Once more, pinched from the Suburban Yogini after her post reminded me that a new month is upon us, here comes a list of intentions for the forthcoming month. I’m enjoying the focus this sort of list offers; no pressure, as it was only ever intentions, but a useful reminder if you find yourself with a spare five minutes and a brain which has dissolved parliament, so to speak.

So, here goes:

1. Grout the tiles.

2. Make some Chrimbly bunting.

3. Clothes for the small girl’s doll -
- velvet trousers
- some sort of fleece/felt top
- velvet shoes

4. Craft Project for Quercus, the details of which shall remain unspoken due to Quercan Prying Eyes. (All I can say is I’d keep your eyes on that Ilex fellow – he looks mean.) Abandoned due to incipient craft madness.

5. Fleece goblin hoody-scarfy snood (?) thing for the small girl.

6. Brown dress with toadstool for the small girl. Postponed.

7. Watercolour the unfinished wooden toys I’ve got en route from the States for the small girl. (They’ve been shipped, so should arrive in the next two weeks.) Postponed due to realisation that had gone completely overboard on presents.

8. Sand and paint the wretched, wretched skirting boards.

9. A decent walk three times a week. – ish.

10. Earlier to bed by fifteen minutes at least three times a week.

11. Freecycle three things From The Attic. (Shudder with me, dear reader, at this prospect.)

12. Assemble reliable Chrimbly lists for anyone who’s going to be on the receiving end of presentage from us.

13. Make wrapping paper with the small girl. This year: brown paper with plasticine stars stamped thereon. Let there be chaos.

14. Chrimbly puds and cake.

15. Eleven felt reindeer to go on whatever shambolic tree effort we end up with. (Locally they are selling for FIFTY POUNDS. Clearly, that’s not on. To the drawing board, I say!) Three we ended up with, and three were fine.

16. A red fleece heart for each day until Chrimbly, for the small girl to hang up somewhere in an unspecifiedly pretty manner. (Two down, twenty-three to go.) Eight we ended up with, and eight were fine.

17. Some sort of present malarky for the Gothic Folly (my brother).

18. Last-minute felt advent tree.

And you? What games have you afoot this month?

This weekend the aged parent came to visit. Oh, it wasn’t great. No. Wait. In lots of ways, it was fine. We talked, and he bought take-away, and came armed with wine. He cleaned the sink, and put some wallpaper up for us in the sitting room, where the dust is quite bad because the plaster is falling off the walls (we’re hoping to fix it this coming summer, by replastering the whole of the inside of the old bit of the house, so there’s just no point in doing much beyond papering over the cracks – literally! – for now).

But…

When will I learn that I won’t get what I want from him? That showing him things I have made, or written, or cooked, or tiled, or built, even, just won’t elicit the response I appear to crave, despite my outward nonchalance? And why do I crave it? I despise myself for so doing; I feel like a small dog, yip-yip-yipping as I jump up at his leg, desperate for attention. Yet time and again, I produce the quilt I have sewn (a sort of mildly bored ‘right you are’ acknowledgement being the best result here), I show the tiles I have fixed (which he hadn’t actually noticed, despite being in the room minus said tiles only a couple of months ago – regular readers will have noted that they are not exactly subtle…), I volunteer information about things I am writing or have had published only to realise that the conversation has miraculously moved on to his wife’s proofreading work, or his stepdaughter’s eating problems. Time after time after time.

Also, when will I learn that I must make my plans so that they may coincide with his, but are not dependent on them? To wit: this weekend, there was an advent fair on at a local-ish Steiner school. I had wanted to go for weeks, and had planned accordingly; I knew what time I needed to leave, and what I would do afterwards, and where we could get some lunch, and how I’d manage some sleep for the small girl, who sleeps most afternoons shortly after lunch. I had thought about the possible Chrimbly presents I might manage to buy for her, and how best to hide them from her notice if I ended up going alone with her. I told him about this fair before he said he was coming, and we agreed, when he’d arranged to visit then too, on a time at which we would need to leave. It wasn’t prohibitively early, really – 9.00. Yet 9.00 came and went. As did 9.15. And 9.30. And at 9.45, when he arrived, he strolled through the door in a leisurely manner, appearing somewhat wrong-footed by my bags-ready-let’s-go response. We got to the fair about forty minutes after it started, as a result, and, as I had feared, it was utterly beseiged. Being reasonably out of town, there was nowhere left to park, and no easy alternative. I abandoned the attempt, bit down my disappointment because I didn’t want the small girl to see it, and moved on to the rest of the day.

