Ordinary and Beautiful

Sometimes it happens that Esmé and I get to go for a walk together, just the two of us. These are savouring sorts of walks where I get to be quiet or murmur to my baby girl. More often than not I am loving these quiet tender walks for the time I get to just stare. And stare and stare.... as much as I do this same walk I can never get enough of my world, right here. I think that I must look like a tourist, googling everything as if for the first time. The way the living, breathing lanes and woods and fields change, so subtly and yet so dramatically every single day. It is breathtaking. And ordinary. Mundane even, I imagine, to some. I wonder if those who don't get the pleasure of being at home, and living a *slow* life would see my life as a Mama of three as mundane? 'Ordinary' for sure - so how come I feel such joy? Isn't joy for the spangled, brightly lit, high achieving, fast paced, money filled life? My life is really none of those in the aspiring modern way. It is just..... both Ordinary and it is Beautiful. That's how it feels.




























'To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work'
~ M. Oliver

Woollen Rainbow

This is the Classic Cardigan from The Debbie Bliss Essential Baby book. I think this is the fourth one of these I have made in the last year. It is not the easiest cardigan I have ever made, but it has a nice rhythm to it once you join the pieces together and knit the last half. Just enough to do so that you don't drift off and get bored with it. I have perfected the art of lying down in bed and knitting at night with a sleeping baby plugged on to my breast. Even the lopsided arm ache didn't deter me in my efforts to get this finished. It is not for Esmé you see, it is for my sister's baby - due in two weeks! Yippee! I don't think she reads this blog so I am safe to show it here. The buttons are hand carved Nepalese made, from the local ethnic shop (yk, the shop every town has with the rainbow tie dye skirts hanging in the doorway, incense drifting out in a pink wafty smog, chimes tinkling and elephant batik print cushions for sale). I was a bit worried my colour choices would make it look a little too United Colours of Benetton and maybe it sort of does except the buttons pull it into something slightly more....earthy? Usually I go for the classic shiny gray disk shell buttons favoured in the book or plain wood but well these ones were pretty enough and in any case Felix already had them wadded tight in his chocolate smeared fist and the shop was really too funky-trippy and scented for me so these were perfect this time.



Stuffed Esmé into it and managed to get the one button fastened - she so wanted to model it I could tell, and besides she is so cute I just needed another legitimate reason to take a photo of her......

Oh! The knitting, yes the knitting, that's what this post is about. So, this is the first item completed since having my baby, and considering the other million and one things I could be doing instead of knitting when she naps I am quite pleased it is done in time for baby-gifting. Now nothing stands in the way of washing the kitchen floor.

Gypsy Life

For two days we have stopped by the festival that is gearing up in town. A little fringe fair has set its self up in the castle grounds. Here the boys found a new friend who's parents had a stall (his dad was a fortune teller). Then I saw this little gypsy caravan. Oh oh oh. I see these so often! And I want one. Oh, how I want one. I want one with that feverish wishing and longing that as a child I longed to be allowed bubble gum, or that my imaginary friend (a tiny creature that slept in a tissue box) would actually appear in the fury soft shape I pictured him. I have these visions of it being a play house out in the garden with moss growing over the wheels, a crochet Afghan slug over the bed, little windows with slightly grubby rosebud curtains. Muddy wellies kicked off outside.

I looked into buying one last year and almost wished I hadn't. They are SOOOO expensive. Not to mention the woman selling was like a Priest quizzing a witch - you know was I actually going to live in it? Was I really? Because she only wanted to sell to someone who was, and the horse was part of the sale too, did I realise that? She was born in there, as was her mother (so she said) and so she wasn't going to see it being turned into a garden ornament. Yes. Quite. *Blush*

This one though was being lived in by a carpenter. He made furniture and figures from fallen hardwood he found. He saw me sitting by a tree watching him and the little caravan (ohhh darling little caravan be my very own garden ornament!) and said he had a daughter who just turned one, and his wife had two other children. They were all living in there. All of them. Gasp. At least for the week of the fair in any case. My mind spins when I hear things like this. (And you can see by the living junk outside that they do).. where would I store the nappies I mused.... or wash them? Hold on, where the heck is the running water? It looks to be the size, thereabouts, of our chicken coop. My dh would be driven insane within about two hours. In winter, in the rain. Actually even in the summer, I mean where would his suits hang, where is the Internet connection.... where would he lie down and stretch out? :)

Ok. I don't think I'll ever live out my noble and wild Woman In The Woods living on roots and rabbit and picking wild herbs all day life (like that fabulous goat woman in the Cold Mountain book). Not when I have a large and lovely family and nappies to wash and other people to help keep sane. I think for me, it would surely be a garden ornament. I am ok with that :)

In fact, childishly, it makes me want one even more.

