Transitions, Knitted Socks and Pixie Cuts

The Boy returned home to us yesterday from 4 days at his grandparents' house in the woods. He helped Grandpa fix a roof, went on a 2 hour cruise of Georgian Bay and learned that too much coffee feels really bad. 13 is an interesting age.

Today was a day of transition for him. We met with the school guidance counsellor as we do every year before school begins to go over who his teachers will be, how his schedule will look and to answer any questions he has. Mostly it will be much the same as last year as far as schedule and teachers go. The difference being this is Grade 8 and everybody is focussed on getting him ready for high school next year. Deep breath...here we go.

At home he is trying to deal with transitioning from summer to school time. It's been a difficult day with lots of acting up in the form of provoking his sister and angry outbursts directed at me. We got through it though. I've learned not to react to this behaviour and to maintain an even keel as much as possible.
The Em-ster had her hair cut at an actual hair dressers today. I've cut her hair myself since the beginning but this time she wanted a pixie cut and there was no way I was going to attempt that! It was the best $20 I spent all day. The cut looks great and she's happy. I admire her courage to let someone cut off all her hair and to look like someone completely different. She has hutzspah that's for sure!

I finished knitting the 2nd little sock to match the pair I wrote about the other day. So cute! I have to redo the Kitchner stitch I used to close the toe on the first one and then it's done. I also finished knitting another pair of animal mittens. I'm hoping to get some knitting time in this weekend to knit up some ears for the mouse mittens and find a pattern for bear ears. I'll post pics as soon as I have a pair done.

Yarnalong: Knitting baby socks & Beyond Sibling Rivalry

Joining Ginny today at Small Things blog for Yarnalong::

Knitting: teeny tiny baby socks, pattern from Zoe Mellor's 50 Baby Booties to Knit called Heel and Toe socks. The yarn is Paton's Astra I had left over from a quilt I tied.
Friends of ours had a baby 2 weeks ago and as we all know, all babies need knitted things and being a thrifty knitter I decided whatever I made had to come from the stash. I didn't think our friends would be overjoyed at being gifted a knitted baby thing they had to wash carefully so I figured I'd better go with some good acrylic yarn. I don't love acrylic yarn (at least not the stuff I've used in the past anyway) so I don't keep great quantities of it around except the odd ball to tie a quilt with so finding something suitable for a knitted baby thing was not easy. I found these 2 balls lurking at the bottom of my good yarn stash and knew they would come together nicely to make practical, easy to wash, warm baby socks. Besides, who doesn't love a pair of heel and toe socks?!

I remember when The Boy was a Small Boy we didn't have much money, it was the end of winter and he'd grown out of his winter boots but it was still too cold for rubber boots. I found a pair of hand-knitted little heel and toe socks at the farmer's market, bought them and used them inside his rubber boots until winter and the cold part of the spring was over. I love useful gifts and even if these won't be soft and squishy they'll be warm and cosy for those wee little baby feet.
Reading: Beyond Sibling Rivalry by Peter Goldenthal. Something's gotta give with all the fighting going on in this house!! I know part of this is end-of-summer boredom and anxiety about a new school year starting but I need all this arguing and one-up-manship and whatnot to stop already. I found this at our library and I'm hoping for great things. I think we need a parenting tune up and some new ideas. I've been researching ways to induce peace in this house for awhile and it is getting better (I think). I'm understanding my kids' needs better, slowly. For example my loud, sociable daughter is actually an introvert underneath and needs down time to get her energy back. She also doesn't handle any transition well. Period. So whenever we can we leave her behind for unnecessary car trips and it gives her and her Oma time together.
What about you? What are you knitting and reading? (and what do you do to induce peace in your house??)

Gratitude Sunday-truthfully and honestly

Joining Taryn today at Wooly Moss Roots blog for Gratitude Sunday:

Some Sundays I love showing up here to write about all the great things going on in my life and those Gratitude Sundays are easy. And some Sundays I resist writing this post. I think I have nothing to be grateful for-the kids are always fighting, dinner sucked, I'm stuck in my knitting trying to fix a mistake I made, blah, blah, blah. But I know that I need to be here and I know I need to make this list so I can put last week behind me and start anew this week. There is a verse in the bible somewhere that says "In all things give thanks". The writer doesn't say "In the really great things in your life give thanks", he says in ALL things. I struggle with this but I find when I do give thanks for the crummy stuff I see how they get turned around to reveal the good behind the crummy. So in that vein, I will take a deep breath and here goes:

::I am thankful that my daughter returned safe and sound from her trip to Germany and France with many great memories and souvenirs. The girl that left 2 weeks ago is not the same girl who returned home to us. There is a new level of maturity I am seeing these past few days.

