Summer Days

Christmas and New Year has been quiet here. Not hosting Christmas means there isn’t really a lot to do in terms of baking or menu planning. That was all in the hands of my in-laws this year.

Christmas day saw us drive out to the country, to Young, the cherry capital of Australia. The landscape is dry, windswept and beautiful.

When my father in law saw this photo he said ‘that’s Australia at Christmas’. Well, one part of it anyway.

Most of our time off has seen us being at home, just being. It’s at once a much loved way to spend summer – away from crowds – and at the same time strangely subdued. I do have the sense that there’s life and excitement happening elsewhere but I’m happy to just potter here and have the odd day out, visiting here or there, seeing people when the mood strikes but mostly just focusing on withdrawing a bit from having to be anywhere. I can garden, knit, read, do odd jobs I’ve been putting off and hide from the reality of the world a little bit. It suits me. It suits us.

And so my afternoons often look like this.

Sean bought me new set of Clover Soft Touch crochet hooks for Christmas (from SuzyHausfrau) and I’ve been digging through bags of years old cotton to replenish my stash of dishcloths.

Over the break I’ve sewed, decking Alice in new summer clothes. I explained to a friend the other day that the reason to make so much stuff for her now is because the time will come when she no longer wants my simple homemade items (maybe it won’t, you never know) and I can make stuff for her now that gives me experience and new skills. It’s fun. This dress turned out to be too tight across the bodice but it’ll do for now.

And this skirt, which the designer said would take an hour, really did only take an hour. She loves owls.

There was New Years’ Eve in the city with Alice. Ice cream, fireworks and fun.

A ride on a sheep statue (it was just pretend, she explained).

We did get away for a couple of days though – to visit my parents with Alice while her parents had a break. It is nice to be somewhere else for a bit, even if home is where you want most to be.

The inlet just near my parents’ house is perfect for toddler swimming. She even put her face under. She felt very brave and none of us got sunburned given it was our first proper afternoon in the sun with less clothing on than we normally wear.

Now that festive stuff is over and the slow pace of days has settled into a gentle rhythm for a bit longer (I’m not back at work for a little while yet) I plan to sew more, keep working on the garden, have an airing of the stash (will wait until Sean goes back to work for that – there are some things he does not need to see!) and continue my general withdrawal from the world. 2013 begins not with a bang but with a quiet, sun filled dawning.

Bells

The Contented Chook

On Sunday during lunch, I looked under our lunch table and this is what I saw. Thank goodness I had my phone nearby to take a photo.

It’s Winifred looking every bit the fat, contented chicken. We try not to have the girls up on the deck with us while we’re eating. They’ve been known to attempt a table leap for food, or your lap. Mostly it’s just, and I say this with love, a bit annoying when hungry chickens harass you while you’re eating.

Even more so if what you’re eating is actually chicken. That’s weird and we’ve had moments where we pause, a drumstick hovering between plate and mouth, alarmed. I’m not opposed to pet eating per se, but it’s not a place I wish to go at this point in my chicken keeping life. It’s hard enough to massage oil into the cold, featherless body of a bird I didn’t know before putting it in the oven.

In the meantime, I just savour moments like this one, where someone, in the case it’s Winifred, wants to be quietly nearby, peaceful and content.

It certainly helps to remember such images when I’m cursing them for eating my potted lettuce.

Bells

Green Therapy

For six and a half years we’ve had a big back yard and we’ve struggled with it. I say struggled. Sean would say we’ve been thinking it through.

This is not to say that we’ve done nothing. I only have to go back through old photos to see that our garden, in the early days, bore all the hallmarks of a drought ravaged rental garden. It was barren. Way back then, we built a square vegetable patch, just to get things moving. You can see here more or less what the yard was like. Just like the space behind this bed. A big square block with nothing to recommend it. A blank canvas and us with very little knowledge or understanding of just how much work we needed to do to to make it into something.

Those first few summers were depressing. Sure we grew some veggies, but the place just felt baked. Everything did in Canberra after nearly a decade of drought. We got a deck built two years ago which was, to be frank, life changing. Shade, and a place to sit and contemplate the garden has been wonderful.

