Things to make, things to eat (peppermint bark, in this case). Most of the shopping done (we’re going easy financially, so no huge trips, really, anyway), and the house reasonably ordered as we look forward to Quercus’s mother visiting soon. Oh, we are genuinely looking forward to another pair of hands. The small girl, who will forthwith be known as Hero because it’s getting confusing remembering to differentiate between ‘small’ and ‘smaller’, has been quite challenging of late, and while Quercus and I know that it’s a question of adjusting to new family dynamics while at the same time being three, and also being born of two parents who are, shall we say, determined, that knowledge is not making the day-to-day battles any easier, frankly. There is a lot of willpower in this household, and although we are sure that it’s the adults who are in charge, sometimes getting that message across takes quite a wee while, and no small measure of self-control and anger management. Hey ho – we shouldn’t have joined etc. etc. I am trying not to take the constant struggles for power and attempts to stage minor coups personally; I think it is just that Hero has reached that age when she is aware of possibilities, and the limitations to what she perceives is very frustrating, so she exerts control over the things she can control, i.e. the time it takes her to put shoes on, whether or not she is hungry/thirsty/tired, whether or not she can stand up/do her coat up/find something… The list is endless, and super-annoying in the short-term, but ultimately, I keep telling myself that she will not be doing such things when she’s five, and wow, how quickly that time will come around, if the first three and a half years are anything to go by. I am not always quite the parent I want to be (that calm oasis of maternal love), but I am trying my best, and hopefully the result will not be too too awful. I do wish that it wasn’t such an uphill struggle at the moment, that said; I feel myself to be constantly – though I know, rationally, that this is an exaggeration – at war with Hero, and I hate that, but I also feel equally strongly that I am her parent, not her friend, and that this means sometimes I have to be the Person Who Says, albeit kindly and respectfully and patiently, and she has to be the Person Who Does, albeit in a few minutes, in her own way. But oh, for it to happen just once in a while without the back-and-forth negotiating, or the wailing, or the howls of despair. This Too Shall Pass.

In amidst the challenges we are managing some organised chaos festive buggering-about. We have made stained glass windows à la Claire, and confections à la Orangette. We have baked saltdough stars for a wreath (our front door is getting to look positively civilised these days, as Quercus limewashed the house again this year, and repainted the sticky molasses-like stuff on the bottom of the house, and we have even now got a door which shuts properly and which you can only see daylight through in tiny cracks…), and used red paint and wooden stamps on brown paper for festive wrappings. I have replaced my obsession with needle-felted pumpkins with felt lantern-making; I made thirty-two of the little blighters for autumn, and have taken down those only to put up a miniature cream version for winter. (And no. No. We have not got a season table. No. For some reason, they make my toes curl. Instead, we have the rather ancient twiglet shelves. They are so-called because genuinely, the uprights look like giant twiglets. And on the twiglets lurk toys and something to indicate the passing of the seasons. That is as twee as it gets, frankly, without my need for a sick bucket becoming overwhelming. I know: a part of me is missing, and I am a horrible, awful person. Meh.)

I also realise that I haven’t put up any pictures of the upstairs of the house since Mirth, the name by which the smallest of our number will now be appearing here, arrived in August. I must remedy this, for lo! we hath walls, and ceilings, and even limewash! Quercus has been working quite hard lately to get the stairs finished off before Chrimbly; as a result, there are now bastard little cat paw-prints in white gloss on the carpet here and there (animals are such a joy), and hopefully we will have a completely-done-bar-the-stairs-carpet-because-flat-surfaces-are-hard-enough-let-alone-things-which-go-up-and-down first floor, at which point there will definitely be a picturethon (and yes, of course that is a word). Gratuitous baby pictures follows:

(How? How? How is she FOUR MONTHS OLD? It is not possible, I tell you: the laws of Physics – they be brokeded.)

For the meantime, I go, to make a fourth stocking, to mix up a Dark Solstice Cake, to sort out two more rolls of wrapping paper, to make yet more peppermint bark as presents, and to contemplate the genuinely horrific prospect of a grocery shop at some point this week. And you, dear reader? Full of festive spirit, or bah-humbugging in the corner?

