riveting

The night after I wrote my last blog post I dreamt that I died.

I was haunted by the visions of my death-bed scene all that weekend. I couldn't shake the feelings and conversations and finality.

Eventually, when I just couldn't let it go, I called my mum for an explanation and some reassurance, and hopefully no ridicule. You see I am the parent who finds the long, painfully detailed descriptions of my kids' dreams terribly tedious. More than once I have uttered the word riveting in a sarcastic tone when they have caught me somewhere and begun to share a minute by minute play-back of their last 10 hours in slumberland. Nine times out of ten it doesn't deter them and I am treated to every single gory detail and held captive until they are done; elephants and nakedness and school-yards and teeth and everything else their precious subconscious selves have thrown at them while they were slumbering.

So as you can imagine I didn't take my decision to call my mum, our family's chief dream interpreter, lightly.

But eventually I did.

Once we got over the riveting bit and I filled her in on all the death-bed details, she got down to business. 'A dream about a death is really about the end of something and the rebirth of something else' she told me. In this case she thought it was most probably my blog. And although this feels obvious now, it felt like such a relief at the time not to have to worry that it was any sort of premonition.

The end of something tho - was it really the end?

When I had sat down on that last Friday to write my blog I had had no idea that I was about to take a break from it. I knew that there were problems, I knew that it had started to feel like more of a responsibility than a joy, and I knew that that one woman's demand of my content had rattled me, but still I had expected to post some photos, write some words and press publish. I certainly had not anticipated the death.

But my blog knew what I needed better than I.

10 years had been a great run but the time had come to take a break to ask myself some questions. I felt relief as soon as I admitted it to myself.

In the past month I have not missed my blog at all. I have not missed the pressure to find things to write about, the guilt to read and respond to other people's blogs, the small but growing fear that my words could and might be judged and used against me, and I have not missed the time it takes to put it all together - the words and the photos.

Those precious blogging hours.

As a work from home/on the farm mother, there was so often a measure of guilt involved as I sat at my computer writing my blog on a Friday while the to-do list exploded around me. But it was a decision we had made, and although sometimes I did have to do battle with the lists in my head, I guarded those hours carefully and refused to allow them to be compromised.

After I published my last blog, my friend Penelope wrote to me suggesting that I spend my usual blogging hours on some other creative project. At the time I loved that idea, but I soon saw how useful those hours were at the end of the week on the farm or in the house, and then they were quickly gobbled up.

But then as my missed month of May became June I decided that I would blog again on the first Friday. Even if it was just to say goodbye. And then leading up to the Friday I began to notice all the things that I have missed: the community, the creativity, the precious few hours put aside for myself, the record, the writing itself and weirdly - the typing on the computer keys. All the nos I'd been feeling became maybes.

I had hoped to come back here today with some answers about my blogging future. I had hoped to have done some research about a new platform. I had hoped that once I sat down here this morning that the words would flow out of me and decide for me, like they did last time. But unfortunately I've had too many interruptions to give them a chance to make themselves heard.

So my plan is to keep blogging for as long as it brings me joy and as often as I feel like it. I suspect that I won't be here every single week, but I hope that I'll be here at least once a month. Ideally I'd love for it to be more often, but realistically I know that I need to give myself space to only blog when I have a story I want to share.

And I guess it needs to be said that as much as I value your thoughts and opinions, this is my personal blog and I will blog about what I want to blog about when I want to blog about it. If you have a problem with what I choose to write about please unfollow me, if you have strong opinions and thoughts about content please feel free to share them on your own blog.

And finally, I'd like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for being my community. For reading along over the years, for caring about our family and our way of life, for writing comments and messages, for not scrolling past, and for reading my long posts in a world that favours the quick snippets. You guys are the best!

I don't know when I'll be back here again, but it might be sooner than later as I just bought a new camera and I suspect I'll take lots of photos as I learn to use it. And then we're going to visit Indi soon and travel blogs are always fun to write...

Big thanks also to Miss Jarrah who braved arctic conditions to model for me in my latest knit-in-progress The Sólbein cardigan , hopefully I'll have the sleeves finished and be ready to steek it (cut it down the middle) by the end of the weekend.

And with that I'm outta here! No longer dead but not quite yet reborn.

I hope you have a beautiful weekend my Foxslane friends.


Love,

Kate x

missing may

Hello friends,

How are you? How's your week been?

Late last week I got a message from a reader questioning something I'd written on my blog. Or rather questioning a world event I'd chosen not to mention. To omit.