But when we got home and I heard him saying airily that we’d decided to give it a miss, I did feel sad, to be honest.

And when he shot off home on Monday, having spent a weekend looking rather bemusedly at the small girl as she attempted to engage him in conversation, or telling me how she ought to wash her hands before she comes to eat, I couldn’t help but feel that he rather misses the point with her. He says she is lovely, but he won’t play with her. She asks him to play with her – ‘Grandad come an’ play wiv me? Have a look a’ my toys? P’raps read a book?’ – but he’s not even interested enough to sit on the floor, preferring to sit on the sofa, not at her level, and read the paper. He couldn’t even read a book to her the one night that he did try it – he just sort of flicked through the pages while she clearly felt confused by his lack of animation. This, from the man who thinks he is good with small children.

It’s stupid, really. It hurts. It still hurts. I can predict how he will behave; I can see the hurt coming; I can warn Quercus that it’s not going to work, asking him to look after the small girl, because if she comes to expect anything from him, she will be disappointed, and I am not willing to have that happen if it is at all within my control to avoid it. I can predict the inappropriate presents – more soft toys which she doesn’t need and won’t really play with, and a cardigan both ugly and strangely-sized – despite the fact that there are, of course, lots of things I could have suggested, and which she needs.

I have learned to predict the hurtful or thoughtless things he can and will do. But still I can’t stop it hurting. I have learned the lesson, so why can’t I act on it?

A gratuitous small girl photograph. Yesterday we went out to tea in Exeter. We looked at the lights; we walked; we talked; we pootled; we ate massive quantities of cake. Life is good.

The fleece stars which took approximately four lifetimes to sew; the new quilt project has finally come to fruition, and just in time for the cold weather. Because I already had the white fleece in my stash (let us not speak of those cloth napyp days), this feels almost like it was free. Almost. (Well, it was only about £12, I think, which isn’t bad, really. I’m going to draw a tactful veil over the years it has added to my Dorian Gray-style attic painting, of course.)

Quilts = hiding. Fact.

I think she likes it.

Damn grouting. Damn handmade tiles. So, brown? White? Grey? I am all agog for your grouting suggestions. (And there is a phrase which one does not find springing from one’s lips particularly often.)

Yes, they are random, and yes, we love them. Better pics to follow when I have finally pissed or got off the grouting pot.

My first piece of flat felting.

And it is possible that I have something of a felted pumpkin addiction. I just can’t stop. And the more there are, the better they all look. It’s compulsive.

If only these leaves were likewise. I had in mind this fantastic autumnal banner with heaps of the blighters, only to find I’d used up a lifetime’s quota of blanket stitch tolerance in, well, about six leaves.

Though I did enjoy doing the oak leaf, in particular.

Not quite as abundant as I’d hoped, but hey, it’s a work in progress, right?

Monday morning:

- Bright sunshine and hard frost.

- Small girl’s starry quilt finished in time for the first proper cold weather (pics to follow when I finish changing cameras; have I ranted recently about how much technology has pissed me off lately? Broken or useless in the last few months: microwave, kettle, toothbrush, two digital cameras, external harddrive; it’s just not funny!).

- Several new recipes to add to the stash (sweet potato and lentil burritos, butternut squash and rainbow chard lasagne, stuffed pumpkin).

- House full of clothes needing either washing, drying or putting away (why oh why have we no decent line outside? Winter sun may not be either frequent or particularly warm but it beats the hell out of dank indoor set-ups, with the exception of the wonderful Victorian airer we have on a pulley system…).

- Hair cut on Saturday and now the mirror shows me someone else; can’t do the things I normally do with it very successfully, and yet don’t like it just down… Time, I guess, will solve that one!

- Small girl has been quite cross for about a month now, and Quercus and I are definitely noticing. Teeth? Virus? Chickenpox? All considered, but nothing conclusive.

- Gingerbread forest baked on Friday; eaten by Saturday evening.

- First pieces of flat felt made, one with stripes and one with spots. Again, pictures to follow once I sort the camera issue.

