Hooked - a blog hop

This is pretty cute!!

It's a new book celebrating the crochet motif in the most gorgeous way. Hooked! by Michelle, Cecile and Sylvie Delprat is filled to the brim with all kinds of sweet motifs, there are hearts and flowers and cupcakes and mushrooms and apples and birds and skulls and so many more. Seriously, I want to make them all. And my girls want me to make them all for them too. They've already started designing brooches, decorations for their school books and patches to sew on their jeans.

I think it's a really great book; the styling, the patterns, the photos and the ideas are all beautiful.

But where to start??

Miss Indi has been begging me to make her some love heart bunting for her bedroom for ages, so I pulled out the cottons and started hooking.

And then just because they were too cute not to, I made an apple, a mushroom and a strawberry. I really want to make the cupcake next too.

If you are into cute and quirky and crochet, then this book is for you.

If you want to follow along on the blog hop - then this link is for you.

If you'd like to win a copy of Hooked!, six balls of yarn, and a crochet hook - then this link is for you.

And if you feel like it, just for fun, tell me which motif you like the best, or what you'd like to do with them, and I'll choose one or two from the comments and make them up and send them to you.

See ya later crochet potata!

xx

Making time

Hello lovely friends. How are things with you? I'm good. Really good. Really busy and really good.

You see along with all the spring craziness in the gardens and orchards and at home, we are also getting ready to hold our first ever clearing sale this weekend. We've been on this farm for almost 15 years and oh my goodness we've collected a lot of stuff. Sheds full of stuff, cupboards full of stuff and a cellar full of stuff.

So this week, along with all the planting and weeding and watering and parenting, we've been pulling out and sorting through our history. It's been fun and emotional and exhausting.

Farmer Bren has a bit more info on his blog if you are interested.

In the meantime I thought I might do a bit of a show and tell about my knitting.



First up we have the green love heart socks.

I knitted these for my Mum.

I don't know about all mums, but I like to think that most mums deserve a pair of socks hand made especially for them. My Mum calls these her magic socks and wears them when the going gets a bit tough. It makes me happy to think that in times when things are a bit hard for her, she can put on her magic socks and know how much she is loved.

Heart toe up sock details here.



I made this little cardigan for our friend Steph's new baby Holly. Like I wrote on instagram - not much makes me clucky for babies these days BUT knitting teeny tiny cardigans, now that's another story entirely.

Holly's card details here.





Then I started contemplating the growing pile of little sock balls leftover after I finished each pair of socks. I couldn't just let them sit there now could I?! I decided it was either knit one pair of socks with all the bits and pieces, or I could start a patchy memory blanket. Each square, or each few squares, a memory of a time and a place a person I knitted the socks for. The blanket won.

This is a looooooooong term project. Each square is knitted with 4ply yarn on 2mm needles which means they are small and slow. But I'm loving the though of it. And if I get sick of it at any stage I can turn it into a cushion.

Scrappy sock blanket details here.



And then I decided I needed some more colour in my sock blanket so I cast on a new pair of socks. You can't see it yet but these ones will have a cute diagonal stripy pattern thing on them.

And that green ball up there on the right was wound with the ball winder and swift my family bought me for my birthday. How ace does it look!! I love it. I just want to wind all the wool into balls now.

And that's me. All knitted and caught up.

So how about you? What have you been making in your spare, or stolen, time? Care to share?

Loads a love to you friends.
I hope someone you love makes something lovely for you sometime soon.

Bye!

xx

Committing.

For obvious reasons I've been thinking about life and death a lot over the past few weeks. More specifically, I've been thinking a lot about the decisions and plans people make when they think they are going to die, or when they get a second chance at life. Plans to jump out of planes, to travel to far away places and to follow dreams and loves.

It's got me thinking about how I want to live my life and that I don't want to wait for something catastrophic to happen before I realise my dreams and live my life to the fullest.

So what do I really want to do?

I really want to go on this caravan adventure we've been planning. I really want to commit to going. To get excited and make plans and let go of the guilt and fear that's holding me back.

Yep, I feel guilty.

Why do we deserve to take off on a four to six month holiday?

