A Woolly Wednesday

Well, this is Christmas knitting, but not gift knitting, so I can share with you and Ginny this week!

Last week I got an email from Sausages' playschool telling parents that all of the children were going to be sheep in the joint nativity with the school infant children. While searching for a nice little hat pattern this fell into my lap(top). Soooo...I got a bit carried away, ordered some delicious yarn and broomhandle needles, and they arrived on Saturday morning. Over the weekend, thanks to some enforced "feet up" courtesy of my lovely Outlaws and a girls' night at a friend's, I knitted up the hat (Saturday) and the tunic (Sunday). On Tuesday while Sausages was at playschool I sat outside in the car and did the making-up. Then, on Tuesday night, I had some sort of plot-losing experience when I decided that the costume was SO AWESOME that a stuffed-sock tail would be totally inadequate, and I had to knit one. It took several attempts while I messed around with diameter, stitch pattern and gauge, and thanks to pregnancy insomnia I finished it and sewed it on to the tunic before breakfast. Crazy!

He looks pretty good though! This is it: the pinnacle of my mothering career. Never again will I manage to appear so competent. This year I have produced the best sheep costume in school, thanks to the generous genius of Margot Stevens, who sadly seems no longer to run a blog. Unless Sausages has to be an alpaca next year, it is unlikely to be matched again, since I am no seamstress, but I have enjoyed my day of school-gate glory. It's over now, thank goodness!

Reading-wise I am still plodding through Daiper Free in a slow way, although my free time has been little of late. I agreed with a lot of the first half of this book, but as I progress the later chapters are troubling me a little. I was expecting a more child-led approach, I think, whereas a lot of the accounts from parents practicing "natural infant hygiene" seem to be increasingly about a parent taking the lead by "cuing" the infant to relieve themselves. This makes me worry that if I were to follow this path my child would be responding more to the cues than to their own body sensations, which strikes me as a little unhealthy. As does the preoccupation in the book with regular morning defecation as a healthy objective...I feel like I have wandered into some surreal world with this! It started so well! I might have to indulge in some trashy fiction after this to clear the brain.

Christmas present knitting continues, as do the crafts, although I'm definitely slowing down now towards Madge's birth. Thanks so much to all my cheerleaders, I am now almost two weeks further into this pregnancy than I managed with Sausages, and feel like a term baby (and all the wonderful things that go with it) is within my reach. Sitting in my cosy, Christmassy house knitting and crafting with my lovely son in our last few weeks alone together sounds like a really good way to spend some time. I hope you're enjoying the last two weeks of advent, and are ready to embrace whatever seasonal celebrations you are looking forward to.

E

P.S. Later this week...me and my starter x