haywire. Or maybe the other way around. Too much information, always, eh? Weeks with a lot of time spent with other people are much easier, but actually reaching out for that connection when I'm so darn tired is hard.

Words come in fragments.

Talia cut her hair this week. She walked in saying, in the tiniest voice, "I didn't cut my hair..." I laughed. So so much. It had been a hard work sort of a day and I realised how unimportant the things I was stressing over were. Hair grows back. Time solves a lot of the little things.

This wasn't meant to be a long post but my intentions got away from me and here I am wondering whether to write about the stress of running out of money and washing detergent at the same time when Jenna seems to be getting hives from cheap soap. Or whether to witter about having got my hands on a copy of Fool's Quest and how satisfyingly perfect it is (usually I don't enjoy the middle book of a trilogy so much).

I have a horsefly bite on my shoulder from our walk yesterday. The cat is currently asleep on top of the Bueno bar Martin bought for me and I don't want to disturb her or allow the bar to melt. And so many other ordinary trivial tiny things that feel like they deserve cataloguing.

What even is this post becoming? I'd better go before it gets more bizarre!

Yarn Along during troubling feelings about how fast time is passing

I'm still setting aside projects and picking up something else, over and over again. Jenna's shawl is waiting for cables. Talia's coat is waiting for its button. I'm knitting back and forth on an experimental ribbon toy thingy that I planned to be finished with weeks ago. But at least I have lots to read. Okay that's an exaggeration, because these all arrived two days ago and I read them all within twelve hours. I have new fanfiction to read. That's good enough for me. :)

     *     *     *

You guys, this was ten years ago.Ten.Years. I was horrendously sick (again), pregnant with Morgan, and I felt like my life was simultaneously coming together and falling apart. I still feel like my life is simultaneously coming together and falling apart, and I look about that much pregnant even though I'm not, and I honestly feel like nothing has changed in any essential way and I sort of thought I would have my life a bit more together by 31.

I mean, the sort of together where you don't phone HMRC the day after the tax credit deadline to sort out the renewal. The sort of together that does laundry before we run out of pants. That sort of together.

Alas...

In ten years I have learned to knit, and stopped wishing I was an artist and started claiming the fact that I already am because I can't not create and it doesn't even matter if almost all of it sucks and I have no idea what I'm doing.

In another ten years maybe I won't feel so much like an overgrown kid trying to fake being competent at things. Or maybe I will. Hopefully I'll still be able to take it all on one moment at a time, one stitch at a time.

Warrior face

I want to whine: about being tired and juggling Martin's early shifts with evening plans for theatre trips, about being broody and yet not wanting another baby at the same time, about trying to juggle all the business administration, about being so very needed.

But I'm so very needed. And today is so very precious, and feels far too heavy to waste on complaining about having to be an adult. (Maybe I'll whine later, when I've kicked today's behind.)

I need to warrior up, first.

(Art and work progress shots just because everything is better with rainbows. Even tired-mumma-big-girl-pants rallying cries.)

It's been a while, folks

Sometimes there isn't a right time. Sometimes there's no right place to start. I've thought about starting to write again so so many times, in the midst of the chaos (or the beauty) or in a quiet moment of peace (or exhaustion). There's nothing extraordinary about today. Here I am, surrounded by journals and projects and children, the vivid colours and astonishing disorder that is my home, and I'm sitting down to say something.

Not a big, articulate, important something. Just a hello. Perhaps only to myself.

Maybe I'm honestly evading starting to pick up toys and clutter and papers to make space for hosting Doctor Who Club tomorrow. Maybe I'm connecting this ordinary moment to so many other ordinary moments occuring right now, and that common familiar sensation of the present and its very mundane precious existence.

Here I am.