Category: general stuff

countryside · crafts & knitting · garden stuff · general stuff

March: blossoming, birdsong and buds

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)2 Comments

 

We’re in that odd in-between time of year where one day it feels like Spring has arrived bringing sunshine, blue sky and warm breezes, and the next winter has reasserted dominance by sweeping back in with chilling frosts and squally sleet showers.

There are however signs that Spring is really just around the corner:

  • the treetops are a-twitter with small bird song, not yet at the full glory of a May dawn chorus, but certainly building towards it,
  • the plum tree in our garden is in full blossom, drawing in the first bumble bees and a few butterflies emerging from their hibernation in the woodpile,
  • the days are often warm enough to hang out washing on the line again, I do love gathering in line-dried washing, it smells so fresh and clean,
  • blackthorn is just beginning to blossom out in the hedgerows, with the frothy white flowers so pretty against the bare branches
  • trees are starting to bud, not yet turning green but poised and ready to begin
  • and it looks as though Katsue the little fox is pregnant, she’s grown very rotund around the middle and I’m pretty sure it not just all of the cocktail sausages she’s been eliciting from me

Back inside I’m really excited to be working on a new 9 inch animal pattern again, but progress is unfortunately woefully slow. Having Toby here for most of the time means that I’ve had to adapt to a new way of working and basically snatch what time I can between taking care of him. It makes for very sporadic and haphazard progress, but I’m pleased if, at the end of each day, I’m able to say that I’ve moved forward a little. It’s too early in the process to show you anything just yet, but I’m really looking forward to reaching the point where I can share some progress pictures with you.

As an antidote to the brain taxing business of pattern writing I’ve been spending the bookends of each day knitting simple things, (that is to say the early mornings when I’m not fully awake, and the late evenings when I’m dozing off again). I’ve made a few of these small bandana type scarves now, it’s a lovely easily remembered pattern, perfect when when you’ve run out of concentration capacity. The pattern is called ‘Sorgenfri Torkle’ by Guri Pedersen and I’m knitting it in Cardiff Cashmere Classic yarn in shade 518 Piombo

Well that’s all of my news for this time, I hope to have some more details of the new animal pattern soon, thanks as always for visiting with me, see you in April, J x

countryside · crafts & knitting · general stuff

January frosts & home comforts

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)Leave a comment

The days between Christmas and New Years Day are an annual gift I give myself, a peaceful pause in the march of days when no ‘to-do lists’ are allowed to intrude. Instead there is just a gentle drifting, a pottering and flitting between things that feel right at the time. We walk with Toby every day out in the quietly dormant countryside, and then it’s back home to warm up by the fire and put cosy indoor clothes on. Afternoons and evenings are spent reading or watching films and knitting, of course.

However, now that the year has got going I’m finding it hard to pick up the pace, so we’re still in hibernation mode here and gradually easing back into routines. Toby is back at his two activity days and I plan to start pattern writing again next week, hopefully picking up where I left off before Christmas if I can gather together all of my notes and remember where I got to.

As always, walking in the countryside remains a big part of our week. The woods in January are cold and still and quiet, shrouded in drifting mists and carpeted with mud and damp leaves and the overhead branches make filigree frames around patches of leaden sky. There’s no birdsong, just the cawing of crows and chattering of magpies, all of the smaller birds have flown off towards back gardens where food is more plentiful. Mice, shrews and hedgehogs are all tucked up and hibernating and the squirrels spend weeks slumbering high up in their cosy dreys before rousing from their torpor on warmer days and coming out to forage. 

Not that there have been many warmer days of late. Last week was bitterly cold here, with deep frosts so we were bundled up in extra layers and our walks were brisk affairs, rather than the leisurely strolls of summer. It was so beautiful out there though, every surface shimmering with a diamond dusting of tiny ice crystals.

Back home I curl myself around a cosy hot water bottle and nestle down under a warm blanket and knit socks. There is peace and quiet and comfort and I feel immensely grateful to be right here, right now.

I hope that there is cause for a little gratefulness in your January days too, J x

autism · countryside · general stuff · in the woods

March

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)Leave a comment

March has been full of extra challenges here, a two-steps-forward one-step-back kind of month.

Amy went into hospital for surgery on her complicated wisdom teeth, which required a general anaesthetic and, for someone with quite intense anxiety issues, this was very difficult for her. We’re proud of her for coping, and she’s now recovering well.

Planning for Toby’s life after college has been an adventure in stress management, and as yet is still unresolved. My mind is a cacophony of worries about his future and the impact that has on all of our lives as H & I grow old. And Toby has been struggling to cope recently and has had to stay home from college a couple of times after injuring staff. With all of this to juggle any hope of me being able to concentrate on a task like pattern writing has completely gone out of the window. In fact I can’t seem to concentrate on anything fully at the moment. I can’t even choose a shade of green to finish my Spring lamb and instead have managed to start a rabbit and a bear, flitting around with my knitting too.

The other day I sat down with a notepad in front of me a tried to write a list of things that would promote some calm happiness in my life and all I had on my list was ‘going to the woods’. Going to the woods is enough for now, those quiet solitary interludes help me to top up my batteries just enough, but in truth I long to have something more exciting to look forward to with eager anticipation. It would be so liberating to wake up in the morning and think to myself, ‘what shall I do today…?’; to do something on a whim without meticulous planning to fit around other people’s schedules; over even simply to choose what time I go to bed at night, when to take a bath, or just to be able to sit and concentrate on something, anything, without constant interruption in order to meet someone else’s needs.

But that is not my lot, and so I must choose to either wallow in self-pity or try to embrace the gifts that each day can bring if you look hard enough. I’m coming to realise that since I cannot change my circumstances the thing that I must change is my mindset and have started reading ‘A Book for Life: 10 steps to spiritual wisdom, a clear mind and lasting happiness’ by Jo Bowlby and I really hope it delivers on that tantalising title.

Happily being out in the countryside always does bring me pleasure, and there are many small joys out there now that Spring is arriving: the gradual building of bird song each morning, each week a little louder and with a few more voices, gathering towards the full beauty of the dawn chorus that comes in April; wild daffodils and wood anemones nodding in the spring breezes and the field boundary hedgerows now clothed in cloud-like blackthorn blossom. And I am grateful for the small sustaining pleasures of seeing the beauty of nature.

I hope that you’re finding some moments of peace and pleasure in your days too, J x