The first few months of Willow's life have been a huge contrast with River's early weeks. No pain, no despair, no isolation, no borderline PND. It's been wonderful, in fact.

The only downside is all the enforced sitting we have to do. I can't feed her in the sling -- she just seems to hate it. Instead, we're spending many hours sat on the sofa. It's been getting me down, because I do like to be busy and productive as much as possible. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I realised I could get things done while breastfeeding. So I've started learning Italian on Duolingo and I also dug out my knitting needles.

Here we have Willow modelling the delightful Pebble:



( Read more... )
And a bonus picture of BatWillow with her grandad, pondering all the crime she's going to fight.

Matt's sister is due to give birth any day (actually, she was due to give birth nearly two weeks ago, but apparently late delivery is very common in first pregnancies) so I feel I can finally reveal the answer to my other mysterious UFO conundrum. It was not a legless elephant, Loz, or a cozy for an iron, Inkwolf. It was in fact one of these little beauties:



( More shoes under the cut. )

New words: 987
Total words: 5,211
Outside: Sunny day! A tour of my chicken-keeping friend's new vegetable patch, followed by a tour of mum's garden, and badminton on the grass by the sea with Matt.
Inside: Courgette, lentil and cumin soup, with home-made bread and smoked cheese.
Reading: The Grey King by Susan Cooper
Piano: More Bach (it's an addiction), and accompanying lots of songs at a small concert in the afternoon.

What are these going to be?





I'll post pictures of the finished things later...

This one was a gift for Matt.



( Two more pictures under the cut. )

This time it's knitting!



( Two more pictures under the cut. )

( I knitted stuff! Images under the cut. )

I made other things too, but I'll save them for another post. Being off-internet turned out to be very productive, even though I did no writing at all (sorry, Loz).

What else can I tell you? I suppose the first thing you'll want to know about is the state of Matt's tadpoles. They're fine, on the whole. We had a bit of a drama yesterday when he discovered that they'd started killing each other, which we thought might be due to over-crowding. So we neatly solved the problem by sending most of them into exile to my mother's big pond (travelling via a watering-can). The ones that are left are still killing each other, though. They've obviously spent too much time in the company of humans and not enough time developing a spiritual bond with the natural world.

Our six year anniversary will be
On Sunday, and I've made a gift for Matt:
A lovely stripy scarf to keep him warm!
It's loosely based on one I found just here,
But with a few small changes of my own --
The colours, fringe and gauge are not the same
And all the increase stitches turned out wrong.
He doesn't seem to mind at all. In fact
He rather likes it -- luckily for me!
( I've put two pictures underneath this cut )

[/pentameter]

I'm reading "The Ode Less Travelled" by Stephen Fry, and thought I ought to have a go at iambic pentameter since he's spent two chapters insisting that I try it. ( Read more... )

I've read a lot about the fragility of my iPod nano. Poor little thing -- one scratch and it's dead. So my end-of-holidays project was to knit a protective cover for it, complete with extra plastic screen to keep scratches off the actual iPod screen. Pictures under the cut. ( Read more... )

At last I'll be able to take it out for walks without worrying about its health.

...and on we go to the next project...