yarn along: june 2022, clearing my needles (and head)

June 2022 begins under a bit of a cloud, both publicly and personally.  I don't really have any new words to add to the clamoring voices.  All I can do is think, "What if it were my kid?" and offer prayers for peace.  

The past few weeks have bridged school year and summer as my people finish all their activities and prepare to start a couple of new ones.  My oldest graduates in a few short days and prepares for a whole new chapter in her life.  We are thrilled for her and, at the same time, change is hard. The middle years of parenting are disorienting and bewildering and humbling (so humbling!).  Our calendar is full; I'm not getting enough sleep, which is never ever a good thing for my mental state.  Both sets of grandparents arrive next week, and I can't wait for their comforting presences.

Still, there's knitting and reading, two balms for my troubled heart, and right now the only things I feel like I do with any sort of competence.  In May I finished a pair of socks and two shawls, and I cast on three(!) more shawls.  My project basket is overflowing right now, and the other day I wrote myself a little knitting triage flow chart to help me clear the needles.  The knitting time I've given myself is optimistic, but I'm pressing on.  One week to finish a pair of socks--that's enough, surely. Projects currently receiving attention: St. Mary Mead socks and Z's cowl, which is a self-drafted pattern.  On evenings when my brain is fried beyond belief, I find the Briogarter Split to be the rhythmic and mindless knitting I crave.

My reading consists almost entirely of planning for next school year, especially for my Form 3 (seventh grade) student.   Ourselves is my favorite of Charlotte Mason's volumes, one that I'm eager to revisit with my newest middle schooler.  It's also one of the best books to help pull me out from under that black cloud.  This morning's reading gave me a new motto to add to my little "Book of Mottoes": Up and be doing.   

For pleasure I have been taking in little snippets of Sesame and Lilies, a CMEC assignment for the high school students.  I copied the following, a reference to good, old books, into my Commonplace book:

"The place you desire," and the place you FIT YOURSELF FOR, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this:-- it is open to labor and merit and nothing else...[at the gates...] there is but brief question:-- "Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be a companion of nobles? Make yourself noble and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it and you shall hear it. But on other terms? No.  If you will not rise to us we cannot stoop to you."