I think Civiblog has been deserted. My blog host, which I really have come to like, hasn't been active for a year. So far, no blog seems affected, but it's no longer the community I hoped for. For a variety of reasons I've decided to move hosts, and in the meantime I've started posting on http://mummydothat.blogspot.com. Layout elements etc still in process of being transferred, but new contents is already up for the moment.

So why am I moving?

- Civiblog has no SEO tools, so my traffic has been static and rather low. Which may be a sign that my blog is of little interest, fair enough, but you can't blame a girl for trying to get more readers.
- There is no active community on civiblog (anymore) and I want to network a bit more
- my blogging themes have changed and the majority of blog posts are no longer linked to civil society though this is still a passion of mine
- I'm not allowed to make money on my blog at civiblog. This hasn't been policed and I doubt that there is anyone who would, but don't want to chance having my blog deleted for the sake of earning a few pennies.

I've considered using Typepad, after deciding Wordpress isn't for me, but for the moment I want to save the cost if Blogger works out ok for me, I give it a couple of weeks but so far it's looking like it does all I want. The only thing I'm rather disappointed with is that the import blog function causes an error. I had really hoped that I would have been able to transfer all my content to the new blog.

The new blog is called Mummy Do That because that's what Cubling tells me every day, and really, it's about all the stuff that mummy Cartside does with the time that she's been given. One fine day in March, I changed from Cartside to Mummy. Whatever they say, once you're a mum, you're mainly a mum, everything else is second, and I'm finally no longer pretending that this is not the case. I like being a mum. The new title reflects that. My pen name will remain Cartside because I love living at the White Cart Water. All things considered though, the new blog is really just a continuation of this blog, not a break with it.

So, hope to see you at http://mummydothat.blogspot.com and do say hello! there, follow me and if you would even change your link / add a link to my blog... that would be just brilliant .

On the long long road to the Cotswolds, thanks to driving hubby and sleeping Cubling, I was able to pick up some knitting needles which reminded me that I still have a few crafty items in waiting for a post. Having knitted a good few items for friends and family, it was about time that Cubling herself should be thought of and in time for her second birthday, I knitted her a cardigan. It was ready a few weeks early and to be honest, I couldn't wait to put it on her, and so I did. It's still a bit wide (surprise, she's not exactly slim) but lengthwise, just fine. I'm not particularly happy with the yarn used - neither feel of the yarn nor my choice of colour. While I don't mind that it looks a bit christmassy, I realised that I went for the dark autumnal colours that I pick for my own wardrobe, rather than the light yellows and greens that are a joy to see on Cubling.



Nevermind, the cardigan was easy and fast to knit, and my first attempt at some embroidery, which went, well, mildly wrong. I'll call it personality the way the back embroidery is ever so clearly off centre. The little regular white/green stripes worked out better. The special thing about this cardigan are the bottom panels which are knitted first and then joined onto the main body - it's very effective and adds texture to the cardigan, and making the knitting of the otherwise plain stocking stitch / moss stitch a bit more interesting. It's a bit saggy around the shoulders for now, possibly because there's still a lot of space to grow into.



The timing is great though - these cool first days of spring, where Cubling can't be held indoors, just scream out for a cardigan in which she can move freely without getting cold. No restricting winter jackets, but the freedom of malleable knitware with which the explorations in the garden can be so much more fun. The yarn, if partly synthetic, is fully washable, so she can dig away without any worries from mummy even.

The pattern is from Alternknits, Cardigan for Clarke and Lily, size 2-3 years. Cubling's comment: "Cardi on!"

Some weeks can be rather frustrating. I have a drawer full of half written blog posts (that'll be a mental drawer) but no time to write. And if I say frustrating, it's relative. The week has been good, time for blogging has been short. I'm not moaning, just saying hello I'm still here but there may not be any sign of my mental posts becoming real ones because sometimes we juggle with too many balls.

At work, I've been to a few really exciting events which I'd like to blog about, but preparations for our big weekend trip down south plus lovely visitors in the evening who keep me company while hubby is away in Wales mean a certain postponement.

