Letters from Wetville

Quelling nervousness & the finished cardy

2012-01-28T20:59:00.003+13:00

The blue cardigan is done. Notice how in the photograph the light is bad, the cardigan looks green and the background appears to be a slovenly mess of unmade bed? The only part which is an illusion is that the cardigan is blue in real life. I read and adore some truly gorgeous blogs where people wait days and even weeks to get good light and someone to take good photographs of them modelling their creations. This is not a gorgeous blog; it is the blog of impatient woman who is learning to sew.

Anyways, I am quite pleased with the cardigan. There is a little bit of puckering but I figure it is only by sewing more that I will get any better at that bit. I actually still sew quite wonky seams and I may never ever sew contrasting thread topstitching. But a little wonky puckeringness is way better than cardies which stop half way over my bosom, which is the only kind shops sell. I do like how the sleeves aren't too long as well.

Will I make it again? Maybe. Possibly in a slightly heavier weight fabric. The merino is lovely and soft and light to wear but it remains to be seen how durable it is as an outerwear garment.

So I've finished all sewing up all my Global Fabrics Christmas fabric. I made one cardigan, one t-shirt and two skirts for myself this month, plus two five year old skirts. I have never ever been so productive behind a sewing machine in my life. In two days I start multitasking in a much higher gear and I'm working through some nervousness about that. My lovely family did some cleaning today without me even asking and I spent a wee bit of time in the garden, all good things for my soul. I made chocolate blueberry brownie cake in readiness for school lunch box filling and went to work for a while.

I'm wondering what I shall sew next. What I really like most is dresses, but I don't want to buy more fabric right now. I have some felted wool (some intentionally felted and some accidentally) which I imagine myself turning into a skirt at some point, but I haven't found a pattern to modify to make it. Actually dresses is what I really like the most. Skirts are practical things which I wear enough (trousers not much at all outside of the house - not because I hate myself in trousers, I just don't love trousers much) but they don't have a slightly magical quality of appeal like dresses do for me. I like how dresses don't require much in the way of coordination. Perhaps it is time next to dye the pink jacket from last week's op shop bargain day. Maybe the flowery curtain Crepe dress.... I need to make up some more fabric from my cupboard before I deem myself eligible to buy knit fabric for one of the Vogue dresses in my last post.

For whom the alarm rings

2012-01-26T20:49:00.004+13:00

The world of paid work is not just knocking gently. Tomorrow it will be an alarm clock going off loudly. It has been a great summer with much to love and cherish. Brighid had her actual fifth birthday earlier this week which was a furling whirling lovely day of visitors and visiting. Tonight I remembered to go to the supermarket and buy food for school lunches. Mostly, I've been fitting in sewing my blue cardigan, as though it represents organisation itself. If I can have it finished for Monday (no chance for tomorrow), the Global Fabrics sewing project will be complete. It seems almost talismanic, as if completing the sewing will confer order on my world, despite the rational element in my brain noting that time spent sewing is time ignoring everything else which needs doing. A few days ago it looked like this:
A cardigan which reaches to the centre front is a rare and wonderful thing for me. It may still be a smidgen small but that is because I altered to measurements taken before a summer of wine, barbeques and general indulgence. A bit of running around multitasking and possibly the green prescription gym class may see things return to a slightly slimmer version.

As for the second photo, I had to unpick the band and scratch my head a lot and then repin it differently. Now it is much much less puckered. There is nowhere in the house to take a current photo without waking someone or somebodies up tonight. Then again, as for this second photo, you don't see a room like this on the sewing blogs too often do you?

I look at my sewing and think back to my first finished dress (which went into the bin - not even good enough for the Sallies) and I think that the best way I am learning is by carrying on sewing and then carrying on again. I'm getting better at using my machine and working around the limitations of its age and era. The garden has taken something of a back seat to the sewing projects, but not completely. Votes for a dress sewing project please? Both of these dresses have been very popular on Pattern Review (possibly the most useful resource for sewing I have stumbled across)

Pros: I already own Vogue 8379. I have cut the pattern pieces out and attempted an extended bodice as a sop to the FBA situation. [I never sewed it up as the cheapie fabric I chose was so awful I couldn't bear to use it as a muslin after I whipped up a skirt (gone to the Sallies without a single wear) in the same fabric. With my slightly more practised knowledge about bust adjustments and getting wrap dresses to sit flat and not gape, I will have to change the alterations quite a bit.]

Cons: I will probably need 3.5 metres for it, which makes for pricey fabric.

Pros: It is gorgeous. I've seen photos of it on a range of figures and I think it could work. It only uses 2 metres.

Cons: I need to buy the pattern which is $NZ33. It is a summer dress and summer is, sadly, not long for my world.

People of the Book

2012-01-24T22:21:00.003+13:00

Geraldine Brooks' The People of the Book is my best read of this year. Possibly last year also. This morning the children got to make themselves ice creams in cones and drink powerade and help themselves to chocolate all so I could concentrate on reading People of the Book. Eventually, with some regret, I finished it, and re-entered my usual world. It is both a marvellous and absorbing read and also for me a constant reminder of the relentless persecution of Jewish people over many many centuries. Next beside my bed is a Linda Grant novel.

Sewing. The pattern alterations aspect has gone fairly well, but matching the band on the cardigan to the altered fronts has involved a lot of pinning and repinning and a lot of unpicking. I've left it for the evening and altered my 50 cent op shop slip instead. Now it fits perfectly to go under yesterday's $15 teal dress and today's $15 black dress. Postie Plus has a store here in Wetville and sure enough, they had the same design as in yesterday's blogpost but in my size in black.

Tomorrow Brighid turns five and her grandparents visit for the day. The house provides ample evidence of my flagrant flouting of all that my mother taught me about respectability, tidiness, sobriety, moderation, many other virtuous things, and being good. Perhaps magic fairy dust will settle on me in the night and I will wake before dawn and perform housekeeping miracles.

This afternoon was all about the infirm. We did some visiting at the hospital. Our second hospital visit was to our eight year old friend Miss E who had her appendix removed last night. Turns out the nurse is funny (the make you laugh kind of funny) and you get a tv in your room these days. They never had funny nurses in my childhood romps around Nelson hospital wards. Then we went to see Mary K who has been approved for permanent residential care starting next week. I am so pleased and she is excited about it too.

Shopping in Hoki

2012-01-23T19:56:00.003+13:00

This making clothes fit lark requires some brain power, endless thinking and consultation of Palmer and Pletsch's Fit for Real People. Then lots of practising. I'm part way through all that and have far to go. Below is the full bust adjustment I did for the top in New Look 6735. I feel like I learnt a lot just making this adjustment, but there are still a lot of pulls in the fabric when I wear it. This time I am making the knit cardigan from the same pattern, which has a similar shape, so I thought I would try a new FBA method. Although FFRP advise that for alterations of more than 1.5 inches per side, a "Y" bust dart alteration is the best method, that seemed too hard at the time.

Now it seems I have the requisite bravery (and the knowledge that I bought the fabric and if I don't sew it up, then I have wasted quite a bit of cash on the merino). Here is the cardigan front with the "Y' bust dart alteration. I'm part way through sewing the cardigan - no try-ons or photos yet.
Today bargain shopping day. Bargain shopping days cannot be planned, they can only be fortuitous accidents. It is also true that the chance of a fortuitous accident goes up if the shopping involves the St Vincent de Paul shop in Hokitika. Below is my new tailored jacket which cost me the princely sum of $4. Casting my eye over it at home with my newly acquired fitting knowledge, I can see that the sleeves need taking up and if I can find a way of shifting the front closure (currently a button) down, I might lose the maternity silhouette (a bit anyway, a fat tummy still has to fit under there somewhere). Last time I had a great op shop jacket find, I paid the Bernina ladies to adjust the sleeves, but for goodness sake, it is four dollars of jacket! Time for me to have a go myself. I'm not sure I can do anything about the gaping at the lapel and I may yet dye it a different colour. It is very very pink and liable to look grubby within seconds of wearing it at the moment.Bargain #2: a knit dress from Postie Plus for $15. It has a soft collar and pleats on the front with buttons to hold the pleats. The colour is a bit Air New Zealand teal, but I do like the dress The lace at the bottom isn't part of the dress. The slip underneath (an older op shop find) needs shortening. Without a slip, this dress will cling to big lumps a little too much.
It does seem like I've gravitated towards some rather matronly items, by my own choice. I'm not there on analysing that, but it is true that we are talking about work clothes here and work clothes on a budget. Plus I don't want to wear a floaty tunic.

So the day does not disappear into complete oblivion

2012-01-20T22:43:00.002+13:00

I laybyed the boots. If the recession hits and peak oil all at once and I have to walk to work and make my boots last for many years, then I will need these boots.

I chopped a lot of wood and dragged the scrappy stuff to make a big heap on the old sandpit. Just chopping with the loppers. Me and a chainsaw isn't quite the best idea.

I helped my elderly cousin. All fingers crossed that we get a good outcome from the meeting with her carelink worker (like an old person's social worker it seems). Mary K had been home less than 24 hours and she was in a such a confused and distressed state when I visited. It is cruel to expect her to carry on at home.

We farewelled our lovely friends who are about to start a new life in Blenheim. Can't wait to visit them there. I feel so lucky that we will see them again. Not such a big and difficult scale as when we farewelled friends in the UK.

FH finished the roof. We went to friends for a barbeque and had a marvellous time. No dishes. I like no dishes almost as much as I like friends. I did make basil pesto and beetroot salad to take round. My latest food assessment is that the best basil pesto has a little coriander thrown in for good measure.

The chimney sweep came. The wood delivery man came. Now it remains only for me to stack that wood.

I vacuumed the dining room. There is no bureacratic evidence of when it was last vaccumed. But the archaeological evidence (the state of the vacuum cleaner afterwards) is that it was a long time ago.

Irresponsible thinking of unimportant things

2012-01-19T22:41:00.003+13:00

One skirt finished. One pair of new boots in the shop spied and now coveted. I'm going to take a dress and some socks down tomorrow to check they are as high as I want them. Then we can talk layby. It doesn't seem so chillingly selfish to take bits of food money out each fortnight compared to not feeding anyone for a week so I can have new boots.

Absolutely, there are more important things to be doing than thinking about clothes and boots and sewing. World peace, global warming, the state of the dining room floor, finding some magical way of being at work and looking after small children at the same time, reading Geraldine Brooks, the Ports of Auckland industrial war and what it means for trade unions everywhere in New Zealand, weeding the garden, the Euro...

What I'm thinking about next is how to alter the pattern for New Look 6735. This time I am going to make the cardigan. I made a FBA for the top a long time ago so I can repeat that, but now I've been wearing my latest version of the 6735 long sleeved t shirt, I can see that there are more adjustments to make. Not necessarily what they are, but that those ripples and bits that ride up indicate something out of skew. I suspect sway back and sloping left shoulder, but there is something else I cannot explain. My best current guess is that I need to drop the bust gathers down to allow for my ageing and post-babies shape.

and the reward for the day was red wine...

2012-01-18T21:10:00.008+13:00

Seven children, two men with a chainsaw on a scaffold, an old lady kicked out of the old people's home a day early and a crazily messy house. I'm prepared to say that a) the kids were GREAT and b) the men did an excellent job decapitating the big tree in the back yard. I spent a bit of time on the phone to the old people's home and sorted out that crisis. I planted some celery and lettuce (the old fashioned crunchy kind because frankly it tastes better than the swanky kind in the upmarket section of the supermarket, all red and crinkly). Most of the children went home before sundown.

I made some progress on the overgrown globe artichoke patch. When I made this garden four years ago, I imagined peas and beans twining themselves up the arches. Now, even in its overgrown state, it seems that not even the convulvulus wants to twine itself up the arches I carefully placed. But there are some lovely calla lillies in the wilderness and I aim to rescue them from visual oblivion and add some geraniums to the red theme as I go ministering.

Highlight of the day (apart from the people, whom I do love dearly): the neighbour brought us over some frozen crayfish. Delicious.

Also, the remains of the tree provide rich imaginative fodder. I show you only my daughter and not her also vividly imaginative friend, because putting other people's children on the internet without permission is rude and I try not to be rude. They enacted all kinds of wacky scenes but the one which stays in my head is where Brighid continues her project of making sense of Nana Pam's death and tells her friend "and I even got invited to her funeral!" They had a conversation afterwards about how Nana Pam died and couldn't come to any decent answers. What I could tell my daughter the other day when she had a minor vomiting bug was that she wouldn't die like Nana Pam after this bug, which is what she feared.

Reading I recommend: Chris Trotter's open letter to David Shearer about the Port of Auckland dispute (thank you Bryce Edwards for the link)

and Zoe's interview on Exciting sustainable fashion research.

parties and Pike

2012-01-17T21:08:00.004+13:00

Today was Brighid's party. Thanks to a very helpful husband, lovely friends and lovely children, we all had a great time. I'd also give credit to my streamlining of the party process. Home made cake and everything else bought. Only cooking at the event is the barbequed sausages and FH took care of that. Chips from the fish and chip shop for the actual lunch part. Otherwise chips (crisps), animal biscuits, juice and fizzy. My one concession to my usual nutritional concerns is there is no raspberry fizzy, no fanta and no cola. The giant bouncy pillow and the go karts were pretty fabulous. Of course I didn't do anything taxing like have it at home. Imagine the cleaning involved, not to mention the scaffolding - how many small children dancing on a roof is wise exactly? We went down to the nearby holiday park and hired their facilities for a very reasonable sum and almost no cleaning up involved.

The roof painting continues, with just a few hours off for partying. I did some weeding and began to plan the winter garden as I dug. As per the usual January preparations for winter, I've been organising for a wood delivery just as soon as the scaffolding is out of the way.

I've done a bit more on my winter version of Simplicity 2451. I'm getting less scared of putting zips in and more proficient at creating a working closure. This is what it looks like so far.
I need to put the yoke facing on and then hem it and then it is done. While it will work fine with a black top, I would like to pick out the forest green in it and make another version of New Look 6735 to go with it. Ha ha ha. Not very manageable at the moment given the limited stock in our local fabric shop, but maybe Dunedin's Global Fabrics would send me some samples if I rang them and asked very nicely. I would like some of that heavy weight cotton/spandex or even polyester/spandex which they make the more expensive ready to wear t-shirts from - the kind which keep their shape over time.

There is another fifth birthday party in four days' time. Right now I see a trip to a shop to buy something readymade rather than time on the sewing machine in my future. Perhaps by Friday I will be back in the kiddie sewing mode.

I've still got some lovely blue merino fabric from Global Fabrics in Auckland. Originally I saw it in McCalls 6408, but I've since read more reviews and the wide arms won't be practical for work and the fabric may be droopy rather than drapey. So that may turn another top or tops and I will have to keep thinking about a winter cardigan type garment. I spent over a year knitting a cardigan which I'm now not especially fond of. Sewing is appealing more for its faster turn around from idea to finished garment.

That's it. No insightful political comment or inspiring creations or luminous prose. Just another diary entry in an internet-lined world. I really like how free blogging allows me to sometimes merely retell the events of my little world over days or weeks and other times to connect in a more considered and reflective way to the ideas and arguments elsewhere in my town and the wider world.

While the news media moves on (and in some ways, thank goodness), 29 men still lie under our mountain at Pike River. The people we usually buy our wood and coal from, the very talented Stephen and Carol Rose, lost their son in the Pike disaster. At the end of this month they will close up their wood business and after a month's holiday they will return to Wetville to concentrate their energies entirely on getting the bodies out of the mountain. I support the work which the families of the Pike River 29 group are doing. The recent news that it may be years before they are out needs to be challenged. Everyone has a right to go to work and to come home again at the end of their shift.

Nigella's failsafe cake fails

2012-01-15T21:59:00.002+13:00

Nigella Lawson's "Failsafe Chocolate Cake" wasn't entirely safe from failing in my hands. The children and I have opted to return to our trusted Danish chocolate brownie recipe for the actual birthday party cake on Tuesday. As you can see from the photo, the result was almost obscene.

After making a chocolate cake flop this afternoon, we went swimming, taking Brighid for her first ever go on the hydroslide, and then on to the park to have fish and chips and play on the playground with our friends. I gave the girls their matching blue twirling skirts which they expressed great enthusiasm for.

The weather has gone cold and wet again which effectively stopped me from beginning a fanciful summer dress out of curtains and redirected me to making a winter skirt from the same Simplicity 2451 pattern which I made last week and have decided I like. I need to buy a zip for it tomorrow and it should be finished and ready for photographing, in a couple of days, or a bit more due to crazy fifth birthday partying. The fabric comes from my mother in law's stash which I suspect in turn was her mother's and is a needlecord fabric with parrots on it. I remember wearing pinafores from similar fabric when I was about seven, but so far it is working as a slightly retro woman's skirt.

Brighid has just received another birthday party invitation, so another twirly skirt is on the horizon. This time I will use the tiered skirt rather than the circle skirt option on Simplicity 2356 so I can use up scraps of fabric from several finished projects.

The weather has been too wet to garden and I have been sewing rather than reading. Not quite two weeks until work life begins again in earnest. I've been doing a bit of prep for that but mostly really appreciating the wonderful free time the four of us have together right now.

Broken Heartbreakers

2012-01-13T23:06:00.005+13:00

It's been a wonderful week, half of it childless. Mum and Dad love having them, they love going to Hanmer and spending time with their grandparents and we love sleeping in in the morning and going out at night without arranging a babysitter. Lucky and blissful indeed.

On Wednesday night we went to see the Barley Shakers which was a lovely evening out. They were a family band playing Irish music, mostly classic tunes with one lovely original song at the end.

Last night was superb. We went to hear the Broken Heartbreakers and Bond Street Bridge. They were wonderful and we've been listening to the CDs we bought from them all of today. I loved the layers of skill in their musicianship and the political aspect to some of their songs (go the folk ballad about the IMF and Ireland) and I'll be lining up for more as soon as I hear they are back in Greymouth.

These are the gladioli which were supposed to be a lime green "Bells of Ireland" type colour. Hmmmm. Still, they are quite pretty. The pink ones start out a salmon colour which I'm not fond of, but then they deepen into something quite beautiful.

Here are the matching dancing skirts for two special girls just turned or about to run five. The one above with the berry strips around it is for Brighid and the one below with the green trim strips is for her best friend Rebecca who leaves town for a new life in Blenheim in just one week's time. We will all miss you Rebecca.I'm about to enter these two skirts in the Pattern Review stash contest, the first sewing contest I've ever entered. Anything which encourages freeing up space at the bottom of the linen cupboard is a good idea. I had planned to make a Colette Crepe dress out of curtain fabric next, but the cool, wet and blustery weather has got me in mind to make another Simplicity 2451 skirt for winter instead, using some of the fabric I brought back from my Mother in law's stash.

Enough sewing though. I read Adrienne Martini's book Sweater Quest which was quite good holiday reading and good for showing up the ways in which internet collaboration has enriched the lives and practise of knitters across the world (something which is also applicable to other crafts including sewing). Now I'm onto Geraldine Brookes' People of the Book which is fabulous so far.

The pursuit of fabulous books, a transformed roof and clothes that fit

2012-01-09T21:57:00.009+13:00

Ah the joys of second hand books. Last night I finished Andrea Levy's Fruit of the Lemon. I liked it. The protagonist initially denies any interest in Jamaica, living as a modern young woman in London, but then has something of a breakdown and her parents send her to Jamaica for a holiday. Good and classic (if by now standard) Levy stuff. Small Island is still her best novel. Next stop, the library. It is holiday time after all. I chose Still Here by Linda Grant (whose entire collection I may also work my way through after loving The Clothes on their Backs. I may have to request that the Wetville library purchase her The Thoughtful Dresser.

Another Geraldine Brooks, this time People of the Book. Then I found one I'd read about and looked for last year, Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini. I'm currently uninterested in knitting, but maybe this will fire me up.

Here are the photos which I couldn't persuade blogger to uplaod for me last night. Tonight it cooperated so long as I loaded each one individually. My new skirt above and top below. I've been scooting round fatshionista type blogs and net articles lately and challenging some of my own assumptions about normal shape. My first reaction to both garments off me is they look rather odd. 'No, Sandra, they look the shape which fits you.... Which is a perfectly functional shape which only appears odd because it is invisible in mainstream fashion media' So I put the photos up there as my teeny tiny contribution to making visible a wider range of pictures of clothing. Maybe sometime there will even be one of me wearing the clothes. We've just downloaded Fionn's pictures from the camera my parents gave him for Christmas and he has a natural and very good eye for taking photos.

Brighid's photo of the chooks. In case I haven't posted enough pics of our egg force over the years.Child labour. Fionn has been an awesome assistant on the roof project. Today we hired a waterblaster and booked the scaffolding for another week.

Bestest of all fun: the kids and I went to see the movie The Muppets today. If you were born in the 1970s, go see. The kids liked it as well, but don't be deterred if you don't have kids to take with you.

Although my eye wanders from the garden a bit these days, some time and love still goes in, and we were repaid tonight with our first meal of green beans from the garden. Last night I harvested some garlic but it could do with another fortnight to get to a better size. I think it went in lateish as well.

painting & sewing

2012-01-08T21:29:00.003+13:00

Today I made an entire knit top. In one day. I only had one major unpicking job. I also finished my new skirt. Which makes nothing less than an ensemble of a matching top and skirt. It even appears they will match other separates in my wardrobe. How sensible. Though I am pleased with my actual sewing progress and the individual garments, I'm left rather deflated by this sensible-ness (yes I know there is a proper word called 'sensibility' but it doesn't fit the context). I've pulled out the curtain fabric, the one with the huge flowers on it which are like the ones in my grandparents' bedroom 30 years ago only perhaps a larger print, and I'm gearing up to make another Colette crepe dress with it. I doubt 'sensible but modern librarian style' is going to apply to that when it is finished. Strange and old fashioned maybe, but not 'sensible'.

The roof painting continues. Actually, the wind was too vigorous to safely do anything on the roof this afternoon, but this morning Favourite Handyman primed the north facing side of the house. We may have someone coming to help this week - paying for painting assistance is starting to look like a wonderful idea when the scaffolding costs for each day of hire and the weather forecast knocks some of this week out for painting already.

I attempted to load some photos of the top, skirt and the roof work, but blogger isn't interested in pithy requests like loading photographs tonight.

scaffolding

2012-01-06T20:31:00.003+13:00

In which the sun mostly shines, so often I am even watering the garden, and I haven't had to make a school lunch for weeks. It's definitely a happy life.
Leeks taste quite good, but left alone, they are beautiful gone to seed. Behind the seed head, that is not fancy solar panels on the house roof. Rather, it is where the finish on the coloursteel roof has worn off. Which is why tonight Favourite Handyman and Fionn assembled this:
In honour of all this roof painting and window painting and the general observation that FH is working very hard, I made myself clean and tidy quite a bit of the house today. I also played nurse to Brighid who has a minor lurgy and planted more basil and made some pesto. This year's basil harvest is my best yet, possibly making up for the dismal state of the tomatoes. I know the diy gurus all seem to freeze basil for the rest of the year, but I find it too yummy to have any left to save.

Yesterday I started making a skirt:
I thought it would be magnificent but currently I'm less convinced by the reality of how the pattern is turning out. It may be that I just need to get my head around my actual size rather than assuming a pretty skirt can render my tummy invisible.

I do love my cosmos flowers a lot. The green leaves to the front right are bean plants. They taste good raw but I don't have enough ripe for a family meal yet. In the right background are gladioli almost ready to flower.

At the same time as loving all this time with all of us at home together, I am starting to get organised for a year ahead in which I double my paid working hours compared to last year. I think that on balance it is a good decision, but I'm a little nervous about the family-work balance. It is the first year in the last nine since I became a parent that I'll be working five days per week, meaning I won't have a day to keep an exhausted or asthmatic child home to rest or help Mary K for the day and it will be harder for me to go on the children's school trips. Still, I remind myself that it is all about one foot in front of the other, knowing that I have a supportive workplace and also my wonderful child carers Robyn and Sharon who the children love.

