wish i may - wish i might

Hello my lovelies,

Another Friday, another Foxslane post.

So much of my last week, if not the past three weeks, or even the last year, has been affected by the fact that I can't sleep. It feels like I've spent so much time talking about and trying different preventatives and cures, working on my sleep hygiene, pushing harder at the gym, cutting down on coffee, learning meditation, taking herbs, writing lists...but still I can't sleep. My body has forgotten how to sleep. And so I've been walking around feeling like the front of my head is filled with soggy cotton wool and hoping the right words will come to me in conversation when I need them.

It's frustrating and exasperating and scary. I feel like I'm wasting the days of my life working at quarter strength. Wandering around in a daze, dazing around in a wonder.

But late last night when I was preparing myself for another eight hours of lying in the darkness, my farmer boy suggested that whatever happened or didn't happen overnight wouldn't matter because all I had to do today was sit up in bed, knit a couple of rows of my shawl, edit some photos and write my blog.

I hardly slept at all last night and feel like I'm in slow motion again today but it's been kind of nice taking the pressure off and not expecting to get anything done but the bare minimum. So please excuse me if I'm a bit incoherent in places, I'll totally forgive you if you lean on the pictures instead of the words. And let's just cross our fingers and hope that by some miracle something changes soon and I sleep and make sense again.

So how about we get back to the photo, or five, a day, okay?

may twelve

Last Saturday we picked the last sale-able apples from the trees. Five crates of Jonathan's. It was so cold that I couldn't feel my fingers, the rain was dripping off the trees and nets down my neck when I looked down and up my sleeves when I reached up, and it wasn't an altogether pleasant experience. But the apples were bright red and beautiful, they came off easily and we filled the crates in no time.

As we walked the rows of the orchard afterwards and noticed how the leaves were turning golden and fluttering to the ground, we thanked the trees for the beautiful apples, made plans to take the nets off before we pick the grannies, and acknowledged the fantastic season we've had and all that it involved.

We put those apples on the farm gate stall and by the next evening a box had been taken for an apple pie cooking lesson at a Women's prison nearby and the rest had been sold to passers by. We took the signs down, we put the scales away, we emptied the money tin and then we closed the stall doors until next season.

may thirteen

On Sunday we helped Indi paste one of her photos on the water tank at the top of the hill. It's part of her year 12 art folio and has all sorts of theory and meaning behind it, but like I said I'm not in the right head space for explaining anything complicated so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

She printed up some more yesterday that will hopefully get pasted around our farm over the weekend, I'll report back next week.

After the trek up the hill and the pasting we ate pancakes for Mother's Day lunch.

may fourteen

After school on Monday we went for a walk through the sunflower patch to assess the storm damage. Being such a late crop they're probably not as strong as they could be and many were lying down or bent over, but still there were enough standing upright staring at the sun for us to get lost in the magic of and bask in their glow.

may fifteen

These are the chrysanthemums I bought myself for Mother's Day. Bren bought me a blue handled pocket-knife which is equally as pretty and I probably should have taken a picture of, but I forgot.

may sixteen

On Wednesday Bren and Jobbo built the roof of my studio. I had been worried that adding a roof onto the structure would make it too big and overpowering in that space, but after they played around with angles for a while I think they got it just right. I love it and its little pitched roof.

Bren's parents drove up for lunch which was fun.

And then I walked up and down each row of flowers until I found enough for a bunch.

may seventeen

Yesterday I planted some more garlic, I pulled the basil out of the garden and saved the seeds, I watched as they wrapped the studio up in sisalation and Miss Jazzy got her braces put on her teeth.

may eighteen 

Today. A few days ago when they were discussing ideas for the ceiling of my studio, I sent my farmer boy an instagram photo of a ceiling I love. It was one of those dreamy cabin photos with a pitched roof, chunky rafters and big, wide, dark boards covering the the entire space. From there the boys went into action pulling bits of timber out, sanding, staining, oiling and then holding them up to be discussed. At one point Jobbo remarked that he'd always wanted to see what sump oil did to the colour of a wooden board and the next thing he knew Bren came back from the depths of an old shed with a bucket full from an old tractor. From time to time we laugh at him and his hoarding tendencies and then at other times we are swiftly reminded that he's the one laughing. Or feeling smug anyway.

Eventually they sourced some hardwood offcuts and spent today getting them ready. Jobbo cut them to size, Bren sanded them down and then they played with the ratios of linseed oil to sump oil for the dark and richness.

