Another week of Yarn Along…

In a post very much like this one, at the beginning of December I promised that I would finally finish reading The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith S. Wallerstein. And I did.

It wasn’t an easy read, but luckily for my my husband had read it first (when I first got it out of the library) and so I could look at him and talk about a particular chapter and he knew exactly what I was talking about.

It’s hard to find the words to explain how important this book is. (Made harder by the fact at least one of my parents sporadically reads this blog…) But important it is, because when you experience divorce as a child, it has a profound effect on you. Or rather it has a series of profound effects on you, that come up again and again throughout your life. For me, it was a relief to realise that was normal, rather than indulgent or a case of wallowing.

This book revisits a number of people, 25 years after they were part of a study looking at the effects of divorce on children. (They were revisited after 18 months, 3 years, 5 years, 15 years and 25 years I think – though I’m working from memory there, so the numbers might only be generally right. ) It also compares a number of the case studies with similar people who came from intact families, to see how they differed.

This is what I took away from the book:

Children of divorce are quick to grow up but slow to mature. Without positive relationship role models they find it hard to trust romantic relationships in general and either throw themselves into marriage on a whim very young, or settle down much later.

Most come from families where the death of the marriage was quiet and thus the split up and divorce was a huge shock that was never properly explained to them. (Only the children from violent marriages that got divorced had improved out comes, overall. For the rest of the people interviewed, divorce made their lives harder, not easier.)

Visitation, in general, sucks.

In an intact family, the parents are on the sidelines, helping their children along but staying ‘behind the curtain’ while the children are on the stage of their own childhood (wonky metaphor?) whereas during/after a divorce the parents get on stage and might never get off again, their children (even as adults) always on the look out for/dealing with potential blow ups or tensions at – for example – family gatherings etc.

Basically – though not all of that reflects my own experiences, I found I learned a huge amount about myself having read this book, and really would recommend it to anyone who went through divorce as a child or teenager (as well as adults contemplating divorce – there is tons of information about how you can make your child’s life more manageable.)

An important book then. Even if it doesn’t have all the answers.

And on to the knitting…

This is a cowl that I am going to have to stop knitting, because I have the baby blanket to finish knitting, and the shawl for my midwife to finish both spinning and knitting. (I spun the knit the first half in the late summer.)

It is the Five by Five Cowl by Felicia Lo knit in two strands of — (which I bought from the new yarn shop in Oxford, which I will link to as soon as I can find any sign of them online!) and a strand of Old Maiden Aunt Yarns Laceweight (the pattern calls for mohair but I didn’t have any, and anyway I don’t need to be *that* warm down here in the south of England. 🙂

It’s 52″ long, and I’m about a third of the way through. Ideally it would be lovely to finish before spring, but with these other projects, plus a couple more for the baby that I have my eye on, that might be a step too far. In which case it won’t be the first time that I’ve finished something and had to put it away for a good six months before it gets any use.

(At least when you get it out on the first cold day, you feel you’ve received a lovely present from past-you. 🙂

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/five-by-five-cowl

It’s wednesday… time for the Yarn Along.

Firstly, apologies for the awful photos but we are still sick. Or rather FB is healthy again and bouncing off the walls (though luckily he is out for most of today), while LR and I are slowly coming back to something resembling normal. She still screws her face up in pain when she coughs (it’s on her chest so it makes her muscles hurt) and I’m blowing my nose every few minutes, and my energy is stuck at about 50%.

Hopefully another quiet day today will help.

Anyway… Knitting!!

One good thing about us all being unwell is that there has been unwell is that we have been floopy on the sofa a lot and so I have got some knitting done. I am making dolls clothes for the dolls for christmas (which I’ll post about soon), and as you might expect they knit up super quick. Following on from that I came across Tiny Pants and a new knitting obsession was born.

Seriously though, they are cute knitted shorts for newborns and they take a 50g ball of DK. Thus they knit up in no time and are ripe for stripes, patterns or embellishments.

What is not to love?

I cast off my first pair yesterday, and cast on the second pair a couple of hours later.

After two october babies, this March baby will need a slightly adjusted set of clothes (any excuse to make more things for new tiny people.) I’m hoping that these shorts will be useful, though you never know how March will go – sometimes we’re shovelling snow, sometimes we’re out in the garden sat on the blanket.

Regardless it’s lovely to be using up some much loved balls of yarn in my dwindling stash that have been there for a number of years now.

Reading wise I just finished Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield (which you can get free from Project Gutenberg here, and as a free audiobook from Librivox here). I had never read it before and I really enjoyed it. From an adult point of view it’s about the power of the parent and how that can stunt or set children free. From a child’s point of view it’s about a little girl who goes to live on a farm and finds out that she can do a lot more than she thought she could. It’s now on my list to read FB at some point.

Apart from that, caring for sick children (and sick me) hasn’t left much time for reading. However next on my radar is The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith S. Wallerstein which I borrowed from the library a couple of months ago, only to have W run off and gobble it all up in about a week. Since then I’ve been putting off reading it even though he says it’s amazing and that I really should read it. Tomorrow I have to take it back to the library to prove it still exists (fair enough) and then I really need to knuckle down and read it.

I guess I’ll tell you more about it next week. (How’s that for accountability, eh?)