Yet… Largely, I have done nothing. I have, mind you, finished brushing out my dreadlocks (all hail!), and I’ve been to a friend’s house for a haircut (all hail twice!), and I’ve come back and done the usual faffing and oh-good-lording that goes with haircuts. And I’ve done boring things like laundry, and grocery-shopping, and house-tidying, and small-local-town-sauntering, and nappy-changing and baby-feeding. But other than that, nothing. The plans I have all fall to one side; the ideas remain nothing but that. Why is this, I wonder? I do feel motivated to do things, but somehow when given the opportunity to do all the things that I normally lust after (uninterrupted knitting time! undisturbed felt-bunting-making time! baking! serious cleaning of a once-a-season type!), all I do is just sit here, with the odd potter on the inter thrown in for good measure.

I have until Tuesday afternoon, when the small girl and Quercus will come back.

So. Here are the things I could do.

:: Knitting. Slightly dispiriting, as I’m about halfway through knitting the small girl a rather nice berry-coloured cardigan, and have just discovered that I’ve fucked up the ribbing at the bottom of one half of the front. The half that I’ve just finished, of course. And I discovered this by not fucking up the other half, and then realising the difference. Arse.

:: Bitumen-painting the bottom of the house, so that Quercus doesn’t have to. Well, the appeal of that… is, er, tremendous, obviously.

:: Felt bunting. I’ve made 32 little lanterns of felt, all hanging in the room between (which is my new name for our old dining room; it speaks of pleasant trips between the worlds, does it not, while drawing a pleasant veil over the mould to which said room is prone), and have plans to make some smaller ones in cream felt for hanging on the Christmas tree.

:: Bleaching the downstairs of the original house. Yay. Such fun. Can’t wait. But… if I don’t do it, it won’t get done, and the alternative is to live with encroaching mould until next spring, when we’re hoping to gut the two rooms involved.

:: Making a boiled wool dress for the small girl. I have two rather nice charity shop-find wool jumpers, just itching (ha!) to be made into something delectable…

:: Knitting the smallest girl a winter hat. Which is slightly otiose, given that she’s already got a very nice Noro Kochoran number which I knitted for her sister; I just don’t want everything to be a hand-me-down for her.

So, gentle reader, what should I do? Some of these things, or something completely different? Suggest-me-do.

• listening to Thievery Corporation’s latest offering and loving it

• wondering how the small girl will manage at her grandma’s for a few days; Quercus is driving her over as I write this, for her first solo stay. She’s excited – helped to pack her things and was literally bouncing with enthusiasm come departure time – and I so hope that carries her through any mama-orientated wobbles

• immensely grateful that we have this as an option; Quercus and I haven’t spent any time together on our own for the better part of three years, and while the odd evening out has been managed here and there, the notion of several days is simply unreal, even if those days will be filled with limewashing…

• inhaling the scent of a particularly lovely sort of Nag Champa incense picked up by the small girl in Firkins, a long-term favourite shop in Exeter

• watching the corn turn golden in the field behind the house; it really is summer, then, despite rumours to the contrary…

• thinking of the crafty things I can do in the next few days if the small girl is happy with her grandma – so far, the list includes a bag for her to take to playschool (she’s been going for a morning a week, and seems, with the odd wobble, to be enjoying it, which has been very good for maternal energy levels when she gets back…!), a small quilt for the impending baby, some more trousers for the small girl, whose legs are growingly ridiculously fast, it seems, and possibly the shortening of my Storchenwiege sling.

• marvelling at the notion – quite ridiculous! – that this baby is less than two weeks away, universe permitting.

And you?

One day, there you are, making felted eggs, and the next thing you know, you’re on to a whole family of hen plus chicks.

And you?

We have a cupboard full of jam:

• ten jars of spiced apple jam;

• eight jars of quince butter;

• six large jars of sweet and sour spiced plums;

• eight jars of dark Seville marmalade;

• seven jars of apple and herb butter;

• four jars of plum jam.

And the booze:

• four gallons of sloe wine;

• two gallons of quince wine;

• two gallons of plum wine;

• two gallons of elderflower wine;

• a gallon of greengage wine.

