bits and pieces for sharing

After three very focussed days, my mind was a-wandering today.  I attempted to sit down and look “quietly” at my knitting - taking a quiet look is the means to solving any knitting dilemna according to my old Nanny - and whilst I realised where I’d gone wrong in the last row knitted (2 weeks ago), and some quiet looking showed me what I should have done, and did, I promptly hit another prickly hedge, and no amount of quiet looking delivered the path through. Bah!  I’ll have to go out tomorrow to the wool store and get some help.  I honestly think if we keep reading knitting patterns we will surely have the most flexible and active brains in old age.  Who’d have thunk there was so much jiggery-pokery required to knit a pair of bed socks.

Never mind.  Onto the sharing.

:: Julia Butterfly Hill :: - extraordinary, inspiring, beautiful and so very very wise.  After enduring my ramblings on love yesterday you must listen to this.  Wow!  I was clearly channeling this girl yesterday and she puts it so beautifully.  When you’ve finish with “Pro”, take a listen to “Disconnection” - I believe so fervently in this.  And in another moment of serendipity, Abby had to write a prayer yesterday for homework on the theme “Make Everywhere your Home” .  We sat in the back garden for glorious late afternoon hours - the sun sparkling and the sky blue, but the southerly breeze whispering through our hair and over our arms that autumn is almost upon us - chatting about the idea of everywhere being our home and putting it into a “prayerful” context - and Julia’s notion of “Disconnected Consciousness” is exactly what we had came up with!

Abby wrote, just as the New Testament demands that we love our neighbour as we love ourselves; so too should we think of how much we love and depend upon our homes, how we care for them and protect them and then look upon the environment as our “home”  When we make these connections with people and the amazing world around us, we are forced to stop and think before we act - they become real, important, essential to us in a way that they never will if we continue to stand aloof.

:: LibriVox :: omg!  OMG!  This is seriously cool.  I have spent the most delightful time listening to “The Stories Mother Nature told her Children”.  You must listent to it - it transports you back a hundred years to a time when you wore a straw boater whilst playing in the garden and Nanny scolded you if you came in with a muddy pinafore.  And a beautiful way for little ones to connect with the natural world in such a whimsical and imaginative way.  Now, the reader of the first chapter has a sweet and naive voice.  Delightful to listen to because it is a person who loves to read and wants to share and I really enjoyed her accent. After her comes a very crisp English accent.  I want to believe that both of them read The Stories Mother Nature told her Children when they were little and so loved them, they wanted to share the magic.  I could picture them both sitting up in their respective beds, answering their mama every ten minutes, “Just one more and then I’ll turn the light out, I promise!”

Not only is this a good tale, but the whole existence and operation of LibriVox rocks my boat.  The books are pretty much anything published before 1923 and thus out of copyright.  When LibriVox chooses a new text, they announce it on the forum and VOLUNTEERS - yep!  you or I! - select a chapter/chapeters to read.  You don’t have to audition, you don’t have to fill in an application, you don’t have to compete for a position - you just need a microphone and be able to read.  Then, you submit your audio file and you have contributed to the global ownership of a vast library of audiobooks.  Oh I go tingly all over just writing this!  I’m hoping to make my first recording soon and will let you know when it is ready :-)

[ nice deep hem  glues over the edge very smoothly ]

:: Hoop-i-ness :: As I unpack my sewing supplies, I have discovered SO MANY wooden embroidery hoops.  It wouldn’t be unseemly to think that everytime I visited Spotlight, I bought a few more.  So there’s been quite a lot of stitchy hoop-i-ness going on.  Doilys, appliques, embroideries and visions of many more.  Experience has taught me a few things along the way.

~ Don’t stint on the excess fabric, it sits much better when you get to the glueing part if you have a good few inches to play with. A shy, stingy edge will buckle and sit lumpenly - which is yuck. A deep edge can be smoothed out evenly and leave no wrinkles or creases.

[ stingy hem clumps and buckles = yuck ]

~ Not all pegs are created equal.  Wooden ones are generally okay but can stick to the edge and have to be yanked off.  Regular plastic pegs seem to poke into the surface fabric and create little hillocks.  Not a good look.  Make sure you adjust them before leaving your hoop to dry.  Pegs from Dunedin, New Zealand, received for Christmas from your Aunty are by far the best.  I don’t know why and I don’t where else to get them and I only have 16 so I’m not sharing :-0  But they have a nice thin, sharp and roof-shaped grippy edge and stand nice and straight when the hoop is drying and they don’t stick.  Look out for these pegs - in the photos, they are the yellow and green ones.

:: Let your child move away from your side :: Now that she is in high school, Abby has embarked upon the wonderful world of public transport.  There hasn’t been a moment more empowering or confidence building since she started walking.  My, how independent, resilient and competent she feels.  Just to watch her stride off in the morning fills me with pride.  And do you know what she did yesterday afternoon?  Julian had given Abby his old mobile phone the night before, so she called me from the shopping strip before she boarded the tram on the way home and asked if she could stop at our favourite European bakery and buy us a special afternoon tea with her pocket money.

[ coffee-creme filled doughnut for Abby, coffee and almond meringue for me, and Abby's raspberry, banana and yoghurt smoothie special ]

My heart just burst.  I know, I’m easily thrilled.  Abby’s thriving in her new role as high school girl.  I’ve stood back and let her skip along ahead and it is very very good.