from winter

Although I would never consider myself a 'writer', it occurred to me a few minutes ago that most of the writing I do in my life is from my own perspective: the how I'm feeling, what I'm reading, what I'm doing sort of thing. But over the past few days I've been writing a bunch of stories that have nothing to do with me. They're general informative pieces, written to a deadline and a word count. And now here I am sitting down to write about my own life and even though it's my usual thing, it feels a bit strange and personal.

I feel like I could easily describe the picture above in terms of the arctic bite of the winter air, the white skies, the thin slices of frost to be found in puddles, the bird song that breaks the silence, the sting of the icy coldness in your fingertips, the clothes you should wear for protection, the steam coming from your mouth as you breathe, the sound of the slither of frost as it smashes into thin glass-like shards against a tree, the smoke drifting slowly from the chimney reminding you of the warmth inside...

But I want to get back to last Saturday morning, and to me. How I lay in my warm bed and put off getting up for as long as possible because I dreaded those few seconds of feeling the wintery chill on my skin before I got dressed in my hundred layers. How I tried really hard not to bang the lounge room door so as not to wake up my sleepy teenagers, while at the same time resenting them a tiny bit for their sleep-ins. How I tried not to feel disappointed at the fact that we aren't going to be able to run away from the farm to the beach this winter. How I opened all the curtains, put wood on the fire, washed all the dishes in the sink and cleared the place up before I ate my breakfast of cut-up granny smith apple and muesli and yoghurt and drank the coffee my farmer boy had brought in to me in bed. How when I finally did get outside and found Miss Pepper playing with the pieces of frost, I got swept up in her winter joy and for a little while I forgot about all the bits that annoy me and enjoyed all the bits that she loves.

june 30

Last Saturday I cast off my second pair of Uppsala slippers and took them round to Bren's dad. I remember reading something in a magazine years ago about how if you give someone a gift of jewellery and they put it on straight away then they love it, and if they leave it in the box then they don't. Well it made me happy to see Bren's dad John take the slippers out of the bag and put them straight on his feet. They passed the jewellery test. 

july 1

We painted the first coat of black paint on the big window wall of my studio. We plugged the heater in so it was nice and cozy and we played music through the speaker and danced and sang, but still I'm finding it hard to imagine it being anything other than a work site. I don't think the reality will hit me until the tools have been cleared away and I'm sitting in there with the door closed in complete silence all by myself. 

july 1

On Monday we went back into my studio and painted another coat on the wall and I painted our names for one of our great, great, great grandchildren to discover sometime in the future when they're doing repairs on the ancient studio. Then we pulled off the tape and admired how much the black makes the wood and the window pop. 

july 2

We drove to Ballarat for studio lights and supplies and I knitted a beanie. The details are here.

july 4

On Wednesday I struggled through a bit more of Heart of Darkness. I remember feeling the same way when I read As I lay Dying, another one of Indi's literature books, last year. I can't work out if I'm finding it so difficult to get into because I know that it's a school book and I'm reading it extra carefully for the themes and meanings, if I'm just not the literature type, or if it is a difficult book. It doesn't make me feel great that the main character in the film of Tim Winton's Breath, a 14 year old boy, was seen reading HOD on more than one occasion. But someone on goodreads mentioned that HOD is one of those classics that you have to read if you want to consider yourself a well educated adult, and I do. Also it's very short at 100 pages. And best of all, I had Indi put a book mark in the spot where she thinks the book gets really good and I'm only about four pages away and I can feel it starting to pull me along and that's promising. Don't tell her but goodness I'm ridiculously relieved that I won't ever have to write an essay deconstructing the prose, or discussing European colonialism or racism. My brain hurts just thinking about it.

And Jobbo gave Bren a lesson in how to shingle a wall.

july 5

Jezza came and hooked up the electrics, fitted some power-points and put some lights in my studio. Bren and Jobbo constructed the mezzanine for the bed. I admired the light from every angle, the silhouettes it creates against the big window and the glow it casts on my knitting when it is held or worn against the wooden wall next to it. And I started to get a better glimpse into my future creative space and its endless possibilities and I got EXCITED!

July 6

After a busy week of digging up and storing the dahlia tubers, loading and stacking firewood, planting seeds, tidying up the garden, running on the treadmill, looking after emotional children and writing articles, today I'm pleased to say that I haven't yet gotten dressed or left the house. Instead I've been sitting here with Bren and Jazzy watching Friday Night Lights, drinking coffee, eating last night's leftovers and knitting this beanie that I'm pretty certain I won't have enough yarn to finish. Oh well, I'll just have to deal with that when I get to it.

And now I have to rush off to pick Indi up from the train station.

How have you been anyway?
Are you on holidays?
Does the weather sometimes make it hard for you to get out of bed?
Do you sometimes dig around where the daffodil bulbs are to check how far from spring it is?
Have you read Heart of Darkness?
Can you believe that it's 4.48pm here and we're almost in darkness?

