Looking past the crap.

After my last post I've been thinking about writing a blog about the ordinary stuff that goes on. The not so blog worthy stuff. The lice combing, the never ending piles of laundry, the stress attacks over keeping up with school and life details, the wee on the floor, the dead mouse smell from the roof, the mess of beyond overripe pears in the bottom of the fridge, the mess full stop..............

If you read my blog you know that these things exist here. You know that there are wrinkles and tears. But to be honest, I don't want to dwell on those things. Why would I when I could focus on the good, the happy, the love? And it's amazing what happens as soon as you decide to see the beauty in your life. As soon as you make a conscious decision to be happy, to love your people and to live your dreams.

What started out as a pretty crappy week has turned out to be quite wonderful.
I've noticed the details, I've been kind to myself and I've been happy.

I haven't had much of a chance to crochet this week, but I've loved having the weight of the granny blanket to warm our toes at night. The colours look so joyful against the white of our bed-sheets.

I've been lucky enough to find some vintage treasures. A floor length velvet pinafore which I will have to shorten despite the fact that it makes me feel oh so glamorous, and some Johnson Brothers crockery including this beautiful blue set.

I've been preserving, preserving, preserving...apple jelly, quince jelly, poached quince, apples in syrup and apple compote.

I've been gifted bright pink flowers from the youngest and two bunches of the most fragrant roses from the oldest.

I've been digging in the back of cupboards and pulling out hand knits. I knitted this cardi almost two years ago, I'm so pleased she'll get another year out of it.

We've been spending lots of time outside. The days have been gloriously warm and sunny. We've been collecting kindling, planting, weeding and making lots of new garden beds. And we've been walking around the big block and the lake and shifting things around so we can eat our breakfast and drink our coffee in the garden.

And lastly but really firstly, I've been overwhelmed with kindness and support from your guys.
Thank you!!!!
Your words have meant the world to me.

I am grateful magateful.

I do hope your week has been a lovely one too.
I hope there has been treasure and yummy food, some crafting and some fabulous friends.
I hope you feel loved.
I hope that you have looked past the crap and seen a bit of wonderful.

Bye! xx

Grateful 2 u giveaway...

Since we've been on the road, I've been a thinking a lot about blogging and bloggers and blog readers.

I am so super grateful for my blog. My blog has given me an outlet to express myself. It's enabled me to make friends all over the world both virtual and real. It's given me the confidence to believe that perhaps I am not the only non writer in my family. It's let me journal my life internal and external. It's let me catalogue my photos. It's inspired me and it's presented me with some pretty amazing opportunities.

And you guys. My readers. I am so super grateful for you too. Thank you for reading, for following along, for commenting, for sharing and caring. Grateful is probably too small a word.

Thank you!!

Over the past little while on the road I have been crocheting the bits of this cushion cover. Those who follow me on Instagram or The Twitter have seen it grow from the first square all the way through to the blocking and the sewing in of the ends.

This cushion really holds a piece of this trip inside it. If you put your ear to it and listened carefully you might hear the buzzing of mozzies in Katherine, the rumble of the car engine from Kununurra to the west coast and my farmer boy reading Tim Winton to me at night in Broome. If you breathed in deeply you might smell citronella, sunscreen and the sea breeze. If you were so inclined you might have a lick and taste bbq's and vodka and old fashioned lemonade and possibly some tears too.

Hopefully Miss Jazzy has found all my own hairs that got caught in the crochet hook and pulled them out so there wont be any of them. Hopefully.

I'd love to send one of you this cushion cover as a thank you.

Trust me, it would look so great on your couch. It looks so good on our caravan couch that I've started on another for us to keep.

Leave me a comment on this post to win it. Tell me something: A joke, your dream, why you like reading my blog, where you think we should head next, what you are grateful for, what inspires you. I don't know...you decide.

If you are one of my email subscribers, send me an email with your comment and I'll add it in.

We'll choose the cushion cover winner on Friday.

We'll also send a post card from Broome to four runners up.

Happy adventuring. xx

First day.

Mum's pic

I knew as soon as I opened my eyes this morning that today was a special day. I went through the motions of breakfasts, lunch boxes, hair plaiting, Melbourne clothes, but my head was somewhere else. Today was the first day of the rest of my Dad's life. This journey to Melbourne would be very different to my last.

