Month: July 2022

(Cat tongues sticking out amuse me!)
Hiya!
How was everyones weekend?
I’ve been working on ‘stuff’ as a new photo challenge has started. I’ll share photos soon (2 months prep time and I have precisely two photos ready. Hmmm)

In the interests in saving $$, plastic and keeping Jeff happy, I made a double batch of choc chip bikkies!
They’ve been pretty good!!
Didn’t come even close to fitting into my Nanna’s old Bikkie Tin!

We valiantly ate our way through them so the lid fit on.

Bit of soap here and there.. the above is lemon myrtle. It smells lovely!
I forgot to get a few snaps of the cut version. The yellow bits are like flames!

A double batch of Japanese Honeysuckle – top half with a scrub.

Getting in early on prepping Christmas soaps and trying something a little different with my tree

Love how these turned out… snowy grey scene! I mixed an apple fragrance with peppermint and really like it.
Will attempt a few more batches of this.

I even got out into the back garden for a bit of a tidy up!

Its great to have the straw to immediately mulch once I’ve weeded areas

I left the strawberry patches alone… they’ll need digging up and topping up with soil before replanting. That can be another day

Yikes.
There is a herb spiral in there…

I also did a big pruning out the front of the house and had grand plans of burning the bonfire to the ground.

That was a rather large waste of my afternoon. Failed utterly to get it to keep burning.
I think I would have had to douse it in fuel as it was too wet and green.
And as we know, petrol etc is hideously expensive world wide so just going to have to let it be and dry out a lot more.

Back to the inside fire which I don’t usually have that much trouble with!!
Lovely and cosy in here as the rain is pouring down steadily!

Cheers!

Hi!
Just for something different, I convinced Jeff to come along to an avocado seed carving workshop!

A lovely friend of mine, Jaana, makes these gorgeous natural pendants out of avocado seeds and she’s started doing workshops. I’d been wanting to pop along to one for a while.

The above designs were done by Jeff… he split his in half. I am waiting for mine to dry and pop apart themselves? (Maybe)

Have you ever tried this?
Its such a beautiful process. I can see it being addictive. Just need to get some carving tools.
The seeds were soaked so it made them easy to peel and work with.

Its a bit like magic… you score the surface of the seed or cut in and after a few minutes, the cut area turns this amazing burnt orange colour!

People in the class did a wide variety of patterns and designs. It was pretty fabulous!
Jaana taught us the basics then showed us how to embed things into the seed as well… I did a little blue resin button (made by Jaana for us to use in the class)

A bit hard to see the little bit of… damn it I forget the name of this rock all the time. We panned for them and collected them a while back.

And because my brain is useless I also forgot the name of this seed that I embedded into the Avocado seed! But its a COOL seed with the wrinkles!

And because I was in an embedding mood, I popped a cute little silver bead thingy into my feather design.

Of course… the seeds will shrink as they dry and change colour.
I only have one to show you… one I bought from Jaana a while back.

Still some of the orange colour in there!
And on the back it curves in

We got to take a lot of seeds home so I grabbed a metal skewer and did another couple in front of the telly that night –

I am looking forward to getting some proper tools to experiment more

And last but not least, I carved a Totoro onto a seed! (Fav. Japanese character from the Ghibli Movie Studios and if you’ve not had the pleasure, check them out! There are some excellent movies to see (my favourite being ‘Spirited Away’))
I digress…

Because I am NOT an artist when it comes to drawing even a convincing stick figure, I had to trace the character then try to copy it onto my seed.
I am happy it actually LOOKS like Totoro!
I wonder what they will all look like when they shrink and dry?
I’ll let you know.
It really was an enjoyable few hours of creativeness and meeting a few new people!

And next time you get an avocado seed… have a go! Its pretty cool fun 🙂

Cheers!

(PS… Leaving you with todays Fossil Bluff view)(Low clouds today!)

Hello.
Gosh we’ve had quite the streak of frosty nights and mornings!

