Where I’ve been.
So, I finally finished brushing out my dreads. The resulting haircut is quite short, but not too bad, I’m thinking. It’s taking some getting used to after having hair which I just tied up ALL THE TIME for about, oooh, eighteen months, but I’m getting there, and gosh, it’s nice not to have an enormous mass of tangled roots to fret about!
Talking of tangled roots, the small girl and I made a sort of autumnal randomly-festive-feeling wreath thing for the door, using the (I think…?) wild clematis that Quercus and I hauled back from the woods the year that we moved here. We added lots of leaves, dipped in beeswax, and there you go. The small girl greatly enjoyed the dipping; man, there was wax EVERYWHERE, but sometimes I think it’s worth it. Of course, it is entirely possible that I was singing a rather different song when cleaning the spots off the hob and the counters the next day… Though the leftovers did make two rather nice-smelling pots of balm, with rosemary, thyme and marjoram.
The days are moving so quickly here that, although I often intend to post bits and bats, somehow I don’t seem to get around to it. I’ve made some felt bunting, for example, and wanted to post pictures, but haven’t even got around to taking them off the camera yet…. And I’ve also smugly made Chrimbly puddings, courtesy of a good friend’s excellent decision that we should meet once a week for what has become known as a Crafternoon (heh – see what I did there? A wit without parallel, moi), foisting our children upon one another in the hope that sufficient exposure will foster friendship, or, at least, tolerance, while we embark on crafting adventures which will keep our maternal sanity in the darkness of the winter months, where summer’s outdoor answer to so many problems has the nerve to keep such very short hours, and to cover itself in mud and rain.
The smallest of our number continues to ensnare me. I worried when pregnant that, while I knew I would love this child, I might not feel as strongly as I had the first time. Of course, completely ridiculous – her conquest of us has been every bit as absolute, and just as unwitting. She seems to have developed a lovely rhythm – sleeping for a couple of hours morning and afternoon, and then a short cat-nap at about 4.30 before we all pile into the bath and thence the usual bedtime palava.
Of course, all bets are off at night, but then she is only three months old, and I think it’s a little early to be worrying overly about how many times she wakes. I’m in the fortunate position of having Quercus to hand her over to for a half-hour or so in the morning, which really helps the sanity stakes, and of having a four-day weekend every week since Quercus moved to working three longer days as opposed to the four afternoons he’d previously worked. (On a financial note, having only one part-time wage is not ideal while I’m on maternity leave, but this is the bit where I keep reminding myself that we made these choices for a reason: we want to be able to spend time together, all of us, in one big sticky heap, and not being at work for forty hours a week may mean we’re a bit hard-up when we do so, but at least we’re all here; we also get much more flexibility in terms of getting major work done on the house, which is very necessary if we are to finish it before we are old and grey.) (Insert radical home-making-style rant here.) (No, really.)
I appear also to be knitting three hundred things. Well, at least mentally. I have mittens on the go courtesy of Claire; dark pink and purple stripes, as the small girl has just chosen these colours for the boots she is having made as a Chrimbol present from her grandma. (We appear to be moving to the end of her Red Years, where All Must Be Red, Or There Will Be Trouble; I am now so accustomed to looking for red things that I don’t quite know how to get out of the habit… Purple and pink? Surprisingly girly, though the pink is a very good shade, and she is super-picky about it not being pale and wussish, so I guess I will adapt.) (Just as well, come to think of it; have you tried finding a coat for a small girl which is red and not horribly shiny? Ye gods, they’re hens’ teeth. Which is why a purple candidate and a khaki alternative are on route, on approval, as it’s getting a little more seasonally appropriate here in the last day or two, and already there have been complaints of frostbite from a certain young lady.)
Also, we have been off adventuring about the place, enjoying not doing work on the house in every spare minute. Of course, this means that we have yet to touch the landing and stairs since the smallest joined us in August, but hey, sanity is more important, right? Quercus took this picture when we on a jaunt to Dartmoor, where, I have decided, we do not go often enough. There is something so uplifting about the space, the huge views across the landscape, that we always seem to come back feeling renewed and refreshed, as if we’d had a whole holiday, rather than just a day away from the usual views and the rhythm of our everyday existence. So, perhaps a monthly visit is in order, methinks. I leave you with some tors. Impressive, aren’t they? The small girl certainly thought so. The smallest? Well, she mostly slept in a striped sling, snuggled up inside Quercus’s fleece against the wind.
