Oh there has been so much goodness today. Here I sit, my white shirt sleeves speckled with red, the kitchen floor sticky with juice, sour cherry jam at a rambunctious boil, and the garden full of shrieks and laughter as three fourteen year olds – also bespeckled with cherry red – race round and round. They were playing croquet. It turned into a riotous game of chase with Sweetpea beside herself with excitement and not quite sure WHO she should be chasing, so she’s just zooming and leaping with delirious abandon.
We visited Ellis’ Cherry Farm in Red Hill this morning :: sigh :: Such a lovely spot. It was cool and drizzly with rain, clouds hung low and misty atop the trees and it was tricky to tell where the ocean ended and the sky began so immersed in grey were we. But as we trooped up the hill to the cherry orchard, I was reminded just why it is our ancestors decorated evergreen trees with gaily coloured trinkets at the Winter Solstice. The sight of lush green trees, smothered in glowing, jewel-like fruit, with a slight sprinkling of sparkly rain drops is such a wonderfully life affirming sight. How could you not believe in the magic and power of our natural world.
And so we picked …
This being our third season of fruit picking, we came prepared with our own basket of ice cream buckets, one each to fill and then deliver to the large bucket the farmer gave us which held almost 6 kilos. Mmmmm … 6 kg of Morello cherries. Back and forth and back and forth we went.
A blissful hour or more passed before we’d filled our bucket. We were alone on the hill, rows of cherry trees reaching ever further up the hill, nearby birds chirping, the distant sound of a tractor, the freshest air, the giggling and chatter of girlies … I may have said before, I do so love the peace and pleasure of picking fruit. And when we returned to the farmer for weighing, I spied the coolest apron – the harvest apron! He even let Sacha and I try it on – much to Abby’s mortification!
Maybe I should make us Boot-versions for next year!
We filled our boot (well, not quite :-) and home we went, via Dave the chook farmer with his point of lay hens and honey. Oh what good fun THAT was. We now know how to feel a hen’s pubic bones to gauge her readiness to lay! And Saturday, we will be returning ….
But now, I must go, the jam is calling …
Julian had a stay at home day today. I like these :-) I feel so very indulged when I have his attention all to myself – Abby and Sacha were out adventuring! We pottered around this morning, thought about tidying, decided not to, cooked a yummy lunch (Julian’s completely smitten with Hugh at the moment, especially his Meat book), and then ventured out into truly ridiculous Melbourne weather (atrociously gusty, pelting with rain, brilliant sunshine, more rain, hail, repeat) for some errands and shoppings.
One errand took us all the way to Kew – rather unexplored territory for us and we took many side streets along the way, awestruck by the mansions and leafy streets of Toorak. And boy did we find a good thrift shop! We treasured a collection of crystal wine glasses - short for red (4), tall for white (5) …
… some clothes for Abby and I – mine are now on the table with yesterday’s piles awaiting some embroidery and perhaps some beading – and this dear little hanky.
Isn’t she so sweet how she’s been presented? I took the photo partly to show you but also to remind me how to give my hankies in the future. See, on our holiday, a visit to a very very out of the way embroidery store called Mandeni’s led me to discover the joys of crocheting the edges of hankies. Oh my! Talk about addictive!
I bought some lovely soft white cotton hankies with their edges usefully prepared (i.e. wee holes), a ball of Cebelia, the matching size hook (15mm – lordy, it’s so fine and yet not as fine as I should have bought!) and a very sweet little book – Paragon’s Forty-six Crochet Edgings. :: sigh ::
It was all I could do to lift myself from the sofa whilst mid-hankie crochet. And whilst my first finished hankie looks a little more like a bread cloth (too coarse a yarn and too big a crochet hook), it is very pretty and made a lovely wee Christmas gift for my mother-in-law. Only Charlene, now I know how I should have presented it to you – see above! Next time!
Honestly, there are so many gorgeous things to do with our days, aren’t there! Look at that edging – it’s so frothy and delicate. Another :: sigh :: I should have been born during Jane Austen’s time. To a reasonably wealthy family. Preferably plain with an awkward manner – rich enough to find a suitable husband and bear some lovely children but dull enough for him to leave me to my children and needlework basket :-) And then I could wear those modesty things stuffed into the necklines of my dresses – all with crocheted edges of course. No wonder the washing is still in piles all over our house, the front porch looks like it belongs to vagabonds and there won’t be any new camera lenses or laptop hard drives anytime soon!
