a labour of love

I finally finished my very first homegrown, hand shorn (by Brad, using the old fashioned hand shears), handspun and handknitted jumper. I get a real buzz from being a part of every step of the process, knowing exactly what was done to produce something. So much of what we buy these days undergoes much processing, and we don't know about it. Its just one jumper, but its another step towards self reliance and reducing 'clothing miles'.

Brad with Pedro the alpaca who 'donated' his fleece for this jumper.

Regardless, I am pretty proud of our joint effort!

You know when you are a little obsessive about making stuff, when your daughter asks first 'who made it?' rather than 'where did they buy it?', and she is always disappointed to hear when something was made 'in a factory in china'.

Two

Can´t quite believe it, but our little girl turned 2 yesterday. The terrible twos are now upon us, and we will have to wait and see how it will all go. I´ve read that 3 is worse, so we are in for a fun filled next few years. Our little girl is now in a ´real´ bed, can say 3 word sentences, says lots of words, especially useful for demanding food etc. I think she demands more of my time now, than as a newborn, although she has always been a needy child, we now realise this, since the baby is just the opposite. Very calm, chilled out, and patient.

We are having a bit of a party for her on sunday, and we will be cranking up the pizza oven - SO EXCITED! We fired it up again, and it heated right through this time. No major cracking (cracking is a normal part of a clay oven, as clay shrinks and expands). Pizza trays and peel (the thing to put in and pull out the trays) are ready, now its just a matter of days...


A bit of stress at the farm at the moment is that there are 2 vicious dogs killing sheep on nearby farms. These dogs appear to be similar to Rottweillers, big and good at killing. There is going to be a bit of hunt for them this weekend, as they are decimating sheep herds. Hope they catch them. I am the last person to want to see an animal dead, but I worry about my 2 alpacas and my arthritic old goat Archie. They would not have any chance against such dogs. I am losing sleep over it, and my heart stops when I go and check on them, I don´t want to find them all mauled... Here are my beautiful boys.


Our scythe finally arrived! We ordered it from Scythe supply in Maine USA. We can´t wait to use it. Its been custom made to fit Brad, but I should be able to use it too, but with the kids around its not really a child friendly thing to do, so I guess Iĺl have to wait till they are bigger.


I´m frantically working on a top for our little girl. But I really want to have it done by her party on sunday. No way though, I would need some sort of miracle! Its a modified version of the standard top down raglan, but below the arms, I´m doing a feather and fan lace pattern. Its knitted in some handspun and dyed mohair. Depending on how much yarn is left, it will either have long or short sleeves.


I also have to sit down at the spinning wheel, its been too long now, and since I got some new books on spinning I want to have a play... Soon I hope.

Anyway, lots of food prep to do before now and sunday, will post pics of pizzas (well if they turn out that is)...

Tree planting again

Well, its probably one of my favourite 'chores' on the farm - tree planting. And today was extra special as we planted our little boy's tree. A blackwood, which is also his middle name just like his big sister who got a Mountain Ash. This year we are only planting 100 local indigenous trees, as we figured we might be strapped for time with a little one on our hands, plus plenty of building to do etc.

We spent more time trying to take a photo of the whole family, than what we spent planting trees (we only did 16 today, just to see how the kids would cope - our little girl did not like us planting trees last autumn-winter...). Its almost impossible to get everyone to look at the camera, or even be in the photo! (Freya our dog was being particularly difficult).



We will be also planting more fruit trees and paddock trees, but probably no more than 20 odd plants for now, I HAVE to get a peach tree in this year, or else I'll be waiting too long to eat a nice peach once we make the move to the farm (I haven't touched shop peaches since I tasted our peaches off the tree here at home). Which reminds me about my recent experience with milk (I know its probably a boring story...), we normally buy organic unhomogenised milk, and have done so for a few months without buying conventional milk. Just recently we had to buy milk from the local shop, and I am shocked at how awful it tastes! Now I grew up on the regular milk from the supermarket, and never particularly noticed a difference when we made the switch to the organic stuff, but this was just amazingly different. Now I just have to hang out to make the full move to the farm, so that we can have a house cow! REAL milk and tonnes of it! We are planning on making butter and cheese etc, but I guess we will just take it one step at the time. The hard part is having to wait!

