please take my child to work day - yabloodyhoo

portable crafting kit - ready to go

Today is "(Please) Take My Children To Work" day - but I am unlikely to benefit from this (just like all the other SAHMs round here especially since school has ended for the summer).
This is a glimpse of how I routinely take my work to my child (since that is how things are done around here right now) - a tray of handcrafterly goodness with projects to complete. If I have something set up like this it means I can indeed go watch Spiceworld with The Wee Guy for the umpteenth time and manage to be productive too (and even retain a little sanity and brain power perhaps).

time goes by .........

 

... not slowly enough sometimes. How many other mums out there are trying to cram 27 hours-worth of duties into a measly 24 and still trying to grab some restorative shut eye too?

Although weekends are traditionally thought of as leisure time I've yet to met a mum who thinks on that wavelength. For me, it's just a time of the week when I have more family members in the house (and under my feet). Instead of having just one relative to wrangle, I have two. Now luckily additional family member J is quite handy at combining activities with junior member T so I can boot both of them out of the house at the one time, making space for such exciting projects as housework, cleaning toilets and floors, and homework from my further education course. Woohoo! I can also rely on Family Member J to come up with edible meals over the weekend too.

But this weekend was different. It was a long weekend for a start, then school decided to tack on a Pro D day at the end and Family Member J was jet-lagged so I felt guilty at throwing him into domestic stuff immediately (tho' if we'd all been flying back at the same time I guess I would have ended up being responsible for feeding us, jet lag or none!).

So I've had very little time to get anything done. If I'm working sensibly I try to kill many birds with one stone (squelch) so blogging via ByHand is a useful option in terms of getting my message out and reaching a wider audience. I still haven't cracked my marketing strategy but blogging is in my current armoury so I need to do it regularly. Once I blog it's tweeted out via ByHand, Blogfire (from my other blog, thank you Alicia for setting this up) and TwitterFeed, and thus appears on Facebook too. There is also a very useful function within ByHand which allows you to post from your account to you blogger or wordpress blog. So for one blog post I can potentially reach five different audiences.

An efficient use of my time methinks! (and I made a sale from my ecrater shop which I never really promote too!)

lacking focus

clutch of fidget rings in brass and copper with furnace glass

Time has most definitely not been of the essence recently, mainly due to an enforced run of solo parenting for the last week. When I'm not parenting I've generally been too tired to create, and this makes me more exhausted and in turn I get little other than the immediate childcare stuff done in a day ..... and so on! It becomes a catch-22 until I get some unfettered "me-time" to reboot. We've been mainly home-based too so I've not even been managing any portable crafting moments despite having a new waistcoat on the (circular) pins.

However, a few evenings ago I sat down at my desk and worked on two projects. Somehow the metal obeyed my command, I only shattered one glass bead during rivetting and the pair of fidget rings shown above were the end product. There's also a new flotsam wire and fibre brooch on the go but it needs a repeat felting so no pics so far.

Having some new projects on the go certainly helps me banish the crafting blues, and I've found it helps with life in general. I feel calmed and productive amidst the chaos of my role in family life, a job with no reference, feedback or career pattern. I guess this mother's little helper is fibre or metal plus assorted tools!

PS: they're fidget rings cos the glass rivet section sticks up a bit and is great for fiddling with, all rings should have a fiddle section!

Being a mum ......

the moment of birth!

Being a mum rocks!

1. I loved being pregnant, found it fascinating and it total awe of my body even though it insisted on throwing up each and every day from about 8 weeks in (thank you doctor for the loverly diclectin!). I am still in awe of what my body managed, during the pregnancy, birth and thereafter until weaning at about 3 years. Thank you body!
2. My Wee Guy continues to amaze me. The force of his own personality at such a young age impresses me. I'm sure that I wasn't as much my own person at his age. I only hope I can nurture and not crush it.
3. We do fun things together, activities that I wouldn't even have thought of, like movie nights with popcorn, browsing for treasures at the local thrift (which he thoroughly enjoys), making pretzels, movies for mummies, cycling round the zoo ..... I'm sure some of these are just extensions of what I loved doing as a child but many are new to us both.
4. I love watching him react to new situations and learning to handle these experiences in his own way. Certainly there are some instances when personality traits get in the way but it's rewarding seeing him learn for the next time around. He re-discovers the magic of the world for me. It's easy to become jaded as an adult "been there, seen that" so many times before. On his level, he's seeing everything afresh and his enthusiasm is infectious
5. I'm amazed at how he is pre-programmed to grow and learn. His brain is like a sponge, his reading ability races ahead with every book and he gets bigger! How do his bones know to lengthen, how does his body know to get bigger? Yes, I know - I studied developmental anatomy and biology at university. I know that there are growth plates, mitosis, cell growth, hormonal cues etc etc etc ..... but when you see it in action it's quite astounding!