Over the years, we put in more beds (always built with a sense of being temporary while we thought things through), planted some ash trees which are now in their third year and really providing some structure and we’re in the process of planning some proper raised beds, tall ones so the chickens can’t get into them.

After a particularly big weekend of yard work last week, I took some photos, again, thinking we really don’t have much of a back yard. Then I looked at the photos, looked again at our yard, and realised actually I’m telling myself lies. We do have a nice back yard. It’s absolutely a work in progress but progress has been made. Compare the above photo to this one.

It’s green – the end of the drought helped with that. There is structure thanks to the thriving ash trees, lush beds and the chicken enclosure which we try to keep as neat looking as possible – the addition of plants around the enclosure really helps with that I think. See the tall sweet peas up along the side?

And on the other side I built last week a narrow herb bed for lemon balm, tarragon and sorrel which the chickens can, in time, nibble through the wire. I’ve since enclosed it in a little fence to stop them attacking it when they’re free ranging.

I’ve said numerous times over the years that our garden is, for me, a definite sign of my mental well being. If I’m disconnected from my garden, not giving time to it, not working on my evolving plans, it means all is not well within me. And sometimes, even if things are not right inside, going into the garden helps make it so. I come home from work every day, especially now the days are longer, and do some yard work. Whether it’s working with the chickens, watering, or getting stuck into some serious digging and lifting, and I feel better. I forget just about everything. It’s a form of therapy. Green, lush, vibrant therapy and the more involved in my garden I become, the more closely I rely on that therapy.

A part of the garden that’s filling me with joy at the moment is a bed we built a year ago, in autumn out the front. It’s a bulb bed, under a well established ash tree. The bulbs are long gone now the days are warm, but the lush seaside daisies, pansies and other ground covers have covered over the dying bulbs – which was my intention and created a beautiful bed that for most of the day thrives under the dappled light of the tree.

This photo I took a few weeks ago, when there were still irises. The row of pansies down the front were a joint effort by Alice and I who now thinks of them in some way as her flowers because she planted them. That sense of having made something yourself is so important.

I’m learning more and more to just get in and try things. Both of us have a tendency to over think and over research. Research is fabulous and I love going into a task armed with ideas and some knowledge to apply, but in the end, it needs action, and experimentation. We’re learning not to worry about failure. Just try it.

The addition of chickens to our back yard means we’re having to come up with creative ideas to work with them, not against them.

Judicious use of chicken wire (the green kind – it looks better) around beds helps but in time I want to have a completely sectioned off area for our vegetables and flowers, so that the chickens don’t have to be controlled. It’ll just be an area they don’t get into. I want to do away with the irritating slight slope, to have retaining walls and paths between beds and around trees, with garden benches tucked into pretty spots and a wonderful sense of home and peace. I’ve got that sense when I’m out there now – it gets better all the time – but in time, I hope the external reality of the garden matches more closely the visions in my mind.

I picture a rambling, yet structured, shady, but light oasis, with year round vegetables and flowers. Today as I picked these flowers to decorate my lunch table for a friend, I looked at the colours and thought yeah, my garden is giving me good things and it’s because I am giving good things to my garden. It’s a great relationship.

Best of all, it’s becoming every year a wonderful place to pull up a chair, pour a drink and knit in tranquility. Who can ask for more?

Bells

It’s raining, it’s pouring

We’re setting into a period of steady rain here, and for summer it’s oddly cold (I am wearing a knitted cardigan today, in February. Amazing!). All i want to be doing right now is sitting at home, rain outside, working on finishing a little shrug I’m making for Alice so that I can start swatching for something new for me.

Here’s the shrug in progress. It should be finished, washed and drying by tomorrow morning which is handy because Alice is spending the weekend with us.

Like RoseRed and others I’m stockpiling yarn and ideas for the cardigans I want to knit for winter. I’m itching to get stuck in. Hours have been devoted  in recent weeks to matching yarn and patterns. There are cardigans’ worth of yarn I’ve had set aside for some time and I’m going to use them, instead of buying anything new. Revolutionary idea, right?