And then there are clothes:

• trousers in brown velvet, brown cord and cornflower blue cord for the small girl;

• a turquoise fleece dress for the small girl;

• two sundresses for the small girl, one with a bell closure;

• a sun bonnet for the small girl;

• a reversible quilt… yes, for the small girl;

• a knitted hat, in Noro’s gorgeously soft Kochoran yarn, together with scarf and legwarmers… for the small girl;

• two pairs of pyjamas bottoms, for Quercus;

• a brown fleece goblin hood for the small girl;

• clothes for Bluebell, the doll I made for the small girl’s second birthday;

• knitted wristwarmers for Quercus’s birthday.

And then there are, well, things:

• a seat cover for the small girl’s high chair;

• a felted wrap for our coffee pot;

• more felted pumpkins than I care to number;

• several sets of felt dreadlock-style hair ties;

• more felted acorns than is strictly decent;

• a baby.

EEK.

Ah. Yes. I realise that last point may require a little explanation. Ahem. Thirteen weeks down, twenty-seven to go: our second child is due in early August, if all goes to plan. We’re delighted, and, predictably, knackered, terrified and skint, not necessarily in that order. Did I mention that this is the year when we plan to replaster the rest of the house?

• I’ve cast on the child’s placket neck sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts (that was Knitted Gits first time); I have some rather lovely Rowan wool in, worryingly, a shade called ‘Rage’. Does this indicate the shape of things to come, I wonder? Probably, as I’m relearning the magic loop technique for this sweater, and wishing – so, so wishing – that it was just knitted flat. And on BIG needles, rather than 4mm ones, which seem rather piddling after the 9mm variety I used for the last knitting I did. Anyway, we shall see. I really hope that I find my knitting zen; I think that despite my professed love of winter, I am finding the stultification of a very wet, muddy January a bit of a bummer, technically, and as previously discussed, I need to achieve things if I am to avoid feeling a bit shit, really.  I’m also hoping to kick off the hourglass sweater in the same book for myself (the first thing I’ll have knitted for me! all me!), but am a bit dismayed at the concept of 15 skeins of Noro anything; approx. UK price for that would be somewhere over £100, so I’m going to be attempting to come up with an affordable – hopefully tweedy-looking – alternative. Any suggestions? I would love to just use up some of the stash I’ve accumulated since I started knitting, but as ever, nothing is the right size, or the right quantity. Typical, no?

• Why do I keep seeing knitting things I want to do, but which always call for either a different sort of wool or a size of needle which I don’t yet possess? Also, as an aside, how is it possible that I don’t now own at least one instance of EVERY SIZE of needle, given the vastness of my inherited/purchased collection?

• I find the prettiness of my circular needles rather distracting. I keep finding myself wandering off, mentally, and completely forgetting how many stitches whatever particular form of torment I’m engaging in at the present moment I have actually done. This has lead to an interesting border to the bottom edge of the sweater. (I’ve now frogged the blighter and started over.)

• I have submitted my tax return, though I hope to all that’s holy that the calculation is wrong; it’s over £100 more than I’d estimated. Fortunately, I’ve got a week to speak to someone about it before the deadline, so if it’s out, I can hopefully sort it before simply stumping up. Sodding, sodding student loans.

• Today, I declare to be a baking day. This morning, the small girl is at a toddler group with Quercus brandishing craft supplies in line with the theme of shopping; this should mean that she probably wants a reasonably quiet afternoon, and baking is our default activity at such times. I’m itching to try something new, though; cake suggestions, anyone?

• Preschool: the pros and cons thereof. Please discuss. At present, the small girl goes to a toddler group once a week, and we meet up with friends who have similarly-aged children probably most weeks, so she gets a reasonable quantity of socialising, but, left to our own devices, our rhythm is pretty home-centred. Lots of people we know are now looking at preschools, or, indeed, have had their infants merrily toddling along for the last few months; are we doing ours a disservice by not following suit? I can’t imagine leaving her somewhere on her own at the moment; she is going through a particularly mother-centric, well, life, really, although she is confident with people she knows reasonably well, and will quite happily toddle off with some of our friends and so on. I don’t want to push her into something for which she isn’t ready, but at the same time, I do think I underestimate her sometimes, so I am wary of being simply selfish in my desire to keep her with me, all the time. Ahem.

• Wet, dank, grey. That is Devon this morning.

And you?