I've also been very busy putting together a photobook of Cubling's first year with Blurb, who kindly agreed to give me a voucher and another one to run as a competition on this blog. So watch this space for the competition and the review of Blurb - hopefully the book will arrive soon and I'll tell you all about the booksmart software Blurb uses and the results of the print. For now suffice to say that I spent much more time on it than I had intended, trying to make it a perfect book. I also spent more money on it than intended, simply because the first year book has to be the best it can be.

As to my charity book project, I've had a useful critical comment from a fellow knitter on ravelry, pointing out that people who would download an ebook on knitting are likely to be internet savvy and on ravelry, where you can get lots of free patterns. Also charity knitters usually are long standing knitters who use the same (simple) patterns again and again and are unlikely to buy such a book. Of course there may still be people who would buy such a book, still, time for a bit more thinking and market research. It's a lot of work, and I don't want it to be a failure.

Tomorrow we'll make our way to a wedding in the Cotswolds. That's a 350 mile car trip methinks, and the first time we'll do such a journey with Cubling. I'm rather apprehensive, especially as advice goes to try and get past Birmingham before lunch. How on earth we can make that I don't know. It's a long way to Birmingham and somehow I don't see Cubling sitting happily in her car seet for 4 hours non stop.

Not that I feel like weddings. Or like birthday celebrations. It's a strange tension of feelings which all boil down to the wrongness of things. We should be happy to celebrate Cubling's birthday or her grampa's special birthday or even mother's day. Yet all that I can see is the empty chair that isn't even there. The huge and impossible loss that feels so much more real on days of family celebrations. It also brings back how my mother is missing out by having left us too early, how much she had longed for a grandchild. When Cubling was finally there, she no longer was, and she would have loved her so much. This grief for her is no longer very present for me, the grief for what was withheld from her still lingers after all these years. Of course the kids are oblivious to all of this and enjoying themselves. This is good. It feels right among all the wrongness.

Still, I don't want to let the clouds take over. This week, I've been very happy for my friend J and her now officially healthy bump, and I'm counting the weeks until I'll be an auntie again (that'll be 20).

My beautiful baby is two today. It seems like only yesterday that she looked like this:





Now you're 88cm, about 14kg, and still as wild, loud and a roller coaster of emotions as ever. The glow of pride and elation when you blew out your birthday candle on the first attempt, the cheeky grin when saying "happy birthday" and the squeak of delight with which you opened one present after another (present being one of your few truly bilingual words). Your generosity of cuddles, kisses, and how you love doing "criss cross apple sauce" on mummy's back, or how you launch into an upside down baby without warning. Your infectious laughter, and the way you find so many things "funny!" or the way when you don't like something you'll say "sorry mummy sorry". How you know how to get your way with an irresistable "do that mummy pleaeaeaease!" So much energy, joy and happiness.

Happy birthday my little firecracker, I love you to bits!

Here's a brief update on my Big Idea. Maybe not brief because a lot has happened. It will be the short version of events, even if that's not going to be short in the strictest sense.

To recap, Save the Children's Knit One Save One campaign was a shocking success. It involved knitting a baby hat and sending it with a message to Gordon Brown about our responsibility to do something about so many million children not reaching their 5th birthday due to entirely preventable conditions that cause their untimely death. The target of the campaign (in the UK) was 50,000 baby hats. We've now received over 650,000 and they keep coming. There is no money left to send them abroad, to be honest, we don't know what to do with them. Well, we do, they will go to other charities so the knitting wasn't wasted!

What the campaign illustrates is that a) you can sometimes capture people's imagination b) unexpectedly and in much bigger ways than anticipated c) knitters love knitting for charity d) there are many more knitters than anyone would expect.

