New

Today is the first day.  I love this day more than the night that precedes it.  Hogmanay can be built up, and sometimes the need to feel you are having a great time and making the most of the last moments has a slightly desperate tinge to it, but that's just me.

We had no plans, save playing a board game with the Smalls, but had the pleasantly squishy experience of a caravan full of impromptu guests last night, which was the best and most perfect way to see in the New Year, surrounded by the friends and neighbours who have helped us so much in the past six months.

After so much merry making, we decided to have a slow day spent being together, doing what small jobs were needed and resting.

It has given me space to walk the land, and dream a little more, plan a little more, see a little more.

We know where the house is going to be sited.  It isn't exactly where we would have liked, but councils don't like little houses being built on a visable hilltop, even if there is no one else to see it, and there is the practicality of being a pensioner, climbing a hill with bags of shopping.  So, the house is to be nestled into the side of the hill, not so far from the track.

With this certainty we've been able to start marking out other things.  A pond, a line of stock fencing, a barn and a woodland.  It feels good to have a solid plan after many months of switching things about.  I feel we've been flexible enough and now, armed with a little more knowledge of where the sun sets and rises in the darkest months, we are able to stick to a plan.

So, weather permitting, foundations will be put in for the house in March, and the frame will follow from that. We may have a shell in time for my middle boys birthday.  Just six short months away.

For now I am enjoying the feeling of new. New hopes, dreams and plans.

Yarn-along

I've never done a yarnalong before.

Mainly because it has taken me years to learn how to knit and purl, and I'm still at the very start of following patterns.

But I have decided that this year will be the year of KNIT and a weekly check in is a good way to keep the momentum going.

The project is a set of fingerless gloves for my nephew.  I am currently basking in knitted glory (auto text changed that sentence to "basking in kittens" which would also be nice.)

I made a rushed pair of rainbow gloves for my own littlest and his cousin came to stay.  He much admired those rainbow mitts, and before he had left he picked out some colours for his own set.  I have four days to finish them, and as he wants three colours together they're knitting up pretty fast.

After this I'm crocheting my daughter some headbands for an upcoming skiing trip.  

And reading...I can't believe I've missed out on this book as a young woman.  It's blowing my mind.  I was a wild child growing up, but somewhere along the way of becoming a young woman I lost that part of me.  I can remember being fifteen and having friends tell me that I needed to stop climbing trees and riding horses and pay more attention to boys and clothes.  I only half listened to them, but I did listen.

Since living here, and living so close to the seasons, I feel I'm back in touch with that girl, but it's better now, because I'm a woman.  And I have a confidence that I lacked in my twenties.  I hope I can convey this to my daughter, I hope she never loses her wildness within.

Sunrise

8:35 a.m. This morning.

Winter walking

We've been sitting inside for several days now, and whilst I've enjoyed playing with the Christmas presents and eating all the food.

Today I needed to blow off the cobwebs and burn a few calories, and so we went for a walk in the woods next door.

Temperatures have struggled to get above freezing for serval days now, which means we have plenty of ice to play with, and comedy chickens that flap as they slippy slide their way around.  After a quick venture out they tire of the slipping and flapping and go back in their coop where the ground is sturdier and the air is warmer.

These days

Various pictures I found on my phone from the past few days.

A robin that has taken to popping up whenever we feed the chickens.  We throw him a little seed too now.

The Mr starting his latest project, a waterwheel for electricity generation.

This rather sad specimen is our outside tree.  It was a sapling growing under two other bigger trees, and so we decided to let it have it's glory moment with lights and sparkle.

My daughter on her newest herd member.  She's eye catching, and she knows it!

The stove, with bread baking on the top.  It made a respectable baton loaf, but it didn't rise particularly well, but tastes ok.

Living temporarily

Nothing is permanent.

Nothing stays the same.

We all know this, and yet days can pass and they can feel similar, so that you don't notice the changes because they are so small, and then you do notice and perhaps you wished you'd paid more attention. 

This is how I am finding our temporary living.  I hope that we won't be living another year in this little space, but at the same time I don't want to wish it away too fast.

A few big things have happened in here . My youngest lost a baby tooth, we had our first ever game of monopoly where everyone played independently.  We got creative with Christmas decorations, making the most of limited space and decorating vertically and outside more.  

I love that I can stand and cook in the *kitchen and be involved in the conversations in the living space.  I don't always love that I can be in the living space and have a conversation with children who are in their beds and not supposed to be listening.  I know that this will change, and that one day my husband and I will be able to hold private conversations within a building, instead of opting to walk outside in order to not be heard!  This is how most of our Christmas gifting decisions have been made as the walls quite literally have ears.

In a surprising twist, having started this post about how things change, the architect drawings arrived today.  Although we are building our own home, we needed the expertise of an architect to get Planning off our back and our detailed application to be approved.  This seems to be an expense worth paying out for, because the council have left us alone and are satisfied that the architects have it all in hand.

So, with the arrival of the drawings, I am reminded once again that our current living arrangements are not permanent, and that with the arrival of Spring we will see another change, and this makes me happy and keen to embrace what will be an unusual and unforgettable festive season in our wee caravan.

*the kitchen is really nothing more than a corridor joining all the rooms together, but I'm making the space work.  Some days it works better than others.

This picture has nothing to with the post subject, but my dearest drew it on my favourite chipped coffee cup, and it made me smile, not just for the comedy face but for the effort he put in to draw it in secret.  It has washed off now.  Which proves my nothing is permanent statement, so maybe it is related...

(Honestly, these blog posts are really not very well thought out, so please give me some credit for managing to get that creative link in there.)

Winter

The snow arrived last night.  It was the most very delicate smattering.  Enough for fun, not enough to cause major disruption for us.

I know friends on the Western Isles have had a very different experience, and BBC Radio Scotland had a special report about the lightening strikes causing power cuts.  Lightening, high winds and snow?

I think you have to be a special kind of tough/ crazy to live up here.