It wasn't from anyone who regularly contributes to the comment section on my blog. And it wasn't written in an attacking manner. It was fine really. But for some reason it really stuck in my mind and I couldn't let it go.

The first part was me continuing to ask myself the same question she had asked me. Why did I decide recently to talk about the Christchurch mosque shootings while failing to make mention of other horrific world events since? How do I make the decision of what to include and what not to? What is the tone of this blog and what sort of issues do I want to make mention of or to discuss? Is it okay anymore to write a personal blog about life in my little bubble, or do I have a responsibility to the world to acknowledge events and politics and to take a stance? And what if I don't always feel comfortable with that?

And I guess the second part is that if this is my personal blog, how is it fair that other people get to question what I choose to blog about? I do know that I'm being naive and that the way the online world works these days is that everyone gets to judge and opine and question. I also know that I am sosososososososososososososososososososo lucky and unusual that a simple, polite question is as tough as it gets when there is so much hatred out there. I can list the negative comments I've received over the past 10 years on two hands (and this recent comment definitely isn't one of them). I'm sure that's virtually unheard of. But having said that I do miss the golden olden days of blogs past when we shared so much of ourselves and were constantly inundated with kindness and compassion and encouragement.

Over the past few years the number of blogs being written has diminished, blog interaction has diminished, my readership has diminished, and let's face it - being a mum of teenagers - the things I can blog about have diminished. So what do I talk about? Who is my blog?

I've had all of these questions and thoughts sloshing around my head all week only to be further confused when a brand that we believe in ethically and ideologically, a brand we buy and use regularly, contacted me to work with them. I've never written sponsored content before but it did make me wonder whether using this space to spread the word about good people and companies would help me feel more at ease with all of these issues. Not to mention allowing my words and images to pay for the time it takes to create them. I don't think so but it's been interesting to think about.

Anyway the point is I woke up this morning and didn't feel like blogging. I know how much my blog posts mean to Indi while she is so far away, and I was lucky enough to have some photos taken yesterday as a starting point, but other than that I felt stuck. I still do.

In this great big online world of experts and hash-tags and people shouting to be heard, I feel like I need some time out to think about who my blog is, what it stands for, and what it needs to look like moving into the future. It interests me that I've come to this point only weeks away from my June 23 ten years anniversary of this blog.

Gosh it feels weird and a bit cringe-worthy to look back at my first blog post now. To remember myself wanting to move away from farm blogging and to find myself a place in the online craft world. It's funny to read my definite statement that I would try any craft but NEVER ceramics. And it's amazing to have those memories of sitting by the girls' baths and in school assemblies crocheting, of those sweet little embroidered tops I used to make and they used to wear, and to remember how excited and inspired I felt at the discovery of the craft blogging world. How many craft blogs there seemed to be. And the promise of the community within them.

Things have changed. Of course they have. From the big wide real world, to the online world, to my little family world. I guess now I need to work out where my blog fits in with all of that.

So I think I'm going to go against the blog-every-day-in-May of the past few years and give May a miss this year.

Hopefully I'll see you again in June.

I hope your May is extremely lovely.

See you soon.

Love, Kate xx


PS sorry Indi (this would be a great time for a guest blog though??)
PPS for some reason blogger won't let me reply to your comments on last week's post. Weird. But maybe a push to move platforms finally.

the missing month

Hello friends,

How are you? How have the first few days of your new year been treating you?

I'm good. It's ridiculously hot and scarily windy outside, so after a morning of farm work I'm now sheltering in my dark bedroom, in a tee-shirt and undies, with my laptop on my lap, thinking about my blog.

It's been a month since I last posted here.

In the beginning I just ran out of time. It was a Friday early in December. I had taken, edited and loaded a whole bunch of photos documenting the transformation of the old farm shed into farmer Bren's new wood-workshop, and all that was left was to write the words. The words would be straight forward and easy. It's all very beautiful and exciting.

But then somehow the hours disappeared and it was time to go and visit a local ceramicist friend, then we came home and I had washing to hang out, a greenhouse to water and girls to feed. And then it was time to get ourselves dressed and ready for our beautiful friends' wedding. And then we had so much fun that we stayed all afternoon and evening and by the time we got home, after all those champagnes, I was in no state to write the words.

The next morning I woke up with all the best intentions but then my computer died. I knew it had been coming - it had been acting up for a while - so I closed it down and walked away. Unlike other computer malfunctions, this time there was no tantrum, there were no tears and there would be no blog post that week.

