Non stop growth
My daughter went on her very first residential school trip last week. She is 7. I had some reservations about letting her go (cue internal "she's so small!" wailing). Turns out I was right to be hesitant. She left as a 7 year old; three days later school returned a 17 year old. I feel like I went to bed and woke up a decade later but without the benefit of ten years' sleep. Admittedly, most of the initial attitude and determined independence has now past, but she has definitely done more than a weeks' worth of aging since she went. I still feel like last time I looked she was 2. Apparently she's not.
When you become a parent, everyone tells you how fast children grow up and how important it is to make the most of the time while they are small. I have no desire to keep them little and am fully accepting of my role in teaching them how to live strong independent lives - essentially teaching them how to leave, but the rate of growth and change does still catch me off guard. If my two carry on they way they are currently going, they'll both be 7ft tall pensioners by the time they are in double figures. I'm sure that if I sat quietly in the dark in their room at night I would actually be able to hear the growing happening. I am raising human rhubarb.
It seems everything in my life is currently growing at an uncontrollably fast pace. I finally managed to spend some time on the allotment this week (win!). It turns out, I am cultivating a special variety of drought resistant nettles that appears to be entirely unique to my 90ft plot. As far as I can see, none of my plot neighbours are growing this particular variety and I'm pretty sure I don't have some previously undiscovered reservoir under the plum trees, so I can only assume they are a new breed just for me. Now if only I could find a way of monetizing them..... Why is it the uncultivated weeds can grow so much faster than my carefully planted, watered and loved crops? I have cow parsnip that can grow 4ft high and yet not a single one of my cucumbers has germinated.
In fact, the only thing in my life that is not growing quickly (except, of course, of the cucumbers) is my waistcoat stitch cushion cover. I recently discovered Fyberspates CoopKnits Socks Yeah! range on Wool Warehouse (also available with other stockists) and completely fell in love with the colour palette. Naturally I bought one in almost every colour before having any kind of project in mind - oops! I am going to make a series of retro feel cushions I think, the first of which is using waistcoat stitch. I'm really enjoying working with this yarn, and the way the cushion is progressing, but I must admit it is a little slow. In case anyone is unfamiliar with waistcoat stitch, I will do a future post and tutorial on it. For now though, I am going to go and listen to my children grow.