Oh – and mid shoppings – we visited one of those Aladdin’s cave Asian grocery stores for a new chopper and sieve and I came away with this!
Mum! Do you remember A & W! We lived in Malaysia when I was a wee girl (1970s) and one of our favourite treats was to go with family friends to A & W for dinner. Talk about sophisticated ;-) My favourite meal was the sausage burger, chips and an A & W root beer. And look! Here it is! Same colour tin and all! Awesome!
And as for that hankie lady – she reminds me of Phryne Fisher and boy, I can hardly wait for that to start! – I think she needs some fine crocheted lace added to her hemline, don’t you!
Goodness … that time simply vanished! Hoping your Christmas was merry and love-filled. Ours was chaotic – moments of great cheer and love, moments of “oh-my-god-we-will-never-forget-this-Christmas” and lots of letting go. Mmmm … it was a season of letting go … with which comes the essential reminder that nothing experienced is ever wasted. No, even the most disappointing moments teach us something and like every moment of every day, it passes, we enjoy, survive, relish … and move on. I know now my expectations for this Christmas were wildly unrealistic – packing up 14 years of living in one home, retirement, interstate moving, setting up home (all with mum) just days before Christmas, added to spousal exhaustion and family illness. Again, I say mmmmm …..
And so here we are in January. Home late Sunday afternoon after a lovely last week by the sea, a long and stormy drive across the Gippsland, and a spot of wild plum picking – everything is made sweeter by picking wild plums along an almost forgotten railway track whilst a herd of nosy cows watches on :-)
Now we are in the midst of unpacking, washing – 8 loads and counting! – finding homes for all the things we took on holidays that clearly CAME from here so must surely FIT IN back here, dusting, rearranging, tending our neglected garden, and welcoming our dearest friend Sacha for ten whole days holiday!
And amidst the busyness, there is so much goodness. This is what I shall strive to capture for the rest of our summer holidays … the everyday goodness that makes us smile broadly at each other and say “Oh I love being at home with you!”
This morning, the ripest of bananas implored to be baked up into bread …
… and whilst we waited the loooong hour and a half for it to be ready, I ignored the piles of clean clothes awaiting folding and cupboards. Instead, very sensibly, I drank tea and stitched felt into a necklace.
Kept me away from the cocoa pops in the pantry. Really it did! I’m sure had I been making beds or ironing clothes, I would have scoffed a bowl of cocoa pops and perhaps some toast with cheese and jam whilst waiting for the banana bread to cook. Thank goodness for felt, I say.
Time up and my girlie and I shared the warm, fragrant bread at the table … a table smothered in fabric. Not sure how this happened so quickly given it was bare when we arrived home Sunday night. Oh, but there is nothing quite as productive or encouraging as a fabric smothered table, no?
I stitched and she talked. It was lovely. One felt necklace grew into three and I listened to her dreams and plans of artwork, stories that have been slowly added to over Christmas, ideas for creating magic. My girlie is so very inspiring. And we promised each other that we wouldn’t be lazy this year. We would make the most of every opportunity and gift we have. It’s going to be a good year.
Before we knew it, it was time to ditch the nighties, dig some clothes out of the piles and head to the airport to fetch Sacha. Isn’t it just brilliant how our children come that extra bit alive when they are with their most beloved friends. There’s an extra sparkle in my Abby’s eyes, her mouth is permanently curved up in a smile, the whole house is bubbling with an infectious energy and joy. And Sacha is oh so at home here – it’s like having two gorgeous daughters :-) I love it!
p.s. did I mention that my computer’s hard drive is just about dead, it’s one-year old battery is kaput and that the camera hit the dust – I mean ASPHALT (good one Jules!) – and now my favourite lens is broken (hello outdoor zoom lens!) and there’s something not quite right with the way my photos are uploading onto my computer – but then again, that could be the hard drive that is now closer to dead than it was when I wrote the line five up. Oy!
