The Evolving Homemaker

So I decided to sleep in this morning since the kiddos went to bed so late and were sleeping in.  Instead of getting up and blogging and starting our day, I hid in my room, took the time to meditate, read the second mindfulness training from Plum Village Monastery, and began perusing a book called If It’s Not Food Don’t Eat It. It was next to my nightstand and all my other books I am currently reading were in the living room.  Not worth the risk of waking the kiddies up to go get them.

Ahhhh…….

And then the kids got up. And our day has begun.  They are eating breakfast, yummy coffee cake from yesterday, and some yogurt, while I get this post up and think of breaking out the Omega Juicer for breakfast.

The knitting has hit a SNAG this week.  A big snag.  I finished the body of the glove then cast off, easy as pie.  Then I watched a You Tube video to try to figure out how to pick up the stitches for the thumb.  I knitted a thumb.  Then realized that there were a couple of large spaces in the knitting of the thumb AND it was inside out.  The knit was on the inside of the thumb hole and the backside was on the outside.

So I ripped it out and have yet to find the time to find another video.  We had a blasted busy Saturday and Sunday I played catchup with making a list of things that need to get done in the garden and in my life.  The list is long.  I am not feeling any pressure to get to it, actually feeling like I have knowledge of what it is, instead of the rambling thoughts in my brain that get lost.

So you can see my needle holding the four stitches that I had to ‘hold’ for later.  I will figure this out.  I will.  I want theses gloves.

I am still reading the Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, and will be for the next five weeks as long as the class goes.  And went back to I Need Your Love-Is That True.  Funny, the day I finished Stillness Speaks and went back to this one, a friend posted she was reading Loving What Is by Byron Katie.  She was loving it, so it will probably be next on my list since I am enjoying the philosophy of I Need Your Love so much.

That is it for my reading and knitting update for this week.  Not much to share since I have found myself stuck at the moment.  Hope you all are having better luck this week!

Joining, albeit late, with the weekly Yarn Along!

Joining Ginny after a month and a half away for this weeks Yarn Along over at Small Things.

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Finished my niece’s shawl yesterday.  I had finished the body like a month ago, but had yet to get around to the fringe.  Now if I can only get to the post office.  My least favorite errand on the planet.

I started a scarf for a little boy on Monday and finished it last night.  I also started one for his little brother last night too.  Hopefully I can finish it today cause there is a little boy in my house who is hoping for a knitted BLANKET for Christmas.  Gulp.  I originally wanted the brown and blue for the little brother, but it was too wide once I tried it on my little tykes.  It was perfect for my 7 year old, not so much my 5 year old.  Knit and learn.  Knit and learn.

I am reading at the moment Surrendering To Marriage, author of Surrendering To Motherhood, and Surrendering To Yourself which I will read both next, and have started Born To Run.  Born To Run because I need a lot of inspiration at the moment, and Surrendering To Marriage, because well you can never have too much inspiration to keep your ‘civilization’, as she calls the family unit, going strong.  My husband and I have been both VERY busy the last couple of months, I am personally choosing to slow down cause I was about to implode, but he doesn’t have that choice.  I am almost done, but this was a nice read to remember that the long haul isn’t perfect for any marriage, but it is worth it in so many ways.

Obviously not if there is violence or abuse in a relationship, there is no suggestion in this book to stay in such.  But how to keep the marriage strong in a time of such distractions that we have today?  Young children?  Building careers? Frustrations? Extended family?  Friends? Activities? There is so much pressure on families today to do it all, but at what cost?  How much pressure are we putting on our most precious of relationships?

“Loving someone at the moment they are asking for it because they need it even though you don’t want to give it is the ultimate surrender in marriage.” Ahh, how hard is that when kids have been clamoring for you all day, you feel busy and overwhelmed, and you just want to rest and replenish yourself?  And what about him?  Who spent all day at a stressful job and an hour and a half in a commute?  Doesn’t he want to replenish too and not have to give to me?

Surrender.

