Adventures in England

A new leaf (please turn over)
This weekend I decided to reclaim my life. I didn't like how my life was going. I've decided to make the most of my time at home. I'm going to stop wasting the little bit of time that I have during the day. I will use that time for crafting, or blogging. I will try to get to my plan of gathering pictures of our time here to make a photo book.

I had been spending all my time sitting in the living room, even when V was asleep, watching TV and snacking when I've not been like that in the past. After V was born, I weighed in at 10 lbs below my pre-pregnancy weight. I have since put all that weight back on. All I do is sit around here which doesn't help.

Sunday night I decided to do something about my life and reclaim some time to just be Michelle and not 'Mom'. I don't mean to say that I don't love spending time with V or don't want to be around her, but I believe for me to remain sane, I must keep some ties to my former life so I handed her off to her dad and did some 'me' stuff rather than sitting around killing time between caring for V.
I also must get out of the house more regularly. Yesterday the weather was beautiful so I packed V up and we drove to Newmarket and went for a walk. I would like to be able to walk right from here, but my options are around the horse paddocks or along the 60mph road that we live on that doesn't have sidewalks/pavement. Neither of these options really appeals to me. I put her car seat in the buggy rather than carrying her in her sling. Perhaps I can try walking her on the verge of our road with the sling, but didn't want to use the buggy on the rough grass. We went to the market in Newmarket which wasn't very interesting and I bought meat from an actual butcher. It's probably quite sad that I've never done this before. I bought pork tenderloin that I made into sweet and sour pork for dinner last night. I also bought wild boar and apple sausages that I look forward to trying out.

Today it was the new mum's group. This, as I discovered last week, runs from 10-11:30 and doesn't start at 10:30 as I had thought in the past. After the group ended, I went for a walk in Bottisham which is where the group is held. It was a nice walk. I also stopped by the post office to buy some stamps and pop a couple letters in the post.
I plan to do this walking thing more regularly. It is nice to get out of the house. I plan to go into Cambridge every now and then, or perhaps to where I work but that isn't as easy as going to Newmarket or Bottisham. I think I will also try putting V in her sling and going along the road here since I can get away from the road itself even if it's too rough for the buggy.
Expressing regularly so that V gets some breast milk doesn't make this easy, but I will do my best to balance the two. Expressing won't last past the end of this month most likely. I can tell that the volume is dropping off a bit (probably not helped by sleeping all night rather than expressing in the middle of the night). I intend to make it to 3 months if I can. I do feel a bit bad about giving up on it, but I've never gotten V to latch well where she was getting milk and not just pinching me. I've been doing the expressing which is a lot of work. I should keep up the expressing as long as I can, but it is something that really wears on me.

I'm also getting better at not picking V up every time she fusses a bit. Just before sitting at the computer, I put her in the travel cot downstairs for a nap. I knew she was tired, she fell asleep twice in my arms but would wake up when I put her down. The second time I let her fuss for a few minutes and she has been asleep since then. This gives me more time to do things and is probably better for her if she gets this chunk of sleep undisturbed.

Craft wise, I dug out my tablet weaving loom and put an old project on it on Sunday. I wove a couple inches of that double faced pattern. I had been tired of the pattern, especially since I wasn't all that fond of it once I got it going so I'm currently thinking to come up with a different pattern to use up the rest of the thread. I have probably four metres of the old pattern and probably enough thread to do a couple metres of a new pattern.
At Ffair Rhaglan, I was encouraged to do a bit of documentation for the weaving I've been doing. I had started a book that has clippings of many of the bands that I've woven plus some of the dyeing I've done and braids I've made. I had taken some of the samples out to put in displays but what I really need to do is take the book to put in the display. This way people can also see the information that goes with the bands as to the technique, extant examples, materials used, etc. Monday I went through this book and added the samples that I had to it. I also clipped off samples from the rest of the bands that I'm willing to cut a bit off of. There is one band that I made that I will NOT be cutting and that is the one I made for our wedding. I plan to print out pictures of this band to put in the book along with the information that should go with it. Most of the other bands, since I didn't really have a final purpose in mind when I made them, I was willing to cut off a few inches. I even cut off a couple patterns of my twist patterned band to put in the book.

In browsing through my craft journal (that I'm not currently updating) it strikes me that I should put pictures of my embroidery in this book as well. They are items that I cannot put in the book, but pictures would be able to show people what can be done as well at those times that I cannot show them my blog. I did put the one nalbinded sock in the book.
I really like this idea of having something to take with me that shows what I've done craft wise. Since I didn't start (well, re-start) this book until now, I don't have all the data like when I made it that would be nice to have, but I will be able to add that info for future projects.

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