We have apples

Five boxes of carefully, individually wrapped Fujis, Jonathons and Granny Smiths. I read somewhere that this is the best way to store them. We have them in our downstairs which is a steady cooler temperature and darker. One day I dream of have racks to store produce, under the house, where our wine is stored.

We have pumpkins

This is about half the crop, in same downstairs area.

We have tomatoes

I thought with the cooler, wetter summer that our tomatoes might not be all that good, but they are wonderful and steady and this is about one day’s harvest. We found the earlier ones a bit tasteless. But now they have that gorgeous home grown tomato taste, where you just keep popping the little ones into your mouth like lollies. Nyum! The winners on taste test and productivity this year are Tigerella - super-productive, keep on keeping on, good useful size and fantastic taste.

I had some visitors to the studio this week and a sold a couple of pairs of socks  - good feeling. So I have finished another pair - real Aussie colours - green and gold.

When it was so wet yesterday, I got going with weaving a new snuggle rug. It is out of home grown, home spun, home dyed fleece from our sheep. I love the gentle soft colours and am quite happy with how the pattern is shaping up.

I think Warrnambool must have been the wettest place in the state yesterday. Our rain gauge recorded 83mm from late Saturday to Monday am - that’s a lot of rain! Ro was watching the telecast of footy being played in Geelong while I was weaving yesterday and it was sunny there!

On the animal front we have a new resident  - Dizzy. He’s a very cute baby koala who fell out of a tree and banged his head and was rather sad for a little while. But he is getting along nicely now and has learnt to suck properly on his bottle at last. He was a rather messy feeder!

I have been being creative again at last, have made some socks and some cobweb scarves, a snuggle rug made from handspun home grown alpaca fleece and a rebozo made from hand spun home grown sheep wool.

These are the new cobweb scarves. I am playing around with inserting contrasting patterns.

And these are the most recent socks.

We have just been on a very nice holiday on the southern NSW coast - just beautiful country/coastline. I did a bit of sock knitting while we were driving. The holiday is the reason I am feeling much better. Message to self - don’t put off having proper breaks and rest times!

And these are the snuggle and rebozo made with handspun wool.

Otherwise we have been gathering the harvest in - lots of apples (about 600 or more, an excellent crop), quinces, pumpkins and tomatoes. I have been doing much preserving in various styles - pastes, jellies, semi dried, bottled, etc, etc. It is very satisfying when the production hoped for at the beginning of the season actually comes to pass! I hope all your gardens, lives and creativity are going just as well.

On the creative front:

I have begun putting the borders on the elephant quilt. I always find this stage most satisfying, because suddenly the whole concept pulls together strongly. I guess it is much the same as framing a painting.

I also have a couple of weavings chugging along nicely - a silk rainbow scarf and a homespun alpaca snuggle rug

Floods

My heart goes out to all the thousands of people affected by these incredible floods. Our son and daughter-in-law in Ipswich were affected, but luckily the river peaked before damaging their house, just got the garage and all the garden, so we were very relieved. The Hopkins River has been really spectacular. The dirty water is still gushing out to sea and goes almost to the horizon. Here are some photos of the falls and the river mouth on Monday evening, after it had peaked.

We took Ro’s mum (92) out to see it.

The force of the water was just amazing!

The next few are of the river mouth

Garden

One great benefit of the plentiful rain is the awesome garden growth. The veggie garden is just wonderful

And Ro has begun our pizza oven, although some question whether it is Stonehenge or a sacrificial altar. He loves to do things BIG!

I have been creating a couple of “Chill Spaces” around the garden. Places where I can sit and relax for a few minutes and be by myself. With Ro’s mum living here now, it seems a bit harder to fined this sort of space.

The garden room and some solar powered lanterns I have put there.

And my special Chill Space next to the veggie garden and chook pen, with the lovely swinging seat Ro got me for Christmas.

These are the quilts I have made during the year. The first two photos are of one made for for young Joshua, our god-daughter’s son. The next two photos are of an autumn leaf quilt made for Shelley and Eggie’s little girl - Indigo. The next three photos are of the “Wild Thing” quilt made for our little Lucinda. And the last one of the koala quilt is for Nyema - Maxine’s baby daughter who arrived just before Christmas.