After the success of the Christmas shortbread, I think I will make a big batch of that for the freezer for school lunches. After four years of frozen muffins and banana cake, it's time for change. Last year when I was recovering from surgery, my lovely friend Nina popped round with a container of bolognaise sauce from her freezer, a bag of pasta and a pack of parmesan cheese. She was really busy herself, but her awesome pre-cooking organisation (and generosity) meant she could still gift us something nutritious that required little cooking. With lots of veges and tomatoes, I reckon I could make up six meals of bolognaise sauce from two kilos of mince.

Also on the freezer project, maybe polenta, especially now Fionn likes it as well. Really garlicky polenta this time. As always, I'll fill the rest of our little freezer with Blackball sausages. I don't care what the food purists have to say about sausages, they keep faces smiling and bellies satiated here and I can't imagine giving them up unless we give up meat altogether.

a little summer research

2012-01-04T22:23:00.002+13:00

Polenta is good (thanks Rachael and Christopher). I have added making it more frequently to my loose aggregation of 2012 goals. I made a fry up with it this morning with some slabs of ham, a large tomato, chopped spinach and celery and a slab of polenta. It was good. I've no idea what the family rating is as I only made it for me.

I am the official secretary for the painting the roof project. I proffer my opinions on paint colour charts, compare prices of painting poles and roof rollers and line up the booking for the scaffolding. I have also taken on another home maintenance research project - learning about home ventilation systems. It's a topic mired in slick sales pitches and alleged dodginess on the part of other companies. I may post about that more when I have read more widely.

I also spent a chunk of today sorting out my haberdashery. It turns out I had quite a bit before - much of it tangled and confused - and now I have a lot more as I have sorted the bounty from Favourite Handyman's mum and nana. I bought some containers supposedly for microwaving dinners to store my now rather extensive collection of thread and some plastic bags to collate and store bias binding, ribbon, elastic etc. I declined to sort out the wool side of the chaos space and celebrated sewing space progress by mending FH's trousers. Not something I imagined myself doing once upon a time, but as I'm not going near the actual painting of the windows and roof, I've decided to be unafraid of a little mending as a household contribution.

No gardening, apart from buying more celery seedlings. I did fit in some wine drinking though.

Reunited with my cosmos

2012-01-01T21:44:00.007+13:00

Back. Auckland was fabulous. Highlights include a trip to Howick Historical Village to see, amongst other exhibits, the cottage which Fionn and Brighid's great great great grandparents lived in when they came out to New Zealand in the 1840s as a fencible family. Also three nights in Ponsonby where Brighid and I went for a walk one night and ended up sitting on a verandah watching a talented Samoan band perform on the front lawn. Another night of course was a walk down Franklin Road the see the Christmas lights. We interred my Mother in Law's ashes and that was a beautiful ceremony and has helped me appreciate another side to cremation. I found it way too brutal when she was simply driven away from the church, but now I feel quite a lot of peace about her. We spent Fionn's ninth birthday at the Auckland museum with some short cousins. Favourite Handyman and I spent some time in his father's garden weeding, chopping and mulching.

It is wonderful to be back home. I spent part of today fixing up my languid drunken tomatoes which should have been tied up before we left. The garden is crying out for help and I'm balancing it with reading, my other holiday love.

I bought Margaret Forster's Hidden Lives: A Family Memoir (published 1995) in a little secondhand bookshop in St Kevin's Arcade on K Road. We were in secondhand bookshop heaven a few times on holiday. Last night I started to read it about 10pm and, with a few hours of sleep in between, did not get up until I had finished it this morning. Forster tells the story of her grandmother, her mother and her life up until her mother's death. She explores the changing opportunities for working class women in England over that period (c. 1873-1981) in terms of combining marriage and family life with intellectual fulfillment and reflects on the potent mix of love, frustration and envy which characterised her relationship with her own mother. I found it absorbing and interesting. Hers is a world in which multiculturalism does not feature, possibly the defining preoccupation of my favourite authors who are of my own generation. There was however much in her writing that I felt walked familiar territory to my own journey and that which didn't was the most interesting. I'm now on the lookout for more of her books, especially her second memoir, Precious Lives.

I took some early Christmas money, a discount voucher and some patterns to Global Fabrics. I came back with three lots of fabric and then my father in law asked me to go through several boxes of sewing related items. I now have some doilies to repurpose, about ten metres of fabric, some beautiful honiton lace and plenty of ribbons and thread to flounce up many a little girl's dress. I am indeed a lucky woman. I also brought back some 100% cotton yarn, making it slightly possible that one day I will make some knitted facecloths and dish cloths.

I have one New Year's resolution. All those jars of legumes and polenta which I feel virtuous when I buy them and almost never cook with? I'm going to cook them up and feed them to our chooks. When I'm done with that, I'm going to order lots of the only dried legume I use regularly - chickpeas - from Ko Minaya Wholefoods, a real live organics shop on the West Coast, and cook it up and then make lots of hummous and freeze it. I may even make zillions of ham sandwiches (huge hams on the bone in the post Christmas specials bin) and freeze them in preparation for when our next and busier life begins in February. That will be quite enough resolutions thank you. I certainly won't be giving up wine or turning into a housecleaning wizard.
Takapuna Beach, looking out at Rangitoto, after a morning at the pantomine.

With Santa up high at Sky City.

Christmas lights on Franklin Road.

My windswept garden on arriving home. Cosmos in the front and leeks gone to seed in the back.

A crochet side board cloth before I started the soak and transform process. Not all of the coffee stains have come out, but a lot has. There are some holes and tears in this cloth, making it perfect for experimenting with cutting it up and dyeing it. This comes from my children's great grandmother and possibly her mother before that.

Time for the hillbillies to head north

2011-12-13T21:20:00.003+13:00

I've made acres of shortbread. I've spent lots of afternoons with my elderly cousin, and mornings and evenings emailing her children. I've wrapped the little niece presents. I've stocked up on chook food and arranged the chook feeding roster. I've washed and folded a lot of clothes and written five Christmas cards. Today we celebrated Brighid's final kindy days with a play dough cake and some special kindy rituals. We gave the kindy the three dress up skirts and they loved them. So special they are going in the box with the musical instruments (!). I got another special kindy certificate for my contribution. Apparently they are only rarely handed out. I got one when Fionn left as well. Between the two experiences, I've managed to never ever wield a broom at tidy up time, so really I'm a cheat. A successful one. This time they wanted to thank me for my efforts with the dress-ups for Christchurch kindies after the February earthquake. With Fionn I had done a lot of work with the kindy library.

Despite extensive organisation on my part, we have some magic to perform to be able to leave at 3pm tomorrow. I'd really like an entire day in the garden first.

But now. Now is the time for some wine and cheese and a little chilling out before the next stage in the journey.

What is my favourite thing right now? It is having Favourite Handyman off work as well as me. This morning we talked about what we wanted to do in Auckland. Out of the mish mash of seeing friends, helping my father in law and doing things with the kids, we talked about how we could extend the trip beyond Auckland, squeeze in a trip in the tent. The tents are being packed. It's great to see everyone else, but there is nothing quite so special as a bit of time away just the four of us. The kids clamoured for a certain beach, a certain playground, a certain camping ground, last time we were up north, so that is where we are looking. Before Christmas of course. Boxing Day camping madness is not our thing.

What will I remember about this year?
1. That I cut back my hours at work to spend more time with my Brighid in her last year before school. Totally worth it. Our Thursday "Mummy Days" have been gold.

2. That I got confident enough to sew adult gifts.

3. That through tragedy, I started to feel like my in laws are my family as well as my birth family.

4. I discovered Geraldine Brookes and Andrea Levy. I got back into attending book group.

5. I finally cooked a globe artichoke. More to learn on that.

6. Some paid work things. I don't blog about paid work. But I get to learn a lot about life at paid work.

7. Brighid almost severed an artery and survived. People at Christchurch hospital, back at work just days after losing homes and sleep and grieving and still worrying, are amazing.

8. 29 people dead and trapped in the Paparoa Ranges is 29 people too many.

9. That one day it will be our turn to look after our parents. That my siblings are sane and intelligent and wonderful and I love them and we won't be alone.

10. That I married well. We chose perfectly for each other.

11. That even though I am a useless sideline supporter at rugby league, my boy still loves it and I can more or less remember the right times to shout.

Have a wonderful festive season.

sangria summer

2011-12-11T19:13:00.002+13:00

I've had a brilliant weekend. Barbecues and sleep ins and a 40th birthday party and gardening and sewing. I weeded various spots, dug in bokashi, divided and replanted rhubarb, and planted aquilegia, bergamot, a daisy and another plant which was irresistible at a stall yesterday but I have no recall of its name now. I planted a chilli and there is more to plant out yet.

I finished bag number one for last night's birthday party and T seemed to really like it. I really liked her sangria. I'm possibly inspired to have a 40th birthday party maybe. But I am definitely inspired to make and drink more sangria this summer.

I made a bag for me today, which should put an end to carrying my keys and wallet and not having enough hands for everything. I've considered making a new dress (the floral curtain Colette crepe of course) but as we leave in less than 72 hours, I'm thinking that making about 100 more pieces of Christmas shortbread, packing holiday things and reacquainting myself with the broom and vacuum cleaner might be wiser.

blur

2011-12-08T21:23:00.004+13:00

It's a blur currently. I spend my days and nights baking biscuits and sewing presents and looking after small children and old ladies and occasionally I go to work but thankfully not often. Periodically I look up and find no food and no magicians to cook meals and today I ended up buying lunch in town and later on both McDonalds and KFC for various meals which could collectively count as an evening meal. So it does sound rather good that this morning I handed in some beautiful home made shortbread and a card with a photo of my children on the front of it to the staff at Fionn's school to thank them for the entirety of this year plus last night's fabulous school concert. But don't be fooled. Chaos lurks round the side of all this season of craziness activity.
Brighid has only one week left of kindy. I've been turning remaindered curtain samples into dressups for kindy. Above is the gold version modelled as a cape. Below, the same item as a skirt. As you may notice in the background, my children have no regard for the resale value of our home. That was proper wall paper when we bought the house. Bad parenting. Yes I know. See that pile of sewing stuff on top of the red and white bucket? Well that would probably fall off in a big earthquake, leaving access to the bucket, which is our emergency water supply.

Above and below the other two items as wrap skirts.

Above is the bag which I am nearly finished making for a 40th birthday present. Bad photo - plain dark denim doesn't photograph that well. I had to resew everything I did at 3.30pm this afternoon as good decisions are not made while negotiating post school meltdown peace negotiations. Which is why I bribed with McDonalds if they would share and play nicely, which gave me the chance to unpick and properly clip the corners and then re-sew it. The handle is tricky and the sewing machine refuses to cooperate so some firm hand sewing is on the agenda. It needs to be finished and wrapped in exactly 44 hours.

Today I bought some hair dye. It's part of the anti-Hillbillies project before we go to Poshville, aka Auckland.

Christmas carnival

2011-12-03T22:31:00.004+13:00

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Prize for float having the most fun: the Pasifika float.

Prize for most dour: the Salvation Army float.

Prize for event I beamed at most: the kapa haka group which Fionn performed in.

Prize for children who lost their balloons more than thirty times: Fionn and Brighid.

Prize for the group which made me think of my uncle the most: the Pipe Band. Uncle Ron stopped short of smoking a cigarette at the exact same time he blew his bagpipes, but I was always amazed as a child watching him talk with a cigarette in the side of his mouth, killing a few more lung cells in the breaks at the Pipe Band competitions.

Prize for most interesting side display: the vintage cars. Though the steam powered traction engine from Shantytown and the Wiggles car vied for most popular vehicle in the actual parade.

Perfect Thursday

2011-12-01T20:42:00.003+13:00

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Today was perfect. As my tired children eventually stumbled out of their beds, I gave Fionn the option of going to school late (once I'd bought, mixed and applied the new eczema strategy ingredients after our health consultation with Laksmi last night) or of having the day off. I've got enough idea of what goes on in schools in December to discount the notion that he was missing utterly crucial learning. In terms of applying creams and lotions and feeding quality food, a day off was the perfect health remedy.

So I had a mummy day with both of my children (and with Brighid's special friend R from lunchtime onwards) and it was fantastic. They played a zillion different games, re-enacted scenes from Dora, dressed up in everything from the dressup box and generally had a blast. I fed them, laughed at and with them and finally (finally finally, rather late) sowed my potatoes. We dropped off some eggs to a friend who had gifted me lots of clothes for Brighid in the weekend and discussed strategies for looking after things (our chooks, her daughter) in the holidays. This is the interconnectedness which I love about our life here in Wetville. We popped in to see Mary, who was thrilled to see us, had a cupboard of biscuits (Brighid proudly explained to her friend that Mary never runs out which is true and a stark contrast to her mother's biscuit supplies) and was confused about bigger stuff. Age is cruel, a blessing for getting to enjoy life that long, but still barbed.

A tribute to Julie Fairey

2011-11-30T22:00:00.002+13:00

Once upon a time I was a stroppy child. I told my Dad with confidence that one day I would be prime minister. The daughter of parents with a strong work ethic and a strong marriage, I spent some of my teenage years planning to get out of small town life and to live radically differently to my parents. I assumed I would earn lots of money and sleep on Sheridan sheets. I certainly wouldn't be doing such embarassing things as sewing two old sheets together to make one serviceable one and I assumed that if I had children, they would fit into my career. Which would of course be very successful.

Much later Mum said (maybe not to me, maybe even filtered through my sister) that she thought I looked down on her when I was a teenager because she didn't have a career. Interesting comment. I didn't look down on Mum. Despite her only being five foot nothing, you just don't look down on my mother. She is the strongest of strong people and I have not seen grown men quake in their boots because they have hidden rather than let me (or Mum) see them quake. I believe on last count she is sorting out the bishop, who needed some guidance as to the state and needs of the local church roof. My most vivid memories as a child are of her sorting out the postmaster in the days that postage and telephones were one state owned service. The local telephone service was hopeless, with people waiting 18 months just to get a telephone number. Given we were out in the countryside with no public phones, this was problematic. As a role model for a feminist, she was in many ways absolutely fantastic, even though she would prefer to pour scorn on the term and had no intention of challenging institutions of marriage and norms of wifeliness and motherhood. The telephone system got fixed. For everyone in our area.

Zooming forward to now, it turns out I went to university, got a couple of degrees, lived and worked on the other side of the world, and then chose to come to a small town on the unfashionable side of the less populated island and work in an area which everyone needs and everyone wants to criticise. Every time I read the analysis of women in politics, I feel conflicting senses of pride in the choices I have made (I had alternatives and I would make the same choices again) and a sense that I have let the ship down by my choices. There is a lot of pressure on women in politics to carry a flag and speak for women and from a point of view of female experience and yet I leave it to others.

Which is why I would like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, Julie Fairey, for all that she does and all that she helps to make happen. Apart from reading her blog posts on The Hand Mirror, I don't know Julie at all. But this morning, after I had skipped exercise class to get Brighid to her kindy trip to Shantytown and to get Fionn sorted with creams and foods for his eczema instead of risking infection from the chlorine of the school swimming trip (not that chlorine creates infections, but it strips precious moisture from the skin and makes it vulnerable to infection and Fionn has hardly any left in places), and before I went to paid work, I made a few phone calls, got some washing on and sat down to eat breakfast and read The Hand Mirror. I loved reading about the buzz Julie gets from working with her constituents on her local board (I don't think we have local boards in Wetville; I think it is to do with the structure of the Auckland Supercity) and I totally utterly truly empathised with her dishwasher story. I love it that in one corner of New Zealand (and I know there are others besides Julie) there is a woman out there in local politics with a perspective which is shaped by having young children and making decisions about the collective good and contribution of her entire household to our society.

Thank you Julie.

Broad bean pesto

2011-11-27T21:10:00.007+13:00

Three days ago I had minor surgery to remove two cysts from my back and shoulder. I'm guarding against infection with loads of vitamin C. Apart from the pain, I've loved and appreciated having Favourite Handyman cook the meals and look after me. I've also been spoilt by friends helping with childcare and dropping by with pumpkin pie, biscuits and a meal. It doesn't get much luckier.

I bought a convalescing treat in the form of the NZ Gardener's Homegrown Flowers book. It's a very romantic take on flowers - no strelitzias with cactus here. It's a perfect read for the circumstances, and I've been arranging and rearranging new flower ideas for my garden in my head as I pore over each and every page. I am loving the cosmos which I bought as seedlings and which is flowering now, so I'm most pleased to learn that it is easy to grow from seed. Unsurprisingly, I've had the Kings Seed Catalogue out as well.

Favourite Handyman mowed the lawn yesterday, transforming our front and back sections from a jungle into something much tamer. I cut back all the broad beans which were laying across the lawn (forgot to stake them) and then picked all the beans. I nearly always plant broad beans for the pleasure of watching something grow in winter, and then each spring we prefer to eat other foods. Today though, I made broad bean pesto, an Annabel Langbein recipe. Podding the beans, boiling them briefly and then shelling them from their skins was laborious, but the final product was very yummy. Based on this, and the nitrogen enhancing properties for the soil of growing legumes, I may plant the entire 2m x 5m old chook run garden in broad beans at the end of Autumn. Well almost. I'm pretty sold on having one end devoted to flowers now.

After the big lawn cut, I snipped the long-long-long grass on the edge of my peas-and-roses garden. Now I can see what is inside the grass 'fence' and it isn't entirely weeds. The alyssum seeds which I scattered are now little plants. I could get away with transplanting a third to a half of them elsewhere in the garden. There are sugar snap peas plus more flowers, and new shoots on the gooseberry bush. The jasmine is yellowing though, so my prescription is some dolomite lime. The Dublin rose and an unnamed blousy pink rose are lovely despite aphids on the stems and rust on the leaves. But the yellow rose will have to go. The clusters of tiny flowers lack the impact of the other roses and, frankly, annoy me. I look out at this garden from the kitchen window, so the blooms need to be of a size for distance-viewing pleasure. I am eyeing up Bantry Bay as a possibility, though perhaps a bush is what is needed rather than a climber, and I'll be chatting to our neighbours who are superb rose growers for some suggestions.

Today it rained all day. Fionn's eczema has returned with a vengeance. I'm using the strategies I learnt last time plus trying some new things I've learnt in my minor nutrition obsession of the past few years.

I finished reading The Help and I loved it. I also read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini which was fantastic. In a week when New Zealand politics is in such a stupid pickle, it was great to read writing dealing with grittier and much bigger topics. Afghanistan is in the news so often in grey and impersonal tones and A Thousand Splendid Suns made lives real in a personal and memorable way.

I've done a little more for the C word. I make it both easier and harder for myself by gifting to hardly anyone and simultaneously making the gifts I do give. Nursing wounds isn't conducive to sewing so that is currently stalled. The presents which mean the most to me each year are those I make for our two childminders. Is there more important money ever spent than that which goes on childcare? Robyn and Sharon are very special people in my life and I use Christmas as an opportunity to thank them. Today Fionn and I went shopping and chose a bowl for each of them. Most usefully, they both really like my hummous, so I will fill the bowls with hummous and make a hamper around each bowl. I doubt very much that my idea of a handmade bag to house each hamper will eventuate.

It's all about Saturday

2011-11-23T21:20:00.002+13:00

Mary K has been central to me feeling part of Wetville. When we moved here almost six years ago, people asked me suspiciously why we'd moved here. They often followed up with "Do you have family here?" At first I said no not really, just some distant relatives. But after an uneasy sense that moving here without family ties could put me in the league of rehoused paedophiles, I started to say, "Yes, I've got cousins here."

I remember the day Mum drove Fionn and I over to Greymouth. Mum filled me in on Mary and Lou, as I could only dimly remember them from large family gatherings, most of them a long time ago. A couple of weeks later, I rang in advance and then called round with Fionn for afternoon tea. It was the beginning of a special relationship. Mary and Lou have lived their entire lives on the coast. The only substantial time Lou was away was during World War Two, and he spend most of that in a Prisone of War camp. The only time Mary has been away is when she has travelled to spend time with extended family. Four years ago Lou died. It took me a long time to adjust to Coast life without Lou's stories to add to whatever news I brought to the kitchen table. He and Fionn used to play with tractors as well as eat Mary's superb Anzac biscuits and peanut brownies. Brighid was only nine months old when Lou died, and it took me a long time to pass on her green trousers he thought suited her last time we visited. I still have the small piece of greenstone he gave me one day, waiting until I turn it into something for Brighid, who was with me when Lou gifted me the pounamu.

Mary was a tower of strength to Lou, and their marriage was one that many have admired. Such love and constant mutual support. I love the story he told me once of being drunk when he met Mary (it's not quite the story she tells!). He then said "I guess it turned out alright." I guess!! Their love was palpable and their commitment tested and found true over many years of ill health and nightmares from the war and of a baby who spent just five days with them before a burial while Mary was still in hospital.

Now it is Mary's turn to get increasingly fragile. We've had the occupational therapist in on several occasions lately and a plan for increased support is in place. I'm trying to visit her as often as possible, even when the visits are short and bit rushed. Her physical health is pretty good, but her memory and confidence with multiple tasks or new things is eroding, almost in front of me.

I don't care about any politician and their tax base stories. While I could be working full time, to be with my kids and also spending time supporting Mary is far more important to me and for my family. I do understand my privilege. If Favourite Handyman was earning $13 per hour on insecure contract work, then I'd be back at work 40+ hours and fitting family work in round the edges.

If we had massive job insecurity and low income and we were living in Auckland or Wellington with lots of dependent family, then we might be burying a child who would have lived in Sweden or the Czech republic, as per the documentary on poverty in New Zealand last night. Given my family's genetic vulnerability to respiratory and skin problems, I am absolutely not being flippant. The money to ensure good food and warm spacious housing is what keeps my kids out of hospital and FH working instead of in bed with buggered lungs and on a benefit. We have to vote for a better future for all of our children this Saturday.

There is a lot of talk about a high wage economy from Labour. I might come back to the issue of what should constitute high wages another time. But toilets still have to be cleaned and tyres changed and supermarkets staffed and we must give dignity to this work in how we pay for it and in the services which we offer to all children to keep them well and full bellied. I'm still thinking about my vote this weekend. I'm unhappy with so many things about the political landscape but not voting is just not an option.

Sewing: slow progress but progress nevertheless. I've made one dress and one bag for one niece. I've cut out and started to sew up a dress for the second niece. I am contemplating a) some adult sized bags for presents and b) making a Colette Crepe out of my church fair curtain fabric after all. Sandra-the-flowery-curtain is a concept I am beginning to embrace.

Home maintenance: that old chestnut. Turns out that repainting the roof will be $600-1000 depending on how damaged the roof is on closer inspection. That's with FH doing the labour. Which tells me a whole lot about how lack of funds to fix a roof is the beginning of a descent for some families into unhealthy housing, as the roof begins to leak and the house gets damp. We'll find a way.

Kitchen: Once upon a time, long ago, there was a woman called Sandra who liked to cook. However, she got caught up in other things, and eventually sausages ruled each day, punctuated by takeaways and the occasional extremely simple foray into fish or chicken.

Books: I'm reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I love it. There was no blog post last night because I wanted to read instead and that's where I'm headed very soon.

Garden: As we are on a hill, we haven't been flooded like much of Wetville this week. Nevertheless, it hasn't quite been gardening weather.

Community: Brighid has had two school visits. She loves it. I love her teacher. She loves her teacher. What's not to like right now?

