Excellent neighbours

I consider myself very lucky to live in such a great community. Over the weekend one of our neighbours gave us some pink carpet they didn't need so we spent a day moving everything out of the littlies room and then laying the carpet. We were excited about putting baby G into a big boy bed as he seemed very keen during the day but after an hour of crying every time mummy left the room we changed our minds and re -assembled the cot. He's not so much of a baby now though as he approaches his 2nd birthday, but he was very happy to be back in his cot. We'll try again in a few months. The hoddie I photographed started out to be for him but he's grown so much in the arms and back lately that we'll find another home for it.

On the other side of the property ( over the wood fence in previous post) my neighbour and I put our heads together to plan our fruit tree purchases today. We're making sure the fruit trees we buy this winter will pollinate each others trees allowing us to plant more varieties. We're working on some apricots, plums and cherrys. I'm going to help her espalier some of her trees like I do. This is my nectarine it's on my back fenceline. The kiwifruit ochardists behind us are not terribly friendly I constantly ask them not to spray weeds along my fenceline but they are bellidgerent and keep doing it. I go out with the hose if I see them doing it and hose it all off when they go round the corner.To his credit he does however ring me when they're spraying the fruit which is luckily only about twice a year.

Early winter jobs

Another beautiful sunny winter day. Where do you start? All the garden needs attention. I pulled some grassy weeds and planted some garlic at last. I make sure the beds have well rotted manure or compost and I space the garlic about 20cm apart. Consider growing your own garlic it's so easy you just have to keep the weeds down. Who'd want to buy supermarket garlic that's been sprayed to prevent botrytis, suppress weeds and then at harvest to stop it sprouting. Worse still it the Chinese garlic, recognise it in the supermarket by the roots being totally removed. Just imagine what they do to it before it's allowed to be imported. This time of year I lime my soil and add as much compost as I can lay my hands on. It's alot of work on my own so the long term plan still includes providing some accomidation for WWOOFers. Standing on the compost heap to view the winter veges.



I'm often heard saying I wish I had a wwoofer to .......I figure even though we only live on a small section we can offer a great stay to organic minded visitors. We have a good selection of fruit trees and animals and a collection of medicinal herbs, we are close to some of NZ's best spots and Motueka our town, is nestled between the mountains and the sea. I reckon hosting people from different cultures would be a valuable lesson for the kids and never having traveled myself it would be a good start to broardening my own horisons. Although I must say visiting all my favorite blogs is great, I know more about the contryside and culture in England, Canada and the States than I ever did. I love checking in on the every day lives of the bloggers. I updated my links be sure to check them out.

Look at the late sunflower hiding from the frost.

Jobs this week include planting more garlic, weeding, cleaning the chook house, and hopefully I'll get into the shadehose to sort the plants. I've planted out some asparagus corms that I grew from seed, it will be an experiment to see if they survive the transplant so young in the cold, wet weather to come. I got the strawberry bed sorted too, it was over-run with clover and buttercup from the horse poo I put on last year. L helped me to make a worm farm I filled the bottom with horse and rabbit poo and introduced some tiger worms from the compost heap with some apple cores to eat. Underneath is a bucket to collect the worm juice. Sounds delicious! I was quite pleased with the idea of having it by the back door so the kids can drop in their apple cores and banana skins but it might get a little smelly in summer. Anyway hopefully the worms I put in today will make lots of babies and make lovely vermiculture for the spring seedlings. Also if you've got a warmer garden you can sow peas and broard beans and probably little onion seedlings. They'd just freeze in the soil here as the frost will stay on the ground all day soon. The winter veges are well established and I'm optimistic we'll have enough brassicas leeks, lettuce and celery to get us through to spring.

