from yesterday with love x

So here's something a bit weird. I'm actually writing this on Thursday and not Friday, even though I'm posting it on Friday and not Thursday, and you're probably reading it on Friday and definitely not on Thursday. But if I didn't tell you that you wouldn't know any different. The internet is funny like that isn't it? All this information and all these assumptions and in the end we just have to sort through it all and decide for ourselves what we believe in.

But you can trust me I promise. The reason I'm writing it a day early is because we're going to The Australian Sheep and Wool Show tomorrow (Friday) and on the way home we're going to pop in on our old friends in their new house, and I don't want to feel all rushed or like I've got something at the back of my mind that I feel like I should be doing instead.

So here I am. It's Thursday evening and it's dark and rainy and cold outside. I'm sitting about as close to the heater as I can get, Bren's in the other room practising guitar, the smalls are next to me programming a robot that Pepper and Bren just finished building, and Indi is on a bus home from Woodend. When she gets home we'll have spaghetti with lentils for dinner.

The top photo is of the kitty cat hot water bottle cover I knitted for Miss Pepper for her birthday last year. I was just looking through my Ravelry page before and noticed that I had never taken a photo of it, so now I have. The details are here.

This is the tractor hot water bottle cover that I'm just finishing off now. Did I mention it's cold? 

I feel like overalls are the only clothing option that makes any sense these wintry days. I pretend that I wear them for work, but really it's the handy hot water bottle sized pouch up front. So cozy.

Speaking of sheep and wool and knitting and stuff, here's a little shearing shed drawing my farmer boy found in a box of his primary school exercise books. This one's from grade three. There are more pages of sheep drawings but I forgot to photograph them and now it's dark. Oops, hopefully I'll remember and add them in tomorrow. So cute!!

I'm reading my daughter's copy of Once & Then by Morris Gleitzman, trying to stay ahead of her so we can discuss it as she goes. Once & Then are fictional books that follow the life of a 10 year old Jewish boy called Felix living in 1945 Nazi Poland. I've only read 50 pages so far but I'm already completely engaged in the story. I'm so interested to see how the book progresses and how Morris deals with the horrors of the Holocaust through the eyes of a child and for an audience of children.

I'm also interested to see how the conversation with my daughter evolves. She says that most of the kids in her class have already read the books and she's grown up in a house where many discussions about the Holocaust have taken place in front of her over the years. But still it's pretty tricky subject matter for a kid. I'm hoping that I can trust Morris Gleizman to be sensitive to his young audience and their naivety, but like I said, I'm reading ahead just to be sure.

I'm thrilled to report that my onion seedlings have finally decided to show their sweet green faces a month after I planted them. These were the first seeds that I planted in our new green house so it means so much to me that they have. We also eat a lot of onions so it'll be great to have a big stash.

When we were first talking about and designing the green house I just assumed we'd use old windows for the roof as well as the walls. But then I was quickly talked out of that because their weight and fragility would make the structure unsafe. If we wanted to use old glass, we'd have to build a proper roof structure to support them. 

So after much research and discussion we ordered some poly tunnel plastic and popped it on up. We thought it would be reasonably priced, easy to fit and that it would be UV sensitive come summer.

What ended up happening is that it looked flat and ugly, and when it rained huge pools of water collected in the low points. We tried shoving bits of wood and tubes of cardboard up to stop it, but nothing stopped the pools and we were worried that one day the weight of the water would burst through the plastic and flood the space. 

So this week the plastic came down and some good old, practical Laserlite went up in its place. It's strong and sturdy and safe and now that it's up there I don't mind that corrugated look as much as I thought I might. It does the trick in the rain anyway.

And look at that. Remember in my last post when I told you that we'd been having issues with our Esse stove since it was installed in 2012? Well, on Monday Bren's Dad's plumber came back and after another big day they lit it and ever since then it's been running like a dream. Our house is warm, tonight's dinner was cooked on the hot plate, and if you sit with your back to that radiator in the photo above to write your blog you'll feel as toasty as a marshmallow. So my farmer boy is happy and so say all of warm us!

