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'

every day in may

Hello honey bunches,

How's your week been?

I'm happy to report that after our bumpy homecoming, things here have been really good. It helps that the sun finally came out. And although it's still much too cold for my liking, we've had some bright, still, autumn days that have made my heart sing and my body happy to be outside and moving.

Last Monday morning I drove through the forest on the way home from taking Indi and Jarrah to school. The girls had been gorgeous in the car, I knew that Bren and Jobbo were meeting at home to plan the rebuild of the hot-house, the sunlight was streaming through the trees and I felt overcome with the feeling that my week ahead was rich with time and possibilities. It's the best feeling. I wanted to grab onto it and really feel it and take it home and make stuff happen.

At the same time I was listening to Sara Tasker's podcast interview with Xanthe Berkeley about the power of creative projects when it occurred to me that a creative project is just what I need. And with the start of May, the month that sort of rhymes with 'every day', the timing felt perfect. So I started auditioning projects in my head: a crocheted granny square a day, a water colour painting a day, one of those blankets people knit where each row is a reflection of the weather or the mood of the day, a blog post a day, a short film clip a day, a hundred words in a diary every day, a hexagon quilt project, an embroidery stitch a day, a hand written letter, a new recipe, an instagram post a day, a charcoal drawing...the possibilities felt endless and endlessly exciting.

In 2012 and 2014 I crocheted a different motif every day in May and loved it.

Then I arrived home, listened to the plans the boys had made, drank coffee, cleaned up the breakfast dishes, took some laundry off the line put it away and hung out some more, went to gym for an hour, came home and pulled the last of the irrigation lines out of a bottom paddock, checked on the olives, picked some flowers, brought in a load of wood, got Pepper from school and took her to her singing lesson, picked her up from her singing lesson and brought her home, took Jazzy to her dancing class and then came home to find Bren and Pepper making pasta for dinner.

The entire time I'd been wondering about my personal creative project: what form it would take, what skills I could hone or learn, and what materials I would need. Late in the day it occurred to me that the real question was when would I fit it in?

My project had to add creativity but not stress to my life.

As I watched them break the eggs and mix them into flour I decided on a capture project rather than a create project. As I watched them stir the two ingredients into a dough I chose my big camera over my phone. And as they rolled the dough out into long sheets and then skinny noodles I decided that I would document one moment of every day. One moment with a few photos.

Not the most special moments, not the most photogenic moments, not even the moments that have stories that I would usually blog, just the small moments that make up our days this May.

Ideally I'd like to push myself out of my comfort zone and take more photos indoors, I'd like to capture some tiny unposed moments, I'd like to be brave and play around with composition and settings, and I'd really love to trust myself more and not have to take 20 photos just in case the first 19 don't work.

I plan to publish them here on my blog with a short explanation or story. I thought about posting them every day but I don't want to break with this Friday thing that is working so well. And even though this might not feel any different to you than my usual style of blogging, it does for me - in its everydayness, it's making me see my world a bit differently, and its encouragement of risk.

I hope you like it - here goes.

On - May first - Bren and Pepper made made spaghetti for our dinner. Most afternoons I drive out to pick the big girls up from school and those two spend the time playing and making dinner for us. It works really well for them to make and bake and hang out, and then it works really well for us as a family to come together at the end of the day, to share a meal and catch up with each other's news.

On - May second  - we picked the last of the outside tomatoes and cabbages and basil before the predicted frosts arrived the next morning. This year we harvested, cooked, preserved and ate so many fewer tomatoes than in any other year I can remember, but still I'm happy to see the end of them. The last ones of the season always smell too strong and are too floury for my liking. This crate we picked on Tuesday is still sitting by the front door; there's a chance I'll cook them all up over the weekend, but it's more than likely they'll get fed to the chooks.

On - May third - we finally lit a great big fire and burnt all the heads of the trees that we cut down for firewood late last year. I know that my farmer boy mourns the carbon and would much rather mulch them and feed the land, but burning sh#@ is one of my favourite parts of autumn farming and happy wife - happy life, hey.

On - May fourth - we suited up and visited our bees. All of our hives seemed madly busy stockpiling for winter as the season is so obviously changing. And because our bees had a rough winter last year we were really careful and only took a few honey frames here and there and only where it looked like they had plenty. Taking honey from the bees always seems like such a gamble at this time of the year, but then the thought of that spoonful of honey in our porridge and in our tea makes it too hard to resist.