I've been going about pondering how this creative potential could be engaged further. I found the website www.craftivism.com, joined charity knitting groups on www.ravelry.com. I talked to people. Save the Children will be 90 this year and during a brainstorm on how to use this anniversary to raise awareness of Save the Children's work and maybe even fundraise for the organisation, I came up with the idea of a book. The 90 recipies from 90 countries Save the Children works in was well received, the alternative of 90 knitting patterns less so, but I'm just too curious to find out if the knitting theme can pull off another surprise.

So I'm going to publish a book for the 90th anniversary of Save the Children with a knitting theme.

Now to the technicalities. I investigated www.createspace.com where you can self publish. They print on demand, they have a transparent pricing overview. The drawback is the actual production cost - a knitting book really needs colour, and colour books are expensive. The actual profit for Save the Children wouldn't be great. More complex is the issue that they pay by bank transfer into a US bank or by cheque only - no paypal option. So either I need to find a way to open a US bank account, or link up with my US colleagues, or bite even more into the profits by cashing foreign currency cheques (they carry a significant commission). I also learned that there's tax to be considered - any product sold is taxable income, createspace being a US company, this would be taxable in the US. There are ways to offset and reclaim, but it all means hassle and declaring it as personal income when really the profit goes to Save the Children.

So I returned to Lulu. Lulu offer payment by paypal. The also offer e-book publishing - this means that I can publish the book as a download and avoid all book production cost. The only cost to the downloader is that which I set as a "royalty" (read donation), minus 20% commission which Lulu takes. The drawback is that there's no real book, the plus is that this is the best way to create an affordable book without any initial outlay of costs. Of course, Lulu also offers real books by on demand publishing. The price is comparable to createspace, with the only difference that I personally can buy a bulk order at a cheaper unit price and sell on locally in shops / amongst friends. I can do both the downloadable version and the real book version. Tax implications remain but as Lulu's services have always been international, there is lots of information and it doesn't look quite as daunting.

So for the moment I'm inclined towards Lulu. I haven't found any other online on demand book publisher that doesn't require an initial outlay of a significant sum before a book is published, although I'm still open to look at other providers if they do exist.

Encouraged by the cheap option of a downloadable book on Lulu, I sent out my first request on the Ravelry charity knitting group, asking people for patterns they would be prepared to share for this project. So far, it seems that I'm asking the wrong people. While supportive, charity knitters seem to use free and simple patterns, they don't tend to design their own that they can give away. So I may have to go the route of asking pattern designers if they want to get involved, or going around charity knitting websites that offer free patterns. While this is more work, it's also exciting and gives me new ideas. I'm even thinking that the book could be on charity crafting and portray initiatives, what they do, and become a resource of charity crafting.

This was only the first approach to charity knitters, there are many doors that I plan to knock on. However if anyone who reads this has ideas, knows an interesting website on this subject or even has a knitting / crochet / sewing pattern they would like to contribute to this book, please do get in touch! Comment box is below, alternatively send me an email: knit @ cartside dot co dot uk (as ever, remove the spaces, and replace dot with and actual dot).

Did I say it was a brief update?

You may remember my recent post calling for fabrics to support a sewing project for African women refugees in Glasgow who suffer from mental health problems. What a wordy phrase, and of course that description is a very crude simplification of lots of issues. Anyway, Karibu is a refugee community organisation based in Glasgow which brings together French speaking women refugees from Africa and looks at what they can do to improve their situation as lone parents, women with no access to money, women who have been through hell and back to get here and then were disempowered by the asylum system  in this country, and as parents living in a very different culture and with all the clashes of values and customs that can cause. Karibu does lots of things, and the sewing project is one of the most recent endeavours.

The history to my involvement is short - I got a phone call and request for fabric and knowing how therapeutic crafting can be, was all ears. I sourced fabric from my own home, asked my colleagues, got some unused fabrics from the office together and asked one of our charity shops for rejects. This time I didn't get any fabric through posting on the blog. Still, there was about 3 bags worth of fabric.