{ The Tomten Christmas Band, copyright 2011 A Pint of Cream }
I’ve been squeezing Christmas cross stitch time in between all the other busyness that is our lives at the moment. It began with the realisation, back in Bootville, that I couldn’t find our Christmas stockings and that, in fact, I hadn’t been able to find them last year either. Hmmm … I do wonder whether “moving” ever truly finishes!
So, the day before we left Brisbane, after collecting Abby from school, I dragged her along to Amitie with the promise of a Bagelicious smoothie once I had picked out fabric and trim to whip up four new stockings. Three for us, and one for Mum who has never had a Christmas stocking. Disappointingly for Abby, Jenny, Judy and I chatted and ooohed and aaahed over the new Sue Spargo ribbon for so long that Bagelicious had closed by the time we got there (never mind, we had frozen raspberries and bananas and yoghurt at home so we made our own smoothies) but I did come home with a clutch of loveliness for the stockings.
I began stitching straight away – all will be simple stockings in lovely coloured linens with natural linen linings, each topped with different and gorgeous bands of Sue, a 4 inch strip of cross stitched linen and a wee trim of lace (from Nana Nicky’s lace suitcase – yep! lace suitcase). All who observed my feverish stitching noted that the missing stockings were sure to turn up once I had made these new stockings. And guess what – as I whipped out the bottom drawer on a wardrobe at Mum’s, just before the removalists were about to carry it out to the truck, there were the missing stockings. :sigh:
But like the Father Christmas quilt, I have now made such good progress on Mum’s and Julian’s (remember – Mum has no stocking and Julian’s is very impersonal) that I’ve decided they simply must be finished in time to hang from the chimney with care.
For Mum’s cross stitched band I used a Danske Julemotiver pattern – the only alteration were the colour choices and the addition of an “A” for Alayne in between my sweet Christmas girlies.
For Julian’s, I got a lot more carried away with the basic pattern in the above leaflet – and ended up working up my own pattern on the computer. Which is what I have included christmas tomtem band pdf 2 here for you.
{ The Tomten Christmas Band, copyright 2011 A Pint of Cream }
I know, I know, I know … it’s Christmas in less than a week. But surely I’m not the only silly billy who’s still cheerfully plugging away with her needle. Perhaps you have a last minute stocking, or a Christmas apron or tea towel or gift bag that needs trimming :-)
It’s sweetly simple and quick to stitch and it’s here for you as a Christmas gift from me. So, while I’m unpacking boxes and downloading furniture – oops! arranging furniture! (moving has made my brain go soft – can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought in the last week, “never mind, I’ll just hit edit undo!”) – you can plonk down by the fire or snuggle up in bed or on the sofa with a hot cocoa, or stretch out on the verandah in a nice cool breeze with an iced tea with plenty of ice (depending on what’s going down in your neighbourhood at this time of year) and stitch up some Christmas loveliness.
And think of me. Sweating and grimy. With my sore hips and aching back. WISHING I was sitting in that lovely spot with that lovely drink stitching some Christmas loveliness :-)
Enjoy dear folk!
p.s. please remember that this is an original design and is available for individual use only. Please do not reproduce or use for commercial purposes. Ta!
p.p.s. when I tried out the link for the pattern it came up enormous and I had to shrink it (using that command – thingy) and there it was perfect. hope you can work it out :-)
I had grand notions of calling into every thrift store and second hand aladdin’s cave we passed on our 3 day journey. Alas, this did not happen :-) Even I can see that it was a rather unrealistic notion.
Especially given the boot was already filled with orchids, hydrangeas (well-intentioned farewell gifts!), a sewing machine and overlocker (just in case!), crazy things that didn’t make it into the removalists’ trucks (a thick and heavy slab of marble and two large table lamps), an enormous stack of books that we bought at an amazing bookstore in Ballina (and then added more to from its sister store in Grafton), and eventually a food processor, blender, and several Christmas presents that were bought in a flurry at Peter’s of Kensington as we battled through the bum-numbing Sydney traffic.
Yes, we Boots travel like the Beverley Hillbillies. The only thing we are missing is the grandma and rocking chair on the roof.