:: I am thankful for the 2 days a week I still go to work because they help to keep food on our table and allow me to be at home the other days of the week.

:: I am thankful for the cooler temperatures that remind me that summer is fleeting and fall is on its way (whether I like it or not!)

:: I am thankful for the rain that fell last night during the wedding dinner we attended. It meant we stayed at our table in the tent and had great conversations with the people sharing our table and laughed so hard at times. I am thankful for the generosity and authenticity of the bride and groom. It might be the nicest, most down-to-earth wedding I have ever attended.

:: I am thankful my kids have been fighting constantly the last 2 days (I am laughing writing this because it just sounds so ridiculous and insincere) I am looking hard for the sunshine behind this cloud and I guess it came at dinner when I made everyone say something nice about each person at the table. The things my kids came up with for each other surprised me and this one activity seemed to have helped everyone move past the wrongs of the day. There. How's that?

:: I am thankful for the cupcake sitting in my fridge right now that I was given last night from the wedding. I have been saving it all day to eat once the kids are tucked away in bed.

Yarnning Along with Gratitude and socks...still

Joining Ginny today at Small Things blog for Yarnalong:

I turned the heel on this crazy sock the other day and the knitting got crazier. It went from that chevron thing to more of a variegated situation. I know it would drive other knitters nuts, this change in pattern but it satisfies the wild child deep within and I know come the dark days of winter I will appreciate it very much. OR in a fit of mid-winter blues I'll rip it out and start again. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
I picked up Debbie Macomber's One Simple Act the other day when we were visiting Stratford. A little bookshop was going out of business and it was 99 cents. I wasn't going to buy it but every time I turned around there it was, gently calling to me. Either that it or it was very good product placement by the owners. Doesn't matter. I picked it up and it was balm to the soul. The book's theme is generosity and how one simple act of kindness can lead to many unexpected things. Debbie begins the book with a lesson in gratitude. You have to be grateful, appreciating what you have in life, in order to be generous. It's full of short anecdotes and things to think about it and quotes from the bible. I'm glad it called to me and I'm more glad that I listened and bought it.

In my Garden

I thought I'd take you for a walk in my backyard tonight with pictures I took last week. It's raining cats and dogs here in Waterloo and I didn't get a chance to putter around the yard after work and I'm missing that meditative outside time right now.

This jumble is my vegetable garden. From left to right I have potatoes, red leaf lettuce, carrots (cleverly hidden by the overly-enthusiastic, self-seeding-from-last-year dillweed) and beans. In the top of the picture is my friend's plot and you can see some green cabbage, lots of hot peppers and kale. (Don't tell but I've been nipping her kale and adding it to lunch and dinner for a while now)
If I could get out there now I would try to do something with the bolting, falling-over lettuce and weed around the carrots.

A LOT of green onions. I've added them to everything I can think of and I feel like I've barely made a dent. This photo was taken last week and some of them are now the size of small cooking onions. A friend suggested I freeze them for use in the winter. I'm thinking that's what I'll do with the green tops and use the white bottoms now in cooking.

Isn't that kale beautiful? I'm feeling pretty hopeful for these green tomatoes. Just need some hot weather...

This is my herb bed. The tarragon is going crazy. I have thyme blooming in the background and hiding underneath are oregano, basil, sage, parsley and chives. At our last house I made the mistake of planting mint in a bed. After it spread everywhere I decided that here I would plant it in a planter and save myself the dirty looks from the neighbours.

My perennial bed. It stretches most of the length of my backyard and has orange lilies, sedum, peonies, irises, asters and some low green stuff that I don't know the name of but the foliage smells nice.

Our toad house. One of the kids made it at pottery camp and I thought it made such a great garden ornament. It lives underneath the grapevine behind a plant The Boy gave me for Mother's Day a few years ago. I don't know if any toads have taken shelter in it but I love the sight of it peeking out unexpectedly.
That was fun! Although the rain has stopped, night has fallen now and it's time for me to crawl into bed with a book and maybe I'll even go to sleep early tonight. G'night.

