I have no idea how an entire week has passed since I sat down to whinge about the internal thought process I’m working through about the whole procreation idea. (As an aside, how would one go about having an external thought process? Ah yes – a whingeing blog post.) Yet somehow it has, and here it is, Wednesday again, and me all good intentions about posting a bit more regularly too – I don’t know if it’s just me, but discussions with one or two other bloggers tend to suggest that to call oneself a blogger, one must lever oneself off one’s proverbial at least twice a week, and ideally more frequently, and bloody well write something. This works well with me because when I write frequently, I tend to think of more things to say, and I even remember to plug in the bloody camera and go through the iPhoto-related angst (I have about 8000 photos in my iPhoto library, which means it takes roughly the power needed to light Liverpool for a week to open the app, and once it’s open, it needs another kick, this time of a nuclear-like level, to actually bring the pictures up and let me sort through them, and that’s before we even begin challenges like uploading the blighters to Photobucket) of adding pictures! pictures! to my otherwise blocky text.

Anyway. Where was I? Ah yes.

So, this past week has seen Quercus finish cleaning up the old window frames in the front of the house, cutting in bits of chestnut wood where the rot had got too bad to make the original recoverable. I’ve glazed most of three windows, leaving only the tiny daughter’s to do; we left that one until last so that we’d hopefully have perfected the technique, insofar as we were ever going to do so. This morning, furthermore, will see the arrival of the replacement window catches – the old ones were rusted to the point where their continued existence was just not on the cards, frankly – which may even mean closing windows! with glass instead of board! glass! which you can see through, and everything! this very day. After two or three weeks of living with boarded-up windows in the original house, I’m quite looking forward to the restoration of light.

We’ve also been scavenging about in various hedges, procuring nine pounds of sloes (rough translation: fifteen – eighteen bottles of wine, in about six months), four pounds of rosehips (thirty bottles), shedloads of apples (mostly cooked and frozen for the tiny daughter’s afters), shedloads of blackberries (ditto) and some plums, which are nearing the end of fermentation as I write.

It’s that time of year where you can smell autumn just around the corner; this morning there was a slight mist coming across the fields and a cool breeze coming in from the west, and (annoyingly, for those of us with a scavenger’s eye) the hedges were cut last week, meaning there is a newly-spartan look to the borders around Earthenhouse. How did it get to be autumn again already? It seems only yesterday that we were taking down the wreath over the stove in January, and here we are, contemplating cleaning out the woodstove prior to lighting it for the winter (because in a house where it’s our only source of heat, it basically stays lit until spring).

And oh – we’ve got so much to do on the house before the weather gets colder. The render, for a start. The cob is still bare at the moment because the preparatory work has taken ages (sorting out the windows, the door-frame, the top of the cob walls just beneath the thatch, the fact that someone is now living in the cob wall at about bed-height in our room…), so this coming week, Quercus’s mother (who obviously drew a short straw sometime in a previous life, given that she’s a sixty-odd- year-old woman, and clearly shouldn’t have to spend her visiting time hoiking lime render into a mixer; on balance, though, she is also incredibly, astonishingly, bewilderingly irritating at times, so perhaps it’s a fair trade-off) is coming to help Quercus; hopefully, this will be the time when we actually begin to get the cob covered up again. If we manage to get the render sorted and the windows done, and the guttering on the extension, and the lead on the join between extension roof and cob wall, I shall be a very happy bunny indeed. That only leaves the woodshed to sort out – we’ve now got planning permission to build a large wooden shed which we’ll use for storing the wood we burn in the stove, so all we need to do is, er, build it. Oh, and source the wood – possibly pallets – to do so. So, yes, um, a few bits and pieces to be getting on with.

However: coming soon – crumble topping to beat off feelings of overwhelming chaos, hotly followed by a detailed – yet not depressingly-so – list of works-in-progress I’m going to allow myself to contemplate over the coming few months. Repeat after me: I will not – repeat NOT! – keep accepting copy-editing work which turns out to be written by someone for whom the English language exists only by reputation; rather, I will develop extensive x-ray writing-standards vision which will detect the looming presence of such bedlam, allowing me to decline, politely and in words of one syllable which are not open to misinterpretation, such projects.*  And, of course, stopping taking on work which ends up being rather longer-winded than once anticipated, I will reclaim my evenings, and thus, some crafty creativey whatsit time (hereinafter known as CCWT).

