I have almost finished the Cheeky Kea for Thomas (the purpley bit I'm knitting is the pocket). OK so it was meant to be for his birthday which was last Friday, but I was close ! This is a fun knit. I did find the directions a little tricky to figure out a couple of times, but I think this was partly because this is the first garment that I have knit in the round (with my new found skill of continental knitting!). I started off (at the top) doing the same repeating stripe pattern, but then got to the bit where you use both sizes of needles at once to do the body and the sleeve edges, and trying to do the sleeve edges in green and the body in stripes and having four pointy ends to deal made my head hurt, so that bit was all green, and after that the stripes are more random.
I have just finished reading Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne. My kids go to a Steiner (Waldorf) kindergarten so the ideas in here are not new to me, but I really like the way he expands upon them. Also his writing style is quite poetic, so even though it's a parenting book it's lovely to read. I don't feel like I've quite won the battle of the stuff in our house though. We have rearranged rooms so the kids could each have their own, and there are still piles of things that need new homes all over the place. We are dreadful for gathering books. One of the ideas in the Simplicity Parenting book is that kids only need a few well loved books out at one time - we're still working on that one.
