Knitting

I have cast on another project for me this week, a hat which I thought would be a gentle introduction to knitting cables.  The first few rows after the ribbing were hard as these were setting up the pattern.  The even rows on this pattern are to knit the knits and purl the purls as you see them.  I was struggling to see them and I may have made some mistakes although I can't tell now!  The cable stitches have turned out to be the easy bit.  I love this pattern and after a few rows I have now got into  it and can tell where I am.  I just hope it fits after all the work.

I have also been working on the scarf I shared last week and this cardigan which is slowly growing.  All my current projects are for me which is unusual, I do have projects for others in the pipeline!

I am away for the rest of this week on a camping trip with friends to celebrate midsummer.  If you leave me a comment, thank you, it may take some time to appear!  I will catch up with all the lovely post shared on this weeks work in progress over on Tami's blog at the weekend.

Cleaning?

Welcome to the June edition of the Simply Living Blog Carnival - Around the House cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. This month, we write about what we do to keep the little things from overwhelming us. Please check out the links to posts by our other participants at the end of this post.

I grew up in a cluttered and messy house, my room was an oasis of tidiness and no clutter.  My mother hated housework and still does, only doing what is absolutely necessary.  I have definitely inherited the hatred of housework but as my house is infinitely less cluttered it is rarely as messy.  I would not say I am, by any stretch of the imagination one of those people who cleans, dusts or hoovers on a regular basis.  I am much more of an adhoc do it when it needs it type of cleaner.  You are much more likely to find me with a book, a board game piece or knitting  in hand than a duster.  Personally I would rather spend time doing other things and that does not mean that my house is thick with dust or my carpets covered in bits, well some floors are covered in Lego but I would not try and hoover that up!

I clean when I need to.  In the case of the kitchen this is daily, personally I would rather prepare food on clean surfaces using clean utensils.  In the case of the bathroom this is about once a week depending on how much use it has had.  In the case of the other rooms in the house it is definitely less often.  But I tidy up almost daily.  I clear the floors and most surfaces.  We don't have a lot of possessions so there is never that much to put away.  Friends often comment on how tidy my house is, in an enviable way, they bemoan the 'bits' that get everywhere those very small things that children are wont to collect and attract.  They are not everywhere because we don't have any.  I may be mean but I will not let them come into my house and if they do they make their way back out again quickly.  I know that it is those little bits that can create a mess and make it much harder to tidy up, as if it is not difficult enough being a parent without making life harder for yourself, they are staying away until the day when my children keep their own things tidy.

So we have simple toys, Lego excepting, that are easy to tidy away.  Lego is kept to one room in the house in an attempt, that seems to be largely working, to keep it fairly contained.  We have a small house which means we simply cannot store many possessions as we do not have the room, less space also means that there is less areas to keep clean.   Decluttering takes place on a regular basis, it has to particularly after birthdays and Christmas and in the case of the children's clothes, after changes in the seasons.  By owning less it is easy to keep our house tidy and then when I do feel the need to clean, I can do so with minimum effort.

Thank you for visiting the Simply Living Blog Carnival cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. Read about how others are incorporating simple ideas around their homes. We hope you will join us next month!

• Embracing the Schedule - Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy writes about how her family learned to keep on top of household life by creating a family calendar.
• Simply: Car Free - On the one-year anniversary of selling her car, Lyndsay from ourfeministplayschool, reflects on her family's decision to go car-free in urban downtown Toronto.
• The Importance of Finding Your Housecleaning Rhythm - Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama outlines how she keeps her housecleaning under control with a daily rhythm. Even her 4 year old gets in on it!
• Keeping It Simple At Home - At Living Peacefully with Children, Mandy shares some tips for keeping the clutter and cleaning at bay.
• Cleaning? - In her post, sustainablemum outlines how keeping clutter to a minimum makes for an easy life when trying to keep her house clean and tidy.
• Simply Downstairs - Jorje of Momma Jorje has found a way to simplify laundry AND bedtime... all with one simple move.
• In Shares, not Chores: Helping your Kids Help You Without Coercion Laura from Authentic Parenting tells us how she gets work done with two little kids and without coercion.

 

Moments..

...this week of...

...happiness the blooming seedlings in my garden everything is growing, spending an afternoon with friends celebrating a birthday.

...sadness at some tragic news in our village this week.

...creating a scarf and hat for myself, a flower wreathe with my youngest.

...reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

..learning more about wildlife and dinosaurs.

...thinking about my brother in law and trying to understand why he is behaving as he is, not ringing or visiting his father who is very ill, it is upsetting his mother and my husband, his brother.

...wondering if I have planned too many camping trips this summer, they is so much preparation but I love them when I get there!

...hoping that I can fit in another foraging walk soon.

...looking forward to celebrating midsummer and the solstice camping with friends.

Gratitudes

Joining in with Taryn for her heartfelt Sunday tradition.

A time to slow down, to reflect, to grateful.

This week I have been grateful for...