* As an aside, working as a proofreader/copy-editor has really pushed my moral boundaries, and I make no apology for the pompous nature of that statement. I keep getting approached by international students who are blatantly failing their assessments, sometimes at PhD level, because their English is simply not good enough. Surely the universities must have known/know what their language ability is? Or is not, more to the point? How can it be right that they are accepted on to programmes they have little hope of completing successfully? Or, worse, how can it be right that they’ll complete, having paid someone to sort their work out for them, or that they’ll complete because these universities give them a free pass in order to keep getting the fees? And where does that leave the qualifications I got myself from these bloody institutions, having spent a decade working, from time to time quite hard, in order to do so? De-valued, surely. On the other hand, I know that if I don’t do this work, someone else will; that’s not a justification for contributing to this system, and it pisses me off to be doing it. And one the other other hand (and yes – we now have three hands), we need the money. And it’s easy work for me. And round we go again, and again, and again… I still haven’t answered this one, in other words.

After a productive weekend, the crapness of last whenever-it-was has just about dissipated, I’m happy to say, though some low-key teething on the part of the tiny daughter means that Quercus and I are once more entering the Sleep Deprivation Olympics. However, the sleepiness didn’t prevent us…

1. Stripping the windows back far enough that we’re going to be able to have them as plain wood inside the house; we’d thought they’d be far too buggered, and had prepared ourselves for yet more gloss painting, so finding that, actually, they’re really strong wood underneath the years of neglect has been a nice surprise; they’ll be painted outside, partly because of the listing requirements and partly because of the weather, but inside, our earthy house is going to be a woody earthy house;
2. Freezing another couple of bags of blackberries, picked in the field behind the house; I can’t decide what to do with them – jam? jelly? wine? cordial? – so I’m thinking pick ‘em while they’re there, and work out the details later, not least as the entire house is somewhat bedlam-ish (and covered in dust) because of the ongoing work on the windows;
3. Making up some lentil, tomato and onion soup, part of which I’ve frozen in individual servings for the witchling’s suppers-to-come;
4. Re-glazing the downstairs window, which now opens after being painted (and rotted) shut for about thirty years – I have come to know the love that is linseed putty, and while I didn’t really think about it when we couldn’t, I find myself delighted that we can now open the window, should the fancy take us;
5. Whipping up a couple of batches of beeswax balm, this one with a mood-lightening effect in mind – I’ve christened it Bright Skies, and it’s got indecent quantities of marjoram, cedarwood, sandalwood, rose and neroli, so hopefully it’ll do the trick, or at the very least, smell gorgeous while it’s trying.

Oh, and then, I discover that Mel has very lovelily (and yes, that is a word) given me an awardy-whatsit, with a very lovely pic to boot. The idea is that one passes said loveliness on to three people who have reminded one of witchiness and, for me, the existence of The World Beyond, so here goes:

1. Doc Witch, whose meditations on subjects ranging from striped tights to the mythical status of fairy-tales are always a pleasure;
2. Mon, whose explorations of astrology continue to pull me in, particularly in combination with her determined attempts to crochet the entire world;
3. LQS, whose ongoing explorations of What It Is To Be keep me fascinated, and all the more-so because I know some of What She Is In Person.

Happy Monday, folks.

Gosh. It’s actually sunny outside for the first time in what feels like months. Now that I’ve written that, of course, a dirty great black cloud will feel it incumbent on itself to slorm over here as fast as the quixotic zephyrs will permit, just in order to throw it down all over me, doubtless, but hey, at least in future years, I can look back to this post and say ‘look! there! it was sunny for at least ten minutes!’.

Anyway.

With the bright morning comes a brighter mood. Thank you for the lovely comments and suggestions on how to rediscover my inner creative mojo; I shall be attempting to put my money where my mouth is over the weekend, and I am already adopting witch of oz’s suggestion that I reframe my view of my current activities and start trying to see them as creative in themselves (cooking, making wine, sorting out the house and looking after the tiny daughter). What an excellent way to look on things which the drudgery of which might otherwise threaten to overwhelm. There is no doubt in my mind that simply working our way through the day in a cheerful, careful, interesting manner is, in relation to the tiny daughter, really rather important work in itself, but sometimes I need to remind myself of this, and to think that, actually, it’s OK if the only thing I do ALL DAY is keep her happy and healthy, because at the end of the day, that’s pretty bloody good going. And most days, she is indeed happy and healthy.

And I think I also ought to acknowledge more often the work that I do which is either creative (baking, cooking, wine-making), or which goes towards allowing Quercus to get on with the big, visible work on the house. I have spent a lot of time recently feeling mildly shifty for not being out there with him, chucking things in a cement mixer and getting covered in a mildly corrosive substance from head to foot, but then I realised the other day that someone has to keep us running, and basically, that’s what I do – with the witchling to look after, someone needs to be clean and presentable (or, at least, as presentable as I ever manage), and as I’m needed for feeds throughout the day, it’s probably the most sense for that someone to be me. Someone needs to make sure there is food in the cupboards, and there are bowls to eat it out of. Someone needs to keep the bathroom clean, and the rugs washed. Someone needs to feed the cats (who have hollow legs at the best of times) and clean out the chickens. Ideally, someone needs to keep the small patch of garden to which the tiny daughter has access, surrounded as it is by woodpiles and cement mixers, free of the usual bedlam, and full of things to look at (currently, lemonbalm, mint, courgettes, potatoes, runner beans, Jerusalem artichokes and sage).

