love, indi x

Hello to all you wonderful readers sitting behind your screens ready to read my mum's blog.

I hope you slept well, are happy and healthy and have something exciting to do with your day!

My day consists of making mum and the rest of the fam shlep into town in the hope of crossing as much of my shopping list off as we can before I head overseas for the year. In ten days! Aaaaaahhh!!

I know from experience that when you travel your eyes see many beautiful new sights, views and monuments, but it's always a funny feeling to leave home. Because through all my mum and dad's constant hard work and joy for what they do, our home is also one of the most tremendously beautiful places I've ever been! Especially as the flower season begins.

Looking at the photo above makes me know that as I watch through my screen from across the world each new exciting flower variety bloom, just how much I'm going to miss always being surrounded by flowers, walking through the garden to pick them, bunching them and filling my room with colour.

But somehow I think that I'll miss the flower farmer herself much much more!

Sorry to take my mum away from you for the day!
I promise I'll make mum sit down and write another blog soon!

Wish me luck with my shopping list and taming the butterflies for the next ten days!

Lots of love, flowers and foxslane appreciation!

Love, Indi x

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

some answers

Hello friends,

Another week has flown right on by. So many times I thought of these photos and that I should post them along with the answers to the questions in the comments at the bottom of my last post, but it never came to be.

This past week was warm and dry and I feel like we made use of every minute; planting veggies and flowers, weeding, mulching, pulling the garlic, watering and mowing. From first thing in the morning til last light at night. Summer craziness on the farm has begun.

And it's exciting to watch as the scarlet runner bean fronds grab hold and wind their way up and around the trellises, flowers on the tomatoes begin to emerge, broad beans fatten up and await their picking, dahlia shoots emerge out of the soil, lettuces grow and plump up, strawberries and peas wait for you to walk by and snap them off and each day new flowers open and show their pretty faces to the world.

So here are the photos now. My Lanes cardigan still buttonless (Ravelry details here). Indi and Jazzy, the foxgloves, delphiniums and the warm summer's eve.

And now for the question and answer bit.

Hi Carly. Now that Indi has finished school she's trying to get her hours of learner driving up to 120 so she can get her driver's license (she's currently sitting at about 94), she's relaxing and socialising and she's working for me on the farm. I can't actually remember any stand out signs from the climate rally but at one stage Bren turned to me and said we should have made one that said 'Organic Farming is the answer!' I love that imagined one too. My advice for a new gardener would be to only grow the things you love to eat and look at. And to grow rocket and radishes because they are quick and easy. And I'm okay. Not great. I had a fight with one of my kids this week that really rocked me (we're good again now) and yesterday I finally went to the doctor about my elbow and ankle and now I'm all strapped up in purple tape with exercises to do and a list of things I'm not allowed to do. And I'm not allowed to knit for a week which I am stressing about. Or spin. Ugh, what's a girl to do?! A week feels like such a very long time. x

Hi Small Catalogue, has my brain returned now that my youngest is 10 and if so did it come back gradually or in a rush? Hmmmm definitely not in a rush. Actually I feel like for me it's been less about getting my brain back and more about carving out a space of my own. And I don't just mean a physical space, although the construction of my studio definitely helped with that. Over the past year I've come out from behind my girls and really felt a push to rediscover who I am, what I need and want, and to create some projects for myself. It's ongoing obviously, and it often gets squashed by things like VCE and other demanding family issues, but I feel like this past year I have felt more true to myself than I ever remember feeling before. Do you? x

Hi Kate, ooooooh I love your question about the other senses and what they add to my stories. So often when I'm in the garden wandering around or working, with the soundtrack of the calling of the birds, the singing of the frogs, the rustling of the wind through the trees, the fountain of the water as it comes out of the ground and pours into the house dam, I'll grab my phone and try to record the visual together with the audio to try to capture the scene as a whole. It's a shame I can't do that here now. I think that when I took these photos of the girls it was early evening and the birds must have all been calling out to each other but my focus would have been on Indi and Jazzy, laughing, breaking into song, telling each other stories, finishing each other's sentences and being silly. And as for the smell, I've been finding the sweet peas quite overpowering. There would have been that just freshly watered smell and the dry forest smell is just starting to be noticeable. I'm writing all of this from inside my studio where I can't really smell anything except for the wood of the walls, but I'm sure I'll be much more aware of everything later on when I go back to work. x

And that's me today.

Where are you? What are you up to? What can you hear and smell? And how do you feel?

See you next week friends.

Love,

Kate x

eighteen

Yesterday our Indigo had her eighteenth birthday and this afternoon, at 5.15pm, she'll put her pen down on her last exam and officially finish her life as a school girl forever.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how when most people consider having babies, they think about having babies and possibly toddlers, but never about having grown up kids.

For me so much of it was about the chubby little babies, about breast feeding, about wooden toys and cloth nappies, and about parenting close to nature in a way that felt wild and free. I'm sure I had visions of picnics in the sunshine where babies napped on blankets and beautiful scenes where toddlers ran through meadows of wild flowers with butterflies flying all about them.