Today, Karibu exhibited the first finished sewing projects at the Govanhill International Women's Day Celebration at Govanhill Neighbourhood Centre. I had a sneak preview last week when I dropped off another bag, so I already had had a chance to admire the colourful robes, quilted cushions, beautiful head gear and practical oven gloves/aprons. What I saw today was also a lot of happy and cheerful faces. The women wore traditional outfits, the children had their hair plaited in the most adorable fashion and everyone was chatting, smiling, enjoying food and company.

And as ever, Karibu have lots of plans for the future. They have no money to implement any of their projects but somehow, with persistence, enthusiasm and clarity of purpose, they manage to find ways to support each other. They show what commitment and taking on challenges can achieve. They are an inspiration to us all. The sewing projecgt continues and fabric donations are still welcome. The photos below are taken from the exhibition and sale and depict the organisers of and not participants in the sewing project.

The black item is a traditional headdress. It looks like a tube and not very interesting lying on a table, but when put on, it's a beautiful traditional headdress. Underneath are quilted apron for cooking and quilted oven gloves and a lot of cushion covers.

This is a cushion - the flowers are quilted onto the main fabric.

These are traditional overcoats, for receiving guests formally.

Cubling has made leaps and is now a truly talking toddler. Her choice of language has no pattern, some words come out in English, some in German, some in both. She's definitely entered the 2 word sentence stage, which seems to come with a sudden interest in more complex imaginative play.

Yesterday, she put her favourite polar bear (soft toy I dare add) into a toy travel cot, complete with pillow, duvet, rabbit, singing a song, patting his chest and trying to close his eyes. Later that same day, she insisted on mummy playing WITH her with the toy caravan. One of her new words is "mit" (with), as in "mummy mit!" (come along mummy, play with me mummy). She's also mindbogglingly said "Regenbogen" and "triangle". Repeatedly, so I'm not imagining it. When we go out and put jackets on, she'll enquire where we'll go - swing park, elephants (that would be Kelvingrove museum), A (cousin), shop, N (childminder)? Her first full line of nursery rhyme is "horsey horsey don't you stop" . My daughter even knows the theory of phonetics, specifically she knows what a plosive is and can distinguish voiced from voiceless consonants, which she demonstrates by consistently exchanging velar plosives (k, g) with the relevant voiced/voiceless palatal plosives (t, d). See, studying linguistics will come in very useful when analysing the emerging language of your toddler, and not worrying about a potential speech impediment! Hurray, my education wasn't in vain.

On the con side, she still repeats the same string of 2 words until mummy starts to scream. I'm getting ever so slightly tired of endless car conversations which go something like this: "mummy?" "yes dear?" "daddy!". Repeat until breaking point. Or how about this: "moon?" "Es regnet, der Mond ist heute nicht da." "moon?" "Es regnet, der Mond ist heute nicht da." "moon?" repeat about 169 times. Replace moon with sky, Himmel or star for variation, depending on the day of the week. If no parental respond is forthcoming, eardrum perforating whinging will ensue. Unfortunately she also knows the words for her favourite food now, which means that she'll demand egg, chocolate, cheese, yoghurt, bread and sausage and refuse to eat anything else. So much for all the effort of healthy weaning.

Two weeks ago, the most stunning new word she uttered made my heart miss a beat or two. She said her uncle's name when she looked at a photo of him. It was spontaneous, not encouraged (we haven't been doing photo albums recently). She remembered.

I find it difficult still to post regularly. I don’t have bloggers block, but struggle with the right angle. There are various crafty posts waiting to be written, and I will explore the interface of charity and knitting as my thoughts and ideas take shape in this area. My mind is taken up with other much more important things and the blog has taken a back seat. It’s not easy to write about everyday things or even about some recent discoveries of community activities/projects, fascinating as they may be, when all you think about is something entirely different. At present, I only scrape the surface of all the potentially exciting thoughts and projects I encounter, there is not enough depth or motivation to explore further and share here. So at some point I may talk about Transition Scotland, the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, Commonweath Orchards, update you on the Karibu sewing project etc. However, I currently recharge my batteries knitting and I have a few photographic projects lined up in my mind, and hopefully soon on my computer as well, I intend to share these while not making this a crafts blog (which it clearly is not).

