(Or, yarn along from small things – where you post what you are reading and knitting with, I hope, no requirement to be able to do both simultaneously.)

The small dull-blue pretty thing on gorgeous wooden needles will one day in the distant future, I hope, be a river shawl. I cast it on approximately 800 years ago, its leisureliness caused by being a pattern that requires attention, ie I can’t do it in front of the telly. The long, long grey thing at the front will one day be a shrug for me. I love the yarn (Rowan lima, all sort of braidedy plaity instead of twisted, soft and cuddly and yum); I can do the pattern with my eyes closed* after so many many miles of it. However, as it is so very long now, it is hardly portable, so the very bright ball of Noro towards the back there is about to start being turned into small, portable, socks. This represents a paradigm shift for me as I have scoffed at the idea of knitting socks: Karen, I apologise.

Reading-wise: a large pile of sewing and knitting magazines – I basically went into Hobbycraft and bought one of each in a bid to work out which are me and long-term stop wasting money on magazines full of patterns for old-lady cardies. Time will tell whether it works. “The shipping news”, which I started before (like, 10 years ago) and hated so gave up.  I then watched and adored the film, so I am giving it a second chance. And “delusions of gender” which is fascinating, such that I keep reading bits out to anybody who will pay attention. (Jenny is very interested.)

*I can’t really, I can’t even do it and read: I can do it while listening to and keeping half an eye on a television programme. Cameron doesn’t mind at all when I make him rewind because I forgot to pay attention for a bit. No not at all.

This is my First Proper Thing made with the sewing machine, apart from a couple of scrunchies. I followed the instructions in this oddly titled pamphlet (“I can’t believe I’m sewing!”) for a baby blanket, but added a layer of wadding, batting, whatever you call it, between cotton and fleece. For extra pouffiness (or, as I believe one would say if one knew what one was talking about, loftiness. Or just “loft”. Have yet to learn to speak sewing.) Hence it being a “quinket”; not quite quilt – although I did sew along the edges of the squares in a quilty fashion, the edges were just turned over not bound with scary bias  binding – not quite blanket.

Or, an excuse for a great big whinge about trivial annoyances (from Sluiter Nation)

1. Cameron being away all the time. It’s either feast or famine here; we are in a famine just now. My ideal would be for him to be away one or maybe two nights a week (if he’s here all the time I never get to watch “my programmes” – currently Glee, Lewis and Baking Made Easy – and I never spend an evening reading in peace. If he’s away all the time the house gradually goes to pieces and I go with it.) Actually, my ideal is for him to get home from work nice and early, be here until the children are all in bed, and then go out. A couple of times a week.

2. Cameron visiting interesting and exotic places and staying in lovely hotels where nobody (I assume!) wakes him up four times a night, demands to have their covers put back on, wants a drink of water, or sneaks in and warms their feet on him. And yes I know about the jetlag and the meetings and the public speaking and the flights and the airports and and and, and yes this one is pure envy. But I haven’t been anywhere for 5 years.

3. School runs in any weather apart from pleasantly warm, blue skies, light breeze.

4. Trial by ballet on a Wednesday.

5. Tedious manuscripts.

6. Dog owners who don’t pick up after their dogs (I am going to have to go and wash Tamsin’s scooter when I have typed this).

7. Trying to sell the house.

8. Clearing under the highchair after every single meal

9. Tamsin and Jenny playing a plastic saxophone/recorder duet behind me as I try to deal with #5.

10. Sleepless nights.

Go to sleep Jenny-wrenny
Jenny go to sleep
Shut your eyes
Jenny-wrenny-wrenny-Jenny
(repeat at random for ages)
There’s a plastic beeeeeach
And it has plastic on
And frolicks in the ocean in a land called honalee
(repeat lines about Jenny going to sleep until your mother wants to weep)

She walks! Only a couple of metres unaided, and very wobbly at that, but give her a little finger to hold and she can do the full length of the house. She is safe up and down stairs (though I still have kittens if she tries to combine the two, walking and stairs). She climbs on anything that is left accessible, favourite being the wobbly old wooden chair in the kitchen.

She talks! Nana (banana); mama (me); gong-gong-gong (no idea); uh-oh (I have thrown my dinner/the clean washing on the floor); gak-gak (the noise a duck makes)

She plays! She rocks a baby doll and bangs drums. Favourite is anything that has beepy tunes and/or flashy lights:  no waldorf child, this. She disappears upstairs for hours with the big girls: they play Barbies, I have no idea what she does.

She points! Most forcefully, we are left in no doubt that what she needs is That Thing There.

She doesn’t sleep! She eats on a pattern best known to herself! When she does, she loves minestrone soup, bananas, shepherds pie, and thinks egg is weird.