RIP Flossie Veloci. 🙁 We palliated her for a couple of weeks. I thought she might perk up as I was hand feeding her all sorts of treats and she did rally slightly.
In the end she got BnB in the cat carrier inside overnight and the warm sunny hothouse in the day. But it was not to be 🙁

We also said goodbye to Freckles but in a nicer way.
After a gender pronoun reassignment, he is now back on his original property and hopefully doing well.
The hens can now eat in peace as he was a greedy butt!

This week I’ve knuckled down and done the 11km round hike about every second day with my pack (currently at 14kgs)
The river track with the bonus view up on Fossil Bluff is most enjoyable… even on the dodgy days.
Been taking a snap from the top each time to compare.

Tide in

Tide out – Sunny

Tide out – Not so sunny…

Me standing on the edge of the cliff…

Worth the short but huff and puff worthy climb

It doesn’t look too bad from this shot.

Found some flax along the track.
So foraged and got Jeff to carry it back!

The river track is so handy and pleasant to walk around

(Low tide)
And I can’t believe I am seeing the wattle out!

This was a gorgeous sunny days walk

Broccoli slowly coming along

Cant wait until we can eat it!

The potatoes sitting up nicely too

I seem to have a slew of craft things happening at the moment… But it is nice to have those projects sitting there for the rainy days or early nights by the fire

Weird knee rug I’ve been working on for the ‘knitting for charity’ group I often go to Monday mornings.
Being a born rebel, I am crocheting.
Since it was school holidays we got some younger kids pop in. Last week I was teaching a young girl how to crochet – she knew how to chain stitch but that was it. She went really well. Hoping she comes back next Monday so I can teach her the start of a blanket.

Spare yarn and rope and crocheted a basket…

It was just to see if I could 🙂

Anyway, hope everyone is having a totally super weekend!!
Cheers!

Hey there!
Just a few snaps of the unmoulded/cut soaps from the class.
Above was a shimmy design (Anjou pear and Lemon Zest) that I made so the participants could have a go at cutting slices of soap off the loaf.

This lemongrass scented soap had a lovely two tone design! Simple with some poppyseeds mixed into the top layer (and some soap butterfly embeds)

This lovely natural soap was scented with Key Lime Tart fragrance with a subtle swirl of Green French Clay.
A bit of fun with butterfly embeds and poppy seeds

Another lady had a lot of fun swirling a very pretty mermaid blue mica into a variety of my patterned moulds

The fragrance she used was ‘Blueberry’

Another student decided on giving the loaf mould a go and chose ‘Dragons Blood’ as the fragrance.
It turned out lovely with a solid base colour with the top mixed with sprinkles!

And lastly, using the lime and coconut fragrance, this deep blue and white design turned out great with really interesting folds of the colours!

And lastly, I finally got around to cutting the soap I made as a demo during the class and loved the patterns on the inside!

I used Peppermint for the fragrance

I think the wobbles is what you get when you make a very fluid batch of soap then chuck it in the car to drive home!

But excellent effects

I’ve had a LOT of interest to do more classes, so looking at doing another one possibly in August 🙂

Lets finish on a culinary note…
I went to a local workshop on making sourdough bread!
It was excellent fun and apart from mixing and kneading up our own loaves, the lady baked some she had prepared so we all got a taste at the end.
Soooo good.
(I still have to get info on the starter but I really want to do this as a regular thing.)
Mine baked up beautifully the next morning and we (mostly me) thoroughly enjoyed eating our way through it!

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!
Cheers!

Well… theres the straw!
Will hopefully last a while.
Have popped several bales in the garage out of the weather so we’ve got access to dry chook bedding!

Poor Floss is unwell. No oomph
She’s spending her days in the hothouse out of the weather and full access to treats/food that she doesn’t have to fight the others for.
Fingers crossed she perks up

I STILL haven’t managed to get the white garlic in!!!
But the purple garlic is all going along nicely

Jeff dragged me out in the cold with my camera the other night to check out Frog Village

So many cute little frogs living in the ‘Bonsai’ Rhododendron

Glad to see them hanging about!

