Knit One, Purl One

As mentioned in my previous post Seize the days – live life to the full! I’m off to a knitting class and I just remembered this morning that it’s TONIGHT!! Even though I write everything down in my diary I still can’t keep a handle on what I’m doing from one day to the next (bit scary considering I’m a project manager by profession....).
Anyway, the knitting class. I’m not sure what I’m expecting but my intentions when I signed up for it were to learn a new skill. I got obsessed with learning new skills after watching the BBC programme Survivors whereby a virus hits Earth and most of the population are wiped out, apart from a few social misfits who were immune. Obviously it’s a rather morbid thing to happen but it got me thinking if we had to survive it would be good to have skills that you could use to trade with other people until the world got back on its feet. My version of the TV programme would obviously be a bit more idealistic than what happened in the show, people seemed to prefer going round with guns and making threats to get all the things they needed to survive!! In my world it would work something like this: I would knit someone a jumper in exchange for 3 months supply of eggs, or a haircut – sound like quite fair trades to me!
I’ve done a bit of knitting before - well sort of! My Nan would teach me every now and then when I was younger as I would insist I wanted to learn. I would start the obligatory scarf (because this is all you can think of knitting when you’re about 8 years old!), get about 20 rows into it and see all the holes where I’d dropped stitches, get frustrated and give up. So tonight I’m hoping that with age on my side I won’t give up after a few hours, and perhaps if I set my sights on something a bit more exciting than a scarf I might find it an inspiring past time that I can in turn pass on to my little girl. I'm not sure I'll be skilled enough to dress the survivors of a Pandemic head to toe in knitted fashions but I'll do my best! More tomorrow.....

photo by Flickr user The Loopweaver

Seize the Days - live life to the full!

I'm always very conscious of the limited time we spend on this earth and I like to make the best use of my time whenever I can. That's why the Lonely Planet book 132 Seize the Days really appealed to me. We're always complaining in this country about the lack of bank holidays we get in the UK, but I bet most of us don't make the best of the time off that we do have every year anyway. This book outlines that in fact there are 132 days in the year that we can please ourselves (comprised of 52 weekends, 8 bank holidays and minimum of 20 days statutory annual paid leave).

This book gives excellent ideas on how best to use your time. It makes you realise that there are small amounts of time that you may waste, like your work lunch hour - most people spend it eating lunch at their desks, when there could be interesting things going on nearby or nice walks to take.

I also subscribe to the email flyer (Seize the Days) that compliments the book and arrives in my inbox every week. It gives information about various fun and inspiring things to do that week up and down the country, including festivals (food - yum!, music) and exhibitions (art, historical) and all sorts of other strange things like cheese rolling in Gloucestershire!

Obviously I realise that us mums are time poor and most of us have to cram a lot into our busy lives but it's worth thinking every now and again that life is too short to spend it doing housework and boring stuff, getting out with your family creates wonderful memories! I'm going to make an effort to seize my days by taking a walk out in Kensington Gardens in my lunch hour, it's, beautiful, 5 minutes away and really there is no excuse not to! I'm also taking a knitting lesson (how old am I!?) in a couple of weeks, so I hope to fill some of my spare time clacking my needles on the train to work - more on the knitting lesson in a future post.

Photo by Flickr user Xavier Donat