Christmas 2008

Our first as a family of five! It was such a relaxed and funny day, I hope yours was as good.

Handmade Christmas

Now the day is done I can show them all!



I made art bags for some children relatives. And for Felix who carries a sketch pad and pencil EVERYWHERE, he loved the bag so much and wears it every single day. That makes me smile and feel all cosy since something I made makes him feel so good... what is that called anyway? A positive feedback loop? :) The bags were made from trousers of mine that I never wear (or rather am likely too anytime soon they are far far too small) - the bottom chunk of leg chopped off, turn upside down and inside out and sew where the upper calf/knee would be. Flip right side out and then sew on a strap/s. I made the straps on mine by cutting out the waist band strip and using that (I cut the loops off). I cut the back pockets off the trousers since they were pretty and embroidered and sewed them to the fronts of the bags. Inside I added artists sketch pads, I sewed little pencil cases with drawstring tops and put in sharpeners and pencils. Food colour fibre tipped pens, fancy stickers and in the front pockets I added the play dough we made.



We gave them already and they were well liked I think :)

More needle felted dolls



The fatal peppermint creams (fatal to me since I ate seven in one go and then suffered from sugar rush brain freeze and hyperactivity followed by huge headache) Great gift then hey! Parents everywhere will just adore us this year. Isaac really wanted to make them after reading in a new Christmas book about some pigs making 'peppermint candies' as gifts. We read up on how to make origami boxes to store the peppermints and then the two of us made LOADS. More than required. They were addictive and soothing to frazzled nerves (it also helped that the baby was asleep - otherwise it would have been fraught with a scissor and paper thief and many yells and screeches I am sure - probably from me rather than the baby). And the photo for these..... well I seem to have lost it, or maybe seeing the sweeties I put the camera down for another sample and then forgot to take one? Mmmmm probably that.



A gift arrived from Boho Mama - material! I knew just what to do with it and set straight to work (with the baby trying to step on the sewing machine pedal too) and ran up two new Christmas stockings for the boys on Christmas Eve. The cherished ones with embellished crocheted snowmen made by my mother have vanished this year and rather than use ugly rugby socks or carry on hunting (mice had laid waste to our Christmas decoration box and a little nest was found at the bottom along with chewed tree lights! So maybe they pilfered them for further nest making?) I decided I'd better whip up new ones. They were easy-peasy and well liked. Esmé has a stocking of her own that I think Santa will struggle to fill, I bought a pair of adult striped wool socks and sent one to my sister's baby girl so that she and Esmé could be partners with one each. I filled my nieces with goodies (wooden rattles and beads and felt blocks, jingle bell mice and bits that we all made here).

I made Esmé a new Christmasy pilot hat since the other was outgrown. The yarn is a Regia 6ply sock wool.



Finally - lots of felt broaches (birds for the boys) flower ones for women and girls I know and lots of lavender sachets from my bag of material scraps. I am loving making the broaches and have made a million more since the Christmas ones, I need more wool felt urgently so as to get on with them. I keep stealing away to my sewing machine which is crazy but there you go, it feels like a guilty pleasure, I grab five minutes and in that time I have ran back and forth to check on the super whizz fast crawler girl about seven times as she perilously lies on her belly and gazes down the un-gated stairwell at the deathly hard tiled floor below. Shudder. I so need a stair gate because the sewing distracts me. It seems the sort of thing I should get second hand, I mean what happened to ours from the boys? They get outgrown quick. I need to have a search before my nerves are torn to shreds as I am incapable of trapping her in any one room such are her squeals of disapproval in any of my attempts and she melts my already gooey heart so much so that she can literally walk all over any of us here, in fact we encourage her to. Will she become a demon child of multiple demands or a angel girl of love with these showers of attention from all sides? The grand experiment continues :) But she is so adorable I don't think any of us would care either way.

Quick Gifts

Bath Melts

Cocoa butter melted and poured into silicone ice cube trays already half filled with lavender flowers. Drip a drop or two of essential oil into each heart.