So, my new resolve is to remember that it’s creative to cook meals which mean convenience food never makes it through our door, and it’s creative to think of meals ahead of time so that there are frozen bags of smugness for the witchling’s dinner, and it’s creative to think of next year, when we will be drinking plum wine (three gallons started yesterday), elderflower wine (nine gallons started about three weeks ago), or honeysuckle wine (two gallons started about a month ago). And it’s at least a part of being creative to make sure that the house is clean and clear, because otherwise I get so bogged down in the need to clear and clean that knitting or sewing or making or doing gets shunted so far down the list that it’s not even funny. Maybe this is my fallow period, in terms of actual tangible creative products – and I suppose that’s what I’m missing, really: the knitting project finished, the stitching bound off, the end result toted around by one of my lovelies as an outward and visible sign of my love for them – but that doesn’t mean it’s a fallow period in the bigger picture.

Anyone out there doing alternatively creative things? Found a way to look on the washing-up as all part of the artistic process? Let me know. In fellowship, there is strength (or something equally  communist-sounding), and the knowledge with more people searching for it, We Shall Overcome The Crap And Find A Way To Justify Knitting Instead Of Housework.*

*Obviously your mileage may vary on this one; feel free to substitute a loathsome occupation of your choice for housework, and the scintillating freedom of whatever you choose for knitting.

You know how sometimes you’re all full of good ideas, and one fantastically creative moment after another happens in an uninterrupted stream of productive fabulousness? Nah. Me neither. I’m really struggling with managing to be creative at the moment. All I seem to do is lurch out of bed, knackered and confused, get through the daily tasks necessary to decent (or indecent) living, and pile back into bed, marginally more knackered and confused. Don’t get me wrong: the tiny daughter continues to delight, fascinate and amaze me. Quercus continues to entertain, converse with and divert me. The cats, well, the cats are the cats. But I know myself well enough to know that, while I am very glad that in the last week I have shampooed the downstairs carpets, removed five (FIVE) dead mice from underneath the sofa, and generally pulled the house into a better semblance of order than has been managed for, oh, two years or more, I need something MORE. Largely, what helps me to stay sane, to feel genuinely happy, is to create things. It doesn’t really matter if it’s something baked, some writing on the wall (literally: our house currently sports a quote from John Masefield’s The Box of Delights above the dining room door, and there is an entire verse of a Mervyn Peake poem in our bedroom, put there as a surprise for Quercus’s birthday the year before last), or a knitted creation – I just feel better somehow if I am managing to make, do, or otherwise produce. I have a list of things that I’d like to do at the moment. Here it is:

- Make some more beeswax balm (my fingers have been unaccountably buggered since we moved to this house; kinda like bad eczema but apparently it’s not that, and it refuses to respond to, well, anything, really; I’m trying the balm I made originally for the tiny daughter’s nappy rash, but I want to add some things specifically designed for buggered skin of my particular variety);

- Find a simple pattern for a toddler cardigan to knit for the tiny daughter;

- Turn the old wool jumper I’ve felted into a pixie bonnet and a felted heart monster (don’t ask) for that same tiny daughter;

- Use some of the machine dyes I bought earlier in the year to dye our sad-looking towels, in part to check if they come out half as gorgeous as the colour of the red wall (I have it in mind to dye a pink rag rug to match the wall, but I don’t want to fuck up the colour as the pink is too nice to just throw away on a dodgy dye but at the same time has no obvious long-term home in our house as it’s the wrong colour, if that makes sense).

You’d think that all or any of these things would be simple, and fun, and promisingly tempting. And they are. Yet somehow I’m not doing any of them, and all I seem to manage in the evenings is to clear up after dinner, put the house to bed, and SIT. I’m doing a lot of that, somehow, when what I want to be doing is making things, and gloating as I see a tiny daughter in something I have made her – I have hats that I’ve made for her, and it still cheers me up no end when I see her little personage toddling about in the blue bonnet I improvised earlier in the summer, when there was some actual sun around the place. I keep reading lovely lovely blogs where lovely lovely mamas share lovely lovely patterns/recipes/suggestions for creative things that just make me want to go out and fall down a pothole. I’m not normally susceptible to crafty jealousy, but at the moment, the fabulous goods that the universe keeps showing me seem only to remind me that I’m not managing anything but the bare essentials of living at the moment. How to break the cycle? Suggestions, please, lovely internet.