I felt a little bit disappointed, a little bit relieved and a little part of me wondered if it was a sign. If my time as a blogger was over and done with.

Blogging does take up a huge chunk of my life each Friday and as the growing season progresses and my time gets more valuable, it's hard to justify the whole process.

I'm a little bit embarrassed to admit that over the next few days I waited for the messages to start arriving. I thought that some people would notice my absence and write to ask why. And although I never wanted this to be about ego, I did feel a bit disappointed when nobody did. Not my family, not my friends, nobody. (Poor me - I'm so embarrassed to write this but it's true).

I think it was then that I stopped being a blogger. 

I stopped taking photos, I stopped writing posts in my head, I stopped thinking about it and I worked right on through my Fridays without another thought.

After a little while a few messages did trickle in, and then a few more. Mostly I replied that I was having computer problems, which was officially true considering I still hadn't turned my computer back on since that first Friday.

When I eventually did try to turn it on and it still wasn't working my farmer boy took all the photos off, wiped it and then reinstalled everything. 

Then he wrapped it up with a bow and left it on my bed.

Over those few weeks I thought a lot about who I was without my blog. I thought about what it gave me and what it took away. It challenged me when one of Indi's friends told her he just could not understand why I did it. And then I considered signing out of all social media altogether. I wondered if six months short of my 10 year blog anniversary, it had all just run its natural course, petered out.

As the weeks went by I received some beautiful messages from people telling me how much my blog has meant to them over the years. Lots of memories and stories and thoughts. So much kindness. Those messages meant the world to me.

And then this past week as the flowers started blossoming and the girls picked a bouquet a day, as the late afternoon golden summer sunshine intensified the beauty of where we live, and as the vegetable harvests began in earnest, I discovered that I missed the whole blogging process and was ready to have another go.

I took these photos last night, I edited them and loaded them into my blog early this afternoon when it was too hot to work outside anymore, and then, just as I was getting ready to write the words, my computer crashed. Again! Apparently the operating system I'm using is so ancient it's stopped being able to talk to Safari. Or whatever that means.

So while my computer is updating itself in the other room, I'm back on blogger on Jazzy's computer. Fingers crossed I can make it to the finish line this time.

I quite like the thought of writing a post summing up 2018, but for now I think I'll count my blessings and stop before something else goes wrong. Maybe in the next few days.

Until then I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you so much for hanging out with me at Foxs Lane. I hope your 2019 is full of all the best, most beautiful and love filled stuff. Hopefully I'll see you here really soon for more flowers and farming, family and knitting.

Big love,

Kate xx

short cut blogging

Hello lovely ones,

How's your week been?

Most Fridays by the time I finally sit down with my laptop I generally know what I'm going to write my blog about. Most Fridays I've been thinking about something, or feeling something, or making something and as soon as I've loaded the photos the words come. Not always the words I expect, not always in one go, not always in order and definitely not always in any sort of readable state. But over time the sentences and themes emerge, I type them, I rearrange them, I delete some and then, mostly, by the time I press publish, I'm happy I have.

But not today. It's been a bit of a messy old week and somehow it's gotten to an hour before I have to go and pick up Pepper from school and I feel rushed, and I haven't had lunch and I'm hungry, and what I really feel like is a cup of tea in Bren's workshop and a few rows of my socks.

So if it's all the same to you I think I'll load the bunch of photos I took this morning which will give you a little glimpse into my right now, I'll write a tiny bit about each one and then we can all go along our merry ways and hopefully have a wonderful weekend.

Here goes:

This is Miss Pepper's cat who until recently was called Popcorn but then somehow during a particularly intense Orange Is The New Black binging session, had a name change to Poussey Washington. It's such a good cat name and it just rolls off the tongue, don't ya think. She doesn't look like she minds anyway.

This is farmer Bren axing a bowl blank out of a piece of apple wood. He has plans to make us all breakfast bowls. I can't wait to see them.

This is of a pile of blankets that I've made on a shelf in our studio. The pile grows and shrinks as girls take blankets to put on their beds and snuggle on the couch and then put them back, but these three seem to remain the constants.

These are my baby cabbages. I tell you what, growing plants from seeds never fails to excite me. Each one of those stems and little leaves feels like a lucky blessing. I love germinating seeds, it seems to make sense even when the rest of the world doesn't.