...a quieter week.

...a day out on the train to visit a castle, with friends.

...an afternoon with friends spent chatting and catching up.

...time for sewing and knitting.

...lovely messages from friends and family for the handmade gifts that I sent them.

...time to potter in the garden, weeding, sowing seedlings, potting on a few minutes here and there.

...finding a simple project to introduce my youngest to sewing as she really wants to have a go, she really enjoyed the act of creating, we will share what we have made next week!

...tomato plants from a friend, I don't usually grow them as the tomatoes don't ripen before the cool, shorter days arrive, but as the plants were strong, healthy and free I have planted them in the polytunnel.

...a lovely summery afternoon spent outside celebrating the birthday of a friend of my eldest.

Measuring

I had a really interesting conversation with a friend this week about education.  She was lamenting the changes to the eduction system that the current government is planning to implement over the next few years.  I pay little attention to what is going on in our education system these days as my children are not at school.  One of the reasons that I chose to home educate is because I could not reconcile myself with any part of the national curriculum.

I was fortunate enough to attend school before the national curriculum had been introduced it was, I think, bought into primary schools as I was in my last few years of secondary school.  My only experience of this framework for learning, prior to having my own children, was through my mother who taught in schools for twenty five years, from the late 70s onwards.  She did not really have a good word to say about it and when I considered being a teacher when I was about to leave school she, thankfully, put me off!

When my eldest child was born I wanted to get to know more people in the village we had not long moved to, a job came up in the village school which I applied for and got.  I was a clerk to the governing body of the school, a job which took up a few hours of my time each week and I could mostly do when I wanted to.  Whilst it did serve the purpose of getting to know more people in the village it also served to open my eyes to the national curriculum and many other facets of measuring that took place in that, and I am sure many other schools across the country.  I would sit in meetings listening to how test results could be improved with what I felt to be little regard for the children.  Over time it dawned on me that I would be giving my child over to this system and I really was not comfortable with that at all.  The measuring and testing of children, it seemed to me, had become so important it had become the benchmark of teaching.  If a child did not reach a certain standard in a certain week they would be deemed to have not succeeded, where in all of this was the children centred learning that I kept being told was at the heart of our education system.  It had gone, replaced with a system for learning that I could not reconcile placing my child within.

It is important to me that my children can learn at the pace that is appropriate for them as individuals.  I do not teach them anything, I facilitate.  I provide an environment for them to learn.  I did not teach my children to walk or talk, they learnt that themselves, the learning that takes place in my home is a natural extension of that.  I don't measure them or test them.  I have no idea what they would have been taught, at their respective ages, if they were at school.  So I was further intrigued by a comment that was made later in the same conversation about education.  We were talking about a child of a mutual friend, one who is two years old and has been taught the letters of the alphabet by his father, she labelled him bright.  Really?  What happened to playing.  Are parents really feeling under so much pressure to ensure that their children achieve at school and tick the boxes in the right week that they have to teach their children the alphabet at two.  I am not sure what made me feel sadder that act in its self or labelling the child, bright.

Seedlings

This week has been all about seedlings in my garden.  I have been hardening off, gardening speak for getting my plants used to cooler temperatures outside as they have been started in the polytunnel, many of my seedling this week and planting them out.  There is very little space left now I have even planted some inside my pea wigwams!

So far, purple sprouting broccoli, white cabbage, kale, chard, spinach and lettuce seedlings have been planted out and I have sown some romanesco cauliflower seeds that I was given.  I have also bought some plants and seeds to restock my depleted herb garden which died of the cold and old age over the last winter.  I have planted rosemary, sage and cotton lavender also known as santolina plants and sown salad burnet, hyssop, borage and caraway seeds.  I would like a few more plants but could not get them from the garden centre I visited today so will keep hunting.

Over the course of the next week I am going to plant out courgette and cucumber seedlings, sow the last of my seed potatoes, plant out leek seedlings and onion sets and sow some more radishes, carrots, turnips and beetroot.

I am not sharing any pictures this week as I shared several last week and my garden has changed very little in the past week!

Knitting

My needles have been busy over the past few weeks, I have many small projects on the go.  I have finished the baby cardigans and sent them off, my twin nephews arrived last week both weighing around 7lbs!  I have also finished this hat but cannot find it to take pictures to share.  I cast on an Old Shale Scarf a couple of weeks ago as I thought it would make a good project to take camping which I have been doing a lot of recently.  I have soon got used to the pattern and can now pick it up and work out which row is next which is rather pleasing.  I hope that the scarf will be long enough by the time I get to the end of the skein, there is not much left and the scarf is a bit on the short side.  I love this pattern and it is a quick knit, I can see myself making some more of these for presents.

Despite being away a lot recently I have not done much reading at all.  The latest edition of Juno magazine landed on my doorstep last week and that has been the extent of my reading lately, with it being so light, so late we have been spending much more time outdoors in the garden so reading is taking a back seat.

Joining in with Tami for this weeks work in progress