A while ago I mentioned the ridiculous number of things we’d attempted in a bid to keep using cloth nappies; one of our trials included a home-made bot balm, and, as we’ve ended up using the aforementioned balm for finishing off wooden toys, restoring dry hands, scenting one’s person, balming one’s lips (er…) and generally slathering about the place, I thought I’d share the recipe here.

Body balm
Get hold of…

A small bar of beeswax (ours was about an inch wide, three inches long and half an inch deep)

A (measuring ) cup of oil (I’ve used sunflower, olive, calendula and sweet almond)

About fifteen drops of essential oils to scent (I’ve used combinations of various, or single oils when I was in a monastic mood; I’ve also used calendula oil here too, because I was after something super-skin-friendly. Best scents so far: lavender and valerian for a sleep balm, and geranium, rose and lemon for a daily scent.)

Then…

What I’ve found works best is either to melt the lot together in over a small pan of boiling water, or to wait until you have something in the oven and pop the ingredients in a silicone something-or-other (I used a muffin tray and it worked quite well, not least as you can leave the balm in situ to cool and then you’ve got little poppable-out discs of it, suitable for stashing in a small tin for use as, say, lip balm or solid scent) and shove in for about ten minutes. I’ve read recipes which suggest grating the wax; I did this the first time, and while it may have melted a little more quickly as a result, to be honest, for the general knuckle-grating potential of wax + grater, I didn’t bother after that. Oh, and I found the wax took far longer to melt than I’d expected when I used a pan, hence my experiments with the oven; patience is a virtue, but not one which I possess.

In other lyrical news, how is it that now that I have the opportunity to listen to lots of music (my iPod is a constant companion in the morning shift at work), I’m bored bored bored with everything I own? Now, here’s the thing: that whole buy-nothing vibe is still very much at the forefront of my mind, so while I’m keen to expand the ol’ musical sensibilities, I’m also keen to do so without the outlay of a wodge of cash. So, anyone fancy doing a CD swap? I was thinking it might be entertaining to come up with a topic* (say, ‘travel’), and a collection of random tunes to suit, and to do an exchange. New music for the price of postage (and yes, I am certainly up for international exchanges – the more the merrier). Thoughts? Criticisms? ‘Are you having a laugh’? In the comments box, please.

*I owe this idea to Peaceable Imperatrix, who did such an exchange some time ago; it was good fun, and I got a v. g. mix CD from her imperial self.

This weekend I have A Plan. It involves large glass bottles, lengths of tubing, indecent quantities of sugar, and some hot water. It also involves tramping through a few fields with Quercus, armed with a long stick of some sort for hoooking purposes. (At times like these, I’m glad I’m beginning to get the hang of carrying the witchling on my back; we recently acquired a mei tai carrier in brown velvet, and it’s quite good for popping on and off, though I hate to say it, but I think perhaps, despite the time and faff of on and off, I am perhaps more comfortable in the woven wrap. Is that a woman i.e. ‘I have breasts; please do not attempt to flatten them with fabric’ thing, I wonder?)

Where was I? Ah yes. Alchohol.

We’ve realised lately that it’s been a bloody long time since we last made some wine. Last year, I got some sloes on the go when I was first pregnant, but then nothing else really made it after that; I s’pose knowing that one isn’t going to take part in the fruits of one’s labours (an oddly appropriate saying, bearing in mind my pregnancy) meant that I sort of forgot about it. And now, after a year of construction and general builderyness, our supplies are quite depleted – somehow, three demijohns of plum, three of sloe, one of ginger, one of lemonbalm, one of elderflower, one of crabapple and one of coffee wine have disappeared, leaving us scratching about with a few dodgy-looking bottles of vintage who-knows and some cobweb-covered I-wouldn’t-if-I-were-you.

So this weekend it’s time to rectify this situation. The field behind Earthenhouse is covered with elderflower, and there are more trees to be found in the lanes hereabouts, so that’s the first port of call. Then I’m considering a bottle of the ridicoulsly idyllic-sounding honeysuckle champagne, as the hedges are full of flowers at the moment, and – if I can avoid the poisonous foliage and berries – imagine what a thing to make.

Sadly, the first bit is always the worst. No, not the picking. No, not the taking of the flowers from the stems. Worse yet: the cleaning-out of last year’s demijohns. I’m not a complete slattern, so I do normally give them a perfunctory sluice when we empty the last few drops down our necks, but still somehow the intervening time seems to bring forth a plethora of mouldy whatsits and disgusting so-and-sos, and I’m sure that the strangely-shaped demijohn brush will be pressed into service once more, despite my attempts to avoid it… Oh joy. But I’m sure it’ll be worth it, right? When, in a few months’ time, I’m sitting and swigging the odd half-glass down?

