this and that

THIS is where I live in springtime. In this little room made of recycled windows and doors. I spend my`days sowing seeds, watching them germinate, talking to them, watering them, pricking them out and waiting patiently for the soil to warm up and the danger of frost to be over so I can plant them outside. It's been just over a year since we built this space onto the side of our house, it's hard to even imagine life and growing before.

THIS is a little glimpse into what it looks like inside the greenhouse at the moment. Trays and pots and planters of fruit and vegetables and flowers, putting down roots and growing up leaves, getting bigger and stronger every time I check in on them.

THIS is the greenhouse overflow. Last week or the week before I filled up every inch of space on the table, every shelf and window sill, and much of the floor space too. So I moved some of the big guys into the sun-room. Now you can hardly walk in there. The forecast is looking promising though, so get ready garden, here these guys come.

THIS is the badge Miss Indi made me to wear on my birthday last Sunday.

THIS is the pile of hair pins my farmer boy made me for my birthday. The light one in the middle is made from sycamore off my parents' old farm in Tasmania and the other three are from wood from around here. As anyone who wears wooden pins in their hair knows, these things are incredibly hard to come by and having four crafted by those hands that I love makes me feel like I've won the lottery. I'm rich!

We had the most wonderful few days away at the beach last weekend. We walked everywhere, we ate a late breakfast and an early dinner out every day, we read books, we watched the whole first season of Succession, we did face masks in the bath, we played games, we talked and talked and talked, we saw A Star Is Born at the movies, I knitted, I was sung to by all of my favourite people, I cried, I laughed and I felt incredibly lucky to have the luxury of so much time alone with my boy. It was the absolute best.

THIS is what my washing line looks like now that I'm a beginner spinner. That's fleece inside those laundry bags and the thought of pulling out the staples, flick carding them, drafting them out and spinning them, washing and then knitting them, kept me up last night. I've got that excited, addicted, can't think of anything else, need more time in my day, butterflies in my tummy feeling about a craft again. 

THIS is one of the little projects I'm busying my hands with while I wait to have enough handspun of my own to knit. It's the Mimi hat by my friend Sabine - Frisabi Knits - the details are here.

THIS is the new shelf in my studio.  The one above the window. It goes across the back and along the right wall to meet the door. I'm going to fill it with plants and books.

THIS is the strawberry bed that I look at from my studio window. It looks like it's going to be a bumper crop this year.

THIS is one of the self seeded patches of spring onions that feeds hundreds of bees every day. They love that stuff.

THIS is the book I am reading the moment, my sister Abby's copy of - The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper. One of the stories of the Black Saturday bush fires of February 2009. I've only read about 50 pages so far but already it feels like a horror story. It is harrowing and devastating and heartbreaking, but it also feels insightful and moving and important. It's probably a good thing for me to read at the start of this fire season: I've already started making lists of things to prepare.

THIS, right now, feels like such a huge moment in the life of our family. Next Monday our Indi starts her final school year exams and by this time next week will be completing her last one and finishing with high school forever. Next Thursday Indi will celebrate her 18th birthday which means Bren and I will have parented a child all the way through from babyhood to childhood to adulthood. In just over a week our Jazzy will return from her six week overseas trip. The emails and photos have been sparse but from what we can gather it looks and sounds like she's been having the most unbelievably incredible adventure. This week our Pepper got to meet her little buddy. As part of the oldest class in her school next year, she gets paired up with one of the youngest. It's so funny to think of our youngest being the oldest. She's so ready though. And in the middle of all of that me and Bren are rushing around trying to balance the farming, parenting, crafting, building, cooking, playing, making, exercising and growing, all while trying to hold onto the magic we felt last weekend.

And that's that.

And THIS dear friends is my thank you to you. Thank you for your birthday kindness, for your wishes, for your sweetness and for your sunshine. I love ya's all!!

Before you go tell me what's going on at THIS time in your world? What's keeping you up at night? What have you got on your shelf? What are you making? What are you learning? What did you get for your birthday? How will your life be different this time next week?

Wishing you luck and love and adventures.

Kate xx

beginner spinner

So what happens when you're really not very good at something that feels important to you?

