Friday night blog

One of my girls told me the other day that she wondered if she was spending too much time on social media lately looking at people having fun in the sun on the other side of the world at the beach and by swimming pools. She wondered if I thought it might be a problem. The funny thing in our house, is that our girls are so much more responsible and aware of their social media habits and the impact they have on their lives and thought patterns than I am.

After we spoke about it for a while I realised that I've been doing the same. I'm not looking at cute teenagers in vintage bikinis under umbrellas on pristine beaches, but I am most definitely hunting for photos of brightly coloured rows of summer flowers, farmers and gardeners working in their fields and orchards in the sunshine, women and families in summer dresses, and other pictures where the light streaming in looks warm and golden.

It's freezing here. It's often misty, the skies are white and there's icy cold moisture in the air. My face hurts from the cold and when I go outside I have to wear so many layers of clothing and scarves and hats and gloves that I can hardly move.

The following photos that I've taken over the past few days, one week after the solstice, one month into winter, are the exact opposite of those that I've been gazing dreamily at; they're dark and they're moody and they look cold, but maybe if you've  been sweltering in the sunshine on the other side of the world, they'll be exactly what you've been looking for to cool you down (yeah right!). They tell the story of our season anyway.

Our big girls have been on school holidays for the past week and there has been non-stop guitar strumming, lyric learning and melody writing going on. It's been such a joy to have their music floating through the air, down corridors, from behind closed doors, in the lounge room, in the kitchen, in the sun room, in bedrooms. Once I had to ask for a few moments of silence so I could concentrate on a piece of writing and follow a thought through, but the rest of the time I can't stop smiling and singing along and wondering if they know how lucky they are to have this passion and how awesome it is that they can share it, and wondering how things are going to change now that Pepper is on school holidays too.

As I wrote at the end of last week's blog, my farmer boy got on his lathe and turned a couple of door handles for my studio. It took him a few goes to find the right wood, and then the right shape, but now that they're complete I'll be reminded of him and his craftsmanship every time I open and close my studio door. Bespoke door handles...seriously!

And speaking of my studio, this week the insulation went into the walls.

I spent a few days with my farmer boy pushing floor boards from the old Malvern Star factory through the thicknesser.

Then Jobbo cut them to size.

And then they started lining the interior walls with them. They'll need another light sand to smooth them down, but gosh they're looking great. And by the end of today they'll hopefully be close to done and it'll be time to fit out the inside. Can you imagine! Honestly I'm not sure I really can yet. It feels kind of huge and unbelievable. But also ridiculously exciting at the same time.

And despite the icy cold air, we've been out farming. We finally finished pulling the nets off the trees, I pulled out masses of summer flowers, started digging up the dahlia tubers, planted some more bulbs, some sweet peas and some hollyhocks and finished with the wood splitter.

Mostly, once I'm out and into a job I quite enjoy it, once my blood is pumping, and once I'm making a difference, but psyching myself up to get out in it is another thing entirely.

I've almost finished knitting another pair of Uppsala slippers for Bren's dad John.

I've been reading and really enjoying my Mum's library copy of The Good Brother.

And we're watching Friday Night Lights again but this time with our big girls who are loving it.

I was just about to sign off for the week when I heard a bit of activity outside and decided to go and check it out for myself. And then when I saw what everyone was getting excited about of course I had to go and get my camera and include you too.

The beautiful hand-nailed Malvern Star floor wall, the windows, my farmer boy builder, and the chairs that I had seen outside a shop in town today when we were driving home from Pepper's parent teacher interview. I screeched to a halt outside but there was already a woman there buying them. I sat in the car wishing for her to change her mind while Bren went out to negotiate. He asked the shop owner but she said he was five minutes too late so he started walking back to the car.

I can't tell you how disappointed I felt. I've been scouring the internet for months for these chairs and then here they were outside a shop in our town. It felt like a sign.

But then, what do you know, the shop lady came to the window of the car and asked for our phone number because she wasn't convinced the other lady would buy them. And then as we were hunting for a pen and piece of paper she decided that she wouldn't. They were too much of a risk for her Airbnb. They were ours! Some for the sun-room, one for the deck of my studio and maybe one for inside. I'm thrilled!

Thrilled! If only it wasn't hurting cold outside I'd move in immediately.