However, there were a few vintagey-stops – I bought two old floral sheets and a wee wooden jigsaw puzzle at the Nabiac Bush Hospital – my Nanny and Great Auntie Bea worked there as nurses in the 1960s and strangely (sadly?) enough, it’s now an community run thrift store.
And we spent one morning in Tinonee, a tiny timber village on a beautiful bend of the Manning River, and where my Nanny’s family had a timber mill and broom factory in the late 1800s.
{ the once upon a time timber mill and broom factory
- now a breathtaking and peaceful garden }
{ I do declare these three charmers are the reincarnations of some of my Tinonee kinfolk – they were so thrilled to see me! }
{ they practically cantered down from the top of the paddock to say gidday, lick as much of me as they could and head butt me over and over }
{ and bump each other out of the way so they could get as smoochy close to me as possible – I have never experienced cows behaving like this before
- I just must be related to them! }
But our only other truly indulgent stop was a rushed half hour in a vast antique centre in the old docks area of Newcastle. Mum and Abby had visited last year with Cate, and I, being inflamed with jealousy when they described the treasures they found last year, just had to call in this time.
It was indeed vast and if I’d had plenty of money, time and a much bigger home (lacking in all three!) I’m sure there would have been many pretties that may have caught my eye. Instead, I came away with one small treat … The Skating Gander … a children’s story book with exquisite illustrations set in Holland.
‘Tis indeed falling apart … but in a charming way … and some of the text is quite odd. The author’s name certainly sounds English (Alice Cooper Bailey) but some of the story reads more like a wonky translation. And there is an element of anti-semitism that makes me wince.
On the other hand, such flippant yet derogatory and inflammatory descriptions also provide a very valuable opportunity to read, think and discuss with my fourteen year old how what was considered just normal and acceptable “opinion” (bigotry!) contributed to the ease with which six million innocent people were murdered – and thus, how very, very, very important the words are that we choose to use.
But as declared, the illustrations are ever so lovely (the blue is so scrumptious I expect it to rub off under my fingertips like the blue my Nanny used in her laundry), and the nuttiness of skating geese is really funny.
I certainly won’t be chopping it up, but I do think there will be some scanning in of pretty illustrations, perhaps a gathering of frames for the nicest, definitely plenty of cross stitch pattern inspiration from the chapter headings, and almost certainly a six sided wooden jigsaw.
And almost definitely, relief on Julian’s part that he won’t be arriving in a few days time to boxes of “look what I found!” that will then have to be squashed into our car for the journey back to Melbourne :-)
{ what Julian would LIKE to do to me when I spy a thrift store! }
The very day we flew out of Brisbane (just over a week ago now), I was frantically finishing the quilting of our new Father Christmas quilt and adding a super quick machine stitched binding (which, I might add, cured me of machine stitched bindings for ever – they truly don’t look nearly as lovely as a hand stitched binding, no matter how careful you are, but I was in an atrocious rush).
To some members of my family, this seemed a rather silly thing to do. Surely there were more important tasks to be completed before taking leave of Bootville for a whole month. Hmmm … no! I had already put so much time into this quilt – which was a very last minute affair anyway – if you’d asked me one month ago whether I planned on making a new, queen bed sized christmas quilt, I’d have looked at you as if you were crazy – that I was simply not prepared to give up on it. No, it had to be finished and packed so that throughout Advent and the Christmas celebrations, we had a very sweet and jolly Christmas quilt upon our bed.
I’m so glad I did! My, it has come in handy during this week of topsy-turvy :-) It turned Aunty Anne’s sofa into a bed for me on our last night in Queensland.
It snuggled Abby on the back seat of the car as we drove for many, many long hours. It cheered up drab motel rooms, reminding us of the lovely Christmas we would soon have in Mum’s new home.
Today, Abby threw it down on the floor of her new attic bedroom, to add a bit of comfort to an otherwise empty house, where she read and drew. (Meanwhile, I embroidered last minute Christmas treasures in a camp chair by a window overlooking the sea, Lucy and Stella – Cate’s lovely dog – hunted skinks in the backgarden and insisted on dunking their heads into the fishpond over and over and over – thank goodness there are plenty of large rocks for the very quick and clever fish to hide under – and Mum dusted wooden shutters, polished windows and daydreamed about where her furniture will go).
