and breathing

This past weekend I feel like a lot got accomplished in a lot of ways, despite the fact that I stayed in my pajamas ALL day Saturday. Not for any particular reason…it just happened that way. We got a lot of stuff cleared out, dropped off at Goodwill, and boxed up. Yea, I know…I sound like a broken record, but that pretty much sums up my life right now. A friend we haven’t seen in too long stopped by and re homed our compost tumbler and a cast iron chimnea we had sitting around. Our composter has been used and loved for many many years, but we just really want to de stuff ourselves with everything we possibly can. We plan on setting up a composting station on our new little homestead, but maybe one that looks more like this one, however, we also met some fine people up in Maine this past fall, who turned us on to vermicomposting. Either way, we don’t feel the need to tote our tumbler with us on our move, and we’re happy to see it go to someone we know.

Aside from all this moving jazz, I’ve managed to squeeze in a few breaks here and there for myself. On Monday I got to meet, chat, and hang out with Shannon Hayes, as in the Shannon Hayes who wrote the book Radical Homemakers. The short of it is that a friend of mine somehow connected with her and invited her to do a small scale talk in a nearby town. I hung around for a bit and chatted at the end with Shannon and her husband. I left feeling very inspired in my mission in life, and what we (as a family) are striving for right now…simplicity and self sustainability. To be able to provide for ourselves and to live so closely to the basics of what we can provide ourselves. To make the choice to back out of so much of what our society tells us we need, the same stuff we consistently prove to ourselves that we can easily do without. It took a lot of suffering and pain to get to where we are today, a lot of learning, a lot of reforming our thoughts on what is real and what can remain an illusion, but every second of it is/was worth it! And the future. Egads! I just can’t wait!

I’ve also carved a bit of time out for knitting to help me stay present and grounded amongst the mess of moving. Oddly, of all things right now, I am knitting Christmas stockings. They are for a friend who asked me to knit them for her family (of 7). I am using the Spotted Christmas Stocking pattern on ravelry…although each of the seven stockings will be made up of different color variations to make them each unique. This pattern is very straight forward and clean, I love it and honestly it has me thinking about who else I can make a stocking for…but we’ll see how I feel about them after I knit 7…because we all know how I love (or rather don’t love) redundant projects. I figure I have a good chunk of time to space them out though, which is why I started early. That way I can alternate other projects in between.

As far as reading, I have been reading the kids an awesome find called
The Kingdom of Fantasy, by Geronimo Stilton, who is the main character in the book and the fictional author…he’s actually a mouse. But anyways, Jason picked this book up for Hawthorn for Christmas. And I am so happy that it is the first of a set of three. It is completely engaging for all ages, for my clan at least, and is one of the first books that keeps Hawthorn really engaged for very long periods of time. You’d have to flip through the book to see for yourself…but every page is something to look at. My favorite part about it, is that scattered throughout the book are little factional blurbs and educational tidbits. Hawthorn says his favorite part about the book is, well…all of it. He says, “The whole book is my favorite part. I really like the story and the pictures too. I like all of it.” So there you have it…from a five and a half year old…wise words of wisdom.