They got rained out this afternoon because sanding is not an inside job, but with any luck by this time next week I will not only have had some good hours of sleep - but I'll have a studio ceiling too. How exciting.

And I'm still knitting my Merricks shawl in Abbe's Noble Fox yarn. I've just finished the second colour and am about to make a start on the border, it's the most beautiful blue and I'm so excited to use it.

Which brings me to now, still sitting up in bed, staring at the late afternoon shadows dancing on the wall, wearing the new to me cardigan I bought myself this afternoon on our local buy/swap/sell Facebook page, wondering what to make for dinner that Jazzy and her new braces will be able to eat.

And that's me!

Please tell me about you. Are you building? Wallpapering? Is your team winning? Are you excited about something? Dreading something else? Please fill me in, I'd love to hear it all.

Love! Love!

Kate x

May days

Gosh, what a week hey. Sitting here alone in the same place I sat alone a week ago reflecting on the last seven days makes me realise what a crazy emotional flood we've been swimming through. I don't actually know if emotions can flood but whatever this past week was made of feels thick and heavy and honestly at times I'm not even sure the swimming we're doing is even getting us anywhere.

Throughout the week I've found myself looking at the unseasonal weather, at the full moon and at the time of the year for excuses for the intensity, but I'm still clueless. I guess it is what it is. And what it is is a jumble of four people's accumulated stress, needs and experiences and my desperate attempt to be the best partner and mother I can; to guide, to take over, to be there, to listen, to distract, to support, and to comfort. AND to try not to get swept along and be overcome by my own emotions in dealing with theirs.

Unfortunately none of the stories belonging to the emotions are mine to tell so I understand that this discussion of emotional overload might feel empty. This is one of the weeks where I definitely considered starting an anonymous second blog to discuss my secret life of raising and living with teenagers in order to get it out and make some sense of it all. But I do feel completely confident that everything we're living through is normal and some sort of rite of passage. Text book normal even. We'll get to the other side and be stronger for it.

In the meantime April turned into May and I remembered that last May I took a photo or two each day and then posted them on my blog every Friday. If you like you can click back to this post for the explanation. I liked the way it forced me to find one moment every day to capture, I liked the way it showed me how diverse my days are, I liked that it got me out of the rush around on a Friday morning, to be a bit more mindful over the whole week, and I loved the way it helped me to see the beauty in my everyday.

So I'm going to do it again. In fact I already started last Tuesday I just haven't told you yet. 

Let's get going then.

May 1

I took this photo of some pots of chrysanthemums on the first but the story they tell is from the days before. Last Sunday evening we drove through the forest and picked our farmer boy up from his time away. It was beautiful and emotional and our hearts felt full. The next few hours were filled with stories and tears and love. On Monday morning not wanting to be separated again so soon, we drove the girls out to their school together. On the way home, alone for the first time in what felt like forever, I couldn't stop looking at him and touching his face.

It had occurred to me the day before that I deal with my life the same way that I deal with a complicated knitting pattern - one line at a time. And that life line started with the preparations and discussions about his trip and ended with the drive to pick him up. One by one I had dealt with everything in between that I had to; I got the girls fed, dressed and ready for school, I did the drop offs and pick ups, I dealt with emotions and crises and tears as they came up, I looked after the farm, I prepared the meals, I picked crates and crates of apples and bunches and bunches of flowers and baskets and baskets of tomatoes, we all went together to a friend's 50th, we set up and sold at the farmer's market, came home for a quick lunch and then we drove an hour past Castlemaine. 

And the same way that I don't let myself look ahead and over complicate things in my knitting, I didn't look ahead in my life. And then all of a sudden when we were driving the wrong way through the forest, worried about being late, it occurred to me that we were going to bring our boy home. His trip was almost complete and then he would be ours. I immediately got excited, impatient butterflies in my tummy. One bit was ending and I could hardly wait to begin the next.

And then the next morning there was that magical, sunshine filled drive home from school. We told stories, we listened, we said so much mushy stuff, we stopped for coffee in a tiny nearby town and when we walked past a little buggy by the side of the road selling potted chrysanthemums - of course I bought them.

May 2

Until Last May we had an ugly poly-tunnel like hot house attached to the side of our house. On the ninth of May last year we pulled down that hot house that had been there since we  first moved here in 2001. On the fifteenth of May last year we concreted in three massive old bridge posts and started the construction of the green house at the back of the photo above. And on the 23rd of May the hot house was finished just leaving the shelves and table to be completed. (Click on any of the links in the sentences to visit those posts).

