All Fingers and Thumbs

I'm afraid to google the term 'rechilding' in case it goes the way it did when I searched for 'adult play' a few years back. Is sex still the most searched for thing on the internet? Hard to remember that when you tend to type in things like 'yoga for sore feet' or 'quince gin recipes'. Anyway, all of that to say that I asked November for a beautiful day, after the first of the month dawned with the lowest of skies. To my delight today could not be more different. Blue skies, bright and warm, so I asked my too often ignored inner child what it wanted to do this morning. Taking a banana smoothie to the park seemed like a very easy request to grant.

 It's a big yawn. A soft exhale. A carefree squawk of laughter. This year has been utterly different from what I hoped and planned for at the start of the year. It's brought many challenges and many unexpected gifts - more often than not out of those challenges. The end of the eternal winter and the start of the spring found me very low and I reached out for help. Antidepressants and counselling. Life rafts that have helped me float on through a year where the physical constraints of my knee injury had taken away two of my greatest balancers: regular yoga classes and long, wonder full rambles. They continue to help me now as I wait for an operation on my knee. Wait and unravel. Slowly slowly. No matter how slowly I think I am going there is a level beneath that my soul craves. Not a standstill but ponderous, languid, incremental. I write this from my room of my own. Feeling a pull back to this virtual space as I seek to kindle sparks of inspiration. The eternal building

As we descended towards the shortest day I could feel the need to turn within very strongly.  I kept coming back to the image of a mossy hollow. Tucked in the earth, at the roots of a bare tree, a space where I could curl up in to a ball and let the days pass. It sounded soft and comforting, but the slowing has been awkward, and though the body tells me what it needs, keeping the mind, and the world around me to the same pace is always the challenge. As my new knitting project grows, I see the browns and dark greens are like the manifestation of the hollow. Happily a softer, cosier representation. Knitting this wrap is a process that literally helps me create the space I craved. I have been falling home from work and into its embrace all week. The long rows create a rhythm that wasn't in my hands as they scurried at the socks. Warm and safe from epic rains and winds. The hollow is the dip my bum is making in the sofa cushions. I thought I only started on the Orcha

Today is a classic wet winter Sunday, grey grey with just the slight twist of snowflakes in amongst the rain drops. It's the kind of day that reminds me of teenage doldrums, school tomorrow and cooped up inside. Our house used to have downstairs rooms that all flowed one to another and I'd get trapped either in my bedroom, or out of it, with an armchair full of snoozing Papa between me and wherever I wanted to go. He has always had a lot of back problems and was in such constant pain that waking him from a snooze was a little like waking a bear from hibernation. I guess I have much more empathy for him as I get older and creakier! I'm not having the most fun with some of my body at the moment, I injured my knee in November and rehab is slow, and has felt a bit backwards the last couple of weeks, as I just try and take a short walk on top of the essential steps to get through a day. Still, these days grey out and being sofa bound says craft, craft, craft rather loud

Sky and mood are both a lot brighter today, though hibernation is definitely not over yet! It was lovely but very chilly in the park today. The trees were filled with long-tailed tits searching for whatever tiny bugs it is that they eat. Their tiny chirrups were the most lovely soundtrack to a beautiful walk, though how they keep their tiny selves warm is beyond me and my six hundred layers. Stitch by stitch I made a sock and got myself through a tough few weeks. Feeling low for a whole host of reasons I'm so glad that I found my way back to knitting on something absorbing. That old sanity saver has really worked its magic again. I know I've still got to make the other sock but I feel like a knitter again. The surest sign that the old addiction is back is that it's only willpower and cold toes that have kept me working on this sock. Suddenly all the dreamy patterns on Ravelry are calling me. I have a hundred different sock patterns I want to start and to t