Seven Days of mainly creative stuff

1: Knitted blanks waiting to dye
2: Anonymous surprise penguins
3: Spring silks
4: CAD/CAM at the Silk Mill with friends
5: Post-board-game-day dancing in the dark
6: Very Hungry Caterpillar

Seven Days in which I don't have time to remember my own name

1: Advent in full swing, Saint Nicholas Day shoes
2: Crafting
3: And craft fayres (two successful charity events in one week)
4: She might not love board game cafes or board games but she's certainly a fan of attached comic book shops
5: Incredible art at Derby QUAD ("What a Loving and Beautiful World")

I don't know whether I'm coming or going this week. So much going on, and I'm not fully on top of any of it (except posting orders out, I am up to date with that and only have one more bag to take to the post office before Christmas). One out of the two back-to-back birthdays. Two craft fayres. Assorted attempts to get the house chaos back under control. Yeah. My head is a bit of a mess; this year I have found each birthday really emotionally hard. Something to do with not being able to make them perfectly happy and perfectly peaceful any more. Something to do with being afraid that I'm not as good a mother as I used to be (or not as confident a person, or something, I don't know). The elusive feeling of striving for good enough and not being sure I'm ever close.

Seven Days during which I have a birthday and feel sort of lonely and quietly desperate

1: Gradients, because yarn makes things better (always)
2: Changed over Winter decorations in a fit of pique at it being rainy and bitterly cold, having a sick kid on a day I wanted to see people, and generally feeling blue
3: Stacking things
4: Birthday walk
5: The lights in town, photographed by a giddy Jenna
6: Snuggly not-a-baby excited about stickers
7: There's this Christmas fayre we go to every year which I loved as a child and tolerate as an adult. The children adore it, of course. Compensation in the form of vintage tea set.
8: Basically after two huge meltdowns this week (mine) I gave up and we decorated on the first Sunday in Advent. It worked. Prettying things and familiar traditions helped a lot.

I need a calmer week.

Beneath everything this week has been huge painful anxiety about Morgan. She was ill on Monday and better on Tuesday, but continued to refuse any solid food all week. Eventually I told her she had to have a bite of food every hour and her appetite gradually returned. I can't accurately describe the heartbroken sobbing every time I stood over her and insisted she ate something, but goodness, she was so floppy and listless. I'm not yet really able to sort it out into words. And I feel like a failure for coercing her AND for not coercing her sooner. But also so grateful she's perky again and asking for food.

What a week.

*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.

A week of of warm ordinary (and a frustrating weekend)

1: New board game cafe on the way home from the library
2: Kitty wearing a mitten
3: Work day, pumpkin love
4: Park day

We had a great week. I'm definitely feeling like my mood is on the up and we're out and about a lot and doing a lot together every day. The weekend, though, has been long and trying. Dental check ups have led to a lot of crying and refusing to eat from Rowan because the dentist convinced her that eating sugar will make holes in her teeth. It took an hour to persuade her that it was okay to eat an apple today. Tali had an allergic reaction to something at the surgery and Martin had to take her to A&E. Her breathing remained normal and the swelling went down with antihistamines so that was all okay in the end.

Rowan's painful wobbly tooth came out today and she has been very grouchy too, poor thing. So, much snuggling on the sofa today, reading stories and arguing over Netflix choices. Still, all's well that ends well and they're all settling down now. More early shifts next week, and an early night will really help.

Week in pictures - an extremely busy sort of week

1: Emergency rainbow silks to the rescue
2: Jenna and Rowan pausing to enjoy the canal boats on our way back to the train
3: More work. Lots of work. Busy busy busy.
4: So, they asked for hair dye again. Morgan has a blue streak, Rowan has magenta dip dye, and Tali has pale pink all over which keeps causing me to do a double take because she doesn't look like herself somehow!
5: Highly Sprung, performing Urban Astronaut at Derby Feste. Fantastic!
6: Twelve year old on a bridge, climbing things, being ridiculous, and wearing her new jumper which I had to smuggle through the wash last night.
7: Woodland Festival and Talia begged to go in the sling again (I think because she didn't want me to carry the borrowed toddler)!

Seven days of assorted busy

1. Parcelling up mini skeins
2. Singing to the fan to make a robot voice
3. Upside down Roo
4. A bunny sculpture made from tinfoil and bandages
5. A very high up small person at our Not Back to School picnic
6. Paint colour mixing with the two youngest
7. My favourite tree by the swimming pool

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. :)

Belated Week in Pictures: some rainbow-ness

1. Weather yarn product photography session
2. A friendly picnic at Nottingham castle
3. Talia thought this hydrangea needed a crown
4. Giggly small squish
5. Playing with silks
6. Finding Dory trip with these munchkins
7. Another nature walk and a lovely long afternoon on the park with friends

This is only being written a couple of days in to the new week. Anxiety struck, the kind that feels like an elastic band around the chest and doesn't seem connected to any particular thought or event? My unreliable brain, again. We're okay. These three Wildlings are well. I'm well-supported. That's it, really. Oh, and I flaked off the last two days of Index Card a Day so I want to catch those up before I show off my Summer art project this year.