Community 2: I saw my Salvation Army friend tonight (when I claimed to be going to supermarket to buy broccoli which was a useful excuse for buying more wine) and I've found out more about what they need for the Christmas packages. No tins of fruit!! No tins of tomatoes. But everything else very very useful. I often give the kids a chance to choose three nice things each at the supermarket to give to the collection and then I add the rest.

Goodnight Irene

2011-11-20T20:43:00.005+13:00

Last night I went to a play called Goodnight Irene, put on by Kiwi Possum Productions and inspired by the deaths at Pike River 12 months ago. Attendance was by invitation only, and I think that was wise as the media circled Greymouth this weekend looking for a story, us as objects to feed their ratings. I really enjoyed the play and I am so proud that Greymouth has the talent to put on community theatre like this.

There is naught so interesting as compost for a keen gardener. Yesterday we bought a new compost bin. For the first few years I made a pile under the big tree and hoped for the best. It worked okay, but then it got invaded by perennial weeds and I decided there had to be a better way. About this time last year I bought a standard issue type compost bin for our grass clippings and the pea straw/chook poo which I take out of the coop (as mysteriously the chooks no longer want to roost at night, so they poo in the coop instead). It is making compost alright, but it is impossible to turn and aerate it and also we are out of space and need one if not two more. This time we upgraded to a magnificent compost bin which is easily turned and aerated. I'm setting up a new label so I can use my blog as a diary for how long it takes to make compost under our various systems.
I carefully weeded a densely occupied wee section of the herb garden which had given itself over to weeds, buried bokashi deep below it and then sowed bergamot, white sage and evening primrose seeds on top.

The neighbours are chives, feverfew and lovage. I also planted one chilli plant. Only time will tell if it is too cold yet. Lawnmowing didn't get to the top of the list, but lawnmowing can be overrated when what you want is to make flower chains with daisies and buttercups.

I'm enjoying the roses.

This one is Dublin Bay.
I forget the name of the one above, but I always remember that I grew it from a cutting from our neighbour who is a superb rose grower.

Pike

2011-11-19T23:16:00.001+13:00

We all have the right to go to work in the morning and return home at the end of our shift. Remembering the 29 men who never left their shift at Pike River. We all have to fight to make sure our fellow New Zealanders are safe at their work places. I won't be forgetting next Saturday either.

Coffee table talk

2011-11-18T20:31:00.002+13:00

Today I went to Westport. I went to Westport for work at 7.45 and didn't get back until after 6pm, home to dinner just cooked and served by Favourite Handyman and happy children. It was a nice change from the usual set up.

Out lunching in the slick metropolis of Westport, I saw Damien O'Connor meeting and greeting. Funny that, I saw him meeting and greeting at the Camerons Community Market only a week ago. Is there an election on or something? Damien didn't come talk to our table, but Scott Hamilton has a very interesting story on his blog today about when Labour candidate Carmel Sepuloni came to talk at his coffee table. Although to be accurate, she did nothing to deliberately talk to him, only his good wife. It is a disheartening story, though I wish I could feel more surprised.

Things I could do next: read an actual book. Cut out the next C-word dress. Fold more washing. Do dishes. Or read about other people's sewing online in a dreamy and unproductive manner. Just because there is no wine in the house doesn't mean I have to be diligent. Tomorrow night I am going to a play inspired by Pike.

diy in perspective

2011-11-17T22:29:00.003+13:00

The day we moved in, approximately five years and 20 days ago, friends suggested things we could do to the house. Suggestions like knocking out walls and moving fireplaces and generally rearranging everything. I, like the timid wee wuss I can be at times, said I just wanted to do something about the enormous (to us) mortgage first up.

I've told the story of finding our furniture for the lounge at the local church fair too many times already. But only a couple of years later, one of the church ladies, in a valiant effort to engage me in small talk, asked if I'd recovered the furniture or replaced it yet.

No.

A kind person at work asked me only four years after we bought the house what we'd done to it so far. What we've done is create a lot of garden and change almost nothing in the house. The kids ripped a lot of wallpaper off without permission, giving credence to the idea that bleeding heart liberals raise wild children without respect for authority. I ripped some off as well, giving myself permission. But I ripped it off systematically, an entire room at a time, and I didn't draw on it with marker pen, or any kind of pen. Or crayon.

Favourite Handyman painted the lounge last summer. It's awesome. To celebrate, I've been trying to fold washing every day. There is a link. Now you can sit on our couch and look at the yellow walls (Resene Wild Thing to be precise) without sitting on washing that was clean and soon won't be.

We have done quite a lot of insulating. We have spent untold money on washing machine repairs until we spent even more on a decent washing machine. This year we finished the insulation using the grant which National agreed to as part of their deal with the Greens. The Greens get blue-r every day, but gift horses and mouths...

Now I'm on a new project. I'm laying the foundations for cross party (husband and wife) agreement on the need to pay someone to mow our lawns next year. Either that or I change the terms of my contract (I write the contract in my head and no one else sees it but for the past eleven years which may coincide with the duration of my married life, I have given the lawnmower a very wide berth on the grounds that I do too much inside stuff for lawns to go near my list.) and mow them myself. I've gotten a little fussy lately and I fancy lawns which don't go to Brighid's knees more than once every five - seven weeks.

I have this idea that if we farm out the lawns, FH and I could do more fun things around the place on a Sunday afternoon when we don't have to be at work. Like rebuilding the sandpit, painting the treehut, clearing the gutters, turning the big shed into a study, building a plastic house, shifting the side fence, painting the kitchen...

I got a builder in today to check out the dodgy damp smell in the corner of our bedroom and he has identified it as a small problem (thank you all gods of buildings) and will come and fix it soon. I'm farming it out. Last week I got a plumber in to check out the chippy fire in the kitchen. He agreed with the last person I got in five years ago. Hopelessly expensive and problematic. So no restoration of the old wetback for heating the water. It will just have to wait until we can afford solar heating.

When we started this home owning lark, I was in the midst of a serious diy phase. While this phase hasn't entirely died, it is morphing. I'm making more clothes but contracting out other diy.

feeding the soul

2011-11-16T20:17:00.003+13:00

Brighid's photography is improving don't you think? Head, shoulders, rose, all in the centre-ish of the picture.
Brighid with the roses I grew from cuttings, the wandering Jew and the jerusalem artichokes.

Sometimes it is an idyllic retreat from organised life, a romantic view through dappled light.

Other times, the lawn needs mowing and everything needs weeding. Jersualem artichokes almost everywhere. I remember when everything was empty and filling any dream involved spending. Now, everything needs weeding but flowers feed my soul and vegetables feed my stomach.

Blog post of the day: Scott Hamilton at Reading The Maps on the significance of the tea party in Epsom.

Sewing for the C word.

2011-11-15T22:44:00.005+13:00

I have almost finished one dress for the C word. Because it is a sundress with a halter neck, I can't get a decent photo until I have an awake child to model it. I need to press it, neaten the side seams (with zig zag; I cannot manage/face neatening by folding under and stitching with this fabric) and then hem it. The facing is an African print from Brixton, London, which I originally bought for babywearing. The lovely Toddy (who is now blogging at Credit Crunch Kitchen) taught me how to wrap Fionn in it in the traditional African style. I loved learning, and in my time I loved a bit of babywearing, but I didn't get confident enough to wear him in this fabric beyond the initial experimentation. The denim fabric is a gift from the also lovely Susan (who I wish would post more of her superb photos here). I think that maybe possibly if the time Gods shine on me (rare), I will make a bag to go with the dress and the bag will be print on the outer and denim lining. Even so, I'm wondering about breaking up the front with some print on the hemline. I looked up making bias binding but I'm not convinced I have the patience right now to make my own bias binding (the niece does have a sister, and one bias bound dress plus one snotty hanky for the other sibling does not make for happiness). I'm more seriously considering making a ruffle with the print fabric. Faffy, but not so far out of my headspace quotient as home made bias binding.

It has also occurred to me that the kindy dressup or bag which I have sort of committed to in my head as a leaving present from Brighid to kindy needs to be made within the next 27 days. She goes on her school visits next week no less.

Also today I planted out the jasmine and the clematis and transplanted my tomatoes and more basil (I am ridiculously behind with my tomatoes again). I told Favourite Handyman about the quash for the slugs and snails. After all, beans taste better to us than slugs and snails and my project is all about beans for us.

Best blog reading for today: Luxuries, Necessities and the Right to Make Mistakes, by Anthea at The Hand Mirror. Beautiful writing for an important message.

The project to make a wider range of meals? What was I thinking on that day? That term time would be like holiday time? Huh. We did have sushi tonight though, which is pretty fast to make if you mix up the veges and salmon and spread it rather indiscriminately over the rice mixture.

I think I'm getting fatter. It must be the lack of wine over the past few days. Body protest.

Seed saving

2011-11-14T19:56:00.003+13:00

The kale seeds. I recalled instructions on seed saving as involving picking the pods when they were nearly ready to burst and putting them somewhere warm in a paper bag. So that is what I did. I didn't have the inclination to check on whether my reading memory was accurate. Today is clearly a super green day, because the paper bag started out at the fabric shop. Once it had finished carrying my latest lot of interfacing, then it became my shopping list and now it is my seed bag. Although we have a foil wrap around our hot water cylinder, it is still warmer than other cupboards. Those are my socks for the record, though they always make me think of my Dad, a lifelong Crusaders fan.

Brighid is learning to take photos. This is better than the one of my long black skirt beside the water stained cupboard door and the one of the wall where there used to be wallpaper before she ripped it off.
Today I also planted beans. I dug out the old kale plants and then dug compost and dolomite lime to the soil before planting bean experimetn #2 for this season. I opted not to plant them on the graveyard of the last beans because the latest NZ Organics magazine says keep beans separate from shallots, garlic and onions and the bean urupa is surrounded by shallots and garlic. Then on the new site (site of growth, not death by slugs, thank you quash bait), I remembered that they don't like galdioli either. Tough. I kept most of them down the other end to the potentially offensive flowers.

We still have a broody chook. She's not too hard to move on in order to collect the eggs, though she sure makes some indignant noises in response.

I still have a lurgy. Panadol (which I usually avoid) is my friend today. There are worse things.

The bestest thing of all was at the supermarket, where I saw a friend with a baby. Not a usual friend-with-a-baby but a friend who does not have a baby (only big kids) but who has indicated to CYFS she would take a baby if needed. So this is beautiful baby was smiling at my friend and having fun in the supermarket and my friend may get the opportunity long term (certainly short term) to give this wee girl a wonderful upbringing. Bestest bestest. My heart is still singing from seeing them.

garden & sewing

2011-11-13T19:25:00.003+13:00

Purple sprouting broccoli gone to seed.
Globe artichoke and borage
Calendulas and red poppies

Peas and roses after the rain.The birthday gift for our wee friend H who turns two this month. I used Tiny Happy's tutorial. I scaled it down to about two thirds (leaving the bag height a bit bigger than two thirds). I used some remaindered curtain samples. The only bit which was difficult was joining the handles at the top and I think that would be easier with different fabric. This kind was both sticky and slippery to sew - yes both of those at the same time.

Yesterday I bought a clematis, a jasmine (a non-invasive cultivar apparently), more beans, more basil, more celery, some quash slug pellets and a funky miniature tree-like succulent. I haven't done anything about planting any of them yet because I am keeping myself and my runny nose inside and sewing instead. After I finished the bag, I cut out the fabric for C-word project number one, which is to make a sundress (New Look 6195) in a size seven. I have cut the facing out in a pattern (the main dress is a plain lightweight denim), with the idea that I might yet make the pattern up in a wee bag with denim lining. Or even put a frill on the dress hemline in the pattern. Maybe.

Slug pellets. Yes. The end of the organic dream? The beginning of marital deception given I bought them against our agreed protocol? Maybe. But hopefully it will mean we get to eat some carrots and beans and lettuces and coriander, not just the slugs and snails.

Fontana number 77

2011-11-13T10:39:00.006+13:00

At yesterday's church fair, amidst a groaning table of books, was an old manilla folder of knitting patterns. It was taped up, and I felt sure that the very secrecy of it, the fact I couldn't see what was within, indicated that there would be treasure within. I had to have it.

Most of it will go to the Sallies. If I want patterns from the 1970s onwards, I have access to Mum's stash. But it is this book, which I think is from the 1950s, which has captured my imagination.

Apologies for the photography. The blue is my dressing gown. I am having a dressing gown day, in which I refuse to leave the house or indeed do much more than mollycoddle myself out of my streaming nose state through the use of large amounts of ginger and tissues.

This is the one I first liked best.
The cables on this are even better, but I would want to change the neck to a scoop. In fact, if I could change the neck to a scoop, this would be the perfect jersey.

This is the other good option, but without the hanky pocket.
Although this is a great looking cardigan, it is way too streamlined for me. I think it is the best pose though, with the old style telephone. I remember talking on a telephone like that when I was a little girl at Grandma and Grandad's house. They lived on a farm in an area where the phone service was still the old party line. I was quite proud when I was old enough to be able to run in and recognise the ring and report back to Grandma at the washing line.

So. In reality these cardigans are way too hard. They are sized a lot too small for me, plus with the fitted style I would need to make some kind of full bust adjustment. It would take me a million years to knit one, by which time I could be a different size entirely and only at the end would I know if I liked it. I haven't ruled out taking on such an enterprise though. After all, I have knitted about seven rows of a doll's pinafore this week. Why not take on something requiring a miilion times more commitment?

The clothing table was groaning as well. Five dollars to fill a plastic bag. But that was easy to resist. I could tell from a medium distance that there was nothing in kelly or emerald green, and that is all I am looking for at the moment.

But the curtain table was another matter. I gave it a cursory look, not expecting kelly green curtains. But here were some lovely floral curtains, made of 100% cotton (in England! How old is that?) in a light-ish weight, probably similar to quilting cotton.

Five dollars for the pair. I've washed them and now I'm planning a skirt. Even I, with my ever increasingly ridiculous schemes, can see that the pattern is too big for a dress. It will be a swishy skirt.

So my rules around taking more stuff out of the house than what comes in are broken multiply this weekend. I haven't even written about the garden stalls. Plus the children were the lucky recipients of hand me down bags this week, so they are wandering around looking newly trendy. How useful is it when the mothers of your big kid idols give you their clothes? Very useful according to my kids and according to me.

I've started the little girl bag for this week's birthday party. All the pieces are cut out and the interfacing is attached in the right places.

The weekend light

2011-11-11T21:06:00.005+13:00

Today I have looked after people with (variously) worms, eczema, dementia, the first serious exams of their lives looming, sore throat lurgies, sibling rivalry, a need for red wine and a need for me to make a plate for a shared lunch.

The need for the red wine was mine. I looked after it well. I think I did okay on the other stuff, but by evening I was confident I had earned my booze.

Tomorrow is the annual Camerons Community Market. I've been saving my change for it all week as each year there is a wonderful stall by two women who grow lots of plants from cuttings. Last year I bought gooseberries, redcurrants and grapes. This year I'm hoping to get some clematis, as the one I had given up on two years ago is flowering and it has given me renewed hope. The only problem with the clematis which has decided to survive after all is that a big cabbage tree has practically flown up in front of it. The Trinity Church Fair is also on which makes it a double red letter day. Five years ago, at the very end of October, we moved into our own home for the first time and had not a scrap of furniture for the lounge. Around midday our mate knocked on the door with a chest of drawers for us and news that the chairs were going cheap at the end of the sale. Twelve dollars later and we had five armchairs. A few months later our kindly mate and bargain informant sold us the matching couch which he'd purchased earlier in the day. So even though we don't generally strike such gold now, I always think of the Trinity Church Fair (or Kids n Coffee church fair as my children call it) with affection and spend a few dollars there.

This afternoon I slipped into Wetville's poshest frock shop to finger and price the bright green dress in the window - I've pasted a picture below. I've a hankering for something in bright green but I've yet to find the fabric to do something about it. For a very simple dress made of viscose/spandex, they wanted over $200. Which really made the price of fabric on Trademe seem not so bad at all. Of course, thinking about sewing is so much easier than actually sewing. I've a deadline this coming Thursday, as the children are going to a fairy party for a very special two year old whose mother used to be our babysitter. Even if it involves much sewing on Wednesday night, it should/might/could also get me in the groove to do some sewing for the C word.

I'm thinking of more reading and less cleaning as my mantra this weekend. Not entirely sure it will work given we are an adult down in the house health-wise, but a worthy goal for sure. I'm a few pages into The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

The right to return home alive

2011-11-09T20:16:00.004+13:00

I was immensely flattered to be included in the 42nd Down Under Feminists' Carnival for this post on Food, fear and power. The post is actually from October 2010 and, such is the drivel I have been writing lately, I had to double check it was my work. I've hardly posted lately because I'd like to get back to writing more intelligently. Today I came to the conclusion that this wasn't improving the quality of my writing; rather it was freezing me from writing at all and as I do like to blog and I thought it time to get back in the saddle, low grade musings it is tonight.

The musings might be low grade, but I don't think all of my topics are low grade. I've been thinking about privacy and the poor. With an election just days away, beneficiaries and the working poor are being discussed like so many irritating and sometimes filthy obejcts in the media. High income earners don't get lumped together and discussed as a problem. While even National Radio listeners are often moved to email in and advise poor people to cook from scratch, grow their own food and give up booze, smokes and coca cola, no one asks how the wealthy can contribute better. Yes I do understand about differing tax policies for high income earners, but that seems to me to be a blunt and inadequate tool. It appears to be unthinkable to expect all high income earners to give back to their communities. Their communities? Living in gated communities or on large properties with cars to prevent the disaster of walking in the neighbourhood, not using facilities like libraries and swimming pools, using private health care and private schools, - this is what gives some wealthy people the sense that there is not a community that they owe any debt to. Yet the working poor and those lacking any paid job are dependent on community resources like public transport (which we don't even have in Wetville), libraries and public hospitals and schools. They are overrepresented in police records and womens refuges. Their needs are public and it seems to be a sport for many to judge them. But what is it about significant wealth which confers immunity from community responsibility? Much of that wealth, a significant portion indeed, comes from the sweat of the poor anyway.

I've also been thinking about fat acceptance. This post about the purpose of fat acceptance is excellent. I find examples of fat shaming, particularly very public humiliating of fat people on radios, awful and awfully common. Despite my aversion to all commercial radio in New Zealand, I will insist on venturing out into local shops and local shops will insist on playing commercial radio.

I had a project to cook some new meals a while back. I've made almost zilch progress on that.

I've sewn nothing since I last posted. I have knitted about five rows of a doll's pinafore. I haven't read any books either. Come to think of it, I don't seem to have done much outside of going to work, hanging out with our weekend visitors and eating (and drinking). The house is bit tidier than usual. Although this makes it nicer to live in, not reading or sewing or gardening seems rather a high price to pay.

Life seems to have a particular emotional intensity at the moment. This mostly translates into misty eyes, which I wouldn't recommend for any public situation. It is eight days from the anniversary of Pike River. We had a lovely weekend with my sister in law and brother in law and then after they had gone my daughter suddenly burst into floods of tears for her Nana. I guess the visit made her think of the other very special people who visit her from Auckland and then she realised her Nana won't visit ever again.

Long term readers will know how I hate Christmas. It is the material excess and profligate wastage of low grade plastic and hyper inflation of credit cards which bothers me most. But this year the context is different. We have booked to go to Auckland again and this time connecting through thinking positively about Christmas seems the least I can do for my father in law and his children. I'm not about to turn into the crazy excessive shopping lady, but I think I will prepare with better grace this year. I've got my eye on some books for some science-y people in the house and I'm planning to make lots of shortbread to turn into gifts. If the sun turns on its charm one day soon, then I will get a photo of the kids for some cute Christmas postcards. Typically I get these done and only give about five out and leave the rest languishing in a drawer, but five is kind of nicer than none. I have some bags to make out of sheets and once I have these perfected, then I want to make one each for the little girls of a bag lined with a gorgeous dress once worn by their Nana.

Next year though, I could be making way cooler gifts. Today I discovered (though surely I have known before and forgotten) that there is a night class here in Wetville on mosaics. I could make mosaic mirrors. It is wonderful that there are any night classes left. In fact, any time I despair of Labour's ineptitude and untrustworthyness (more often than I would prefer), remembering what National did to a 100 year old highly sucessful story of night classes sharpens my resolve to get them out.

Last May Day I listened to a beautiful song written by a local woman about a working person's right to go to work and return home alive. I thought I had a copy of the lyrics but I can't find them. I think of that often at the moment.

Patches

2011-11-03T21:57:00.003+13:00

I've been cleaning. In order to clean, I had to pick things up. In order to still have space to put feet, bags, even bodies, I had to put the things away. Sometimes opening the doors to away spaces is like opening Pandora's box. Sometimes, when I've been cleaning for more than a few minutes, particularly when it gets up to hours, I become particularly open to distraction.

So I now have a clean wardrobe. The slippers which broke irreparably more than three years ago are now in the rubbish. The broken sandals which happen to date back to my university years are also in the rubbish. The dust is now in the rubbish. The clothes are all on hangers.

I have washed and dried and folded a LOT of washing. I've gotten quite good at folding laundry this year, even if I say so myself. No longer do guests arrive only to be directed to a chair in the lounge as the couch is covered in clean, unfolded washing. There was a legitimate request from a voting age member of the household that visitors didn't have the opportunity to fold personal items.

There is a LOT less stuff in our bedroom, which is where our guests will sleep (if you've been put on the floor in our house, then I can only point out that the criteria for getting my bed is that you are 50 or over). In truth, these are patches of space in a still messy house. But somehow it will work out - it always does - and at least I have a lovely and organised wardrobe for the first time since 2006.

There is beer and wine and fireworks and sausages and barbecue fuel in the house. Shame about the ten day forecast which is solid grey clouds and rain, but that won't get in the way of enjoying the booze.

Should the indelicate details of my day attempting to run a household not prove sufficient procrastination, here are some much better places to hang out: The universal aunts - I love the old pictures. Clearly targeted at a particular class in terms of both clients and workers, but a great little procrastinate all the same. Then the worldometers, which are a fascinating (and depressing) series of live trackers relating to population, world resources, health and other topics.

shortbread & gardening

2011-10-30T21:45:00.003+13:00

I've given up sewing. I got up early today and began more work on my yellow Colette crepe dress. Yesterday I had to resew both seams on the armhole facings but I managed to fix them. Today I discovered that the facings for the neck don't match the dress - they are out by about two centimetres. Given that this is only out of a sheet and as I'm less convinced that I love this pattern on me after all, is probably going to be only for wearing round home, I decided to pack it away. I will pick up sewing again sometime, as I have some things to make for birthdays and maybe even the C word, but no more sewing for me for a while.

I thought I'd get cracking on this cleaning the house lark, only I got as far as hanging the washing out and didn't come in for hours, except to eat. The washing line is a useful escape route to the garden. I cleaned up the chicken coop, changed their water, gave them many many snails and slugs which I collected as I gardened and even a pottle of mussels I unfortunately left in the car - must have brought the groceries in in the dark one night. I planted out one tomato and six basil seedlings. I had thought I would put them in a pot under the lean-to, but as I dehydrated them through neglect this week already, I opted for a place with rainfall access.

I weeded the blueberry and lemon pots and added extra compost and my own fertiliser made of comfrey liquid which I started last week with the comfrey I no longer want in my flower bed and some bokashi liquid. Then I draped bird netting over the blueberry pots. I dug bokashi in in a section of the herb garden where the miners lettuce is past its best and then sowed mesclun on top. I did some digging and weeding out the front, but it is a jungle. I can't get far handweeding when blackberry is involved.

In the afternoon the children and I took about one million glass bottles to the dump. We didn't have to pay a thing because the machine which weighs the car inwards and outwards was broken. Neither the dump weigh man nor I thought I had dumped 850 kilos of rubbish. If New Zealand's economy is dependent on technical equipment being reliable here in Wetville, then we're definitely going the way of Greece.

