Monthly Archives: January 2011

My garden has been disappointing lately.  The tomato plants nearly all have yellowing leaves, wilting branches and dropped, unripe tomatoes. 

Also, the peas, broadbeans and spinach have finished before I was ready.  Jasper loved plucking and eating the peas 🙂

Some ‘crops’ have failed to grow altogether… leeks, beetroot, radishes(!) just to name a few. 

But, today:

Today Jasper and I did some harvesting!  And I’ve realised that, maybe, it’s not all gloom and doom after all :o) The beans are going well, and the zuchinni harvest has begun. But best of all I am sucessfully growing tomatoes regardless of the pitiful state of the plantsl!

In celebration of my new upbeat attitude to the garden I went out and turned/aerated the compost 🙂

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in other news:

I’ve been Jamming, Pickling, Saucing and Fermenting!

Highlights have included the creation of my own sauerkraut via fermentation.  I did this at the request of Chris and fully expected that I wouldn’t like it.  But it’s DELICIOUS… even Jasper loves it!  The best bit is that I’ve used my own cabbages – very satisfying.

The Apricot Jam is divine! I’ve also made more pickled beetroot and pickled red cabbage – which we love to eat.

The plum sauce is lovely and would go nicely with pickled pork or even drizzled on ice cream I reckon.  Best of all the wild cherry plums were foraged from a creek line at the back of a friend’s house and were 100% free and otherwise going to waste.

I’m planning on making ginger beer next, we’ve been collecting soft drink bottles for the brew (Chris has been brewing beer like mad lately which is pretty exciting too).

Well that’s got you up to date 🙂  Though one last thing;  I drew those labels onto lunch bags, cut them out and stuck them onto the jars using glue stick.  Thanks to Melissa from Tiny Happy for pointing me in that direction.

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It’s been a LONG time in the making… but I’ve finally finished a quilt made with the red/reddish fabrics I collected over 6 years ago!

I think I originally had a pineapple block quilt in mind but my passion for intricate piecing didn’t last the distance (unfortunately!).

Then last year I decided to make an irish chain quilt which only involves piecing squares. However, when I layed the quilt out I realised that some of my reddish fabrics were too pale pinkish and the effect was ruined against the cream/tan background.

So I improvised and came up with this lap quilt:

I had this quilted by a long arm quilter, an expensive option, but I just wasn’t going to get to it myself anytime soon. I’m just glad that it’s done and in use.

It’s just the right size for couch snuggling, goes very nicely with our lounge room stuff and almost makes our place look well put together!

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This was such a fun stall set up, and I was very pleased with how cohesive it all looked considering that Kate and I worked independently with just a ‘brights and linen’ as a theme.

Kate’s work was especially lovely and I’m blown away by her ability to put colour and pattern together.  Here is a little collage of some of the things she made for the stall:

Kate gave me the yo-yo necklace that is at the feet of the (adorable) lion above and I get loads of compliments every time I wear it 🙂

One of the great things about doing the market was (suprisingly) the dicipline of making multiples, I really liked working in this way!  It was also lots of fun chatting to other stall holders.

The worst bit was that we didn’t sell very much, which felt pretty disappointing.  I really did have unrealistic expectations about how much I would sell in a 4hr period LOL.  But it was a great learning experience and I’m SOOOO proud of what we achived.

I’m not sure that market stalling is for me. But I wont rule out doing more in the future. 

However, I am thinking about another venture/project which I have tentatively named ‘make 3’. When I get the urge to make an item, I will actually make 3 of that something … keeping one for me and offering the other two for sale 🙂  Online somewhere.  I’ll get back to you on that one!

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We’ve been having so much fun lately that sitting down to writing a blog post hasn’t been a big priority… which is a good thing I reckon 🙂

I hope you all had a great Christmas.  We had a lovely time with Chris’ family in Bridport.

I made this waldorf doll for Jasper’s Christmas present.  He’s called Leo and he’s now Jasper’s bed-time cuddle doll.

I used a llittle book called Making Dolls by Sunnhild Reinckens which had excellent instructions for making the head.  The book in general though is fairly ‘light on’ for instructions but I quite like that as it pointed me in the right direction but generally let me nut it out for myself.

There were some ideas for puppets in there which I’m thinking about trying too.

Jasper got a lot of presents this year, but he has been playing with all of them so I think that he really was due for toys and books that were at the next level… thank goodness for Christmas I say!  And thanks to Jasper’s Grandma, Grandad and Aunty Sarah who contributed to the bonanza!

I owe you a report on the market stall (way back in November!) – but I’ve only just downloaded the photos and need to sort through them.

What else?  I just finished making a quilt today but I’m not happy with the photos, so I’ll try again and get back to you (promise!)

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