Stymie
tr.v. sty·mied d), sty·mie·ing also sty·my·ing -m-ng), sty·mies -mz)
To thwart; stump: a problem in thermodynamics that stymied half the class.n.
1. An obstacle or obstruction.
2. Sports A situation in golf in which an opponent’s ball obstructs the line of play of one’s own ball on the putting green.
3. A weighty instrument used primarily in frustrated – and normally foolhardy in the extreme – craft projects.
See also kill-joy (n.), thwart (v.), fart-arse (v.), despair (v.)
Also consider: to suck the life out of (v.), to infuriate (v.).
Origin: twenty-first century Devonian (dialect).

Yes folks: I’ve temporarily lost my marbles once more, which behaviour led me to forget – very temporarily – that to approach the sewing machine – or the stymie, as we now think of it – without at least an entire bottle of gin as a back-up plan is complete lunacy. I’ve been making the witchling a blind since about, well, December. So far, it’s one-all; the stymie has successfully defeated many attempts to finish four simple seams, but I prevailed – sort of – today, and managed to get the front! and the back! together! Sweet lord. However, I fear the stymie may have the last laugh: approximate quantity of thread used to achieve seams of roughly six feet in length – so far, nearly an entire bobbin, and about half a new reel. (Is that right? ‘Reel’? It looks… wrong, somehow. Perhaps that’s guilt by association?) The seams, thankfully now hidden away, have literally dozens of short bobbin threads per stitch. It’s an interesting effect – kind of the Glam Rock approach to sewing: ‘Now with added fringing!’. Not quite what I had in mind, but see earlier statement re hidden away… Why? Why does it do this, I ask?

Or at least, so I am told. I have no idea where this week has gone; surely yesterday was Monday, yet somehow, five days have elapsed and it’s Friday again. Five first-thing-in-the-morning feeds, five shared bagels, five mid-morning cups of camomile tea, five standing-up-while-holding-Mama’s-hand sessions, five Mama-attempts-to-create-the-perfect-baby-snack no-sugar cookies, and five now-she’s-asleep-I-really-should-put-her-down moments. At least.

And talking of the quickness with which time flies, which we weren’t, exactly where has the year gone since the witchling arrived? Surely last week I was still pregnant…? Yet somehow, the buttercups in the field across the lane are out again – and especially glorious this year; I keep meaning to put up a pic because they look so fab – and it’s nearly June, and the weather is warming, and they’re harvesting the fields around Earthenhouse, and… and… and the tiny daughter will be one on Monday. June 1st. Monday. MONDAY. How? How is this possible? 

I’ve been thinking a lot as her birthday approaches. It’s such a time of changes for us. Quercus will be working part-time from next Thursday so that he can look after the witchling while I go back to work for five mornings a week (which is of course the most enormous change in itself). This weekend, while Quercus continues to recover from his horrible throat infection thingy, we are painting the kitchen; from drab bare plaster and a decidedly work-in-progress look, we’re going to move to crimson distemper on one wall (breathable for the cob wall we’ve lime-rendered) and cream one the others. We’ve got a plan for the kitchen Quercus is going to build, and we think we know where the wood – oak, obviously, given his, er, name – is coming from. We’ve planted things in the garden, albeit in the only tiny corner which isn’t covered in building chaos, and they’re coming up – beans, courgettes, taters and some herbs, as well as the Jerusalem artichokes which, let’s face it, are going to come up whether we like it or not (they have actually grown through the spoil heap, which is nearly solid clay, which is about ten feet thick above where they were planted the year before last).

Things are changing, growing.

Especially the tiny daughter. She is delighting in more and more flavours and textures – everything from fish, fruits, baked beans to velvet and wooden spoons! – and her favourite thing du jour is to stand up while holding on to a thumb or two; she isn’t very interested in crawling, but clearly wants to walk. Her hair is growing apace; very fine, very fair, from a distance nearly invisible, but the curls remind me of my mother, and we wonder if it’s from her or from Quercus (whose hair is… a little wild). She laughs when I throw her up in the air, and she giggles as we dance an impromptu tango across the kitchen. She talks to herself as she settles down to sleep, and she sleeps for increasingly long periods, prompting me to savour the midnight feeds, at whatever time they happen. How is it that things can be so happy, and yet still remind one of the transience of life? 