This evening finds Devon under a thick quilt of feather-like snow, downy and soft. Last night, six inches fell, and more is predicted tonight; this is so unusual in this area that most people have been quite caught out by it, I think, so often are the forecasters wrong when it comes to ‘wintry showers’. We ventured into Exeter, our nearest town, along roads thick with ice and slush, and the drive along our lane was easily as interesting as I would want it; no gritters get within two miles of us, which, given the tiny nature of our lane, is not surprising, and I was glad to get back safe and sound, with a bootful of food and a toddling person gleeful in the face of impending blueberry consumption. (The small girl has been out of sorts for a few days, with a temperature and a cough, hence tantalising morsels to eat.)

We have also acquired a wooden sledge, knocked together by Quercus the first morning of the snow, and perfected with plastic drainpipe runners; this means longer walks are good fun for all of us, rather than presenting boot-topping challenges to the smaller of our number…

These days, one of the best things about living in a house which needs, ahem, a bit of work is that we have so many things kicking about the place. Of course we had drainpipe and suitable wood, because, well, who doesn’t keep eight metres of plastic pipe kicking about? Er… It’s both delighting when we get to make something out of, well, not quite nothing, but certainly oddments and remnants, but at the same time maddening, as we have so much stuff which has yet to find a proper home, and even more stuff for which a suitable home is unlikely to appear unless we move to a much larger house… Oh, the irony – fix your house, in the process acquiring so many tools that you then need to, er, move…

And yes, that is the goblin hood I mentioned a while back, which I managed to put together quite quickly as the sewing machine has switched its allegiance back from the powers of darkness to me, largely, I think, due to blandishments involving fine-grade oil.

It took about three hours to get the sodding door shut, of course, after we were foolish enough to open it…

Predictably, while I have yet to finish some of the things I’d like to do before Christmas arrives in earnest, as it were, I’m happy to undertake side-tracks right left and centre. Note: felted winter fairy queen whatsit stage left. But the weather shift has changed the feel of the days already – we live at a slower pace, aware of impending darkness from mid-afternoon, and waking when the light bounces off the brilliant white of the fields and hedges which surround us. Somehow, the sense of busyness which I felt only a few days ago has receeded slightly, and I’m just letting myself go along with that. (See earlier jumping-on-bandwagon-excuse-making.)

Things have been crossed off lists not because I’ve done them, but simply because I’ve ended up questioning whether it was actually that worth getting worked up about. I have nearly finished grouting our tiles (for interested parties, we ended up with a sort of biscuity colour, which seems to set the bright colours off well), and I’ve managed to make some clothes for Bluebell, the small girl’s doll, and to attain a level of control over the craft cupboard not seen since shortly after its arrival, but for the most part, I am trying to feel OK about Just Being. Because it’s a bloody good thing, isn’t it? If you can get it to sit right?

Just Being is so important to one’s sanity, isn’t it? It’s something Quercus and I are both utterly rubbish at. We both struggle to sit, to contemplate, without constantly Doing, and Achieving. I only realise this, really, when we have nothing obvious on our lists (of which there are many, naturally, at levels ranging from ‘fix house’ to ‘sort escutcheon on front door’): these last few days of snow, neither of us has been out and about doing our normal things, and we’ve both been a bit on the antsy side, casting about for Tasks, for Purpose, for Things To Finish. Funny, really, for two people who often lament the lack of Time Off – when we are given it, we don’t seem quite sure what to do with it! It has meant, however, the completion and organisation of a few bits and bobs which were just sort of hanging; we’ve shoved (what felt like) hundreds of demijohns up on top of the oak cupboard, and we’ve put things in the newly-finished workshop, and we’ve hoovered the place and generally sorted a few things out. All of which is good. And makes me think, slightly, ‘this must be what sane people do at the weekends, rather than buggering about with knackered old houses which have a tendency to fall apart’. That said, of course, I know enough people who do what we do to realise that we’re not alone…

Anyway, with Quercus’s mother arriving tomorrow and a small girl who quite miserable (and has her first ear infection, we learned this morning), I’ll be back in this space in the new year, folks, so a medley Crumphole to all who read and visit and comment here, and bright starry wishes for 2011.