On - May fifth - literally five minutes ago, we picked some beetroot to go with our veggie burgers for dinner tonight. As I type this they're cooking on the stove. I think we'll make a rocket, feta and beetroot salad with lemon juice with some of it and slice the rest.

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 looking for one? Do you want to join me?
Do you do something everyday already?
Do you have something fun planned for the weekend? I hope so.

Oh and thank you so much for your feedback on my coping with winter post. I guess my every day project and the way it'll hopefully help me look for the photographable moments is part of the way I hope to deal with it a little better this year. That and a bunch of other things I've written down from all of your suggestions.

See you in a week my friends.

Love Kate xx

What makes your heart sing??

And then this amazing thing happened.

One beautiful February evening, I interrupted our family dinner and asked everyone to grab something from the house that they LOVED doing, something that made them happy, and then we filed out the door. One by one I checked to make sure no-one had food in their teeth, everyone was dressed appropriately and then we headed to the steps of our cubby-house.

It was a gorgeous evening and we were happy just to hang out together doing what we love to do.

And then I made some comment about a ridiculously enormous fart, everyone cracked up laughing, I snapped my shot, I started laughing and fell back into the herb garden and got a wet bum, the girls laughed some more, I kept snapping, and then we hung out until it slowly got dark and cold and we went inside to clear away dinner.

A few weeks later I was standing in our local newsagent first thing on a Monday morning hassling them to undo the piles and piles of new magazines that had just been delivered - because one of the photos that I took that evening was on the cover of the Autumn issue of Slow Living Magazine!!!!! My family are on the cover of a magazine!!!

I've had a copy of that magazine sitting on my desk for about a month now and I still get a happy surprise every single time I walk past it. I still can't really believe it.

There are certain things that I have gotten used to over the five or so years that I have been a blogger - a lot of people know a lot about my life, some people respect my opinion, I can take good blog photos and write good blog text, I've taken photos and written articles for some other publications, I've even written a book!!!! But never in my wildest dreams did I think I would take a cover photo.

I'm thrilled.



I also wrote an article and took some pictures for the inside of the magazine. All about farmer Bren's spoon carving and how it's changed his life.



You can get all the information you need about Slow Living magazine here - http://www.slowmagazine.com.au.

And if you do have your very own copy and would like to win a subscription - take a photo of the cover in your home/in your garden/with some of your favourite creative things, upload it to instagram, hashtag it #slowlivingmag and Slow Magazine will choose their five favourite images and reward them with a subscription each. Cool huh!! Better get snapping.

And until next time - why don't we all do a bit more of what makes our hearts sing!!

Love ya's!!

xx

finding balance

Where to start?

I feel like I need to preface this post with to be honest, because although I like to think that I am always honest here, I am also aware that I like to have an undercurrent of gratefulness on my blog, because when all is said and done I do know how lucky I am to be living this life.

Ten minutes ago my farmer boy left with the girls to visit some friends. I am alone in my house for what feels like the first time in months. There is a possibility that I may have the next one to two hours to myself. Thank goodness. Big exhale.



To be honest I am struggling a bit at the moment. Although I am certainly and ridiculously grateful for my way of life, right now I feel overwhelmed by it. Right now my whole instagram feed is full of people on summer or winter vacations relaxing by the beach, reading in bed, knitting a few lazy rows over lunch, while our house, garden and farm to-do lists are so long that we had to slot bits of them into calendar days to try to even make sense of them all. Right now to combat the guilt of sitting here writing this blog, I'm interspersing each paragraph with a trip to the washing machine and washing line, or from the washing line to the girls' wardrobes. I feel less guilty and more productive this way.

Right now instead of doing this I could whipper snipper another few rows of the orchard in preparation for netting them this evening when it cools down, I could wheel hoe the market garden, plant some carrots, leeks, lettuce and parsley in the home garden, I could mow around the house, I could think about dinner, I could do some fire prevention, I could start trellising the beans and that's just the start and that's not even thinking about the housework or computer work. And that's when the girls aren't even here to tell me every detail of their dreams, ask me to braid their hair, watch their show, remind me that I still haven't taught them to sew, ask me to find their sandals, drop them at the pool, cut them another mango, help them with this, watch them do that and then that.

