Echoes of a Dream

Help - I'm having a crisis.

Isn't it amazing how things happen and they shake you up something rotten and then you look back and say "I'm so glad that happened" because they help you to stop, reflect and move on?

In the last fourteen days I've been shaken to my core as you know by some criticism. Then seven days ago one of our kittens got knocked over in front of our very eyes and we spent most of Sunday crying. On top of that Amber said something which hit me like a bolt. I was telling her off for shouting at her brothers and she said something like, well what about you, you shout at us about the most trivial of things. I sat with that comment, and cried over the cat last Sunday and to finish it all off Ali sent me a list of questions about why we blog which set me thinking on that front.

It all went into the great big melting pot that is my overactive brain and for the last few days I've really been reflecting on who I am and what I do. It occurred to me that for the last year or so I have been living out of integrity. What is integrity? To me it's honouring my word and my commitments. It's being true to my principles and to myself.  You see fourteen years ago I made a commitment to stay at home and bring up my children and somewhere along the line I forgot that. Because I forgot to make a commitment to myself at the same time, to nurture myself in the process, the last few years have left me drained and empty.

I noticed (as I reflected) how I was desperate to have time to myself these days and to do things that were just mine. Cue the crafting and the blog - both served to fill an emptiness in me. They were things that I did for myself and were separate from the family. They gave me a sense of individuality that I had lost being at home. All was fine at first. My priority was still the home and I crafted after the children went to bed. Then I started selling at the christmas fair and during the autumn term I sewed madly whenever I could but I always new that it would stop at the beginning of December. It meant that I was free to concentrate on a great advent and christmas and in the new year the children and I played and mucked around with never a sight of a sewing needle. I had time to read and knit in a leisurely fashion too.

But then came blogging and like most of you I threw myself into it with gusto. What a world there was out there and so many like minded people. What crafts and patterns and ideas floated around in blogosphere. Hungrily, greedily I lapped it all up and for a while it filled the void that had developed over the years. The balance was fine at first but when you have a blog you need something to write about don't you and as mine was a craft blog I found myself making things all year round. That was great at first. Look at what I've learned and done over the whole eighteen months of blogging - the plant dyeing, all the softies I've made, the dolls, the felted jumper bags, etc etc. It's been wonderful to have really stretched my crafting skills and to have discovered other talents. But more than that look at the great connections I've made through the blog and all the lovely comments I get. Let's not forgot my amazing holiday either.

However, I began to find that thinking about what to write, the words to use, actually writing a post, reading my comments and replying to them and finally reading other blogs and commenting began to take over my life a bit. I also made myself a craft room and whereas once I sat at the kitchen table and sewed, chatting with the children all the while, I was now often esconsed in my room. Suddenly the balance shifted without me noticing.

The events of the last two weeks then have thrown all this up in my face and thank goodness too. I've realised that I've been spreading myself too thinly and that I really need to re-assess my commitments and then to find a balance in my life. I'm not sure what I'll decide about blogging and crafting to be honest. At the moment I just need a break from it all. I can't imagine not making things anymore so I guess that I may just slow down a bit on that front but as for blogging .........hmmm. I'm not sure whether to stop or continue.

I'd be very interested in hearing your comments on that and also to know how you find balance in your lives. Thank you friends for reading my mid-life whatever and sorry for the lack of photos ..............

Self confidence - what self confidence?!

Woah - I haven't posted for over a week now. I had meant to write on Monday after the children went back to school but I had a bit of a ........hmm what shall we call it now?  A bit of a major upset at school (great timing on your first day back!). The details don't really matter - suffice to say that I was criticised by a parent for the way I ran my lesson - and I took it badly. My, did I take it badly! I was so upset and I discovered that my self confidence is just barely held together with the finest of threads. I was upset for most of this week and spent ages going over everything in my head. I didn't do much else - I just wallowed. I didn't agree with everything that was said to me but I realised that there were some things that could be improved. More than anything though I was shocked at how much it knocked me. I started to wonder if I was desperately self absorbed or very vulnerable.

In the end I decided that I could either learn from the experience or just keep being a victim and I finally felt able to move on yesterday. That's why I just couldn't post anything till now. I couldn't pretend everything was hunky dory and I didn't want to go on and on about it here. Gosh there was a time (pre-children) when I could take these things in my stride - what the heck's become of me? Was I harder then?

Anyway, as I said it's time to move on and to tell you what we've been up to instead.

Look what I knit yesterday - a girl bear:

I don't know if I mentioned it before but Wylie gave Amber a book called 'Knitting for Peace' this summer. Well, Amber was very taken by some of the projects in this book and particularly the Mother Bear Project. She decided to get some girls together to knit a few bears at school. Well, inspired by her, the other hand work teacher and I decided that we'd get a couple of our classes to knit bears too and we decided to have a cake sale today to raise some money for the wool. Here's a copy of the letter that Amber wrote to the everyone in the school:

Dear Parents,

During the holiday I was given a book called 'Knitting for Peace - Make the World a Better Place, One Stitch At a Time'. It has stories about people that knit things like hats for premature babies; shawls for cancer patients; jumpers for orphans; blankets for the old and infirm and teddy bears for orphans in Africa.

