Australian Sheep and Wool Show 2013

Oh my goodness, I LOVE WOOL!!!!!

And I love the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo. Love it!

Last Friday was my third visit to the show and each time I think I love it more. I think I understand it more and I think I am less overwhelmed and inspired by it more.

I love it all the way from the sheep, to the fleece, to the sheep and wool peeps. I love watching them judging, handling, admiring, wearing, spectating and socialising.

I love watching the spinners and weavers and felters and dyers and knitters and crocheters too. I love the passion they have for their craft. I love watching their fingers move, the smiles on their faces and the excited way they describe what they do. I feel like I'm one of them. It makes me happy.

I love watching the way the stalls are set up. Trestles and baskets and bowls and hooks and shelves of glorious woolly delightfulness.

And I love how the shoppers shop. According to their craft, their colour pallet, their yarn weight, their yarn type, their budget.

I love the weaving.

I love the felting.

I love the yarn bombing.

I love the buttons.

I love all the different types of needles and hooks.

And most of all, I adore the wool.

On my first trip to the show, four years ago, I was so new to the wool crafts and so overwhelmed that I went home empty handed. Not so much this time. Now I know that I love organic, Australian made, naturally dyed, and 8ply or chunkier.

I had such a great time. I Love that my farmer boy did too. Taking a day off farm-work to walk from stall to stall, to chit chat with the stall holders and to carry my bags.

I'm hoping that by next year's show we might have a few woolly friends of our own living here. I'm hoping that I'll be a spinner by then too.

Oh what fun!

I'll have to show and tell my purchases another day, I've run out of room.


Did you go to the show?
Did you have a great weekend?


Happy new week you guys.

xx

SNOW!!!!!

Last Thursday I overheard a bunch of old timers in the main street of Daylesford predicting snow for this Saturday. It was dark and it was mild, even a little bit warm at the time and they said that was a sign of snowy things to come. 

Apparently the old timers are always right!

This morning we woke and looked out the windows into the forest as the steady rain became sleet, and then the sleet became fluttery snow. Slow, quiet, snowflakes fell from the sky. We lay in bed and watched them make their journey from way up high, and then down, down, down to the ground.

It was beautiful.

Magical.

Wonderland-iful.

Fairy-tale-iful.

And then the girls ran in giggling with delight.

Its snowing! It's snowing!

And then the girls ran outside and jumped on the trampoline, and collected cup fulls, and caught snowflakes on their tongues and on their eyelashes and in their hair.

Of course we had to join them too.

We've lived here for 12 years and although we've had snow before, we've never seen anything like this. This was real, crunchy, heavy stuff. Thick enough to pull Pepper down the hill on a tarp-sled, plentiful enough for snow ball fights, cold enough to almost freeze my toes off.

We visited all the animals, we walked through the forest, we covered vegie beds and compost heaps and we smiled the whole way through. There's something so fresh and pure and wonderful about a snow covered farm.

By early evening the snow had melted into mushy, slushy puddles. The creek flowing through the bottom of our place was rushing with extra speed. And all our clothes were soggy right through. Even Miss Pepper's pockets full of white stuff had been mixed with juice and drunk.

It might snow again tomorrow. It might not.

I like that Mother Nature keeps her little secrets to surprise us.

I hope you are having a wonderful, magical weekend too.

Lotsa love

xx

shout!

This afternoon was the very last of the winter school holidays. Tomorrow we're back in the thick of it. Waking up to the alarm,uniforms, lunchboxes and all the other joys of term three.

This afternoon the girls sat for hours at the kitchen table discussing what they liked and didn't about school and making intricate collages with cuttings and drawings.

This afternoon when farmer Bren asked if I wanted to walk with him and do a bit of a stock take of the chook houses, I encouraged the girls to come too. I'm sure they wanted to, but a piece of bubble gum each sweetened the deal.

So we walked.

Crunching through leaves, sloshing through muddy puddles, admiring mushrooms and fairy houses and climbing over and under logs.

And then, when we got to the back paddock, we started screaming. SCREAMING!!!!!!!!

I have no idea who started it or why but once we started we couldn't stop.

All together and then one at a time.

High screams.

Low screams.

Silly screams.

It was so exhilarating and so liberating. It was such fun and it was SO LOUD!!

At a time when the city grass is starting to look greener to one member of our family, it was great to remind her that ours is pretty lush too. Making such a racket would not be the done thing when your neighbours are a only few meters away.

 Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay term three, bring it on! We're ready for you. And if at anytime you prove too much, we now know that screaming therapy works.

Shout, shout, let it all out....


Happy week peeps.
When was the last time you had a good yell?
Go on, I highly recommend it.

xx

the book quilt

If writing my book was all crocheted up into the squares of the book blanket, then these few weeks before the release time is definitely stitched into the book quilt.

Each email received and sent, each room tidied and cobweb brushed away, each photo taken, each interview question answered, each time and date diarised, each little piece of nervousness and over-emotion, each big piece of excitment buliding, each ohmygoodness ohmygoodness I wrote a book!

Each time I cut out a bunting flag to advertise the book, I also cut out a tiny 9mm by 9mm square of the same fabric.