For dinner I made rosti in the oven like Annabel Langbein's recipe and they came out very nice. That recipe will be a keeper. Grate 700g of peeled spuds into a bowl of water. Then drain the grated spud and squeeze out as much water as possible. Add 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and some cracked pepper and a splash of anchovy sauce. Mix it goether and then put generous spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking try that has baking paper on it. Flatten the blobs out, leaving a bit of room between each one. Annabel made 8 with the mixture but I made 12. Bake at 200 degrees celsius for 40 minutes. They will look crispy when they are done.

Tonight I am making shortbread. The shortbread is going to Ronald Macdonald House, where there is a tradition that families take baking when they go and it goes in the freezer for nightly nibbles and support for all of the families staying there. I'm sending this baking full of hope that the hospital can help one little boy from Blackball and his family.

One benefit to baking when the children are in bed is that I get to lick the bowl myself. There have to be some gastronomical perks to a wine-less evening.

Avoidance

2011-10-29T20:04:00.002+13:00

My favourite sister in law and brother in law are visiting in just six days time. This is wonderful. There is that not so small glitch in between in which we have to magically transform the house into a place with space to put things. Like feet. "We" means what it usually means round here and so I am in avoidance. Instead, I emptied almost all of the mending & altering pile and sewed some more of the Colette crepe yellow dress. I came back from Auckland with some clothes which used to be my Mother in Law's and I'm slowly making them mine, whether by pairing them with different things to make them 'mine' or by adjusting them to fit better. I opened up the waist band on two skirts and resewed the elastic more tightly and fixed a couple of holes on the skirt which I like best. As for the Colette crepe, I am a bit sick of it hanging around. Much as I love dresses, I don't think I'll be sewing any more in the near future once this one is done.

I read about fashions in bra shapes, here and here. Quite interesting.

We also took a walk down to the new hardware shop down the road from us, where the kids got spoilt rotten with opening day freebies and I found out a place where we can get sawdust for the poultry palace as our usual source seems to have dried up.

No gardening. Too wet.

Friday

2011-10-28T22:04:00.003+13:00

Garden: I went outside with a torch and a small container last night and found three large snails at work on my vegetables in the punga raised bed. No doubt they are responsible for the annihilation of the beans.

Chooks: These ones have been unkeen on being caught after a session outside the poultry palace so I've hardly let them out at all. But tonight I trialled letting them out not long before dusk to see if it was much easier to return them to the palace. It was.

Kitchen: I tried the greek pumpkin spread for my ten new meals project. It was awful pumpkin and too much fennel. I am going to try it again with decent pumpkin, no fennel and maybe even some coriander in it. I made pizza from scratch tonight. I haven't done that for ages, certainly not since Dominos Pizza moved into Wetville. But as, most irritatingly, there are more days until payday than is ideal, I opted to make it at home. It was better than the bought stuff and did leave room to buy some wine.

House: well. We have visitors in less than seven days and some serious miracle working is required. I am organising the boys to go to the dump tomorrow.

Sewing: I fixed Fionn's missing button on his school shirt. He is particular about buttons.

Shopping & dreaming: I bought this tie front cardigan at the Postie Plus 25% off everything sale yesterday.

Only mine is black. I like it, but in an ideal world, I would sew or knit it with some kind of FBA so that mine had straight centre-front lines like in the photo instead of curved-round, too-much-cleavage lines. So I spent part of this evening surfing the net looking at things I will likely never make in a semi-purposeful way instead of actually sewing the project beside me.

Body politics: The Hand Mirror is hosting a pro choice postings week. I don't have a post to offer THM but I will be reading with interest. As many women fight for bodily autonomy for all women as they campaign for improved legislation around abortion, I think also of a powerful story a new friend told me last week. She was in the process of carrying eggs for another woman who had fertility obstacles, when she discovered in a short period of time that two of her own children were deaf and autistic respectively. She told the programme and they terminated her involvement immediately, despite the receiving couple being happy with the apparently higher risks of disability that this baby might carry and still wanting her involvement. Other people in the process were offered counselling, but not the mother of the children, the one already on the extra hormones and who had been rejected because she had a biological history of imperfect children. What does this say about the kind of babies we are not just supposed to want, but are even allowed to want?

The 99% and a personal biography of class

2011-10-27T20:49:00.004+13:00

Some very interesting stories about the effects of rolling 99% of people together:
Megan's story on her blog Craft is the New Black. I loved reading her story and I totally endorse her call for all stories to be heard.

Megan cited her inspiration as this piece by Tiger Beatdown called The Percentages: A Biography of Class. It is brilliant. I loved every short and every long sentence in it. I may have to buy a new printer so I can print this out and stick on my wall. When she writes about middle class students seeing the working class as an idea, I was nodding furiously, right back at university remembering the way unions were exalted as the pure and wonderful way forward for working class men (tactics for making working class women invisible were widely practised and could be a post by itself). It didn't entirely square with my memories of watching the TV news in scared silence to find out if Dad would go back to work the next day or not. That's silence while Dad listens to hear what the union bosses have decided, let alone the freezing works management. I would like to write my own biography of class in my life some time soon, and I encourage everyone, anyone, to read the two articles and write their own, whether for private or public consumption. Where is the moment when you realised that you were invisible to the popular discourse? I think everyone has at least one. My experiences with the system when I was a very very new mother in East London/Essex also come to mind.

Labour Day at Blackball

2011-10-25T20:22:00.004+13:00

Yesterday I went up to Blackball for Labour Day celebrations. It was fantastic. I was completely humbled by the awesome job Denise had done on the care workers' exhibition. I was pleased that my small contribution of Brenda's story was there because I am so proud of what Brenda does for our community. But the story Denise had woven with her information on care throughout the last 100 years or so was both fascinating to me and clearly very engaging to the people who were there and who had been through earlier in the weekend.The very talented local artist Tony Manuel has made a beautiful carving for our building which you can see in the photo above.
The choir was fabulous as always.

I felt sad that I wasn't able to do more for this project as I enjoyed the afternoon talking with lots of wonderful people and admiring what has been achieved in recent years on this site. You can see the memorial wheel for the Pike River 29 behind the choir. At the same time, I have to look reality in the face: if I had time to do more, I would have achieved more already.

Before my trip to Blackball, I took Mary K to the cemetery to lay flowers to mark the fourth anniversary of her husband Lou's death. Death has been a big feature of our lives recently, but what matters most, I think, is supporting those who remain behind, left and bereft.

I've hardly sewn at all lately, instead gazing blearily at the screen in an activity recently and aptly described as 'sewing blog porn'. Although it is safer to read than to turn on the sewing machine when I am slightly drunk with tiredness (then there is slightly drunk with alcohol on the other nights), it isn't yielding much in the way of finished projects here at the messiest house.

I have a 'ten new meals' project. I got so sick of cooking and eating the same foods endlessly that I got my Best of Annabel Langbein book out and identified ten meals which appeared affordable, weeknight-friendly and like we would want to eat them. My challenge is to make them happen and hopefully at least half will become regular meals. Tonight was smoked fish and kumara pie. Smoked fish as in the cheap tinned stuff. I added spinach and sweet corn because the point of pies is surely that everything goes in one pot and I don't have to coordinate timing of side dishes.

The next nine dishes are:
caramelised onions
greek pumpkin spread
sushi sesame rice balls
chicken laksa
spicy sausage and chickpea minestrone
chilli ginger whole fish
mussel and corn chowder
salsa verde
potato rosti

Some of these things I have cooked before, but I have put them on the list because Langbein has a more promising method (e.g. rosti in the oven) or because I would like to get practised enough to cook them easily on a weeknight (e.g chilli ginger whole fish).

2011-10-23T23:51:00.004+13:00

We won the Rugby World Cup! I've got the kids into bed after a memorable 80 minutes watching the game I must have first seen when I could barely lift my head by myself.

I'm so pleased for so many people whom I love and who love rugby and love the All Blacks. I especially am pleased in memory of a woman who adored the All Blacks. I don't have a literal vision of an afterlife where my Mother in Law could watch from the heavens but I do have a sense of pleasure that her great desire for the ABs to win this world cup has been realised.

Other news seems to pale by comparison, but we did have a wonderful few days in Wellington, where the kids enjoyed riding on buses, the cable car, a rugby world cup simulation activity and Te Papa and I loved all that plus catching up with my friends whom we stayed with. The children were a bit fatigued and Fionn had asthma, so we took it easy and I even forswore the fabric shops because the kids were tired.

I've been gardening. I weeded round the strawberries and put the netting tunnel over top. I may have to change that though as the mesh is too fine for the bees to get through and pollinate the plants. I've dug up the spent broccoli plants and weeded more and more and planted red onions, lettuces, shallots, cyclamen and cosmos.

This is a beautiful post on what the RWC means to one woman on a very personal level.

almost writing about privileged food movements and pastoral idylls

2011-10-14T21:45:00.003+13:00

It's not quite Godzone, or the land of milk and honey, these days is it? Pike, the Christchurch earthquakes, Rena. Bryce Edwards has assembled a number of very interesting images commenting on the Rena crisis here.

I've been mostly focused on my own family, especially my children. Tomorrow we head away for a while, partly to visit my grandparents and partly to give the children some new experiences in parts of New Zealand we've not taken them before. We booked and paid for this trip before our sad and sudden trip to Auckland and I hope it lifts everyone's spirits.

I finished The Long Song by Andrea Levy. It was quite good, but lacked the magic of Small Island. Now I'm reading Jeanette Winterson's Lighthousekeeping. I've also started to listen to her South Bank lecture which is found on her website here.

I read today of something called Blog Action Day, which this year is to be held 16 October, which is also world food day. I've not enough to say to make a proper post, but if I did, it would be around privileged food movements and pastoral idylls. Once upon a time, a time which seems quite distant now, I read a lot about traditional foods a la Sally Fallon and the Weston Price Foundation. Isa Ritchie wrote an excellent thesis on the movement, placing it in its social and political context. Isa seems to have taken down her blog on her thesis, so I can't link to it anymore.

As a relic from the days when I regularly hung out with Sally Fallon and her maddening book, Nourishing Traditions, I get facebook updates from a blog called 'Nourished Kitchen'. Beautiful ideas, photography and a clear sense of purpose. But is this really about cooking? Or even eating, or health? If you care to procrastinate a little further, then read this sample post on healthy fats and oils. This is the language of religion. Food the 'Nourished Kitchen' way is a journey down the path less travelled, the path unsinned, the pastoral idyll where your children will grow up free of trans fats, but also, or as I sense the implication, unsullied in a wider sense by modern living. People busy gathering apples and making appleasauce perhaps do not have time to mainline heroin and get pregnant to a non-life partner.

I think that food in most, if not all of our lives, is both more and less complex. I've definitely got a sense of principles around the food I eat, make and grow. What I would like to explore but don't have the headspace to do so at the moment is the intersection between belief and food in terms of individual choices by privileged people (that'll likely be everyone reading) and how modern food movements start out with good intentions but so often eventually function as markers of privilege.

Petition to Facebook to remove pages promoting sexual violence

2011-10-12T20:48:00.006+13:00

It was time to do more completion and less starting of new projects. I was sort of successful.

Done:
1. The ironing board is now functional. It looks like this:

There were indeed some plain blue and even plain beige covers in the shop. I did not care for them.

2. One shirt belonging to Favourite Handyman now fixed. Jackie at the Bernina shop advised me how and didn't charge me a cent for it. She is shopkeeper of my year.

3. Planted slenderette dwarf seedlings, celery seedlings and some polyanthus. Watered my basil and tomato pots.

4. Cooked loads of fried foods for dinner. I almost didn't provide dinner at all, because the garden was so much more interesting. Fried sausages, bacon, onions and mushrooms, plus I added butter to the steamed broccoli and asparagus. Only the carrot escaped the butter or oil treatment. It tasted beautiful.

Not quite done:
1. I began weeding the strawberry patch and bought a netting cloche to go over it and protect it from the birds. Probably another hour of work to go on that. I also bought some agria spuds to sprout and plant.

2. I extracted chook poo from the coop. This never stops as a job. For reasons I don't understand at all, they only like to hang out on the roost we built during the day. As chooks poo mostly in the night, this makes for a very pooey coop which always needs cleaning. Luckily we have a big coop (1 x 2 metres). The pea straw matted with poo also has to be great for the compost.

3. The Blackball care workers' project. This had to go on hold while I was in Auckland and today I found out what I need to do to wrap the project up. So tonight or tomorrow I need to write up my interview with the lovely Brenda. I want to say something along these lines (starting to write it now hopefully): For many people, the boundaries between paid and unpaid care work are quite blurred. Brenda B has looked after people for most of her life. As the youngest of six children, her father encouraged her and her older sister to help others, including running a family camping ground in the weekends for Brenda's uncle. Brenda was not yet a teenager. As a young woman, when her Dad fell ill and she was the only child without her own children, Brenda took on much of the care. This expanded when a brother and her mother also fell ill. In more recent years, Brenda has worked in several paid care work positions, including for the IHC, for PACT and at a local rest home. Some of the people she cared for at the rest home were men and women she had known since she was a child. Brenda went to all of the funerals of residents. Even when she stopped working there, she still went back to visit some of the residents. Brenda currently works for Pact, which she really enjoys. She combines this work with work for Home to Home. The respite care she provides for young people through this project is overnight, sometimes for up to a week continuously, and this is also a source of pleasure and satisfaction for her. Care work isn't hugely well paid, and it isn't protected by a clear national pay scale and a single, unified union, but people like Brenda, people who are often invisible in the pages of our local papers, glue our community together.

3. The second Colette Crepe dress. I cut out a new back facing last night. Despite an idea of lining the bodice completely instead of making facings, I have fallen back on the facings idea as I can't decide how to best incorporate the interfacing to strengthen the neck and armholes. It will be a yellow bodice and a brown patterned skirt. Yes I too am reminded of a Brownie uniform by the colour scheme. But people who rush off to Auckland with no warning and also buy new trainers up there have to find sewing satisfaction with sheets.

Idle dreaming:
1. Honeysuckle and jasmine for the garden. Favourite Handyman has spoken of these scents as part of his Auckland childhood and I want to recreate them here. It's on my garden shop list for as soon as funds allow.

2. Knitting a Miette cardigan for goodness sake. I haven't even knitted more than a dozen rows of the doll's dress this last month, let alone an entire adult cardigan. But I am inspired by Patty the Snug Bug's post this morning, not to mention by perusing all the Ravelry Miette projects. No no no Sandra.

3. There are more sewing things to do but Colette crepe comes first. I want to wear the altered pattern which I spent so long on.

Much more important than all that stuff:
I'm copying this directly from an email I received this morning. I've signed the petition and hope the response to this petition is both overwhelming and successful.

Dear NCWNZ members and affiliates,

The National Council of Women of NZ, in association with the White Ribbon Campaign, has launched a petition calling for Facebook to immediately remove pages which promote sexual and other violence against women.

The petition is a response to Facebook’s decision to allow pages which promote violence against women. These pages include , ‘Punching pregnant women in the stomach,’ ‘You know she's playing hard to get when you're chasing her down an alleyway’, and ‘Riding your girlfriend softly ‘cause you don't want to wake her up.’

Facebook allows these pages to remain online despite their violation of the site’s Terms of Service which clearly prohibit users from posting material which is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains gratuitous violence. There are also rules against bullying, intimidating or harassing other users, and using Facebook to do anything discriminatory.

But Facebook has refused to remove a proliferation of pro-rape and other pages promoting violence against women, despite receiving numerous complaints.

As we’re all aware, violence against women is an issue in New Zealand. Statistics tell us that one in four women will experience sexual assault, and one in three women experience partner violence in their lifetime.

Please support our campaign by signing the petition and letting your networks and contacts know about it. We’d love you to sign it straight away because we’re shortly going to send out a media release and the first thing the media will do is check to see how many names are on it!

Its very easy to sign, go to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/violenceagainstwomenonfacebook/ and add your name. It’s quick and all you need is a valid email address.

Thanking you all in anticipation of your support,

Kind Regards,

Nicky.

Nicky Steel

Executive Officer,

National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ),

Level 4 Central House,

26 Brandon Street,

PO Box 25-498,

Wellington 6146.

Tel: +64 4 473 7623

Email: nickysteel@ncwnz.org.nz

Website: www.ncwnz.org.nz

Irises, cardies and love.

2011-10-10T21:04:00.003+13:00

Never go into the kitchen before the garden when rain looms. Starvation takes a while to set in.

That's how I overcame the hurdle of the noisy tummies and sowed carrot, beetroot, pea and alyssum seeds outside and tomato and basil seeds inside today. I would normally have sown the tomato seed earlier but now has to be good enough. I am hopeful of a good growing season this summer. I came back from Auckland to huge and lovely-tasting broccoli. The heads were lots bigger than the supermarket ones (brag braggidy brag brag). Last years' broccoli was shameful and almost inedible. This year I grew it where a compost heap had been not long beforehand and also in a more sheltered spot. I also cut the irises which were prone in the garden due (I presume) to recent winds and put them in a vase in the dining room. Thanks to their prolific division over the last 2-3 years, I now have lots of iris bulbs, but they are still too spread out in the garden. Next year I want them in clumps instead.

We are getting lots of bees in the garden. They really like the flowering kale and also the borage. The other bee attraction is the purple sprouting broccoli which started to flower while we were away. I've left two of those in the garden for sheer beauty and for attracting bees.

While Wall Street burns and a substandard boat off the coast of Tauranga ruins our sealife, I've been thinking about clothes. I don't think I have political apathy (though I could be wrong), but my cynicism levels have increased steadily in recent months. It doesn't help that we have an election just weeks away and no credible, powerful alternative to John Key.

So I took in two bags of clothes for the Sallies and bought three belts. The belts use up a lot less room. It's been decades since I've worn a belt but apparently they are just the thing for my body shape, so belts it is.

Then, just because I have squillions of unfinished projects in the study and don't feel like doing any of them, I decided to revamp my long black wrap cardigan. My long black cardigan started out from this pattern, made in an alpaca/merino yarn:

I made a size too big plus I made it bigger again because I went up a size of needle without checking the tension with the new size. It's a great cardigan, beautiful charcoal colour and very soft and cosy to wear, but really really enormous and all the folds sit to the front creating a late pregnancy side profile. Last night I unpicked the sleeves (the rest is knitted in the round) so I had three flat pieces of knitting. Tonight I put it in the machine at 60 degrees celsius then for ten minutes in the tumble dryer and now I have three significantly diminished pieces of felted wool drying by the fire and awaiting the next step of the transformation.

Only I haven't decided on the next step. Which means that maybe I go back to considering politics instead. Except except except - I get no further in my journey from thinking about politics. Hell in a handbasket or something.

I gave up on Hannah Tunnicliffe's The Colour of Tea. Soon I'm off to bed with Andrea Levy's The Long Song.

I haven't forgotten about last week. I think about my Mother in Law all the time, something I never did before. I'm trying to appreciate my own Mum more, acutely aware of how lost I would be if the phone call had been my Dad to say it was my Mum who I would never hear or see again. I think about lots of things to do with extended family and the fabric of who I am, who we are. Fionn has been writing to his Grandad via email since we got back and tonight Brighid dictated an email for him. I was 28 when I got married, already long used to living in a different city to my parents and indeed to all of my immediate and often all of my extended family. Adopting a family when I already had my own wasn't a process which came easily to me, but this last ten days has shown me that I am one of their family and they are mine and there is room for me to connect with my in law family without sacrificing my own identity and links with my blood relatives.

Attempt at being sensible in vain #301

2011-10-09T23:10:00.004+13:00

Or maybe some higher number. It's true that I dare not keep stats.

Today I went to Mitre 10 to buy some coat hangers. I did this for three reasons: 1. I was given some new clothes up north and need hangers for them. 2. I hate shopping at The Warehouse. It gives me the wibblies. 3. Miter 10 is closer, so ethically favourable.

While I am at Mitre 10, I find replacement ironing board covers. As I have been meaning to make a new cover for our ironing board for about three years, and I accidentally cut the fabric of our current one not long ago, buying a new cover seems very sensible. After all, the laundry mountain at my place currently seems to be on growth hormones and there is a garden waiting for some more seeds, some weeding, some tender loving care.

Twenty-three dollars later, I get home, take it out of its packet and finally remember that we have an extra long ironing board. It doesn't fit and the wrapping is torn so no returns.

So now I have spent money and I am making an ironing board cover. I am part way through adding an insert into the new one, using the felt from the old one. Tomorrow I shall try and match the super strong elastic and maybe there will even be photos.

I sowed some mesclun salad mix seed this morning. I had more gardening planned, but the rain fell just often enough to ensure maximum time wasted at the washing line and minimum time spent in the garden. Mesclun is mesclun though, and the particularly good news is that no one in my family vomited today and no one in my family died. Moving on from the hard facts, I also didn't walk out on my family just before dinner. Given the strain of making hamburgers and chips from scratch (bought bread rolls though), and the particular facts of me loving my husband and children, I shall not make these again. I am a one pot dinner kind of cook, not an assemble lots of things all at once while others make noise and be uncompliant on every front kind of cook.

The chooks are still happy and laying and appear to be rat-free. In case you were wondering.

A seismic shift

2011-10-08T21:00:00.003+13:00

Ten days ago I got a phone call which has changed all of our four lives here at the Messiest House in Wetville. My sister in law couldn't say the words out loud and with a thumping heart I guessed. My Mother in Law died of a heart attack, cuddled in the arms of the man she married over 50 years ago. The man she loved and the man who adored her. We have spent the week since that phone call in Auckland, farewelling a much loved woman along with almost 200 other people in a small wooden church in the lovely leafy suburb they made home as they raised five children. All the 13 grandchildren were there, all the children, her siblings and squillions of other relatives and friends. The vicar of their church was a very good friend of my Mother in Law's and that made for a particularly lovely farewell service.

My Mother in Law loved to shop, but until I was asked to help go through her clothes and to pick out some things to take home for myself, I had no idea what a marathon eventer she was in this sport. One pretty cotton print is too narrow for me, but I plan to cut it up and use it to make some special clothes for her youngest grand daughters.

Today, still adapting to our life back home and coming to terms with the odd and sobering fact that we will never hear my Mother in Law's stories again, Fionn started vomiting. Then he had a very hot neck. Then he had a rash on his face. Did I mention we'd just been on two aeroplanes and spent time not so far from the locations of the meningitis outbreaks? Which is why we have recently got home from six hours in our local Accident & Emergency department. He doesn't have meningitis, but he does have a rather nasty case of gastro-enteritis and spent about an hour on a drip. They were keen to keep him in overnight and we initially agreed, but by the time the paediatrician arrived almost two hours later, Fionn seemed to be on the mend and we asked to take him home. Now he is sleeping in the big bed (where else do you sleep when you are sick?!) and I think he will be much better by the time he wakes up.

So I don't have any sewing or gardening to report. I have no kitchen adventures to report on, and I've not been living in my local community, let alone doing anything useful in it. I have no comment to make on local or national or international politics, though a brief look at the international news section of today's paper revealed that the Bank of England are printing money because everything is dire and they could find nothing else to do. Better than nothing and not going to prompt massive inflation. Apparently. I'm hopeful that tomorrow will be quiet and without incident. Perhaps I will even spend it in the garden. I am grateful beyond words for the treasure of those around me still alive. I give particular thanks that this scare of Fionn's health didn't happen while we were still in Auckland. To have left my Father in Law's house with a child potentially with a fatal disease to spend hours in a huge alien hospital is a worry I am glad to have spared him.

So. Please do tell me what has happened in the rest of the world that I should look at/read/think about. It's time I read some more good books and any recommendations of new blogs would also be welcome. Has anyone seen the film of Jane Eyre? Worth it?