Everything in this book really touched me but especially the teddy bears. Some of these traumatised children are so poor that they use broken glass bottles as dolls so these bears really mean a lot to them. One of the stories in the book was about a small girl in Zambia who was ostracized at school for having AIDS. She told her teacher that her teddy bear was the only thing in the world that loved her. It was buried with her when she died.

And so when I read this I wanted to do something about it and to get some other people involved. My Mum and I talked about it and she and ( ) decided that it could be a handwork project for classes 4 - 7 this term. It would be great if we could send off at least 50 bears.

But before we start we need to raise money for the wool, stuffing and postage that is needed so we thought we could do that by having a cake sale on Friday.............etc etc.

Amber, Class 8

Isn't it lovely? A number of parents came up to her today and said they'd been really touched by her letter. Agggh, I'm so proud of her.

Well, we've had the cake sale and we raised £110. We're going to get our wool from Get Knitted who are offering us a good discount and I'm hoping to get started in a week or so. Do click on that link above for the Mother Bear Project to see what it's all about. I take my hat off to this lady and infact to all the ladies in the book (Knitting for Peace) who do such amazing things for others. Infact, my own friend Wylie knits shawls, together with some ladies from her church, which is part of a project mentioned in the book. It's called the Shawl Ministry and you can click on the link to find out more. Thanks Wylie for inspiring us so much AND for starting something just by leaving that book by Amber's bedside when we came to stay.

So, first week at school has gone by. The children, well Amber especially has loads of homework now but I did get them to quickly make these the other day for our young friend who is going off to Uni next week. They're all made from dyed blanket. The bright pink is Dylon and the other two are plant dyed:

The builders are still here and the porch has definitely come on:

we weren't happy with the levels in the garden and made a drastic decision to cut down a tree as it was in the way basically. It's made quite a difference to the view now and you can see that house more clearly.

but it does mean that the lower level can be wider which is good and we'll plant another Rowan tree on the edge of the orchard to replace this one.

Other than that my parents are off to India on Thursday so we're popping there tomorrow to say bye but that's after we've been to the open day at the Black Country Museum.

I should just say sorry to my dear friends who've all be waiting for replies from me - Jodi, Wylie, Kristin, Sarah, Val, Tracy. Sorry ladies. I'm back on form now and promise to write in the next day or so.

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PS I'm not fishing for sympathy or asking you to side with me this was more off a - 'look what fourteen years at home has done for my self confidence' post. If you do leave a comment please refer to that point. This post may well be read by people in my school community and I do not want to start anything!

Corners of My Home - ha ha

I don't think I've done a corners of my home post before. I've seen pics on other blogs of people's homes and I know I've shared some of mine too but I was looking around today and I thought you might like to have a tour with me:

Hmmm - where shall we start. Inside or Out?  Perhaps you'd like to see under the spare room bed first:

I went to put away all the spare bedding and was horrified to find a graveyard of dead woodlice. This is not such a bad corner. You should have seen the other end. I just shoved the bags of duvets and pillows under and covered the whole lot with a bedspread. Out of sight - out of mind:

Let's go down to the sitting room to visit one of the resident spiders and its numerous babies:

It (and many others) seem to have moved in whilst we were away this summer but sadly they do not have squatters rights and will be sucked up by the hoover removed later.

Shall we have a glance at the fireplace. Willow chewed to bits and a nice bowl of frankincense broken:

Let's hurry through the kitchen to the little shoe room. Oh my, the children just love to dump things:

We ought to go back and look at the seasonal table, re-arranged by the cats in our absence:

I bought some sunflowers and put them there in a sort of made-to-look-like-that way so I wouldn't find it too depressing.

Here's the kitchen table:

and I expect you'll want to see where all the dirt is coming from that is getting trodden into the floor, carpets, sofas, curtains etc. The new porch that seems to be taking an AGE to finish. No, I'm not going to go on about how the builder was hardly here last week and seems to have disappeared again. Or, the fact that it could have been almost done by now. Not me:

.

Let's step outside shall we? The porch from one angle:

and another:

the stable and the garage which was attached but has been seperated and had new windows put into it:

another view of the stable:

and one of the leveled garden which I don't actually like at the moment:

The levels are a bit high, the top one is too big and the lower one too small. We can't afford to have retaining walls built so have to have these slopes. Oh, those planks are roughly where the man-with-the-digger has to take the top level back to.

Another view:

Anyway, now that you've seen what a dump my house is at the moment you will totally understand why I'm going to go and sit on the sofa, cover myself with a blanket, make a pot of tea and eat the rest of this:

 

Hey, I've just had a thought. How can I be glum when I've been nominated by a few different bloggers for these awards:

The Reflective Blogger Award. The purpose of the award is to, in the words of the originator of the award, make you reflect on five bloggers who have been an encouragement, a source of love, impacted you in some way, and have been a Godly example to you. Five bloggers who, when you reflect on them, you get a sense of joy at knowing them and being blessed by them.