Play dough coloured with beetroot juice as mentioned on my blog alread;, friends have liked this so we made a few batches to give away.



And my favourite! Fudge! I seem to eat half of every batch I make and so need to make more. I made some with Green & Blacks Maya chocolate yesterday and it was all eaten rather than packaged - Is this family-fudge Felix asked? Ummmmm yes, my mouth was too full too answer but the teeny lone square left over would make a pretty paltry gift. Guess I just better make more....

My next post will be my not so quick gifts which are shaping up and I am so excited to be making them, lack of time as always but that's half the fun this time of year - in any case I am glad my 'rushing' is at home with my sewing machine and not in some high street in Town :)

Felt undone

First attempts at needle felting, I followed Julie's instructions and voilá. Not too complex and very exciting to see taking shape so I was instantly hooked and made three. But today the freakin cat shredded one of the blue ones (the teeny girly one and my favourite of the bunch) to airy fluffy nothingness and then attacked my lovely new hank of silky wool. Enraged I chased it downstairs where it jumped up on to the kitchen worktop and began to eat the banana cake I had left out. In another rage I grabbed the beast and flung it outside into the frost. It spent the next ten minutes purring at the window mournfully and then ran off to the sweet scented hay filled barn behind the house. Pah! Bah Humbug, not even for a second did I feel like letting it back in. Of course it is upstairs curled on a bed right now, and petted half to death by more forgiving family members. Desperate measures - in order to save the two remaining dolls one became the angel adorning the Christmas tree (early or what? I can easily wait until the week before The Big Day before wanting a tree but as usual I was outvoted) and the other is on a high shelf.

Bah, Pah and Grrrrr. Crazy half wit cat. If only it used it's bit of sense to be helpful yk, like helping me tidy up or guard Esmé from eating Lego, but no, it uses it's meagre brains to hunt out and shred my woolly creations. Christmas Cat instead of Goose anyone?



We used to have a lovely nature/season shelf and then it was lost in the way of busy life and so in the slowness of winter I have revived it. Play dough snail, felted robin, lanterns and a mini twig 'tree'. After this pic was taken we settled into a beeswax candle rolling session and now have some beehive shaped candles sitting there too and then I found a card with an angel flying over skies with a tree in her arms and it sits in it's place there also. Holly and pine cones; those are next to be hunted and brought in.....



Some random family photos - Esmé in her 9.5 month glory



Dh slinging the babe



Felix taking a break from decorating the tree and again (his insisting I put this on here, with his beloved storm trooper Lego men) as he loves to smooch at the camera so he does.

start as you mean to go on

The boys keep on convincing me to make deserts for breakfast. Not that I really need too much convincing if I am honest. I can eat desert anytime without much persuasion. Our favourites right now are so utterly delicious and warm and comforting that I just have to share them with you: Goat milk stove-top Rice Pudding and the easiest Fruit Crumble in the world, oh and today; banana loaf (but everyone has banana cake recipes so I'll leave that one).

Easy Peasy Fruit Crumble

One tub of raspberries
one tub of blueberries
two chopped bananas
one or two peeled and chopped apples
3/4 of a packet of wholemeal digestive biscuits
3/4 of a block of butter
3 lg TBSP of muscovado sugar

Add fruit to an oven proof dish. In another dish melt the butter and with a rolling pin smash up the biscuits to crumb (in a bag!). Add the crumbs and sugar to the butter and mix well. Spoon and smooth this over the fruit and pop into the oven until the top in golden and you can see the fruit bubbling at the edges.

Decadently eat with ice cream or custard or rich cream poured over, or just as it is, juicy and crunchy and sweet.


Rice Pud

Arborio or Sushi rice makes the creamiest rice pudding I think.
Use 2oz of rice to one pint or milk (goat, rice, almond, cow...)
BUT the trick to a good rice pudding is to have it full fat. So don't make it with skimmed milk. And add in there a good slosh of double cream if you have it.