“It doesn’t get much better than this.  The older I get the more sure I become that the peaks and passing fancies are not what ultimately make for happiness.  I can’t say that the grind of the ordinary makes me happy, either, day in and day out.  But living our a conventional marriage with children and a husband has forced me to know that happiness is only ours in fragments, in delicious bites that we need to thoroughly savor, because, hey, the next day could be a whole different story.  Can any human ever really be happy?  The answer is yes.  The answer is no.  The answer is sometimes.”

Is it only sometimes?  I don’t know.  So many spiritual teachers would tell us no, that it is up to us, but it can be so much more of the time than it is for many of us on a daily basis, and some would argue most of the time.  I feel like it is sometimes now, but I am hardly enlightened and I suffer great mood swings while I am PMSing.  For now it is sometimes, and I will take it.  And relish it, because there is really no place else or no other thing I would rather be doing than what I am doing right at this moment of my life.

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Another Wednesday is here, I finished a book FINALLY and am working on two others.  Joining Ginny in our weekly Yarn Along.  If you are looking for my Savor book review, the book I have been reading for the past month, you can find it here.

Ahh…life slows down, a WEE bit, not enough to write home about really and sickness hits.  That is the way it happens isn’t it?  Your body says, “Oh, you have been very stressed lately, and now you are trying to settle down and ease into a routine, so why don’t I just nail you with a sore throat and boogers out the ying yang to help get you started.”  The boogers aren’t coming out the front exit yet either, they are slithering out the back exit and giving me the heebie jeebies.

So this post is late, I slept in.  I had the weirdest stinkin’ dreams last night which made for not a good sleep at all.  Here is my yarning and books this week:

I don’t think I got that much farther on my knitting, but honestly I can’t remember.  It is either my brain or my week that has made recall at the moment hard.  I read The Well-Trained Mind last night before bed, and I think it was one reason I had restless sleep.  I am a bit disappointed in it for sure.  I am wishing I checked it out of the library before buying, considering the cost, I could have bought a bunch of books that were a bit more up my alley for the same price.  I am not regretting reading it, but I am wondering why the author’s sons are left out of talking about how much they LOVED this style of homeschooling and how it benefited them.  Maybe the family wrote another book highlighting such, I will look into it.

In all honesty, I cannot imagine my son sitting down and learning in this way.  My daughter?  Maybe.  We will see.  I will read more and do a full review when I am done.  I am leaning toward at this moment, we will probably not get super excited about classical education, the method, or the practicality, and the reasoning behind it.   See, the title says, “The Well-Trained Mind”, what about the rest of the child?

That is my week of reading and knitting.  Not stupendous, but hey, it is something.

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Wow.  That week flew by.  Without any feeling as if I accomplished a quarter of the things I set out to do.  After yesterday’s post of expanse, and hope, and a cup that felt full, the day went on in a continual downward spiral.  So as I was feeling great and refreshed in the morning…by the end of the day something had to give.   That something was me.  I crawled into bed feeling completely defeated.  Incapable.  Completely unprepared.

So today?

A long day of television.  JUST so Mama can get the house cleaned and organized so we actually can start ‘official’ school on Monday.  Next year I will look at our summer plans a bit more closely to see when it is appropriate to begin school.  My idea of starting yesterday was a pipe dream.  My goodness, we had just walked in the door from three days of camping the night before LATE.  The house was already a disaster from the week before.  There was way too much on the to-do list in a short amount of time to even hope to start school in a lovely way instead of a way which would feel more like rushing through and another check in the ‘done’ column.

That isn’t how I want school to be.

Some randomness that has to happen:  1- a bow that got left at the music store a half hour away needs to be picked up before tomorrow…my son wants to try cello, so great we rented it, brought it home, opened it to try out, only to find the bow was left at the store and we had no time to get it before leaving for camping.  2- I was planning on getting a booster seat for my daughter, she needed one I was sure, my husband questioned…I got out the measuring tape to check…she is 3 INCHES above the cut-off in her old seat.  Of course our local Target is out, so there is one on hold in the half hour away town so I can get it today.  3- Dentist appointment that I somehow made during my daughters gymnastics class must be changed.  It is today. 4- The house officially looks like a tornado went through it.  And if you don’t believe me you can come see for yourself.  Last week the kids couldn’t watch any t.v. because a room they made messy they were not cleaning up.  So instead of cleaning, they made all the other rooms messy too. On a positive note, they finally cleaned that messy room last night so they could watch some t.v.

