hello again

September 7, 2020September 16, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)31 Comments

Hello and thanks for dropping in to visit here despite my long absence. I hope you’ve had a good few months and that life for you is finding a balance in these strange times.

The summer break here has been a little challenging at times, things have been difficult for Toby with all of the unpredictable happenings and changes due to covid 19, so we slowed things right down and just parcelled each day up and put it away, moving on to the next one with the hope that it would be a better one. We’ve had a gentle pace and a very limited routine to our days but that has helped him to settle and calm. He’s enjoyed lazy morning lie-ins with breakfast in bed and our daily walks (come sun, rain, wind or storms) have been a time of meditative contemplation. As we’ve walked quietly together along the peaceful woodland paths, I’ve matched my pace to his, stopping for minutes at a time when he’s in sensory shutdown and can’t move, and trying to keep up with him (but mostly failing) when he is overwhelmed by the desire to run. The walks have been the highlight of our days.

There’s been a lot of evening knitting time for me while he’s watched his videos and played with his books and duplo, and as a result I have a lot of pattern plans on the go. I’m currently working on a set of removable shoes for the animals (for both the regular sized patterns and the small version); the badger pattern is coming together slowly and I’m also working on small versions of all of my animal designs. I’ve been playing around with this lion idea too, and though it’s not quite right yet I hope to have this ready soonish as a free supplement to the existing bear pattern. I’ll keep you posted here of developments.

In other news,

I’m very flattered to have been nominated for Noteworthy Knitting Blog in the Crafties, 2020 which is organised by Lovecrafts. If you’d like to vote for me I’d really appreciate that, the voting link is here.
September 3rd was my 14th anniversary of starting this blog and so I’d like to hold a little celebratory giveaway, but need to get myself a little organised here first. More news of that in a later post.
The Facebook group has been a great source of pleasure for me over summer, I’ve loved seeing everyone’s projects there and at the end of August we topped 3,000 friendly members. I’m pondering how to celebrate that with an exclusive giveaway over there but haven’t yet worked it out, but that will be coming up too. If you’re on Facebook and would like to join us and share your projects, you’ll find the group here

Well, that’s all the news from me, I mainly just wanted to break the silence and say Hi. Now that Toby is back at school (for his final year) I’m hoping to be able to pop in here regularly and I’ll keep you posted on pattern writing progress and the giveaways.

Thanks as always for taking time out of your day to join me here, I really appreciate your visit 🙂

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PS: I’m sure someone will want to ask, so here’s a little info about my notebooks.

I like to write all of my patterns longhand as I’m working them out, so always have several notebooks on the go, jotting down ideas, trying things out, changing them and trying them again – it’s a long slow process 🙂 The notebooks themselves are from MD paper – the pages are in a lovely paper that takes the ink well, and I like to personalise them with stickers from the wonderfully talented Nastia Sleptsova.

On finding routine

May 4, 2020September 29, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)14 Comments

Hello, how are you holding up?

I expect that you’re just like me and are finding that the days have lost their identity and all merged into a constant stream of sameness. Here we have settled into new routine of sorts. Happily Toby now enjoys a long lie in – something he has recently been starting to get rather good at, after many previous years of waking at dawn. So my early mornings do give me a few hours of precious free time and my favourite activities are tea, toast with honey and knitting in bed (currently working on lots of clothing patterns for the small version of my rabbits); reading (currently The Wild Remedy by Emma Mitchell, an inspiring and comforting read) or pottering in the garden. Once Toby’s up and dressed and lunch is dealt with we’ve been keeping occupied. On sunny days we’re outside in the garden which has needed a tidy up and a rearrange ready for summer. H has spruced up the trampoline, which needed a bit of TLC after the winter, and Toby has had fun bouncing with lots of bubbles from his bubble machine. On rainy days we’re inside for some boxercise, yoga or a disco, depending on Toby’s mood. Toby loves music and he’s also really enjoyed watching the music videos on ‘The Singing Walrus‘ – be warned before you listen as I often go to bed at night with the catchy songs still circling in my head! We’ve also been baking, tidying and sorting too and Toby’s got quite good at helping peg out the washing.