We had our three week holiday in winter, this is our busy season I hear us repeating to each other and the girls like a mantra.

And it's true. Winter is the slow season on our farm and now we are go, go, go. And that would probably be OK except that I feel like I'm not doing anything at all creative. Instead I'm being yanked through my days doing task after task after task. I feel completely out of balance. I often call our farm The Hungry Beast because of it's capacity to gobble money but it is also hungry for my time. Gobble, gobble, gobble.

It's possible that I always feel like this at the start of the summer holidays until I find my rhythm, but this year it's making me feel cranky and tired and unaccomplished and unmotivated. And I don't like feeling like this at all.

I know The only way to fix this is to do something for me, regularly. I need to make time for something creative so I can get back to feeling the love in the other, more demanding parts of my life.

So I've decided that in order to get through and on top of this I need to make some resolutions, change things up a bit for myself without putting more pressure on. So far I've come up with two things I'm going to put into place as soon as possible.

The first one is to blog. I really, really love this blog yet for some reason I never prioritise it. I find the photography and the writing so fulfilling yet it's always the first thing to go when I'm busy. Pretty silly hey! So my first resolution is to try to blog every, or almost every, day in January. Even if it's just a photo and a paragraph. I just know that I'll feel so much more creatively fulfilled if I stick to this plan.

I also feel like it would be really great for me to stretch myself and learn something new. To take something I love and push it further. So my second resolution is to do an online Lightroom course. So far I've been able to teach myself how to take photos for my blog and have been lucky over the years to have been published in some cool publications, but there's always been this point where I've hit a wall and haven't been able to progress with my skills any further. Hopefully this course will teach me about post production, about sorting and filing my photos and give me a bit more confidence with my photography. Maybe it'll even inspire me. It's online and I can do it in my own time, I'm really excited about it.

And you know what? I feel better already.


So anyway how are you going these last few December days?
Are you slowing down or speeding up?
Are you feeling creative, are you coping, are you feeling overwhelmed or calm as a cucumber?
What do you do when the world feels a little off balance?
Do tell.

LoveLoveLoveLove

xxxx

Slow Living : A Practical Workshop

To create good content you have to live good content.

Beth Kirby, otherwise known as Local Milk, wrote that and it's absolutely perfectly true, don't you think.

This September Beth, together with Luisa Brimble and Rebekka Seale will be coming to Melbourne, to Butterland, to run a two-day, Slow Living workshop exploring creating content through food, florals, photography and textiles.

Oh. My. Goodness!! It's the dream team running a total dream-come-true workshop.

This is the little blurb on their booking site;

During our time together, we will explore the process of living the content you want to create. The first day, we will delve into the natural dye process using local, foraged plants and flowers to brighten rustic kitchen linens, and the second day we will bake wholesome pastries together. Afterward, on both days, we will workshop styling, photography, and visual story telling with the dyed textiles, flowers, baked goods, tea, and coffee. Participants will receive focused, personalized guidance in photography & styling—we will touch on camera basics, building a portfolio, creating a social media presence that resonates, prop sourcing, how to write a pitch & get published, planning photo shoots, post-processing, and more—as well as learn the practical skills of dying, floral arranging, and baking. We will share morning and afternoon teas, lunch each day, and one very special dinner. 

If you, like me, drool over these three women's instagram feeds, if you, like me, are always wanting to learn everything there is to learn about textiles and flowers and baking and styling and photography, if you, like me, would love an opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the best in the biz, if you like me, cannot think of anything better than spending a few days away from home surrounded by utter beauty and like minded folk...then this is for you. It's for us. Let's go!

I've been given a ticket to the workshop but I really, really would love for some of you guys to come along and sit next to me, it'd make it so much more fun. Let's go together!

Check out Local Milk for even more gorgeous photos and details about The Slow Living Workshop here.

And book your tickets to the Melbourne workshop here.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!!!!! It's going to be so wonderful, I can hardly wait.

Thanks Beth and Luisa for the photos. x


I hope you get loads done today my friends, our girls are back at school and I've got mountains of stuff to catch up on.

Big love

xx