Anyway, let us not allow the morbid to prevail; of course, at least part of what I’m thinking at the moment is gloat-worthy, as I survey the haul of presents which we’ve got lined up for the tiny daughter – the corduroy owl I made back in the darkness of the winter, a stacking wooden lighthouse, a pull-along Fresian cow (wooden again), possibly a knitted vest (if I finish in time!), and, possibly best of all, a set of wooden animals which Quercus has made for her, consisting of an elephant, a warthog and a, well, er, a Moomin. They are delightful; I drew him some simple silhouettes and he cut, sanded and waxed them (using a beeswax-based balm I made a few weeks back; I’ve been meaning to post the recipe, come to think of it, as it’s the good stuff (best hissed in a drug baron voice, that last bit), and works well on everything from post-shave soreness to, well, yes, your everyday wooden animal needs).  So, all that’s left is for me to decide on which sort of cake says ‘I’m one today!’ best. Any suggestions, anyone? Preferably of a non-dairy nature?

Some time ago, I acquired a patchwork quilt courtesy of the aged parent. Said quilt was made by my mother, with help from the aged, before I was born, and was in need of refurbishment – about thirty patches had worn away, while others had come loose at the seams, and the fabric used to back it had disintegrated in various places. Now, I am a patchwork numpty. I like very much the look of quilts like this, and I have a collection of Kaffe Fassett books which I regard as patchwork porn, but beyond that, I know nothing (except, obviously, a keen desire to fiddle about and produce something gorgeous which involves no time, no experience, and no expenditure; modest in my ambitions, aren’t I?).

See, I had wanted to make a patchwork to go in the witchling’s room. (Nothing like having a small person about the place to bring out the crafty impulse, is there?) To start with, I wanted one for her bed. Then I quite fancied one for the chair we sit in when I feed her. That was what I decided on, in the end, as her cot is quite diddy, really, and I was imagining making something using large patches, as I thought that would be the easiest in terms of instant gratification. Patience? A virtue, I am sure, but one with which I am unfamiliar. But then there I was, in possession of this quilt – an already-made, acceptable-as-made-by-one’s-own-mama-and-thus-not-constituting-buck-passing quilt – which needed only a little TLC to restore it to its former, ahem, glory. Or so I thought…

Anyway, I found, to my slight chagrin, that up-close and personal, repairing a patchwork quilt is a little bit daunting. Not least when you find that it’s a cleverly shaped one which consists of those little … is it hexagons which have six sides? Maths has never been my strong point. I attempted to make a dooberry. You know, one of those little shape whatsits which you cut round to get the desired patch. I failed miserably, as I was basing it on the quilt itself, and somehow, the fabric didn’t want to stay in position long enough to ensure an even-sided template. (Template – that’s the word I was fumbling for, isn’t it? Although I’m still thinking there’s something beginning with M. Or is it an F? I give up.)

Eventually I settled on sticking the fabric in the gap created by taking out a buggered patch, and sort of making it up as I went along. It seemed, on balance, to work out fine. I replaced all the dodgy-looking ones, and I sorted out bits where my aged parent had haplessly stitched a patch into the backing fabric, and then I realised that what had been troubling me the most was that, despite my love for this quilt, and my appreciation of all the hard work my mother had put into it (and, yes, the work my aged had done too), I didn’t really like the overall result. For a start, there were some (to my eyes, at least) lavishly ugly fabrics involved. I’m talking orange, brown and white asymetric blocks. And bright green, pink and orange flowers. It was… well, quite hideous, if I’m honest. I mean, there were corners which I loved – lots of little be-sprigged patches, small patterns of flowers, tight stripes and plain blocks – but the overall effect was a bit like an accident in a dolly-mixture factory.

So, I resolved to dye the entire thing. Bold, I know. (God, I need to get out more, don’t I?)

And, as might already be obvious, I’m pretty chuffed with it.

1. Quercus’s mother has been here since last Thursday. For the most part, it has been OK – she has helped with bits and pieces of DIY, which means that we now have everything done in the extension bar the last remaining bits of plastering (we’re getting a plasterer for this, as our abilities with lime render are not matched by our abilities with cement-based stuff) and the fitting of skirting boards. Oh, and painting. And, er, making a kitchen. But, you know, getting there. Lots of gloss painting, lots of undercoating, lots of cleaning. Progress, in short.

2. The witchling is teething again. She’s got four teeth at the moment, and seems to be working hard at the arrival of number five. Lots of crying this morning which wasn’t very nice for either of us; fortunately, the sling still works wonders with her, as she very rarely cries when carried. 

3. Over the weekend we have clawed back a small piece of vaguely presentable garden so that the witchling can have some time outdoors without being bombarded by building-site nonsense. I am really quite pleased, not least as it gave me an excuse to dig out a couple of windchimes to hang in the tree. 

4. We are about to order some clay paint. Well, it might be clay paint, but it might be casein distemper; having spent days sorting out the lime render on what used to be an external cob wall, we’re keen to give it the right finish so that the wall can breath. It’s going to be red, whatever the finish, and eventually I shall paint a new spiral on the wall somewhere. I am looking forward to that day more than I can say. 

