Cold

It feels like Saturday but the clock tells me it’s Sunday now so it is already J’s birthday. How 15 years have flown with the one who was a boy of few words and is now nearly a man and still of few words. It was cold like it is now when he was born too and I carried him in a rebozo under a huge overcoat of my grandad’s to keep his skinny limbs from freezing.

Later on he will have his favourite dinner followed by a mayonnaise chocolate cake with whipped cream on the side. The girls will make a huge fuss and he will be underwhelmed but happy.

The freezing temperatures have enabled the girls to try out something I saw on Pinterest somewhere:

They only needed all this stuff to make the ice bowls

They set it all up at about 5pm on Friday and by 11pm that night the water was already well frozen and Mr G got in the car to see how cold it was… -7! Living in a river valley keeps us a bit warmer but not that much.

This morning they pushed the ice out of the containers and watched them all day as they melted a little bit but not completely then became filled with snow. Miss Froo couldn’t find her mittens so I made another pair – my only FO this week. If you missed my how to sew mittens tutorial my biggest tips are to use a zipper foot and sew the seams then cut the fleece afterwards. The thumb and other curves are tricky to sew without going off the edge and pinning the two layers together makes this easier to handle. Get your zipper foot out and start sewing!

The snow was dry and easy to play with until it got dark but now it is melting and everything is dripping. We’ll wait and see if it freezes tomorrow but in case it does I’ve moved the car up the road onto a flat road so that we can get out if we need to. Last year when the weather was bad I ended up leaving the car here at the bottom of the hill for nearly two weeks as I didn’t want to risk driving up one icy hill and down another to the main road which was well salted and clear.

Keep warm and sleep tight.

By Jupiter!

I saw Jupiter through a telescope today with its cloud and four moons and everything then saw a shiny thing in the sky with my naked eye and asked the nice young man where Jupiter was in relation to that star…….doh. That is what happens when you get to places a bit late and miss the briefing!

I’ve boggled my brain thinking about billions of light years and dark energy expanding the universe and just wish I had more headspace and time to understand the information about life, the universe and everything explained in equations on posters in the lift of the physics building. The view of Oxford from the top of the building where the telescope is was breathtaking on such a clear and freezing night which was an unexpected treat.

In more domestic issues today there has been some tv-inspired sewing, some Winter Sling Thing sewing, some mini envelope making and a lot of cutting up paper.

There was a short little film on CBBC about a girl who wants to sew clothes but as she doesn’t have any fabric she draws patterns for outfits then colours them and decorates them and sticks them on her dollies. She wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up and have famous people wear her designs.

My first thought was: why has no-one told this girl about re-fashioning? She could make real clothes for her dollies and herself if she cut up things that didn’t fit her any more. Then I thought that I hoped she did follow her dream and not have someone stamp all over it and tell her she needs A Levels and a degree to get anywhere in life.

Then Miss Froo started drawing on a piece of paper and asked me to cut some fleece (we have a lot of it lying about) because this was the pattern for a dolly waistcoat.

Here it is

cutting two front pieces; the back will be cut on the fold

fronts pinned to back and mummy’s improvised shoulder seams pinned

Modelled by baby born who wees if you manage to get water in her mouth then hold her just right.

All done in about 5 minutes because I had the sewing machine out and threaded doing my own sewing. If only I could replicate my influence and that of the media in a different context by standing in the kitchen with the children listening to a programme on the radio about keeping the kitchen floor clear of trip hazards.

Knitting and listening; painting and eating.

My girls love painting and Amelia is experimenting with techniques like blowing paint with straws

They create amid this mess

We have just finished dinner and the plates are cleared but for some reason the pot always stays on the table.

One of the things I love about home education is that there is no fixed time of day for doing anything. If they want to paint at 8pm that is ok. When Amelia first left school she painted or drew something before she had even had breakfast. She doesn’t still do it quite so predictably but the urge to paint or draw has not left her.

I knitted two matching booties! The first one was finished whilst listening to Holby City on BBCiPlayer at midnight and I even unravelled the whole ball of wool managed to find the place in the ball of wool where the colours came out in the same sequence as they did in the first bootie. The second one was finished while listening to Dani’s House and The Worst Witch on the sofa with the girls on Wednesday afternoon.

Tiny things for tiny people set my dh off on how another baby would be lovely so I got them out of the house quickly. They have been safely delivered now and I haven’t had the camera at home for days so no pictures.