My top five patterns at the moment, receiving heavy consideration are Seamair by Amy Herzog, Blair by Thaya Preece, Driven by Veera Välimäki, Iced by Carol Feller and Estelle by Linden Down. In a way I think I have to stop looking for Winter 2012 patterns and just pick one and start because I keep finding new ideas and it’s quite paralyising.

However, just because it’s cold and wet this week, doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way and I’m sure there’s some summer left to be had, so I’ve got some time to think.

I’ll leave you with something that’s thrilling me in my garden at the moment. My sunflowers. Their big, happy faces (which are under constant threat by the cockatoos that sit over head waiting for them to be ripe) are such a wonderful addition to my garden. I think, like daffodils in spring, I must always have sunflowers in summer.

Almost the end of the week. It can’t come soon enough.

Bells

Sunshine Dress

You might remember a couple of weeks ago I made two matching pinny style dresses – one for Alice and one for the daughter of a friend.

Here’s how they were just after I finished them.

I’m told the Queensland based recipient of one of them has started calling it her Sunshine Dress and so the name stuck.

Here’s Alice in hers, taken yesterday morning in front of my zucchini patch.

Blondes in yellow! Such a great combination. I love it! The dress is reversible but this is the side she chose to wear on our outings yesterday.

Once again, it’s the same pattern I’ve used about half a dozen times for Alice – the Lizzy Pinny. Always a winner. I’ve been making them for about 18 months now so for fun, here’s Alice in the first one I made for her in September 2010, back when I was a total newbie.

Such a cutie. So little. I’m totally ready to move on to slightly more complex dress patterns, but this one is just such a winner with its simplicity as a sun dress. She gets so much wear out of them and I love choosing which fabrics work for a reversible pattern. I don’t think this will be my last!

Bells

Creative January

January is cold so far. This is an odd sentence. In this part of the world, it’s meant  to be hot, scorchingly so. But it’s not. While this is brilliant for knitting and quilting, it’s not so great for the garden. Growth is slow, ripening almost non-existent.

I’m consoling myself, both on the weather front and the fact that I’m back at work, with knitting and sewing. How comforting it is to even write that sentence. There are so many circumstances in life where that’s a fitting sentence.

Anyway, life goes on and in the absence of any finished knitting to show you, I thought I’d share some recent photos. You’ve probably seen most of them if you’re on facebook or instagram. For those of you who aren’t, here’s a tour of all things creative in my world right now.

I made two little matching reversible pinny dresses for Alice and another little girl I know. Alice hasn’t received hers yet but will have it by the end of the week.

I needed to make these to restore my faith in my sewing skills, which have suffered a bit lately. This worked.

I’ve discovered the marvel that is Cascade Ultra Pima. It’s lush and highly addictive cotton and I can’t get enough of it. This is becoming something for Alice (big surprise there).

I’m in the grip of a cast-on frenzy at the moment (well, relatively speaking. I’ve not started too many new things, but there are a few). This gorgeous yarn (spun by 1FunkyKnitWit Margarita) is becoming a Hitchhiker scarf. It’s a match made in heaven.

See? It’s gorgeous.

I’ve nurtured my first artichoke bloom. I have grown them for the first time and rather than eating them, decided I wanted to see how they flowered, because I knew it’d be spectacular. Look!

And I’m hand quilting Alice’s Christmas birthday quilt.

I still can’t believe I’m hand quilting. This came as a shock. Like I’ve said before, never say never. I’d like to finish this soon because there’s a new quilt in the pipeline and my mum is making it too. She’ll leave me far behind if I don’t get a wriggle on.

So that’s January. As always, never enough hours in the day for it all. I hope you’re feeling busy and productive in your creative life too.

Bells

Borage – Or Why I Love Herbs

Who can say where certain interests or passions originate?

In another life, I might have ended up a herbalist. From a young age I was drawn to ideas of what you could do with plants for health or diet. If I came across a snippet of information about how such and such a herb steeped in hot water could aid in the treatment of a cough or some other ailment, I remember happily storing the information away for later.

