pic of the week

tight

last saturday i walked past this beautiful woven willow fence in bow; last sunday i was given a little weaving frame by my secret santa; this week all i managed to do in terms of me-time was playing with my little weaving frame and my favourite colour combinations. this week was so packed and space-less – which i kind of knew when i accepted to deliver a 4-day peer mediation course in a lambeth school. but being in it it still felt incredibly intense and coming out of it i feel really compressed! it involved a 10-hour planning meeting, getting up a 5.30am for four mornings in a row, cycling altogether 76 miles between east and south london, having a 1-hour prep meeting at the start of each day and a 1.5 hour debrief and re-shuffle meeting at the end of it, and unfortunately also quite a bit of other work when i got home that needed doing. most of my supportive morning and evening routines went out of the window with this schedule and it felt at one point that all i did was to get up, go to work, come home, play with my new weaving frame for 5 minutes, go to sleep. the work was very rewarding, that’s why i did it. and also very demanding: being present all the time, responsive to the group and my co-trainers, flexible to change things around – and that’s part of what makes it so rewarding. the most exhausting part for me is the school environment, the early starts, the time-table-ing and fitting and squeezing things into a day: i bow my head to all the teachers that have such a routine every day of their work week!s

i will now do some de-compressing over the weekend and am starting with just letting the faces and voices and conversations of the week bubble up and about in my head for a bit while i might be doing some more weaving…