Exactly one year later on May the second, the sub floor, insulation and then floor of my studio went in and down.

Even though the hot house is predominantly my space it's still family owned and used, even though I am quite vocal and adamant when I decide that I want a recycled brick floor for the sun room, open shelving in the kitchen, and to decorate all the spaces my way, I still can't believe that this new build is only for me. Every piece of wood or window, every nail and screw, every jackhammered hole, all of it has been carefully chosen and designed, and banged and dug, and drawn and discussed, for me. I am definitely crazy excited, but I am also overwhelmed. So much time and effort and money is being spent on something that will be mine alone. I can't really get my head around it.

Watch this space, if I know anything at all I know that it's going to be pretty special.

May 3

On May third, yesterday, rain threatened and I made comfort soup from the garden for my gang and thought about how important beautiful spaces are to my state of mind. One year on and it's hard to imagine life before this greenhouse with it's beautifully big windows and purpose built shelving and table. It feels like it honours the growing work I do and enables me to be better at it.

I also took that photo of the sign I'm halfway through painting because seeing it there yesterday amongst all the golden leaves was the first time I really felt like it was autumn. There was a chill in the air, crunchy leaves underfoot, the air smelt smokey and we were preparing for rain. It's time.

May 4

Today. I always say that I can survive almost anything if I have a good book to read and a lovely pattern to knit. At the moment I have one of each.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Abbe who I met years and years ago at a craft thing when she was a quilter and I was a crocheter brought her three gorgeous boys to visit me at market. It's been years since I've seen her, possibly even since her wedding, but in the intervening years she's moved over from the fabric to the yarn side (yay!), and fallen deeply in love with knitting and dyeing.

It was pretty cute watching her three boys sitting beside our stall munching on apples. It was pretty exciting when Abbe gave me three skeins of her gorgeous hand dyed yarn to play with.

Abbe has teamed up with Kylie from Whiskey Bay Woollens who has designed a gorgeous shawl called Merricks to showcase the dyed yarns and together they are offering packs of yarn and pattern for sale. Click over to Abbe's instagram page for all the different yarn combinations she has available.

That's the start of my Merricks shawl up there, I'll pop all the details as I go on my Ravelry page.

The book next to it, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover is the book I'm about to finish. I've loved it and highly recommend it to anyone interested in beautifully written, powerful books about family, fundamentalist religion, mental illness and Mormonism. As Angela M, a reviewer on Goodreads wrote - 'Difficult to read. Impossible to put down.' 

And the last photo is the scene that greeted me just after I looked up from taking the photo above it. On the way to school, hot water bottle against the cold, happy to be in grade 5 again after spending the day at the local high school yesterday.

And that's my May so far
How about yours? How's it going?
Do you have a creative project on the go?
Are you swimming in a thick sea of emotions?
What's your trick to getting through times that are overwhelming? (I've been going to the gym most nights).

See you'se next week lovely ones!

Love, Kate x


ps Our farm gate stall is still open and full of delicious apples...just sayin'

a slice of my life

Hello lovely ones,

How are you feeling? How's your week been?

I'm sitting on the couch in our new sun room. It's quiet except for the sound of the birds and of Jo-Jo snoring next to me. Bren is away, the girls are at school and although I looked forward to this time all week and felt excited at the thought of having the house to myself, now that I'm here I'm finding it hard to sit still and focus.

It's funny, even though everyone who knows me understands that I struggle with the cold, wet and grey, I'm finding this crazy long growing season that we're having exhausting. We still haven't had the Autumn break, the first frost, or any decent rainfall, so we're frantically busy with all of the late summer/early autumn jobs. We're still picking tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, apples, beetroots and carrots, we're still picking and dead-heading the flowers, we're still planting and weeding and preserving and collecting seeds. And in between all of that we're making the most of the sunshine and stacking firewood, watering the garden and wondering if the seeds we plant out now will have any chance of growing.

And that's all great, especially the fact that the days are brilliantly sunshiney and warm BUT usually by now things are starting to slow down, the summer crops are beginning the next part of their cycle as they rot into compost and there's time for catching up on the indoors jobs, for crafting on the couch, and for introspection. Instead we're still working outside from first thing in the morning until dark, our list of things to do feels like endless, and I'm feeling overwhelmed and stretched, and tired.

