Little Cotton Rabbits

wood walks

It's school half term break here - it hardly feels like enough time has passed since the Easter break and I'm not at all prepared.

 

 

Luckily both Toby and I share a love of quiet, woodland places and since he's so hard to entertain at the best of times, we'll be having a daily jaunt to the woods to help keep him occupied.

 

We walk along in silence, enjoying the sounds of the birds and the wind in the leaves and sometimes we get rewarded for our quiet strolling by a glimpse of a deer or a fox. Toby has a favourite wood walk with ancient contorted trees (a legacy of coppicing) and a brook running through the centre.

 

It also has Ermine Street, an ancient Roman road running through it and I like to think of all of the people who have passed this way through the ages, apparently including William the Conqueror and Oliver Cromwell and now Master Toby...

 

Toby usually loves paddling in the brook (and occasionally peeing in it!) but at the moment it's completely dry thanks to the lack of spring rain.

 

Despite that everything is verdant and cool and so very peaceful. I hope that peace will keep us company the rest of this week as we're still waiting to hear about dates for respite care and Toby has been particularly unmanageable over the last few weeks. Hopefully the woods will work their magic on him and help to keep him calm, he usually is when we're there.

I love this picture of him strolling along ahead of me, he looks for all the world like any other nine year old boy. Seeing him like this does me the power of good!

I won't be back this week but hope to be back with some knitting updates next week. Hope you have a peaceful week where you are and thanks for dropping in to visit.

sticky fingers...

...is what I have right now from having spent the afternoon making chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream for Amy's school spring fair tomorrow.

 

 

Luckily there were 3 that wouldn't fit into the cake boxes; one for Amy, one for H and one for Toby and me to share. He'll lick the buttercream off and I'll be left with the cakey bit, which suits me fine right now as I've already licked the spatula and the bowl and the thought of more buttercream is a little sickly right now!

 

Well, I better go and do the washing up - I seem to have made rather a lot of it! Wishing you a fun weekend wherever you are.

shoots

I really enjoyed reading everyone's nostalgia on the last post - thanks so much to everyone who took the time to reminisce with me.

 

Here things have been hotting up in the garden and all my veggies are getting ready for planting out.

I love growing things from seed - it's like magic really, especially with something prolific like a courgette.

You take a tiny wizened seed, poke it into some damp compost and after a week or so you have the most perfect little seedling - looking just like a child would draw one. After a little watering and tending for a couple of months you have a huge bushy plant popping out fat and delicious courgettes.

Lettuce and leaves are quick to reap rewards from too. I sowed some rainbow chard and oak leaf lettuce around 8 weeks ago...

and look at them now!

My little courgette seedlings have me feeling all inspired and so I've been playing around with charts and have knitted a new seedling dress design...

I hope to have a bunny to wear this along with a few friends ready by the end of the month.

nostalgic

For some reason I've been feeling rather nostalgic of late. I feel very lucky to have had a happy and carefree childhood and have lots of vivid memories, some of which are triggered by a particular piece of music or a smell or perhaps an object. When I saw these glasses in the Pedlars catalogue I was suddenly swept back 35 years to my Gangan's kitchen, because the exact same ones always sat in a little stack on a shelf in her glassware cupboard.

 

When I was growing up my family would always visit with my grandparents on a saturday morning. My Gangan would brew coffee and the grown-ups would talk in the kitchen while my brother and I watched saturday morning tv in the living room - Tarzan and the Osmonds featured heavily in the early '70s and then later it was swap shop or Tiswas. There was always elevensies - either my Gangan's special concoction of drinking chocolate, dessicated coconut and the cream from the top of the milk mixed into a delicious goo or maybe some cake or cookies. To drink it was either a glass of robinson's lemon barley or some PLJ in a glass exactly the same as these.

 

 

I love that every time I drink from these glasses I have a little blast from the past and despite the fact that both my grandparents are no longer with us, they feel close again. Funny how inanimate objects can conjure up such intense feelings.

 

Is there anything that makes you feel nostalgic about your childhood?

one a day update

I'm rather pleased to have turned the page of my calendar over to May. Not that April wasn't lovely, with unseasonably warm weather and the real start of spring but it did only contain 7 school days for Toby and he does find the lack of term time routine very hard. And, when he's around I am not able to be a person in my own right.

I was thinking about this over the long 4 day weekend that has just gone, I live a double life of sorts. When Toby's at school I can potter around and do housework and some of the things that I enjoy, like reading and knitting and just sitting peacefully with some music. When Toby is in the house I am constantly watching over him, keeping him from harm and doing everything for him that he can't do himself - I am more of an extension of him, bound by his needs and whims to do his bidding or face the consequences of huge outbursts and violent behaviour. I suppose it may sound a bit harsh to an outsider for me to wish the school holidays over with, but I am relieved none the less to have a little peaceful time on my calendar again!

Despite full days, I have still found a little time at the end of them to carry on with my one-a-day squares.

 At the start of the Easter break I had this...

and at the end, this...

It's pleasing that there are people out there with a much better handle on maths than me, as I now know that I can make 210 absolutely different squares from my 7 chosen colours. Though now I'm rather wishing that there had been a nice orange to include - the only orange in the same yarn (Amy Butler Belle Organic wool cotton DK) was a little too violent for my liking, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming along.

I'm off now to sneak in a few extra squares, just because I can!

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The lovely pattern for this blanket is a free one by Solveig and can be found here.