I had a conversation this morning with an old blogging buddy of mine from eight+ years ago. She stopped making and blogging years ago and it felt a bit weird to say that I'm still here, still creating, photographing, writing and still pressing publish. She's moved on but I've stayed in the same place. After all this time, after all these posts. But then as we hung up and I plugged my card reader into my computer and sat down to write today's blog, I felt so pleased to be here. It felt like coming home. Who knows how long I'll go on for, but for now I'm happy to prioritise Friday blog day and I guess that as long as it feels good, I still will.

So tell me lovelies, what have you been working on today?
What's the soundtrack to your life at the moment?
What's your favourite way to deal with weather that hurts you?
And what are you still doing after all this time?
Do tell.

See you next week!

Love, Kate x

spots on socks + other fancy stuff

Hello dear friends and welcome to today's episode of the Friday Foxs Lane.

I hope you've had a lovely week and that you're gearing up for a wonderful weekend.

My week has passed by in a haze of hot days, sleepless nights, garden and girls. Actually I can't work out whether the word I want to use is haze or daze, but you know that blurry feeling you get when your body gets out of the habit of sleeping at night for no apparent reason, your nights are never ending and your days are filled with fog? Yep, that.

So in honour of my loosening grasp of the English language and the hazey-daze, I have decided to take a blogging short cut today and make a list of ten things I am doing right now. Or more precisely doing or done, past tense, so I can include the spotty socks above.

Are you ready? Here we go...

one - sewing in the ends

Everything about sock knitting fascinates me but especially the way it makes me into someone I'm not. On the top shelf of our studio there is a basket that is filled with clothes that need mending. Shirts that buttons have fallen off, skirts with hems that have come down, socks with holes in the heels...the list goes on. This basket has in fact recently overflowed onto the back of my desk chair and on top of my sewing machine. Optimistically, I imagine that one of these days I'll pull that basket down and methodically work my way through it, buttoning and hemming and darning. But the truth is, I probably never will. But for some reason every single time I cast off a pair of socks I finish them off all the way to the end. I find a needle and I thread each of the loose bits of yarn on in turn and I darn them in until they're all done. It's like the little shoe-maker's elves have visited. And only then can I consider them finished.

two - admiring the insides
There's something so unexpected and surprising about the wrong side of a fair isle knitting project that I only really discovered a few months ago when I started knitting colour-work. Since then I've started a little ritual where I save the inside-looking until I've cast them off. Once I'm done I turn them inside out and sit with the wrong side for a while, looking at all the strands and the negative colour pattern. Each time it's so interesting to see how things have knit up on the back, sometimes I even prefer the wrong side.

three - finishing up
Once the knitting, the darning and the admiring are done, the next step is to hunt down a daughter for the photographing part. Sometimes it's as easy as stand, snap, done! But other times the foot looks funny, the part of the sock that I'm not thrilled with is too obvious, the light's not right, the foot model is in a hurry and won't stand still...you get the picture.

Luckily last night all the sock moons and planets aligned and we got the shot and the sock model was back to singing scales within ten minutes.

The details are on Ravelry if you're interested in such things.

four - casting on

I'm going to call the next project to hit my needles - when you love someone who loves the Bulldogs. Not exactly my usual type of colours or colour combination, but I do love her and she does love them. 

I guess it's not really cheating on the Bulldogs socks if I'm sitting here daydreaming about a beautiful skein of CircusTonicHandmade sock yarn that fell into my shopping cart this morning. Australian merino wool...indi dyer...soft variegated yarn...ochre, greys, charcoal and the slightest hint of lemon...mmmmmmm.....

five - preserving the sunshine
Over the past few weeks I've mentioned a few times that this season's harvest isn't looking to be quite as bountiful as we'd hoped and expected. There are definitely some things that have positively surprised us, like the cucumbers, the berries and the beetroots. There are some things that have flat out disappointed us like the apples and the plums. And then there are some that could still go either way.

Over the past five or eight years we've grown most of and made all of our own tomato passata. Enough to last the whole year through. Over January our tomatoes get going slowly allowing us to finally break our tomato fast and to eat them on everything and in everything we can. By March we're not keeping up with the harvest and we start with the cooking and bottling.

This year has been the strangest tomato season ever. The vines are heavily laden with fruit but it's just not ripening. Or rather it's just starting to now, but only enough to eat, definitely not enough to preserve for later.

