Aurantium Blossom by Alice Yu
My Ravelry Post: here
Yarn: Oxford Kitchen Yarns Sock Yarn in Antique Ribbon (1 skein) and a small amount of Raspberry for the border (because I decided half way through to knit the larger shawl.)
Needles: 4.5mm addi lace. <3
Notes: This shawl really grows. I’ve been knitting lace for about 6 years now, and usually I’m pretty calm about knowing they’ll turn out ok, but the complexity of the stitches meant that the shawl felt really bunched right up until it hit the water. Then it really did blossom, and turn into something larger, and more beautiful.

I love that lace is still surprising. I guess it always will be. :)

I finally got to give it to my sister on sunday, when they came over. A belated, but hopefully useful birthday present.

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’m not back yet. But…

…there is some actual crafting going on in the house and I thought I would show you a quick work in progress, which there is still time for any interested parties to make their own (before Easter I mean.)

This is (obviously) a chicken, from Ikat Bag’s wonderful pattern. Personally I think she is a genius.

While you’re there, check out the Owie Dolls (the blonde boy now lives at our house, ready for when FB is bigger and unwell)  and the felt allotment (the peas! the strawberries!)

See? Genius.

I’m not back (give me another couple of weeks or so I think…) but if you can, I urge you to sit down and watch Eddie Izzard: Marathon Man. You may or may not know that Eddie Izzard, comedy hero and action transvestite, ran 43 marathons in 51 days last summer for SportRelief.

Mind blowing.

It’s not that 2010 is a bad year – it’s not. But it is giving me a bit of a kicking, what with one thing and another.

So things are going to be quiet around here for the next few weeks.

The shop will remain open, and orders will still go out asap, and hopefully I’ll get the new stock in the shop, but I’m getting very very little crafting done, and there really isn’t much to talk about.

Hopefully in a few weeks that’ll change.

Have fun in the meantime.

x