It is a sweet and very simple quilt! The Father Christmas fabric came from Ikea. The rest of the fabric came from the stash and I made up the pieced borders using my dresden plate ruler. Oh, except for the binding fabric. I bought that at Amitie the day before adding it. Such a pretty red floral. Oh how I do love red :-) And it was quilted straight onto a dear checked vintage blanket from an op shop. Very satisfying. I practically drove it round and round my machine, endeavouring to follow a straight path but not minding when I didn’t.
And on Monday, after the removalists (or should we now call them deliverists?) have delivered two and a half containers of furniture (holy moly!), we shall set up the beds and in Julian’s and my little room at the back of Mum’s new home, with our view of her glorious garden and the forest beyond, I shall throw this Father Christmas’ quilt across our bed and oh we shall be so ready for the wonderful celebrations to come.
Until then, I know this cosy quilt will continue to deliver whatever is needed at that moment. Yes, it was definitely well worth finishing.
Oh the busyness! Oh the exhaustion! Oh the nerve-wrackingness of not being able to boot this silly little laptop up for a whole week. Oy!
The last week has seen us finish up school for the year, travel to Brisbane, finish packing Mum’s house, experience the franticness of the big moving day, say au revoirs (not goodbyes!) that were tinged with lots of sadness to those we love in Brisbane, journey down Australia’s glorious east coast, stopping at all our favourite places along the way … and every night, I pulled this here little laptop out of my bag and tried to boot her up. Nothing. Well, not nothing. Each night as I lifted her screen I was greeted by the grey boot up screen with a never ending beach ball. Thankfully, I was too tired and otherwise occupied to gnash my teeth and wail.
But now, here we are in our favourite seaside village and tonight, Abby plugged in this temperamental wee electronic lass … she thought and churned and thought and churned and after a loooooooong wait, finally graced us with her presence. Phew! There’s some serious back upping in order.
For now, melodrama aside, I have some end of year prettiness to share … the teachers’ presents. This year, for those who taught Abby and the ever-so-lovely Bob who supervises the pedestrian crossing – homemade fruit mince pies. Hannah, Abby and I chopped and cooked the fruit – a medley of sultanas, raisins, currants and prunes combined with lemon zest, lemon juice, grated apple and a whole bunch of grated wee dutch carrots, with a hearty helping of brown sugar, maple syrup and enough rum to satisfy the booziest pirate. We filled 4 jars and left them to sit for a few weeks until it was time to whip up some pastry (almond pate brise), fill the cases and bundle them up in cellophane and narrow gold ribbon.
For those special teachers Abby adored … Mrs. Horgan (english), Mrs Walker (homeroom, music and r.e.) and Mrs. … ( oh dear, forgotten her name, the lovely Japanese teacher) we made special gifts. And I completely forgot to photograph the finished patchworked and quilted cushion (Mrs. Japanese teacher) and only have this “in progress” shot of the quilted blanket for Mrs. Horgan (it is the quilt I pieced a few months back, remember?) …
However, I was so utterly smitten with Mrs. Walker’s present … a needle felted St. Lucy (a kit from that exquisite Dutch needlefelting company De Witte Engel via the scrumptious Winterwood Toys) that I took plenty of photos – couldn’t stop actually :-)
And then offered to let Abby choose any hand stitched item from our home to give Mrs. Walker so that I could keep St. Lucy. She refused. Such a bummer. I shall have to make another one.
I know this a bit big-headed but isn’t she just gorgeous! You wouldn’t believe how soft she is. Oh all I wanted to do was rub my cheek against her glorious skirt :-) Look at that skirt – the texture is divine. I started off following the instructions … can you imagine that the only bit of non wool in her is a week pipe cleaner for her arms! But soon deviated. I’m a bit useless at following instructions. They called for something truly confusing for the skirt so I cast the instructions aside and made it the same way I made the pumpkin mama. As for her hair – there didn’t seem to be the required wool in the kit for the hair, so I used wool from my stash (oh yes, I am now growing and nurturing a wool-for-needle-felting stash!) I rouged up her cheeks with a soft pastel, added a red ribbon sash to her waist, and felted some wee red flowers and green leaves into a wreath for her hair.
