Rain? bah, rainCOAT.
I spent today in the garden. In a week where I've barely been at home, today was wonderful. Thursdays are Mummy Days for Brighid and I, each one particularly precious as next year she will be flying off to school five days per week. After a stint of grocery and chook food shopping, we came home and, ignoring the rain, dug and sowed, transplanted and de-stoned. I buried two buckets of bokashi, cut back some really overgrown lemon thyme and sage. Interesting to see how the sage propogates of its own accord by layering. I transplanted the seedlings I bought last week (various Asian greens + cavole nero + beetroot + primulas) and I sowed peas, carrots, beetroot and alyssum. Brighid helped with the transplanting and the de-stoning of two gardens which are far too stony. I was crouched with bent knees this time, but de-stoning always reminds me of when I was pregnant with Brighid. First she was transverse and then she was breech. Given that I wanted a home birth, I had a huge incentive to get my daughter to turn head down and I wasn't keen on the scrubbing of floors so every day I filled a bucket of stones from the garden on my hands and knees. She turned.
A freesia peeping through the miners lettuce.
This used to be the strawberry patch and then it was going to be the super spuds experiment, but now it is the kale-chinese cabbage-pak choy bed.
I pick salad leaves from this patch at least once every day and still it grows lusciously. My favourite variety from the simply red mesclun mix which is part of this photo (along with tat soi and rocket) is red mustard, so I am letting some of that go to seed.
Tat soi in flower.
Our very own broccoli. The funny bubbles on top are rain drops.
Primulas in the front garden. There is still a lot of work to be done on this strip, but colour is infinitely better than no colour, and I like the pink and white together. Eventually I would like just red and white here, but pink and white is good for the time being.
I've also been sewing. I have finally worked out a way that my sewing machine can handle knits, or some knits anyway. I set the tension lower and the stitches closer together and the zigzag on 2 ('5' is the sharpest angled zig zag stitch) and it worked. So I finished the skirt I had cut out months ago and sewed red ric rac to the hem. I like the ric rac but the fabric of the skirt is irredeemably awful. It was cheap and that polyester shinyness is way uglier made up than I naively imagined in the shop.
Last night I began a nightshirt for me using yellow-orange-brown floral sheet from the Sallies. I've reduced the size from the last time I made this but it still looks rather enormous. Then tonight I paused on the nightshirt to make a bag for Fionn's friend's ninth birthday which is tomorrow.
Earlier this week Brighid and I went op shopping for the pure pleasure of not going home and doing jobs. I found a top which I haven't photographed but a blue cardy which I have. Since Patty the Snug Bug became my new sewing and style guru starting last week, and I skimmed through Trinny and Susannah's Body Shape Bible in the library recently, I have, for the first time ever, decided that cardies (the kind which go in at the waist) could be a flattering thing. I thought I might be a cello but when I looked at the detail in the Body Shape Bible book, I decided I was an hourglass after all. Not that I agreed with everything they said and there is an hourglass photo in a dress with overflowing cleavage which isn't a look I aim to reproduce, but Patty the Snug Bug, she is a better guru because she sews and is not super skinny like T & S.
I think I do like the belted cardy overall, though in an ideal scenario, the slopey shoulder aspect would be altered somehow. The cardy has a nice feel to wear, but it is almost all acrylic. I've sworn off knitting any more cardigans of any description for me, but maybe I could make a belted jacket/cardy like the one above out of merino fabric? Buying new stuff that I like in wool is toooooo expensive.
Out in the big wide world, I am having great difficulty with reading even small parts of the reporting on the Royal Commission into the Pike River deaths. The stark evidence that it was avoidable is worse than awful.
On a more positive note, Reading the Maps manages to begin a post linking to that blasted oval ball frenzy which is sweeping New Zealand on an even worse scale than usual, and then launch into a very interesting report on Pacific languages and an interview with Vaughan Rapatahana. I When I fell for Auckland, where Reading the Maps is based, what I really fell for was the Pasifika culture. For a small town South Island girl, living in Auckland and working within a multicultural and mostly Pacific Islanders setting was like moving to another country without needing a passport. I could happily live and work in that multicultural setting again, but I would not happily give up our 1/5 acre section near the beach for a tiny crossleased flat in a far away suburb which would cost us way way more than our current home.