Well, unfortunately being mum to 2 kids now has really killed my craft time.... I just have to try and remember that in no time I'll again have time for these pursuits, but sometimes I look at my poor neglected spinning wheel, and long for an hour or 2 to just spin. It'll come... I hope.... I'm just working on a plain sock for Brad at the moment, which is progressing, but fairly slowly. Would like to make a little poncho for our girl, but will see how I go.

Winter already???

Wow, what is it with our weather??? For 3/4 of March we had not a drop of rain, and a week or so of full on heat, and now... winter!!! Its turned cold and wet! I'm glad about the rain, but it would have been nice to have some mild days with rain, so that maybe the grass would grow... oh well, not much we can do but complain about it, and get over it eh?


Well, the Cookie saga (Cookie is our goat who wont stay in the paddock) continues.... We have tried added extra wires to the fence, putting on various variations of yokes around his neck, but he still gets out, harasses neighbours and their animals (he is TOO friendly, raised by people not animals - I wont ever get an animal raised by people again, they just don't bond with the herd, but want to be with you all the time), hops into people's cars (yes, literally). So I'm looking for a home for him. He is back on the tether now, and unfortunately I just can't devote my entire day to him alone (yes, I do have other things to do too...) so he has to go. We are very sad about this, as for all his vices, he is a nice boy and deserves a good life....

I've finished my Jaywalker socks, they turned out well, and I'm happy with them. Next I will have to make a pair of sock for our little one, as I'm yet to knit her a pair. Crazy, since she has the smallest feet, and toddler socks would take me very little time at all....


Brad's vest is comming along slowly.... Note to self, don't do cables on men's clothing, Man Size items should be simple and quick, they just take SO long to knit! But I am up to the armholes now, so at least the back will be done soon.


I went along to the local spinner's group the other week. It was good. I've been meaning to go along for some time, but just never got around to it. I was the youngest one there by a good 20 years or so, but it was nice to see other's spinning. They all spin such fine and even yarn, made me look a little silly with my think and loosely spun stuff, but then again, one lady said that although her spinning is really good, she wont knit it, as its just too fine! I guess I spin the yarn that I like to knit, rather than striving for perfection. Maybe one day I will aim for a perfect yarn, but now I'm more interested in doing it as a way of being self-sufficient - grow the fleeces on the farm, then spin, and knit our clothing. Better than buying some cheap factory produced jumper...

New gadget!

Since summer has decided to try and make a comeback (nearly a week's worth of high 30C temperatures...) I've decided to dry some apples. Unfortuantely they are bought apples, but they are organic, so I guess that makes up for them not being home grown....

I just recieved my apple peeler/corer/slicer gadget, and its great! Its nice and solid (not plastic!), and its all manual (no electricity required), and should last a lifetime. So I've put out 2 trays of apple rings to dry, hopefully the next few hot days should dry them out, otherwise I'll throw them into the dehydrator to finish them off. Our daughter loves dried fruits, and will probably eat all these apples in a matter of days, but I can always do some more....


Have been doing lots of pruning in the garden, mostly because the goats require so much variety in food (they are not impressed by dry grass - and I'm desperate to keep them happy - a happy goat is less likely to cause me trouble.... and yes cookie has been escaping still, he was visiting our neighbour's cattle...). So they are getting Peach prunings, roses, jerusalem artichokes, lemon balm, camelias, and some old pumpkin plants. Soon I'll prune the raspberries, and they will like that!

I've been busily knitting on Brad's vest. I'm getting really worried about running out of yarn though, fingers crossed I can finish it.... This is my first real cabled project (I've done little practice cables, and 'fake cables' on socks, but this is the most intricate), and I'm really enjoying it!


Not much else to say, just trying to survive the current heat wave, and hoping my trees will hang in there... this could be the straw to break their poor little backs....

How much does one have to do?

I'm truly at my wits' ends with our goat Cookie. He is a real sweetie, very friendly and incredibly beautiful. But why can't he just not escape from his paddock? Even wearing the Y shaped branch that we have put around his neck to stop him going through the fence, he still manages to get out. He has a nasty habit of eating trees that we care about, either fruit trees or plants with sentimental value. But I also fear for him, as he is likely to follow someone home (he is a people goat), and who knows what could happen to him. I wish there was some simple solution, but then again, that is why everyone has goats that they give away, they are a real pain in the butt sometimes....


But on to more happy things. We have been getting a bit of rain now, and it really feels like autumn is on its way. Although we are still getting warm/hot days, the nights are cool, and I can feel the plants (those that survived anyway) breathing a sigh or relief. At the farm, my only vegies that survived were my potatoes (although there is nothing on the surface now as the grasshoppers ate the plants), I harvested some today, and we had roast potatoes for dinner.