Gratitude Sunday-a day at the beach

Joining Taryn today at Wooly Moss Roots for Gratitude Sunday:
Last night we decided that today would be a day at the beach. We live an hour and a half from Lake Huron and every summer it's on my to-do list to spend at least one day at the beach. I've had my Manifesto for Summer in the back of my mind the last few weeks since cutting my hours back at my job and going to the beach is high on my priority list for really living and enjoying summer. I know in my heart if I set Sunday aside as a day of rest it does me a world of good. Keeping the Sabbath, in the words of Martha Stewart, is a good thing.

It's a stony sort of beach. After the water are the stones, then the sand near the trees.

We sat on the beach for awhile and The Boy combed the water's edge for beach glass and interesting looking rocks. I knit and drank coffee while my husband tried to become comatose on a towel in the sand. The water was pretty cold so not so much with the swimming today.

On the way home,

we stopped in Stratford and poked around the shops.

Somehow after all that sun and sand and riding in a hot car I managed to make an edible dinner of baked chicken, rice and sauteed green beans and mushrooms.

Now sitting here at the beginning of a new week and the end of a day I feel grateful for:
*living close to a beach. It's not California but it's just as pretty and the sand is still warm and the water cool (mmm, cold!)
*ice cream on a park bench
*my new camera and growing skills
*beach-knitting, car-knitting and small projects like socks
*good food and plenty of it
*the sense of abundance I've been experiencing this week
*new books from a book store having it's closing sale
*talking to my girl almost every day this week and hearing her adventures in France and Germany
*green beans from the garden

Yarnalong: The Sock & the Power of Less

Joining Ginny today at Small Things for Yarnalong:

I just love the evening light in summer. When I'm at home in the city it reminds me of sunsets at the cottage and driving home from a day at the beach on Lake Huron. It puts me in that easy-going summer frame of mind even if the reality is that I have to go to work.
I'm still knitting away on the sock and still working on the heel, one row at a time as I have time. I'm a year round knitter but I definitely knit less in the summer and spend more time digging in the dirt in the gardens. Especially this year with more time at home to tend to all the gardens.
I finished Blossom Street Brides and it did not disappoint. I want to read another Debbie Macomber but I found these 2 books at the library and I'd like to finish them first before I treat myself to a little fiction. The first, Opening the Mind's Eye by Ian Robertson, is about how language and images are related. There's a great chapter about worry and which side of the brain it comes from and how it's a language-based problem. If you imagine what you're most afraid of instead of just worrying in words over and over again it can make the worry disappear. Interesting idea. I haven't delved too much into this book yet but I'll keep you posted.
The second one, The Power of Less by Leo Babauta, is about simplifying your life in every way from the amount of stuff you own to how you order your day to reducing commitments. Leo is the author of the blog Zen Habits. He suggests if one of the things that's driving you crazy is all the time you spend tidying up and dealing with all your stuff then challenge yourself to get rid of everything your own except 200 things. I've been talking about this book to my husband and son and we agreed to challenge ourselves to donating 200 things. So far we have a big pile of books, some clothing and extra kitchen stuff. I don't think its quite enough yet but its a great start.

Slowing Down in a Speeded up World

I finally got the pictures downloaded (uploaded?) from my camera today. I've only had this camera for a few weeks but I'm slowly learning to use it's plethera of features. I am so pleased with the shots I am getting thus far.

This is the back of our cottage and my canoe. We heat with wood (as you can see by the pile of logs), cook with a propane stove and all our power comes from a bank of solar panels. There's no running water but we do have an old-fashioned hand pump. I love washing dishes here as you can't beat the view of the lake from the kitchen window. Usually everyone takes off after dinner to avoid having to help with dishes so on top of the great view I get silence and an empty cottage as my reward. We have a record player powered off the solar panels and a pretty awesome record collection thanks to my brother and his friends. When the mood strikes me I can scrub crusty egg off the breakfast dishes to the sounds of Bob Marley, Abba, the Flashdance soundtrack or Frank Sinatra.

Snorkelling is what we do when hurling one's self off the dock gets old. It's no Fiji but it's still a neat perspective seeing everything under the water and definitely a bonus when someone spots a crayfish or a treasure of some sort. We had a campfire one night complete with hotdogs and s'mores. 