Have I told you how much I adore needle felting!!! Oh how I do. It’s incredibly satisfying creating something so very substantial from long locks of wool and almost nothing else. I’m so hoping that Father Christmas has some sweet needle felting lovelies for my stocking :-)
And the teachers? Yep, they loved their presents – just as much as we loved making and giving them.
Many moons ago, we found this glorious book at Avid in West End (our favourite Brisbane bookstore). Everything Alice is a right little charmer of a book – an enormous range of projects demanding skills from a wee bit of cutting and glueing to quite complicated toy making. And it’s not just useful for parties – there are many projects in here that Abby and I long to make. We have pored over this book together for hours. Most weekends, since bringing it home in July, have begun with another study of all the projects we wanted to add to her birthday party.
One of our favourites was the idea for a wooden tea set with which to decorate the back garden. And so, I bought a sheet of thin plywood from our local hardware (Penhalluriack’s – the original rebel!), gridded it up with my square quilting ruler and drew Abby’s requested teapot, 3 teacups and a milk jug. I would have done a sugar bowl too, but ran out of ply. Never mind :-)
I cut each piece out with our jigsaw – this was rather laborious as I had to use the kitchen bench as my work bench, and the shape of the tea set pieces made it very hard to balance the ply adequately let alone properly clamp it. Halfway through my arm was practically vibrating!
The edges on the cutting side were a bit rough – I had bought finer blades but in wonky lily-style, couldn’t work out how to get the old blade off, so just soldiered on with a blade that was probably too coarse and certainly a bit blunt. Ahem! So I gave the edges a thorough sanding.
Each piece received two coats of paint -colours chosen by Abby – including one coat on the back. Then I cut decorative flowers and stripes out of a pretty piece of wrapping paper I bought at an elegant stationery store in Fitzroy – Zetta Florence.
I stuck a garden stake onto the back of each piece with liquid nails, hammered them into the ground and then sprayed them with a coat of gloss sealer. Truly, they did look unbelievably sweet and were the recipients of many an oooh and ahh! As for Sweetpea – she was very, very good and didn’t even give them a tiny, exploratory chew – well done Sweetpea!
Now, looking at the photos, I realise I forgot to trim the paper stripes – oy! Oh well, Abby didn’t seem to mind much :-)
{ the wee blue flag is marking the boundary of the croquet court, and we are growing vegetables in the tyres }
Oh this was a gloriously fun project - made me long for a lovely wood workshop with awesome tools. Oooooh the things we could do! Hmmm ….
Oh my goodness! I’ve been away so much longer than I intended … the bandwidth issues did indeed resolve themselves just as Julian predicted, but I’ve allowed myself to become so caught up with Abby’s birthday and end of year busyness that time has flown by.
And yet, as I sit here now writing, I am reminded that in fact, taking the time each day to record our days in words and pictures is very soothing and encouraging. As I miss day after day after day, I tell myself that I’m too busy, too much on, not enough time to sit down with my camera and laptop. Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. But that’s just not true.
Making the time to visit blockaday and add yet another chapter to the story that is our ordinary, lovely, homemade life is just what I need to encourage me to get up each morning with a smile and a cheerful belief that everything that needs to be done will be done and that we are capable of creating so much joy here in Bootville.
So – here I am. In two days, Abby and I will be making our last journey to Brisbane to visit Mum. We will help her with the LAST of the packing, be there when the removalists arrive, spend time with Nanny and Grandad, visit Rainbow Bay with CarolAnn and Peter, and then, next Tuesday, the three of us will head off with the car packed for our four day meandering along the Pacific coastline. We are all so excited … there are so many places we want to stop and remember along the way. And new places we want to check out.
Then, not this Friday but next, we will arrive at Mum’s new home in Merimbula. Oh my! A whole year has sped by since she bought her cottage by the sea and now it is time to move her in! Unbelievable!
Before then, there are still Christmas presents to be finished and wrapped and Bootville needs a good clean and tidy. So as to make life as comfy as possible for Jules who will be here all by his lonesome until the week of Christmas.