Back to soap…

A bit of bubblewrap on my Honey Milk and Oats soap again to make the honeycomb pattern

Speaking of soapy stuff…
Been caught up preparing my first solo workshop.
Sharon isn’t doing them at the moment, and I was asked to do one by the local group who I do the basket weaving through!

I had five ladies come along to learn (I capped it at five since I was on my own – although I did have amazing volunteer help with Michelle and Mal who ran about washing dishes etc which was a lifesaver!!)

It was fun setting up. I’d written out some notes for the students and baked a cake
I had to talk at them for quite a while with all the background soaping information and they were very patient and got involved asking questions etc. so that was nice.

I pre made most of the lye which made things slicker and faster when it came to everyone making their own batch.
Since its a critical part and I wanted them to be VERY aware of how to handle it and the dangers, I did one demo of mixing the lye into the water.
Everyone was a bit shocked on how quickly the mixture heated up to dangerous levels.

We got through all five batches quite well with the ladies choosing a wide variety of fragrances, colours and designs.

I’ll start unmoulding later today and get some updated snaps of the finished soaps
The dining room is COVERED in soap and it was a bit tricky getting them all flat in the car to transport home!
Later this week I’ll arrange dropoff/collection for everyone.

The ladies had a great day – even said not to bother advertising the next one as they just all wanted to come back and do it again!! (Nawwww)
They had the bright idea to get their own moulds so they could make soap and then just take it home with them!

First… I need to recover!
I swear I was more sore and tired after that than when I did that accidental 7 hour hike the other day!
I STILL have most of my gear in the slate room because I’ve not mustered the energy to go put everything away!

But it was fun! I even got time to do my show off demo!

Hope your weekend has been great so far!
Cheers

We’ve had a stretch of mostly really lovely days!
I finally caught my Straw Guy (Barry) at the market and happily he still has straw bales available.
I’ve ordered about 30 for drop off (tomorrow I think) but we grabbed one on the spot so I could clean the coop.

First off – I am so delighted at being able to easily get the wheel barrow through the new chook run door! Its a comfortable width so I don’t even have to watch my knuckles! Having the barrow at the coop door to shovel all the pooey straw into is so much better!

Freckles couldn’t resist getting in to see what I was doing!

I did a bit of extra weeding and then dumped all the straw straight onto a couple of the unused garden beds

They won’t be used until spring so I am hoping any of the fresh manure will have broken down and aged enough by then

I did a quick prune of the Rosemary bush and stuck sprigs of it everywhere and stripped and crushed some branches off and scattered the nice smelling leaves into the straw and nesting boxes

Much better. Gets mucky quick with 15 hens!

I am trying to work out how to describe (without using swear words) how HEAVY this lump of timber was!!
Basically after I got it up into the garden I looked up to see:

Nice timing Husband!!
I wanted to use it as an edge to the garden that had the potatoes in it last season.
I started digging around the whole plot but its sodden and way too hard to do effectively at the moment. (The red soil sticks to my boots and I end up about 2 inches taller!)

So I just did this bit to get a permanent path between the patches

First a sawdust layer… should compact and help smother the weeds

Luckily I had some cardboard on hand

And finally the woodchip
I’ll wait for another day to weed the ex-potato plot then I’ll put a thick covering of straw on top.

Little by little 🙂

Hope everyone has a great week!
Cheers

Hello… just zooming by today.
Sun is shining so need to pull on my hiking pants and get out there!

Above is a start to a new basket I did while teaching my cousin Fiona and her friend Prue how to do it! We had a lovely day. Fiona has heaps of flax in her garden to use plus she made us an awesome lunch.
The day was cold and dreary so a good use of a winters day!

My current basket is coming along nicely.
At Fridays workshop, the teacher, Adele had supplied some pretty yellow/green flax which I’ve incorporated into my basket.

The colours will fade (and they have already) but the remaining hue will be different from the other flax used
I just got a photo while it was fresh and bright!

Hope everyone has a super weekend!
Cheers!