Digression: I know most folk shudder and get squeemish about cream and anything 'full fat' and indeed the diet dictocrats of current food-thought would have us dropping dead of clogged arteries at every turn with this list of ingredients. But if you have read Weston Price or even Sally Fallon you will have seen that in days gone by people ate something like 10 times the amount of fat soluble vitamins (A and D) than we do now and they didn't all die of heart attacks. They ate lots of fish eggs and shell fish and organ meats and bird eggs and - yes full fat (unpasturised unhomogonised) animal milks. True they mostly cultured the milk to make it into yogurt types of drinks or rendered the butter into a easily digested Ghee, but they did consume these types of foods. They didn't just eat animal products (of course!!) And by 'they' I am meaning people from anywhere on the planet pre-industralisation. They ate vast quantities of greens and veg and roots and berries too.

So anyway, back to the fat-rich desert-breakfast :)

Put your rice and milk and cream into a heavy bottomed pan/casserole dish. I use a cast iron one. Sit it on medium heat and add an once or two of sugar or instead sweeten with maple or agave. Honey isn't so good with rice pudding. Just sweeten to taste.

That is it. Keep on stirring every time a skin forms. Stir this in and you end up with a very thick and creamy rice pudding. Depending on your cooker (I use the AGA) it can take 30-60 minutes or more. Just stir stir stir. Add in lime zest if you like. Or vanilla extract.

I find it needs nothing else at all to serve with, it is already so sweet and creamy.


I used goat milk (still searching for a local raw unpasturised source) so this was store bought. But I do like it with almond milk too.

Almond Milk

A really really creamy milk!

~2 cups of almonds to 3 cups of water
~Soak the almonds for 12-24 hours(drain off the water and add fresh if it stains brown - it's just the tannins but freshen it up)
~After soaking replace the water with fresh filtered water
~Blend the mixture with some vanilla extract a pinch of salt and a few dates tossed in. Add more water if you think you need it.
~Strain through a nut milk bag or piece of muslin in a sieve over another dish.
~Stores 2-3 days.

In sickness

When illness strikes sometimes it can be a gift in disguise. What's the gift? Slowness. Time out of time. There is nothing for you to be or do but be cared for or if destiny wills it, to be the carer. I don't enjoy seeing my children ill any more than the next Mama. But when I try really hard I can see that slowing right down, paring everything down to the body and it's wellness can be like scouring away at the less important bits of life and leaving an appreciation of simple pleasures. My two youngest have been very ill with a viral infection which left them in bed with fevers over 40C for nine days apiece. Ear ache, vomiting, headaches, sore limbs..... we had one hospital trip and one Dr visit and mama care in between. The joy of seeing my little boy back upright and smiling without any pain - magical. Despite his thinned limbs. My little girly smiling, even though pale with purple smudged eyes. It is good. Little things take on a greater significance, like seeing the yellow leaves from the window, having a magazine to read, using lavender soap to wash away sweaty necks.... and for myself I step outside for the first time in days, breathe in and out and feel as renewed as if a trip to the sea had happened.

Not much in the way of anything besides beds and rest and simple activities here until recovery is complete.

Simple things giving lots of pleasure:



Playdough made from this recipe and coloured with natural dye (beetroot juice).

And above, wooden beads painted with watercolours and then smoothed in oil and beeswax.

Unschooling thoughts

We have been unschooling since my children were born. In essence what this means to me is that the learning that happens is directed and initiated by my children. For example, when they ask the time I tell them. This is not the same as telling them how a clock works and slipping in the basics of how to tell the time one's self while the subject is at hand. It is just answering the question asked. It is twenty minutes past six I say, as we both look at the clock. That is it. Or I sometimes might add, the big hand is at the number four and the little hand is at six, so it must be twenty past six. But really it feels a little patronising to do that. Like my hidden agenda is to teach them how to tell the time, rather than assist with their own learning - it felt sort of false to elaborate (would I say that to another adult if they asked the same question?). I am not doubting that knowing how to tell the time is a valuable skill, it is, but their aims and questions were directed at finding out what time was right there and then (not how to tell them time for themselves or what the various numbers around the clock might mean) and so my answer needs to reflect that in a simple way. Since I am using telling the time as an example here I'll tell you how my older son recently learned this skill.