The Nice Matters Award. "This award will be awarded to those that are just nice people, good blog friends and those that inspire good feelings and inspiration! Those that care about others that are there to lend support or those that are just a positive influence in our blogging world! "

and The Power of Schmooze Award. "to reward bloggers who not only blog but also participate in a conversation with other bloggers, creating new communities."

Oh my. That's lifted my spirits somewhat and distracted me. I was feeling utterly depressed at the beginning of this post.

In the spirit of the game I would like to nominate the following ladies for all of the above awards:

Louise; Tracy; Marie; Emma; Val; Rowan; Ramona; Sirri and finally Vicki. That's in addition to all my blog friends that I stayed with in America.

Bye then I have a bit of cleaning to do. The sofa can wait (I ate the chocolate as I was writing though) .................

It's (nearly) all over ..................

Yep, it's over - well nearly - the children don't go back to school 'till next Monday but in effect summer hols are over aren't they? We've had our trip-of-all-trips to America and been to Wales for a week and now it's a week of going to the Dentist, getting haircuts, buying stationery and new shoes. Boo hooo hoooo.

We had a great week in Wales with my sister and family and the house we rented was perfect (for once). There were two sitting rooms - one for the six children and one for us adults and a games room in the garage that had table tennis and pool in it. The garden was huge so many games of cricket were played too. We had a glimpse of the sea from the garden but if you walked along the road you saw this:

and if you crossed the main road and walked down to the beach you saw this:

that's Harlech beach. Beautiful isn't it? It never got very busy and even if there had been a lot of people about I don't think it would ever get full. There are some pics of Harlech here courtesey of Flickr.

We had some days on the beach and the brave swam and then trembled in the chilly wind afterwards. One day we went on a steam railway:

another day we walked in the hills - that's after going down the wrong road and the boys hopping out about twelve times to open and close gates. We went to Portmeirion one morning which is an amazing place:

 

More pics here. Another time we went to Shell Island on Rebecca's recommendation and it is indeed a nice place with lovely sand dunes, a harbour and a beach. It's not really an island but does get cut off at high tide I believe.

In the evenings we adults sat and chatted and watched a few films like the old Belles of St Trinians with Alistair Simm; Shadowlands which made me weep into my knitting and an old 60's film called The Leather Boys. Yes, I did say knitting and you'll laugh to hear that I took two projects with me one which was a bit of a disaster and the other which was OK but not what I'd had in mind to knit.

You see I'd hastily grabbed the wool that Kristin had given me and some other balls from my stash and decided to crochet the Ripple Stitch blanket that I'd seen at Georgia's. Amber read the pattern for me and got me started but at some point I started making mistakes at the edge which meant that my dips and peaks didn't lie flat and whole thing was bumpy:

So I gave up and cast on to make a small cotton hand-towel for the kitchen. However, the pattern that I had printed was not the same as the one in the picture so I had to unravel that and determined not to let my hands sit idle during the films I cast on as for the King Charles Brocade dishcloth hoping that my wool wouldn't run out before it was long enough:

I think that thought might be in vain as I'm nearly at the end of my ball. Might have to ask Jodi to try and get me another ball from Weaver's sometime or else keep it as a dishcloth.

Sadly, the last day came all to soon and for some crazy reason we decided to drive back across country which in the end took all day rather than the four hours it had taken on the first day. Still it meant that we stopped off at Colinette and I bought some wool (from the sale section) for Amber and Rohan:

there wasn't enough of the turquoise for Amber so she went for the green and Rohan opted for the former. However, he's having second thoughts now about how bright it is (although one of the sales ladies was gushing about how it suited him so much with his colouring).

Then we stopped briefly in Montgomery, far too briefly. What a find. The town has a beautiful market square, nice buildings and an amazing view if you climb up to the castle (we didn't as we were in a hurry). Sorry I didn't take any pics but if you look on Flickr you'll see what it's like or click here.

That was the last of Wales and we passed into Shropshire where we saw the nicest views and the prettiest houses before we finally arrived in Ludlow just in time for tea:

Of course, it had to be a cream tea - how else were we going to bribe the children to sit in the car for eight hours?  More pics of Ludlow here.

We finally reached home around 6 o'clock and hastily made supper for ten. The children who had got on so well all week decided to have a huge row that night leaving Rohan and his girl cousin in tears, the older two sulking and being told to apologise by their parents to no avail. We finally locked them in their bedrooms at nine and managed to have another cosy evening.

After a quick visit to the local farmer's market next morning and a speedy lunch it was the moment I'd been dreading all week - saying goodbye to my sister. We always end up in tears every time and wish with all our might that we could repeat those years that we lived near each other in London and saw each other all the time.

So hols and fun times with family are over. I've done four machine loads of washing and hoovered half of the dirty house. I need to go to the supermarket and stock up, nag the children to finish their scrapbooks and get ready for school - welcome back to the real world.

PS I hope those links to Flickr work. If not, go to my Flickr page and type in the various place names into the search bar. There are some great pics of Montgomery, Ludlow, Portmeirion and Harlech, taken by many people, to see.