A Cobbled-Together Autumn Cowl (and Postscripts)

On Sunday it was chilly in those hills. Real Autumn chilly – with a sweet, earthy smell of decaying, damp, mulching leaves underfoot. I wore my newly knitted Cobbled-Together Autumn Cowl. I stood in the middle of the forest while my kids ran around like wild things and the Mr went off on chestnut reconnaissance. I assumed that weird, taking-one-handed-photos-of-self, contortionist pose, tried to look like a happy cowl-wearing person and felt like a dork.



Three



dorks.



Ever since Monday it has been getting steadily warmer, with a weekend forecast bordering on perfection and there is very little chance that I will be wearing this cowl and taking better photos, without feeling like a bigger dork.

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Postscripts
1. I know the Mr could take the photographs. But he always has an OPINION and then there’s disagreement and someone occasionally accuses someone else of behaving like a ‘dork’.

2. The Cobbled Together Autumn Cowl was supposed to be a Honey Cowl, but I failed to read the pattern, assuming I remembered everything from last year’s Honey Cowl. Twenty five centimetres into the knitting, I realised I was using a two row pattern repeat, not the required four rows. Ah, well.

3. The Cobbled-Together Autumn Cowl was supposed to be a pair of socks. I have only ever knit two socks in my life. Both are odd socks, as they are in a different yarn and knit to a different pattern. As it happens, odd socks fit in well around here. Even so, given my current inability to make the same thing twice, choosing a cowl over a third odd sock seemed a sound executive decision.

4. Cobbled-Together Autumn Cowl details here. Again, my heartiest thanks to Alexis for her beautiful yarny gift.

Random Postscripts
1. On Wednesday the Mr and I went out on a DATE! and saw Daniel Kitson in Where Once Was Wonder. Fabulous. Sadly no tickets left for the remainder of this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival but the Mr and I have made a mutual decision to be groupies and join his mailing list and thank him exuberantly for any updates he emails. I know Daniel Kitson will love this.

2. I have decided to relaunch my career. Sort of. First I need to grow up and decide what to be. Not a sock knitter.

“If You’re Going to Eat Chocolate for Breakfast You May as Well Eat Pineapple Upside-Down Cake for Dinner”

Early on Sunday morning, I squished my eyes closed tight, clamped my hands over my ears and tra-la-la-ed while my three kids relished in the delight of an entirely self-choreographed, chocolated, Easter breakfast. At one point I overheard the eldest advise the youngest to ‘listen to her body’. The youngest stopped munching and held silent and still, her head cocked to the side, for whole, long moments: LUCKY I CAN’T HEAR MY BODY TELLING ME ANYTHING!

Not long after, we piled in the car with packed lunches and headed for the hills. We found a walking track, noted the cool and the damp and the

exquisite



detail.



After a while, the voices calmed and those three kids fell back into themselves:

Dreamers...



Adventurers...



Inventors...



Bite-Off-More-Than-You-Can-Chew-ers...



The vague plan was to hang out in the hills for the day – at least ’til the Mr stumbled across a chestnut tree.



The day became foraging for chestnuts,



hoping like heck a spiked meteorite wouldn’t plummet to earth, via a human head.



We rushed home – quicksticks! – for fire-building, roasting and toasting. Spent the afternoon and early evening in the backyard, by the fire, babysitting those chestnuts,



drinking tea, listening to just one more Harry Potter chapter, waiting for spur-of-the-moment, Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes to emerge from the oven. More chocolate was consumed. More Mama eyes were averted.

The Chief Chestnut Roaster (aka Mr Myrtleandeunice) noted the knit-knit-(not-stopping)-knitting of the Rubble jumper,



and suggested rustic hunks of Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, a perfectly viable dinner. He reckoned that was the kind of wisdom he’d be happy to be quoted on.



A Sunday packed to the brim and overflowing and runneth over-ing with GOOD.

Monday night dinner: virtuous, brownest rice; holier-than-thou broccolini. Tonight: less smug, (buttery) brussel sprouts and chestnuts.

Just all ’round YUM.

E is for Easter(ish)

Usually, at this time of year I hunt out the carefully wrapped handmade-every-year-by-us Easter decorations. Usually, there is as much ceremony involved with decorating the Easter Tree, as there is with the end of year festive version.

Somewhat guiltily, I note a new Easter ‘usually’ developing. A ‘usually’ that involves a second year of Mum not having the FOGGIEST which Very Safe Place the treasured Easter decorations are hidden. A ‘usually’ involving a last minute attempt to engage disgruntled offspring in a whole, new approach to festooning the Easter tree. A ‘usually’ prompting mess and fabric scraps and PVA glue (with the bonus fun of peeling dried PVA glue ‘skin’ off fingers and face and hair and clothes and Mum’s fingers and face and hair and clothes).

Once we finished our Easter Tree, we all stepped back and there was a little sigh and a small voice wondered where, oh where, are the Easter decorations?

This year buttons saved Easter.



A few strands



of speedy button threading



and there was consensus that now our house is definitively Easter-



ISH.

Someone has posed an Easter Chick at the base of the Easter tree.



He’s doing his level best to be convinced.

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PS. MAY YOUR EASTER BE SLATHERED IN DRIPPING-WITH-BUTTER HOT CROSS BUNS AND GET-TOGETHERS AND HUNTINGS OF THE CHOCOLATIEST KIND!