And that's me all blogged up and no place to go. That is until the sheep and wool show tomorrow. Can't wait!

And just for fun, if you could have anything at all knitted into a hot water bottle cover what would it be? I think I'd like three little girls on mine, or maybe a sheep.

I hope you have a great Friday, honey bunches. I have no idea how to schedule a blog post so I think I'll just publish this early before we leave. And I haven't decided if I'll take my big camera along, but I'm certain I'll be posting to my instagram stories if you want to follow along over there.

Big love!

Kate
xx

Hello happy & beautiful (almost) winter list

It's freeeeeezing cold here. Today was dark and grey and stormy and wet. Winter feels like it has well and truly settled in two weeks early. Although this weather feels like it could drag me under, this year I am determined not to let it. I'm determined to stay on top of it all. And what better way than by noticing and remembering and appreciating and being grateful for the good in my life. The great in my life. The beautiful in my life.

So here we go, here's my HELLO HAPPY and BEAUTIFUL (almost) WINTER list.

I love watching my little girls and their dogs. It reminds me of what we wanted, what we dreamed of, when we decided to move to the country to bring up our family. Jazzy and Willow.

I love the bits of bright colour in our garden. We're pretty good at growing the edible and the functional, but we often forget about the purely decorative. The decorative serves a pretty important function too, so I am learning.

I'm so happy that the kitchen garden is looking almost ready to take on the winter months. Kale and lettuce and rocket and herbs and garlic and broccoli and carrots and beetroots. I've got a bundle of seeds to plant in the hot house next time I get a chance too.

Pom pom parties!

We bought a Clover pom pom maker last weekend and it is rocking our world. It is quick and fun to use and makes the best, fluffiest pom poms around.

It may be freeeeeeeeezing, but Daylesford does autumn beautifully. This tree up near the poly tunnels seems to change colour and glow as the day goes on.

A sneaky, mid-week, wintery getaway with my farmer boy. We had the caravan park and the beach to ourselves and spent a whole luxurious two days alone. (Thanks heaps M and D xx)

The very last of autumn's colourful bounty. Yesterday I spent a bit of a disgusting few hours poking through the sloppy, mouldy vines in the poly tunnels for the final time of the season. Tomorrow the chooks will go in and clean them up. It's been a wonderful season but the time has come to say farewell.

A sunny Sunday's work in the kitchen garden resulted in a ute load of garden scraps for the compost. Out with the old and in with the new. Hooray!!

I've been catching glimpses of the cubby-house in different lights, from different angles and falling in love over and over again. 

Keeping the home fires burning. Cooking our food and warming our home. Late in the evenings we like to pull chairs up to her and open an oven for extra warmth. Then my farmer boy reads some Michael Pollan out loud and I knit. It's cozy. And MP is a great writer. And my farmer boy is a great reader and he took that photo and he's a bit cute too.

Ahhhhh, I feel better already. I think I might have to make this a regular thing.

Do you want to play too? Here in the comments or on your blog?
What are some of the little things making you feel up and happy at the moment?
What's chasing your grey away?

Big love peeps.
Be good. xx

Cheesy green garden bread. ( a kind of recipe).

I gathered a colander full of kale, beetroot leaves, mustard greens, spinach, rocket, parsley and rainbow chard. I wilted them, squeezed out all the excess water and cut them into teensy little pieces.

Then I filled a mixing bowl with;

2 cups of wholemeal flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
a small pile of grated parmesan
a small pile of grated mozzarella
a small pile of grated vegetarian tasty cheese
a small pile of feta
a third of a cup of sliced olives
half a cup of milk

I let the mixer mix all the ingredients together until they were combined and I had a really wet dough.

I plopped the dough mixture onto a floury bench and rolled it into a log.
Then I cut the log into three even pieces and rolled them into long thin snakes.
I laid the snakes on an oven tray covered with baking paper.
I joined the three snakes together by pinching one end.
Then I plaited them and tucked the last pinched end under.

