This year I decided I needed a creative focus to stop me spending my entire maternity leave in a blur of daytime tv and aimless wandering around town. So I joined an online photography group with the aim of taking one photo a day for the year. So far I'm loving the challenge, although pretty quickly realised that on some days, especially ones revolving around poorly children, the photography was going to slide. So with the slightly adjusted aim of seven photos in seven days (so that some days I can take a spare to balance out the off days) I've completed January and here are a few of the pictures.
It's making me look at my surroundings in a whole new way, there really can be beauty (or at least an interesting shot) in the simplest things, and I'm really looking forward to starting the new month tomorrow.
When we had our daughter eight weeks ago I thought I was prepared, but it turned out that I really hadn't fully comprehended how huge the tidal wave heading our way would be. I'm talking about the inescapable flood of pink! I'm really not a big fan. It's not that I mind pink as a colour, but it's how ubiquitous it is when it comes to little girls that I object to. I have this Oliver & S pattern that I want to try to make for B and while I'm still the boss of what colours she wears, I've ordered these gorgeous fabrics to use. I think I can get a few years of blues and greens in before the pink takes over...
It was freezing cold, but the walk was beautiful and the cake at the end of it was even better.
I'd forgotten that life with a newborn baby means never getting to finish a cup of tea. She has a cold and won't be put down, so every cup I brew ends up abandoned. I keep making them though, ever the optimist! Inbetween dealing with baby germs and cold tea, I've managed to finish crocheting a pair of wristwarmers for my three year old niece. We're making the journey north to see them soon and I wanted to get them ready to take with us. It's a bit of a cobbled together/made up pattern using Rico Creative Cotton and I still haven't quite mastered changing colours neatly, but hopefully she won't mind.
Today we packed up the Christmas tree and put away the decorations for another year. I absolutely love Christmas, but as soon as it's over I feel angsty about the decorations being up, as though if they hang around for too long, they won't be special anymore. So I have the will, but not always the inclination towards action (last year we didn't manage to completely pack them up until the beginning of February), so this year I'm already feeling terribly organised and ahead of the game. These decorations were new this year and are my absolute favourite and best.
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter has just reopened after being closed for refurbishment for the past 4 years. We visited today and I really loved it. Upstairs is the most amazing collection of taxidermy, butterflies and sea creatures, as well as all sorts of fascinating artifacts, all arranged beautifully but also managing to make you feel as though you are rummaging around in the attic of a Victorian explorer (everyone knows that's the best kind).
It made me feel ridiculously nostalgic. There was a time, mainly on our travels, when T and I were never out of museums and galleries. We'd rock up in a new place with our backpacks, find somewhere to stay and then spend the next couple of days wandering around the local museums and galleries, looking and learning . From huge slick modern operations to tiny little dusty local ones where you'd have to find someone with a key to let you in and would be the only people there. And for a few days afterwards you'd retain the information you'd read and know everything there was to know about the course of the Mississippi, the relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, historic Fijian hairstyles, or the history of paint-by-numbers. And then it would gradually slip away, leaving only the odd 'useful' fact behind (the inventor of paint-by-numbers kits always insisted on including the colour red, whatever the subject matter - fact fans!). There was a lot of beer consumed on these travels as well, which may have contributed to the patchy retention of information... I miss it (both the freedom and drinking beer in the sunshine!) but then I've found there's nothing like spending all day at home with a newborn to make you long to pack up your backpack and head off again. We will one day, I'm sure.
Anyway, back to the RAMM, I wasn't sure if photography was allowed and there was nobody around to ask, but I couldn't resist taking a few furtive pictures of the butterflies.
So far this year, when I have not been trying to get to grips with a new baby, toddler-wrangling or fighting off a host of evil germs with a hotshot combination of flu medication and industrial quantities of left-over Quality Street, I have been working on my daughter's ripple baby blanket. I'm using Debbie Bliss Ecobaby yarn, which I'm smitten with. The colours are so gentle and it's such a beautifully soft cotton that it's a complete pleasure to crochet with. I'm using Lucy from Attic24's ripple pattern and it's just such a relaxing one to do, just count to four, increase, count to four, decrease. Just about the maximum my brain can manage post-Christmas/new baby.
This year I decided I needed a creative focus to stop me spending my entire maternity leave in a blur of daytime tv and aimless wandering around town. So I joined an online photography group with the aim of taking one photo a day for the year. So far I'm loving the challenge, although pretty quickly realised that on some days, especially ones revolving around poorly children, the photography was going to slide. So with the slightly adjusted aim of seven photos in seven days (so that some days I can take a spare to balance out the off days) I've completed January and here are a few of the pictures.