Now I am working on an elephant quilt for Catherine and Tim who are having a baby daughter in April - could even be on Indigo’s first birthday!

I have taken images from photos I took when in Africa in 2008, converted them into sketches, then turned them into applique-ed machine embroidered patches. These are interspersed with patches made by making rubbings with oil sticks. I have been busy piecing the quilt together, then putting on the borders.

I had quite a bit of “fun” with the borders. I had actually decided on another fabric for the border, then it just didn’t seem to work. The one I ended up with was actually the third try. Sometimes it just takes that long for it all to work!

I have also learned that it doesn’t pay to try and cut corners - it only ends up costing you more in time or quality and seeing a quilt lasts for years and years - it is just not worth it. So now I block the quilts out just as carefully as I block out knitted lace. It takes time and effort, but the result is so much better.

First you block the quilt base onto the blocking board, then the batting on top of that. Each layer is stretched and pinned onto the board individually. Oh and I must say, I have become quite addicted to bamboo batting for quilts - it is light, warm, easy to work with and has a lovely feel. My next most favourite is fine wool batting. I just can’t get excited about cotton batting for some reason. Then you stretch the quilt top on top of the other two layers. I leave that sitting there to “consider its position in the world” for at least 24 hours and sometimes two days. By then it all seems to have decided to sit nicely. Then I pin it together throught all layers with those lovely bent safety pins which have made quilting so much easier - no more tacking!!!! I love that! Just lots and lots and lots of safety pins - and they don’t prick you like the long quilting pins do! Then it’s time to begin quilting - another long saga all of its own!

These quilts take hours and hours, but I am so pleased with each one - it is well worth the effort.

Now of course my stash of hand dyed fabrics has about run out, so I have been doing a bunch of dyeing to have a break from bending over a quilt - a mere 12 metres or so dyed up this week. It’s a sort of colour therapy really!

     And while I am dyeing - might as well do a couple of silk scarves as well!

 Preparing the works for the exhibition.

The opening was a very emotional occasion, with family, friends, staff and residents attending en masse! Family members were awestruck with the work produced by their relative/mother/grandmother/greatgrandmother and residents were amazed at the ability demonstrated by their peers. Some of the exhibitors had not painted prior to our program. I hope you enjoy the photos.

 Bessie’s beautiful watercolour paintings

 Grace’s works

 People admiring Bessie’s works

 Agnes introducing Bessie (aged 97) to the people attending the opening.

 Joan - one of our artists.

 Grace - another of our artists.

Impressive hey!!!!!

You will need to gather your materials and equipment. You need: wool tops (available from various textile suppliers, I use preblended merino and silk tops), a spray bottle that works properly (otherwise you get sore hands and frustrated!), a length of bubble wrap (you can get a 3m x 30cm length from Reject Shops or Australia Post), some nice soft pure soap (I use my own hand made soap. As you will have your hands in this a lot, be kind to yourself), access to plenty of hot and cold water, some clean towels, a long cardboard tube (like from the centre of material rolls), a mopping up cloth, an apron, a comfortable chair, time and space without distractions (up to an hour), some nice upbeat music and some muscle power!

For this scarf I have used to demonstrate, I decided to use two colours of wool tops - a dark blend for the scarf body and a light contrast for a feature.

Lay out your bubble wrap, then take about 2.5metres of wool top and put it on the bubble wrap. You will need a reasonable table area  (which can get wet) or else lay it out on the floor to begin with. The top will be like a long soft “rope” of fibre. To create the scarf base you need to spread this out flat and fairly evenly on the bubble wrap, almost to the edges of the bubble wrap. If you are using a contrast, lay this as you wish onto the underpiece, or else you can add some more of the same coloured top to build up your scarf a little. I find just one top length tends to make a rather fragile scarf structure - to begin with, it is probably a good idea to make a slightly stronger one. You just gently pull out little amounts and lay them across where there are thin bits. It doesn’t matter if there are some thinner areas or even some little holes - it is all part of the lovely textural feel of the cobweb scarf.

 This shows the top spread out on the bubble wrap, with the unspread top above.

 Here I am adding my contrasting feature. I decided to make shapes like bows or butterflies. I added these to both sides, which is just a bit tricky because you need to “flip” the fibre batt halfway.