5. We have acquired a new magic board. When I was pregnant, Quercus had the rather touching idea of a board where I wrote things I wanted to do myself, but couldn’t, for one reason or another. He then came along and did said things, without saying anything, and wiped them from the list when they were done. It worked very well, and kept me sane about various bits and bobs that an increasingly large waistline made difficult. Now, it’s become a bit swisher – a dry-chalk pen, and a picture frame with a piece of black card behind it in order to create a wipeable surface – and has spawned a ‘We must…’ section, together with a ‘We need…’ bit. 

6. One of our hens is broody. Trout. We’re not in a position to make raising chicks sensible, and are thus spending a lot of time turfing her out of the nesting box. 

7. The witchling’s favourite meal appears to be sardines on toast. I have gone back to making bread lately, which is a genuine delight to me. Months of bought bread, no matter how nice, makes me realise anew how much I enjoy baking bread, and how grounding I find it. The kneading, the rising, the baking – there is a sort of rhythm to it which I find immensely reassuring, particularly when I do it just after the witchling has gone to sleep, and the house is still and gently dark. Better yet, the witchling seems to like my bread best. 

8. The witchling’s favourite activity is probably playing hide and seek, which she does at the table in her chair. I finished making a cushion for the chair on Thursday; it’s a wooden highchair with a sort of curved back, a little like a carver chair, and she likes to rock, which gave me conniptions because I thought she would bash her head, sooner or later, hence the cushion. (The irony is, at school, I loathed needlework and all such things, yet now I frequently make things, and the more I make, the more I enjoy it. I wonder if the people who were good at things like this when we were in classes together still make things, or does the universe move to ensure that only a select few can ever master the obscure art of sewing-machine-threading at any one time?) Anyway, she raises a tea-towel over her head, and grins out from underneath it, sometimes hiding, sometimes peering around one edge. It’s hard to say who has more fun – her or her audience. 

9. My favourite words at the moment: mama, dada, duck-duck. Bet you’d never guess why…!

10. The chard seeds I sowed last week have sprouted already. Soon, we shall have rainbow leaves again. The colours! The colours! 

This is the sight that greets me most mornings when I open up the cupboard which now hides the fridge away: we’re getting about two dozen eggs a week, lots of them blue, and Quercus, whose real life is interrupted daily by a large office, is doing a roaring trade in selling; so much so, in fact, that we sometimes find ourselves eggless, which is ironic, given that we’re the ones with the chooks. I’m particularly delighted with the blue eggs, I confess; the colour of them is simply gorgeous in person, and it’s particularly touching that one can tell which hen laid which egg by the colour. Cobweb, who came into lay before Nightshade, lays eggs which are on the yellower-end of blue (two of hers are at the back of this photo), while Nightshade delivers turquoise confections which you can see in the foreground. Then we have darker, speckled eggs courtesy of Liquorice, our Barnevelder, and the paler ones from the two Buff Sussex hens, who – and I swear they do this on purpose to increase the frustration of not being able to tell them apart because their markings are so similar – seem to produce identical eggs.  I’m starting to think that white eggs might be nice too… Or perhaps green ones. Anyone got any breed suggestions? (And yes, I’m playing with fire here – I remember a conversation with Quercus, oh, two years ago, where I said ‘it’ll only be two of them; no, really!’.)

In other news, I have acquired the most fantastic fabric. It has got wols on it. Wols, I tell you. Shortly, it will be transformed into a blind for the witchling’s window; not before time, I might add, as British summer time has only been prevented from fucking with our normal morning timings by the fact that the poor tiny daughter has been rather sick for the last day or so. I know I’m in a lucky percentage here, mind you, in that this is only the second time she has been ill, and she seems to be getting over it pretty rapidly, but I did feel for her yesterday when gravity appeared to be suffering a regrettable performance lapse in relation to her tum. I am glad that she is still breastfed; it seems to be the one substance which stays down.

In other, other news, the thing I wrote for Juno Magazine is going to be in the next issue. I am quite excited. Oh yes.

