I have been away for way too many weeks now. But I’m making my way back, and I think I can probably tentatively share a few of the things that have been going on.

I’ve mentioned before that we’re trying to move house – we’re only moving a few streets away, but it’s be a tough process (and one that I really hope we don’t have to do again for YEARS and YEARS.

Hopefully things are going to get finalised in the next couple of weeks and we’ll get to move either at the end of May or sometime in early June. I’ll have to close the shop around the time of the move, and it won’t open again until we get broadband installed at the new house. (But even so it should only be shut for a few weeks.

However when I come back, I’m planning to have a sale – as well as some extra yarn that has been sitting patiently in the wings waiting for me to be able to finish processing it.

Unless we have an awful, constantly wet summer, then the move (after some settling in) should allow me to start dyeing again, and I’m planning to be in regular dyeing mode from the end of June(ish) to September in preparation for the autumn.

I guess I just wanted you to know that Oxford Yarn really does still exist. It’s just that big life stuff has taken over here, and so it got a bit nudged to the side.

Personally I can’t wait to move and start getting settled in our new house (with a garden! So exciting.) And I really can’t wait to get some freshly dyed yarn onto the washing line. Expect photos when I do!

What do you do?

I get asked this pretty regularly, and I find I’m still answering the same way I did two or three years ago – “I naturally dye yarn, and I build and manage websites.”

I have to say this answer doesn’t feel totally true, or genuine these day, even with the ‘oh and I’m a mother’ tacked on the end. Or rather because ‘oh and I’m a mother’ is tacked on the end, when – in reality – mothering is what I spend the vast amount of my time doing.

At a time when most of my other parent friends have long gone back to work, I’m still here, living a day to day life with FB beside me, and managing websites during naptime, as well as working towards us moving house (soon *fingers crossed*) so that I can start dyeing again.

Aside from a very hands on husband, I’ve don’t have any other external support, so if one of us is sick, or (like last night) up half the night with a little boy who is too awake and probably teething, then some of my plans have to shift a bit. Which means if I don’t want to be chronically short on time, a have to limit how many plans are made in the first place.

I don’t know when I started feeling like explaining my life was some how wrong… except that staying at home to look after your children seems pretty alien to most people.

Or maybe I just assume that they’ll find it strange. And suddenly feel the need to justify myself – ‘well I do work too – I’m self employed! We don’t have lots of money but we get by and live without a car, etc etc’ (See how I’m sneakily justifying myself to you there? Clever huh?)

Oxford Kitchen Yarns is still really important to me, and I’m still really committed to it. But I’ve also made my peace with the idea that I can’t do shows right now, and that it’s going to stay a tiny little company while other bits of my life settle themselves down.

And that right now, the truth is that I’m a mother. Who also dyes yarn and builds websites (sometimes.)

I’ve got to say that the chicken came together surprisingly quickly, after some leisurely handsewing.  And to be honest we didn’t wait till Easter Sunday to give her to FB – after I’d wrestled it out of W’s arms (he thinks it the best thing ever. It is very pleasing to tuck it under your arm, I have to say.)

Of course then the weather was grey and dull for three days and I couldn’t photograph it.

And when the sun shone my (very) enthusiastic assistant wanted to help…

Since then our Easter has progressed on similar lines to last year (fever, snotty nose, general lack of sleep all round. Though luckily no hospitalisation this time.)

However there was baking, which I’ll post about next. 🙂