We have a metal filing cabinet where we store our seeds. Packets and jars of saved and bought seeds all filed by the first letter of their name. These are the seeds I've pulled out over the past few weeks optimistically hoping to get a head start on spring. It's a bit of a mess. We are hoping to get organised and keep really good records this year so when next season rolls around it'll be less of a guessing game and more of a knowing game. Although working under Mother Nature you can never really be sure.

This is the book I'm reading. I love the cover. It's about Trevor Noah, who was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time in apartheid South Africa where such a union was punishable by five years imprisonment. It's an easy read but I'm finding it hard to really get stuck into it. I think that's because the last book I read, Idaho painted a picture that was so vivid that I felt like I'd watched a whole movie by the time I'd finished. I could not put it down and then I could not stop thinking about it once I had. What a magnificent book. I hope that this one grabs me soon and takes me on a journey with it like Idaho did.

This is a cup/bowl that Bren carved during the week out of Native Cherry. It's such a beautiful piece and when you hold it up to the light, parts of it glow bright pink. Right now it's drying out slowly in that pile of wood shavings but I cannot wait to see how it dries and how it looks when it's oiled. we're not sure how it'll hold hot coffee, but gosh wouldn't that be a perfect way to honour one of my favourite rituals.

This is an arm warmer I knitted for someone I've never met who asked for one via a local Facebook page. Apparently it fits and is exactly what they were after. Yay!

This is a slipper I knitted for a giant. Oops. Just a gentle reminder to knit a gauge square when you are knitting an old fave pattern but in new to you yarn.

These are the first socks I ever knitted, three years ago almost to the the day. Look at how much they've faded. I still love them and wear them often despite the hole in the sole of one of them.

These are the socks I am currently knitting. Colour work is addictive! I can't wait to grab a chunk of time tonight to knit some more. I've gone up a needle size to 2.5 because the last pair of patterned socks I knitted were too tight. Fingers crossed these ones turn out just right.

This week is musical week for our big girls. This is the puzzle we've been doing with Pepper while they've been busy rehearsing and performing. It's of Santorini in Greece. It's hard to imagine that it's been almost two years since we were there ourselves.

It's raining as I type this and with all the mucking around it's almost three hours since I started.

And by mucking around I mean pestering my youngest sister by text, watering the greenhouse, picking Pep up from school, putting some washing away, making myself a snack, pulling out some weeds, crying to Bren about the state of the world and our country, reading and looking at everything on Facebook and Instagram, feeding the fire and scrolling through Ravelry. But I guess some days are just more straight forward that others.

So that's me and my meant to be quick blog that ended up taking hours.

How about you, what do you like to do to procrastinate?
Are you a good seed organiser? Garden record keeper?
Do you get obsessed and stay up way too late at night looking for just one more puzzle piece?
What are you making/baking/reading/planning?
I'd love to know.

I hope your weekend is exactly what you need it to be.

Love is love,

Kate

xx

see you tomorrow

Hello sweet friends, I can't believe how fast this week's flown by and that here I am on Friday again sitting here tapping out yet another blog post. I probably say that every Friday but it always feels true.

Usually Friday is the one day of the school week that we don't have to spend hours in the car driving the big girls over the hills and back, to and from their school. I love Fridays, apart from our one hour at gym, the rest of the day is for blog writing and bowl turning and other creative adventures. But today being the first Friday of the first week of the school holidays means that all routine is out the window and rather than a slow and easy day, today I am being pulled in all sorts of other directions.

So instead of giving myself a hard time and trying to rush this and fit it into all the small gaps, I'm going to have a quick shower, put on my Melbourne clothes, and drive into town to pick up Miss Pepper and bring her home. I'll post a proper blog tomorrow when I can give it a decent chunk of time.

In the meantime why don't you pour yourself a cup of tea from the kettle farmer Bren has boiling on the stove in his workshop and make yourself a toastie on the fire. I'll be back here before you know it.

See you tomorrow!

Love Kate x

PS What're your favourite toastie fillings?
I'm pretty boring with my cheese, olives and semi dried tomatoes.

PPS I like the old peppermint tea the best too.

capturing + creating

Hello honey bunches - here we are again.

The whole of January I wondered if I was doing the right thing by sticking to the Friday Foxs Lane, rather than blogging every day the way I had for the previous two years. Every now and then I'd pop back into my archives to remind me of what we were doing on the same date a year ago and I'd love the connection to the seasons, the summer rhythm, and our past.

Our summers look so dreamy in blog posts. They're filled with fruit picking, girls in floral dresses with messy braids, vegetable pickling and long sunny days spent together as a family.