Felting is achieved by damaging the fibres. We are doing this deliberately and in a controlled manner. We use water, friction, heat, cold and soap to achieve this. The fibres will shrink quite a lot in the process. Our first step in doing this, is to wet down the fibre batt. Using your spray bottle, with warm soapy water (I usually leave some warm water with the soap soaking in it while I am laying out the fibre batt, then put that into the sprayer.) Spray this gently and evenly onto the batt to saturate it. I do a bit, then roll that up into the bubble wrap, then do a bit more, then roll a bit more.

 Spraying with warm soapy water to saturate the fibres.

 Rolling the wet batt up in the bubble wrap.

Once the whole batt is wrapped up in the bubble wrap, you gently massage it by rocking to and fro and pressing down. At this point, I enjoy having some music in the background, it helps with the rocking rhythm. The first time, about 25 rocks is enough.

 Hand position for “massaging” the scarf. I have only one hand showing, but you need both hands. I needed my other to take the photo!

Then you gently unroll the scarf and check that the fibres are sitting as you wish. At this point you can make any corrections, add a little more fibre or shift things around a bit, so I spend a bit of time really making sure it is looking even and how I would like. As each bit is checked and corrected, I roll it back up, working along the roll from one end to the other. So what was in the middle will become the outside and vice versa.

 Gently unrolling after the first short “massaging”

 Making corrections and rerolling.

Now back to “massaging” - this time about 50 rocks, shifting the roll over slightly after each dozen or so. At this point can I suggest you check your posture and make sure you are sitting in a nice relaxed upright position, with your feet on the floor and as little pressure as possible through your shoulders and neck and that your are using your hands and wrists to do the massaging. 

This time when I unroll, I have my jug of warm water and soap handy and as I unroll and reroll, I wet down the fibre a bit more and GENTLY - ever so gently, rub soap into the batt using a flat handed motion. Some people like to use a bit of net or orange bag for this part of the process. I guess I like to feel what is happening. It’s a personal choice.

 Gently massaging soapy water into the batt.

Did I warn you that felting is messy!!!! It is! As you roll up and massage, then unroll, reroll and massage, over and over and over, checking the scarf each time you reroll, you will create a wonderful wet froth that pours all over the table and onto your lap and onto the floor. So this is where your mopping cloth comes into its own!

 Good, clean, messy fun.

So now we have been rolling and massaging and rollong and massaging and how long do you continue? Well it varies, depending on your technique. But there will be a point when the fibres have stuck together into a sort of cloth. When it reaches this point (and not before - you can’t rush this part), you pick up the scarf from the bubble wrap and take it over to your sink or basin.

 The scarf has reached the point where it is starting to become fabric. We still have a way to go though!

In an ideal world you will have a double sink. Otherwise a couple of large bowls will do. Fill one with water so hot you can barely put your hands into it. The other, fill with cold water. Now we are going to really damage the fibre! Put your scarf GENTLY into the hot bowl. Gently agitate it in the water for a minute or so, then gently lift it out. Check it doesn’t have any enormous holes you dont want. If it does, resoap it , lay it carefully back in the bubble wrap, reposition the dodgy bits and repeat the old massage and roll process until it has corrected. If the scarf is looking reasonably OK, then put it into the cold water. You will feel it “take up” as the fibres suddenly go into shock and shrink a bit with the temperature change. Agitate for a moment or so, still moderately gently.

 The scarf placed gently into very hot water.

 Checking that the fabric looks OK, before continuing.

Now we get a bit more rough! I love using the ridgy bits on the sink to do this part. You get the soap and taking the scarf out of the hot water, begin soaping and rubbing, working along from one end to the other, you will feel the scarf begin to get more solid as you do this. Just work from one end along to the other, then back again, until it feels fairly even and strong.

 Rubbing with soap on the sink - flat handed again to get an even pressure across the fabric.

Once it has become quite “strong”, then we really let loose!. I use a trough for this. Be warned - you need to turn your head away otherwise you get soap all over your face and glasses! Hurl the scrunched up, soapy, wet scarf with all your strength into the base of the trough (You can use a basin on the floor for this). Pick it up knead it around, then hurl it again - SPLAT! Keep doing this until it feels properly felted - it is a feel - hard to explain. The more you do it, the firmer the felt becomes. If you want soft felt, dont do quite so much.