I remember as a child reading a family friend’s Encyclopedia Britannica, looking up herbal remedies. Not there was much in them about the specifics of such things, but I’d find bits and pieces about how this herb or that plant was historically known to be able to do this or that and I’d think it was really interesting.

I experimented as a teenager with home remedies for beauty treatments, like egg whites as a face mask, or oats mashed up with rosemary or sage if I could get hold of them. Who knows where such interests come? Was I a village wise woman in a past life? Not that I believe in such things, but it makes me wonder.

In my imagination I’ve got a world of time to devote to intricately designed herb beds. On my bedside table I’ve got a range of books devoted to these subjects. Herbal encyclopedias, pictorial guides and so on all devoted to the subject of herbs and flowers.

I like the idea of ways we can incorporate every day items from the garden in our diets for benefits that have been tried and tested for centuries before there were pharmaceutical companies with their push for profits.

I like that you can steep some leaves in hot water and maybe cure a headache or an upset stomach. I’m not sure I hold with the idea that serious illnesses can be cured, but every day remedies? That said, today’s everyday remedy might have killed two centuries ago so who is to say, really?

Ailments cured in the kitchen, that’s where I’m at. It fits with my idea of food as a gentle, wholistic  piece of the life puzzle.

This brings me to Borage. I’ve never thought much about it and have probably flicked past it in my herbal books without a backward glance. So when we were collecting plants for our herb beds a month or so ago, and Sean suggested Borage, I said yes mainly because it sounded obscure and interesting, not because I knew anything about it.

The little plant we got has taken off beautifully and has flowered in the most striking way.

A few days ago Sean said it was time I got out there with the camera and so I did. I love how I never really see a flower until I’ve photographed it. I didn’t see the lovely pointy centre until I was processing the photos.

I’ve read up on Borage and didn’t know until today that it had properties which may make it useful in treating hormonal imbalances and head colds. Also, a friend of ours says it goes very well with both gin and pimms.

Health remedies? Cocktails? This plant can do both! That’s a win in my book!

I’ve already been shredding the slightly spiky leaves into salads and they have a fresh, slight cucumber flavour.

But what I really love is knowing that in my garden, which is such a work in progress, I may harbour all manner of exciting trinkets and treats. I planted Borage because Sean recommended it without knowing anything about what could be done with it. What else is out there that I don’t yet know about?

At a BBQ this afternoon, where there was a great, expansive borage plant in the garden, I was told that you can freeze the flowers in ice cubes and put them in drinks. How great is that? I think I’ll go gather some as soon as I’ve hit publish on this post.

It amazes me sometimes, all the stuff that we can find out. You just never know.

Bells

Have Camera, Will Walk

Sometimes I lack the desire to exercise. I know. Shocking. I don’t think I’m alone.

I once wrote a post about how walking was important to me, back when I was doing Weight Watchers and realising that I spent a lot of my life wrapped up in wool and comfort. The motivation that was with me back then was real and inspiring. I did well. I imagine, looking back, that winter arrived and I retreated again into the all too familiar comfort from bleak Canberra days.

I wrote about  how I felt better about my cocoon time if I had been out and about. I know I feel better. I know it’s good for me. But I let bad habits slide back in and I’m at square one again.

Last month I started walking at lunch time with a wonderful friend I made at work. It’s a great time of year to do it and we decided over yet another indulgent lunch one day that if we like talking so much, we could just as easily do it in Spring sunshine, with fresh air fuelling our conversation. And with fewer temptations. Treats of a different kind, if you like.

From those lovely lunch time walks has come the knowledge, again, that I do actually like to move, that as cosy as it is to stick close to home where I can knit with wine and food, it’s not really that good for me, at least not in the proportions I’ve been doing it. Not only that, but I’m noticing that I’m knitting slightly bigger cardigans for myself than I was knitting a couple of years ago. Worrying about that is an energy sapper. It comes laden with guilt and shame. When I sit down to knit, knowing I’ve done some movement for the day is a good feeling. I hate living with guilt.

But I need more to motivate me than just imagining trimmer thighs or guilt free eating. I need something that feeds me without the calories and for me, that’s always creative expression. So I decided that I must take my camera, or my iPhone, and I give myself the task of capturing something on my walk.

