The Creative Home: Yarn Along Late Spring Notebook

Today I am joining Ginny for Yarn Along and Frontier Dreams for Keep Calm and Craft On.

On the needles:: I have found a new slouchy hat pattern, one that I have knitted up before and loved (just didn’t love the yarn I chose the first time so much). This time round I am loving the result so far. The quality and type of yarn definitely makes a difference – I think I may becoming a bit of a yarn snob lol.

This pattern I found in an old knitting magazine that I have. It is easy to knit up and I just love the decorative ribbing. This hat is knitted flat on who needles, you hardly notice the seam once it is made up. I do think that I am going to give the other pattern another go – as a wonderful fellow Yarn Alonger shared wit me last week, often it is user error – and I wholeheartedly agree with her. Truth be told my concentration levels are just not at their peek right now 🙂

Reading:: I have quite a few books on the go and am looking forward to sharing them all with you, but today I thought I would share the books that I have taken out of the library for our read aloud time each day. Arthur Ransome is one of our favourite authors. Last year we read ‘Swallows and Amazons’ and ‘Swallowdale’, a delightful series of stories set in the Lake District of England. Having visited Lake Windemere, the setting of these books, it has been a delight to my girls to recognize places and the landscape of which they read.

Next week Thursday, we are off to the Norfolk Broads to spend a week on a house boat and enjoying this new-to-us place. I knew that Arthur Ransome had written many many books for children and had a look through his list of books to see if I could find anything suitable to tie in with our living and learning experiences, and I found something! ‘Coot Club’ (published in 1934) and ‘The Big Six’ (published 1940) are two books he wrote that are set in the Norfolk Broads.

We have begun our reading with Coot Club. This story sees the Callum children, previously introduced to the reader in the book ‘Winter Holiday’, visiting the Norfolk Broads for the Easter holidays. The stay with a family friend who is staying on a small yacht called the Teasel. Here they meet a gang of local children, one of whom is Tom. There is much adventure tied into this book as is characteristic of Arthur Ransome’s books, and of course plenty of sailing and landscape descriptive’s too. 

Arthur Ransome seems to take everyday happenings and turn them into gripping and engaging experiences for children. I love how you can live a vicarious and free childhood through his books ;o)