Quietly Content at Home

Originally published 19 September 2022 under my crochet business, Liz & Lottie. These crochet King's Guards are made in one piece with almost no sewing! Suitable for beginners with just a 4mm hook and some 8ply/DK yarn, make a set of these soldiers for a castle play set. I started drafting this pattern back in 2015, hoping to make a set of little soldiers for a toddler's Grand Old Duke of York play set. My amigurumi skills were not quite up to it and I made a set of peg dolls instead. With the sad news of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I thought it might be time to finish it off. We have not been to visit our girls' grandmother's home in England since 2016. The youngest has never seen the Grenadier guards in person before but was very interested in the soldiers when watching the tv coverage of the proclamation of King Charles III. I had barely cut the threads on my draft prototype of this pattern before she toddled off with it to play with her castle...

 It seems it was another lifetime, but my husband and I met in another city at university. Of the things I studied during that short time before we decided that our new family was more important, creative writing and archaeology were my best subjects. Feeding all my old drafts, manuscripts and notes (including a novella and a poetry collection) through the shredder a few years back while decluttering old tax papers was the most freeing and cathartic act. What I was writing wasn't bad but those papers had served their purpose back then in my pointless, lonely university days and have no place in my happy, full adult life of family and meaningful work so I joyfully shredded them. And you know what happened next? After thirteen years of writing nothing beyond thank you notes and grocery lists, the words began to flow again. I started with a story about my daughter finding a fairy blown in her window from a storm, then another about my other daughter trying to name her pe...