I've already learned something today...

...so I have changed the time and date settings to GMT. It really is Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!

Which reminds me, Bez is my next door but one neighbour. We say hello in the street, but I bet if he knew I could knit socks, he'd invite me to his parties. :-) The kids want me to knit something for the baby, which is a nice idea, so maybe I will.

Back to my Monday. For some reason I awoke at half past five this morning. Hadn't slept particularly well, which is probably down to a combination of paint fumes and back pain. Both of which are down to us spending the weekend painting the hall.

It used to look like this.....



Now it looks like this......




We have been meaning to do it for nearly 4 years, since the loft conversion, but kept putting it off, maybe hoping we could actually come up the the £2000 it will take to plaster it. Well, that's never going to happen. So a hell of a lot of filler, and some paint will have to do. It is a lot better, and brighter, and makes me feel the house isn't quite so crap. We ran out of paint for the new stairs up to the loft, though, and haven't done any woodwork except for the front door and ceiling, so we still have something to look forward to. :-)


Anyway, I wake up at 5.30 am, thinking I will get some time to myself, and I find that M is already awake and watching children's telly. Apparently, she woke up just after 4 and couldn't get back to sleep. And she has made a schedule for the day, which includes wanting Maths and Art lessons, which are to begin at 9am, (cue me suggesting things that she won't want to do anyway.) So I think my plans for the day, which included knitting, and looking at my newly painted hall, may have to take a back seat to my actually doing some things with the kids. Since I managed to tidy up the living room as well yesterday, we could sit and read for much of the day - after our Monday morning trip to the library. We still haven't finished reading Inkspell, and we have the next book, Inkdeath waiting for us. We have until 2, which is when R will do her radio show on All.fm, and then C will be drumming, and then R will be trampolining. She has a DMT competition coming up that she wants to try.

My goal for the day is to turn the blasted heel on these, my Feb (and March) KAL,

and maybe find a baby for this,

which I started to crochet last Thursday at Knit by the Sea, because I couldn't focus on anything else. This was easy, and I finished it Friday morning while waiting for kids to do home ed drama stuff. It is made from a tiny bit of leftover sock yarn, from the lovely knee high socks I made for R ages ago. Great colours.

Although now it is half past 7 and I have been up for a couple of hours, I am ready to go back to bed.

I've lost my knitting mojo

Actually, I have been really busy doing other things, and haven't made progress on much of anything. It has been getting me down, since my head is full of ideas about what I want to make next! So I have been telling myself to enjoy the process, to look on my knitting and crochet time as ME time, and not to fret about not finishing things. But finishing things would be nice too. :-)


Last week, I spent sewing because we went to Jorvik Viking Festival. We hadn't been last year, in fact, we missed all of our re-enactment shows last year, so it was really nice to get back to seeing a few people we had missed. Al and I and C and M went, as S was working and R was away with Scouts. I had to make C all new kit as he had outgrown his, and I kept getting it wrong, and having to unpick stitches. It was just one of those projects.

In the end, he was presentable, and I can go back and finish it properly, hoping that it will fit for a while. Here we are enjoying ourselves.













Now, I will at some point have to make some more kit for Easter. Cloaks, dresses, shoes, and tunics are needed. Since I have weeks to do it in, I will no doubt, leave it to the last minute. :-)

slow going

It seems to me that January was a bit dry for knitting and crochet projects. I did a couple of birthday presents, a couple pairs of fingerless gloves, started a pair of socks that will be going on for a while, and 3 berets. But I had said I wasn't going to buy any yarn to start anything new, and except for the birthday presents, and the things made from the leftovers for the birthday presents, I didn't.

Now, though, I seem to have a glut of things I want to do, and absolutely no time to do them. I am working on a nice pair of socks for Al for my Feb knit-a-long with Violet Green yarn. Progress is very slow!

I am still working on my gloves with my December Christmas Congo from the Getknitted Sock club, M wants me to make her a hug with the yarn she has dyed, (if you don't have a ravelry account and you want to see a photo of the hug, go here), I have won a yarn raffle, and cannot wait to start making something beautiful from a skein of this, and my Feb sock club yarn should arrive soon as well! What am I going to do?