But! Right now, I have so much to share of the loveliness we have enjoyed over the last week with Abby’s fourteenth birthday and her marvellous Alice in Wonderland Party. First up – a candlelit birthday breakfast …
As we all know and lament, money just seems to drain away at this time of year, despite my efforts to keep everything handmade with as many supplies from thrift shops as I can find (yes, strangely enough, I don’t often find lovely gutermann cotton thread, or richly coloured pure wool felt, or the yards of quilting fabric needed to finish off some handmade projects in thrift shops! Such a bummer that! ) - and when you add birthdays and parties to Christmas – egads!
So last week, when I discovered that we needed new candles for the birthday ring, the thought of hopping back into the car and choofing back over to Honeybees and spending more money was more than I could bear. Instead, I hunted through the cupboards and dragged out all the sheets of beeswax I could find (we live near an apiarist supply store so do regularly stock up on these) and made our own wee candles. Nor could I find the ring’s little candle cups so resorted wrapping the bottoms in aluminium foil.
As I began rolling and pressing and melting, frantic thoughts of … “this is going to take so long! what a ridiculous way to spend the afternoon when I have so much to do already!” But as the kitchen filled with the soft, warm scent of beeswax, and the holes of our ring began to fill (all but two filled this year!), making candles was actually the loveliest way to wind down, slow my breath, and quieten the incessant, anxious chattering inside my head.
The homemade candles looked beautiful – dripped a bit, but picking the melted wax off the wooden ring was simply extra entertainment after the birthday feast later that night! The birthday breakfast table glowed, the hydrangeas and … (name completely gone from my head even though the garden is full of them, Nanny used to grow them and used to give me cuttings and I have loved them for years – do let me know if your know their name!) from the garden looked sweet and fresh, Julian’s poffertjes were warm and moorish … and the birthday girl was utterly delighted.
Her day began gently with much love, happiness and good dose of pretty. Just how birthdays should begin.
I am here … I’ve just had a quick trip to Brisbane to celebrate the end of Mum’s 22 year career and a heap of packing … now I’m stitching and quilting and sawing and gluing and trimming and soaking and cooking and wrapping …
But I have no bandwidth. The changes you can see here at blockaday – to cheer us along through this glorious time of the year (and my hands down favourite) – have taken me 3 hours to implement. Yep, 3 hours of trying to navigate the internet with my phone. Thanks dear family for leaving me with no bandwidth – ahem, Abby!? Julian?!
So there’s no photos of Little Donkey puzzles or Father Christmas quilts or Advent nighties. Just a quick note to say hello, prod you into checking out our newly updated Christmas booklist – there are so many books here we utterly adore and I would be so tickled if you checked them out of your library or hunted them down in your town and had a lovely read – they make our Christmas, year in year out – and assure you that I will be back as soon as the bandwidth resets for the month – hopefully, tomorrow. But I don’t know whether Julian was just saying that (I was wielding a powertool) or if that really is the date our mad, world wide webby bits will come back on line. Fingers crossed!
And – it’s only a few sleeps ’til Advent! How excited are you!?
p.s. you’ve really got to check out the books – we’ve been reading The Christmas Mystery every Advent for 8 years now. I can’t imagine Christmas without it (including the catching up nights when we have to read several chapters at once!)
p.p.s. the header photo is Abby in 2006 at our annual Christingle Service at St. John the Baptist – it was exquisite – and look how wee she is. Sigh …
Meet the Doris nightie. She could be called the damask nightie, seeing as though she’s made out of damask. She could be called, less charitably, the tablecloth nightie, seeing as though she was a tablecloth in her former life. She could be called the doily nightie, seeing as though she has a doily appliqued onto her bodice.
But she’s called the Doris nightie. Because this lovely piece of thick, soft, elegant cloth once belonged to Mrs. Doris K. Henley. It’s the cloth version of Nanny Dougall’s bandaids :-) Doesn’t this just speak of another time. A time when we took our lovely cloths and beautiful china plates, laden with cakes and scones and biscuits, to social events – the church morning tea, the Country Women’s Association fete, the luncheon table at the saleyards, a friend’s daughter’s wedding breakfast.