I walk fast, I breathe deeply, I listen to music or an audiobook and I notice what’s around me. Paying attention to the world around me reminds me that what’s in my head, what’s weighing me down (figuratively, not actually in this instance) is alleviated to a degree by moving and noticing. By engaging.

There’s only one rule. I must come home with at least one photo of something I’ve seen. Sometimes it’s the case that I only take one photo if inspiration is thin on the ground.

The gardens in my suburb are bursting with life, with fertility, with colour right now. It’s a photographer’s dream. I try not to limit myself to flowers but it’s hard to look past them.

One evening last week, feeling stressed, full of difficult thoughts and swirling ideas, I went walking before a storm. I love a bleak, pre-storm sky. It makes me feel. There are few sights more evocative. I snapped these leaves against the darkening sky.

I used Instagram to add a filter to the photo. Are you using Instagram? If you are, I’m there as Bellsknits (surprise!). Share your photos with me there.

Yesterday I walked in the morning. Such a contrast to that pre-storm romance. My suburb is filled with irises now. Tall, sweeping, vivid, they’re incredible flowers and they’re waving at me from the gardens I pass.

I’m just hoping the people in my suburb don’t mind when they look out the window and see a woman with a camera getting up close and personal with their flowers. I do like to get up close. It’s the best way to see how they really look, what detail is hidden at the heart. Like with this poppy, growing wild at the edge of our deck. I never knew what detail was there until I pointed my camera at the centre of it. Breathtaking.

So over the course of National Blog Posting Month (daily blogging, hosted by BlogHer) I’ll be sharing some days what I find on my walks. Anything to get me out the door.

Bells

Raindrops on Roses

A Spring shower today sent me into the garden in the late afternoon, armed with my camera and a desire to find all the ways the rain was settling on my flowers.

My newly bloomed ranunculus were such a surprise. Shocking pink if ever there was!

Delicately poised, tumbling to the ground on a moment’s breath or the tiniest bump from my hand as I get close, the little drops are fleeting worlds that I love.

They’re a mirror, each and every one.

Tiny, watery mirrors. If it’s possible to enhance nature, the raindrops do a pretty good job.

A Callistemon is about to burst open but for now, water pools in its tiny branches.

They are pools of light.

Bubbles of poetry.

And if you look close enough, really look, symbols of all that’s good.

They might fall away and evaporate, but there’ll be more.

There’s joy in that.

Bells

Still Life

A maker’s life is never really a still life is it? Recently when my mother was staying for the weekend she said ‘Helen you never really stop do you?’

No. Not really. Although I hadn’t thought of it that way until she said it. There’s always something to do, something to make, something to work towards. Some days it feels like I’m just getting through what I have to do to get what I want to do, always with one eye up ahead to where the colour and the light and the making is waiting.

My mum also said, during her recent visit, ‘You’ve never really grown up, have you Helen?’ and actually she meant it in a good way. At least I’m mostly sure she did. She said it while Alice and I were crouching at the back door eating a ham sandwich while the chickens glared at us through the glass, wanting to be fed. We thought it was hilarious, the taunting.

Sometimes it takes someone else’s eyes to show us parts of ourselves we didn’t know were there. I mean, of course I know it’s fun to be on the floor with a two year old taunting chickens, but it’s just me. I didn’t know it meant I haven’t grown up. I just thought that’s what people with toddlers in their lives did!

I am on the go, busy, fulfilling dreams and all the while, not growing up at least not as long as growing up means forgetting how to sit on the floor and be silly. Or how to take hours out of my day for making, for colour, for light, for things that are beautiful and soul feeding, not soul destroying.

Kindness, positivity, goodness. Getting up close to what is important, what’s real and what’s needed. I’ve been digging deep, thinking, feeling and trying to figure out what these things are for me. It’s a work in progress. I’m a work in progress. It’s called learning to live. Every single day.

In still moments, I’ve stopped and thought about this and I’ve been thankful that I can see, and every day that I learn to see a little more, what matters.

Bells