My little angel

OK, this is gonna be a bit of a gush, a bit of a self indulgent ramble about how much I absolutely adore my little girl, my little princess! (Although if blogging itself isn't self indulgent I don't know what is!) She is just the most beautiful thing I have even encountered, ever laid eyes on, and I've seen a few beautiful things in my time, let me tell you! Really, it just blows me away how absolutely perfect and wonderful she is, in form, in spirit, in every way. She has eclipsed our lives totally and utterly! Both Mat and I are truly smitten. She has us squarely in the palm of her fat little squishy hand! Those hands!! Is there anything more adorable than the hand of your baby child, those triangular fingers so fat at the base, the softness, so plump she can't even really bend them properly, it's just too adorable for words.

At the moment she is sleeping. So contentedly. She got to sleep fairly easily tonight, it's been a big day, with two lots of lovely visitors to our house to entertain and enlighten her, and not-very-long sleeps throughout the day. She was rubbing her little eyes while I cooked, patiently sitting in her dads arms while I chopped and stirred, and continued to rub while I held her in one arm and added spices and stirred with the other. I just wanted to get our lovely beef stew on the boil so it could simmer and cook away while I lay with my beautiful baby and helped her into her night of rest and rejuvenation. So she can grow. And learn. Those are her two jobs in life really, to grow and to learn, that's all she has to do, and she is doing them very well, thank you very much! She has been doing them since she was born, she's a natural!

She really is such a spritely little thing, she has such a good sense of humour! I just love love love love love (did I mention I love?) the way she will raise her fat little hands to her mouth and giggle away whenever she sees me being silly or doing a funny dance or making a funny face - she makes me do the silliest of things! And I love being silly for her! We laugh together and really share the joy of the moment, our eyes locked and linked in shared happiness, pure exuberance! I find myself doing the craziest of dances, or repeating nonsensical phrases over and over, simply because they elicited a smile or a laugh from my beautiful queen. I used to think she was the princess and I the queen, but no, she is really the queen! She has so much power, she dictates what will happen, when it will happen, how it will happen, and never lets us forget it! And I, joyfully, am her willing subject, her court jester, who will do anything to make her beautiful heart smile, and to see that smile shine out of her gorgeous face.


This is what life is about!

The Art of the Knit

Well I seem to have stumbled upon a huge secret world... well, secret to me until I stumbled upon it, at which point I realised it is a BIG thing - yes, knitting. It's *massive*. Lots of people knit. Really ugly stuff. Some people knit cool stuff. I wanna be one of those people.

So yes, I recently taught myself how to knit, again (about the third time...) and am currently making a magic red hat for my little sweet thing Indigo to wear when it's freezing outside. This is my first ever proper knitting project. When it is finished and I can call myself an accomplished knitter, I intend to widen my creative horizons and make more interesting stuff, like toys and creatures and other cute things. There is actually a Japanese thing called Amigurumi (don'tchya love the Japanese?!) which are tiny little super cute creatures, usually crocheted but often knitted, and yes, they are tiny, and yes, they are super cute, here have a look...


Seee? I wanna make a cute little Amigurumi pear! Or three!





And a mushroom with a cutey little face...

And a little teensy weensy cyclops... every little girl needs her own teensy weensy liddle cyclops to cuddle...


So yes, I am enjoying this new phase of creativity in my life. It's nice.

I'm also quite impressed with knitting itself, knitting as an art form, knitting as a craft. I'm quite impressed that anyone ever came up with it. If everyone in history was as lazy as I am, we would all be sitting around under trees shivering, trying to wrap leaves or bark around us to keep warm. It amazes me that someone actually took some wool (OK it amazes me that the wool was ever taken OFF the sheep and then stretched and spun into yarn... I mean, it's really quite cheeky when you think of it, stealing a sheep's wool, but quite ingenious!), OK so they take the wool, the yarn, and then they take these two sticks, and figure out how to wrap and weave the yarn around these two here sticks, and keep wrapping and weaving and wrapping and weaving, until they end up with a jumper! Freaky! Coz it's really quite complicated in a super simple kind of way. What I mean is, once you know how to knit it's quite simple, but to have actually come up with the whole thing, well that just seems mightily impressive to me.

So as I knit away I feel connected to this amazing group of women who have not only developed but have passed on this wonderful technology from generation to generation, and it feels good, it feels good on a really deep level, to be doing this. What seems so wonderful to me is that it involves so many connected things - it's creativity, it's technical brilliance, but it's also about nurturing, yourself and others. When you make someone something they can wear, you're helping them be warm, you're helping them be well. Especially back in the time when you couldn't just pop down to Sportsgirl to pick up a jumper, back when if you wanted a jumper you had to bloomin' well knit yourself a jumper - the art of knitting was developed as a nurturing technology. Like cooking, another of my deepest joys. Both are fields that engage you on deeply creative levels, and which enable those around you to live richly, to be well. I don't think it's a coincidence that this new activity of mine mirrors one of my all time favourite of things to do. I think it says a lot about who I am, and what I like to do.