One night the sunset reflected off the clouds in a line on the edge and was all pinky on their fluffy undersides. The sky looked as if it was on fire underneath the clouds.

We found this little guy near the edge of the water. 

When I was a kid our little island was covered in wild blueberries. My mom would pick blueberries for the entire 2 weeks we spent up there every summer. She would make pancakes, cobblers, muffins and cakes with the blueberries and still come home with an ice cream tub full. Now that the trees have grown so much bigger there isn't as much sun now and it's rare to find more than a dozen berries on the island. The infestation of gypsy moths and their caterpillars isn't helping the situation either as they've decimated the bushes. This is the down-side of living in nature I guess. You have to take the good with the bad just like everything in life.

My favourite place to sit is on the stoop outside the kitchen. I can stare out at that lake and the far shore for hours if I had the time. This is where I took the sunset picture above. I like to think of myself as a liberated feminist with the best of them but here I relish the time to nurture my inner domestic. Washing dishes and clothes and hanging them up to dry and listening to kids' stories of what creature they saw is totally my cup of tea when I'm on our little island. If I could bottle this I would be rich...

Gratitude Sunday-embracing and letting go

Joining Taryn today at Wooly Moss Roots for Gratitude Sunday:

For whatever reasons today the grass has seemed the greener, the sun warmer and the house more peaceful. I set out with one intention for this day-no work. No work means not doing things I think I should be doing but really don't want to do such as the incessant tidying I seem to do, anything on my to do list, and cleaning. I set out intending to read until I was done reading, putter in the garden if I felt like it and make stuff if the spirit moved me. Today has been a good day and I feel ready to tuck into cleaning, working, and getting the stuff done on my to do list...tomorrow.
Some things I feel particularly grateful for today and this week are:
::seeing my girl off on her epic trip to Germany with her Oma and Aunt. Knowing she arrived safely, she's all good and having a great time. I love hearing from her each day and learning about the high points of the day: things that include schnitzel, pretzels and climbing stuff.
::learning to use my shiny new DSLR camera and finally getting the pictures I had in my head.
:: reading until I'm done (had I mentioned this already?) it's a big one. I'm reading Debbie Macomber's Blossom Street Brides and loving the knitting she tucks into her story.
::weeding and sorting out the oft-forgotten perennial bed. It usually gets left till last on the list of garden beds to be tended to. It's not very exciting right now as the previous owners only planted things that bloom in spring and fall and it's situated smack-dab in the middle of the backyard where no one but me sees it. I usually expend my time and energy on the front yard beds and the vegetable garden.
::breakfast out with the 3 of us and my father in law. I love love love breakfast out.
::getting in a good run after dinner. I ran more than I walked and I feel pretty good right now.
::only having to go to my job 2 days this week, the other 3 days I am free to devote to my own creative projects that will hopefully bring in some money to contribute to the household finances.
What about you? What are you feeling grateful for today and this week?

Indulge me in a little philosophy and deep thinking for a moment...

Last week when we were at the cottage His Lordship decided that we should go bush-wacking in search of a couple of tiny lakes he had found on a similar expedition. It had been a cool week and the kids were getting bored so we headed into the forest.
Not a great picture above but I was swatting mosquitos while trying to capture the depth and greenness of the forest. You get the idea-it's pretty dense, no trails and really far from well, anything.
We never did find the lakes as the mosquitos were unrelenting and the kids had had enough after not too long. I don't blame them.
We did however find these:

Two rocks balanced on a bit of outcropping of rock. You can't see it very well but there's a 3rd little rock acting as a shim to help keep the other 2, bigger rocks steady. I keep thinking about this pile of moss and lichen-covered rocks in the middle of nowhere. The forest is pretty dense around these rocks and our cottage is pretty far from anywhere and anything. And I wonder who piled these rocks like this? and when? and why? I mean we make little rock piles all over the place now for fun. You see little inukshuks all down highway 400 to cottage country. But these rocks are different somehow. I keep thinking about them and I wish I could travel back in time and see who so carefully placed these rocks in this place.
There was logging here 100 years ago so I can hypothesize that one of the loggers is responsible for this and maybe it was to mark where they'd been or something.
Imagine, this pile of rocks has been there for 100 years.
I guess it's just one of those things that I'll never know the answer to but it sits in my mind and I keep turning it over to see if I can figure it out from a different angle or understand why I keep returning to it.