That is just the beginning of the list of things to get to today.  There is more.  I don’t want to bore you, instead I am meaning to show you my knitting from the week for the weekly Yarn Along!  The pink shawl is cast off, but I still need to add the fringe.  The blue shawl is cast on and on it’s way, getting ready to be given as a birthday gift for a little friend.  The only reason I had time to work on it was because of the expanse of car time had this past weekend. The book?  The same.  Cause who has any time to read AND blog, AND home school, AND sleep, AND clean, AND camp, AND do laundry, AND knit, AND, AND, AND….

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I am joining Small Things again, for this weeks yarn along…

Sigh.

So I am still working on the same bubblegum shawl, reading the same book, except now I have added a new book, The Well-Trained Mind, to the pile as our school year is fast approaching and I was hoping to glean a bit from this one for our upcoming learning adventures.  I found one idea in the book already a little disconcerting, “In the classical curriculum reading, writing, grammar, and math are the center of the curriculum.  History and science become more and more important as the child matures.  Foreign languages are immensely valuable, but shouldn’t crowd out these basic skill areas.  And music and art are wonderful when you can manage them.”

Why is art and music the last we care about?  I find that a bit crushing to my spirit, and the spirit of children, who love to create!  Where is the bit of education that nurtures the spirit?  The soul?  Allowing us to explore the world around us with colors, and glue, movement, sound, and a keen eye?  A friend once sent me this TedTalk, which I may have posted before,  and I have never forgotten it, especially as a homeschooling family:

The fantastic part about homeschooling?  I can pick and choose what works for me and what is completely lame.  Leaving art, music, drama, dance, and the like at the bottom of our education piles is doing a great disservice to the ones we are claiming to educate.

So that is what I am reading at the moment!  And here is the shawl, I will be casting off today and finishing it up, it is probably a bit too big for her, but I wanted her to be able to use it for awhile.  I have my next two colors lined up, the blue for a present for a little gals birthday and the purple for a little niece for Christmas.  Those should go WAY faster seeing as how I won’t have to do them in secret!

Every Wednesday I am joining Small Things in her weekly Yarn Along.

Reading and knitting a gift for my little girl is a challenge.  Mostly because I can’t knit in front of her so I have to wait until she is asleep or I am away at the coffee shop to make any progress.  This also inhibits my reading time, after all, my moment to read is usually after the kids go to bed too! Last night I wanted to knit, but both kids were sleeping in my room as my tonsillectomy needs to be under adult supervision for 14 days in case of bleeding.  I don’t want him waking up in the middle of the night alone and finding out he is bleeding to boot!

Needles to say, I read for a bit and then when they fell asleep I knitted away in secret.  My eyelids did not last long with that method, especially with the reading warm-up.  But here it is, my bubblegum shawl for my 5 year old princess for Christmas and the same book I was reading last week but really like, so I don’t mind reading it longer! Here is last weeks post so you can see there was actual progress made though!  Hopefully I will be casting off by next Wednesday and starting something new…one can be hopeful anyway!

It is Wednesday and I am joining Small Things in her weekly yarn along.  Why?  Cause I have committed myself to knitting all of my Christmas presents this year, minus a few other handmade items and some toys like the Millennium Falcon Lego set, for um…my son…not um…for me…at all.

Stop laughing.  I can hear you.

I have knitted exactly 2 things successfully in the past.  And I have knitted a few not so successful crooked scarfs.  And I have showed the terrible ones to you.  I really, really am wanting to learn how to knit hats too, a few different colored beanies for the winter.  After all, I don’t like to wear coats, so a vest with a hat should cover me!

Anyway, here is my project for this week, a shawl I started a couple months ago for my daughter, but I had just finished two back to back for gifts and then my son got his concussion and the summer got away from me.  She is still waiting for it, and I am only going to work on it at night so she doesn’t think she is getting it any time soon.  I want Christmas to be a bit more homemade than it was last year.