It's late on a beautiful, warm Saturday afternoon in the middle of March and we've made the decision to stop with the farm work and spend some time together as a family crafting outside.

It's a crazy time of the year and often I'll find myself getting ready for bed at night not able to remember a single time when I sat down all day. Everything is ripe and needs picking, everything is dry and needs irrigating, everything is going soft and needs preserving, everything is becoming a jungle and needs weeding, and mowing and feeding and fencing and fixing and moving and stacking and and and and...so stopping early just to sit together and chat and make feels indulgent, and precious, and also necessary.

My farmer boy is carving a spoon. It's been months since he's made one but he's committed to demonstrating and selling at a market soon and has lots of cutting ahead of him. His hands feel out of practise, his fingers are sore and blistered, but he's in the zone and not long after he starts chipping away he remembers and he becomes excited at the possibilities and the feelings.

Nearby Indi is weaving wool around sticks and inside the house Jarrah is creating with paper and washi tape.

Miss Pepper is taking staples from our sheep's shorn fleece, combing them, using some for her fairy house and making neat piles of the rest for me. I can't help but joke about how she owes me. How I've been brushing and braiding her bottom-lengthed hair for eight years now and it's time for her to pay up. She is strong and likes to discuss the feeling of the lanolin on her hands, the sheepy, woolly smell and the bits of dirt she finds as she cards.

And I am sitting to the side, shoes off, straight backed, deep breathed, trying my hardest to find some sort of rhythm on this spinning wheel I borrowed from my spinning group.

And it's hard for me.

And I am a little disappointed because I think I had hoped that it would click for me sooner. That wool and fibre and textiles are such a big important part of who I am and what I love that spinning would just be an extension of what I can do and would be easy for me.

To be honest and fair I haven't given the wheel that much time. When time is precious it feels better spent on projects that will produce a sure thing. I have a sleeve to knit on a jumper, I have squares to knit into a blanket, I have Indi's cardigan to cast on, winter is coming and there are socks and mittens and beanies in the queue.

But still the spinning calls to me.

I visit the sheep that grew this fleece every day. At the moment I know that they are in our south orchard eating the grass that grows between the trees. I love that they feel so comfortable amongst the chickens and that they sleep with the dogs. I watch them carefully to see how they behave on the warm days and when it is cooler. I love how they stick together as a pack, how they panic when they are separated from one another by accident and look relieved and chummy when they are reunited. I don't mind that they are eating the lower leaves on the branches of the apple trees and I am sure that their little pellet poo is doing great things for the orchard's fertility.

Now that we have sheep, I find myself less interested in buying commercial wool.

I want to knit with wool that tells our farm's story. Wool that holds our seasons, and bits of our land and the love and respect we have for them as part of our farm.

And yet I find myself with lots of tangley twisty bits.

And a bobbin filled with yarn so bobbley and uneven that it almost looks like that novelty pom-pom yarn you find in op shops and wonder why it was made in the first place.

I will persevere of course. I will hold the fleece in my left hand, draft with my right, while treadeling with both feet and trying to get the wheel to spin in a clockwise direction. Phew! And I'll hold my breath when my farmer boy hops on; part of me wanting him to get it and explain it simply to me, and part of me wanting it to be too hard for him too so it's not just me spinning my way into lumpy-town.

I wonder how far away from my dreams of a hand spun, hand knitted jumper my reality is.

In the meantime, we've opened our farm gate stall for the season, Yay!

You can find us at  - Daylesford Organics - 19 Foxs Lane Muskvale.

The stall is open between about 8am and 8pm every day.

Apples are all certified organic, grown here, picked within the last 24 hours, DELICIOUS and cost $6kg.

Please bring your own bags, exact change and honesty.

And tell me, if you please, when was the last time you tried to learn something new?

When was the last time you didn't at first succeed?

And how long did you try and try again for?

Oh and I'm on the hunt for my own wheel if you have any suggestions.

And youtube spinning videos, can you suggest any?

Thanks.

I'm off to pick today's tomatoes and plant some cabbage.

Big spinny love to you,

Kate 

xoxo