Just click your heels together three times...

When we saw it on Craigslist we fell in love.

When we walked through its rooms we felt at home.

When we learned we were going to get to live there we danced for joy.
 

 

 Its a little yellow farmhouse out on a country road. It sits on enough land for our vegetable patch and some chickens. Perhaps a porker if our landlord is willing. 
In one week time its our home God willing.
 

Jo xx

Yarn Along and nesting

 

Between rental hunting, homeschooling resettling and just the crazy hurley-burly of building a household routine from scratch all my creativity is being crammed into tiny little bursts of crochet. And all these tiny little bursts of crochet are making tiny little items of homeliness to dot around the 'not quite home' like space we are living in at the moment. So already down are coffee mattes (made out of the leftover Rowan yarn from Delphine), a short runner and a little doily which looks lovely under a gorgeous blue vintage hobnail jug I found at an antiques market in the gorgeous little town of Healdsburg where Matt works.

 

At the moment I am creating a crochet box cover to fit a tissue box.  Instead of there being a hole for the tissue to pop out of I'm covering the box bottom and sides so the top can be cut off and the box makes a handy  *pretty*  holder for tape/calculators/glue sticks/erasers etc that tend to wander homeless around our schooling space. Next in line for a cover is a small coffee can for a pen holder also for the girl's homeschool desk.


I'm almost there with Delphine. She is at the point of blocking but I haven't had an iron or a suitable place to block since before we left the UK. So she sits in a corner of the cupboard languishing for want of blocking. I've also started Paloma in a slow/haven't got the focus/haven't got the time/ haven't got the mental energy for a lace pattern sort of way. So she mostly sits in my knitting bag languishing for want of focus perhaps another yarn along she will make an appearance in all her gorgeous teal coloured yumminess.

Also... did you see those little people by the hobnail jug... Really. So delicious. They are my little souvenir from Paris. There were whole cityscapes for sale (v. v. expensively) but these little folks with their sweet little dog looked very Parisian to me. Maybe sat by the Seine admiring the view of the Eiffel Tower.

X Jo

Two weeks

 

There has been a dream like quality to the time since we landed in San Fransisco and traveled to our new temporary home in Northern California; so two weeks has felt like four months.

 

I read once (I can't remember which book but it was a psychology for laymen book) that when you are actively doing something different to your normal routine your brain registers time as moving more slowly because it is laying in more experiential memories than if you were experiencing the same-old-same-old thing. Thus time goes faster as we get older and become less curious and less adventurous...  So i suspect this year will feel like one looooong golden dream for me before January 2014 arrives. I have no objections to actively trying to make it so.

 

We have been very blessed in this 5000 mile journey. Besides Matt getting a job so quickly, the greencard taking 6 months less than expected and our house selling for the right price almost immediately: we have been given through pure generosity and love a place to stay for as long as we need it.  I cannot express how much this has meant to Matt and I but in reality it has been possibly the greatest blessing of all our maneuvering between countries.

 

So I am making a little temporary niche in the home of one of my mothers best friends. It has been a great joy to get to know her husband who is the most amazing glove to her hand and to simply feel the gift of friendship.

 

I will eventually try to get some sort of routine back in order but for the time being the girls and I are doing small amounts of homeschooling with a few books off amazon, multiple trips to our local library and exploring within our reach. Matt works (as always) with a lot of cheerful enthusiasm finding his feet in his new job about an hour away from 'home'. And so starts our long golden dream.

 

x Jo

 

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.

– D. H. Lawrence

 

Occasionally things occur which remind me of how much life has changed me; how living in a different country and surrendering my sense of belonging to the ether has altered my vision of the world.  The feeling of being altered is generally strongest among my own compatriots and cultural background where I can observe variations with the greatest degree of contrast.

 

 

 It has lead me to believe (please feel free to argue with me if you disagree) that travel* is one of the most startling catalyst for transformation in the human mind outside of the conscientious pursuit of faith.

 

 

*By travel I don’t mean trekking round the world in a gap year or going for a week in an all-inclusive holiday resort in Sharm el-Sheikh. I am referring to going somewhere new with your eyes wide and ego dampened. Of course you may do just that trekking around the world in a gap year or in an all-inclusive holiday resort in Sharm el-Sheikh. But you can also experience it in your own town or the one down the road. Fundamentally becoming well-travelled is far more about cultivating a sense of curiosity without the self-rightness we construct like defences against change to our well laid patterns of thinking.

 

 

Travel is a mysterious thing: it can encourage humility and insight or it can reinforce prejudice and nurture pride. There are some much “adventured” people I know who remain un-humbled by what they have seen and done but instead believe that they have seen everything in the world and can make absolutist statements on any topic of conversation.

 

Proust said:  The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes; in seeing the universe through the eyes of another, one hundred others - in seeing the hundred universes that each of them sees.

 

The world would be a much better place if people allowed themselves to be awake to the differences in the minutiae of other people’s human experience.

 

Its nearly time that I return to my native soil so for the next few weeks while I "travel" I will be away from posting here and keeping my eyes wide to the wonders of the earth around me.

 

x Jo

A peaceful new year to you

 

Quiet peaceful times spent together with my children are among my greatest joys.

In a suddenly and suprisingly quiet house we spent the dawning of a new year feeding our beings with comfort, creativity and faith together.



Morning- headed home from the airport

Noon- warming our tired bodies and minds

Night- exercising creativity
 



Knitting for fidgets

Researchers recon that people who are fidgety tend to be slimmer than people who aren't.  I am the proof that that doesn't work for everyone.
 

I didn't used to be "delightfully Rubenesque" as one acquaintance described me (thanks Nat, that gave me nooooo end of confidence!). M. is convinced that I could model for Lely's Venus which sits in his favorite room (wonder why) in the British Museum ; not having recently seen myself crouching at my bath I can neither deny or approve of his assessment.

 

I also didn't used to be fidgety. I don't find it difficult to sit peacefully or to relax but I do have difficulty having empty hands. I sometimes fill the gap between my fingers with sketching, especially when I'm supposed to be looking attentive in meetings. **blush**

 

  Knitting however is perfect. I can do it while sitting as a passenger or watching a DVD; I do it in the cinema and sometimes (awkwardly) in the bath. I will pick it up while waiting for the kettle to boil or talking on the phone. I got an indignant huff from K. as I knitted during a card game (she won btw).  M. never gets impatient when I say "Hang on- just finishing this row", never ever suggests that I could be more gainfully employing my time and is happy for me to lounge across him with my knitting in hand in the evening while he reads aloud to me. I think its because it's almost always a jumper for him on my needles.

Earlier this week I finished another jumper for M.  This one is in Rowan's gorgeously soft and luxurious (machine washable) Cashsoft in Thunder. The pattern is from the book Warm Knits, Cool Gifts which is full of stylish practical knits and the authors include loads of information about adjusting patterns to fit your needs. So for Matt's Polo I shortened the sleeves (he doesn't like rolled up sleeves) and broadened the chest to suit him.

It was nearly 8 inches longer & wider because M. decided (while it was still damp and blocking) to try it on. I went... mental.  The poor man apologised in a tiny terrified voice. It felt like that moment where Galadriel is tempted by the ring.  Combine that with my "Rubenesque" (thanks Nat) figure and it makes me feel...

Not Good.

Jo x
 

 

Todays the day

Sanity escapes me as our belongings are
 rifled and settled into paper, boxes and bubble wrap.