Domesticali

End of the school year

Somehow I always seem to forget how frenzied this time of year is. Sports days, music concerts, class assemblies, day trips - the last few weeks of the summer term always result in a jam packed diary and extreme exhaustion. Not least because one of my offspring is in the older half of the school and the other in the younger, which means I get to do all of the above TWICE! Roll on the holidays, I say!

But before we fling this year's books, artwork and associated scraps of paper we cannot part with into the dark recesses of a cupboard, we have a little bit of thanking to do. Which means a little sewing for me.

So now Johnny's teacher has a way of getting all her end-of-year papers to the car on the last day of term. He wrote her name, in his bestest handwriting, on the lines I had sewn on to the calico and I embroidered over them. It's a simple unlined tote, with french seams for neatness.

Now if only I could come up with a suitable (and extremely fast) idea for Mark's music teacher (who is male and is retiring), I'd be laughing. Please tell me you have a great idea up your sleeve. Please.

Loose ends

Amazing how knowing you have less than two weeks left of the children being in school focuses the mind.

So there has been progress on the UFO pile. Starting with some loose ends. These have been waiting for me since about Christmas, all because I couldn't put my hands on my yarn needle with the really big eye. Thankfully, it turned up this week.

So it was possible to sew in the ends of the seriously chunky yarn, made from recycled tshirts. I've been squirrelling away the worn out ones (with no side seams) for some time. To make yarn, you just cut a strip, spiralling your way round the body of the shirt, and pull on it which makes the sides curl in. Google will provide a tutorial if you need one, I'm sure.

I had plans for a bathmat, knowing the tshirt yarn would be super absorbant. What I didn't know is that one tshirt would yield only about 4 inches of knit bathmat. I had nowhere near enough yardage. Plus it is incredibly stiff stuff to knit with and hard on the hands. So serious design modifications were called for.

The finished bathmat has tshirt yarn either end, with the middle being Rowan Cotton Tape in two colours held double. Kristina gave me this yarn years ago - it became a table runner and a wrap which never worked out and was frogged for my bathmat. Which did work out. Even if it took me about 7 months to get around to weaving the ends in.

Not perfectly blocked, as you can see. But when it's raison d'être is to be stood on with wet little feet, there really didn't seem too much point in being pedantic about it.

Finished is good enough.

Lists

When I forgot to collect the dry cleaning the other week, Johnny, who clearly believes his Mother could use some 7 year old wisdom, said to me in his very finest 'I am trying to be patient and understanding with you' tone: "What you need to do is make a list".

Hmm - perhaps he had a point. So I made one. And I've even ticked off the things on it.

But somehow, even a cute chalkboard list with relatively pleasureable tasks on it was failing to make my heart sing. The loop the loops round the edge were fun, but the list still made me feel antsy.

I think it's because when you are CEO of the house, the list is endless. I could tick and tick and tick and still the next day there would be a pile of things to do. Some, exactly the same as the ones you did yesterday. And it makes me feel as if I am getting nowhere.

And then I came across the idea of a Thimble List. The total antithesis of a bucket list, a thimble list is a list of very small ways to savor life. And I may just go and erase that to do list and write one full of the teeny things that are going to make me happy today.

• Listen to Johnny's music concert
• Eat a slice of banana bread
• Put on some happy shoes
• Know that I don't have to cook supper tonight

What's on your thimble list?

Rhythms

As a person who has always been very excited by new things, it shocks me to be confronted with evidence of what a creature of habit I truly am. 

My kitchen table - June 17th and June 12th, a year apart.

I may never have realized, had it not been for blogging.

This post has sat on my screen all weekend. The idea being that seeing it there might trigger a suitable conclusion to my thoughts. But one has yet to arrive.

So many of us seem a bit ho-hum about writing our blogs of late. It's not new any more. We're not striving to connect with our tribe. We're in our groove. Or rut, depending on how you think of it.

There seems to have been an exodus of late (to the lure of Twitter, perhaps). But for me, there has always been, in the midst of the quest for the novel, a background comfort in the familiarity of routine. And so it continues.

 

Things in boxes

I would like to thank the genius who put a letterbox inside the enormous changing cubicle of the branch of Charles Tyrwhitt where we found ourselves on Sunday.

Because when you've forgotten to pick up your hubby's suit from the dry cleaners, such things matter. Especially when he has a Monday morning flight that leaves at 6.20am for a trip that involves Madrid, Brussels and Milan where he will be required to do much suit wearing.  And doubly so, when the endless business trips (don't get me started) and associated wining and dining have caused him to most definitely grow out of the waistbands of his other suits, necessitating an emergency shopping trip.  Accompanied by the two worst tempered clothes shoppers ever created, such things are a lifesaver.

No really, they enjoyed being shut in the letterbox - it's just the shopping they are not keen on.

Thank you Mr Charles Tyrwhitt - I'm sure none of your business plans included flowcharts of our precise chain of events, but the bright spark who designed that fitting room deserves an instant bonus.  And is it okay if I pick the kids up at the weekend?

Five months

This year, I really wanted to go for the Project 365 properly. Five months completed- that went fast. Though not quite as fast as the video suggests. It's made with Pummelvision - addictive, I tell you.

I am always so pleased later when I look back at the little capture of days. Even if some of them are a shot of the final moments before sleep, because the day hasn't seemed too photo worthy. It's not the quality of the photographs, it's the capturing of a phase.

When I was in my twenties, I refused to own a camera. It seemed that on many days, taking pictures would put me one step removed from really experiencing what was going on around me. Funny, because now I wonder if you can only really understand the significance of what you've experienced when you look back on it.

Or perhaps that's just age talking.

Overseas

We headed off for part of half term. Overseas (well, over Solent - which counts, don't you think?). Quite frankly, who needs Barbados when the Isle of Wight looks like this?

I think the spectacular weather helped a bit, but how glorious to find such a treasure practically on our doorstep. The Isle of Wight has it's own island character - that connection to the sea is something I grew up with and miss sorely, living in the landlocked heart of England. And I never thought I would be lucky enough to own a boat.

Okay, so we won't be rowing the Atlantic in it exactly, but it was an awful lot of fun. And I have a feeling the Thames might be seeing a little boating action too, because we can carry this down from the front door.

There were land based finds too -  a tree which grows stripey string.

The perfect vehicle for climbing high up into the canopy.

We made new friends, some small, some large.

Amazing what you can pack in to a mini-holiday. Ours tend to be fairy impromptu - in those precious few interludes when the stars collide and the boys holidays include a few days when Hubby isn't out of the country.  I've learned to seize them quickly.

The booking of a 'big holiday' is almost too daunting a prospect. The pressure to get it right because you are spending a couple of weeks and a great deal of money doing something. And having to choose just one destination, from the vast raft of opportunities. This summer remains resolutely undecided.

Holiday commitment-phobia is a serious issue -  I'd far rather book some flights and a car and then wander as we see fit - staying where we are enjoying ourselves and moving on when it seems there might be something fun on the horizon. Before children all our breaks were like this - but with four bodies, its slightly more tricky being footloose.

Perhaps the answer for the summer conundrum is a series of holiday-ettes - if they were all as good as this one, we'd have a ball.