A Family Affair

We've been very fortunate in recent weeks to see an awful lot of our extended family- nearly a full house on both sides in fact! This was very much how it was for both C and I when we were growing up, with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents forming important threads in the fabric of our lives. I'm very happy that the same seems to be happening for our little ones.
The occasion on the weekend just gone, which began with a car journey spent knitting, was a special centenary. 100 years ago on Saturday my paternal grandmother was born. Professional harpist, wartime bride, mother of two and much loved wife, you never hear those who remember her (she died when I was four, so I'm not among them) describe her as sweet or gentle. Instead you get the picture of a strong, witty, intelligent force to be reckoned with, for whom family was so very important. My Dad's sister had the idea that to celebrate her birthday it would be great to have a family get together. This used to happen on that side of the family a lot when I was little, with Baptisms, First Communions and Confirmations happening in either mine or my cousins' family more or less every year. We were also lucky enough to have a Grandfather and Great Aunt who organised summer parties and St Nicholas Day celebrations for the lot of us.
And a lot of us there were. My 'Mama' (as we called her) only lived to see four grandchildren born. That number eventually grew to eight. On Saturday, as well as her two children, her son in law and daughter in law and her eight grandchildren, there were also eight great-grandchildren- P was in heaven with so many little ones to play with and I was pretty happy to catch up with cousins whom I haven't seen for two years.
At a lovely country house hotel in Herefordshire (nice and central for a family coming in from London, Surrey, Manchester, Shropshire and Cumbria) we ate a fantastic meal, pored over precious documents that gave amazing glimpses of a life begun a century ago, had a slideshow of photographs and even watched a DVD of my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and parents' wedding - they had a family friend at the time who was a home film enthusiast. We had a harpist to play who also, so patiently, allowed the children to explore her instrument. Perhaps most precious of all, we got the chance to catch up and reminisce with one another and to demonstrate to the next generation how wonderful and rich the experience of family life can be.

Improvisation and Inspiration

I'm fond of a good pinafore dress, especially since having a little girl baby. On my 'most coveted' list for when M is just a little older is this gorgeous number from Oliver & S. As it happens, more inspiration came today from reading this blog- it must be a pinafore sort of day!
Anyway, I'd had some pretty spotted babycord ever since I accidentally ordered it when choosing fabrics for P's quilt. Only having a fat quarter it wasn't going to make any sort of garment, so I thought I'd improvise a little using some old cord trousers from the scrap pile and some leftover Liberty print from making last year's Christmas presents. I bodged a pattern together using existing garments and the Picture Frame dress pattern in Handmade Beginnings and came up with this little number. Then I found it wouldn't fit over M's head, even with a popper at the back, so I had to unpick a shoulder seam and add a button loop.
To be honest, while the finished result looks okay (it's all about the model!), on closer inspection it's rather a testament to what happens when you try to sew stuff with a heavy cold and in a hurry because the baby's grumpy. There are some unfinished edges inside, some upside-down linings and some decidedly wobbly seams. However, the process of making it has given me some inspiration for something I want to come up with based partly on this pinafore and partly on the trousers I made (more successfully I might add) a while back.
Meanwhile I have a cardigan and scarf off the knitting needles and ready to block. Which means I have nothing to knit over the weekend. I feel a baby hat coming on...

Fear

Meet my nemesis. Okay, that's over-egging it a little, but this slide and its brothers and sisters elsewhere do give me more than their fair share of grief. All mummies have their particular fear- their child choking, getting lost, poisoning themselves, cutting themselves etc. etc. Of course I worry about all the aforementioned and more, but my special thing is P falling off tall things. I'm like my own mother in this respect but who knows if it's nature or nurture. All I know is that I end up on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand I find it nerve-wracking to let my little explorer clamber up ladders, balance on walls, scramble up banks and so on, and it makes me want to stop him or hold his hand all the time. On the other hand I know that the only way he'll learn to negotiate heights safely is to clamber, balance, scramble and yes, even occasionally fall. Also, I don't want to pass my own fear of heights onto him. So most of the time I work really hard on appearing calm, try to keep my steadying hands to myself and let him take (controlled) risks. I've found our recent repeated viewings of 'Finding Nemo' (the only way we could get Baptism preparations completed in time) quite inspiring in this respect. At one point a character points out that if you don't let anything happen to your kids, then nothing ever happens to them. Of course, today, having persuaded myself that maybe I should stand back when he tackled the slide ladder pictured, his foot slipped on the rain-wet second rung and he tumbled straight off. He was fine thank goodness and I managed to be matter of fact and encourage him to climb up straight away again. Of course, he didn't need any persuasion, as he's not scared of heights. No, my little toddler, with a pet chicken at home and Granny with a friendly dog who lives on a farm, who goes on country walks through fields of livestock, has suddenly decided he's scared of...animals! I really hope it's a phase, and a reasonably short one at that.