Hello again

I didn' t realise I'd been absent from my blog for two weeks. I've been pre- ocupied with life. I felted those gloves they need another go through the washing machine but it's going to do the trick. Thanks for the suggestions. Instead of reading and writing blogs I've been gardening, sewing and sorting. The garlic beds are manured and dug over and I've been redesigning other garden beds and making compost now that everything's died down a bit. We had a couple of hard frosts last week so I spent an afternoon piling straw up around my young citrus trees and covered them with frost cloth and hessian for winter. I had a massive power bill, $170 for a month so I've been looking for more work, I sewed a few bags as I had visitors who wanted to buy bags and none to offer. I used some of my recently aquired ric rac on one of them and have a few more in various stages of completion. I might get them finished if it keeps raining. I got really frustrated with not being able to find sewing stuff so did some sorting. All the lace, ric rac, bais binding and buttons were in a big chest and I discoved alot of stuff I forgot I had including this adorable golliwog. I'm going to make her some friends her body is made from old wool stockings, I think my Grandmother or one of my Aunts made her the old gingham is beautiful. The sorted stuff will make me alot more efficient I hope, I really am such a hopeless hoarder. Why do I have a huge boxful of zips I ask myself? At least I'll be able to find one to suit now.I've also been staking out Trade me trying to find fabric bargains for more bags but have been bitterly dissippointed so far as the bits I like, everyone else wants too. Bahh.
My Mum had a pretty rotten experience with her recent operation and then her leg got badly infected, the public Health system in New Zealand is getting scary all I hear now is horror stories! She's feeling a little better now and hoping for the all clear on Tuesday to go and visit her grandson in Australia. Thanks for asking.

Knitted gloves

I knitted these gloves in an evening but am really bummed out they don't fit, they're just a bit loose. Would anyone like them? You probably need big hands. I was inspired by these and then these. (check out my links I'm quite proud I can do it now without any help from the teenager)I've started another pair 'cos I'm determined to make some that fit. The poor old sewing machine in the background has been a bit redundant in the past few weeks. I'm tossing around an idea for a crafty group get together once a month, a friend suggested it a year ago and I've been mulling it over since then. It would be a great source of inspiration and sharing I think.

Rainbow dyeing

I've been checking out some springtime blogs in the northern hemisphere and was inspired by the wool blankets dyed by here at Small Wonders. Taimarie has provided some good links to follow and before I knew it I was in the mood to do some dying. I havn't tried with blankets but wound some recycled wool into hanks to make multi coloured yarn. My Aunt who has entered the World Of Wearable Art for years taught me this simple method which requires only food colouring and white vinigar. Wind some wool into hanks and wet it. Bring a dye pot with a few centimetres of water to the boil. Add about 3/4 of a cup of white vinigar to the water ( this sets the dye) or acetic acid could be used then you'd only need a tablespoon or so. Lay the hanks on the water and sprinkle the dye on top, Steam, dip or stir to create the desired effect. Add more water and vinigar if it all gets absorbed. It takes around 10 to 20 minutes of simering for all the dye to be absorbed, don't stir too much or it will felt. Experiment!

Take the wool out of the pot with tongs and put it into warm soapy water to rinse. Squeeze out any excess dye without agitating too much, then hang on the line to admire the result and plan the garment you're going to knit.

Nettles

The past week has been a beauty, the first half was full of STRESS getting our Playcentre ready for the education review, then the weight just lifted because the review went pretty smoothly and we are all feeling optimistic about the report. We know Playcentre is the most awesome place for kids to learn and a good report will help confirm it. If I was gardening I'd be clearing and mulching for winter in the beautiful weather but I'm not quite ready to test my back out yet so in the mean time I've let the chooks out to clean up the bugs, turn the compost and hopefully scratch out some weeds. I'll break up some garlic for planting and prepare myself for a more witchy weedy garden next year. It will be hard as I'm a bit of a control freak in the garden, the nettles are already making their presence felt. I love them, but the kids complain. Alot of their friends have not come across nettles before and walk right into them. This week I'll try to cut down my coffee habit a bit and drink some organic nettle tea. Aparently it is full of iron and vitamins and I can use it as a hair rinse if I don't like the taste!

Thinking positive

I'm on the road to recovery. My old chiropractor was good and had alot of old injury's to work through, but the new one is great he uses a gentler method which doesn't involve me having my whole back cracked twice a week. He's very good at taking time to explain theories and steps in my treatment. I'm pretty twisted up still after years of physical work, a couple of accidents and four babies. I've started thinking more about my everyday activities and how I can do them safely. Also it seems I'm going to have to look at how I handle stress and do gentle excercise instead of doing lots of shoveling and carrying. I've resolved to get my teenager in to have some treatment too as he has had several trampoline accidents. Apparently having your bones heal out of alignment can affect your whole wellbeing and even growth. I havn't gardened for a while, but enjoyed a long walk in the autumn sun yesterday afternoon. The toadstool from my walk reminds me of my childhood where I played under a beautiful grove of oak trees imagining faries and their friends living in the toadstool communities that thrived there.Yay I even felt well enough to finish a small knitting project it fits in quite well with the fairy/ pixie memories. I've been inspired by Helen's "week of wool" knitting and crochet posts.