Yellow

2011-09-29T01:05:00.004+13:00

One in the morning is a perfectly reasonable time to get up and do some sewing and blogging, isn't it? That or nothing this week. I did buy some more sheets (errr yes. Cheap.) from the Sallies and St Vincent de Paul. Those Catholics have expensive sheets. Three whole dollars vs the Sallies only charging $2. So I've made up the bodice of the Colette Crepe dress in a plain yellow, using my new pattern piece for the front with an FBA and adjusted neckline. I pinned down the sides and tried it on and indeed it looks like the adjustments work. Hurray hurray hurray. I don't have enough fabric for the skirt as well, but I did buy some sheets which I think complement the yellow fabric and so this time the skirt will be a contrasting colour. I am getting faster at sewing. Once, the bodice would have taken a week of evenings. This time round, I think my blood pressure is even stable when I sew darts. Other blogging sewists have suggested they would fully line the bodice on a second project for this dress, removing the faff of hand sewing down the flapping facings. I'm thinking of doing that, assuming I have enough yellow fabric for that and the long sash tie, but I wonder how to include the interfacing for the neckline and armholes? I'm loving the sewing as something which doesn't have a big deadline and can be fitted in in tiny bits at weird times of the day and night.

The Blackball care workers' project is on again. So I've been rushing around doing that, writing up sections of it by the side of the pool while the kids do their swimming lessons and in a snatched and lovely moment with cake and wine at Jones's while Fionn was at martial arts last night. Earlier today (yesterday I suppose) I interviewed the wonderful Brenda for the exhibition. Brenda is our old neighbour and a very dedicated and capable carer who cared for her parents for many years, worked at an old people's home as activities coordinator, worked for IHC and is now working for PACT. In her spare time, she also works for the Home to Home project, providing respite care for young people with special needs. Denise and I are hoping to get that written up, done and dusted as soon as possible. I have flagged up very clearly to the group that I am resigning after the exhibition. I'm not housewife and mother of the year, but I do take my responsibilities to actually feed my family six nights per week seriously, and fitting in work and the exhibition is making everything else late and stressed.

The chooks are doing great. My fears about a rat have been allayed. Actually, the chooks are laying a treat, but they do like to scatter the straw over the eggs and sometimes they are hard to find.

Tomorrow (which could be today, but I am planning on going back to sleep), is a Mummy Day. I plan on ringfencing it for things with Brighid and not the exhibition. I'm already quite good at not doing anything to do with paid work on a Thursday. We will probably start the post-9am day with reading some Milly Molly Mandy. I'm on the lookout for some pink and white fabric to make a Milly Molly Mandy dress, possibly for Brighid or for her best friend whom we recently introduced to MMM, for one of their birthdays. Maybe it is cute overload, but I did fancy the idea of a MMM book from Trademe with a pink and white dress as a lovely birthday present for an awesome girl when she turns five...

Do you think the sun will shine tomorrow? Please? Yes I will do some washing but really truly and utterly, Brighid and I would like to garden. I think she wants to make play dough, which I promise, weather gods, that I will do as well as the garden bit....

The Runaway Hug

2011-09-25T21:34:00.006+13:00

My favourite picture book at the moment is The Runaway Hug. The blurbs don't show the best bit which is the illustrations. The story is sweet but I love how the house is messy and that is just normal.

I've been looking at my garden with a new eye since I read Dennis Greville's Colourful Gardens. He talks about restful colours with red rather than the full on drama of red and yellow which I had been planning for the red fence garden. I have since noticed how the yellow looks good against the old mustard fence.

I don't have a photo of the blue borage and the globe artichokes together, but the silvery foliage of the artichokes and the blue-purple of the borage would be the perfect gentle foil for our dramatic red fence. Given the self seeding proclivity of the borage and the ease of division of the globe artichokes, it will be labour with no financial cost to create my new red fence garden vista. When it stops raining.

Amongst the parenting today, did I clean the house? Not likely. I did laundry and food and laundry and food has to be enough. I did a little more sewing. Brighid's dress is relatively uninteresting to me compared to the endless thinking about version 2 of the Colette Crepe dress. With my Fit for Real People open beside the pattern pieces, I carefully made an FBA on the bodice after all. I am going to do another sheet version, with at least the bodice in this fabric:
Instant transportation to 1975? Actually it reminds me of the 1980s, because when I was a kid, we weren't sleeping in recently bought, highly fashionable sheets, but the ones from Mum's glory box and Mum and Dad's wedding presents from the very early 1970s. Although this is an op shop find, it still makes me think of a summer night down at the Tahuna camping ground when I was a little girl and we visited family friends there and stayed up all-the-way-to-midnight (We lived the high life we did, what with Brownies and Mass and school all in one week nearly every single week of 1979). If the new version works out well, then I shall look at buying brand new fabric to make a serious dress in. We shall not talk about if it does not work out.

The finished Colette Crepe

2011-09-24T20:23:00.005+12:00

Do you see that? For the first time ever in my entire life, I have finished sewing a dress for myself. This is the Colette Crepe dress and the fabric comes from two rather thin but lovely sheets from the Salvation Army op shop right here in Wetville. I highly recommend sheets for sewing this frock given it uses almost five metres of fabric. It was a bit cold for wearing in summer mode this morning, so there is a t shirt and leggings underneath.

The dress is quite wearable but not quite the right fit. What I really want is to make a dress that I can wear to work. I had cut a size 16 straight from the packet after much umming, ahhing and endless reading of blog reports by other people who have sewed this dress. Actually, if I had listened to many of them, I would have downsized, but I fear the dress too small more than the dress too large. It is a little big all over but the wrap function hides that effectively. The front darts are strange. They are so long that they completely cover the bust apex and there is a baggy piece about five centimetres north of my actual bust apex which is presumably where my boobs lived in my extreme youth. So today I got out my tracing paper and traced off the front bodice piece. I've cut a 14 with much shortened horizontal and vertical darts. I've resisted the temptation to lower the horizontal dart as some blogger sewists reported that this mucked up the armhole sizing. I have also lowered the neckline by 4 centimtres. That still creates a modest neckline by my calculations. Now I am eyeing up my other sheets (all single sheets with only one of each pattern) to make another dress. Five metres' worth of complementary fabric is a lot to find.

This sheet is my favourite, but it is going to be hard to find something to match it for the skirt part.
No go. I think the dress is too curvy for the geometric sheet, and the other green is too thin.
Impossible to match. A bit on the large side print-wise.These aren't sheets but some lovely gifted linen/cotton mix fabric (thank you Susan!). I have enough for the skirt part with these two together, but I think white linen/cotton for the top is the only matching option and the combo would create something pretty but very easily creased and probably not as figure accommodating/flattering as I would prefer. I think I will turn this into a skirt later on instead. Probably Simplicity 2451 which I already own, but it would need lining, which is a skill I've not yet got to...

While I was wearing my dress and gearing up for making a new, changed Colette Crepe, I began making Brighid a dress - Simplicity 2989. Also from a sheet. Two pink patterned sheets, with a contrasting pattern on the bib part. I think the pink patterned sheet fabric looks great on kids. Not so on me. I've stopped sewing for today though. When I realised I had sewn the wrong sides together for Brighid's dress, I took that as time to stop. Today I did try out cutting on the kitchen table with weights (jars of anchovies actually) instead of pinning the pattern to the fabric and cutting on the lounge floor. Much much speedier and easier on my back.

That's it. There is garden news, but that can wait for another post. Just as well I'm upskilling on making clothes out of sheets. Now that flour bags are made of paper instead of fabric, we'll have to sew clothes out of something else once the economy falls apart completely. The Guardian Weekly arrived today and I'm bewildered as to how the US, which almost defaulted not many days ago, can flood the market with its dollars to avert a crisis if Greece defaults. How does the US have those dollars if they almost couldn't pay their social security and wages obligations last month?

I'm off to bed now with The Colour of Tea by Hannah Tunnicliffe. I haven't left the house at all today, and neither have FH or the children. It has been wonderful.

Milly Molly Mandy, Thomas the Tank Engine and Feilicty Kendal

2011-09-20T20:55:00.002+12:00

Hmmmm. I wonder if we have a rat(s) stealing eggs. I've been googling possible solutions.

The nice garden seedlings man was over from Blenheim again today. We bought snow peas, celery and more polyanthus.

Milly Molly Mandy still has some appeal. Though if I read her as often as I read the complete stories of Thomas the Tank Engine, my enthusiasm could fade. The pastoral idyll is not confined to the adult market. I wonder, if The Good Life had been real, what Felicity Kendall would write about her life now? I do feel sure she would have left Tom eventually.

I cut two more pieces of skirt for the Colette Crepe dress. That is because I didn't read the instructions properly the first time. The weather was so sublime today that black and purple seemed rather sombre after all. The weather for wearing a summer dress is now on the horizon.

I have had only three glass of wine in ten days. Eight of those days were alcohol free.

Tomorrow is green prescription exercise class. Apparently I will hurt after this one.

That is it. They are the bits which aren't paid work or normal run of the mill feeding and haranguing of children. Those people who wonder about the perfection of lives on blogs do have an alternative: be bored by how little I have to share.

Juggle jiggle

2011-09-18T19:49:00.003+12:00

It's time to resign.
Not from parenting.
Not from paid work.
Not from blogging or gardening or sewing.
Not from cooking or cleaning.
Not from doing the night shift with poorly and nightmare-spooked children.
Not from the Green Prescription exercise class which I actually liked.
Not from spending time with my elderly cousin.
Not from daughter stuff, especially given Dad has an operation coming up.

But it is time to face the fact that I can not fit the Blackball working class history project into my life. I'm waiting on an email from my co-curator for the care workers' exhibition and then I will decide whether to resign immediately or as soon as the exhibition is completed. It hasn't been an easy decision but it is the only tenable one.

So. Yesterday I sewed. I ignored all other claims upon my time and worked on my crepe dress. I reached that amazing pinnacle of multi-tasking which is that I could sew while the children were chatting or playing around me. I remember reading online of people sewing around their very young children and lacking any clue how that could work. Were my children the only ones drawn magnetically to my foot as I pressed the accelerator pedal? Did these other people not have tiny fingers creeping around to the pin tin almost constantly? How did they actually think while they warded off invasion?

But finally my children have gotten big enough and I did sew while they hung out in the same building, sometimes even the same room. It was good therapy for a week in which 'hectic' and 'sleepless' featured as a losing combo far too often. I have cut the fabric for the Colette Crepe and sewn the bodice. The fabric is a blue and white sheet and I think the bodice shows I cut a size too big. The pattern says that Colette sizing is snug and in between sizes should go up a size. So I did and cut a straight 16. Only many of the reviews say quite the opposite and it turns out they are right. Because it is a wrap top I should be able to wrap it to fit, but I will cut a 14 in the shoulders at the very least next time. Also, the bust and waist darts go up and over/across the bust apex, which seems a little odd. My current thoughts are to cut a 14 and to make the darts shorter on version 2. Assuming I get to a version 2, which would be a very good idea given I paid $33 for the pattern. Some time this week I shall finish the skirt part and get the first version to wearable stage, if the sewing gods shine down upon me with sun rather than rain.

There is an asparagus shoot in the garden. This has never happened before. I am slowly learning to put my most expensive and longest investment plants in the spots of best sun and drainage. Slowly.

I learned yesterday that if I start to make hummous and then find there are no ripe lemons of limes anywhere on the property or in the house, then apple cider vinegar will make a perfectly reasonable alternative.

I'm not spending a lot of time with cooking books lately, but just for idle pleasure, I read Elizabeth David's Summer Cooking while I ate my lunch today. I've not made a single one of her recipes ever, but I think her books are worth owning for the prose alone. On decorating platters for a buffet: "You are, after all, preparing a meal, not decorating the village hall."

Garden progress. Asparagus as aforementioned. We have eaten green and purple broccoli from the garden this week. The kale continues to sprout and flower, but we continue to eat the leaves which still taste good. I've weeded out the russian kale from the red mesclun. Russian kale grows to an enormous and rather bland-tasting size. The word 'tree' was not inappropriate last time I grew russian kale. I am planning on letting the bulls blood beetroot grow to eat the roots, and the giatn red mustard to go to seed as I would like to grow more of it in future. There appears to be mint growing again down in the bog garden by the neighbour's rusting and not quite falling down fence. Only it doesn't taste of mint. What is the point of that? Time to rehome the rhubarb and grow mint there instead. Leeks are ready to eat in the garden. So is cornsalad, which grows like a weed. But it is rather tasteless. I much prefer miners lettuce, which is taking over part of the herb garden. It is keeping the area around the bay tree moist, which I think is not so good for the bay tree. So much to learn. Not everything likes to exist in higgledy piggledy cottage garden style.

I love the red cyclamen. It gives me pleasure every single day. Blood red cyclamen. I am on the lookout for more. The pink primulas are doing nicely as well. I might boost their numbers as well. Why are these plants looking so good? Well you might ask. I believe it is because they are not regularly assaulted by a rugby or league or soccer ball.

We had our first double yolker egg of the season at breakfast this morning. Interestingly given their identical diet, one of my breakfast eggs was yellow and the other quite distinctly orange. These were separate whites. Two different colours within a double yolker would be too bizarre indeed.

Obesity (yawn) epidemic: what about changed work patterns?

2011-09-13T21:07:00.003+12:00

I'm part way through making Simplicity 6951, a child's top/very short dress which in the pattern is accompanied by matching frilly pants and a hat. The pattern was published in 1975 and comes from my Mum's collection. Given the date, I imagine I wore a version of this ensemble as a kindy girl.The fabric is darker in the photo than in reality, but even so, it is quite a dark print for Brighid. The top is reversible and the grey with mushrooms fabric of the pockets is the lining/reverse dress fabric. I'm hoping to press out a lot of the puckering around the armpits and neckline, but if not, then at least I'll learn something more about handling these shapes.

I bought the fabric in a sewing shop in Ilford, Essex, in 2003. It's taken a while to use it... I have a bit more of the lining fabric left. Rather than the frilly knickers, I might make some longer style shorts if there is sufficient fabric. I am, slowly, reducing the fabric & mending piles and creating some order in my part of the study.

On a different tangent, I read for the zillionth time this week about the obesity epidemic and how the world is about to implode under the increased weight of its wealthy, minority world citizens. I have no problem with the touting of the usual culprits of fast food and a loss of home cooking skills. But why do those articles never ever mention changing work patterns? When my grandparents were young, working class men did performed labour intensive, calorie burning jobs. Working class women washed clothes and houses without automatic washing machines or vacuum cleaners. Now, many people are unemployed and the gadgets available to clean a house and tackle laundry mountains make relatively light effort of the jobs. Just saying...

Green Prescription

2011-09-12T21:49:00.003+12:00

A while ago a couple of friends mentioned an exercise class they were going to. When it came up in conversation again, it turned out it was a Green Prescription class. Which got me thinking, because I had imagined that Green Prescriptions were for people with lots more barriers to exercise than me. But not so. Busy Mums who are a bit plump and not very fit at running (as differentiated from making lunches, listening to the radio, organising breakfasts, mediating disputes and checking on short people's getting dressed progress ALL AT ONCE, which we are very fit at) may also qualify.

So I make an appointment and about a month later I actually get to see the doctor and I explain that I heard about this programme and as I am fat and unfit, I thought I too might qualify.

Doctors are BMI country. I'm not so into BMI myself, but if you want a freebie, then needs must. I nearly disputed her technique of getting me to leave my shoes on for the scales and to take them off for the height measurement. Only I bit my tongue just in time because y'know, the point of all this is to get categorised as sufficiently fat. You could be skinny and be as unfit as me, but whatever, focus on the freebie bit.

Today I had my interview with Michael, the Green Prescription coordinator. He was very nice and asked me what my typical day involved. He was dead impressed with my busy-ness by the time I'd gotten to 9am in the morning. Um that is what working and having children looks like of a morning, nothing very unique. But we established that my biggest barrier to physical exercise was time. I do get time to myself in the evening, time to read or sew or blog or surf the net, but it isn't physical activity time.

So this Wednesday I start doing some exercises in a room above the pub. Given that I go at 9am and have to work later in the day, I should be safe from the temptation to go to the pub afterwards.

At the supermarket tonight I bought some gladioli for summer flowering. It is the one pictured above, called Irish Blessing. I think I shall plant them in a big pot so I can move them round to where I see them most. It is fashionable amongst greenies to eschew the supermarket, and I've done just that for chunks of the last decade. But right now, I LOVE the supermarket. I love that it is open until 9pm so I can go down at 8.30pm and buy breakfast food and prevent early morning disaster all. by. myself. It's cheaper that way. Or, put another way, the treat is gladioli bulbs instead of Snow White tissues. Better value for the mother.

Food. Whether I feel like cooking it, or growing it, or buying it, people keep on getting hungry. Not long ago my children turned an excellent display of good fortune. They were asked to draw the numbers out for the meat raffle at the pub and Brighid drew out our friend's number and Fionn drew out FH's number. Since then, we've had sausages, beef swirls and now loin chops from the meat pack. the loin chops were good. I might buy them again. Next is some cross cut steak. I feared recreating the charred chops of my childhood and I recoiled from the cost of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's recipe for loin chops, so I marinated them in garlic and rosemary and olive oil and grilled them for dinner tonight. They turned out pretty good. Last night I made latke. Three people liked them. Three people is good.

Laundry. It's rather like death and taxes.

Girl with Curves

2011-09-10T22:33:00.002+12:00

Clothes stuff. That seems to be my main evening interest at the moment. Just for my own personal record really...
1. I have nearly finished the night shirt. I shortened it a lot compared to the last one. Looking at it unhemmed, I think I will make pyjama bottoms for it and it can be a long pj top with bottoms for the coldest nights and the nightshirt can work alone when it is warm.
2. I was thinking about cardies the other day? This looks useful:
It is McCalls 6408 and is apparently easy to sew. Not just now, but maybe after I've sewn the Colette Crepe. I suspect I'll have to buy fabric outside of Wetville for it. I like the red version. Indeed, I would like a red version myself.
3. The Colette Crepe pattern arrived. Gotta get the night shirt jammy bottoms made up so I can sew the big spring project. The instructions do look very accessible.
4. Found a blog called Girl with Curves. Tanesha Awasthi is totally gorgeous and what makes her blog appeal to me is that I look at her outfits and think I could and would wear some of them. Not so for almost all clothing/fashion shoots/displays.
This is an example from her blog. I think she'd love the fit opportunities which sewing would open up.
5. Much of the appeal of sewing at the moment is that it is a break from my paid work. It has taken me years to consciously realise that September is the busiest time of my working year. I appreciate beyond words my kind friend Carolyn who looked after my children this afternoon so I could go to work. Meeting deadlines is a good thing.
6. Books. I don't know. I think it is time I started reading again. Can't sew until past bedtime and read more than the odd magazine though.
7. Chooks. The egg numbers are improving, but this morning there were two soft shelled eggs again. Two firm shelled eggs as well and I am taking care to provide lots of grit. I've been googling and starting tomorrow I shall add apple cider vinegar to their water, something I've known about doing before but been slack about regularly adding it.

Rain? bah, rainCOAT.

2011-09-08T21:00:00.006+12:00

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 Sunday

2011-09-04T21:37:00.004+12:00

in which I began to deal with this:

a small section of a small room. Another view, in case any orderly readers were not sufficiently shocked by the first photo, is here:

Now that the sun is down, the children asleep and I think there are enough clean clothes to send the four of us into the world tomorrow, I can report that I have cleared one sqaure metre. Leaving the most difficult two square metres remaining. Still. Progress of one kind or another.

Interruptions to the cleaning project centred around Fathers Day and the rugby league breakup. Favourite Handyman had to go to work for much of the day but I took pity on them all and took them to my least favourite shop, the one in the big red building, and they chose gel pens and dora stampers to embellish the cards they then made for their Dad. We took pizza to work to share with FH and then it was time to go to the league breakup, an event involving many many speeches and presentations, artifically coloured fizzy for the kids and alcoholic fizzy for the adults (I abstained. It does happen occasionally.) and the fastest gobbling of a huge feast that I've ever seen. Around our place we don't go for presents on Mothers and Fathers Day, but we do give the special day person a day off dishes/cooking/ironing, which used up the rest of my day.

Except.... I did fit in a little gardening... About six weeks ago we dumped the floor of the poultry palace on the garden first and researched later. So it was only afterwards that I learned that the mixture of wood shavings and chook poo (specifically the wood shavings) was probably leaching nitrogen out of the soil. John at the garden shop suggested sulphate of ammonia when I asked for something to help restore the nitrogen balance. I sprinkled that on a couple of beds and then added a bit of lime and some potting mix for good measure. Then I planted tat soi and spinach in the punga raised bed garden.

Lovely daffs and kale huh? I think I would like to make a daffodils and kale forest throughout all of this garden.

Colour and the Colette Crepe

2011-09-03T22:08:00.004+12:00

I've been reading Dennis Greville's book Colourful Gardens and learning more about colour combos in the garden. That should really read 'I am now starting to learn about colour combos in the garden.' As well as thinking about what colours I want where, I've also experimented with where I put flowers ever sine we moved into our home nearly five years ago. At first I chose the places where I thought they would look best. But that wasn't actually where we could see them very often. Now that the daffodils are in flower in the old chook run, looking wonderful against the blue green of the cavolo nero kale, I see that that is the best place. It is the best place because I look that way from the kitchen window a lot. Also at the beginning of our gardening experiments, I didn't bother with the front garden as I figured that was for onlookers and I didn't care about them at all. But now that I've changed my view on the front and planted some flowers, I realise that I look at the front garden every single day as I arrive home. I also realise that the deep red cyclamen which I bought a fortnight ago (and misnamed as a begonia initially) is the most beautiful plant and I want more. No pink or white ones AT ALL, just deep red.

The insomnia project. Most rude of my body to be wide awake in the early hours of the morning a couple of times this week. But I found a project, made good use of my time. I've ordered a sewing pattern all the way from the USA and I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching it. It is the Colette Crepe pattern and it looks flattering to a curvy figure AND, given it is made of woven fabric rather than a knit one, I think my sewing machine and me can handle it. I was won over by reading that Patty the Snug Bug made hers without any alterations.

I had planned to make a front wrap dress from New Look 6674, but it took me so incredibly long to make the FBA. and then I used a different technique on each side for the dart placement so I can't be sure which one to replicate again, and then there are so many other pieces to be adjusted to match the altered bodice, until I felt tired just thinking about sewing it. Having followed the alterations Patty usually makes to patterns, and read elsewhere that Colette patterns are drafted for a more generous bust than the larger patternmaking companies, I decided that it was worth buying internationally to get a pattern which might fit without a thousand alterations.

When it arrives, I will make it up in an old sheet. I have quite a collection of sheets from the Sallies which I bought for this very purpose. Today's find is a strong contender:

There are some very gorgeous examples of this pattern on the flickr group. One of my favourites is a yellow gingham version from Sew Country Chick. This one is great from the Leopard Anchor. There are some fantastic spotty versions on the flickr group.

Yes I do know that I'm supposed to be doing a lot of other things. But insomnia calls for some relaxing, dreaming kind of projects, not ruthless efficiency.

chook news

2011-09-01T20:46:00.006+12:00

The sun shone and it was time to let the chooks out of the poultry palace. We've had these chooks for a month now, but kept them in the run (5 x 2 metres plus a large laying coop) as they were noticeably more jittery around us than previous chooks. But they have definitely become tamer and I knew the endless green would be good for them.

Hmmmm. They did enjoy being out of the run. They did not want to be caught again. The fifth one took about an hour to catch. Not that I chased her for the entire hour but I did weed the garden and wait and wait and wait until my moment to catch her and boy did she have a lot to say about it when I did gather her up under my arm. I put a pot of seeded salad greens in the run later which they liked. I may have to grow pots of greens to put in the run for them as a supplement for the dock and wandering jew which we pick and poke through the chickenwire. No photos. I was too busy with the problems of reincarceration.