So much for the hunter-gatherer end of the equation, whose giddy jollity was complemented by my mother, largely displaying signs of one who felt she Should Have Done More By This Time, i.e. there should have been handmade decorations a plenty, set off to perfection by a veritable shedload of biscuits (of some predictably Germanic or Swedish origin, for it is written that They, and Only They, know how to do Christmas, and indeed winter as a whole). Instead, she’d have sort of thought about it, and then ended up playing the piano for a while, and making a few biscuits while telling me the story of the Nibelungenleid. That was the thing about my mother; she was so incredibly knowledgeable, and so very talented, that it was hugely frustrating sometimes to watch her beating herself up about not having done something which she could actually have done in a jimminy-whatsit had she so girded her loins.

Loins, the girding thereof, is not my problem.

My problem, gentle reader, is overstretching myself, and taking on so much that even the fun bits end up feeling like some hideous Herculean task designed to extract the very last ounce of festive spirit, before distilling it, adding in a little hemlock just for kicks, and asking you if you’d like ice with that.

So, this year, I found myself compiling an ever-increasing list of Lovely Things To Do. Somewhere, this list metamorphosised, cunningly and slyly, into a list of Things Which I Must Do If I Am To Be A Good Person. See? Not cool, is what that is/was. Suddenly, my old friend Procastination was creeping through the door, bringing with him his cousin, Guilt, and I found myself swigging back the hemlock like mother’s milk.

Part of my problem is that, while I’m not particularly avaricious by modern standards (it only really takes shiny or bright colours and you’ve got me, hook, line and proverbial), I am crafty-avaricious. I read blogs. I look at pictures. I think about the things I could make, the things that the small girl would like, the things that, if I’m honest, would make the people who I love love me more than they already do, because, obviously, it is completely logical and unassailably reasonable to assume that nothing says ‘I love you, and I am a lovely person who you love! Right? RIGHT?’ like a felted reindeer.

And there you have it, you see, in (in)glorious technicolour. For some reason, I seem to equate making, producing or otherwise creating with love, to the degree that I feel that I am almost betraying people if I think of making them something and then back out for some reason, even if I hadn’t mentioned the plan to them. So, the list of things that I wanted to make for the small girl grew, and grew, and grew, until it assumed quite fairy-tale-like properties, and I started to wonder if there was an ogre on the other end of it, piling on the suggestions until it wasn’t just the craft cupboard which was threatening to explode… ‘Thar she blows, Cap’n!’

This week, I have reached a bit of a low point. I was dreading doing any of the things on my list, even though in theory I was happy to do them, and had got the things necessary, and could see them complete. I procrastinated. I spent more time on Facebook than can ever be good for a human intent on making it past forty. I even cleaned the sink. Oh, it was quite like old times – many, after all, was the happy hour I spent thrutching about in u-bends for old tealeaves rather than writing the odd word towards my thesis. So, after realising that I’m going completely bollocking mad, and all for the sake of the random assembling of buttons, beads and felt into a small herd of Chrimbly reindeer, I have decided that this is lunacy, and must be set to one side until sanity can prevail. (Assuming that day comes, of course.) I’ve put the thing I’m making Quercus on hold (largely because a two-week break from it served only to produce a ‘…. But that is complete shite! What was I thinking?!’ reaction during our reunion. I’ve scaled back my plans for the small girl, and I’m trying to remind myself that what she would really value this year is a mother who doesn’t twitch involuntarily at the mention of the word ‘present’, and who is able to remember she has knitting needles in her hair before leaving the house.

It’s a learning curve, this sort of bollocks, isn’t it? Pass the biscuits.

In between our forays into arctic survival, we have mostly been baking and making. So far, six jars of apple mincemeat, with, rather conveniently, no ingredients bought beyond what we happened to have in the cupboards. (This probably testifies more to the strange contents of our kitchen than to any particular fortuitousness…), several batches of gingerbread and Chrimbly Scandinavian-style biscuits, nine red fleece hearts to hang on the Chrimbly tree, when we get it, and three moosibous (somewhere between a moose and a caribou, these felty critters are now lining up on the shelves, complete with antlers, bells and the odd button nose). Still to go: lots more felt hearts, lots more biscuits, cake, puddens, and various crafty bits about which I cannot speak for fear of Prying Eyes. (And yes, I am looking at you, Quercus.)

