fiveandtwo

Procrastination

I am rather good at procrastination. Here I show you some garden pictures. Truly, I'm taking a break from mammoth cutting out and hand sewing of market goodies, as a prelude to machine sewing.

The garden id feral. This is my lovely apricot tree with a good amount of fruit and swamped by the plants around it (away from the trunk). I noticed today lorikeets visiting, to test the fruit for ripeness no doubt. Hmm, a net may be in order.

Passionfruit. The flowers.

And the fruit forming. The one fruit where every single one is eaten by me, Clare and Ally.

Need to cut back the lavatera.

Oyster Plant (acanthus?) flowers for the first time...abundantly. Does this mean it's going to die?  It fills a gap so splendidly.

The fig enjoys a bigger pot. Got it last year from Digger's, and the tag has gone AWOL, but it has a French name. I like fresh figs but don't have the room for, or want, a massive fig tree.

Trying a couple of hanging tomato planter bags - $5 from the Reject Shop. Working well so far, but may be not durable in the long term.

Poppy seed heads are quite photogenic.

 Back to sewing now.

 

Good Fun Marketing

It was good fun, the Maker's Market.

There's my stall, with my splendid offsiders. Without them I wouldn't be able to go to the toilet or get coffee (I brought sandwiches). Well worth the money given for sausage-in-bread and sweet treats from the "cafe", things like tiny caramel tarts, bite-sized meringues, cupcakes...etc. Ally had her felt "mascots" and little packages of Christmas decorations of her own design. She sold about half. Clare had framed drawings. A series of Alice in Wonderland and some Manga drawings. She sold none (but people looked, and were interested). Still, it stung that, "Ally sold stuff and I didn't".  One of the senior art teachers at the local secondary college said the drawing was very good, so that kind of made up for lack of sales. This lady is a dear friend but I know she doesn't make these comments lightly.

It was a good day for me too, sold some stuff, caught up with people I know and sort-of know and other stallholders. A good social workout for me who usually avoids it if possible.

I need to make more: owls, reversible pinnies, mice, purses, birds and dogs.. It was a good day for sure.

Contagion

We've had a "gastric 'flu" making its way through the family. Called so because you have the horrible aches and incapacitation of the 'flu in combination with vomiting and diarrhoea...fortunately it lasts about 24 hours, followed by a further 12 hours of "what the hell was that" and not being game to eat anything, followed by that splendid sort of euphoria that comes with being sick in bed and now being well - "I'm not sick, I can do anything".  It's fleeting but it's wonderful. I think that must be particularly heartbreaking with chronic illness and pain, no "getting better", initially at least. I am fortunate to only imagine it to be like this. 

This lurgy struck Giles last week, Clare and Ally both in the wee hours of last Saturday morning. Clare I got to before...Ally came to me, "Mum, I vomited" . As I was swabbing up the far-travelling splat she said excitedly, "I vomited on my feet!", like it was some sort of special trick. 

I was struck, later, much later than 3am, how much I'll miss these kind of declarations when my 11 year old "babies" get older, like next year probably. All of the kids have made such remarks, it's just that Clare and Al are the youngest.

So, I got the dreaded lurgy next, hence my intimate knowledge of its symptoms and the aftermath description is what I felt.

Maker's Market tomorrow! Aren't those octopi (?) something? I've made a green octopus/whale/starfish as well and they're packaged, in green/yellow/red  as a Trio Of Sea Creatures. I will not make any more unless I can charge $50 for one octopus. Much as I love to hand sew, all those legs - cutting out as well as sewing - was the finish of me!

Wish me luck for good sales tomorrow!

 

From The Tip Shop

I've had my eye out for a shelf or cupboard for this space, where once was an upright freezer. Carrying a measuring tape around in my bag in case I came across something with potential.

Found an ugly chipboard veneer shelf at the tip shop last week - $10. Coats of paint made it useable, and it fits the spot perfectly.

Temporary place for my vintage floral sheets, not ideal since the fold to the outside will fade and they'll get really dusty.  I haven't found a lairy sheet in good condition for a few years. Such is the state of op-shopping now. Because you're dying to know: top shelf, basket of toilet paper rolls and basket of old sheets for making toiles (testing patterns). I buy toilet paper wholesale - four dozen rolls at a time, ahem, yes. It lives in the shed with a top-up basket inside. Must be a big family thing...not only toilet paper, but washing powder, pasta, flour and rice. I wish there was an Indian or Chinese grocery nearby so I could buy sacks of decent rice. Have recently finished the 15kg bag of excellent Basmati rice I got in Melbourne a while ago.

Second shelf: container of dry dog food (also bought in bulk and kept in the shed). Mostly the dog has fresh meat and bones. Pile of flowery sheets.

Third shelf: pile of flowery sheets, canister containing matches, old kiddie schoolcase containg shoe polishing gear.

Fourth shelf: flowery sheets on a painted - same time as shelf - cardboard archive box which contains odd woolly fabric awaiting dyeing, when I get in the mood, you know.

End of riveting shelf-by-shelf description.

Also bought at the tip shop:

Splendid owly cup measure. Not a bargain ($7.00) but irresistable. Probably there was a whole set, once upon a time: 1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/4 cup. Glad there was just this one, no room for others!

