Right now…

I am typing one handed (and left-handed at that!) because FB is having the second half of him nap on my lap.

I can feel the baby kicking and FB breathing against my belly.

I am surrounded by boxes (12 days to go!)

I am wondering where the washing machine should go?

The title is some what confusing since this post has nothing to do with quilting. However the Festival of Quilts has become an annual trip to replenish my fabric stash, and since we aren’t able to go this year, and I’ve been running through my stash quite a bit recently, I decided that a little splurge was in order.

And then the ‘what’s new’ email came from Fabric Rehab…

First off, if you’re in the UK you will want to know that Nancy and Sally stock Anna Marie Horner’s ‘Little Folks‘ collection – both the cottons and (more importantly) the cotton voile. Very exciting.

And as well as some of that, I got Michael Miller christmas fabric, some great Kona geometric boats, some birds, some fish, and some other bits and pieces to keep me a very happy crafter over the next few months.

Yes it was a bit naughty* – but I have birthdays and birth-days and christmas to prepare for this summer, not to mention a new house to make into a home. :)

(*not debt making thank goodness, but it felt a bit naughty spending all that money in one go. I’m not used to it.)

What do you do?

I get asked this pretty regularly, and I find I’m still answering the same way I did two or three years ago – “I naturally dye yarn, and I build and manage websites.”

I have to say this answer doesn’t feel totally true, or genuine these day, even with the ‘oh and I’m a mother’ tacked on the end. Or rather because ‘oh and I’m a mother’ is tacked on the end, when – in reality – mothering is what I spend the vast amount of my time doing.

At a time when most of my other parent friends have long gone back to work, I’m still here, living a day to day life with FB beside me, and managing websites during naptime, as well as working towards us moving house (soon *fingers crossed*) so that I can start dyeing again.

Aside from a very hands on husband, I’ve don’t have any other external support, so if one of us is sick, or (like last night) up half the night with a little boy who is too awake and probably teething, then some of my plans have to shift a bit. Which means if I don’t want to be chronically short on time, a have to limit how many plans are made in the first place.

I don’t know when I started feeling like explaining my life was some how wrong… except that staying at home to look after your children seems pretty alien to most people.

Or maybe I just assume that they’ll find it strange. And suddenly feel the need to justify myself – ‘well I do work too – I’m self employed! We don’t have lots of money but we get by and live without a car, etc etc’ (See how I’m sneakily justifying myself to you there? Clever huh?)

Oxford Kitchen Yarns is still really important to me, and I’m still really committed to it. But I’ve also made my peace with the idea that I can’t do shows right now, and that it’s going to stay a tiny little company while other bits of my life settle themselves down.

And that right now, the truth is that I’m a mother. Who also dyes yarn and builds websites (sometimes.)

I don’t want to stop things while the posts are coming thick and fast but I have a major website building deadline for the end of this month, and general life, plus the snow, plus the fever/throat virus I got last week means that I really need to step away from the internet and get the site properly out the door.

I’ll be back in early February. Have fun!

(ps. The Shop will remain open, just so you know.)

I don’t do big resolutions any more. I have never found that they work, and always made me feel bad.

However there are some small do-able things that would make a real difference if I got to grips with them and so here they are:

• Use the breadmaker more. We eat a lot of bread in our house, and making it at home means I don’t have to keep going to the shops to get it. (Also it’s quicker to set up the machine – assuming I do it in time – than going to the shops.) Plus it allows me to make it lower in salt, which is better for FB.
• Stop buying commercial sweets, and make your own instead. I bought ‘Life is Sweet’ by Hope and Greenwood and a digital thermometer before christmas, and after making various things as christmas presents I’m enthusiastic to carry on once every couple of weeks or so. Plus I don’t buy anything by Nestle any more, and I feel really uncomfortable buying chocolate that isn’t fair trade given the links between commercial chocolate, child labour and slavery. So homemade sweets are the way to go. I’ll let you know how I get on.
• Buy drinks in glass bottles. I have given up my fizzy drinks but I still drink alot of sparkling water, and while I know we can re-cycle our plastic bottles I think it’s probably better that I drink more water from the tap, and that the drinks that I do buy come in glass bottles.

I think that’s enough for the first few months of the year.