Oh yes: before I go wittering on, has anyone out there perfected The Ultimate Chrimbly Biscuit? I am thinking of something along the Pfeffernüssen and Lebkuchen line, with spices and whatnot. We’ve tried a few recipes this year (and I wrote my own recipe a while back, when I was blogging as Kitchen Witch; I’ve meant to add my archives from that site to this, ever since I started here, yet have I done it? Have I buggery. This means I will have to go through the hideously long text file version to find the sodding recipe. That’ll teach me) but I’ve yet to find The One Biscuit To Bring Them All And In The Gluttony Bind Them.

The ice was about an inch long on some of the ferns; just beautiful.

Holly leaves, with cinnamon, orange zest and whatnot. Lovely smell, but recipe was a tad disappointing as the biscuits were a bit on the dry side, despite adding extra milk, and a bugger to roll out as a result.

I’ve never been particularly sure about this lamp, which is in our garden; it always looks a bit out of kilter to me, with its nineteenth-centuriness, against our blatantly-older-than-that house, but it does do a good Narnia line in this sort of weather, so I think I will get over it.

This morning it is bright, sunny and cold once more, though the magical dusting of yesterday has now gone, and apparently it’s going to be warmer this weekend. I love winter; this time of year is my favourite. I do hope we’re not about to have a bout of warm-and-wet, though, because that is all sorts of crap in my view. Let’s stick to the cold and bright, please, weather gods.

In about a week, it will be ten years since my mother died. I can’t quite believe it: an entire decade of this alternative life, this strange, skewed existence which still seems off-balance to me sometimes despite the passing of time. I have decided that December 14 will now be the day when we get our Chrimbly tree. I don’t want to wallow, and I don’t want to dwell on the fact that my mother isn’t here to do this with us, to meet the small girl, to watch us grow, together. Rather, I will spend my time with a small girl for whom Chrimbly and the midwinter is so very exciting, this being the first time she has really taken note of what’s going on, and I will celebrate the going-on of life rather than its disappearance, inevitable, inescapable, ineffable. This small girl of mine has done what no amount of counselling, or thinking, or mourning, or distraction, could do, and she has done it without even knowing she was doing it, never mind trying – she has flipped the coin, making me the mother, and recasting my loss in a new role. I am now the mother, and in so becoming, I feel in charge of myself, grown-up in a way that I thought I had lost forever when my mother died. So, here’s to the healing powers of mincemeat, and of cake-baking, and card-making, and present-plotting, and cold walks in the crisp frost, and reindeer who live at the top of our hill.

Fun.

FUN.

And, of course, the fact that this epiphany struck only at three o’clock on the afternoon of the day before advent begins – well, a minor detail. Ple-e-e-nty of time for creativity to whip its way through a little diversion like this.

And, of course, the fact that the sewing machine decided to bugger about and start snapping the thread right left and centre, well, that just added spice to an otherwise doddle of a project.

Ahem.

Let us not speak of the fact that the sewing machine appears to need another service, after having sewn three layers of felt together. I fear that perhaps three layers was just asking too much of it, though it is rather strange that it worked fine as I sewed the back and front together, and when I sewed on the first five of the twenty-five pockets. And let us also not speak of the fact that its needing attention will probably necessitate a round-trip of some sixty miles, as I take it to the magic-weaver who brought it back to life for me last summer, when I thought it was my own ineptitude which made every project take ten times as long as I’d thought. (Well, of course, my ineptitude accounted for at least three-quarters of that time, but the sewing machine was buggering about too, I learned.)

That said, it was worth it when the small girl got the hang of it, and she was very nice about the concept, and said just the right things about the tree itself being pretty. She is a very rewarding audience, and every time I make something for her, or for us, I feel remarkably fortunate to be able to do these things, and to have her to introduce these things to. I think I’ve written before about the genuine delight I feel in creating family traditions of our own – ditching the Christmas Eve hunt for the inevitably dog-eared tree in which the aged parent used to indulge was a revelation, for example, in lowering stress levels – and bringing her along, showing her the world and the joy which it can hold, is just the bestest of the best.

God.

How twee am I?

(And yes, that is a very obvious join in the wallpaper you can see. Technically, this is known as ‘papering over the cracks’, because the plaster is actually falling off the wall here. So, another layer of paper, just to get us through until the summer of next year, when hopefully we will replaster.)