I have avoided pinterest. I do have quite enough distractions. Although I am sworn off large knitting projects, this Faultline scarf looks most attractive. I'm not allowed to buy it or look seriously at wool until I have finished the doll's pinafore and that is a long way off on current performance.
No progress on the care workers' project. I can't concentrate on it until I have finished the huge chunk of paid work which should be done by the middle of next week. Thursday though, they are sacrosanct. I'd rather give up my weekend to do paid work than give up a Mummy Thursday with Brighid.
A freesia peeping through the miners lettuce.
This used to be the strawberry patch and then it was going to be the super spuds experiment, but now it is the kale-chinese cabbage-pak choy bed.
I pick salad leaves from this patch at least once every day and still it grows lusciously. My favourite variety from the simply red mesclun mix which is part of this photo (along with tat soi and rocket) is red mustard, so I am letting some of that go to seed.
Tat soi in flower.
Our very own broccoli. The funny bubbles on top are rain drops.
Primulas in the front garden. There is still a lot of work to be done on this strip, but colour is infinitely better than no colour, and I like the pink and white together. Eventually I would like just red and white here, but pink and white is good for the time being.
I've also been sewing. I have finally worked out a way that my sewing machine can handle knits, or some knits anyway. I set the tension lower and the stitches closer together and the zigzag on 2 ('5' is the sharpest angled zig zag stitch) and it worked. So I finished the skirt I had cut out months ago and sewed red ric rac to the hem. I like the ric rac but the fabric of the skirt is irredeemably awful. It was cheap and that polyester shinyness is way uglier made up than I naively imagined in the shop.
Last night I began a nightshirt for me using yellow-orange-brown floral sheet from the Sallies. I've reduced the size from the last time I made this but it still looks rather enormous. Then tonight I paused on the nightshirt to make a bag for Fionn's friend's ninth birthday which is tomorrow.
Earlier this week Brighid and I went op shopping for the pure pleasure of not going home and doing jobs. I found a top which I haven't photographed but a blue cardy which I have. Since Patty the Snug Bug became my new sewing and style guru starting last week, and I skimmed through Trinny and Susannah's Body Shape Bible in the library recently, I have, for the first time ever, decided that cardies (the kind which go in at the waist) could be a flattering thing. I thought I might be a cello but when I looked at the detail in the Body Shape Bible book, I decided I was an hourglass after all. Not that I agreed with everything they said and there is an hourglass photo in a dress with overflowing cleavage which isn't a look I aim to reproduce, but Patty the Snug Bug, she is a better guru because she sews and is not super skinny like T & S.
I think I do like the belted cardy overall, though in an ideal scenario, the slopey shoulder aspect would be altered somehow. The cardy has a nice feel to wear, but it is almost all acrylic. I've sworn off knitting any more cardigans of any description for me, but maybe I could make a belted jacket/cardy like the one above out of merino fabric? Buying new stuff that I like in wool is toooooo expensive.Out in the big wide world, I am having great difficulty with reading even small parts of the reporting on the Royal Commission into the Pike River deaths. The stark evidence that it was avoidable is worse than awful.
On a more positive note, Reading the Maps manages to begin a post linking to that blasted oval ball frenzy which is sweeping New Zealand on an even worse scale than usual, and then launch into a very interesting report on Pacific languages and an interview with Vaughan Rapatahana. I When I fell for Auckland, where Reading the Maps is based, what I really fell for was the Pasifika culture. For a small town South Island girl, living in Auckland and working within a multicultural and mostly Pacific Islanders setting was like moving to another country without needing a passport. I could happily live and work in that multicultural setting again, but I would not happily give up our 1/5 acre section near the beach for a tiny crossleased flat in a far away suburb which would cost us way way more than our current home.
I have avoided pinterest. I do have quite enough distractions. Although I am sworn off large knitting projects, this Faultline scarf looks most attractive. I'm not allowed to buy it or look seriously at wool until I have finished the doll's pinafore and that is a long way off on current performance.
No progress on the care workers' project. I can't concentrate on it until I have finished the huge chunk of paid work which should be done by the middle of next week. Thursday though, they are sacrosanct. I'd rather give up my weekend to do paid work than give up a Mummy Thursday with Brighid.
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