So here he is: I’m delighted with him, I confess, and not a little surprised. I had had it in mind to make the tiny daughter an owl (note to self: must stop calling a wol, or she’ll learn the mangled English that Quercus and I use every day as her only form of language…) for a little while, and then he sort of appeared over last weekend. It gives me hope for future projects – I love making things for the witchling and for Quercus, and I seem to be getting a bit better at it, which is nice. Recent months have seen Quercus getting a knitted scarf, the witchling two pairs of legwarmers, two hats (a vest is on my needles now, but, being me, I have first to get through the inevitable cast-on-realise-too-small/large-unpick-start-again-x-4 bit – if only there were a way to sidetrack whichever god it is that is so vindictive about my starting knitting things), various felted objects, a blanket and something else which escapes me for now. Oh yes – I knitted Quercus a hat with the most beautiful wool from Felt Studio UK, somehow managing to do so without a pattern and with only a modicum of swearing. Well, OK, maybe slightly more than a modicum, but still… Next up: more hats I think, including a very nice one which looks a bit like a beehive (and is much more attractive than that makes it sound), that knitted vest (once the necessary casting-on palaver has been overcome, of course), and the rest of the felted alphabet (and do look at the comments on the previous post for Blue Witch‘s thoughts on lower/upper-case letters; I’d never thought of it, so am now thinking about starting a new set of lower-case ones and keeping the upper- for later). I’d also really like to knit some wrist-warmer thingies; does anyone know of a good, fairly idiot-proof pattern? I love knitting on double-pointed needles, and would like to do something with a thumb-hole, but I’m too dense to work it out on my own without going very, very cross-eyed indeed.

When I was pregnant with the witchling, I read lots of stuff about the use of aromatherapy in labour, and during pregnancy in general, and, as I have quite a stash of oils from my time working in Star Child and for the Inner Pyramid, I ended up using a couple of the suggested blends regularly. I don’t know quite how it happened, but somehow, my collection of oils extends to three drawers, and warranted A – Z organisation about three years ago. It’s quite shifty-making, and would be more-so if it weren’t for the fact that I got enormous employee/friend discount on the prices, making valerian oil quite doable, really. Anyway, one blend has really stayed with me, and I now use it as scent most days. The irony is, of course, that during my labour, I got as far as having some oilburners going, with clary sage and another pregnancy blend, but the visions I had of relaxing massages helping me through the early-stage contractions? Total bollocks. I couldn’t have cared less about massage – I was more interested in breathing and lusting after cheese sandwiches. Anyway, I just thought I’d post the recipe I used, in part so that, when my current bottle runs out (though some days I wonder if it ever will, given that I’ve been using the same batch since February of last year), I can make some more up and thus avoid the witchling thinking I’ve been changed for Another Mama Who Looks Similar But Is Not Her One (I encountered this suspicion from her the last time I wore a different scent; hopefully it’s not permanent!).

Everyday Blend

About 200ml of base oil (I used sweet almond)
15 drops of geranium
10 drops of rose
3 drops of neroli
5 drops of vanilla
5 of lemon
3 of clary sage
3 of lavender
1 of nutmeg

Stick the lot in a bottle, preferably a dark one, and shake to blend them all together. I wear it on my wrists and neck most days, and it lasts and lasts, quite unlike ‘normal’ scent. (I reckon you’d get a very similar effect with just lavender, rose and geranium, incidentally, if you’re capable of more restraint than I am.)

Bearing in mind a particularly challenging conversation I had with my father last night, it’s perhaps apt that Mon has chosen now for new moodboards. I feel that it’s time I put a few things to rest, and my expectations of my father really ought to be one of them. I mean, I am a grown woman, dagnammit, so why do I let him get to me every single bloody time? And why does it still bug me that he is the way he is? I mean, I should surely have accepted it by this point. Well, I haven’t, but it’s time that I tried a bit harder, I think, as it seems to me that the crusty old git isn’t going to change at this stage, so I may as well work rather harder on my defences. I wondered last night if he feels as I do, from the other end – that I’ve changed, that I’m no longer open with him, that every time he sticks his head above the emotional parapet, some sod fires a tank at him – but no, I don’t think so. Well, he probably thinks I’ve changed, becoming even more entrenched in the reckless behaviour he’s accused me of in the past, but you know what, I think ‘stuff it’ is the considered, emotionally mature response that I’m going for now.

So. The last few weeks have been introspective for me (and yes, I am going to blame it on my PhD finishing, because hey, why miss an opportunity to blame the PhD for something else? It’s always been my ‘go-to’ blamification device thus far, and I see no reason to change that), with lots of thinking about things to which there is no definitive answer. So, inward-looking, sometimes lonely, and sometimes hard, though ultimately important thunking has been done, I hope:

The coming month will, I hope, find a more optimistic Earthenwitch, one who is ready to try once more (and repeat after me, interweb) to find that inner zen-like oasis of calm. It must be in there somewhere. Right? RIGHT? I shall be a child of the universe. Tossed along on its gentle, balm-like waves. Wittering on about a right old load of shite. Thinking karmic thoughts. But seriously, I hope I can hold on to the sense of peace that I have felt in the last few days, and just Not Let Things Piss Me Off:

We’ll see, eh?

Thanks Mon, for suggesting this – if you too would like to have a pictorial moment, have a look at Mon’s original post about moodboards.