The big picture of simple living

This candle, made of beeswax, was sent to me over the ocean by the lovely Niki at rural writings. Hi Niki!

We have a public holiday here next Monday so yesterday I brought home my work laptop and the new standards manual and I'm not going back to work till next Wednesday. At work I am interrupted with phone calls, meetings and people coming in to talk, so I'll get this project started at home, then go back.

I feel like I'm on a tiny holiday.

But today I'll get reacquainted with my home. I haven't seen the chooks since last week, nor been into the garden, so that will be my first priority this morning. There are also clothes to be washed, bread to be baked and the bed linen needs changing. House keeping is a great leveller. It doesn't matter how many people line up to see me at work, at home here I am the one who puts things to rights, I pick up, wash, clean and sweep, and get renewed in the process.

Generally I do my everyday chores when it is their time but if there is something unusual that I don't like doing, I try to do it as soon as I can. That gives me the satisfaction of completing an unwanted task early on and I don't have to work through the day thinking about doing something I don't want to do. It squares the unwanted out of the way and leaves ample room for enjoyment.

Hanno is still fast asleep now but when he wakes, we'll have breakfast and talk about what we'll do over the coming days. We may well go out! I have an idea forming about him taking me to lunch and me taking him to the movies afterwards. We haven't been out together since we picked up the chickens so it will be nice to take a day off and just float around.

On the crafting front, I'm still knitting dishcloths, I have a lot of work to do (still) on Shane's birthday quilt and I haven't yet started a winter knitting project. I have some lovely yarn to use so I'll have to get onto that soon. My thoughts are wandering to a cosy shawl. Does anyone know of a nice pattern? This afternoon I'll be drawing stitchery patterns for Liz A, Lightening and Ann so I'll check out their blogs first to see what I can find to include in their patterns.

As usual I'm behind in answering emails. I apologise if you're waiting for a reply, I hope to do some tomorrow morning. I also want to get back to the comments that I haven't answered. I read them all every day but often I don't have the time to reply. Again I apologise. I love the comments and I build up pictures in my mind of the people who comment regularly and each new comment adds another piece of the puzzle. So thank you for your contributions to this blog. The comments here really add a lot to the big picture of simple living.