 SPLAT!

Now you will have a piece of funny shaped fabric - so how do we get a scarf out of this? Firstly we rinse it out until it is clean of soap.

 Rinse

Then we spin for about 60 seconds in the washing machine

 Spin

Now we lay out our towel on a flat surface and get the cardboard roll and put it across the towel. Lay the scarf along the towel and begin to shape it. You can be quite firm with shaping the felt at this point, so get it nice and flat and even, pay attention to the edges.

 The towel, cardboard roll and scarves laid out. Notice the difference between the part that has been shaped and the unshaped parts.

As the scarf is nicely shaped, we “permanent press” it by rolling it in the towel onto the cardboard tube, still damp. You will probably need two towels to travel the length of the scarf, just overlap them, as in the photo.

 Rolling up the scarves, onto the second towel.

 Pay particular attention to the ends to make them look tidy. What you do now, becomes permanent.

 The finished roll, which will now sit and dry in a warm dry spot, for about three days. Then it will be unrolled and aired and hey presto - you will have a lovely scarf.

Here are the finished scarves after being unrolled.

 Pretty cool aren’t they!

So I have actually finished the shawl. And I think it is quite fine. I was going to dye it, but I am not sure now. The cream would go with a lot of different things.  (And the wedding was hot enough that a shawl was not even slightly needed!). So on with the roll - I then knitted a wonderful rainbow lace shawl for our new grandchild-to-be. And now I am knitting another plain lace shawl for same grandchild-to-be.

I am uploading the photos as thumbnails nowadays. If you click on them they should grow big for you. These ones are of the “wedding shawl”. I’ll post the baby shawl photos when we have given them to Matt and Andrea.

This shawl was knitted using a lovely pattern I downloaded called the “Aeolian Shawl” www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring09/KSPATTaeolian

But what I really wanted to post was: I have lashed out and bought a few nice books on lace knitting and a couple of then are just great. So I thought I’d share them.

The first one is called “The Mermaid Shawl & other Beauties” by Kathleen Valentine. It arrived last week and is just the best read. She is a woman after my own heart - ie if there is a pattern, then change it around and adapt it and dont really follow it anyway. It is not about careful pattern following - rather it is about taking an idea and developing it. It has the most lovely photos, with “real” people as models - her friends and family. And it has a little story slotted into the middle of the book. It took until the end to realise that she is actually a novelist who is nuts about knitting - hence this amazingly readable knitting book!

The second one I am really enjoying is called “Crazy Lace” by Myra Wood. This only arrived this week, along with the newest Gloria Loughman quilting book - drool! Crazy lace is all about knitting “outside the square” - another one about free flowing and random knitting patterns. I seem to have a theme happening here! The yarns used are just luscious!

One such project this year has been the latest Lord of the Rings Cloak. This one is in lovely turquoise and a sort of sandy gold. I was thinking sea and sand colours when I dyed the wool. The problem is that from concept to completion these cloaks take a number of months (not working on the constantly). I dye the wool, then thread the loom (my huge Glimakra ten shaft loom, which takes up almost a room on it’s own!). Then I spend a varying length of time intermittently weaving the 5 - 6 metres of fabric I need. Sew off the ends, then cut it off the loom and full it. Then I have to lay out the pattern and stitch it out on the fabric, so the fabric doesn’t unravel too much. Now it is time to begin sewing. I sew up the woven fabric into the cloak shape, then cut out the lining in undyed silk and sew it up. The lining is then dyed in colours to complement the cloak. I can sew in the lining mostly on the machine, but there is always a couple of hours of hand sewing to finish it off. That’s where I come unstuck. It has to sit on the dressmakers model to make sure all the fabrics have dropped enough. And somehow I just get used to it sitting there - this time a couple of months! Anyway now it is finished and I will put it up on the website soon.

  The other project I have finished off this weekend is a very luxurious reversible silk jacket, featuring dragonflies painted on the outer fabric. This is another project which  takes some time. First I need to mark out the pattern pieces on the silk. Then I paint the images so that they sit inside the pattern pieces properly. The silk is steamed and set, then washed and ironed. Meanwhile I dye another length of silk for the lining. I then cut out all the pattern pieces and sew up the outer shell and the lining, then stitch them together, so that the garment will be fully reversible. To achieve this properly - again there is quite a lot of hand sewing to do - most particularly the sleeves set into the shoulders. Again I tend to come unstuck at this point! So now this one is finished as well and my total of UFO’s (UnFinished Objects) is reduced by two! Very good I think.