I love the taste of real fresh home grown potatoes, they actually taste of the earth. 'Our' roast potatoe recipe is just to cut them up and toss in a baking dish with olive oil, and add a mix of garlic, peppercorns and rock salt that has been 'ground' in the mortar and pestle. Lovely with a big dollop of sour cream.... yum!


I've managed to finish the chocolate brown alpaca fleece. It ended up being 720g once it was washed and spun, so that is ok although, I would have expected a little more. Unfortunately the shearer made a little bit of a mess of it, and made lots of second cuts. Stupidly, I spun this fairly thick, so that I could cheat when it came to knitting my raglan, so that I could use bigger needles and get it done faster, so now I'm not sure if there will be enough, and none of my other handspun is spun so thick, so I can't even do stripes..... damn stupid me! I am thinking I will probably make Brad a vest out of this, and keep the white fleece ( the last one of my own fleeces! YAY!) for myself.


I've also been knitting away on my jaywalker sock, which is going ok, and a version of the baby yoda jacket (I'm making a 'vest') for the bub to be. I figured I should make it something....

Apart from that its all pretty much as usual around here, nothing much happening and yet constantly busy!

sustainable living festival

Just got home from a lovely day in the city - we rarely go to the city, too far away and too busy, and we can do and get most things locally anyway. We took the train, the first time as a family, wasn't too bad, but the little one was pretty tired by the end of it all! We were in at federation square at the sustainable living festival. We had a good day, and actually caught up with a friend, and were interviewed for a TV show!! Brad got to talk to a company who convert electric cars (he is in the process of building an electric motorcycle), and we saw the solar taxi from Switzerland.


Much of the information was stuff we already knew though, so it was more a positive experience to see so many other people also interested in sustainable living. There were many stalls on solar power/solar hot water, and how to save electricity and water.

Going on the train meant that I got a little bit of knitting done. I'm currently working on the jaywalker sock, using my february Tofutsies yarn. I had to restart the pattern, as for some unknown reason I could actually do as the pattern said, and made my own assumptions up! Anyway, got it figured now, and I am pretty happy with it.


Also have been spinning the chocolate brown alpaca fleece. I'm probably about halfway through now, and have 3 skeins done weighing about 400g. Its a fairly chunky yarn, as it will be raglan sweater for me and I don't like knitting big things on small needles!


Looking forward to getting this fleece out of the way, as then I only have one more alpaca fleece, and a few odds and ends of mohair and sheeps fleece. I'm in a real stash busting mood at the moment, and want to clear up all the old fleece and yarn, to make way for new and different things. I am also looking forward to trying a few new things with my spinning, such as loopy yarn and adding beads etc. We shall see!

Simple pleasures of summer.... or not...

I think watermelon just says summer, don't you?

This summer has been a particularly tough one climatically around here. Its been about a month or so since we had rain (although last time it rained we had over 60mm in 24 hours and lost one of our freshly shorn alpacas.... funny weather eh?). I get really edgy when we don't get rain for a while, and hand watering the garden just doesn't seem to be any consolation as far as the plants are concerned. Unfortunately this has made establishing trees up at our farm incredibly difficult and heartbreaking (not to mention expensive). Many plants just have not made it through (and we still have half of summer to go), especially the vegie garden, where I had planted many pumkins etc. Between the lack of water and the current plague of grasshoppers they just haven't survived. But on the up side we should get a good crop of potatoes, so that is something. And the peaches.... they are about to ripen up, the backyard smells of them when its hot (so pretty much all the time!). Can't wait to eat them! Oh, and preserve some too, bottled peaches are sensational.

Since its been hot alot lately, I've gotten a bit of knitting and spinning done. I've spun all the grey alpaca fleece (all 400g of it... small animal), and finished the Winterberry Socks which where a birthday present for my mum (and I managed to get them finished on time!), and have been working on a dress for our daughter in a Bamboo yarn. This was a bit of an impulse buy as I've been trying to be good and not buy yarn till I use up some of what I have, but it just felt so soft and drapey, I just couldn't resist. The dress is my own 'design', just a simple tank top style dress, should be nice for her to wear in summer. I am looking to start on a jumper/sweater for her with the grey alpaca yarn soon, I just need to buy a printer cartridge, so I can print out the pattern!