Early evening is our time to walk in the woods. We aim to arrive there at around 6ish as this seems to be the quietest time and we usually walk our 2 miles without seeing another human soul. We do see plenty of other creatures though, rabbits, squirrels, woodpeckers, a host of small woodland birds, a sparrow hawk, a red kite and in the last 2 weeks we’ve regularly heard cuckoos. It’s been lovely walking the same route each day and fascinating to see the progression of Spring throughout the wood. Back in March the trees were still bare but now the lanes on our short drive have once again transformed into leafy green tunnels and throughout the wood there’s a gorgeous lime green light created by the new leaves dappling the sun. As soon as the leaves started to unfurl they were besieged by an army of tiny munchers and the lower branches are now strung with silk-suspended caterpillars. When we arrive back at the car we have to brush them off our shoulders. I always come away from the woods feeling deeply grateful that we can walk there. Toby has a couple of meltdowns each day at home but it doesn’t matter what has happened during the rest of the day, our woods walk is always a peaceful and happy time, as you can see from his face 🙂

Then it’s home for dinner and a quiet evening. Toby likes a bath with lots of bubbles and water balloons and then some quiet music until bedtime – hopefully before midnight as I’m usually ready for bed by 10.30, but like most things in our house Toby dictates when we can all turn in. I usually fall asleep with my book in my hand and then am woken up by the hens clucking for their breakfast, ready to start a day of the same again.

What are your days like? I hope there’s a little room in them somewhere for the things that bring you pleasure x

countryside · general stuff

On having hope

April 20, 2020September 29, 2025 Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)21 Comments

Hello, how are you? I truly hope that you’re managing and that those you love are safe and well. Here there are good days and bad days. The hardest thing for me is not being able to explain to Toby why everything he knows and loves has stopped and he has had many more meltdowns than usual, but there is a highlight to each day and that is our walk in the woods. We weren’t going out to the woods at the beginning of the lockdown because there was some confusion as to whether we were allowed to drive the 3 miles there and back but recent clarification from the government on people with autism being allowed to travel to familiar places has meant that Toby now has one loved activity available.

Whilst we are struggling with daily life here, I know there are so many having a much worse time than us: those medical and health careworkers on the front line dealing with hugely stressful days, those overwhelmed by mental health issues, those fearful of loosing their livelihoods and especially those who have lost loved ones and have not been able to even say goodbye, heartbreak that is happening on a global scale right now. It feels impossible to believe that the human world will ever be the same again after this and I’ve been thinking how important it is to hold on to hope that there will be good times again.

Each year, in the quiet pause that is New Years day, I sit and fill in important dates in my brand new diary. I so enjoy this ritual – writing on crisp, clean pages the birthdays of loved ones, the eagerly anticipated events, and all the while imagining the whole year spread out and full of possibilities.

On the first page I always try to write myself a little message or quote, a kind of guiding principle for my thoughts in the coming year. Last year, faced as we were with many challenges surrounding Toby’s transition from child to adult support services I wrote the words

‘Don’t let bitterness become you’.

I’m still working on that one and I’m guessing that as the parent of a now adult son who is severely autistic I will need to keep that one as a constant reminder for years to come – a verbal talisman for when I feel overwhelmed by all the things Toby can’t do, can’t have and can’t be and all the things we’ll never have as a family. Calling to mind these words does help to pull my thoughts away from destructive negativity.

On January 1st of this year, I wrote these words in my nice new 2020 diary:

‘I can still have hope while facing a future I do not know’.

When I wrote that out I was really thinking on a very insular and personal level about the ongoing issues involved in caring for Toby, but that phrase could not have been more apt for the global situation that has unfolded and affects all of us now. The last few months have changed life for us all in unimaginable ways and never more have we needed to believe that there is hope in all of our futures.

So, that’s my wish for you today: That you find hope, in whatever form it appears for you, and you cherish, nuture and tend it so that it fortifies you in these darkly terrifying times.

J x

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:: ‘Don’t let bitterness become you’ is a line taken from the lyrics of Elysium by Bear’s Den

:: ‘I can still have hope while facing a future I do not know’ is a quote from Morgan Harper Nichols, it’s the 4th slide on November 22nd 2019

All of the pictures above were taken in previous springs (the last one with Amy in was from 2011). Toby’s favourite wood doesn’t have bluebells, and even if it did he’d not let me stop to take photos 😉 It is though a comforting thought, that despite everything nature is unaffected – other than perhaps in positive ways from less pollution/human intrusion. And although I may not be able to go and see bluebells this year, I know they’re out there blooming away, smelling wonderful and looking tear-inducingly beautiful.