FO Friday 5/15: Derailed

Twilight Realm: A Tarot of Faery

So I slithered out of bed this morning just like any other day, poked toast and jam into the gaping maws of the children before shoving them out the door to school, pottered aimlessly about the house a bit wondering what I could blog about for FO Friday (the backstory of the saying sweet FA was a bit of an eye-opener), trundled off to the park with Sebastian, still pondering ....

Came back to find a friend had posted a link, which of course - curiosity killed that damn cat - I had to click on: Guardian of the Memory.

I have chosen to remember Chaja Pinkaszovics, who was only 9 years old when she was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.

Destructo Boy is 9 years old.

with thanks to pattisprimitives.com

Sign of the Times

Druidcraft Tarot

 So as Mini Diva is in grade 5, we have had quite a few discussions on when she will be allowed to walk to and from school on her own. It has happened - as things will - that sometimes plans and arrangements fall through, and she has had to occasionally walk on her own instead of with her friend and his Mum, but is has been an infrequent occurrence and we kept to the back-up plan.

We live almost a mile and a half from her school, and there are 3 dangerous, busy roads to cross (only one of which has a crossing person), in addition to a few small quiet ones. Our compromise is that I walk her across the first two busy roads, and then she can walk herself across the quiet roads and cross the last busy road with the crossing person.

Of course, it seems in these times there are other dangers threatening children that when I was a child we did not consider: most recently, April Jones was a tragic reminder of every parent's worst nightmare.

And therefore we have bought a personal alarm which has 140 decibels of incipient deafness in a non-scarey form:

Teddy bear alarm

And since I have just upgraded my handset, I also bequeathed this to Mini Diva:

Nokia 5230

It has been challenging to explain about Stranger Danger - and, more importantly - Familiar Danger (April Jones was taken by her neighbor, whom she knew) as well as not assuming that a woman or other children would be safe to be with, whereas only a man could be a threat. 

This difficulty has been exacerbated by our own strong desire to keep her indoors forever where no-one can hurt her, and at the same time realizing we must be rational, and instead allow her a normal life, with warnings and advice that doesn't totally freak her out so that she never wants to go outside again.

I don't like how this feels at all.

Bimbling Along

A slight blogging holiday last week, as DH was home for a few days; so Ingrid has a new alternator, and we all attended Mini Diva's school sports day. It was disorganized chaos as usual, but her team (Blue) won, so she was happy.

This is the final few days of the summer term, and I am really looking forward to the holidays. That, of course, will last only until the first morning, when they are at each other's throats. But the high winds and heavy showers of early last week are over, and the sunshine has returned, which makes life a lot more optimistic.

Auntie Fashion was down this weekend, and we went shopping together in town. Having been given some gift vouchers at Christmas, I bought a new skirt, sweater and a couple of tops to go with them, hopefully to wear to the wedding party this weekend if it stays warm. Auntie Fashion and I having got separated, I had to call her to come rescue me from shopping hell - the shop I was in is huge, busy, crowded and has no system as to how things are set out - and then the demon Indecision set in. It was the work of a moment for her to make my mind up for me and get me to the checkout before I had a meltdown.

I never used to have trouble shopping for myself, or deciding - but it has been so long since I actually bought any clothes, and since money is an issue, I have also become far more discriminating. It was an unwelcome surprise when I was weighed at the hospital to find that I have put on 14 lbs (and I know where it all is too) and that affects what I wear. I am not overweight (BMI of 22.2 and 'green' on the calculator) as yet though, which is a good thing as dieting takes considerably more willpower and need than I was born with ...

I've also taken a break from Christmas knitting and instead managed to complete in a few days this little lace shrug for my youngest niece:




















The pattern is Sirdar 1690, it's knitted in Lavender Stylecraft Kon-Tiki, a cotton/acrylic blend that was a pleasure to knit with. It has a great drape and semi-shiny finish, and should be cool enough to wear during the summer. The only thing wrong with the pattern is the lace border - all two million miles of it is sewn on.

Now Mini Diva wants one, but the pattern only goes up to age 6; the maths/knitting sector of my brain is not turbo-charged enough to handle the increases necessary to size it up and keep the stitch pattern right; there does seem to be a dearth of patterns for ages 7 through 14 or so: any suggestions, please let me know.