Am I the only one who starts out on a Monday with great intentions that this will be a really productive week?  Every Monday I begin with plans to get myself organised for the week; I’m going to be efficient, finish my outstanding patterns, have a sparkling house (right, who am I kidding!?!) and of course I’m never going to run out of the front door 10 minutes too late with a sandwich in the corner of my mouth :)  And don’t forget all the exercise that I plan on getting done!

If I’m entirely rational about it I would probably acknowledge that unless I magically managed to double the week length that I am destined for failure.  But yet I keep on trying every week.  Why?  Perhaps it’s because when you do have a week when everything goes your way it’s actually possible.  The week, where you bounce out of bed before the alarm, you don’t spend an hour surfing the internet half asleep before you get working and manage to get the load of laundry and a run done before it even hits 10.

But it’s also not just me – with 6 of us in the house a lot also depends on how everyone else is doing.  We have a big mixture of personalities in our house and it doesn’t take much for someone to throw a spark into the powder keg.  We’ve got high achievers for whom anything less than perfect is unacceptable, we’ve got little messers who just love poking at vulnerable spots trying to make the house of cards fall and we’ve got unpredictable high needs (one was diagnosed with asperger syndrome last year) that isn’t always on the same page as everyone else.

So if we’ve got a morning of tears with irrational arguments that make you want to tear your hair out at 7 in the morning you can end up feeling exhausted by 8.30.  If you’re tired our or stressed as well then your contribution to the morning/evening is negative rather than positive.  But yet every new week you start afresh with good intentions.  I will get to bed before midnight, then I’ll have the patience to get through the day calmly, to start work promptly and to take care of myself and everyone around me.

So this week I’m starting in a good place, we negotiated the morning with relative calm, I’m writing this blog post before nine (!), and I will get me to-do list finished this week.

Happy Monday morning everyone, I wish you the courage to start every week anew.

My garden is in full bloom at the moment, this  has to be one of my favorite colours ever, it’s so deep and rich.

A few other favorites include this delightful bright orange:

and these very, very abundant pink roses:

Unfortunately flowers are not the only thing flourishing in our garden, we seem to have developed a full wildlife sanctuary.  In the front garden we have two wasp nests, a giant rat that occasionally makes himself seen, an uncountable number of rabbits and a bat that swoops over the eaves of our house at dusk (this one was especially exciting for the boys to watch!).  Our poor dog is being well outnumbered and goes a little mad whenever he runs out the front door now!

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas.  We had or first Christmas at home in several years and it was really lovely.  I’m feeling in need of some brisk walks and detox by now though!  Our cold spell continued until the day after Christmas, complete with frozen pipes and afterwards cracked pump.  Hopefully we’ll have our pump repaired in time for the next cold snap next week.  Everything closes down for Christmas here in Ireland, so we will be lucky to get it welded by the end of the week.

We did take advantage of the Christmas snow to take some very pretty photos of my niece in her Iceling Cardigan.  This version was knit using Babylonglegs Radiance Aran.  She loved it so much that it was barely taken off while she was here!  I’m putting a version of  the pattern together for BabyLongLegs and she will be starting a KAL in January for anyone interested.  As you can see from this version this cardigan style is short, however if you want to make it longer just make sure you have more yarn and knit to the length you need (you have to add a few more stitches to pick up along the front as well for the extra length).  She is a good size 3 1/2 year old and I knit her the 25″ (4 year old) size.

Another year just sped by and we are almost at Christmas again.  This will be the first Christmas we have spent at home in several years, my four year old doesn’t even remember what I Christmas tree looks like in our house!  I’m very much looking forward to our time off, this last month or two has been tough going, between multiple illness in the house, people traveling and of course the dark, cold early morning starts…..

In fact while I’m enjoying a few weeks parenting alone I have resorted to bribery to get everyone up, dressed and out to school on time in the morning.  Everyone who is downstairs and fully dressed by 7.30 gets themselves a cooked breakfast!  I’m wondering if the appeal will last until DH comes home or if they end up getting sick of it.

I’ve got so many wonderful yarns lined up for different projects at the moment I’m almost feeling dizzy with choice.  Current projects at various stages of finish, knitting are planning involve, drops Nepal (have a lovely wrap just finished courtesy of Rosemary from The Constant Knitter), some Rowan Felted Tweed, Noro Kuroyon, and my newest arrival Madelinetosh Pashima.  Its almost unbearable when you want to knit them all at the same time!

I wanted to send all of you lovely knitters out there a  little pre-Christmas treat.  I’m going to put a 20% reduction on ALL my self-published patterns and e-books until Christmas day.  If you have a knitter friend you can go here on Ravelry and send it as a gift directly…. you even get to add a note.

I’m also very excited to see that 3 of my Interweave patterns have gone up for sale on Interweave Knits online store here. If you have been looking for Trellis and Vine Pullover, Braided Hooded Tunic or the Teacup pinafore you can buy them all individually now for $5.50.

Last week I combined a family holiday with a trip to Donegal Yarns in Kilcarra.  We stayed way up on the mountain just past Glengesh Pass.

Traveling from Ardara up to this pass involved a series of almost vertical corkscrew turns that our car objected strongly to!  After driving for 7 hours (it’s a long trip from Cork) I was glad to see our cottage, even if it was rather a misty view.

I knew there were a lot of sheep in Donegal but the sheer volume was out of this world..slumped on the side of the road, in our garden, hanging off the side of cliffs and even a few right up to the sea edge.

