Someone told me recently that it must be amazing being me, and ‘getting to dye yarn all day.’
Hey – I’d love to be me too! That sounds brilliant!
It’s not true though. Yarn dyeing has to find it’s place amongst a toddler and a baby, and washing and food shopping, and keeping up with the allotment, and keeping up with the house, and trying to make improvements to said house so that next winter we’re not as cold as we were last winter.
I make things because I love making things, and because I am compelled to make things. And because I really like knowing where something came from. And because I can’t afford to buy lots of nice things, but I can afford some of the supplies to make some of them myself. So that has to wedge itself into snippets of time where possible.
Nicole Shiffler at The Sleepytime Gal, wrote today about perfection –
This perfection for oneself, one’s family, one’s home, one’s abilities, one’s children is rapidly debilitating women and, more importantly, mothers. Many of you that I have talked to carry the same burden.
That and some personal experiences I’ve had recently, really struck a nerve.
I’ve only been doing this parenting lark for three years or so, and Oxford Kitchen Yarns has existed about a year longer than that – which is really not much time at all.
I am sometimes confident, and sometimes totally winging it.
I am sometimes confident, and sometimes a mass of exposed nerves – deeply hurt by random comments or looks, deeply protective of my children who are – at the very worst – only acting their age.
But I feel like both these aspects of my life (along with trying to work on our house) is lived inside a giant fishbowl. People have opinions – family have opinions. People feel compelled to ask if you’ve ‘thought it through’ – as if the things you deliberated over were pulled like a bunch of magic flowers from your sleeve, rather than the culmination of hours and weeks, and months and – sometimes even years – of thought, and conversations and soul searching.
I love my life, but that doesn’t stop me feeling tired, doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad that I’m writing this one handed while trying to stop my son from being to rough with his baby sister, who is attempting to wiggle off my knee. I probably shouldn’t be writing this now. I feel like I shouldn’t be writing this at all.
But maybe when I get my act together and write new posts about the clothes I’ve made the children, and the bag I made for myself, and – yes – even – the yarn that is waiting patiently to be put on sale in the shop – you will remember this rambling post. You will remember that life is a lot more complicated than it looks through the lense of a blog, and this will have done some good.