Felix would be pleased. He didn't want to leave today. I really really want to be a traveling boy and go to all the fairs. We could get our own little caravan and even be burglars! Not sure why would need to be thieves in the night but apparently the notion of traveling folk and dishonesty has permeated right down to five year olds who have never seen or heard about such a way of life before. Mystifying. Or perhaps it is just that he sees travelling people living a life of high excitement and fun on par with the likes of Burglar Bill (maybe I should remind him that even he turned into dull Baker Bill by the end of that tale). No, Felix is right. It's that hint of travel and adventure that gets my own self wanting to sit and dream in one of these little caravans, imagining music and the beating of drums and eating food cooked outdoors. Every child's dream for high summer. Especially mine :)

katie morag

We like the Katie Morag books here.



I love looking at the little details in the pictures.... the nappies drying on the rail above the stove, the mum with her breast out feeding the baby, Grannie Island's basket of knitting tucked behind the chair and her fiddle on the high shelf, the spoon people made by childish hands..... I like how they are totally not Autonomous Collective and rather Mum Wears The Trousers! There are bits I sometimes edit but overall the pictures win out. Dreamy Scottish Island rural life, probably not as it really is, but how we imagine it might be. Which is just what you want from a story book. Buy for the child who loves to look at the teeny bits!

Click on the pics for a closer look :)

Work

The best sort. Where you just live your life and do the things you want to do. Is it work? I have tended at times to associate the word 'work' with something I don't want to do but have to. (Where does that come from....?) The dictionary says: physical or mental effort directed to making or doing something.

We might add to this definition that perhaps it is effort that need not have an end result; where the achievement and satisfaction comes from the doing. Or sometimes where the result is such a sparkly mental vision that the effort required to achieve it is pure joy, play, shedding the negative connotations that sometimes stick with the word 'work'.











Dressing up aside - some of our 'work' has been in the garden.

St. John's Wort suddenly shoots up along with the pots of salad leaves



The hammock is strung, ready for a summer of lounging and dreaming...



Our work on Little Veg

March:


May:


So far in the ground: Raspberry canes (along the back hedge) spring onion, beetroot, swisschard, parsnip, turnip, sugar snap peas, potatos and strawberries. Still more to go though...

The sun has been coaxing out the shy strawberry flowers :)

Gold

Gold for free.....

Little Veg needing some weeding.



Looks like the only things truly growing are weeds! Funny thing. When we are late sowing the seeds, Nature gets to work without it even being work. Think I need to work out what might be edible without having to dig or plant any seeds.... It really makes you feel kind of crazy to see such green-amazing weeds, thigh high, and the cultivated stuff an inch from the ground (if that).


One teeny tiny way I feel I am going with the flow of what is happening outside, without my input - harvesting the wind to dry the nappies!



...for The Beauty, fat legs and all.

Egg First

Finders keepers!

Massage

I have a few different massage books focusing on babies. Peter Walker does some informative ones. From his I picked up one particular useful titbit; when you first start massaging your baby it is good to start out doing the feet and progress then to the legs, maybe at changing time. It's not intrusive like getting straight in there with your hands on their little bellies and chests (which they often dislike and squirm at if you start this way). It always worked for me to go from the feet upwards. Gently. Week by week, day by day adding another minute or two. At 12 weeks we are up to the full body massage which takes around 10 minutes, and it is now that I see Esmé really liking it. She gurgles and chortles at me and sighs and afterwards oiled and sweet like a pancake she settles in for a peaceful nurse and slumber. I am so much enjoying seeing her enjoy this that I have been massaging her more than once day! It is so satisfying to stroke those little limbs, just starting to plump out, feel the velvety skin, push my fingers into her palms, softly, firmly flattening her curled up fingers out like dough. It is blissful for me.



I have learned so much from this book, it has got to be my favourite. Beautiful black and white photography and lovely techniques, easy to read and remember - what I like to do is read a massage book, say in bed while my wee one sleeps, and then the next day just practice from memory. It would be too much faff to refer to a book whilst actually massaging. Misses the point some what too since I just tend to follow my hands and the little body under them and often repeat something more or miss other things out.



I really like peach kernal oil or sweet almond, but have used lovely virgin coconut oil too. In fact I would use that more often if I had it to hand when I am thinking about massage but usually it's in the kitchen.

Sweet oiled up girl-y.



You wouldn't think it was the same baby but turn her onto her belly and she does her party-eyed tricks. This is when we call her The Google Eyed Girl: when her eyes are out on stalks like this, she is so funny... if you could see the way her head bobs about looking in every direction trying to see every little thing at once! Oh my.



How come babies heads just look much too big for their bodies huh? So Bambiesque.

Ok mama, see me? It's milk time cos' the fist ain't giving up much juice.

Nettle Soup

Sorry for vague quantities, I made this last night and really didn't measure anything at all. We have made it before and really it tastes good whatever you do with it.....

~Pick basket load of Spring nettles, favouring leafy and green stemmed to woodier brown. Watch out for nibbled holes in leaves!



~Fry up lots of potatoes and onion in oil/butter.



~Add Good with Everything Herbs and Sea Salt or something similar.



~Add stock, then nettles and simmer for a bit.

~Pulse to smooth liquid green pea-ness and eat with freshly made spelt bread...