Today.

Today I cast on a new knit. A test knit for a girl in Canada. After the grey, grey, grey I've been knitting, I decided to make this one stripey just for fun. I like the changing colours bit. Perhaps I'll work towards a bit of Fair Isle at some point. Maybe.

Today was hot and humid and at times felt like there wasn't enough air to breathe.

Today I sewed a dress for a little girl to wear to a wedding.

Is that the sort of thing you had in mind Cath?

Is it a bit too mixy matchy for you?

Today it poured with rain and hopefully got rid of all those pesky locusts that invaded our house last night. They might do awful things to the farm, but when they were flying around inside last night, it felt just like a horror movie.

Today when it poured with rain it made the usually white Maremma puppies grey. They are still pretty cute though.

Today my big girls went back to school. It was so quiet without them.

Today I did lots of stuff but none of the stuff I should have done. No housework or baking or jam making. Plenty of time for that on the weekend.

I hope your today was great. Did you get much done?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

See ya?

A day.

We've been away at the beach for a few days. We left last Saturday when things just seemed too big and too difficult too deal with and came home last night.

Today is a strange, dream like, flitter from this job to that job kind of day.

We have been on the phone to plasterers about fixing our soggy kitchen ceiling, the boys have been chainsawing trees that have fallen down since the rains and have started to clean up around the place and we have been discussing leaving on our caravan adventure sooner than we had planned.

Indi is moving boxes of my stuff out of her new bedroom. Inside these boxes I am finding treasures from another time. Old diaries, fabric scraps, photos and other mementos from my life before now.

In one box I found the wings in the photo above. I made them and wore them to a dance party in the bush one time.

All my craft work used to be made in this fashion. I would draw an outline on a scrap of old op shopped blanket and then set my sewing machine to zig zag and colour in the shapes with millions of stitches.

After so many stitches, the work became hard and three dimensional. I haven't sewn like that in years.

This is today's craft. A row here and a row there on my grey cardi.

It is such slow going and the pattern is complicated but I am loving it.

And today the puppies started to eat food.

They gobbled it up using their whole bodies to launch them further and further into the bowl.

I feel the same sort of melancholy I felt when my babies started to eat solids and became less baby and more person. Any minute now they'll move away from our house and in with the chooks.

I'll miss these snugly, furry, sleepy puppies.

And I am thinking about all those affected by the floods. I can't imagine how emotional and physically draining this time must be.

I am crocheting round and around the back of the cushion cover and can hardly wait to stitch it all together and see how it looks.

Please be generous and make a bid on it if you can. ALL money raised goes to disaster relief for the families and communities that have been devastated by the recent floods.

What are you up to this sunny Wednesday afternoon?

Bye for now. XX

The year of love!

Good morning!

How're things with you?

So I'm sitting here thinking about the new year. 2011. Wow!

And I'm thinking about where I want to go and who I want to be this coming year.

So many things are popping into my mind and I'm tempted to write a whole resolution list but today I'm going to start with one thing. The top of my list.

I think that this coming year, after ten years of parenting, my Farmer Boy and I need to schedule a bit of regular alone time. Just him and me and away from the farm.

A date night. With a baby sitter and all. Woo Hoo! I am excited already.

Just now after I wrote that bit I called a friend and asked her if she was interested in the job and she loved the idea. She thinks we should prioritise it. I do too.

So there you go. My first New Years' Resolution has been put into action.

What about you? Do you have a regular date night? Have you started making your resolution list?

Have a wonderful fourth last day of the year.

Oh and the puppies still have their eyes closed but they have started wagging their tails. Too cute.

Bye now. XX

Loving...

The Rainbow Eden Dress!

I love this wool! I love how the colours bleed into each other.

I love this pattern! So perfect to show off the fancy colours.

And I love how soft merino wool is.

Raveled here.

I love that Jazzy loved her new Rainbow Dress so much, she was happy to brave the icy wind for a photo shoot.

I love that none of us has gotten dressed today. Lazy daysies.

I love, love, love the puppies. Puppy love - I totally get the full meaning of that term now. They are all huddled up together asleep right now in a bundle after a day spent feeding voraciously.

I loved scripting, casting, rehearsing, shooting and editing The Friendship Movie this morning.

I love the way Indi is moving into the spare room and the touches she is putting on it to claim it as her own.

I am not loving the sore pimple on my chin.

I love having my farmer boy at home with us all day long.

I love that the girls are all working together as I type this to make a batch of chocolate balls. Oh my goodness the mess!!

I love that her sticker chart is making Jazzy behave like an angel.

I love coffee and salad with haloumi and salty pop corn and summer fruit.

I love it that the girls are working through a book of fairy tales. The little girls take turns choosing and Indi reads them one each night before bed.

I love that there are no plans, no time-tables, just slooooooooooow summer days.

What's going on at yours?

What are you loving??

See ya later alligator

XX

Slow puppy Sunday.

At our house today we are all tired and slow after being up most of last night watching Willow the Maremma give birth to her six puppies, three girls and three boys.

It was such an incredible and emotional and humbling part of life to witness.

Willow has been napping on and off all day while her still closed eyes pups guzzle hungrily at her teats. She is such a great mama, so attentive and patient and adoring. And we have all been drawn to her like magnets, watching and stroking and checking and admiring.

I've been knitting a few rounds of Jazzy's rainbow dress here and there.

And taking lots of pics of it too.

We have been doing the farm chores and picking raspberries, strawberries, currants and gooseberries.

We have been making cubby houses and sand tea parties and we have been drawing, colouring in, dressing up and stirring yet another frothy pot of strawberry jam.

What are you up to?

I hope all is merry and happy and bright at yours.