I remember a phone call from Bren's mum Rene not long before Indi was born urging us to make a list of practical things a baby would need and to start crossing them off. Spurred into action we rode our bikes to some local op shops and bought bags full of baby clothes. Then we spent the next few weeks dying and appliquéing. 

Eventually she gave up and took us and our list shopping for nappies and buckets and a bath herself. I can still remember standing in the queue to pay with an enormous belly but still unable to imagine actually using these things. At that stage it was still all about the birth. It was hard to imagine the baby.

Let alone the teenager. 

And then there was a baby Indigo. And eight months after she was born we moved to the country to give her that wild and free childhood. We grew our own veggies, we kept chickens and goats and rabbits and alpacas, we made a circle of friends with children the same age, and when she was five she started school.

It's funny to think of how different those first few years of school are to the last.

On Indi's first day of school we knew the teacher and her family well, we knew almost every child in her class and after she said goodbye and went into the classroom, we spent the rest of the morning with the other parents celebrating and commiserating. We couldn't believe how big they were, we were scared they wouldn't be able to undo the clasps on their lunch boxes, find their ways back to class after recess, or make it to the toilet in time.

On her first day at high school,

and then her first day at her second high school, we dropped her off without knowing the names of her teachers, or many of the kids in her class, or how she got to be so big and independent.

Which brings us to today. To an 18 year old, adult, almost no longer school girl.

Even though the hours and the days and the months and the years and sometimes the minutes felt so long, I still can't quite work out how we got here. How Bren and I raised a whole adult. An intelligent, creative, sensitive, empathetic person.

Last night on the phone one of my sisters asked me if I had gotten over the drama of Indi's birth yet. If I had come to terms with the planned home water birth that ended up as an emergency cesarean? Oh gosh yes, I told her, Indi is so full of life, she's so magical and interesting and so full of potential. It's hard to imagine her not being here and how she got here seems inconsequential.

Late last night lying in bed with my eyes closed I thought about those words I'd spoken and I let the feelings they brought up swirl around me and I realised that I've come full circle. 18+ years ago I could hardly imagine the baby and here I am now watching this incredible grown person. She feels bigger than what we've given her and so very ready for what's to come. I have to think really hard to remember that fat squishy baby.

In the Hebrew language the word life or alive chai  is made of two letters - a chet and a yud. In Hebrew each letter is given a numerological value, in this case the chet is 8 and the yud is 10, together they make 18.

The more I think about that, the more I love it.

You're 18 Indi!! You're alive!! We wish for you the greatest adventures. We hope you meet incredible people and make life-long friends. We hope you live a life filled with creativity and music and passion and fun and flowers. We hope you travel the world and we hope that you come home to visit. We hope that you never stop learning and that you get lots of opportunities to teach. We hope that when you're knocked down you remember how strong you are and that you can deal with it. We hope that you remember how great it makes you feel to put your feelings into songs.

And we hope that wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing, that you know how cherished and adored you are and how very proud of you we feel.

And with that it's time to sign off and drive you to school for what might just be the very last time.

Happy, happiest birthday Indigo apple!! Let the festivities begin!!

Love xx

when the wattle is golden

This morning on the drive home over the mountains and through the forest, I thought about the last two weeks, and my blog, and the sort of things I could write about today. The light was streaming in through the trees, Indi was playing music, we stopped once to watch a pair of orange billed white ducks fossicking on the roadside, and then we pointed out baby lambs in paddocks, brightly coloured camellia and rhododendron bushes, and she told me random details as she remembered them from her past few days. Some of her last as a school girl.

For the best part of the past two weeks I have been living in someone else's house, at the base of another mountain, feeling like my own life is on hold.

As a family we decided that for our Indi's last two weeks of proper school, two weeks that were filled with early morning and late night classes, assessments every day and a never ending to-do list, we would stay in a house away from our home. A house ten minutes away from her school which is usually an hour away. To cut out the long commute, to give her more time for study, more time for sleep and easier access to teachers and odd hours.

And over the past two weeks Pepper came and went back home for school and activities, Bren came and went for work and to look after Pepper, and Jazzy and Indi lived there. They ate and slept and worked and played guitar and sang and had friends over and went to school and came home.

As for me, for two weeks I feel like I have driven girls back and forth so many times that I felt dizzy. I have smiled at crazy cackling laughter and comforted through many tears. I have cooked, I have listened, I have edited, I have pep-talked, I have worried and I have celebrated, I have been so in tune with other people's emotions that I put my own on hold.

And while I had some wonderful times: a whole day off alone with Bren away from the farm, a night of knitting with my wonderful friend Elizabeth, a two day visit from my mum...for the most part I felt like I was living some sort of alternate life. Like the life I was living wasn't really my own. Cooking meals from shop bought ingredients that I have in my pantry and garden at home, spending all of my time inside with no farm to tend or forest to walk, watching the television at night for company, no wifi and terrible phone reception, being on standby at all hours of the day, not knowing a soul in the supermarket or cafe, and missing my home and my people.

It didn't feel like my usual life and yet it wasn't a holiday either; so weird.