Keeping Out The Hot

While it's still cool all doors and windows are shut and curtains pulled over all that conductive glass.

This is the kitchen window curtain, if it's really hot a double layer, heavy fabric curtain goes up (we use this in winter too, to keep out the cold).

I really like the dappled shadows of the pittosporums through the curatin.

This afternoon there's been the predicted storm. The hound hates thunder (among other things). Here she is, suffering terribly in a corner of the kitchen.

Tomorrow I will mop that area. She's dripped saliva all around. Yuk.

Chooks!

Mmmm, green grass.

Before we went to Qld our three old hens went to the great chook run in the sky. When we got back I mucked out the run, laid new straw, scrubbed the drinker and feeder, moved the wood heap from behind the shed to the top of the driveway and went and got six pullets. Just like that.

Original run with passionfruit vine growing over. Nesting and roosting to the right and accessed from inside the shed.

Run now twice the size, much better for six chooks. Still some kindling wood I need to move.

This is laughingly called the "Chookie Playground". All the grass has been eaten.

Should have put a "Many photos of poultry warning" at the top of this post.

Here's all six of them. Only one has a name. The mostly white one has been christened Egg White by Ally. That second from front one is laying, see how her comb is bigger and more red.

I've been keeping chooks for nearly twenty years now and I'd be sad not to have a few hens always. Secretly I'd like to have great flocks of them, I can fantasise! We use 1.5 to 2 dozen eggs each week in our household and I don't have a compost pile - I give all scraps to the chooks - and when I muck out the run it goes in a pile for a while, then on to the garden.

Such useful birds. I love them.

Not Quite Right

This photo is from an old New Idea magazine, July 13, 1974. New Idea mag cost 25c back then.

I was quite horrified when I came across it (bought some old New Idea mags from Yandina Market, on the holiday). OK, a Cubs/Brownies Miss World Quest wouldn't even be thought of now I assume. But "It's what scouting is about - fun and games"...really? The parents of those girls and boys thought that it was good and fun?  Anyway, many parallels in these times. Skank-wear for primary school girls anyone?

Holiday Round Up

Early October saw us driving up to Maroochydore (Qld) for a bit of a holiday and to keep an eye on, and do things for, my mum, who lives in a retirement village in Buderim. While my sister went to Tassie for two weeks, a well-earned holiday for her. We were able to stay in my sister's flat in Maroochydore. Overcast and showery weather, but not cold. I sported close to an afro hairstyle on account of the humidity. Monumental frizz, I tell you.

We went ten pin bowling and to a Smiggle shop in "the Plaza" (Clare & Al's request), op-shopping in the very well picked-over oppies of the Sunshine Coast (damn that it's now hip to op-shop), I came away with books and a nice fringed, woollen travel rug (rug from Lifeline in Maleny). We tried to do some national park walks.

It rained. This pic. is from Mapleton Falls lookout.

Then running for the car. Ally got the umbrella!

We also visited Kondalilla Falls NP...it continued raining. Beautiful countryside, the Sunshine Coast hinterland. Visited Rosetta's, an independent book shop in Maleny, and also the two secondhand book shops there. There's a terrific independent book shop in Buderim too. I should say now that, with op-shop books, second hand book shops and independent book shops, I bought at least twice my bodyweight in books (and I'm no tiny girl). Additions to my "reference library" - art, textiles and fashion, and sewing. Also novels from the oppies and second-hand shops. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon rearranging the book shelves to accommodate this influx. No new book shelves, all books have to find a place on the existing shelves. This is hard now! Thirteen novels don't have a place, probably I'll read them and not want to keep them anyway.

Went to pick up my sister from Brisbane airport, her mid-afternoon flight from Hobart. Beforehand we intended going to Qld Museum, but it was closed for renovations. Sadly *cough* we went to the art gallery instead, taking in the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition that was on (he was a very good photographer in the days of film B&W). I'd forgotten what a lovely space the Qld Art Gallery is. The foyer huge and airy with water from outside, then inside and then outside again. Fountains, bronze pelicans and huge shallow pools with river stones on the bottom. The pool outside the cafe has two resident water dragons that wander around the tables and climb the huge fig (?) that shades the area. If I lived in Brisbane I'd visit the gallery often. We didn't have time to visit the newer modern art gallery...next time. 

While away I made stock for up-coming Maker's Market and a newer Meet The Maker's Market. Former quarterly, latter annually. Hand sewn stuff.

Birds

Mice. Lots of mice. A mischief of mice?

Made a very small dent in the "to read" pile of books: Christos Tsoilkas The Slap (and I just want to slap all the characters), Peggy Frew The House Of Sticks (I want to slap all of them too), Lloyd Jones Hand Me Down World (absorbing but not, for me, a keeper), Peter Temple Truth (my first foray into crime writing, I really enjoyed this book) and I'm still reading Marion Halligan The Taste Of Memory (I'm enjoying this cooking and gardening memoir).

Seedlings planted too small before going away mostly died. Not from lack of water but from the scratching up habits of blackbirds. Started again with some more seeds sown and some seedlings bought. We have six new chooks. More in another post.

Hello, and glad to be back.