As I sewed and pressed the flags, I sewed the little squares into long strips.

And as I stamped the bunting, I took breaks and sewed the strips into a quilt.

There was never any plan beyond the current stage. There still isn't.

Sometime over the next little while when I am meant to be doing something else, hopefully I'll sort through my stuff and find an old blanket. Then I'll pin the little sqaures to the blanket and to a bigger piece of fabric. And then sometime after that I'll stitch it all together. Together.

It's not all that big so I don't know what will become of it or where it will go.

But I do know that this time just before the release has surprised me with its mixture of jumbled up emotions. It feels big and sometimes overwhelming to see my name printed in red on the cover and the photos that I took and words that I wrote inside. It feels like an acomplishment and through the nerves I am also really proud.

I also feel really lucky to be a crafter. For the therapy of the cut and the stitch and for this quilt that holds the stories of this time. It's such a blessing really.

Happy weekend my friends.
I do hope yours is wonderful.

xx

all over the place

I feel like I'm a bit all over the place at the moment.

It's school holidays and my girlies have been chatting to me all day long. And singing to me and telling me to look at them and asking me what's for dinner. In between, I'm doing bits of publicity for my book and trying to sound like I make sense and have a clean house and clean kidlets. I'm also cold, always. I'm trying to organise a cute little event or two. I'm returning emails. I'm designing a poster to sell more of our chookies.

And I'm crafting. A little. In between the other stuff and sometimes, sneakily, at the same time.

I'm knitting a beanie for my Mum.

A few weeks ago I was having a really crappy day. I think it was this day. In the middle of it all my sister Meg called. We talked and I cried. Then later on we texted back and forth and I cried. And then finally she sent me this text message;

What you are going through on all fronts sounds huge. But a bad day is just a bad day. And a bad decision is just a bad decision. And a bad mood is just a bad mood. Being alive is about having a full human experience. The great and the crapola. So go easy on yourself. And really, you should be focusing on a genuine catastrophe: Mum's purple beanie. xx

She was right of course. So I am.

Actually while I think of it, Meg and her family are going away for a year and renting out their house. Have you always dreamed of living in Daylesford for a year? How cool would that be?! Check out the details and photos here.

I've also been knitting this teeny, tiny onesie for baby Lola. Well actually I've just finished the knitting part and now I have to block it and sew on the buttons.

It's crazy cute and little and although I have really come to terms with the no more baby thing, it did make me wobble.

I've been cutting and stitching and turning the right way out and pressing and stitching bunting. Lots of bunting. To be hung in windows of book shops selling my book.

My book. Eeeeeeep!! Some advanced copies arrived this morning. I'll show you some sneak peeks in the next few days. You can pre-oreder it now you know. Just click on this link and it will take you there.

#Ohmygoodnessme.

And I've been baking a bit. The wood oven is on 24/7 so I may as well. The old faves are working well but I really should get a bit more adventurous. I think I should make olive bread. I think I will. Tomorrow.

I think right now though, the best thing to do would be to go and have a hot bath and listen to a podcast. Yep, I think I will.

What a rambley old post. I think it pretty much sums up the way I'm feeling though.

How are you feeling?
What are you making?
Are you cold or hot?
Do you like listening to pod casts in the bath? Any recommendations?

Bye xx

the whole farm tour

Miss Pepper met Immy for the first time two weeks before she was born.

I was standing next to her Mum at the chai tent at the Sunday market and being equally enormously pregnant, we got chatting. We spoke of due dates and baby names and cravings and how over it we both were. And we spoke of how our babies would be friends and grow up together and have lots of adventures.

And over their five years on earth, they have.

As little babies, as little dancers, sometimes at bush kinder and this year at school.

Today Immy came over to our house and as she walked in she exclaimed that she wanted to go on an adventure and see Pepper's whole farm.

So they set off.

Miss Pepper started the tour at the site of all the rooster blood from yesterday. She explained the entire process to Immy. Immy said she knew you had to say 'thank you for your life' to the rooster but then she would have to look away. Miss Pepper said she loved eating roosters and thinking about it was making her feel hungry. Immy said her too.

And then they walked through the forest along the dry creek bed. I thought it looked terribly enchanted. They thought it was terribly prickly.

They climbed under branches, over logs, around thistle bushes and screamed abracka-zizzle-pops to make magic doors open.

They told secret stories about fairies and moss,

 about the chicken the fox got,

and about all the crunchy leaves.

And then they scrambled through the prickly hawthorn bushes and into the open air.

They stopped to pull the thorns out of their leggings and shoes and to examine their scratches and then made their way to the farmer boys who were harvesting beetroot.

They helped out for a while, pulling big purple bulbs out of the ground.

And then they came across a beetroot that was so massively gigantic that it needed three people to pull and pull and pull...

Hooray!!

But the fun didn't stop there.

After the gigantic beetroot came the enormous carrot babies.

And the huge carrot noses.

But after all that adventuring they were so tired they could barely walk and needed to hitch a ride up to the house on the tractor.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing with bunnies and baskets.

Oh to be a five year old adventurer. Such uncomplicated fun. Such a big wide world to explore. So many gigantic adventurous opportunities.



xx