Tonight, the sewing urge hit. I could not face the organisation required to sew properly, the kind of thing I would complete and wear out of the house, but I did sew some bright green knit material into an unhemmed skirt. My friend Ruth gave it to me because her machine wouldn't handle the knit fabric and I doubted mine would not long after. But I was most gratified to discover that when I changed to a ballpoint needle, inserted the needle in the machine properly (learnt I'd been doing it wrong in an article recently) and loosened the tension, I managed a nice tiny zigzag seam without jamming the machine or making the terrible noise while sewing that I started the evening making. The last proper skirt I made turned out very unflattering, even though I like the curtain fabric it is made out of.

I have daffodils, thanks to moving them to a sunny position a fortnight ago. We are usually the last people to have daffodils in bloom even within our suburban stretch, but I love them like they are the first of the season when they do arrive. I see the bluebells are poking their flowerheads up now too.

Scapino

2011-08-31T19:22:00.003+12:00

Sometimes, when I have neither time nor patience to sew and the Sallies have good dinner plates but nothing I want to wear, Postie Plus is a good place to go. Every spring I feel the urge to buy something new, really new. Today I bought this:
It's called a scapino chiffon overlay dress. If anyone knows what scapino means, then I'd love to learn. There are worse ways to spend $49.90

I also made fish chowder with my home made fish stock. I cooked the first part in the slow cooker throughout the day and then put the mix into a saucepan to boil with the fish pieces and kale when I got home from work. The fish stock is wobbly when straight from the fridge, indicating reasonable amounts of gelatine and probably other brothy goodness. It tasted quite good. Next time I shall attempt a Chinese style fish soup with ginger and garlic and noodles instead of today's sort of British mish mash of turmeric, carrots, onions and potatoes. And kale and fish pieces too of course. Kale for every meal. It has started to go to seed. I must check if we can eat the yellow flowers. I also added bonito to the chowder

I have lined up another person to interview for the care workers' exhibition. We are focusing the exhibition on Grey District care workers, with a commentary linking their situation to national trends.

I also even watched some telly last night when I babysat for a friend. A sky knowledge programme about a rather glamorous older woman tracing her family tree. Apart from the ridiculous especially-for tv-repetitions and gasping, it was quite good. They focused on the wealthy great great great grandparents though, when I was most fascinated by the son of the rich merchants who died in an alms house in Greenwich, who they barely touched on.

The situation regarding this sports madness in New Zealand is, in my view, quite insane. Prosecuting people for advertising anything to do with the rugby world cup and at the same time running ads trying to sell the tickets no one wants and wanting us all to support it just doesn't come together satisfactorily in my book.

Tomorrow is Thursday, known here as a mummy day as I never ever ever go to work on a Thursday and also, hopefully, going to be a garden day.

fishy

2011-08-29T20:41:00.002+12:00

I apologise in advance for linking to the Daily Mail. I never thought I would see the day... But whilst googling in the weekend, I found this article on why female breasts are getting larger, essentially suggesting a correlation between oestrogen overload and breast size. Plastics, synthetic hormones, chemical disruptions all over again. There is a large literature on how to avoid these 'evils', but it is expensive to make all the changes which are generally recommended. For now, I have a renewed commitment to avoid non-organic chicken. A timely reminder given that I've been cooking it rather often in the last year.

So today I made fish stock. It smells good and I've made almost three litres of it. It looks terrible though - nothing like the beautiful translucent golden colour of chicken stock. The suggested uses for fish stock are not as wide as for chicken stock. I can see some fish chowder and fish risotto on the menu. I'm also on a magnesium mission once again and to that end I'm eating raw almonds each day. Because obviously you click on Letters from Wetville because you are gagging to know what I feel like eating...

I've put the fish bones in the bokashi, which I've not done before, but the literature seems to think fish bones (but not meat bones) are okay. I will bury this bucket's worth deeper when burial time comes.

Last week I bought more garden plants. Waiting to go in the garden are: primulas, cavolo nero, spinach, chinese cabbage, tat soi, pak choy and beetroot.

I've been having a look at the Wecare website which supports family members caring for elderly and disabled relatives. I like the photo messages. I don't have anything profound to say about care work although I've been reading and I've lined up another person to interview. I started a blog post about history and definitions of need and rights relating to wider support from the state and voluntary groups when I was in bed convalescing yesterday, but it's far from finished.

fashionably blighted

2011-08-27T13:23:00.003+12:00

Illness is hugely fashionable here in Wetville this week. Numbers at work were decimated. Almost everyone actually present at work was hoarse or flushed or very pale or otherwisely looking like they were about to go down or should be at home. I croaked a little and took a lot of vitamins.

In the middle of yesterday, the vitamins lost the fight. I sat at my desk at my work as a wave of heavy heat descended over one eye. Not so very good. The first casualty was my patience. After an afternoon of weird one sided increasing croakiness in which I was quite a good mother, I could not be bothered with the sensible option of drinking nettle tea and juicing broccoli leaves and opened the wine bottle instead. Given that I actually cooked dinner on Friday night instead of paying for takeaways and regretting the expenditure very soon afterwards, two glasses of wine were entirely warranted.

Now I am at home instead of on the league sideline, the four year old is so very quiet that no doubt she is doing something she absolutely should not be, and the heavy feeling is over the other eye instead. And my nose.

But. But but but, the world is still a beautiful place. In my garden I have the beginnings of both purple and green broccoli heads. We get one little perfectly formed brown egg each day. Not a huge haul for five chooks, but it serves us right for killing the last lot so damn early.

We have made a start on the care workers exhibition. It was very interesting on Thursday and I only wish I had more time to immerse myself in it. While I was in Blackball, Brighid and I went to the Blackball Salami shop, where they had just finished making saveloys and so Brighid got a warm sav for free. I can remember being four and being given a saveloy for free at the butcher's. I bought zillions of sausages, saveloys, bacon ends, salami ends, black pudding and biersticks.

I bought a dictaphone. Firstly I bought a useless one because the shop assistant assured me it was not useless. But he was wrong and a dictaphone which won't download to a computer is useless. So I returned it and got a refund and took my business down the road to where they sell more expensive dictaphones which actually do as I want them to do and also the shop assistant checked the machine before answering my questions rather than making the answers up. Plus I was offered a discount of $11. Go Ellerys. It is true that we have spent a LOT of money with them over the last almost six years.

What I am going to do with my new dictaphone is to record some interview for the care workers exhibition and to record my Mary K's stories. Mary K is 84 and she tells wonderful stories and I want to preserve them.

This morning I decided a knitting project was in order. It is at the very early stages but when it is done it will be the pinafore below, for one of Brighid's dolls.

I don't have anything else to report because I seem to be at work a great deal at the moment.

spiral filo pie

2011-08-23T21:17:00.003+12:00

They had a much flasher name for it in Cuisine. But essentially it involved making up a onion-spice-mince-tomato filling, letting it cool and then rolling it in filo (two layers with olive oil in between, spread the mixture out along the long side of the rectangle and roll up) and arranging it in a pie dish in a spiral starting from the centre.

It tasted good, felt like a change from the same old meals we've been having forever and it would adapt to any kind of filo filling. The magazine said to top with sesame seeds which I think would be great, only we didn't have any.

A step up on the effort front from cheap Tuesdays at Dominoes Pizza indeed.

Ten top dress making blogs. For those who feel that this is the wrong time of night for efficiency, and is better suited to looking at blogs of clever crafty people before falling asleep without a single care for the unfolded washing.

Gary Younge & Luddite Journo

2011-08-22T20:46:00.004+12:00

Gary Younge has been my favourite Guardian journalist since I first moved to London and discovered the beauty of a liberal newspaper (it's pretty exciting when the Press, then the ODT, then most dismally, the Herald, were what passed for decent newspapers before then) which actually offered analysis of events. Today's Guardian Weekly contained this excellent piece by Younge. As a sample:

But beyond Tottenham, those who took to the streets last week failed to advance any cause, embrace any ideal or articulate any agenda. This places them firmly in the context of a weak and ineffectual left that has failed to reinvent and reinvigorate itself in the face of a deep economic crisis.

Younge has the analysis and I always love to read it. Those games of who you would like to invite for dinner? I used to fancy having Younge and Nigella Lawson for dinner. Not that I expect they'd have a lot in common with me or each other. I do wish though, that we had some better news for the achievements of the left.

Reading about welfare from a historian's perspective reminds me of the harsh judgements meted out on the unrespectable poor in 19th century New Zealand. Eugenic ideas were bandied about then and they retain or have regained currency now. Thank you Luddite Journo for your blog post Turn the Page on Hate. When we dehumanise others, we dehumanise ourselves.

Cream cheese. I've decided it is my winning ingredient in terms of making otherwise ordinary food taste luxurious and special, even in small quantities. I added about 50g to tonight's self-crusting quiche and it lifted it out of mundane Monday night fare into yum stuff (to my mind and tastebuds anyway).

No sewing lately. I've banned myself from new crafty projects until I have this care worker exhibition underway, or even finished.

beetroot, beach & roses

2011-08-21T20:30:00.005+12:00

I made beetroot cake from Pam Blowers' recipe in the July/August 2011 issue of Organic NZ. The original recipe has various sweetener and flour options; I've listed what I used.

300g grated beetroot
1 C brown sugar
1/2 t vanilla essence
3/4 C olive oil
2 eggs
1 C wholemeal flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 C cocoa
1/4 C chia gel (whisk the 1/4 C of water with a heaped teaspoon of chia seeds to form a suspension of the seeds - I did this by putting it all in a small jar and shaking it)
1/3 C ground almonds - I used almond flour
1/3 C ground sunflower seeds

1. Beat sugar, oil, eggs. Add vanilla essence and beetroot. Mix.
2. Sift in the flour, baking powder and cocoa.
3. Add ground almonds and sunflower seeds and chia gel.
4. Mix to just combined - do not overmix.
Pour into greased 20cm square pan. Bake at 180 celsius for 35-40 minutes until firm to touch.

It tasted good. My pan was 20cm x 28cm so it was more like beetroot brownie than classically shaped cake. The texture suits brownie-ness. I don't think the flavour is just right but I'm not exactly sure what is missing. Next time (it's definitely worth making again) I shall add a pinch of salt and some mixed spice.

During much of the rest of a very beautiful sunny day, I gardened. I weeded the creeping buttercup mini hedge. According to some organic gardeners, all weeds perform some kind of valuable function in an environment. Creeping buttercup thrives in compacted, acid soils. I don't know about the acid part, but the shape of its root structure means that it does break up the soil, particularly as it is weeded out. Unlike its partner in crime, dock, it is fairly easy to weed out with the aid of a fork. I buried bokashi in the trench where the buttercup used to be, and sprinkled some lettuce and welsh bunching onion seed on top. The seed is past its best-by date but I thought I would scatter it on the ground rather than throwing it in the rubbish.

Then I went to prune the roses along the red fence. Prune is rather a fancy word for trying to slash the jungle. But I couldn't find the secateurs anywhere and I know I had them last and lost them. Ooops. Brighid and I set off for Mitre 10 to buy some very bright red secateurs which would be harder to lose. Somehow we managed to bring home even more iceland poppies for the garden, which I planted in a curve around my salad greens garden. Back home, I filled a cardboard box with prunings and made a small inroad into the rose jungle.

But before we got home, we stopped to feed the ducks. The sense of space (and the literal space) so close to our amenities (that's the hospital in the left background) still amazes me. I remember in 2006 Mum driving Fionn and I into our new town, our new life, and wondering how I would adjust to all the space, the odd spread-outness and seemingly isolated houses after London life. I did.

We also spent time on the cycle way. Our end is still just a rough bulldozed track, but a huge pile of gravel in the distance promises that improvements are not far away.

Kale for dinner. Like breathing, y'know [except for takeaways nights]. Slice an onion. Chop sausages into 3-4 pieces each. Wash and chop kale. Sautee onion in olive oil. Add sausages. Put lid on frying pan and turn down low. After a while, add the washed kale and some splashes of balsamic vinegar. I served it with raw carrots (there is some kind of religious taboo on cooked carrots as far as my children are concerned) and potato wedges, which had paprika, lemon and pepper (that very useful packet premix stuff) and turmeric and olive oil on them. Between the turmeric (anti-inflammatory and other good things I forget about right now) and the ingredients in the beetroot cake, I think I did quite well on sliding extra good stuff in without fanfare today.

Garden Day

2011-08-20T20:00:00.005+12:00

Gardening day! I've waited a long time and it was worth the wait.
My beer traps a few months ago seemed to stave off the slugs from my broccoli seedlings and now they are middled sized - hopefully ready to feed us in a month or two. I've left some of the borage seedlings to grow for the bees and today I planted soldier (flanders/ANZAC) poppies amongst the broccoli. I thought the red and black would contrast well with the blue-green of the broccoli leaves. At the very foreground of the photo is my ever present companion, creeping buttercup. I left a green wall of creeping buttercup to the left of the photo (not visible) when I planted the broccoli, with the idea of it being a windbreak for my salad greens which I sowed at the same time.
This is my salad greens plot, and the windbreak does seem to have helped. Tomorrow I plan to dig out the windbreak before it breaks out as the ground warms and takes over.
Globe artichokes doing okay. Perhaps this year will be the one when I actually cook and eat them. Again, several self sown borage plants left to flower.
My rhubarb has gone to seed here. Last year one (different) plant did this and I cut it out. This time I will leave this one to nature and see what happens next. Although all round it are miniature rhubarb plants and the entire plot seems to need uplifting, weeding, mulching and replanting. I gave lots and lots away not long ago.
In the closest corner of the punga raised bed is the celery which I planted today. I added blood and bone and plenty of lime first. I had wonderful celery in my first two gardens at this house and pretty terrible ever since. I think it has been the absence of calcium in the soil, so fingers crossed this time. The piles behind and beside the celery are from the poultry palace. I did think it was fantastic fertiliser at the time, but reading since has me wary. The wood shavings are not broken down so despite being mixed with chook poo, it may still steal nitrogen from the soil, the opposite of what I want to achieve. I may yet shovel it back into the wheelbarrow and then into the compost bin. Alternatively, I have considered leaving it there and spreading fresh grass clippings on top.
This is the old chook run garden, which Brighid considers to be hers. The clump of daffodils (leaves only at this stage) used to be in the front garden until this afternoon. It rarely flowers, and then only one, out the front, because of the low sun levels. Today I planted iceland poppies in front of the kale. We are still eating kale regularly and what doesn't get eaten in the next few weeks will turn into beautiful yellow flowers for the bees.
This is the other end of the old chook run garden. Brighid chose the pink of the polyanthus. I chose the pansies colossus. In the back left corner are leeks for spring eating.
Today I was almost all about flowers. I bought a red begonia and a blue Chatham Island forget me not. I would love to have blue forget me nots along the back of the wall and the deep red begonias all along the front. One step at a time, given they were $5 each. It's new for me to splash out on flower plants apart from the occasional rose, but hobbies do evolve...
The convalescents on the home run to good health. Is her face always dirty or just in photos? Hmmm.
This manuka is currently in a pot in front of the lounge. I'd like it in the ground but I'm a bit wary of the cables underneath.

Changing conceptions of need

2011-08-19T19:50:00.003+12:00

Vomit over. I spent much of the day on the couch while the convalescing children seemed increasingly to have more energy than me. I re-read gardening magazines and decided I want to paint our outside table yellow and did some garden re-arranging in my head.

Then Past Judgement: Social Policy in New Zealand History arrived and now I am considering ideas like 'changing conceptions of need' across a range of contexts. It is a pleasure to read such thoughtful, intelligent prose as in this book. I guess I spend so much of my non-fiction reading time on op-ed style short texts which pale by comparison with this product of months and years and sometimes decades of research, thinking and writing. Our Blackball exhibition on care workers will be squarely focused on the workers themselves, but I want a sense of the wider issues in which their real, individual lives play out. There are another half dozen or more books in the footnotes which look very interesting but I will be ruthless - less dreaming and more interviewing once I've read this book and the other one I have ordered.

Confined to the house for the better part of three days, I imagine that when life turns away from nursing to something erroneously known as 'normal', I will burst forth with energy and find the discipline to go walking each morning before 7am. Ha ha ha. Certainly if I wait until after the kids are at school and kindy, I'll never fit walking in.

In the garden collecting leaves for my salad this morning, I heard a distinctive crowing that I've been listening for for weeks now. Indeed, there were two eggs in the coop. Both very soft shelled, and one broken because of the extreme thinness. I recall that the kinds of eggs are irregular at the beginning of laying, but I threw in extra handfuls of grit all the same. By next weekend, we could be back to eating our own poached eggs for Saturday breakfast.

Still no actual gardening, even though the outside weather has been superb here.

vomit zone

2011-08-18T12:58:00.002+12:00

It was lovely while it lasted. Absolutely, utterly lovely. A healthy household that is.

Yesterday, just as I was running around in a state of medium level torment over how many things I had to do and how mu multi-life was spirally out of control, firstly I came in from the washing line to find a message to say I had no childcare that afternoon due to a tragedy involving the family cat. That's not an insurmountable problem, just another task. So I can't get my friend on the phone, so next choice is I make Brighid's lunch really quickly and head to kindy ready to ask the favour at kindy pick up and at the same time I'm running through the steps needed if Brighid needs to stay with one of us at work.

But none of that turns out to matter. I walk into kindy and am immediately called over to a corner by one of the teachers. Brighid is on a makeshift bed and looking dreadful. We leave with an ice cream container just in case. Fifty metres down the road I stop the car and Brighid fills the container with her kai (morning tea). I drive to work, run in very fast to tell the two key people I can't work and run out and take her home. Since then, Brighid has vomited and slept and done nothing else. The vomiting was mostly at night and the sleeping has been mostly in the day. As I've cancelled everything I'd planned for today (and tomorrow for that matter, given her current state), life is not actually nearly as stressful now as yesterday morning.

I love that we have a reliable washing machine. I love that we have plenty of spare bedding and linen. I love that we have plenty of coal to keep the house warm.

Fionn is home as well. His cough sounded like a seal barking in the night so I decreed he was staying home in convalescent land as well. This morning we played Monopoly and now he is writing a letter to his Auckland Grandad. Homeschool for a day or so I can do. Actually he wants to play on the computer, but because those far off days when I was going to parent without bribery are so far off that I'm not totally sure they ever existed, he has to write the letter, to my satisfaction, first.

Yesterday morning, one of the tasks preying on my mind was the Blackball working class history museum exhibition on care workers which Denise and I haven't started. Last time we planned to meet, her family vomited, and today was my turn to cancel. But I did choose my non-fiction purchase for 2011. Other years I've bought nutrition or cooking books (e.g. Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions and Paul Pitchford's Healing with Whole Foods) but this year I've gone for history. I miss having a university library at my disposal very very much and I haven't been organised enough to interloan through our local library. So I ordered two (ooops) books by Margaret Tennant. The first is Past Judgement: Social Policy in New Zealand History and the second is The Fabric of Welfare: Voluntary Organisations, Government and Welfare in New Zealand 1840-2005. I loved Margaret Tennant's work on Victorian charitable aid and ideology when I was studying in the early 1990s, so I hope these books are similarly wonderful. My idea is that I will a) enjoy reading them and b) get the wider context I want from an up to date source before I launch into the real substance of the exhibition, which is local interviews with care workers.

My Kings Seeds order has arrived. Time to get started with some windowsill coriander, assuming I'm not needed on vomit support.

Room

2011-08-15T20:39:00.003+12:00

I've just finished Room by Emma Donoghue. It was ghoulish. I don't like the genre of really nasty stuff in lots of detail at all. Once I read one of Martina Cole's novels when I was pregnant and we were travelling through Spain which seemed to accentuate my reaction. It was all about a pimp and drug dealer and the women he seduced and then exploited. I had nightmares. For the record, at the time of these nightmares stemming from reading a novel, I was 30 years old. Last night I started Room and couldn't stop until Jack and Ma were out of the room (prison) and I even cheated and read bits at the back to make sure they would get out sometime in this novel, preferably early.

I'm not even attempting to write more about capitalism and socialism and alienation and social isolation and racism and the UK riot court verdicts having echoes of Victorian England only this time there are no colonies to send people to only ooops lots of the people who were arrested for looting were indeed from the very colonies which 'Great' Britain looted and plundered and made people already there feel like foreigners in their own country.

Today we had snow. Not as much as most of the rest of the country, but still enough to make the house very cold and me not care at all about global warming and pollution because I love the heat that coal creates on days like these. I walk round the garden each day watching for signs of spring. So far, we have an iris, a crocus, the new polyanthus and pansies I planted, the tat soi and some of the kale getting ready to go to seed and quite a lot of broad bean flowers. Every year I don't much like broad beans and every winter I plant or sow some anyway because planting in winter is such a rare and wonderful treat. Movement on the asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli and green broccoli fronts is what I really want.

The chooks seem happy, but haven't laid any eggs yet. I just looked back on my old blog to read about our first lot of chooks back in 2008. Seems like I was gardening all the time then. They started laying after two weeks with us. We have had our new chooks for two weeks and two days.

This is what I have just ordered from Kings Seeds:

Basil Sweet Genovese

Coriander Slowbolt

Rocket                           

Sunflower Incredible Dwarf       

Carrot Rainbow Blend              

 Mesclun Organic               

Bergamot Bee Balm            

Beetroot Colour Blend         

Sage White                 

Stock Perfumed Giants           

Aquilegia Shady Garden Scatter     

Cowslip                          

Sunflower Ikarus                

Tomato Suncherry F1

I wanted marshmallow as well but they had run out. No kale as in late summer the white butteflies are such a nuisance that it is easier to buy it as seedlings from the garden centre.

Pollyanna's socialist crisis

2011-08-12T21:30:00.003+12:00

A few weeks ago, doing kitchen stuff at the kitchen sink with National Radio on beside me, I started to question my Pollyanna approach to rejecting capitalism. No doubt it had been brewing for a while, in a similar way to when I started to question precepts of the Catholic Church as a teenager. Tonight's post is an attempt to put into words the conversations I have with myself in my head during the day.

I had hippy tendencies long before I became a mother, but when I did give birth, the green movement filled an almost emotional gap. My vision of being an earth mother was challenged from the very beginning, as feeding turned out to be very problematic. Putting my baby into cloth nappies and sourcing organic baby salves and eschewing much that was plastic was something I could control, and it meant I got to hang out with the other earth mothers.

An interest in peak oil scenarios was a logical development from this. Once we had our own garden, first in London and later on the West Coast of New Zealand, I could marry this to my love of gardening. The vegetable growing project continues.

But frankly, given the current scale of global financial uncertainty, I'm more inclined these days to pin my apocalyptic horror fascination to financial narratives. I've lived a very sheltered life and never ever gone hungry because of lack of money. Despite a blue collar and blue voting family background, I've been a leftie as long as I can remember. To a large extent, I'm all about redistribution of wealth for the greatest breadth of good. I tend to only do competition in limited forms.

But given that the consequences of the global situation maybe really widespread and long lasting drops in living standards even in New Zealand, then I just may have to accept Darwin and accept more competition.

Which doesn't quite fit with being a socialist. Being good at my work job or at my home jobs is not the same as being competitive. Competitive, taken to its logical conclusion, means others will miss out.

That is as far as I can manage tonight. The UK riots came along while I was still grappling with how to express myself on capitalism and economic apocalypse (I do love the sound of that word), and they are far more challenging and yet also related. I think my deeper question is not so much why did the riots happen (many better conjectures than mine are out there) but rather 'how do I make peace with a world in which this happens?' It's safe to say that the answer doesn't come in a neatly packaged box.