So yesterday we made the call and went and picked up a 10kg box off our mate Florian at Mount Franklin Organics down the road. Tomorrow we'll squish them, cook them into a sauce with some onion, garlic and basil, and then we'll pop them into jars for later. Hopefully our green tomatoes saw the boxful of red beauties make its way in and will hurry on up. And if not, we've arranged to pick up another box next week, just to be on the safe side.

six - listening

During the week Jo, another knitting mum of three, contacted me about her daughters Mabel and Ivy and their folk duo Charm of Finches. She was hoping we could work together to put on a house concert and as we've been talking a lot lately about doing something like this, we loved the idea and were hoping the same. Unfortunately, at this stage the dates didn't work, but in the meantime Jo sent me the girls' CD and I fell in love.

We've spent the past few days with Staring at the Starry Ceiling as the soundtrack to our drives to school and back, our dinner prep and our lying on the couch with closed eyes, feeling completely transported by their angelic voices, their beautiful harmonies, their original lyrics and all of the instruments in-between. 

With Mabel and Ivy being only one year older than our Indi and Jazzy, I can't help but dream of the places their shared love of music and song and flowy dresses might one day take them.

In the meantime I highly recommend you to click on over to the Charm of Finches site and support the girls and their dreams and melodies by buying their CD. 

Hopefully we'll get another chance to work with them in the future.

seven - listening to the scrape of Bren's knife against his spoon 
One of the best things to come out of this year so far is the dedicated Friday craft day. Just last night my Mum sent me a text asking if we needed help with stacking some wood today. The fact that I didn't have to think twice, or justify myself, or agonise over the decision was awesome. Friday is craft day. A whole guilt-free day for carving, knitting, sewing, drawing, playing guitar and writing my blog. If we decide to do a bit of farm work in amongst all of that then cool, but otherwise even cooler I say.

seven point five - listening to podcasts
Yesterday I listened to Richard Fidler interviewing Kate Summerscale about the life of Robert Coombes who in 1895 when he was 13 killed his mother and went on a spree with his little brother across London. I always love Richard's interviews but this particular story gripped me so tight that I hardly noticed the physical work I was doing in the garden until the whole hour was up.

It is a tragic story of Victorian-era matricide that also includes a boy's own adventure, a court case, an examination of family life with a father at sea and travels all the way over to Australia for the ending.

Kate has written a book about Robert's life called The Wicked Boy which I'm sure is a fantastic read, but I don't feel the need to read it now I've followed the whole story so closely in the author's words. Perhaps I'll look up some of her other books.

eight - splitting

The wood splitter is back for another week and the splinters in my hands and the ache in my muscles are there to prove it. Gosh I love watching that blade slice through those enormous rounds of wood as if they were butter. Not to mention that growing pile of firewood that will be stacked along the driveway and look pretty for a while and then keep us warm when the weather turns horrid.

nine - fermenting

If you were to ask me what I grow well on this farm, after little girls I think my next answer would be cucumbers. I seriously love growing cucumbers. I love how big their first leaves are when they poke their green tips out of the soil, I love how quickly they grow, I love their prolific yellow flowers and I love those green, crunchy, water filled fruit (?) and how much joy they add to my kitchen.

We mostly eat them as they come, in sandwiches and on salads, but when the season really gets going and we're bringing them in by the bagful, we ferment them by the jarful.

The recipe we use is from this book. We pretty much follow it, but often add and subtract ingredients. Lately we've been adding lemon slices (thanks Meg), and bay leaves, and as much garlic as we can be bothered peeling. 

Have I told you that my girls have started calling me Pickle? Tis true.

ten - reading
I just finished reading The Seven Good Years. Bren read it in a few days but I think I took a whole week. Even though I often struggle with short stories, and these are extremely short, I really enjoyed it. I laughed and cried at times but mostly I just admired Etgar's ability to take a simple thing that happened to him and make it into a great story.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. I heard Wendy James interviewed on the radio a few days ago, maybe I'll start her new book The Golden Child. It sounds very interesting and topical.


And with that my lovely friends, I'll bid you farewell. Pepper is sleeping over at her friend's house, the big girls will be home in an hour, which gives me just enough time to pop some washing on the line and get started on those tomatoes.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
I'm going away for three days with my Mum and one of my sisters and I can't wait!

As always please feel free to leave me any suggestions you might have for podcasts, books, music, shows and patterns you're enjoying.

LoveLove,

Kate xx