Fundamentally, the last several days of my life have been spent being truly reactionary. Isaac kicks, I get bruised. He kicks some more, I get a bit more bruised, and again, again, again. (This is a metaphor, btw.) These pictures were taken within 7 minutes of another. In the course of the last few weeks I've spent more time redirecting him, guiding him, nurturing and I honestly don't feel that any of it has gone in. It's soul-destroying, it really is.
One of the reasons I'm feeling so bad about it is that we've had another few weeks where we're feeling very conscious of people, opinions, criticism, that kind of stuff. Steve's final visit for his PGCE is today, and so he has to submit all of his work for scrutiny, always nerve-wracking (especially when you're very bad at organising your paperwork, as he is.) Our next-door-neighbour, for some unknown reason, decided to tell Steve last week that (and I quote) people round here don't like you. This chap has known Steve for 30 years, seen him grow up, and suddenly starts spouting a load of vitriol about his mother and god knows what else. If we hadn't had several hundred poundsworth of damage done to our car since living here, I'd think it was coincidental, but right now, I just don't know. We've had secondhand reports of the kind of poisonous gossip going around, and it's not pretty.
Finally, I'm getting another dose of self-esteem blues. Seeing all the gorgeous artistry of ravelry and knowing what a wannabe I still am is really knocking my confidence in knitting, which is, frankly, ridiculous. I actually finally resorted to knitting myself a garter stitch scarf- and no, I'm not kidding. What's worse, it's black. I discovered that my charity shop alpaca is actually thick-and-thin alpaca plied with a wool binder, and really suits the simplicity of garter stitch- literally, it seems, even the raglan of labyrinth was too much for it. In this, though (it's a Debbie Bliss pattern, link will follow) I love it. I really do- and I can see myself wearing this all winter, and many winters to come. Four repeats down. 54 to go.