In the mean time, I have managed to finish this baby hat for the Pilates teacher's youngest, we have spent a nice couple of days with friends in Leicester, and the activities that I have to taxi children to this week include African drumming, trampoline, Brownies, French, Youth beat group, Choir practice, Drama, Arts Award, Scouts, and Guides. Thank goodness I have some friends helping me to get them to other things and R is old enough to take the bus!

Tomorrow I am going to drive S to an open day at Bristol University. If the train wasn't so bloody expensive, I could have a nice knitting and purling journey, but instead I am driving. :-(

I suppose the good thing is that I have been doing a lot of stuff, within the house as well as without, with the family. But it all cuts into my making time, and I don't see the end of anything in sight! With that in mind, I am going to make sure we have a quiet day today, until the evening at least, and I am going to knit. I really don't want my Feb KAL, which is my first KAL, to turn into a March KAL!

I am off to be productive now...

Felting and dying

Well the felted bag experiment went a bit awry. The navy yarns have felted, but the lilac coloured one didn't. It has had only one wash, so I will try again soon, and see if there is any improvement. I do still like it, I just may have to sew in a liner before I can use it.

On a brighter note, M and I did some more dying of the yarn that Martine gave us. M choose red, purple, and pink, and just squirted her little heart out, covering the yarn in colours.



It is lovely, but who knows when I will get a chance to knit with it. I now have my Violet Green sock wool that I am making a pair of socks for Al with, and my Get knitted sock club yarn that I am still working on my gloves with, a pair of socks for me, and several babies around for whom I have to knit baby socks, plus an urge to do more felting.

And all when life seems to be getting too busy to get anything done!!!!!

Snow!

Yes, like everybody else in the country, we had snow too yesterday. A group of home edders were meeting at the park to go sledging so we decided to join them. I am so glad we went! There isn't much you can do at our house with the snow. We did make 3 little mini snowmen with buttons for eyes, etc. But there wasn't enough snow to do much else, and our garden is a little thing, so we headed for the park, and had a great time. At least C and M did!

They got to use that plastic sled that has been in the garden for I don't know how many years! And got to see some old friends and make one or two new ones.

I am beginning to realize that a lot of the people that have been a part of home education for me for the past 10 years are moving on to other things. Or our kids are just growing older and they don't need us too much to engineer their social lives. :-) But it does mean that whereas I used to arrange activities geared towards the older girls, I now should be making a conscious effort to go to activities for C and M. Granted they do do a lot anyway, but they probably miss the trips to the park which I should try to manage more often.

Since I mentioned older kids, R did her radio show again yesterday. The This and That Show on All fm with about 7 or so home ed friends. They have been doing it occassionally for a while now, from the Zion. Yesterday was their first broadcast from the All fm studio in Longsight. They are getting rather au fait with it all. :-)

hmmmmm.....should have taken some photos in the snow. But let's face it, I was doing good to get out and play, and take them to the park.

Peace
Julie
ps, and I made some baby socks for one of the Pilates teachers who has had a baby girl, but forgot to take a photo of them as well. Gloves continue...

There and Back again

The past two weeks have been mad. I have spent a good year really trying to slow down my pace of life, but that doesn't really work when you have 4 kids and a husband who doesn't drive. It is my own fault, I keep finding things for them to do. At least I have found lots of free stuff.

R and C are each doing two free performing arts groups a week. Naturally they are 4 different ones on 3 different nights, and two of them are on the same night as my knitting group meets. But I am glad they have things to do and most of the time I wish I had loads more money so I could pay for more things for them all to do. And pay for somebody else to take them. :-)

But I can already feel myself waiting for half term, so I can have a break from all of the taxiing around. At least our days are mostly quiet. And I am needing some time to do some exercises to keep my back in shape.

I was at the osteopath on Thursday, having been to Pilates on Monday and Tuesday, and spending all of Wednesday in pain. He cracked my back, and unlocked a couple of things and it just felt immediately soooooo much better. Now I have to keep up with exercising to keep it that way. So I am off for a little walk soon, in my earth shoes, and to do a very small amount of yoga, and then to hope for the best. I can feel the muscles in my neck and back on the left side are not used to where they are supposed to be and want to pop back, but I am going to try to keep them sane. And myself as well. Which is getting harder to do. :-)

I am thinking of loads more exciting stuff that I could be writing, but can't be bothered. Maybe blogging isn't for me. hmmmmmm

Peace
Julie