by Krista | Nov 5, 2015 | Spring
It’s dark and cloudy today, the air fragrant with the scent of rain-dampened earth and my cup of Earl Grey tea steaming next to me.
We’re moving slow this morning, weary and bleary-eyed from hauling, stacking, unloading, hauling, and re-stacking 170 bales of hay this week. When we finished sliding in the last bale yesterday afternoon, we were drenched from three rain storms and plastered from head to tow in hay and hay dust. Is there anything more glorious than a shower on such occasions?
It was a huge project but a fun one, mostly because we got to take beautifully scenic drives through the country and spend time with our friends, Doug and Avis, whose gardens I wrote about a while back. Their gardens are still stunning and inspiring, and when we took breaks from stacking hay, Avis and I got to wander through them a bit, sighing happily at all the flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees. She gave me poppy seeds from ones growing wild in her patch and a Pride of Bolivia tree that is going to be planted next to our chook yards where it will provide both shade and beauty with its leafy branches and gorgeous yellow flowers.
This morning I’ll be planting them along with the other treasures I’ve been collecting from sale bins and market stalls and seed packet displays.
I’ve got five varieties of tomatoes, multi-colored bell peppers, lush little basil plants, Jerusalem artichokes, Butternut squash, dill, lavender, leeks, red-cored carrots, and these gorgeous little oca yams that have sprouted marvelously.
Once everything is planted, I’m giving myself the rest of the day to cook, bake, simmer, stew, and make all sorts of delicious things. Bear is craving cookies with crystallized ginger and sultanas, and I’m pining for a good potato casserole with ham and caramelized onions and cheese. After so much hard physical labor this week, it’s time for comfort food and pottering in the kitchen.
What are you craving today? xo
by Krista | Nov 1, 2015 | Summer
I love this time of year when the rains come and the last parched, barrenness of winter is washed away.
My gardens are so pretty right now, filled with flowers and flowering herbs: rosemary, cilantro, yarrow, comfrey, and sage. Hollyhocks and calendula are coming up, lemongrass sprouting, and my bell pepper and tomato plants are covered with tiny fruits.
The wild things are growing beautifully too. As I walk through the fields with my dog, Luna, I find the beginnings of creeping Winter Apple berries and heaps of wild plantain. I continue to pick the plantain to use in quiches, salads, and soups in my kitchen, but last week I picked a bunch to share with a friend who combines it with comfrey and other herbs to make healing balms to treat aching muscles. It’s such a lovely and versatile plant.
This past week I’ve been nurturing seedlings, spoiling them with rain water to get them strong and healthy before being transplanted into the gardens. This week I’ll plant them out, filling prepared beds with more tomatoes, Lebanese cucumbers, capsicums, and elderflowers.
I’ve also been sprouting oca – gorgeous little South American yams in vivid pink and orange – and Jerusalem artichokes, a gift from a dear friend. I’m so excited to get them planted and see how they do.
Yesterday was spent hauling hay, lots and lots of hay, getting our barn filled after our goats finished off the last of the winter hay. There’s something wonderfully satisfying about getting the bales stacked neatly, right up to the roof, knowing our goats will be well fed no matter what the weather does this summer.
After all that hard work, today was for resting and only doing pleasant things. We had brunch at a lovely cafe, found new plants for our gardens, then came home and pottered. I pressed play on a new audio book – “The Curse of the House of Fosket” by M.R.C. Kasasian – which I’m enjoying immensely, and wood-burned a couple of orders. My favorite piece is this custom design I did on a round cheeseboard/cutting board. It makes me smile.
We’ve been eating simply lately, fresh fruit and veggies and slices of our favorite grainy sourdough bread topped with sliced bananas or fried eggs or traditionally fermented Danish salami with ajvar or marinara sauce.
We’ve also been eating entirely too much pizza thanks to a rather hilarious mix-up on Friday night. We were both gone for the afternoon running errands in different cities, and decided to surprise the other with pizza for dinner. How we laughed when we both walked in bearing pizza boxes. On the bright side, I hardly did a lick of cooking all weekend!
Now it’s time to curl up with my book and read a few more pages before falling asleep.
What’s going on in your part of the world? xo
by Krista | Oct 30, 2015 | Spring
A while ago Bear surprised me with my very own spinning wheel and loom. I was thrilled! Spinning and weaving is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little girl. I remember being enamored by pictures in my fairy tale books of women in lovely old cottages in the woods churning out skeins of yarn and beautifully woven blankets. I was thrilled, yes, but also bamboozled. I had no idea what to do with either wheel or loom.