But it was a blessing to be able to do it for my girl and we all agreed that it was hugely successful. Exactly what we'd hoped for happened. We might even do it again in her exam week.

And as I drove home up the driveway this morning through a blaze of golden wattle, it occurred to me that I don't really have a lot to blog about this week. I haven't had any major revelations, I haven't finished a book or a knitting pattern or harvested anything from the garden. But our big girl was sitting in the car across from me smiling. She's got two months until her final year of high school exams are over. And when she's smiling my whole world is filled with sunshine, so I'm smiling too.

I'm so happy to be home.


I hope you're happy to be wherever you are my friends.
Have you finished anything this past week? A book, a project, a crop?
Have you felt like you've given your life over to someone else recently?
Are you thanking goodness for the weekend?

Big love to you wherever you are.

Love, Kate x

in june

Hello lovely ones,

I've had a bit of a nostalgic week this past week. In preparation for my presentation at Soul Craft festival tomorrow I've spent time going through old photos, old blog archives, old projects, and really thinking about the gifts that living and sharing my craft-filled life online have given me. It'll be nine years this month since I started posting to Foxs Lane. Nine years!! 

And although blog friends have come and gone, and  although the trends have come and gone (hello Kirsty's granny shrug), and although my style has changed a million times (I'm no longer wearing skirts made from tea-towels), and although our girls are so big now that it's hard to even remember that I used to be able to knit them a cardigan from one 200 gram ball of Bendigo Woollen Mills cotton, and I could go on and on...the one constant has always been community. You guys. Us.

Creativity, connection, community.

Our stories, our opinions, our skills, our families, our makings, our ups and our downs. So although my talk will be mainly about my relationship to craft, I can't help but feel it would be completely different, and not nearly as fulfilling, without you guys travelling along beside me.

Which is why it meant so much to me when I opened my post office box this week to find a parcel from Rhonda at Down To Earth, one of my favourite bloggers and possibly one of the blogs I've been reading longest. It means the world to me to think that Rhonda thought of me when she came across this book in her bookshelf and knew that I'd love it. It felt comforting flicking through its pages at 3 this morning and wondering if she was awake and reading too. But the best part of all is, after all these years of reading her typed words, to read her inscription in her own hand writing. 

Thank you dear friend. xx

june second

As you can imagine, a huge chunk of this week has been spent preparing for my presentation and my sock knitting class at Soul Craft tomorrow. I've written questions, thought of answers, found diagrams, prepared instructions, printed pages, taught two friends, gone through old photos and blog posts, had my hair cut, found an outfit, knitted lots of samples, endured the crazy tummy butterflies, breathed deeply, mixed some essential oils, questioned my ability and my authority, written lists and made plans.

june third

All I can remember about last Sunday is that Bren and Pepper made some wooden spinning tops on the lathe, I planted loads of spring bulbs, Indi wrote an essay in Melbourne, poor Jazzy wasn't well and we ate fire-baked potatoes for dinner.

june fourth

I remember being halfway through a conversation with Bren last Monday when I looked behind him and saw the light coming through the window and hitting the cyclamen and I had to rush out to take a photo. I guess that's a big pro for the taking at least one photo every single day. They can't always be the big moments.

I look at that macrame so often and wish for the time to make more. Hopefully when I'm housebound over true winter I will.

june fifth

The greenhouse is in a bit of a post busy season mess, as you can see in the first photo on this post, but somehow through the lattice of windows everything looks just as it should. I love that.

june sixth

On Wednesday, due to the luck of her timetable and my need to escape the distractions of the home and get some serious work done, I spent four heavenly hours in two cafes, sitting across from Miss Indi, drinking coffee and then peppermint tea.

Back at the height of my crochet obsession in 2012, I would have written an entire blog post about those tea cozies!

june seventh

This week three windows went into my studio and three walls were clad in the old car-port tin. Next week the shingles will go on the front and then I think it'll be time to fit out the inside. So far everything but the battens is recycled. I am ridiculously in love with every single detail and ridiculously grateful to my farmer boy and to Jobbo. xx

june eighth

Today. One more sleep til Soul Craft!

It's funny how much I enjoyed hanging out the washing this morning when I knew I had a bazillion other things that I should have been doing to get ready for tomorrow instead. How I shook out every piece to make sure they dried right, how I admired all of the stripes and colours, how I made sure there was nothing long hanging in the back row to get in the way when we carry loads of wood through, and how much an undercover, out-of-the-living-area washing line has changed my life. On Sunday the housework will probably drive me crazy again, but for now, anything but the should is good.

Which brings me to now, 3.26pm on Friday. This time tomorrow I'll be two hours into my class, with one still to go. Wish me luck!

For now I have to go and charge my camera battery, finish printing and collating the instruction sheets, organise my samples, pack my needles and yarn, go through my presentation, wrap my dad's birthday present and take some deep breaths.

Hopefully I'll be seeing some of you tomorrow.

Do you have any last minute public speaking or teaching tips for me?
Do you have any questions you think I should address in my talk?
What's your best procrastination trick?

Hopefully I'll live to tell the tale and see you back here next week with all the gory details...

Love,

Kate x