- For some reason, I appear to be savagely bad-tempered lately. Not sure why; maybe I’m catching it from the small girl (or maybe she’s catching it from me). The house is really getting me down, and I long to have the spare time together that ‘normal’ people seem to get at weekends, rather than the ships-that-pass-at-mealtimes experience that our weekends normally seem to be. I know that the things we each do are valuable, in some cases vital, but that doesn’t make it easier when you get to Monday and just feel flat because the weekend was… blah. Quercus is working to finish the workshop at the moment – the cladding is nearly done, and then he’s got a door and two windows to make before he can move our vast collection of tools in – and I’ve been tidying up things like gate-painting, crack-filling, kitchen tiling and whatnot. I can see progress, and yet the rest of the house is so dusty, so cobwebby, so mouldy (in places), so chaotically full of STUFF that just won’t fit anywhere else because our storage is virtually non-existent, and all I seem to do is half-finish a job while the small girl sleeps only to break off and do something else when she wakes, because otherwise we spend ALL DAY doing housework, which doesn’t seem particularly fair on her, despite her relative patience in such scenarios. (I find she tolerates me doing things like that for a long time, but we often end up with a period of relative meltdown later in the day; it makes more sense, thus, to go for a walk together at some point, even though the laundry mountain will only mock me for such weakness.) What I need is four hands, a forty-eight-hour day, and professional help. I just never seem to be able to keep up with all the things I’m supposed to be doing, and our house is the dustiest, mouldiest place I have ever lived, so here, more than anywhere, I really want to keep things clean. (Insert mild rant about possible reasons for developing asthma here.)

So where are you this Monday morning?

So, there I was, writing myself a good listy whatsit and trundling out lots of productive and creative uses of my time. Well, so far, I have finished painting the bottom of the house, and I have filled in the French drains we’d dug (shovelling pea shingle, how I love thee), which has taken the outside of the house to a whole new level of Finished. I have also finished tiling the kitchen, though I have yet to grout.

(An aside here, and a question: coloured grout – tasteful and a good idea with handmade and thus very uneven tiles in a size-of-gap-disguising way, or just a hideous throwback to 1970s colour-schemes involving taupe? I am contemplating dark brown grout for our very multicoloured tiles [red, orange, dark brown, dark green, dark blue, duckegg blue, pea green, yellow] because I fear white might make the varying gaps necessitated by the uneven shaping of the tiles look all the more noticeable, in a Not Good way. Has anyone out there used coloured grout? Good, bad, ugly? And where did you get it? Any recommendations?)

I have also goodly painted one gate with primer, and two coats of the dark grey which we used on the external woodwork.

Oh, and I have cooked up a vast vat of quince, which I’m going to freeze in little blocks which can then be chucked in with apple pies or crumbles for exciting culinary adventures long after the quinces themselves are but a memory. Or something.

And that, my friends, is where the good stuff ends.

Mostly, other than that, I have been making needle-felted pumpkins.

Or reading Permaculture or Juno.

Or novels.

Or making lists.

Or fretting about what to make Quercus for Chrimbly. Oh, and the small girl.

Or wondering if that rash is actually chickenpox, and if that would explain the grumpiness which has marked the small girl’s days of late.

Or looking for the goblins who come into the house each night just to sprinkle dust around the place, and, you know, trash the kitchen.

Or wishing I could knit faster, because that way, the birthday gift which I wanted to send to La Que Sabe in time for her actual birthday, rather than, well, probably two weeks later,  would be finished. (Shh! I’m not saying what it is because I am still going to send said present… just shamefully late.)

No-one’s perfick, eh?

Shameless because it was pinched from Suburban Yogini. I’m feeling a bit out of focus today, in lots of ways – fuzzy around the edges, and directionless. So, something which reminds me of where I’m going, and where I’ve been, seems a timely concept.

November, then, will hopefully include the following:

1. Finish tiling the kitchen, including the scary bit around the sink and the grouting.

2. Finish painting the bottom of the house.

3. Two coats of paint on the gates. Well, one completely done, and the other undercoated and half top-coated.

4. Sanding the skirting boards in the kitchen and the bathroom. Didn’t get within spitting distance.

5. Painting said skirting boards. Ditto.

6. The small girl’s fleece quilt. (I had some white fleece bought for nappy liners; we didn’t use it for that because of the ongoing nappy rash which drove us to disposables; it’s big, but not big enough to be a quilt on its own, so I’ve bought some red fleece and am going for a double-sided-with-contrasting-stars-sewn-on-in kind of thing.)

7. Decent length walk three times a week. Some weeks yes, some… not so much.

8. Swimming once over the weekend. Not even remotely.

9. Earlier to bed by fifteen minutes. Quite frequently yes.

10. Quince cheese-making.

11. Mincemeat-making.

12. Craft swap!

13. More fruit in the ol’ diet. Not bad on veggies, given that I think my favourite food is probably sprouts, but I’m trying to improve on fruit too, and particularly while there are lots of local varieties of apples about.

And you? What do you hope November holds?