See you next Friday!

Love, Kate x

Friday night blog

One of my girls told me the other day that she wondered if she was spending too much time on social media lately looking at people having fun in the sun on the other side of the world at the beach and by swimming pools. She wondered if I thought it might be a problem. The funny thing in our house, is that our girls are so much more responsible and aware of their social media habits and the impact they have on their lives and thought patterns than I am.

After we spoke about it for a while I realised that I've been doing the same. I'm not looking at cute teenagers in vintage bikinis under umbrellas on pristine beaches, but I am most definitely hunting for photos of brightly coloured rows of summer flowers, farmers and gardeners working in their fields and orchards in the sunshine, women and families in summer dresses, and other pictures where the light streaming in looks warm and golden.

It's freezing here. It's often misty, the skies are white and there's icy cold moisture in the air. My face hurts from the cold and when I go outside I have to wear so many layers of clothing and scarves and hats and gloves that I can hardly move.

The following photos that I've taken over the past few days, one week after the solstice, one month into winter, are the exact opposite of those that I've been gazing dreamily at; they're dark and they're moody and they look cold, but maybe if you've  been sweltering in the sunshine on the other side of the world, they'll be exactly what you've been looking for to cool you down (yeah right!). They tell the story of our season anyway.

Our big girls have been on school holidays for the past week and there has been non-stop guitar strumming, lyric learning and melody writing going on. It's been such a joy to have their music floating through the air, down corridors, from behind closed doors, in the lounge room, in the kitchen, in the sun room, in bedrooms. Once I had to ask for a few moments of silence so I could concentrate on a piece of writing and follow a thought through, but the rest of the time I can't stop smiling and singing along and wondering if they know how lucky they are to have this passion and how awesome it is that they can share it, and wondering how things are going to change now that Pepper is on school holidays too.

As I wrote at the end of last week's blog, my farmer boy got on his lathe and turned a couple of door handles for my studio. It took him a few goes to find the right wood, and then the right shape, but now that they're complete I'll be reminded of him and his craftsmanship every time I open and close my studio door. Bespoke door handles...seriously!

And speaking of my studio, this week the insulation went into the walls.

I spent a few days with my farmer boy pushing floor boards from the old Malvern Star factory through the thicknesser.

Then Jobbo cut them to size.

And then they started lining the interior walls with them. They'll need another light sand to smooth them down, but gosh they're looking great. And by the end of today they'll hopefully be close to done and it'll be time to fit out the inside. Can you imagine! Honestly I'm not sure I really can yet. It feels kind of huge and unbelievable. But also ridiculously exciting at the same time.

And despite the icy cold air, we've been out farming. We finally finished pulling the nets off the trees, I pulled out masses of summer flowers, started digging up the dahlia tubers, planted some more bulbs, some sweet peas and some hollyhocks and finished with the wood splitter.

Mostly, once I'm out and into a job I quite enjoy it, once my blood is pumping, and once I'm making a difference, but psyching myself up to get out in it is another thing entirely.

I've almost finished knitting another pair of Uppsala slippers for Bren's dad John.

I've been reading and really enjoying my Mum's library copy of The Good Brother.

And we're watching Friday Night Lights again but this time with our big girls who are loving it.

I was just about to sign off for the week when I heard a bit of activity outside and decided to go and check it out for myself. And then when I saw what everyone was getting excited about of course I had to go and get my camera and include you too.

The beautiful hand-nailed Malvern Star floor wall, the windows, my farmer boy builder, and the chairs that I had seen outside a shop in town today when we were driving home from Pepper's parent teacher interview. I screeched to a halt outside but there was already a woman there buying them. I sat in the car wishing for her to change her mind while Bren went out to negotiate. He asked the shop owner but she said he was five minutes too late so he started walking back to the car.

I can't tell you how disappointed I felt. I've been scouring the internet for months for these chairs and then here they were outside a shop in our town. It felt like a sign.

But then, what do you know, the shop lady came to the window of the car and asked for our phone number because she wasn't convinced the other lady would buy them. And then as we were hunting for a pen and piece of paper she decided that she wouldn't. They were too much of a risk for her Airbnb. They were ours! Some for the sun-room, one for the deck of my studio and maybe one for inside. I'm thrilled!

Thrilled! If only it wasn't hurting cold outside I'd move in immediately.

I had a conversation this morning with an old blogging buddy of mine from eight+ years ago. She stopped making and blogging years ago and it felt a bit weird to say that I'm still here, still creating, photographing, writing and still pressing publish. She's moved on but I've stayed in the same place. After all this time, after all these posts. But then as we hung up and I plugged my card reader into my computer and sat down to write today's blog, I felt so pleased to be here. It felt like coming home. Who knows how long I'll go on for, but for now I'm happy to prioritise Friday blog day and I guess that as long as it feels good, I still will.