More fabric

I found these beatiful fabrics and ric rac at a church fair last Saturday, now they are sitting on a pile in the lounge room waiting for me to find some inspiration. I had a character ballet skirt when I was 7 which had beautiful ric rac round the bottom. My daughter doesn't like it, she's starting to be influenced by what other girls think is cool and not cool. I'm thinking I may be able to incorperate it into my bags and onto the bottom of pants, I'm excited about it even if she isn't. Then on Sunday I put my back out really bad again, I wish I could figure out what's causing it because I wasn't even doing anything I'd consider to be heavy work. I felt like an invalid and was so depressed watching 50 year old Suzanne Paul whirl around the dance floor on dancing with the stars the other night. Thank goodness for the drugs the Dr's given me! I couldn't move yesterday, even knitting hurt!

Thoughts

So far blogging stuff has been a really enjoyable passtime, it's easy to write and show stuff when life's plodding along quite nicely. It's hard however to know weather to reveal more personal stuff to the blog world especially emotional hardships. This is for me though and it would be fake not to include what's going on. I've had a trying couple of weeks, my Mum had a cancerous lump removed from her leg, it wasn't really a big deal but then things started to get a bit complicated. The specialist didn't know what kind of Cancer it was and started talking about another operation. Mum's waiting results from more blood tests and a chest x-ray. She's very positive and as a born again Christian she veiws this as a test and is kind of embracing it. I've tried not to dwell on it but I'm a bit of a secret pessimist and it feels very strange to be positive about scary stuff. Then if that wasn't bad enough she started having blackness in her vision, Arraaaahhh BRAIN TUMOR the pessimist screamed. Luckily Mum got it checked out straight away, it was something fairly common but potentialy resulting in blindness, detatched retina maybe? I forget, it's a bit of a blur. NOT A BRAIN TUMOR that's all I heard.
So with all that going on I havn't had a lot of sleep, how could I cope without Mum? The teenager has thrived on my snappy moods enjoying the short temper as an oppourtunity to argue all the injustices he has to face, I think he has a built in radar to notice weakness or PMS, cos we always end up fighting if I'm not on top of the game. The small children havn't benifited from many quality conversations either.
The volunteer job I do has become a chore and the main focus for my anger, why should I do this when my family needs me? Not very nice mind speak resulting in headaches and more crabby thoughts. A bit of a vicious circle. I'm trying to look at it all as my own test and though I don't like to compare, it's sometimes helpful for getting things into perspective. My life would be down right boring without a few hiccups and a bit of drama thrown in for good measure. With that off my chest I'm feeling a bit better.

From Grandma's stash

My pile of unfinished objects is growing again as I get ideas and try them out just enough to see if I like them or not. Both my small children need new winter clothes so I need to get a few things finished. Last week I started these baby gowns, finishing them off yesterday. One will be for my friend who just had her third baby girl. The fabric of the yellow one and the blue one is viyella or clydella which my grandma had in her stash. She had 8 children and handmade all their baby clothes. Fabric was precious and she saved all the smallest scraps too. The blue piece must have been a favorite because it appears to have been bought and not made into anything. It's my favorite but the colour might be too boyish for a girl?

All my babies wore gowns, most pre loved and worn by Grandmas children. (nice links to the past). Grandma was too tired to make much by the time I had children but loved seing the things I was knitting and sewing. I didn't really realise what a wonderful craftwoman she was until she died and all her treasures came out. I know she would approve of these gowns I made as she hated seing babies in stretch and grows. Not many friends bother with gowns now but I think they're adorable. For a new born we wrapped a "flannel nap" she called it (soft woollen square) over the nappy rolled the gown down over the top then baby was wrapped in a shawl snug as a bug. Not very practical for outings I know, but so adorable. My only bother with the gown pattern I used is the bais binding tie at the back, it wasn't until I was finishing that I thought domes might have been better. Buttons are out, ever tried buttoning up a cardy on a wriggly baby? Probably why matinee jackets and the like had a tie and only three buttons.
This is a smocked gown that we thik my great grandmother made it's my absolute favorite made of silk. PJ wore it a couple of times when she was a baby but I was terrified it would ge ripped so it's stored now, I'd love to display it but the light would probably make it deteoriate quicker.