I do so love thinking about how these women spent their days – and much of my imaginings do come from what I remember my Nanny Dougall doing. Hers were not days filled with watching movies on cable tv, meandering the airconditioned, artificial walkways of shopping malls, having her nails done or meeting friends at trendy restaurants or cafes. Her days were filled with community work, church work, bridge mornings, CWA meetings and social occasions that always involved lots of preparation – baking, accounts, minutes, the stitching and knitting of goods for sale, the bottling and preserving of goodies for raffling. And whatever the occasion, she packed up her baskets not with disposable plates and a plastic cloth, but a freshly ironed damask cloth and a Royal Doulton sandwich tray (named with a bandaid!). So lovely and genteel. And so much more rewarding – forging rich relationships with her community whilst helping those in need and working to provide her town with better resources.
Oh, the nightie! I almost forgot about it! I bought the cloth at the op shop a couple of weeks back – it was our Halloween ghost! – and on the weekend, I washed it, a bird pooped on it whilst it was hanging on the line, so I washed it again, and turned it into a beautiful nightie.
As I am now up to nightie number 4, I’m fine tuning how I use the pattern. I had a sweet doily of bluebirds and flowers (reminds me of the wee silver bracelet I had as a baby) I wanted to use for the bodice so I put the buttons at the back and I must say, I quite like them there. I also changed how I gathered the sleeves and skirt. Instead of having barely-there gathers along the whole of each line, I created much fuller gathers right on the cap of the sleeve, and across the middle 6 inches or so of the front and back, leaving the rest flat. I love the effect – and especially liked doing it. Adding loose gathers to a whole waist or sleeve is rather tedious and I can never seem to make them evenly enough.
And I added a pretty contrasting ribbon to the waist. Not quite the right shade of blue, but it was a perfectly cheerful make do moment.
I did soak the doily in a light solution of nappy san – this took the edge off the age spots, but didn’t eliminate them and that’s okay. I cannot bear to discard things just because they are a wee bit marked. Falling to pieces is no good. But a little mark here or there on an otherwise lovely piece – c’est la vie. Much nicer to put it to good use and enjoy its loveliness than be all hoity-toity about it. And this doily has been beautifully embroidered. I hope both the embroiderer and Mrs. Henley approve of how I’ve married their two pieces :-)
I have a few more vintage damask cloths, some lovely white cotton sheets and a couple of soft cotton doona covers that are all waiting to turn into nighties and plenty of lace, ribbon, doilies and buttons. It’s going to be a nightie Christmas this year :-) And I might need to mount a scarecrow on the washing line!
Bit addicted! Sewing stretch with my nifty little overlocker is nowhere near as ghastly as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s not ghastly at all. It was super fun, super quick … just super! And the result is pretty darn good.
The fabric – I bought it at The Fabric Store after my research methodology exam – is quite heavy – I think it’s fine for Melbourne and it will certainly be lovely as a long sleeved tshirt in winter. But Julian would like some thinner ones too so I ordered a bunch of swatches from here (and they arrived a day later – awesome service!) and Julian has picked his favourites. The Bamboo Hemp Jersey (divine and a wee bit slubby), the Bamboo and Organic Cotton Interlock (beautifully smooth and elegant) and he would like a shirt out of the Bamboo and Wild Nettle (gorgeous weave).
I’ve also got a sample of their Bamboo flannelette – beautiful. Everything is in a natural colour and apparently easy to dye. We will leave the jerseys as natural but the flannelette … folks, my red flannel nightie looks like it is here!!!
So – tshirt making? Awesome. So quick. So easy. Definitely no reason to buy another mass produced tshirt. Uh! There was one moment. The neck binding. Did I mention last week that it is very hard to buy decent ribbing for the neck that is a matching white? I found it not hard, but impossible. So, after a bit of web research, I decided to just make the neck band out of the same fabric as the tshirt. And it worked fine – it is certainly a little nail biting, fitting all that neck fabric onto a band that is significantly smaller but certainly not impossible.
And then there was the moment when I was a couple of millimetres away from slicing THROUGH A FOLD IN THE BODY FABRIC. Oy! I literally leapt up from the machine and screeched. Thankfully I was able to unpick, take a deep breath and keep going. But keeping an eye on ensuring that the fabric is lying perfectly flat is something that I shall always look out for.
Now I need a women’s pattern and we’re set. And Abby and I are thinking about doing a silkscreen printing course. Ooooh ooooh oooh! That could be serious fun.