Being a mum sucks!

1. I can no longer do anything on the spur of the moment. Leaving the house can take 20 minutes with lots of nagging about shoes, jacket, books, toys, toilet ..... and so on. I really notice how much less encumbered life is when I travel around by myself.
2. My attention span has shrunk. Since I am on call 24/7/365 I have to be ready to drop everything at a moment's notice. Thus I no longer concentrate well on long, ie. more than 2 minutes, projects. I'm much more of a butterfly brain and I resent that imposition. Carving out 'me-time' is a practical necessity yet it is tinged with guilt at not spending time with the Wee Guy or with my husband. I spend a lot of time in conflict with my feelings.
3. My waistline - now where did it go? and what's with the flaring ribcage? Luckily the boobs shrank back down to a more normal size.
4. See no. 2 above - he may have his own forceful personality but often it is in direct conflict with mine! Life can be less than smooth for days on end - sometimes I think there will be no end to the hostilities (and there's still the teenage years to come!).
5. I've grown up, I've had to grow up to be a mum but I feel my husband has lagged a long way behind. It would be incredible to feel like a wife again instead of just someone's mother - as far as I remember, I only gave birth to one child ........ and I don't think this is an unusual opinion for many mums out there.
   

On balance I have no regrets about becoming a mum, there would have been more if I had decided not to have a child I think. I love my Wee Guy and what he's brought into my life. He's an amazing companion for my day-to-day and we both learn from each other. I am so glad I didn't leave the option of motherhood until it was too late but now when I do the maths I do sometimes wish I'd started a bit earlier!

Thanks to i should be napping for kind-of tagging me via twitter! If you're reading this and you're a parent, please consider yourself tagged and comment back here to let me know!

raccoon mums and more ....

It occurs to me that portable crafting might just be the way forward.
I've been musing over the Globe and Mail article I blogged yesterday about raccoon mums (or moms). Although I'm not quite sure why 'raccoons' (is it the nocturnal nature of a the solo time a la the little bandit, or is it the dark circles round the eyes following so little sleep I wonder?), I do think that making your sanity saver more mobile is one way that a few more hours of shut eye can be reclaimed.
Instead of crafting away into the wee small hours uninterrupted why not pack up your goodies and 'interrupt' kiddo's playtime with a few rows of knitting? They can quietly haemorrhage after a fall while you calmly finish another inch of pattern I'm sure.*

So my ideal portable raccoon-saving kit would contain;
1. a craft project with all trimmings
2. one of those super small wireless enabled notebooks
3. chocolate
4. a camera
What would your ideal portable sanity saver be?
No, there aren't any prizes.

*Yes, I was joking. Read my previous posts for tips on quick pack up of portable projects.

nocturnalism now has a new name

... and the new name is 'raccoon mum' as per this article from the Globe and Mail, which was twittered to me by @yoyomama (who incidentally write a great email bulletin).
I suppose since I've spent a goodly chunk of my Wee Guy's life so far in a sleep-deprived haze it's no wonder that I get most of my writing/crafting/business admin done after he's gone to bed. My studio is right next to his room so sometimes this 'me' time is interrupted by snatches of conversation about his day as he drifts off into dreamtime. Occasionally he joins me for a while, bringing a book or toy to amuse himself with quietly while he gets sleepy (and he does! sleep is a great hobby for all of us).
I would prefer to have an evening again but I also appreciate that I would go nuts if I had to try and cram all the things I do want to do into daylight hours. Being a mum has also taught me that I really do value my solitude, my absolute solitude, and I'm getting better at communicating this and defending rather than apologising for it.
solitude = headspace = reboot = better mothering
photo above: sawing metal in the wee small hours

portable prep

Yarns and knitting pouch sitting near the exit, ready to be grabbed for a day out with the wee guy.

PS: the finished result is here below, a pair of lacy felted wrist warmers.

how do you craft?

So, how do you pull it all together and manage a few crafty moments in your day? How does it all fit together in your family life? Whether you're a stressed new mum following the 'sleep when the baby sleeps' mantra or the follower of a very active out-and-about preschooler it can be a real juggling act to try keep that ounce of sanity going by snatching a creative moment or two in the day's itinerary.

Recently I found some inspiration from an article run in the Etsy blog, The Storque where seller Nikki aka BabyBelle talked about her studio and how enmeshed in family life it is. Far from the usual unfeasible "Quit Your Day Job" (!) series, this article actually addressed the ins and outs of working at home and weaving it around normal family duties. It turns out that there are a whole slew of work-at-home mum articles available here ....... maybe you can find some nuggets of inspiration in them too!