 

Cubling is moving fast onto her second birthday and we still don’t have a baby photo album. This has to be remedied. So the next two weeks will see me trying to get together a nice photobook. I had hoped to have won a blurb voucher on Little Mummy's competition but wasn't lucky this time, however, I'm quite taken by her results so might even go for it even having to pay for it (hello blurb people, how about I review the result on this blog, will you send me a voucher, please???!!! See, I've even given you a link for free! Ah go on. Ah you will). I also have great film editing ideas but realistically no time at present. They won’t be forgotten though. Photography has always been a passion of mine, and so far the digital age had disappointed me. Having said that, I’ve not used my beloved SLR in some time, because hubby’s digital camera is quite a good one and so much lighter to carry, and I love having the photos on my computer instantly and being able to share them. Practicalities have taken over. Truth be told though, the quality even of his good digital camera is way off what I’m used to SLR-wise. So for a long time, I’ve wished for a digital SLR, waiting for prices to come down. I’ve saved and thanks to my dad's generous birthday and Christmas fund for his daughter, the time to buy one is now. Easier said than done, unfortunately the choice of digital SLRs is quite breathtaking  and to be honest, the last thing I want to spend time on is making sure I get just the right model.

 

So then, HELP! Does anyone have a clue to digital SLRs? Which one should I get, are there good websites which evaluate different models briefly (my intention is to spend as little time as possible reading up, so it needs to be brief)?

 

Dear readers, your thoughts, would be mightily appreciated, and you’ll end up having luvely piccies on this blog in the near future!

Our house has been invaded. The invaders either live in pots or tubes, and are invariably named "blue" or "blau" by Cubling. They have captured her very mind. Their effect on Cubling is that of a class A drug, the addiction is powerful and shows signs of dominating her very life, with ripple effects on her immediate family. In desperation to lay her hands on any of the invaders, Cubling's language has made leaps. Words like "off", "blue", "yellow", "pen" "paper", "draw", "brush",  "in there", "messy" and "look mummy" (she can say the latter up to 15 times in a row without even taking a breath) are terrorising Cubling's parents. The invaders have strange transforming effects on paper, walls, tables, chairs, floors, eyes, ears, arms, tummies, hands, skin and sometimes even paper. Once the drug is applied, there are permanent marks left on such surfaces which are only pretty to the eye of the agents of Cubling's birth and conception.

However, the liquid alien invaders have a certain attraction and come in handy for the creation of birthday cards for other toddlers who all happen to turn two at the moment (I wonder why that is) and are duly recycled in such manner.

In the meantime, mummy is trying hard to explain that permanent marks on paper are very nice, permanent marks on furniture and walls are less so, applying the drug of choice to tongues, inside ears and to skin in general is not recommended as it results in serious scrubbing and cold turkey (separation from alien liquids).

Cubling is currently deeply steeped in her blue phase as befits a future Picasso. This extends to both waking and sleeping times of the day. Her dreams are taken up by exploring why yellow is not blue and blue is not yellow, and why red starts with a letter that Cubling cannot for the life of her pronounce, so therefore should not denominate such an important representative of the invaders. Upon waking, oftentimes a panicky and urgent "blue! Yellow!" can be heard, a further sign that the invaders have taken control of her mind.

Cubling has a good sense of humour. There's nothing better than her infectious giggle. Her excited super fast dancing on the spot when she knows it's time for bath time bubble fun with her cousin ("bubbles!"), watching In the Nightgarden ("baby!") or going to the park ("seesaw seesaw seesaw").

She finds this hilarious:


(http://www.infoscotland.com/gogreener)

She's totally and utterly into play doh, drawing and painting, gardening (which usually involves scooping up stones and putting them into flower pots, onto the grass and into flowerbeds, or stealing the soil out of the flowerplants). Thanks to her alphabet obsessed cousin, she will now also point out every "S" and "O". Her counting is rather interesting - she always leaves out "one", which is kind of logical, after all if there's only one of a thing it doesn't need counting, does it? So she goes: two three four five eight nine ten!, sometimes also: zwei drei vier five acht neun zehn! and sometimes even: three two nine blue!