Then I popped the braided dough into a hot oven for about 45 minutes.
I pulled it out when the top and bottom were golden brown.

It smelt incredible. And it tasted good. Really, really good. But it's almost gone already and the girls aren't even home from school yet.

Oh well, I'll just have to make more.

I think this is the type of recipe you can modify to suit whatever is in season, or whatever's in the fridge. I am super-dooper excited to try it with tomatoes come summer.

I think that apart from the flour, the quantities are pretty forgiving. I think that it would be delish with crumbled feta over the top...or slathered with butter...or humus...or dunked in soup...And I think that this is going to be the best lunchbox and afternoon tea snack. And I think this is a great way to get your kids to eat their greens. Yum!

Can you smell it from there?
Are you going to make some?
What's cooking in your kitchen.
What sort of things do you love to make?
I hope you have the happiest weekend folks!

xx

Cook while the oven's hot.

These wintry days, if you're looking for us, the chances are you'll find us in the kitchen by the wood cooker. Drinking tea up at the bench, kneading bread, rolling out pasta, chatting with the sour dough starter, stirring the soup, cutting up salad, or just supervising all of the above.


Our Esse is fast becoming the heart of our home. She is burning hot all day and right through the night at the moment, cooking our food and keeping the radiators in the rest of the house warm. And we've all been gravitating towards her.


It's comforting to read Little House On The Prairie to the girls every night and learn that it was the same back then too.


I guess that's what winter is all about.

The biggest differences we've found so far since cooking with wood are that;

• the oven is always on, so we may as well pop something in it.
• we are growing our own fuel source, which feels really nice and self sufficient.
• the days of pressing a button and turning a dial are long gone.
• there is about a one hour time delay between a warm oven and a hot oven.
• a good seal and dry, dense wood is the answer to the overnight burn.
• our kitchen is no longer the coldest room in the house.
• I never have to get up in the night to check that I turned the oven off.
• I am growing to love my kitchen.
• slow and steady wins the race.
• the wood cooker has her own personality and we are falling in love with her more as the days go by.
• we are baking with no exact temperature guage and without a timer. The breads and cakes go in when the oven is hot and come out when they look and test done. 
• cooking can be an absolute joy.

Now if only the dishes fairy would visit it would all be perfect.

So what's cooking with you, good looking?
Made/eaten anything extra tasty lately?
What are you having for dinner tonight?
Got a recipe to recommend?

See ya later, roast potata.
xx

PS ohmygoodness blogger, your spacing issues are killing me.

My creative space.

In my creative space this week I am darning in the ends of my first set of stripes for my stripey pipes project.

And I'm trying to figure out a way to attach them to the black foam pipes that carry hot water from the wood cooker in our kitchen to the radiators all around the house. I'm thinking cable ties or fishing wire??

Every now and then I'm hooking a rainbow row of the queen granny stripe blanket on our bed. It's terribly cold and grey outside and so nice to snuggle in bed and crochet a rainbow stripe.

I'm knitting the last two inches of my Graphite Mara.

At this stage I am desperate to finish with the monotonous rows of knit, knit, purl, purl, knit, knit, purl, purl and actually wear the thing.

And being the school holidays, a lot of my day light hours are spent helping my girlies with their own creative endeavours such as the gingerbread wedding above.

As far as I can see, I haven't posted a my creative space since two March's ago but it feels great to be back.

I'm so looking forward to seeing what you've got going on in your space this week.
Are you making something exciting?
Are you at that exciting beginning stage, or are you racing towards the finish line?

Happy making my friends.  xx

The French style apple tart.

We had a lesson with the boss on the Esse cooker, a bit of a fine tune with the plumber and then we filmed a YouTube clip.

We started shifting stuff back into the white rooms but tried our hardest to be choosy.

We sent Miss Indi off to a Bar Mitzvah party.

We partied like rock stars on Saturday night.
We frocked up and hung out with friends that are more like family, that share our history.

