I hereby present the sum total of my creative efforts this week…

…the toe of one sock…

(But at least I got that far without running out of yarn!).

To be fair, these are great socks. The yarn is perfect,it’s Kells Sport Merino courtesy of the Three Irish Girls and is unforgettably named ‘If it Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It‘. It’s 100% merino and knits up beautifully densely. These will be very cosy I’m sure. my son will be test driving them this week. I’ll let you know!

This week was a tough one. LOTS to do at work – still working more than I should to sort out the mess I inherited – and coming home and being Mrs Super Housewife….and not sleeping enough. Of course the inevitable happened…and yesterday I spent most of the day wiped out with a migraine. (Which is why there was no blogging – sorry about that!)

Somehow I need to learn to pace myself better. I guess it will come when I get used to being at work again and when I’m over that initial tiredness that always comes with a new job. I can see that I need to learn to slow down and take down time as down time and not try to do a week’s worth of everything in a day. I’m just going to have to accept that some things won’t get done. That will be a hard one. I’ll have to try to switch off the control freak part of me.

What I would like to do, although I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to pull it off, is to make Fridays my day….days where I don’t just do housework and shopping, days when I can sew or do sport or relax and read a book with no guilt whatsoever. Whether that’s something I can actually do, I don’t know, but I’d like to give it a try.

A question to finish for those of you who do juggle work and family successfully…..what advice would you give someone in my situation?

Have a great weekend,

Helen

I’ve juggled my schedule a little this week, so ended up having today off…that’s my 4th day at home in a row. I’ve been sock knitting, watching the Swiss do a little better than of late in the Ski World Cup and dealing with mountains of laundry and mending. The girls are home for ski week and so I even cooked a nice lunch for one daughter plus boyfriend…..and the whole time I had an overwhelming feeling of having free time. I caught myself several times thinking, ‘wow, this is how it used to be…I had all this time and I never quite appreciated it’. Isn’t it funny how quickly life and perceptions can change.

Anyway, it’s been a lovely catching up, pottering sort of day. I’ve even cleaned out the (disgusting) fridge – which gave me a deep feeling of satisfaction. Which is a bit sad really, but hey, it did make me happy!

On the sock front I’m coming to the end of the plain vanilla socks I’m knitting for my son – using Three Irish Girls Kells Sport Merino in the delightfully named ‘If it Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It’ colourway. This is great sock wool – it knits up really densely and it’s going to be perfect for the son and heir.

Which brings me to the one niggle of the day. You see that tiny little ball of wool that has just sneaked into the corner of the photo…it’s not very big is it? I’m back to my perennial ‘have I got enough wool to finish this sock’ neurosis. It’s going to be tight…but fingers crossed….on the other hand, I think I’m going to be a big girl and just weigh the darned thing…then I’ll know, won’t I?

…..

…..

I’m back…and as long as my needles don’t weigh more than 9g I’m good…..I think I’m good…the needles don’t register on my not very accurate scales, but they are only made of something that looks like bamboo and they’re very light..light as a feather.

This sock will have a toe.

I hope.

😉

Helen

Today is one of those fabulous bright, clear, cold, snowy winter days that we experience far too seldom in the Zürcher Oberland, where it’s habitually grey and foggy in the winter. Despite the cold it was too good an opportunity to miss. So camera in hand, husband and I headed out into the farmland that surrounds our village.

It was definitely a good afternoon to be out and there were walkers, snow showers and cross country skiers in abundance. I did toy with getting the cross country skis out too, but the loipe near our house is really not for beginners like me and I thought I might leave the falling over all the time humiliation for tomorrow, when there will be way fewer people out there.

Despite being way below zero, it actually felt fairly warm in the sunshine. The snow was so cold and crisp that it squeaked with every step.

As the Swiss-Germans would say, it was herrlich!

We started out heading up the road towards the Pfannenstiel woods…

….but before the woods we turned off across the fields towards one of the local farms…

The views across to the Alps and Austria were magnificent…

Here you can see my village and some of the apple trees that lie all around it.

It’s all quiet at the farm today.

We stopped by the farm shop to pick up some lamb’s lettuce for dinner. The shop is open and unmanned every day – all done on trust. I guess there aren’t many places where you could do that anymore.

Leaving the farm behind we walked downhill a little and then on the path through the fields…

The track was trodden but single file was the only way to go.

Just look at that blue sky. Some serious Vitamin D tanking up was going on today.

And then it was through the snowy woods and home as the mid-afternoon shadows lengthened.

Now it’s time for a nice cup of tea and some laundry….back down to earth with a bump!

Helen

I had a bit of a nose to the grindstone day yesterday. I was so determined to get the Siblings Together quilt finished that after a frankly quite horrible run in a blizzard and thick snow yesterday morning I put the radio on and basted and quilted like a mad woman. I finally got the binding sewn on in front of the television last night. Phew.

So here it is….and I hope that sometime in the summer it will make a little girl in care happy.

Here’s the front….A Spring Fever jelly roll for the blocks (started in John’s class at FQR last year) sashed with bright pink Gypsy Bandana.

and the back…pieced together from the Red Rose Farm spots, plus the border from the Gypsy Bandana fabric that I used for the sashing and a long strip of green Gypsy Bandana to make it wide enough. The green was then used for the binding too.  I’m really, really happy with how the back turned out.

I quilted this little lovely doing loop the loops with bright pink machine embroidery thread – and it nearly drove me bonkers. The first half went really well, but then the thread started fraying and breaking about every 30cm, which meant that each time I had to sort out the mess and rethread. I have no idea why that happened and changing the needle, faffing around with the tension and cleaning the machine didn’t seem to improve things…but I got done in the end, although it probably took a hour longer than it should have!

I only used fabrics from my stash….most of which had been there a good long while, so I’m claiming 8m fabric use in my stash-busting efforts.

So…. what’s next??

Happy weekend!

Helen

Finally a quilting day 😉

Helen