Stopped and searched

2011-08-11T19:06:00.004+12:00

Still thinking a lot about the riots throughout the UK. This Guardian article: 'Being liberal is fine, but we need to be given the right to parent' deals with some of the challenges which the left need to consider as clearly empathy for the sense of hopelessness of estate life in a recession is not to be conflated with carte blanche for people to loot and riot. The stop and search law came in after we left the UK and I had not considered how it impacted on the lives of quite young men until this week. To think of my own son being stopped and searched by the police at the age of 14, on the way home from school, makes me shudder.

Yesterday I planted flanders poppies, polyanthus, pansies and snowdrops along the front of the house. Today I did housework. Tonight I aim to learn why my chooks (not laying yet) have red in their poo.

Update: this very useful page has photographs of all kinds of chook poo, explaining what is normal and what is problematic. So now I know that at least one of ym chooks has shed intestinal lining and that this is quite normal and not at all problematic.

smoke

2011-08-10T21:45:00.003+12:00

Please read this excellent post on the London riots from Penny Red.

I have thought a lot about the riots, about social exclusion, about the structural deficiencies and amorality of capitalism, but I lost lucidity sometime around the moment when I burnt the stock pot and, had we not had a smoke alarm, would have caught the house on fire.

The rioters, burning and looting and attacking police, did the wrong thing. They all did very wrong things. There is not a time to be listened to if you are dispossessed. You are always required to go back to the queue and wait quietly. Not everyone is prepared to wait forever.

Thankful

2011-08-09T19:40:00.002+12:00

Tonight I am grateful for my own safety and that of my family. I think of the police and their families and the horrible fear which must accompany every shift in the UK at the moment. I think of the people living in the midst of the riot areas, their loss and devastation. I think of the families of the rioters, some of them unable to account for their children, wondering what they could have done differently. I think of the rioters, people who made bad choices, who allowed greed and the heady effects of mob mentality to override their better instincts.

I think of the consequences of a deeply unequal society.

Dances with Fat

2011-08-07T20:25:00.004+12:00

My favourite blog find this weekend is Dances with Fat. Go read it. She writes well, thinks intelligently, is all about genuine respect and the vids look like she moves pretty fantastically as well. Thank you to the Wellington Young Feminists' Collective for sending me the way of the Articulate dancer.

Another link worth following is my mate Peter Clayworth's piece on the 1981 Spring Bok tour (scroll down past Jock Phillips' piece to find Peter's). There are more pieces on the tour memoirs which I intend to follow up, courtesy of John Minto's guest post on Liberation.

The gala was great. Crap weather, despite my determination that if I willed it to be sunny, then the heavens would obey. We had more people painting faces this year so the kids didn't have to wait for long to be painted. My guess is they made plenty of money despite the bad weather.

Look at the blank floor space. Massive project this afternoon. Massive achievement. What you can't see is that the lego, duplo, puzzle pieces, toy vehicles, alphabet blocks, dolls' clothes, pens and pencils and crayons, are now all in their own dedicated boxes, not mostly scrambled up together. What did that cost? Four glasses of wine at the end. Fionn helped but he didn't do enough to earn wine.

Food day

2011-08-04T22:56:00.004+12:00

Three fruit loaves, two fruit cakes and one banana cake. Plus roast chicken for dinner. Not a single moment in the garden :( But I did buy a beer kit for FH's birthday though. Recipes below.

Moist Fruit Cake

Put in saucepan:

1 small cup water, 6ozs sugar, 1-lb mixed fruit, 1 tspn mixed spice, 4ozs butter

Bring to boil and simmer 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and cool (not cold)

When cool add ½ teaspoon baking soda.

Beat 2 eggs well and add to mixture, then add 8-oz flour and 1 teaspoon baking power sifted together.

Bake in moderate oven. Great Grandma's instructions are for 60 minutes but mine was cooked in 40.

Fruit Loaf

Put in bowl: 4-oz sugar 1 cup sultanas ½ oz butter 1 tablespoon golden syrup 1 teaspoon baking soda

Pour over 1 cup boiling water and stir well.

Cool mixture

When cool add 8 oz flour and 1½ teaspoons baking power.

Pour into lined loaf tin. Bake approximately 45 min at 350F

The banana cake is from the Edmonds recipe book. I made that for the children, because Brighid insisted. I've frozen most of it for school and kindy lunches. Brighid helped me for a while. My pace picked up a lot after she wandered off to do other things.

Nice tasting swede

3 C coarsely grated swede (1 small swede)

2 T water

2 t butter

1 T brown sugar

1 t soy sauce

Combine all ingredients in a heavy based saucepan. Cover and cook gently, stirring frequently until they are tender-crisp (about 5 minutes).

The swede is from a few weeks ago. It ticks budget and nutrition boxes. It also looks good on the plate beside kale, in case you were wondering if I had abandoned my primary vegetable alliance. I made pumpkin soup for dinner on Monday night and then on Wednesday night I cooked pasta and used the leftover soup as the sauce and grated parmesan cheese on the top of each individual bowl. It tasted fine and I thought the wolf would not break down the door if I keep this careful use of food thing going.

Tonight I cooked roast chicken. The oven had been getting so vile it would smell before I cooked food in it and even I could not stand it any longer. So I cleaned it and as I think the culprit for making all that oven mess was roasted chicken fat, I cooked tonight's roast in an oven bag. It tasted fine, but as I was pulling the bag off it I thought about how endlessly bad plastic is supposed to be against hot food. I need a third solution, and I would like one which preserves a proper crispy chicken skin, doesn't make a mess of the oven and doesn't involve plastic. It's time I started chopping up the chicken carcass before it is cooked and doing more interesting things with the meat and keeping the bones for raw bone stock (as opposed to using the cooked bones). I'd done enough kitchen time today though, long before dinner prep time.

Tonight was book group. It was great to hear what everyone else has been reading. I've brought home Jeanette Winterson's Lighthousekeeping and Emma Donoghue's Room to read by the end of the month.

I've no idea when we will get as far as painting the dining room, but we still talk about possible colours and in the meantime I'm liking the Habitat of the week series. My latest idea is to pick up the rose red and cream of the dining room table (which is wooden with a red and white formica top) by making three walls cream and a feature wall of rose red. It took a long time to even consider something as gentle as having the bold colour on one wall instead of four.

I did manage to share a little creative love yesterday at kindy. Brighid had worn her button necklace the day before and proudly answered questions about it with "My Mum made it". Awwwww. (NB: Remember this when she is sixteen Sandra, and tomorrow when she is obstreperous). The teachers asked if I would show them how, so I brought some cotton thread and buttons down to kindy and made necklaces with kindy kids. Only one kindy kid made her own and the others preferred to choose the buttons for me to make one for them. I might source some thick bright braid or rope and do another session on plaiting, this time set up so the kids do the plaiting. I've also got a book out from the library with some cool string dolls which might be doable... Then I snuck off to Mary K's to borrow her baking tins and after kindy and lunch was done, Brighid went to Sharon's and I went to work. I find myself feeling like I should be doing something else no matter what I am doing and am making myself shake it.

The new chooks are still very shy and skittish. I don't think they've had much human interaction before now. I think next time (which of course won't be for years) I will buy from a smaller, local source.

Tips from a cake stall queen

2011-08-02T21:17:00.002+12:00

Today is the southern hemisphere Imbolc. I remembered as I drove away from Dominos pizza (cheap Tuesday) and FH commented on the beautiful weather and how it was a sign of his favourite season about to come.

So the very special meal we had celebrating Imbolc was pizza from a cardboard box. Very nice it was too. I wandered round the garden and gazed out at the sea and it does feel like positive change is in the air. The first iris is out.

Tonight was the last PTA meeting before the gala. It all looks like it is going to be fabulous. If I can remember the various things I have committed to, then I too will be a good brownie and community member. This morning my Mum sent through her best fundraising baking recipes. Tomorrow I'll buy the ingredients and borrow the tins and on Thursday Brighid and I can have a bakeathon. My Mum is a cake stall queen. Even when I was a teenager and she was working almost full time, I remember getting up at 7am and finding she had been up since five and the top of the large freezer was covered with baking for whatever worthy cause was asking that week. She seems quite chuffed that a) I've asked for her recipes and b) that I'm doing the community goodness thing and not being a delinquent. She spent a bit of time when I was a teenager worrying that I would turn into a delinquent. I didn't even come close to whispering at proper delinquency, but then that's the thing about motherhood - it invokes insanity on a daily basis.

One of the recipes Mum has given me is from my Great Grandmother, a fabulous woman by all accounts, whom my Mum adored. I'll post it later in the week if indeed I find it to be failsafe as Mum has indicated. The word 'failsafe' feels a bit jinxsy.

On the subject of budgeting. I start off thinking that we need to make changes to reduce the supermarket bill. Then I think about how privileged I am compared to so many on lower incomes. Then I think I should both reduce my spending for us AND contribute more to others. This process does not necessarily occur in a linear fashion. Today I stopped and talked to a lovely potato farmer from Methven who was selling his wares outside our swimming pool. His agria spuds are superb apparently, not just cheaper than the supermarket ones (by several dollars) but better tasting. Oooh but I was tempted. So what I did, and I claim no logic for this, is I took my only just started 10kg supermarket bag of spuds down to the Sallies for their food bank and then I bought a new bag from Mr Methven Spuds for my family.

Still loving my new chooks.

spirulina & hummous don't mix

2011-08-01T18:32:00.003+12:00

I've got a pagan wheel of the year on the wall in front of my computer. I'm interested in the southern hemisphere versions of the rituals surrounding the solstices, equinoxes and the mid points between. When we were looking at names for our daughter, I thought she would be born on February 1st, St Brighid's Day. She came a bit earlier, but we stuck with the name we had chosen (no scans, just weirdo hippy confidence that she would be a girl). Imbolc is one of the other names for the festivals surrounding St Brighid's Day, and the southern hemisphere equivalent is tomorrow.

Much as I'm drawn to the ideas in a pagan calendar, the reality for our family is that we are governed by the seasons of school terms and school holidays. Seeing the second day back at school as a significant turning point does feel artificial to the rhythms of our lives. But still. I'm certainly ready for a sense of spring and of hope. The new chooks, the snowdrop, the onion weed flowers, the iris which is nearly out by the kitchen, the beautiful Sunday walks along the beach we've had recently, these are all potent omens of joy.

Apparently the tradition is to clean ones home for St Brighid. We cleaned the house yesterday, that will have to do. I would like to think of a fitting meal for Imbolc tomorrow night. All suggestions welcome.

Like everyone else who ever shops for food, I'm aghast at how much food prices are rising. It occured to me today at an action level that I'm going to have to make some changes. I've played round with various money saving food changes in the past, all of which involve extra time, and I'm not wild about doing it again. I've learnt that I prefer to earn some extra money rather than stay home and use my labour to save money in all directions. Only, like a whole pile of other middle class people in New Zealand, I can see I'm going to have to get my head round doing both, and probably for several years.

This afternoon, I made hummous, as is my habit. Bought stuff is very expensive and a fraction of the quality of home made. I thought for the hundredth time how I should save money and reduce my exposure to whatever nasties in tin cans the Organic NZ people warned me about by buying the chickpeas raw and cooking them up in bulk and then making hummous and freezing it. Instead of doing just that, I opened the cans and thought it incredibly wise to try putting spirulina in the mix. It was hanging round the cupboard, the product of one of my many hippy health food shop random purchases, and I thought I would spread the green love.

Don't. The colour is putrid (rather like the green on our wallpaper, a green we have disliked so much we've ripped much of it off even when we can't afford to paint or repaper over it) and the taste is definitely altered, and not for the better.

Pumpkin soup for dinner, with red lentils and kale in it for goodness and padding. The short people made dissenting noises and I told them there was more soup on the horizon. The world is on the brink you know. Once upon a time I was all about peak oil, using cloth nappies, eschewing a tumble drier or car and embracing lots of walking. Now I'm more wound up by the looming threat of economic disaster.

Geraldine Brooks' March is a wonderful book, creating the life of the father of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I had to get up and finish it last night as I couldn't sleep without finding out what happened at the end. Yay for the local library.

Gala preparations are hotting up. I've emailed Mum for her best fundraiser fruit cake recipe. Apparently fruit cakes sell well, so that's what I'll make. I'm down to do an hour on the raffle table at the supermarket on Friday and I've a meeting tomorrow night which I should attend and some wonderful teenage girls to paint nails as one of the fund raising activities. Brighid will no doubt be lining up for that.

All this for an affluent school where no one has a swollen belly from lack of food like the children in Africa on the news, or routinely goes without breakfast like in many areas of New Zealand. I wonder why I'm doing it sometimes but ultimately I do know why. Firstly, communities are only made by the sharing of responsibility and of tasks and communal activities and our school gala is all of these. Now that Fionn is old enough to go to and from school alone (I've not been allowed up the drive by Mr Independent in the morning for the last four years), activities like the gala are particularly important so I get to know the other school families and pick up tips on what is really going on in town, which is not the same is what goes in the town newspaper. The second, more important reason to me is that because of the efforts of the PTA, school trips and visiting performances are available to all children. No one misses out on going to the big local swimming pool because their family can't afford the bus fare. No one misses out on the orchestra or juggler or storyteller when they visit the school because the power bill was about to be cut off and had to be paid instead of the school. I'm prepared to put in a quite a bit of effort to keep user pays out of our school.

Happiness

2011-07-30T22:00:00.003+12:00

The poultry palace is graced once again with five princesses.

Favourite Handyman cooked brocolli, sausages and potatoes for dinner.

Brighid ate all of her dinner without a single complaint.

Fionn got a voucher at league for doing a fabulous tackle and a big wound on his knee at the aftermatch function when he took a leap in the dark and landed on concrete instead of muddy grass. Despite wailing and gnashing his teeth as I cleaned the wound, and requesting bandages, it does appear that his knee will be perfectly fine in a week or so. It was worth it for him anyway, as he got a bottle of coca cola, illicit stuff in our house.

Geraldine Brooks' novel, March, is fantastic. Gripping, rivetting, etc.

The local garden nursery has little plants of snowdrops. It's hard to get these as bulbs, so buying them this more expensive way is better than missing out entirely. I bought and planted one today, and may well sneak back for more this week.

It has been a wonderful fortnight, full of treats of great weather, a real going-away holiday, and the absence of lurgies. The previous school holidays were rather unfortunately punctuated with vomit. Tomorrow we have friends for lunch, and in between making food and chatting with our friends, I'll be sure to visit the chooks very very frequently.

apple & feijoa cider

2011-07-29T19:44:00.004+12:00

Good things:
apple & feijoa cider from Old Mout Cider. I grew up just down the road from where this stuff is made. Indeed, Brownies was held in the old school next door to what was the Noslen winery, makers of blackberry nip, which was another cheap and drinkable tipple, though I think the cider is better again. Anyways, it's on special at New World at the moment, and it comes in a plastic bottle. $9 a litre! Who can complain, certainly not me.

There was a magical moment at the vehicle testing station this afternoon, when it appeared that all I needed was a new headlamp bulb and then I had a warrant of fitness for our elderly car for six more months. Unfortunately, changing the bulb revealed that it's a bigger problem, and when they gave me the sheet to get it fixed, there was a warning on the bottom about a rusty crossmount bar on the radiator. Or something like that. Something ominous. Ominously expensive. Still. I have had worse warrant reports. Considerably worse in fact.

I bought Simplicity 9900 in order to make some shorts for Fionn, who has been reminding me that it is time I sewed something for him. I realise it is a simple pattern and that commercial patterns are expensive, but I find drafting or freehand patternmaking very difficult and at least this way I am supporting our local fabric shop.

My friend Ruth gave me this remaindered curtain sample, which Fionn likes a lot. I'd demurred that it was impractical for shorts, but then today I wondered why that had to matter, when I had the fabric waiting to be used anyway.
I've nearly finished them. Lopsided bottoms as the hem is marked up on one side after Fionn tried them on. I could easily have made the size smaller.
Only one more day until our new chooks arrive...

[yes, of course it rained today. Otherwise I would have been full of gardening talk. But not to mind, I still found things to do which related in no way to housework.]

Roses are not sacred

2011-07-28T21:06:00.005+12:00

Best day ever! Not bad, considering it's holidays and I've been having lots of great days recently. I spent almost all day in the garden, coming inside only for the rained out bits. I have weeded along the outside of the kitchen and transplanted all the strawberries to this garden bed. Where the strawberries used to be are now free of weeds and covered in chook run fertiliser, seaweed and peastraw.

The kids and Favourite Handyman raked out the chook run and poured five wheelbarrow loads of wonderful fertiliser/compost on various parts of the garden. We've been putting wood shavings and sawdust in the chook run for the last two years and the chooks have been doing their bit by pooing endlessly. I've also cleaned out the coop and the pooey straw (the last couple of months they'd been sleeping in there instead of on the roost - not sure why) and put that on the garden.

That was the morning project. In the afternoon I got stuck into the front garden, or the overgrown strip which could one day answer to the description of 'front garden'. I managed to get the bulk of the gunnera out, which I've never managed before. It was very heavy, even though it wasn't much more than a stump in size. I want to get rid of a very ugly, invasive grass/flax like weed which is dominating my front growing space. It had even set up home in the gravel driveway. I got that out and then realised this meant it had shallow roots. In the past, I'd only chopped it back because it was growing through a rose bush. But today, I knew that roses are not sacred and this one must be sacrificed. Despite going carefully, I still ripped skin (gloves are for people who don't like gardening - I want to feel the process of creating life in the soil), but eventually the rose bush was out and then the nasty weed. Tomorrow I will take photos and try harder to identify the weed, but the rain prevented any photographs being taken this afternoon.

I have transplanted one red-flowering manuka into the vacant space and may do the second tomorrow. After dinner, we all pored over the flower section of the Kings Seed catalogue and made suggestions as to what flowers could go in the space which can nearly be called a garden in front of the lounge. Everyone made suggestions at once and then they laughed at me for writing the wrong name codes by various flowers.

Here is Brighid wearing the finished red dress with green flowers. Nice dress, but judging by her eyes, I don't have a 100% well child. She styled her hair herself, just like Kate Middleton (or was that her makeup? Brighid wants that stuff as well, she tells me).

Earlier in the week I took it into my head to reduce the amount of fabric in the study. Given that the study is going to become Fionn's bedroom in the medium term future, using up fabric needs to happen more often, faster, furiouser. Maybe not furiouser.

This skirt, for Brighid (yeah she has enough clothes, but everyone else is much more difficult to sew for), is made entirely from fabric and notions in my stash. I don't think I've managed that before - usually I have to buy thread or bias binding even when I'm mostly using up fabric. She likes it.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E Pearson is worth reading. It's pitched at teenagers, but I liked it anyway, and thought there was much to consider after reading it. Bio-ethics meets teenage angst.

Last night I finished Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I didn't get drawn into it straight away, but by the second half I was reading without any regard for the late hour, gripped. It is very good. Olive Kitteridge is old, clever, wise, angry, irrational, loving and stroppy. I could see myself in her at times and, chastened by such a clear evocation of the hurts which being alive so long bring, as well as the pleasures, I thought I should be more understanding of my own mother. Read it. Especially you, Marion H and Rachael A and Marija B, because I want to know what you think afterwards.

The cover of the book annoyed me though. What on earth does the image of a young woman's back have to do with this novel?

I'm also having a crisis of belief in socialism, and thinking about budgeting some more. More on those another time. I need to go start another novel, probably a Geraldine Brooks one. Need, you know. Not like when housework supposedly needs to be done. This is need + desire = action.

Reefton retro

2011-07-26T19:26:00.004+12:00

After five nights without the children, in which we had a marvellous time, firstly at the wonderful hot pools at Maruia Springs and later at home, we are now our full complement again and it's great to have Brighid and Fionn back. I miss the chooks too, much more than I had thought I would, so I'm looking forward to collecting our new chooks this Saturday.

Stopping of at Reefton for a pie this afternoon, I was impressed with the retro theme at the tearooms. The painting isn't so much retro but I included it anyway as it is of local brass band players. Those two display cabinets are entirely filled with novelty salt and pepper shakers.

At Maruia Springs we tried a new-to-us traditional Japanese dish called yose-nobe. It was a soy based broth with prawns, salmon, chicken balls, mussels, scallops and vegetables in it. They brought a gas ring to our table and then placed the large dish on the burner and left us with ladles and bowls to serve ourselves. It was delicious and I am on a mission to make our own now. I'm not wild about soy products, but I've found instructions for making traditional Japanese broths with kombu and bonito flakes, which I am happy to do.

Eating the lovely yose-nobe prompted FH and I to reminisce about favourite foods we had discovered while travelling. Memories of fabada in the Asturias region of Spain came back again this afternoon in the butchery at Blackball. So I've come home with white pudding, black pudding, chorizo and bacon (and sausages and saveloys of course of course - it is league season) and tonight I'll put some white beans in water to soak.

I've finished my flowery curtain material skirt, barring a hook and eye at the top of the zip. Hell will probably freeze over before I post a picture of me wearing it, but one of it on the skirt hanger could be up later in the week. I found some very lovely retro floral at the Sallies a few days ago and am gearing up to make it into a bag for my sister in law. I've only had it on my to-do list for seven months...

I took this from the new national cycle way path not far from us. Behind me is the Tasman Sea, to my right are lines of snow capped mountains, to my left are houses and here is our local gravel works. Behind it is more suburbia.

I got into the gardening late this afternoon. I transplanted one rose, dug a pile of weeds out and (it appeared) brought on the first rain we've had in over a week. More rose and strawberry relocations tomorrow.

More garden dreaming

2011-07-24T08:30:00.002+12:00

The two people who taught me about gardening as a child were my Dad and my maternal Grandma. Grandma is still alive and enjoying looking at her garden and gardening magazines, but she has to rely on other people to do the gardening for her now. I think of her when I see aquilegias, remembering when we went to the Royal Show in Christchurch about 20 years ago. Grandma and Grandad also bred pedigree jersey cattle, and we wandered around looking at many breeds of cattle I'd never ever seen before, and then moved on to the garden stalls.

Kings Seeds have many different type of aquilegias, also known as grannys bonnets. I considered the aquilegia yellow star (photo below) for my yellow theme, but as I only have one garden bed which really needs the yellow theme, when I saw the aquilegia shady garden scatter (top photo), I thought of it for the front garden, which is south facing in and need of special treatment.

This is the area which needs the work. Underneath the closest window are some spring bulbs, mostly bluebells which I planted. I'm happy with them. What I would like to add in autumn are some snowdrops, which from memory work well in shady gardens. Mum and Dad had a snowdrop hidden behind a larger tree on the front lawn when I was a child, and I always felt like I'd discovered the secret of spring when it blossomed. Along the back are succulents, which are cheap and grow with no care, but actually some flowers with a bit of height would be best along the back. Along with a mish mash of unknown leafy plants in this rectangle is quite a bit of comfrey. I did that on purpose, marking out my hippy territory. Now I'm moving to flower country for this patch, I expect some comfrey root will be there to stay for ever, but I'll be moving the bulk of it somewhere else.

This is also the front of house wilderness. I had planned on building a super spud patch in the strawberry garden, and shifting the strawberries out to the back. But now I'm into flowers for the front... Maybe sweet peas would complement spuds?

As for the wild long grass excuse for a garden behind the strawberry garden... time for my back to heal and to start some intensive digging and weeding.

Kings Seed Catalogue

2011-07-23T21:21:00.003+12:00

My first Kings Seeds catalogue list came to $83. Several culls ahead. But I am going to get cowslip, or primroses (above), in keeping with my Enid Blyton English wood nostalgia theme. The theme has been in my head and reading to the children so far, but time to take it out into the garden and let it flourish.
I fancy this Californian plant, meadowfoam (above) as well. Also known as fried eggs. I'm gearing up for a summer of yellow flowers. More on my garden list tomorrow.

holidays

2011-07-20T22:05:00.006+12:00

We've had visitors and lots of fun the last couple of days. Much more fun than listening to some of the economic news, and that damn Phil O'Reilly on why workers should not get pay rises which respond to the sharp inflation rate. From the Blackball Museum of working class history:
Without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.