I bought a watch for him a year ago thinking he'd like one since he had been asking about the time fairly often. But he was not so bothered about it and never once wore it. Or not for very long, it would be on one minute and then off the next. And he never asked me how it worked. He said to me later that the strap hurt his arm - it was a ridiculous Velcro one. Fast forward a year later and he finds the watch in a draw and asks me if we can get a new strap in town from the watch shop he has seen. We go and he picks one out and the jeweller person fits it on with little screws. He asks me what time it is and I say quarter past two and then he asks me a few more questions - I forget what. BUT for the remainder of the day (and ever since!) he tells me several times a day what the time is. And he is nearly always right. That first day he told me every five minutes, along with telling every person we met. In one day he learned for himself how to tell the time and when he was stuck, he asked me. I have no doubt that over the years and months he was absorbing the face of the clocks we saw and taking in what he needed until he could do it for himself.

This is not a story to highlight how fabulous the learning of unschooling is compared to the schooled way of sitting at a desk and filling out worksheets and booklets and having many a lesson about how to tell the time (although it does seem rather laborious and unnecessary when it can obviously happen spontaneously) - rather I thought it was just pretty cool that I had not ever really properly taught him in the traditional sense.

It highlighted for me (when I often get anxious that we have no written record of what my children learn) that learning happens from the inside and springs best from self motivation and a desire to learn. When that is in place the learning happens super fast. These sorts of things reinforce for me my feelings that unschooling is A Good Thing. That learning happens every day all of the time. That sitting in a classroom and filling exercise book after exercise book doesn't guarantee anything is learned or retained. I spent five years learning German in school, passed my GCSE in it and really doubt now if I could ever hold a conversation with a German beyond hello and how are you. Friends of ours recently took a trip to Italy and in the six weeks leading up to it the children and mother took home every available Italian learning kit from the library and by the time they went they all were able to order food and ask directions and understand basic signs and what Italians were saying to them. When they needed and wanted to learn a language, in context, meaning they were not learning it for the language's own sake or to pass an exam, but were going to apply it and *live* it, they were more than capable of it.

This brings up for me how important it is to be learning as a part of life, not in the abstract, but by doing and being. We don't need to watch a film about the Post Office we can just go and post a letter; buy our stamp deciding which to purchase - first class or second? Talk to the post lady about her dog, hear her telling someone else that their parcel was too big to go through the letter box they would have to pay extra.... all of these little encounters and interactions are such valuable learning about the way our world works, contributing to individuals who can easily navigate living in the real world. The child that has pocket money and saves and spends is doing valuable maths, as is he when he is baking and measuring quantities, or weighing out how much extra is needed when we need to double the recipe to fit more people.... The child who writes a list or letter or email or makes and addresses a card is writing and spelling - but more so is learning these skills because these things are part of living a real life and doing real things, useful, purposeful. The learning has meaning. Which is exactly what unschooling is. Simply put. Living Life!

Cold Feet

Is what anyone wearing my current on-the-needles knitwear would have. I have been knitting the two bigger socks here now for over two years. I have been known to finish socks, I knit Felix two pairs last year and my mother a pair the Christmas before and my sister too, plus my circulatory challenged FIL (see! I can do it!)



