A Baby and a Bear

It feels like it's been weeks since I was here. Well, it is weeks actually. Newborn babies are notorious for just smacking into your life and sending your train careering off down the tracks to Complete Chaosity. Not that it's my baby technically, but it is my baby's baby and so that pretty much counts for the same thing, sans breastfeeding and so, so many sleepless nights. I've had my nanny-hat on a bit here and there, sharing the odd disrupted night rugged up on the sofa, rocking a bundle into slumber, offering moral support. Washing and shopping and processing sink-fulls of dirty dishes ... and sneaking a few minutes here and there to add stitches to my knitting.

x x x Isn't he adorable ... [Baby R on Instagram] x x x

But now that Baby R is a few weeks old and things are starting to settle into some semblance of routine, my mind is returning to those things I have laid aside (and those things that have been forming clouds in the back of my mind). Like playing with the sack-full of Dorset fleece patiently waiting in the Room-of Requirement. Okay, it's not really the Room of Requirement, but I humour myself with this euphemistic reference to our garage. It truly fits everything but the car ...

Fleecy Poll Dorset fleece, smelling of lanolin and sheepy sheep. 

Full of prickles and burrs, barley seeds and dirt.

 

With Watson's poodle wool thrown in for contrast

 Here I must thank the dog for donating some wool. Just a little bit. He didn't like me brushing his ears before going to the groomer (think cleaning the house before the cleaner arrives). He was a handful, and he unwillingly yielded a handful. This was some perverse justice at work, considering all the knitting he has eaten this year.

I was weary from work last night and too tired to think anything but woolly thoughts. My hand turned to carding a job-lot of washed-up fleece. I was listening to Girl With a Pearl Earring [Tracey Chevallier] while plying wisps of wool between the dog's slicker brushes (works a treat). I had not started this process with anything in mind other than the brushing of wool. I'm not quite sure how the bear happened. He started out as possibly a rabbit, but quickly morphed into a very jowly dog. As my audiobook classic concluded it's final chapter, I realised that he had in fact, emerged as a bear. A fat-faced, slightly lopsided bear ... with potential. :)

It's funny how a random process, a beginning made with no end in sight, yields one small and happy thing that is so hugely satisfying. I suppose (in a kind of a way) it's a bit like making a baby. :)

Now that I am a grandmother I have one more person in my life to love truly, madly, deeply (and one more reason to make fun stuff).

Happy making my friends,

Evie 
x x x