We're just coming out of the worst organic farming season we've experienced since we've been here. We've only been doing the Daylesford Organics thing for 10 years. People wait their entire working lives to take such a trip. And we're leaving the farmer boys behind to work on our property while we go on holidays...

And I'm scared.

How am I ever going to get this house organised and clean enough to leave it to another family? What if our itinerary is too ambitious? What if my children drive me crazy? What if I run out of yarn? What if someone gets a cough or snores and I never get to sleep? What if it rains and rains and we are stuck in the caravan for days? What if something bad happens at home? What if Indi and Jazzy fall too far behind at school and have troubles next year...

Ok, now I've written it all down I'm leaving it here and moving on. From now on I'm going to be enthusiastic and excited. Tomorrow I'll write a to-do list and over the next 40ish days I'm going to work through it.

I am really going to try not going to coast through my life any more and I certainly don't want to wait until something bad happens to live my life to the fullest.

I know for sure that if I were to write a list here of all the positives of our travel plans, I could fill four blog posts.

So let the adventures begin!

Have a fabulous week y'all.

PS. The top two pics are of the vintage sheet pillow case I made my Dad. I'm about to retire to the couch to crochet the edge of Farmer Bren's which is the same.

The third pic is of our heart shaped Melbourne afternoon waiting for our la'heart'tes and h'eart' chocolates with my folks in the city this afternoon.

Heart shaped.

Wheat heart hottie.

Morning la'heart'tte.

My first born heart.

Milo heart for a brand new baby Otis.

Ravelled.

My sewing scraps heart.

Shopping heart list.

Pierre's Chook love art.

I called my Dad this morning to ask him how he was going.

He told me he was doing well.

He also told me there have been ups and downs and that he has always told his patients that recovery is never a straight line.

May your weekend be heart shaped.

♥♥♥♥

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

Heart times in the city!

I really wanted to call this post No sex in the city but one of my sisters thought it would be bad for her reputation. Ahem.

And while there isn't that, there is a whole lot of other stuff. Drama stuff. You know all that stuff that happens when you are living through big life events? New babies, death, trauma, new love, weddings, surgery...big life stuff.

It's like you are living inside a bubble and nothing else matters. You know that life is going on around you but you don't care, it doesn't interest you, there's no more room in your head to deal with it.

The people in the bubble with you are living the highs and lows too. They get it. But for everyone else it's difficult. It's like its ok when they are talking about your stuff, but then when they start telling you about their cousin's new job or their great theatre tickets, your eyes glaze over. It's like there's no room left for other stuff.

It's almost like we should have a sign on us that reads: Our Dad is recovering from open heart surgery. Please be nice to us. Please excuse us.

One morning we went to visit my Dad in intensive care and he was so happy to be on the other side of the surgery. He was chatty and ready for rehab and the rest of his life. He asked me to knit his nurse's three year old son a jumper and bring it in the next day!

We practically skipped all the way home. We visited a department store on the way and bought handbags for us and fancy chocolates to thank the ICU staff.

Another visit he was exhausted, he couldn't breathe deeply and could barely speak to us. At home we discussed him and we cried. We went to an action movie to take our minds off it.

Before hand we had discussed how he would walk on Wednesday and he did. He moved downstairs to the ward, he sat in a chair by his window and looked out over autumnal Melbourne, at an oval he used to jog around when he was a med student.

We were sure he was home free. His quadruple bypass was in the past and we could talk about which day he would be released. We went out and had a delicious dinner and fancy cocktails. I slept for about six hours despite the crazy inner city noises.

And then this morning we learned that his heart beat had shot right up over night and unable to control it with medication, they had shifted him back to the ICU.

He's in the best place he could possibly be. He knows we all adore him.

Two steps forward, one step back.

Life!

PS. Abby we miss you like crazy. In June we'll take these pics again with you in them.

PPS. If you haven't entered my giveaway, you totally should. Who doesn't need an I love craft t in their life? Leave a comment on this post.

PPPS. You'll have to excuse any misplaced commas or typos for the next little while, my Dad is my editor.

PPPPS. I've said it before and I'll say it again, THANK YOU for your comments, calls, emails, texts and love. Trust me, its making this so much easier for all of us.

PPPPPS. Thanks for returning my post blogger. I am most disappointed you didn't bring back the comments too.