BUT. I get bored knitting socks. I just do. And there's the challenge. I knit one (or get 3/4 of the way through one as you can see) and my knitting fever for them wanes. I get tired of the tiny needles and the forever same-same colour patterns (but I do LOVE self patterning sock wool, I really do - it's so clever). My FIL loves the pair I knit for him three or four Christmas's ago. He has some circulation problems which means he can't wear regular socks with an elasticy bit, and the lovely warm temperature regulating qualities of wool wowed him. So much so that my MIL tells me he wears them for a day or two, she hand washes them, they dry overnight and he pops them back on the next day and so it has gone on these past couple of years.... the same pair!! I have promised him another pair (or rather I did - a couple of years ago - thank goodness I did not say when I'd be finished knitting them, ha!). One day those blue ones will be his, I really really will pick them up soon (only because the guilt of seeing them again in my knitting bag kills me: I get this visual of an old man wearing threadbare socks, shivering through the winter (even thought the reality is his home being a centrally heated dome of tropical heat.....).



As soon as the tiny darling ones I am knitting for Esmé get finished (she only has one other pair of socks), and the promised hat for cousin Ruben, and the green pixie shoes I have knit one of..... cute yeah? What is it about footwear? I don't think I am destined to be good at finishing any of them..... and who are the other striped ones for right at the top? I have No Idea. Not one. But am sure they'll be lovely once finished....

two little dickie birds

.... not sitting on a wall but on a recently acquired second hand red cardigan. It needed two little weird blobs of pretend felt (pretend felt I tell ya!) cutting off and then covering over. And with what else but the dear little funky birds I plagiarised from Heartfelt. Thanks again, I adore them! I'd like to use them on every Little itty bitty thing that needs embellishing but my boys drew the line at patches on their jeans :) Of course - but still, I had to ask.

O X O X O

This is the latest of my sewing adventures - a little drawstring bag with travel Naughts and Crosses game. My dh cut the discs of wood for me, I sanded and Isaac oiled them. I painted the symbols on after the pics were taken. Also the flip side of the discs are numbered 1-9 for the game Magic Square - or for little children, just for counting.



I finally managed to get a little table hauled out of the garage, washed sanded and installed upstairs in the little spare room (now renamed as my grand 'Sewing Room'. How exciting! I got to try out it's new name today when Felix asked if I had seen his skeleton mask and plastic handcuffs - Oh yes! In my Sewing Room! He looked at me with wide eyes and said; do you mean the Sofa-bed room? Looking pointedly at me as if I regularly act in a crazy manner and randomly change the names of the rooms in the house. I may as well have said yes dear, in the Teapot room right next to the Banana storage area, seeing the My Mother Is Strange look on his face ..... goodness. Only time will tell if the new name sticks). And so a flurry of excited sewing has begun.



Little Beauty was rewarded for her patience and 'help' with a little white plusch mouse with jingle bell sewn inside.

Christmas dolls

Ok, so I can't remember when I started making these, but today I finished that last bits of them. They are pretty unformed with simple faces but suggestive too. The flowered one is made with a scrap of Cath Kidston fabric and is stuffed firmly with organic sheep fleece. The blue one is made from a piece of sky cotton velour and is my favourite. It is warm; filled loosely with fleece and is the sort of doll that even now I'd secretly and childishly like to take to bed with me. Of course, there's no room, what with my real life baby lying tummy to tummy with me but in that dreamy childhood remembering way I think it's a real girly bed time doll. I have this darling piece of moss green cotton velour that I think I will make another with. I lay the blue doll next to Esmé this morning and then picked it up and made it talk and dance for her and she grinned and goo-gooed. Then gave it a squeeze and tossed it to one side, utterly forgotten. For now. It made me smile to think of a time when she might tuck it up in a bit of blanket and croon to it like I do to her, or sit it propped in a corner and chat to it like I remember doing with dolls. Perhaps it might be whizzed around in a cart, lurching out and pressed back in toddler haste. What ever it's future holds it's good to be making toys for my own children, it feels nurturing, like when I knit for them or hold them to me to feed. I wonder if the items themselves hold a bit of that nurturing mama-magic in the very stitches and fabric and if our children feel it when they play with them?



Ok, so it is really just a bunch of scraps made into a plaything, but sometimes in the right light, for a moment, it is so much more.