A shot of the kids. Both photos from our talented visiting photographer.

Tomorrow we take the children to my parents to stay and then FH and I are going on a mini holiday all of our own, complete with hot pools, and possibly even snow.

None of that over the top expensive broccoli for us. Here we are eating swede. And kale of course. I made smoked fish and potato stew the other night, with kale in it, and I cooked grated swede and 8/9 people liked it. Brighid, of course, was the unpleasable. If you are hanging off the edge of your computer, desperate to know my recipe secrets so that you too can serve swede which people have second helpings of, then leave me a comment and I'll write the recipes in a post after I return from my overnight hot pools adventure.

Inglorious death

2011-07-17T19:10:00.004+12:00

Warning: This post is not suitable for vegetarians. It does deal with some very unappealing aspects of animal death.

Today we continued with the chook slaughter. Last week Favourite Handyman killed chook #1. The biggest learning point from that was that they do have better eyesight than he'd thought. The remaining four chooks weren't going anywhere near him. This morning we organised the children in front of the computer and I coaxed one chook out with some grain. I caught her and spoke to her gently as I carried her round to the side of the house, where FH broke her neck. I repeated this performance once, before the final two chooks decided they didn't trust me and refused to be bribed.

The two dead chooks were in a sack waiting for me and FH took the children to the local swimming pool. Then - and I warn you again, this is not a pretty post - I went to start the skinning and gutting and, upon opening the sack, saw that one chook was still breathing. I didn't handle it well. I took out the dead chook and froze at the sight of the recently alive body on the table outside. Despite having skinned a couple of chooks before and gutted half a dozen, all confidence and sense of skill deserted me. I still felt both sick about the not-dead chook and sicker still that I didn't have the inner strength to kill it myself.

So I severed the feet of the dead chook, carefully washed and froze them, and buried the rest of the chook in the garden. There was quite a weight to the chook as I buried it and I was keenly aware that I wasn't making the best use of this resource. Twice I went back and checked on the not-dead chook, each time finding myself unable to act decisively. The second time I did see that it wasn't in visible distress, just quietly sitting in the sack, it's head turned to look at me. So at least it didn't appear to be dying a slow and tortured death.

When FH came home, I was reminded again why he is such a great husband. He was clear that he would have to kill it again and this time add the step of placing his booted foot on the neck and ensuring it was dead. Very calmly, he also talked me through the need to overcome fears, not to let them own me, and that we would get better at this, learn to kill them as humanely as possible, and this is all part of having chooks. I should add that this is just as new to FH as it is to me, and he certainly does not enjoy killing the chooks. So he killed the undead chook. It seems that the first time the chook just went unconscious and the neck was not severed. Then I skinned and gutted it.

The story gets more gory. As I gutted it, I wondered what huge hard thing I was pulling out. Duh! The chook was about to start laying, probably tomorrow judging by the location of the egg. As I gutted, I saw that we have culled too early. Next time, we will wait three years before culling. I had thought that efficent use of feed meant now was the time to cull and start again, i.e. after two years, but an inspection of the insides of the dead chook suggests otherwise.

The skinned, gutted chook and it's cleaned feet are now in the slow cooker, together with chopped onions, carrots, bay leaves, water and a little apple cider vinegar. The remaining two chooks are locked into the coop (thanks to the help of Fionn, who is the right size for chimney sweep sized jobs) rather than free reigning through the run, and will be killed in the morning.

I tell the story of today's learning not to make anyone feel ill. I am absolutely serious in suggesting that this is not a post suitable for all readers. But in a blog scene where urban homesteading is often glorified, all beauty and sunshine and love and little or no pain, rain, drought or disaster, I think it is important to tell my truth.

We need to ask some new questions

2011-07-15T20:43:00.005+12:00

Often I read of the terrible, inequitable, sad situation of workplaces where women are under-represented. Such articles are so frequent in the places I tend to read (e.g. feminist blogs, Guardian) that I'm writing this as a generalised response rather than linking to a particular article. Such articles have a point, and the fight for workplaces which reward merit not conformity to a particular set of mostly male features must continue. When I tutored at university, my history students included many older women who were juggling the care of small children with study. My friend who was training to be an engineer had a few older male students in her class but the small number of female students were all under 25. Not enormously hard to work out why: daily labs until 5pm and the expectation of full time study were the norm.

But I want to argue tonight for asking some different questions, and I'm basing my thoughts on my own experiences. A couple of days ago, I went on a work-related course. It was fantastic. I learnt a huge amount and came away re-energised and enthusiastic about achieving my work goals this year. As occasionally happens to me, I thought of what I would do if I was running the show. But I am not angry about not running my department and I don't feel like anyone has got in my way. I'm fortunate to work in a job with flexible work time in the school holidays and my specific workplace is very very family friendly. Invaluable given that I'm often home with sick children. I'm not working part time because the door of full time work opportunities has been closed to me. I'm working part time because that is what I want to do.

I want to watch Brighid when the orchestra visits kindy, as it did today. I want to go to the school assemblies and trips (sometimes I can't because it clashes with work but the world doesn't end, soemthing works out with a trip sometime). I want to visit my elderly cousin each week. This afternoon I did FH's work for an hour so he could collect Brighid and they could watch Fionn's school assembly. Extra excitement when it turned out he got a certificate. We are lucky in that there is some, though limited, swapability in our jobs. I want to take them to the library, to make sure they eat well after school, to let them have friends around, to know the world they circulate in.

Just because I want to do these things does not mean anyone should, or has to. Please don't assume for one second that I think parents should not work or that a mother's place is in the home. I'm only talking about what I want to do. The fact that it rains so much here does help keep house prices down and makes it easier for us to enact this vision for our family life.

But can we talk about what goes on when people, like me, do want to stay out of the hierarchy of the workplace in order to pursue unpaid goals? Because it does annoy me when I find assumptions that highly educated people are not using their skills when they stay home and engage in unpaid care work.

As well as legitimately asking why women are not fully represented in jobs with high pay and high responsibility, I want more commentators to ask questions about how we care for others in unpaid contexts. I can't contract out the service of visiting my elderly cousin. It might be possible to pay someone to visit her, to take her out and help her with difficult challenges as they arise. But you cannot pay someone to have the emotional and almost tangible connection of being family.

Regarding childcare, we do pay for it. I don't have sufficient words for how special Robyn and Sharon are in our lives. When I graduated, I had lunch beforehand at a friend's house. I had much admired my friend's family situation because I saw through them the tangible proof that both parents could pursue careers and raise fantastic children within a close and supportive environment. That afternoon, not just my friend's parents, but also Mrs M, who had cared for my friend since she was two weeks old, were at the ceremony. I'm hopeful that our lovely childminders will still be in the lives of our children when they turn 21 and when they graduate from whatever they choose to train in. I also choose to be with my kids most of the time they are not at school and kindy. I want to. That's what I chose when I had them, and each year as we decide our plans, I have continued to want to spend that time with them.

A few weeks ago, I had a wonderful time in Nelson at the birthday party of an old school friend. I was both delighted and impressed with how all of my friends who had had children are enjoying them. Later on, as I was reflecting on the party, I relished a particular aspect of it: there was a diversity of roles within my friends' families. My high flying lawyer friend loves her daughters and her husband enjoys the flexibility that his work gives him to be the person who collects the girls if they are sick or changes his hours to watch their special events at kindy. Several male friends had taken a year's leave to look after their children while their wives worked. I hope my own children grow up seeing that diversity, finding it normal.

Asking questions about who cares for our vulnerable people - the sick, the very young and very old, the mentally unwell and others who cannot maintain independence - need not, should not, be conflated with asking where the women are, although currently that is where a lot of women are. We need to ask questions about how our entire society can arrange itself so that people with meaningful relationships with each other can provide care when needed. We've got a long way to go.

In search of suburban beauty

2011-07-14T21:20:00.004+12:00

You want kale first or last?
Tonight: kale in nachos.
My kids don't like nachos made with a tin of refried bean mush. They also don't like the vegetable mixture to arrive touching the chips. We never have a meat version because if I had the time to make a meat version, we probably wouldn't be having nachos.

So.

Peel one large kumara. Chop into cubes and steam until soft.

Wash, chop out the central rib and chop up quite a lot of tuscan kale (also known as cavolo nero). Peel and chop 4-6 cloves of garlic. Roughly chop the contents of one container of anchovies (50g, sometimes less). Sautee it gently in a pan with the lid on top after the first minute or two (sautee may be the wrong word for experts but it seems the best fit to me). Add some cumin, stir and add the kumara. Mash it up a bit with a fork and turn the element off.

Make some guacamole. I made mine with the juice of an entire lime. This is too much lime juice. Half is better. Otherwise, a couple of avocadoes, the leafy contents of one of those plastic containers of fresh coriander from the supermarket (I cannot grow the stuff at all as of the last eighteen or more months), more chopped garlic. I forgot the paprika until now as I type.

Tip the nachos on to the roasting dish. Grate some cheese over them. Heat them in the oven until they are hot. Dish everything up onto separate parts of the plate. This worked well for three out of four people.

This week I have had only one glass of wine, which was when I went out for drink/dessert with friends on Tuesday night. I am indeed a good girl. Of course I felt a quiver of guilt as I typed that sentence, the sense that only the undeserving liar writes such a sentence, but then recovering Catholics are always recovering, never quite divorced from their gothic, sinful heritage of indulgence and self loathing.

Tonight I bought a home decorating magazine called Your Home and Garden, specifically because it has a feature on Melissa Wastney of Tiny Happy. Tiny Happy is a blog of delicate and beautiful gorgeousness such that sometimes I feel a little clumsy just reading it. It is also lovely and completely lacking in pretentiousness. Your Home and Garden had the usual effect of making me wonder what on earth other people did with their lives to find the time to make their places so gorgeous, before I remembered that it is a magazine, Sandra, and please remember both the artificiality and the capitalist-acquisitional-greed-provoking purpose of magazines. And we have painted a lot of things hot chilli or wild thing or a very bright red on the fence which I cannot remember the name of and I like them all. I might enter the competition to win a holiday in Samoa, just to feel that I didn't squander my money on home decorating unease without redemption.

The four chooks are still alive. I don't know that we are going to be very good at this killing part of the suburban homesteading project. But we have five new ones arriving in just two weeks, so we can't back out now.

With the school and kindy term almost done, and the house in need of cleaning, I'm gearing up for a new and more interesting project on care workers for an exhibition at the Blackball Museum of working class history. In Blackball. I have the great benefit and pleasure of working with Denise, who has lots of work and personal experience with care needs, care advocacy and care provision for the most vulnerable in our community. There is or was a court case not so very long ago about the rule where if non-family members provided care for dis-abled people, they were paid, but family members were not. Time to follow that one up, and then find some people for whom that case is very relevant.

The title. I am. In search. Sometimes I find it, even when I am grumpy.

Kale

2011-07-11T21:39:00.004+12:00

Kale grows throughout winter. Kale survives storms. It survives thunder and lightning and hail and more rain than anyone who doesn't live near a rainforest can ever hope to experience.

Which is why we are still eating it.

Tonight: kale and garlic chopped and sauteed in a small amount of olive oil. Then I poured in quite a lot of frozen peas and a little water and put the lid on for the cooking to continue. Meanwhile I was cooking some fettucine because that is the only pasta I could find in the drawer. I added about a third of a container (the 250g kind) of cream cheese to the green veg mix because that's all we had left and blitzed it with my whizzy stick. Then I added the pasta into the sauce and stirred it all up and put finely grated cheddar cheese on top of each bowl of pasta. We ate it all and didn't have enough seconds to go round, so I'm treating that as a success. The addition of peas does definitely take it into the realm of babyfood consistency. Why not? I tried to cook the same for everyone when I had babies. Tins and jars and separate meals - bah! Yoof of today and their weird (y'know, not like mine...) parenting.

I'm still handsewing flowers on Brighid's new red dress and I actually like this handsewing thing. Just as easy to do as knitting in front of the computer but I think gentler on my hands. If I knit for lengths of time then arthritis makes an unwelcome appearance. This piece of sewing and the commentary was what made me notice how pleasant sitting sewing was. It reminded me that one day I will start something beautiful to go on top of our bed.

Isa Ritchie has flagged up her latest exciting project, this time on free food. I'm looking forward to reading and thinking more about her work. Reading Isa's outline, my own mind immediately wandered to thinking of historical practises of sharing food outside the formal capitalist system. I remember reading of the families of conscientious objectors in New Zealand, people who were supposed to be shunned. In public they were, but also I read of such families rising in the morning to find anonymous gifts of food on their doorstep. I also wonder about the different forms free food movements and less clearly organised free food practises take between urban and rural settings.

Three nights without booze. I've organised a women's night out tomorrow. I best get straight into the cake if I'm not going to drink. On the subject of more books and less booze, I'd best go read. I think it is the Peter Mayle Provence books awaiting me.

More books, less booze

2011-07-10T21:02:00.005+12:00

My latest mantra is more books, less booze. Mostly, it seems that reasonable quality red wine is far far cheaper in the supermarket than reasonable quality paperback books in the bookshop (we don't quite have a real bookshop here either, just some best seller shelves in the stationery/magazine shops). But if I watch Trademe and have a lucky find, or even if I take advantage of Book Depository's free worldwide postage and the current high NZ dollar, and if perchance my body has announced that 2-3 drinks, 3-4 times per week really needs to go down to 1-2 drinks, 1-2 times per week, then books are the new black round here.

This weekend I read Andrea Levy's Small Island, set in Jamaica, India and London either side of World War Two. I loved it. Would I be so comfortably removed from the reality of the racism if the book were set in New Zealand? No. Gilbert Joseph fights for England in the war and yet finds himself more hated by the English when he moves to London afterwards than any German or Japanese enemy. The reason for the hatred? The colour of his skin. With an even greater run of good luck than the $4 Small Island, on Trademe tonight I won Levy's latest book, Long Song, for $1. Better than booze indeed.

We've had spring winds in July this year, and the plastic roofing on the chook run is no longer entirely where it should be.

We are still eating from the garden. This simply red mesclun mix from Kings Seeds is going in my salads and sandwiches most days.

The lemon tree is providing almost as much excitement as when I gave birth to my children.

Yellow lemons! On my lemon tree! Only took four years and three plants.

Next, the bits which need work. Not quite more work as I've done so little so far, but lots of work.

You can't see my precious snowdrops in this lemon balm jungle. The snowdrops are from an old bulb which did not flower for the first few years after we arrived, because it had been squashed and starved. Then it appeared like a miracle two years ago and now... now it is overtaken again. I have rescuing to do.

The front of the house. I've decided it needs a beautification project, though in my head I keep saying beatification, which is less justified.

Also in front of the house. I need to win against blackberry and long weedy grasses. I used to want vegetables, but now I'm thinking flowers. Strong-against-wind flowers.

Still no machine sewing. I do have the loan of a wonderful book called Sew What Skirts as of today, so I need to finish my current skirt. Finishing sewing seems not to be a strength.

I used to be a kitchen queen, a kitchen wizard even, every Sunday. Not so lately. Perhaps the children will die from eating uber-wrapped Le Snak packs at school and kindy. I'm trusting not at this stage. But I did make a new-to-me soup tonight for dinner. It's a combination of reading Nourishing Traditions briefly, shutting it before Pandora-the-food-whiner got out, and remembering reading this carrot soup recipe from Hazeltree Farm.

Peel and chop about six large carrots. Wash, strip and finely chop one leek. Finely chop some ginger. Melt lots and lots of butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook the carrots and ginger and leeks in it for a bit, then add some orange juice (I used orange and apple juice cos' that's the supermarket had and real oranges are too expensive for this recipe), put the lid on and turn it down low. Cook for quite a while, maybe half an hour. Add some quinoa (the mere act of adding quinoa to anything makes me feel virtuous) and cook some more until it too looks cooked. Pulverise it all with a whizzy stick. Then add some cream slowly and mix in. I served it with toast, and followed up with apple crumble. Pudding. Maybe I was a kitchen wizard today after all.

Even better for lifting spirits, we planned a camping holiday for summer and a holiday involving the children at their grandparents and FH and I at somewhere lovely for in ten days' time. Roll on next Sunday.

Our family is not a tax factory

2011-07-07T19:42:00.004+12:00

A post by Daharja on local living: home decorating and education is worth reading. It's part of series she is running on her blog and they are all good. I love her invocation to never paint the walls beige. For the last few years on Mothers' Day, FH and the children have chosen photos of the kids and had them enlarged and framed for me. I love them, and they fit with some of her suggestions. This year they gave me one of Fionn kayaking in a cave near Punakaiki and one of Brighid and FH walking through Hagley Park just a week after the February 22 earthquake.

I've not been sewing, though tonight I've started the handsewing on Brighid's red corduroy dress again. It feels like craft progress without the concentration/difficulty factor of getting out the ironing board and sewing a zip into my flowery curtain fabric skirt.

Fionn is preoccupied with bees and with reading and Brighid spent much of this morning with me wanting to write all our family names. It's fun.

I took it into my head to make paella tonight. I think it turned out okay, though I made enough to feed the five thousand. I used vegetables, chicken stock, squid and turbot.

I've just been listening to an interview with Professor Anne Smith regarding the Early Childhood Education taskforce report. I picked up the link on facebook from friends concerned about the implications for Playcentre. The interview does not specifically address Playcentre, but it does endorse a formalised, market-led model of early childhood, in which the gains for our community are measured in terms of economic productivity and a situation where mothers (it's assumed that fathers are working as well) are working and paying tax is best for everyone. I thought I would love Playcentre, but the reality of our family's experience is that our local kindy has offered what I had wanted from Playcentre and our local Playcentre was quite different to what I'd imagined from reading Playcentre philosophy. I'm a fan of parents/caregivers ditching all this formalised stuff and hiring a hall to have collective fun in. One of the local churches in Wetville does this every Friday and it is wonderful. Trained early childhood teachers do offer great things for children and families in my experience, but I think parents should never lose sight of their own power. We can and do do great things with our kids. Certificates, PD days and profile folders are not the only indicators of valuable growth and learning.

We toyed with home educating Fionn and sometimes people who remember this ask me how I see it now. I am quite confident that our local school is the best place for Fionn and it is extremely likely to be so for Brighid from next year, but I always hold on to the knowledge that we can, could and potentially would learn at home as a family full time ('cos we do it lots of the time anyway) and do it well. I intend for no institution of learning to have the power over us of being the only choice.

slaughter

2011-07-05T20:18:00.003+12:00

The changeover of chooks project has begun. On Sunday Favourite Handyman killed one chook. He didn't enjoy it at all and there was another hitch in that he thought the chooks had worse distance eyesight than they do. They saw alright and they weren't going anywhere near him.

In the past, we have been gifted roosters to kill and eat, but this is the first time we've done our own. We haven't given them names and we always planned they would be eaten once they were past their best laying days, but it was harder to do our own all the same. FH had to go into work straight after the killing and I decided it was far too hard to skin and gut a chook safely (sharp knives and nasty bacteria) with two smallish children wnating to be part of the process. So I cut off the feet (excellent for stock apparently), washed them very thoroughly and put them in the freezer. Then I buried the chook in a deep hole with a bucket of bokashi on top and then soil on top of that. Not the optimum way to get the most out of our chook but it will enrich the soil for some great summer vegetables I hope. Brighid and Fionn were very matter of fact about the process.

This Huffington Post piece on how to talk to little girls is very good. I've thought about it quite a bit and I think I'm fine with still talking a bit of clothes talk with some of the hugely stylish (that's strong sense of personal style, not fashion stuff) four year olds I hang out with. I'm also fine with engaging with boy style choices too, knowing that this interests my own son at least. But as to the talking books stuff and the talking to the brain stuff, bring it on and more. I loved Bloom's story.

That's it. I haven't been sewing. I've hardly read beyond the newspaper. It's the tail end of the school term, unnecessarily long due to some silly sports games, and we're all feeling it here at the messy house.

But not SO messy. I cleaned the oven yesterday. I didn't bother with a medal. I went straight to the wine.

And we had kale for dinner. In the pasta sauce with smoked chicken and garlic and cream cheese and broccoli. 'Twas great.

Going away

2011-06-27T21:15:00.003+12:00

I went to Nelson for the weekend, all by myself, and had the best reunion with some long long standing friends ever, thanks to the uber-hedonist W, who threw a great 40th birthday.

I loved being away without my family. I'm going to do that more often. When I got back, they had also had a good weekend, and were chilled out and happy.

I'm not in a big blogging mood at the moment. No doubt something will get me fired up enough to launch back into political blogging, and maybe I'll finish some crafty stuff and put up photos sometime. 'Til then, go enjoy the rest of the blogosphere, or fold your washing, or read Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders which is my favourite book of the year so far. I got back from the pub at midnight on Friday, slept for four hours, read the entirety wonderful contents of Year of Wonders, got up and had a curry for breakfast in a direly awful shopping mall (all malls are dire in my experience) , then went birthday partying for 13 hours. Which just goes to show I've been jaded lately, but I haven't fallen into irreparable getting older lady bones demise.

Kale in tonight's pumpkin and red lentil soup. Blackcurrants in today's chocolate cake. Rained again today. Not sure if I will ever get to garden again. I guess even Noah's flood stopped eventually.

rockin' and rollin' all week long

2011-06-20T20:44:00.004+12:00

I don't know where the analysis part of my brain has gone. Not quite true. I do know I've been thinking about some things that don't belong on my blog. I speculate that the relentlessness of winter has something to do with it as well. I haven't blogged about anything more thoughtful than sewing for weeks.

Tonight is not the night for breaking through the puffy stuff either. So I present to you, with nary an intelligent caption, a favourite of my childhood:

I found him here. My Dad had this old battery radio, butter yellow with red casing, which I used to prop up beside the trampoline and jump and flip endlessly to the sounds of Radio Nelson. If it occasionally was temperamental, I would bang it just like the Fonz, to make it go again.

This afternoon I took the kids and my elderly cousin M to the art gallery (we only have one in Wetville) to see the local photography competition entries. They were fantastic, and now Fionn has seen the under 12s section, he wants to enter next year.

I've started on the yoke for my flowery curtain fabric skirt. I ran out of flowery curtain fabric for the back yoke, so it is blue with white spots instead. I never tuck tops in, so I expect the spotty fabric won't show much. I do like the heavy, firm weight of the curtain fabric in sewing terms. It stays in the right place, which is more than I can say for those stretchy knit fabrics I tore my patience and tension up with not so long ago.

Fundraising season continues. It's never too cold or dark too early for fundraising it seems. I shelled out $20 for kindy raffle tickets today as I refuse to hawk tickets round when all my friends are also finding money for their own kids' activities. A notice comes home from Fionn's school every week inviting me to gift sugar or corn chips or bottles, plus endless opportunities to gift my time and skills. It can only be one thing. Gala season. I'm expecting league raffle tickets just as soon as I've shut my wallet for five seconds.

Quietly not ticking away at all is my contribution to the next Blackball working class history museum exhibition on care workers. Which puts a stretch on my next thought, which is that in the light of a comment from HarvestBird earlier this week:

I worry, on and off, about the gradual withdrawal of empathy in the rest of the country, as colleagues recount stories of being lectured by people in call centres and other service contacts on the question of “why don’t you just leave?”

what could I do or get a group together to do, which would be fantastic for Christchurch people? I'm really pleased with our dressups for Christchurch kindies project, which yielded two big bags of play goodies, mostly dressups, for the ravaged preschool play spaces. Perhaps, in light of my lack of achievement on the Blackball museum front, I should just send money to womens refuge and throw some project energy closer to home. Hmmm. maybe. Maybe some play jewellery for the women's refuge... Frivolous, but couldn't a little frivolity be a welcome distraction?