But on the last day of this January, just a few days ago when it was waaaay too late to change my mind, I decided that I'd made the right decision after all. It was a warm early evening on the day before the summer holidays ended. We'd eaten dinner, the girls had laid out their clothes for the next day and packed their school bags but we still had a few hours before bed time. Indi announced that she wanted to head down to the front of the farm and pick some flowers for her friend and Pepper and I decided to join her. We pulled our boots on, grabbed some secateurs and a bucket for blackberries and headed out the door. Only once we had well and truly left did it occur to me to bring my camera along too. Just in case the light was just right and I felt like snapping some pictures. So I went back and picked it up.

On the way down, I asked the girls if they remembered the previous January and what it had been like when I was blogging every day. Mostly they remembered my 7pm panic and inevitable hustle of everyone out the door to go and check on the quinces, or go and pick the plums, or get the eggs, or do any other family activity that I could photograph and then blog about that night. 

They both agreed that this year was so much better and thinking back over the last thirty one days I tended to agree. Without the constant blogging at the back of my mind and my camera slung over my shoulder, life felt smoother. We probably ended up doing all those same activities, but they happened when the time was right, and I got to be part of them rather than shooting them from the outside. And while the phone camera in my pocket still gets quite the workout, it doesn't feel like it leads me along, it's just there for the pretty bits.

We all agreed that last year it felt like I was making the moment, whereas this year with only the Friday blogs it felt like I was capturing it.

So while in January 2015 I posted 31 blogs, in January 2016 I posted 28 blogs, this past January 2017 I only posted six blogs, and I'm happy about it.

At the end of the conversation Indi suggested me that I should write about the capturing versus the creating thing for this Friday blog and because I'm such a good and obedient mum (haha), I am.

But just incase you were wondering about the rest of our January, here's a bit more of the picture.

We ate cucumbers, lettuce, beans, peas, plums, strawberries, blackberries, beetroot, rocket, broccoli, cabbage, currants, eggs and gooseberries from our farm.

I read Music And Freedom by Zoe Morrison which I liked, The Healing Party by Micheline Lee which I found interesting, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner which I read because Indi is studying it in class but which I struggled with, Wasted: A Story of Alcohol, Grief and a Death in Brisbane which I could not put down and ended up reading in one night and feeling quite distressed by, A Long Way From Verona by Jane Gardam which I loved, Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offil which I LOVED!!! and most of Wedding Bush Road by David Francis, which took me a while to commit to but then I did.

I listened to hours and hours and hours of the StartUp podcast by Gimlet Media. I'm not sure why I stuck to the one, instead of listening to all the other podcasts I usually subscribe to, but I've really enjoyed every episode, so why not.

I went to the movies once and saw La La Land which I enjoyed.

We watched This is Us and LOVED it, Code Black, and Nashville.

I knitted two pairs of socks, one blogged here and one to be blogged soon, and I sewed a top.

We hung out with the girls, with family and with friends, we did farm work and a lot of work in the garden, we went to the beach, we spent a night in hospital, we cleaned out my grandparents' apartment, we celebrated our farmer boy's birthday and swam at his beach and caught and raced yabbies, and celebrated my Mum's birthday too and we had a girl in our forest.

We discussed: leaving our farm (we're not), leaving the description 'farmers' (we feel stuck) and finding ways to make it easier on ourselves around here (fencing, sheep, help). We discussed separating the feelings of failure from that of disappointment, ways to lead a more creative life, and changes we can put in place and projects we can take on to make sure we are always feeding our souls. We spoke a lot about getting the kid/farm/us balance right too. It's a work in progress, I guess it always will be.

And while we're talking about January, I do have to make note of the fact that so many people wrote to me and pulled me up in the street to let me know that they've switched over to natural deodorant too after reading my January First post, yay team! I love that we're in this together.

So thanks you guys for hanging out with us here in January, it's been up and down and everything in between.

And just like that we're into the school year. Years, 11, eight and four. Fingers crossed for a year filled with inspiration, interest, celebration, light bulb moments, friends, work, passion and fun - for us and for you too.

As much as I'd never want to go back to school myself,  I do love the thought of sitting with a group of people analyzing books. Maybe I should have done literature when I was at school.

That's it for me this week.

Please feel free to share any books, podcasts, movies, series that you're loving.

Oh and we're trying to cut down on processed sugar this term so please share any family favourite unsweetened recipes too.

See ya's next Friday!

Love Kate x