Samhain ~Halloween

In Ancient times Samhain (Sah-win) was believed to be the time when the veil was thin between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Our ancestors could return to visit us, to give help and advice. People set out lights in hollowed out turnips to guide the spirits of the dead, and put out food as an offering.

~Circle Round

These ideas live on today - although the 'spirits' have become the ghosts and ghouls and skeletons, the offerings have become the 'trick or treating' sweets children beg from doors. The lights are ours still in our hollowed gourds and pumpkins.

We like Halloween. We remember that it is a time to think about the people who have died who we knew and cared about. We talk about what we remember about them.

To good to resist though is the spooky, spoofy stuff that make children wild with delight and excitement. There is room I think for both; the sober, heartwarming and the scary-silly.

What we like to do:

Pumpkin carving!
Pin the tail on the black cat (any guesses which book my painted cat was copied from?)
Apple bobbing
Outdoor fire with toasted marshmallows
Dressing up
Harvest soup and fresh bread
Chocolate apples

We have relatives visiting and so are getting ourselves geared up for some fun!

Esmé Eats

It has started. The independence from me in the form of other foods.



Bittersweet.



But mostly sweet. Snow White and her apple.

'Lazy' Saturday Morning

Saturday lunch time and the boys pour through the door. They have been to football practice and then swimming and usually for a quick stop at the supermarket, returning home ravenous.

As I dish up food Isaac looks at me;

Claire! You still have your pajamas on! What have you been doing today?!
Incredulous. Do I?
Oh yes, I do don't I ...Mmmm lets see, what did I do...?.

This happens far often than warrants observation, usually morning slips by busy busy and then we are all hungry and I am the last dressed. But today when they have been out and I at home with the babe it must seem more noticeable than usual. Well? Did I lie in bed until 11am and then hurry on up as I heard wheels crunch over gravel?

Begin mental reelings, wondering what I have done that might interest him....

I made breakfast (soaked oat porridge and raspberry yogurt smoothies), emptied the dishwasher, filled the dishwasher, put a load of washing in the machine, assembled snacks and drinks, waved goodbyes.

Spent a good twenty minutes on my knees sorting out Lego's from playmobil and plastic figures of soldiers and knights and superheros from the toy-soup on the sitting room floor into their rightful basket and tub and box homes.

Swooshed outdoors with brimful of wet clothing and hung them out to dry on the line, I fed the chickens who clucked and pooped around my feet - whoever let them out early forgot to feed them - then I fed the guinea pigs (which involved my wandering around the garden looking for suitable grass and dandelion leaves).

Back indoors, changed the babe's nappy and then vacuumed the upstairs (also involving huge amounts of putting dirty dropped on the floor clothes away, and toys in baskets and books back on shelves before I could even see the floor). I made beds (or rather pulled back duvets to air them off).

I lay down then, gulping a glass of water on the way to feed Esmé and let her sleep. Which she does.

I slip out of bed and run myself a bath, while it is doing so I pull washing out of machine and throw in nappies. I knit a bit then have a bath.

Out in time (just) for The Beauty to wake up, put PJ's back on and hop back into bed for five minutes to feed her again. Change her and roll on the floor for a bit with her looking at some stuff in her little basket of toys, then pop her back in to the sling (yes, she was in it for all of the above).

I call dh and give him a shopping list :) munching crackers and humus at the same time (poor dh's ears!).

Outside for hanging out more wet laundry, then sweeping and washing slabs near the outdoor table where chickens should not go but do and then poop everywhere. This leads to picking up about 700 spilled conkers and putting them in the trailer of the tractor and sweeping up bark chippings I myself spewed everywhere when my the bag spilled the other day.

Back inside for assessing of what to put together for lunch...

Then it's the pouring in through the doors of boys of all hungry sizes.

So what did you do?
Oh this and that... well I knitted a cat!
Did you? ohhh great - can I see it!
You can.

...and so the fiction of my morning is woven :)

But I did knit the cat :)