Last week I got to spend a day with my new medieval friend, Mim, who volunteered to teach me how to spin wool on my dear but unused spinning wheel. She is a highly skilled spinner and weaver who has mastered drop spindles, spinning wheels, and looms, creating stunning works of art based on medieval patterns and techniques. She comes by it naturally for her grandfather made spinning wheels and her grandmother taught her how to use them.
I, on the other hand, have not mastered anything related to spinning, and have no experience turning wool into yarn. Although I come from a long line of fabulous knitters – mother, aunts, and grandmothers – the only knitting I’ve mastered is finger-knitting. If you ever need endless lengths of finger-knitted cord, I’m your gal.
Thankfully Mim is a patient teacher, and soon helped me navigate the unique vocabulary of spinning and knitting. Before long she had me carding wool for the first time, using firm rocking motions to transform twisted lumps of tangled wool into smooth, knot-free batts of wool ready for the spinning wheel.
Mim showed me how to take apart the wheel for cleaning, where to rub with lanolin to keep things running smoothly, and how to adjust the tension.
Then she showed me how to spin. It looked so easy when she did it. Fingers expertly stretching the wool so it fed in evenly as her foot pumped rhythmically, keeping the wheel going at a steady clip.
Then it was my turn. Within seconds the wool I was holding was a mangled bunch of fibers, the spinning wheel was running backwards, and my “thread” was a lumpy, bumpy mess. Clearly I am not a natural.
But that’s OK. Mim assured me that I will get better with practice, and that it’s perfectly normal to thoroughly muss everything up the first time around. Bless her for that.
I’m going to keep trying, and try again until I learn how to coordinate everything, figure out the feel and give of the wool, and remember to keep the peddle going so it doesn’t suddenly lurch into reverse. I’ll get there.
And if I keep messing up for a good while, that’s alright too. There’s always the Russian bakery near Mim’s where I can drown my spinning sorrows.
Have you ever spun wool before?
by Krista | Oct 29, 2015 | Spring
It’s been dark and stormy the past few days, luscious rain falling, cool winds bringing wondrous relief from the searing heat and humidity of last week. It’s lovely.
Our responsibilities have taken us all over the place in recent weeks, back and forth to the city and town, running errands, keeping appointments, and, for me, taking on new work. It’s been fun, interesting, challenging, and, it must be admitted, utterly exhausting.
But we’ve learned that in order to avoid letting ourselves get run down, we have to plan as vigilantly for relaxation as we do for work. Sometimes we stop mid-journey for a walk in a park or along a mountain trail, others we stop under a shady tree for a picnic or nap. Last week we stopped at a bakery we’d never been to before, Banneton in Woolloongabba.
We settled in with cuppas – flat white for me, long black for Bear – and chose decadent desserts to spoil ourselves.
We both chose sour cherry desserts – who can resist sour cherries? Bear had the dark chocolate sour cherry tart and I had the sour cherry custard topped with toasted almonds. Both were lovely, delectable treats to lift our spirits and cheer us on through our to-do list.
It was good to linger, visiting about this and that, watching the resident pigeons toddle about underfoot feasting on fallen crumbs. If I was a pigeon, I’d move to a bakery too.
Before we left we got a loaf of bread that was so scrumptious we returned the very next errand day to pick up 6 more loaves for our freezer so we’d not run out in a hurry. It’s a wood-fired multi-grain sourdough that is chockers, and I do mean chockers, full of deliciousness. There are poppy, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds, hazelnuts and walnuts and who knows what other goodness. We are smitten, and I’m excited to start experimenting to see if I can replicate it.
What little moments keep you going through the busy times? xo
by Krista | Oct 27, 2015 | Spring
Deep breath.
These are precious words to me. Words that have helped me get through every difficult moment in my life. The words I recite to myself when life gets wobbly and I feel off kilter.
Deep breath.
It always helps. Always.
It’s been a Lots Of Deep Breaths couple of weeks for me. Not terrible, not traumatic, just, well, wobbly. One of those seasons where my body decides it’s time to dig deep again, to wrestle around with fears and insecurities that my weary self would rather just shush for awhile. But shushing doesn’t work. It just makes the Fidgety Things shout louder and make a fuss.
So I’ve stepped back a bit to deal with those things, to look into the scared places and uncertain spots and wavering moments and figure out what my body needs to get back to well-being.
Some things are better now. And I don’t have to remind myself to breathe when I think about them. They’ve lost their power and I’ve gained strength.
Other things will take a while. They require a bit more courage, a bit more love, a bit more understanding before they can be resolved. So I’m waiting quietly with them, wishing them well, trusting that the It’s OK Now will come in time.
Hence, the silence here. I find it quite impossible to write Mid-Wobble.
Soon I will write again, and share my little adventures and small celebrations, but for now I need to breathe and look after the things that need a bit of extra care right now.
Wishing you peaceful hearts and the sure knowledge that you are loved. xo