She definitely has an extended blue phase, all colours are blue/blau, although she can say yellow, green, pink, purple, brown, weiss, lila, silber, orange. It's almost as if "blue/blau" means "colour" to her. Her "k" is consistently a "t" and that means that OK becomes OT, which is ever so cute and has gladly taken on in frequency over the past week after a rather frustrating couple of weeks where her answer to absolutely everything was NO.

Her favourite words at the moment are "a dassa", which she uses for things she isn't confident to say (I wonder if it is a variation of "was ist das"), moon, spoon, star, fish, draw, books. She also loves first names, and her vocabulary expands steadily. She is quite clever to pick up bits of conversation not directed at her (like me asking hubby who this band "Elbow" were as I'd never heard of them so far, which made Cubling helpfully point at hubby's elbow with and explanatory "ebow" to make sure mummy knows what an elbow is. Still no sentences, but many more words, including preprositions, adjectives and lots of words I don't understand. She can now imitate new words if they are repeated to her, she doesn't always do it but she can if her mindset is thus. Her cousin is still bound to overtake her active German vocabularly in the next few weeks, but then again, he's exceptional so there's no real competition there.

And the big news of the week is that weaning from mummy milk has been completed. The last feed (morning feed, theoretically any time after 5am but with Cubling waking earlier most nights and not getting back to sleep, this feed had slipped back to 4am or even earlier on some nights) was hard to get rid of. So here's how it all went:

I weaned her off the evening feed in 3 days, day number four she didn't even ask for it anymore. The feed was replaced by books and I explained that she was now a big girl and didn't need mummy milk but could have cow milk from a cup. One night of slight protest, 2 nights of asking for milk, and that was that. Phew, easy.

The morning feed took 3 full weeks to get rid of. It was fine on working days, I simply cuddled her until she would eventually fall back asleep, sometimes that meant 2 or 3 hours of tossing and turning and regular little cries. I was knackered but being used to interrupted sleep and constant sleep deprivation, it was fine. Then, the weekends when I had to consider the sleep of her cousin, it was harder. I didn't want her to cry and usually gave in to feeding her just to keep her quiet. So 2 weeks we had 4 days a week no feed at all, 3 days a week a morning feed. By week 2 I knew that there was no milk. Week three we managed with no feed at all, but still lots of waking and crying and cuddling to calm the crying. This is us at the end of week 3. Last night she slept through and spent the whole night in her own good bed - this is worth mentioning because it very rarely happens - she usually wakes at some point during the night with a big big cry and won't stop until taken through to our bed, so I'm really not used to waking up in the morning withouth Cubling beside me. And did I rejoyce in jubilation? No, of course not, I panicked, thinking something MUST be wrong because Cubling NEVER sleeps through. But actually, last night she really and truly did and she was of course perfectly fine.

Anyway, where was I? After waking her and taking her through to our bedroom for a bit of play and cuddles, she asked for milk, but with a cheeky grin. I complied. She didn't latch, just pretended to, then shook her head - mimi all gone. Other side, the same. A big smile on her face. She doesn't miss it. Neither do I. In fact, it felt like she didn't quite remember how to do it. And I didn't quite remember what it felt like either. Gone like it never happened. We were both very attached to those special calming moments of closeness and nurture. It lasted so much longer than I ever imagined, but I'm happy that this is it. It took 4 weeks to wean, without forcing the issue too much, and on the whole it was much easier than some people made me believe. Bye bye magic mummy milk.

Why did I feed for so long? Because it got easy. Because it was convenient. Because it made her settle and sleep. Because it meant I didn't have to spend hours during the night calming her. Because it's good for her. Because she liked it so much. Because for all the pain and worry at the beginning, I wanted to make sure it had been worth the effort. Because she doesn't drink much milk or other liquids during the day. Because it soothed her so well whenever she was ill. Because it worked, felt right and good.