We took a train to the city, Mum picked us up, we had coffee and beans on toast in Fitzroy with Emily and then waited.

Then it was time to pick Dad up from the hospital. It was scary and exciting. How amazing that only nine days ago he had had his heart opened up and re-plumbed and here we were about to take him home with us. How amazing that the constant fear of the disease that had killed his father, would no longer be a part of his life.

I walked into the hospital just as he was checking out. I saw him from behind and I recognised his clothes but not his shape. His pants and shirt didn't seem to fit him anymore. I remember being so careful not to hurt him when I hugged him.

The guy at the desk was asking him if he wanted him to cut off his wrist band and my Dad looked at me and said This is when I stop being a patient and start to be a person again. It felt huge walking out of that hospital with him. Carrying his bag as he navigated his first stairs, the footpath and then the car.

We brought him home. He was cold and my Mum wrapped him up in a rug. He looked skinny but he had colour in his cheeks and he was hungry. He was home. He was ours. Her husband, my Dad, her Ra.

My Mum made him lunch and me and Indi went walking.

She is obsessed with graff(iti) my girl is. Most of my next hour was spent down city alleys, looking at her back as she ooed and aahed and that's so cooled and snapped pics.

We bought coffee and sushi for the train and went back to the flat. Dad was asleep and Mum drove us to the station.

As we sat on the train about to leave he called. He was crying. He was so moved that we had come all the way to Melbourne to be with him and to celebrate his second chance at life and yet he hadn't said goodbye. I offered to get off the train but then reminded him of how much time we have ahead of us, especially when they move across the road.

All the way home I thought about the link between the physical and emotional heart. How deeply connected they are. If not the same.

So that's it. We're home. My own heart feels full and happy and relieved. Grateful doesn't seem like a big enough word this time.

Thank you so much for joining us on this journey. I'm hoping the rest of the story is really boring, textbook recovery stuff. Red wine, eggs, lots of walking, avocados, beans and so much love.

I hope you've had a great day too. xx

Treasures.

Yesterday I felt so miserable and crappy that my bones ached. Too much bad news. The weight of the world and all that.

Today I feel sooooo different. I feel optimistic and sunny and good.

The sun is out, the girls are happily playing with a friend (a boy), and I'm about to pack a picnic for a fortieth birthday party.

And as well as the usual health and family and friends type of grateful stuff, on this Saturday I am also grateful for other people's trash. Trash that enables me to recycle rather than buy new, trash that inspires me and keeps my Everything but The Thread little business going and trash that is often so much more my style than the same thing in the modern version.

I am grateful magateful for market treasures like this jar of antique lace destined to grace the hems of pretty dresses and skirts and tops.

I am grateful for garage sale loot. Towels for the caravan, tea towels, table clothes and pillow cases for clothes making, pot holders for the wall and wool for some future fun project.

And I am grateful for generous and kind and gorgeous bloggers who send me their treasures out of the goodness of their hearts. I know you didn't do it for an official thank you Cherie but you are just too gorgeous! Thank you!

I hope you have the most wonderful weekend and have so much to be grateful for yourself.

Big love. X

grateful...

Grateful...

...for lazy Saturdays with no farmers' markets, that we live an hour and a half from Melbourne, for my Mum, for delicious new wool and the promise of new projects, for toasted sandwiches for lunch...

...for love heart lattes, that Miss Pepper only vomited once, that it stopped raining after 20mm, for plans to get outta here, for rocket that grows as you watch, for leafy green salads with lemon dressing, for blogging that gets it out of my head and onto the computer...

...for sleeves, for beautifully written and designed patterns, for knitting, for designers that reply to my queries with patience and compliments, for a new cardi that I cannot wait to cast off and wear, for your comments and emails and suggestions and gifts, for my editor, for quiet sister games that go on for hours, that you can't see the state of my hair today...

...for crochet, for sour plums, for my Farmer Boy and our girlies, for sunshine, for baths in the afternoon...

I hope you have yourself a long list of gratefuls too.

See ya. XX

Grumpy 2 grateful.