So tell me lovelies, what have you been working on today?
What's the soundtrack to your life at the moment?
What's your favourite way to deal with weather that hurts you?
And what are you still doing after all this time?
Do tell.

See you next week!

Love, Kate x

light my fire

I always find the blog that follows an exciting, milestone, life-event blog difficult to write. The words don't flow as freely, the subjects are harder to choose and the 'who even cares' voice sneaks into my brain and makes itself comfortable.

If the lead-up to Soul Craft was 'the before', then the past week has most definitely been 'the after. And the after is filled with things we have to do before true winter sets in and the paddocks are too wet to drive in, the wood splitter has been returned to its owner, and everything that grew in summer has been pulled out, pruned, or cut down, and everything that needs to go in the ground before spring has been planted.

People talk about how lovely winter is because it's a time for bunking down inside by the fire knitting and drinking tea, but we are so not there yet. We are still outside. Most of the time we can't feel our fingers or our toes, our work pants are wet up to our knees and our boots are so caked with mud that we appear inches taller than we really are. But we are ticking things off slowly, so hopefully by this time next week or the week after, we'll be able to admire the blanket of frost covering everything from inside the house.

So let's get back to the photo journal shall we...

june sixteenth 

I made these Uppsala slippers as a gift for my farmer boy to say thank you for always taking care of us and our many details. They're the perfect project to take on when you want to make a present but you can't commit to a pair of 4ply socks. Someone on instagram suggested I stitch a piece of leather to the sole to protect them against all the little bits of wood, but I feel like that would make them slippery, and the truth is I only asked him to wear them in the wood shed to make my photos look good, and he held them in his hands and only put them on once we got there.

Here's the link to the pattern on Ravelry. It's a quick little knit but be sure to go down a size because they knit up bigger than you think.

june seventeenth

I've spent so much of the past week splitting wood. Now that that job's almost done I just need to find some time to stack it.

june eighteenth

Late one night last week, with nothing to read, I crept into Indi's room and took the two books off her bedside table. One was Heart of Darkness, which is one of her English Literature books and the other was her philosophy teacher Skye's copy of The Little Paris Bookshop. I didn't make it past page four of the first, and I stayed up until way past four reading the other.

“There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies—I mean books—that were written for one person only…A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.”

I love the concept of a literary apothecary, an encyclopedia of emotions, shopping on a floating book-barge. And I love the characters in this book and the story so far. I always feel rich and relieved when I have a book I am loving to go to bed with, because then it doesn't matter as much what happens sleep-wise in the night.

june nineteenth

That's a photo of my scrappy sock blanket that I have been knitting since November first 2014. From time to time I consider turning it over, darning all the ends in and marking it as finished. But then I remember how comforting it is to have a project on the go all the time. It's always there. Whenever I cast off a project but before I cast on something new I pull it down and add a few squares, I love the mindlessness of it, I enjoy the weight of it on my lap and I reminisce about all the socks I've knitted over the years to make the scraps to make the blanket. It would look so good on the day bed in my new studio though...

june twentieth

And speaking of my new studio, on Wednesday while I was on my hands and knees in the freezing cold mud trying to get the rest of my garlic in before the winter solstice (see the very first photo), Bren and Jobbo were putting the finishing touches on the door and starting on the shingles.

Oh and just in case you get excited about those shingles like I did the other day, whatever you do - do not search up #shingles on instagram. Let's just say I made that mistake so you don't have to.

june twenty first

On Thursday we had our first true, crunchy, frost of the season.  And I ran around taking photos of everything before retreating inside to try and warm my fingers.

And Bren and Jobbo made frames for and inserted two triangular windows in the pitched roof at the back of my studio and finished and hung the door. I don't think I have ever been so excited about a door in my life.

june twenty second

Today. We spent the day crunching through the frosty grass, and then later the wet grass, in the orchards pulling the nets off the trees. We're late to the job and you can almost feel the trees stretching their limbs out in relief and wondering why it took us so long. Which is why it's so late at 5.24pm for me to be writing my blog. Which is why I'm rushing it to get it done before the girls get home from school. Which is why I haven't even taken my wet socks and clothes off yet which feels awful, but I'm also okay because my farmer boy just brought me in a hot cup of tea and a hot water bottle. The best thing about wearing overalls to work is that you can pop the hot water bottle in the chest bit, like a baby. The best bit about hot tea is that it's hot.

And I told you I was excited about my door, but just in case you didn't believe me here are a few more photos of it. Bren is going to turn me a couple of door handles this weekend.

And that's it! All caught up and into a hot shower I go.

But before I leave tell me some things about you.
What are you reading/writing/playing/watching/growing/crafing?
What are you loving most about the season you're in?
What are you getting up to this weekend?
I want to buy some charcoal yarn with a fleck through it, do you know where I could get some?

See ya's next week okay!

Love, Kate x


ps Did you get my door joke in the title - Light my fire - by the DOORS!!