Baptism

I've not been around on these pages for a week or so, with the excuse that we've were using every hour we were awake and the children weren't to prepare for a very special day- M's Baptism. Determined to have at least one room of our new home decorated the way we wanted there was an awful lot of this:

And this:

...with just the occasional break for this:

when far-off friends decided to come and make a weekend of it, so we had to show off some of our favourite places.
As to the baking, well believe me when I say there was a LOT of it...so much that I didn't even get time to photograph it. As we wanted this to be something of a house-warming as well as a special day for our little lady, we invited just about everyone we knew and were flattered that so many made in a lot of cases a long journey to be here. The house was fully warmed, both babes (the bigger one is getting sooo big now!) were smiley socialites all day and some people even found places to sit down!


After a happy, happy day following weeks of seemingly endless lists of jobs, we are left with just a couple:

Carefully handwashing the beautiful christening gown that was handstitched by my paternal Grandmother from parachute silk, worn by my Father, me and all my siblings and now both my babies- the latter two with an equally beautiful shawl knitted by my MIL and M with a darling hand smocked bonnet made by my mother, truly a family affair!

Eating the leftovers! I'm quite pleased that there aren't too many of these, as it must show that the cooking was alright and that my catering calculations were fairly accurate. Enough for a few yummy lunches and luxurious suppers, mulling over the memories as normality returns.

This Moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember. Inspired by SouleMama

New Home Making

Two things our new home has meant to us so far:
1.The quilt has found its home at last. After an interim period using the it in the cot with the side down so P could escape- although amazingly he didn't- we've now acquired the 'big boy bed'. Cue much excitement and a few evenings of trekking up and down stairs to persuade him that he needed to stay in the bed rather than climbing on a chair to look out of the window. All in all it's gone well, however, and every time I see him snuggled up asleep under the results of all that hard work it makes my heart soar.
2.Evenings are a bit less relaxed for the grown-ups. The reality of decorating a house with two small children is that sometimes the only time available is after bed time- assuming that M decides that she'll coordinate her sleep time with her brother's. If that means 10.30pm sees us steaming off old wallpaper (to reveal, in this case, cork tiles!) and slapping undercoat on woodwork then so be it. Even with scruffy plaster and streakily undercoated wood, it somehow looks better than the previous decor, perhaps because it's the first marks we are making on our new home. Can't wait until we get a room finished!

A pause for entrelac

On various training courses over the years I've done those tests that are meant to show you what your personality and work style was. Whatever the label, I never came out as a person who was good for finishing off things- I'm always an ideas and enthusiasm and 'let's get things going' type. In a way, knitting and sewing is good for combatting the negative side of this, in that over the years I've developed the self discipline to make myself finish projects properly, carefully and if necessary s-l-o-w-l-y, rather than waste the money spent on materials and the time spent on producing whatever I've made. The results have always been much more satisfying as a consequence.
Having said that, knitting is a hobby after all, not my job. I've completed a good three quarters of my Rosamund cardigan, but having finished the yoke and the waist shaping I'm now just on the final run over the hips. In other words, a bit of cable, a lot of plain or purl, then an bit of cable. Row after row after row. In a sophisticated but slightly dull beige colour yarn. Then the other day I noticed I had buggered up a cable several inches below. I tried a rescue attempt, but in the end had to frog back those inches to sort it out, which put the tin lid on my enthusiasm for it really. It also wasn't helped by a trip to the Sheep Shop in St Annes on Sea, where I'd bought two balls of King Cole Riot to make an entrelac scarf I'd found after too much time on Ravelry. Those gorgeous, jewel-like colours were winking up at me from amongst the beige in my work basket. So I gave in- it is a hobby after all- and I'm having a break from the beige, giving my knitting brain a workout learning entrelac and hopefully regain the enthusiasm to go back and complete the cardigan.