We made a lovely trip to Donegal Yarns also (can’t give any details away now though!) and met up with Chris who gave us a full tour.  It is a very sizable operation and had me just drooling over some of the wonderful yarns and colors.  Although the factory isn’t always open to the general public in the village you will find Studio Donegal which stocks a full range of their yarns.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t too wonderful for the trip but armed with some heavy duty raincoats in our holiday house we spent most of the week exploring the amazing beaches.  The beach is near Malin Beag and had 167 (I think?) steps going down to it.  Looking up at the amazing cliffs with sheep along the side is worth the walk down.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of it but the most amazing beach we visited was Maghera.  I have never been on a beach quite like it before.  You approach from a small country road and before you get there there is a HUGE waterfall.  We managed to get some amazing garment photos in front of this for the book.  When you reach the beach you pass through a path with sheep (of course) on either side and reach the sand dunes.  The are huge and the sand is pale, pale yellow which is very unusual for Irish beaches which tend to have darker sand.  Some of the sand slopes further along the beach (piled against cliffs) reached 30-40 feet high and the boys spent hours sliding/rolling/running down them.  For the icing on the cake there are a series of caves running down the beach, some of which were very sizable.

On evening walks along our mountain top roads we often felt as though we were walking on a film set..

I want to thank my son Damien for all of the photos, he had his camera with him and allowed me to use his photos.

Normally in our house we just have one dog Kenny…given how large he is that is more than enough. The boys adore him so much, he is regularly used as a cushion/piece of furniture for reading on. Apparently he seems to enjoy this, I think he likes all the attention.

Over the last few weeks my brother has been traveling a lot. His dog Molly has been here for about a month now and they are so cute together. It is fun to go out a feed two little black heads in the morning. I think we’ll all miss her when she goes home.

Kenny

Molly

This picture of the dogs playing in our local woods is from last year.  A couple of weeks go we went down there to go for a walk but couldn’t get in.  The woods is accessed by a wooden bridge but it was washed away by the floods this winter.  I really hope that it gets rebuild, they are just perfect for Sunday walks and only 10 minutes drive from our house.

We came back from our holiday at the end of last week.  At 7 in the morning we came into Shannon airport to -7 degree temperatures, freezing fog and a dead car battery.  10 minutes from landing the pilot announced ‘ we are coming into freezing fog, with minimal visability.  We are going to attempt landing but if it’s not possible we’ll circle around and land in Dublin.’   Now this is probably not a big deal if you are not travelling with 4 kids from 3 to 11, mountains of bags and a home that is not in Dublin (we would still have to get back to Shannon for our car!).  Luckily we still landed, hacked our car open with a credit card and got a jump start for the dead battery.  My poor frozen husband couldn’t even get a coffee at the first petrol station we stopped at as their water was frozen!!

Strangely we must have all been in a very good mood from the holiday because somehow it just didn’t seem like that big a deal.  Even coming home to a frozen (brand new) pump, leaking heating system and broken shower….. at least we  had our new wood stove, it really came into its own.  Having parents living next door helps a lot too, you are never stuck!

The boys all got to enjoy some great snow on Sunday, the first we have had in years.  The slid down the front lawn, built snow men and tossed snow balls at each other.  Now today we are being battered by rain storms with flooding.  Life is never dull.  Now if only the schools would reopen and I could get back to work.

I got lots of knitting done while I was on holiday (and bought lots of wool!).  My sister in law gave me two big bags for alpaca from peru so several pairs of mittens were finished before we came home to be prepared.

I finished (and photographed) a wrap with some more lovely Fyberspates Scrumptious yarn (sneak peak below), photographed a cotton cardi and knit up my first sample of a vest idea I’m working on.

Sneak peak of new Fyberspates Wrap

A little while ago I finished up a pair of socks with an entwined cable pattern I love.  It took a lot of experimenting and several pairs of socks before it worked out just right but it is almost ready to publish now.  They will be called ‘Casadh’ which is the Irish for twisted which seemed rather fitting for them.  This version was knitted by my friend Sue for her husband.  These socks are designed for a man but as the pattern is ribbed there is an awful lot of stretch.  With the foot length shortened they fit me fine as well.

I’ll post a few more photos of our holiday and the holiday knits in a few days when life starts getting back to normal.

I was talking yesterday about the hoodie I made for my oldest son.  It uses the same lattice from the Interweave Holidays Terry’s Sweater but is obviously a hoodie!  I knit this from Drops Paris, originally I had gotten this color to make something for myself but he loved the color so I used it for him.

I’ve had a busy day of people visiting today..all knitting related! Sue who I am doing the Knitting Workshop with in November came over for some knitting and breakfast in the morning and I had a lovely visit from Woolly Wormhead in the afternoon.  It’s not too often that you have a fellow designer passing right by your doorstep (especially in West Cork!).  We had lot of fun talking design and here little boy is so very cute!

Most of the time I find it really easy to knit with the kids around.  However I am working on a fine laceweight project and the stitches have a great love of sliding off the needles if you take your eye off them for a minute.

Yesterday my 3 year old came in to me (for the fourth time) asking me to close his shirt buttons.  Now I was in the middle of a 170 stitch lace row working a double decrease so I mumbled something to him hoping he’d wander away.  Instead he went behind me and hit his cheek on my ball winder.  So now we  had tears and open buttons – that’ll teach me to ignore a button call!