Then we tried to remember to enjoy the rarity that is the seedy Sunday.
We felt our age when it took us days to recover.

We started to consider swapping a road trip up the coast for an inner city stay.

We made crazy hair styles for school.

We were informed by Miss Pepper that teddies are stuffed!!

I knitted more stripes for the pipes.

We finished with Miss Pepper's vomits and started with Miss Indi's.

We spent the day in Ballarat while the Prado got a chunky new tow bar and new window seals.

We read cook books from cover to cover and were excited to find our name in Matt's.

My beautiful grandmother Lucy, who died of Alzeheimers three and a half years ago, started coming back to me. The good stuff, the real Dandenong road Booba, not the sickness. The memories and feelings are so precious and I am so grateful.

I saw Miss Pepper in the door-way and thought it was a four year old Indi.

I ate a gazillion sour oranges off R and J's tree.

I felt swollen with inspiration but itchy with lack of time.

I wondered how people with fringes (bangs) cope with constant rain.

I questioned the wisdom of having a dog.

We baked the apple tart recipe we had been saving for the new cooker.
It's the French Style Apple Tart from The River Cottage Family Cookbook.

I wanted to sit down and write stories here, but with the constant interuptions had to be happy with points. I'll get there.

So what's going on with you so far this week?
Are you making and baking?
Is it hot there or freeezing cold?
Are you guys well, are you happy, are you good?
I hope so.

See ya. xx

Where I'm at.

It's funny how sometimes the more you plan the less your plans come true.

This week I was going to be super productive. I was going to sew and cook and bake and make and write and clean and return emails and calls. After my teary weekend, this week was going to make me feel in control, on top of things. Organised.

But then at the very start of the week Miss Pepper turned grey, got some knives in her tummy and started vomiting and is still in bed today. Miss Jazzy jumped up to reach a helium balloon and fell forwards onto Pepper's pile of chairs and hurt her knee and hasn't been able to walk very well.

And Miss Indi...is 11...yep.

Added to that, a few days ago I was walking up the hill from school to get my mail and I saw my friend Noel's painting van. All of a sudden it occurred to me that I needed my house painted ASAP! I couldn't put up with that dirty cream colour for one more second. I needed white walls and I needed to start making them white right then.

So I walked up the hill, found Noel drinking his morning coffee in a cafe and booked him then and there. It was just ridiculous, plain luck that he had a couple of days free this week. Or it was meant to be.

So this week our house is back to being a construction zone. Completely topsy-turvey. The front half is empty of all furniture and filled with drop sheets and the back is full of stuff. We are going to be eating all our meals picnic style on the floor in front of the fire for a while, but Antique White USA here we come.

We've been cooking up lots of feasts on the Esse. We've been learning that she heats up quite pretty quickly for cooking on the hob, but oven baking and roasting needs much more planning and time.

We think we might name her Mona for she is a temperamental girl and is partial to a bit of a moan and groan.

I've been walking Jo-Jo morning noon and night. It's freeeeezing but it's nice to rug up and get out.

Last night close to midnight we went walking and met Farmer Bren in the back paddock closing in some chooks for moving. The night was inky black, the grass was crunchy with frost and the kangaroos thumping around the forest sounded like dinosaurs. It was quite an adventure.

I've been sewing a little to escape the chaos. A little apple dress.

And a Mixy Matchy dress for my shop.

Yep! I have decided that my girlies have more dresses than they need and I have more floral fabric than I need and so I am reopening Everything But The Thread. It'll be slow going at first but I'm thinking dresses, fat quarter bundles and some other bits and pieces. Oh and I'm thinking it needs a bit of a make-over too.

Watch this space....

I've been knitting stripes to cozy our Esse pipes. Using up lots of scraps and odds and ends. I'm enjoying the mindless knitting but itching to get onto something a bit more interesting.

So that's me. In a rambley roundabout kinda way.

Now off I go to play nurse mama to this little.

How about you?

What have you been up to so far this week?

Do tell.

x