Seven Days of visitors and visiting

1: All dressed up
2: Board gaming with friends (pizza at Derby Alchemy, yum yum)
3: Aaand board gaming again, with cousins, at Game Knight
4: New project, mess
5: My tiny nephew, Finn
6: Aaand board gaming at home with friends!
7: Watercolours

(Sorry, giant picture dump, I partly neglected writing due to illness, tiredness, and busy-ness... But also my phone was refusing to upload photos. And now I can spam you.)

Seven Days of these guys

1: Total quiet just for a moment!
2: Piano baby
3: Takenoko time
4: Beating dad again
5: Puzzles and dice
6: Park
7: Pavement chalks

I was actually really ill with some random virus including lingering cough that week (I am writing, belatedly, over a fortnight later and still coughing). It looks pretty and engaged, but mainly I was on the sofa feeling terrible, I just happened to have snapped some pictures of happy busy-ness on my way back and forth to fetch myself more water!

Seven Days of all the usual music, art, and technology

1: Jenna and Tali ukulele session
2: Crayon drawing by Rowan, "Seaside", pocket contents by Talia
3: Pastel drawing by Morgan (I love that she and Rowan have a really similar style right now!) - "Art Gallery"
4: Cat plus piano plus veg box
5: Engineering open day, a Rube Goldberg machine, historical engine running, and lots to do with friends
6: Marble run construction
7: Butterfly paintings (without pants, of course)

Yarn Along: a brown hat and some children's books

Oh how I love thee, merino silk aran. Any shade, even plain mid brown.

Also, I seem to have gone from reading mainly teen fiction to two kid's books in a row. Counting by 7s is a really warm, interesting, pre-teen story about not fitting in anywhere and what family really is. I bought it for Jenna but it's really more suitable for a younger sib (though it has themes of loss of parents, so more the ten year old than the smalls). I think Morgan will like the young protagonist very much.

I'm not far enough into The Alchemist's Cat, yet. I have the vaguest memory of *possibly* reading The Deptford Mice a very long time ago, and this is a prequel to that series. So far the writing is pretty spellbinding.

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

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.

Seven Days of these guys being the busiest and me trying to keep up

 

Fuzzy, in-the-dark pictures today. I shan't apologise for them because it won't be the last time haha!

1: Canal boating.
2: Pyjama-d band practice. Morgan and friend playing Rainbow Connection.
3: Lucky Cat bracelet making.
4: Takenoko. We've played board games every day this week again.
5: A comparison of Rowan and Tali's foot templates, as they're only a shoe size apart right now!
6: Catan.

Not pictured: all the science, involved discussions about language, a thousand renditions of the songs Morgan is learning on uke, and some reorganising of Ashleigh's yarn stash.

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.

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.