Dyeing with fire engine red
The wood arrived earlier this week and had to go under the tarpaulin because of the large quantities of rain this week. But today Favourite Handyman made a start on stacking it, as you can admire in the photo below. I'd better do some tomorrow given it isn't even half stacked yet. We would normally need to buy at least another truck on top of this, but I'm hopeful that the brickettes made of lime and coal finings will work well in our fire and I can stock up on those instead. They are much smaller and lighter than wood for the comparable amount of heat produced, so I could fill up the boot with them instead of paying for delivery.
Lovely flowers and foliage huh? Shame so much of it is on the ground. Even though this area supposedly has wind protection on four sides, it still gets battered.
Here in Wetville in a damp corner - the cactus and succulents garden is thriving.
Armed with Procion MX fire engine red, I decided to deal to my beige linen skirt. I bought this skirt in Dublin in 2002 and hardly wore it as I got pregnant almost immediately afterwards. I do recall ripping the lining on a bouncy castle once. I thought I was making an effort to dressup for a combined 7th and 40th birthday party, and I chose wrongly. Back here in Wetville, I didn't fit it for ages and then I just didn't fancy wearing beige.
No more beige. I plan to wear this with my op shop find of the year - the black, tailored Thornton Hall jacket.
This is the cut up skirt which was black and white and now is red and black and will some time soon become two snazzy capes for the Chch kindies dressups project.
Out the front, my comfery is eaten to lace.
This is how.
I could do with a book called The Illustrated Guide to Caterpillars Found in New Zealand. I'm not sure if this is the same as the leaf roller caterpillar which is doing plenty of damage out the back garden. I found two rolled up in lemon leaves this morning.
In the kitchen, I had a go at this cheese spread recipe. I bought the children some Le Snak last week and they adore it to the point of ridiculousness. I only bought it because it met the criteria for food for the Chch trip but now they want it forever more. Testing time in the morning.
Comments
Also...since we've been getting raw milk from a friendly local farmer, we've been making white cheese. So easy to do and so cheap (our milk is only $1 a litre, so the 500g of white cheese that makes is much less than butter). We add all sorts of different things depending on our fancy. May I encourage you to look for a farmer with cow? It takes seriously little time and saves dollars (the EASIEST cheese is made by leaving the milk out for a few days til it clabbers, then straining through a cloth - you don't get easier than that!)
~Rachael