Our garden is full of frantic looking bees at the moment, buzzing between the flowers, desperately trying to  collect all the nectar to make honey stores for winter and I can relate to them. I also feel a bit buzzy and frantic going from job to job trying to be everywhere at once. I don't wish for the season to be over, not at all, but I would love a little break. A little slow down. A little knitting time on the couch.

Oh gosh, when winter does come closing in I'm going to regret those words, aren't I.

So what else have we been doing?

I listened to and loved The Habitat podcast. 

I've been eating cut up granny smith apple, with muesli, and nuts, and seeds for at least one but mostly two meals a day.

We sold apples, garlic, flowers and tomatoes at the farmer's market and loads of apples from the farm gate stall.

When Bren went away for a few days we were asked to present him with one gift, and we gave him three. Pepper knotted him a bracelet using his favourite colours. I knitted him a love heart to represent the place he holds in our hearts, how much we adore him and all that squishy stuff. And we gave him a rusty nail that I found in the garden while I was digging up the potatoes. The nail represented our land and the food we grow, those who passed through here generations ago on their hunt for gold, and his new skills as a builder.

That bag of sunflower seeds that we found at the back of a drawer and took a gamble on and planted waaaaay too late in the season, grew taller than me and started to open up their beautiful faces and stare at the sun. The birds have started nibbling at them so I'm going to have to be quick if I want to pick some bunches, but what a way to end the flower season.

I filled up my last pot and started the hunt for some more.

My farmer boy ploughed me up a long strip of ground to plant my bulbs in, but now I can't decide if I should mix all the colours and varieties up like a field of wild flowers, or if I should grow type with type and colour with colour.

We picked the four pumpkins we grew this year. I don't eat pumpkins but I love growing them so it was a struggle to hold myself back to one plant but hopefully this lot will be eaten by our two pumpkin eaters in the next few months and there'll be no mouldy puddles of orange disgustingness for us to deal with as there have been in other years when I didn't hold back.

We bought this framed print at our friend Leah's garage sale and hung it on the wall of the sunroom.

I thought a lot about trying to grow potted colour in the sunroom through winter and whether or not that's even possible.

I started thinking about the best way to teach sock knitting to my class at Soul Craft Festival, (which is only six weeks away YIKES!!)

We picked so many tomatoes.

One of us suffered a broken heart and felt it so deeply that it made the rest of us weep.

One of us learnt how to use a tricky maths formula that had been elusive for quite some time and then just stuck.

One of us read a book about playing chess from cover to cover in one afternoon.

I finished Eliza Henry Jones' new YA novel P is for Pearl. I am such a big fan of everything Eliza writes and have been so curious to read this book that she actually wrote as a teenager and put away in a drawer thinking it wasn't good enough. It most certainly is good enough and I'm so happy that she was convinced to pull it out and publish it.

It's a beautiful and also terribly sad story of a teenage girl coming to terms with her family's history while trying to find her place in the present and plan for her future. Eliza writes characters and relationships so well that even though there are no big events in her book, I still couldn't put it down.

I feel like the themes of mental illness, blended families, teenagers planning for their futures, small towns and friendships are so relevant in the world we live in and this story deals with them all so well. I  really look forward to discussing it with my girls after they've read it. I'd also love to ask Eliza at some stage about the changes she had to make to bring it up to date after it languished in her drawer for 10 years; was there outdated language, gadgets, trends? So interesting.

Bren and Jobbo dug the holes and laid the foundations for my studio. I know it doesn't look like much now, but if all goes to plan, there'll be a floor on those stumps by this time next week.

I learnt that at the very end of their season, dahlias pop their centres as they open to encourage the bees to pollinate them, and their stems become weak and bendy. I keep holding myself back from dead heading them so I can collect some seed to grow some different ones next year

There was this one day, maybe it was yesterday, when I felt ridiculously emotional and unable to focus so I took myself into the garden and dug up the last row of potatoes. It was so great to work hard, to get out of my head and into my body and to let the dirt drugs do their thing.

And that's my blog for this week. I don't know why it was such a hard one to write but it was. I feel like I've used every single procrastination tool in my tool box and still I'm sitting here at 5.30, my girls are about to get home and I haven't even thought about dinner.

Have you?

Have you had a nice day? Have you got something to look forward to on the weekend? Are you reading a good book? Growing something new to you? Feeling grumpy, or overwhelmed, or inspired?
Do you have a link for something cool on the internet? I've been trying to work out how to post that video of Princess Charlotte waving at the the media just before going in to meet her new baby brother but I can't work out how. In any case, it's pretty sweet.

See you next week.

Love, Kate xx