It didn't start all that well this morning. Tired from lying awake worrying about the rain, a loved one with a sore heart, tangles and knots in my knitting wool, girls who tripped over the texta bucket and wouldn't pick them up, a laundry overflowing into the the living room, a visit from a gorgeous friend that turned into a conversation about promiscuous teenagers and left me with a stomach ache and a sticky kitchen.

Nothing was working, everything was annoying me.

So we put on our boots and walked out.

We walked, skipped and danced. We picked and ate berries and plums and apricots. We squealed and sang. We jumped in puddles. We got scratched on prickles and got muddy and wet. We roared like wild animals. It was exhilarating. It was exhausting.

One of us had to be bribed with jam sandwiches to finish the journey. One of us wasn't allowed to take her camera (pic from Bren's iPhone). One of us ended up at Lola's house up the road. One of us was thrilled to show off the lettuce, rocket, carrot and beetroot seedlings and was devastated by a few enormous puddles. And one of us danced the tango with a rose in between her teeth.

Sometimes when we leave the house all I can see is farm jobs that need doing. Today I remembered the reason we moved here ten years ago. I saw the wide open spaces and the trees, I breathed the fresh air and felt excited about this wonderful place to bring up our family.

That two hour walk changed my day, I went from being grumpy to grateful.

I wonder what sort of day you are having. I do hope its a happy one.

I'm off now to watch Madeline with the little girls, eat popcorn and knit a few rounds of the stripey green skirt.

See ya.

ps. More grateful at Maxabella.

Grateful.

This weekend I'm grateful for little bits of magic in everyday life.

I've been hanging out with these two cool cats and my goodness they see magic everywhere.

A couple in a cafe staring at each other adoringly with very shiny rings, a little girl in the prettiest yellow dress sitting in the window of her house, a lady wearing a bridal veil and a tutu walking down the street followed by her hens, a ring of daisies waiting for the fairies to come and dance, dragon flies, a bird song that sounds like 'twoodleoo', water melon that tastes like lollies,

a Macedonian couple filling bottles full of mineral water to magically cure their Mother's aches and pains, a grandmother teaching her grand daughter how to do the monkey bars, ripples and rainbows in the water, a bunny in the clouds,

being able to jump so high you can almost touch the sky, two little mixy matchy dresses that appear out of nowhere at the end of watching a movie about a dog, a Mama who is so happy and patient because she got a chance to sew two little dresses from some vintage sheets and some scraps of lace, a tea party made from sand and water...

More grateful over at Maxabella land.

Don't forget those who might not have as much to be grateful for right now and bid on my auction or some of the others at Toni's.

Hope you find a bit of magic in your weekend.

Critical Mass.

Today I am grateful for choice, opportunity and freedom of expression. Today I am sitting here thinking about how lucky we are to be living in this time, in this place with endless opportunities and only our own imaginations to limit us.

Late yesterday afternoon about 60 cyclists from the Daylesford area met outside the primary school and proceeded to ride their bikes up and down the main street of our town. Exactly the same thing was happening in over 300 cities all around the world.

These bike rides are called critical mass. While they do hold up and block the car traffic, they claim not to be protests against cars but celebrations of bikes. We aren't blocking the traffic. We are the traffic is a popular critical mass catch phrase and the name of a documentary about the phenomena.

This was the second Daylesford critical mass and the first one with an angry swear word yelled from an irate car driver with a hand gesture. It seemed so strange considering the happy, peaceful feeling amongst the riders claiming the streets of their own town for ten minutes once a month.

It is such fun and such a great feeling to reclaim the streets of your own town, to blow whistles, ring bells and to laugh and chat with your fellow cyclists. It is such fun for me to be the event photographer and to run up and down the street snapping away and watching my family riding/scootering.

Gif animators

If you are in the Daylesford area on the 26th of November (the last Friday of the month) at 5pm you should come along. If you would like to ride along but live somewhere else why don't you google critical mass and the town that you live in, grab your bike/scooter/pusher and cycle on.

Like I said, today I am feeling grateful for where and how I live and for my right to be involved in events like the critical mass without fear of any retribution.

Sometimes I do take my freedoms and rights for granted but today I am feeling grateful.

How about you? What are you feeling grateful for today?

Oh and if you are reading this as an email, why don't you click on the Foxs Lane link here or at the bottom to view the blog and the animation the way they should be seen..

See ya!