I am guessing lots of others have UFO’s as well, or are there people out there who always finish off before beginning the next exciting project??? I’d love to hear your comments!

The veggie garden is looking amazing, despite the incredibly hot weather we have had. I have set up irrigations systems in every garden and manage to keep things sufficiently watered to survice the heat. Except for one new bed I planted in spring. It took a terrible beating this last hot day and I doubt much will be saved. The new weather station Ro got for Christmas said we peaked at 45.5 deg - way too hot!!! Ro looked it up in the “old” scale (Farenheit) and that is 113 deg F. I planted my pumkins at the right time this year and we look like having a superb bumper crop of many different pumpkin varieties. I was using up all the old seed and ended up with about two plants each of around eight different varieties. In the photo you can also see Lenny - our old pony - only actually he’s a steed! I have been looking after him and spending time with him each day and even have ridden him a few times this summer. He had been suffering from some serious lack of attention over the past couple of years! Now he’s lapping it up!

This is how the veggie garden looks at present.

And here are the pumpkins and Lenny.

 We have some lovely little animals in at present. There are two little koalas - Cuddles and Angel - both of whom lost their mums. Angel also received and injury to her left arm in the accident which killed her mum and is having to learn how to use it again. Cuddles is a bit younger and came in as quite a small one, but he is growing so fast, that he’ll prbably catch up to Angel. Then we have Santana who is a little swamp wallaby. When he arrived he didn’t even have proper fur, but he is grwoing a lovely coat now and beginning to make very brief forays out of his pouch. He is very cute. The three of them have kept all our visitors entertained and gooey all summer.

Santana

Angel

Cuddles having adventures on the clothes horse!

I’ve been finishing off the bits and pieces for Isabelle and Trav’s wedding which is less than four weeks off now. Posted the bridesmaids dresses up a week or two ago. That was a good feeling! Now I have a new rule, that I want to explore some different things and have more fun with my creating. I’ve been doing some fun felting with fleeces and silk and making more cobweb scarves. But the really fun thing I have found is making rubbings on fabric using oil sticks. Some of our visitors have had a play with this too and it really becomes quite addictive. The oil sticks dry after 48 hours, then you iron the fabric and the image becomes permanent. We ran a wear test on some of the patches and washed them and scrubbed them and soaked them and were generally fairly rough with them and the design stays. Very cool! Then the patches can be turned into whatever you like to make with fun decorated patches. I’m also going to post a photo of a painting I have finished and which I am very happy with. I have been exploring dragonflies, because we have had a number of Dragonfly Days already - you know, the hot windy days when the dragonflies hatch and seem to be everywhere, just floating around on the hot wind? I love dragonflies and this apinting is about the wonder of a child seeing eye to eye with a dragonfly.

Some of the patches

My dragonfly painting

We have been having a “Whale of a Time” today. We woke up to find lots of whale activity happening, so began doing a head count. The sea was gloriously calm and it seemed it would be easy, but by the time I got to 15 - yes that is right - FIFTEEN southern right whales and realised that I could not keep track of what I had counted, I gave up and tried to get some half decent photos. Mind you, when they are generally doing their black lilo impersonation, it can be hard to get an exciting photo. When Shannon arrived to help do Artie’s (the koala - see last post)  bandages, she had been on duty at the whale lookout where they have a roster to try and keep reliable statistics. She and Pete had made a confirmed head count of 21 - YES - TWENTY ONE! southern right whales hanging around immediately in the Logan’s Beach area. This is just amazing, so I will post a few photos, just because I am so excited about this. You will have to look at the photos with excitement in your heart , and imagine that you can hear the whales blowing and you really do not know where you should be pointing the camera to try and capture this experience. The images just do not do it justice!

And then this evening there was the most beautiful rainbow. just to compliment the whale viewing.

With all the severe weather we have had, we seem to have lost a huge chunk of our property into the sea. We have been having quite some difficulty going down to the beach to walk because so much has washed away and our dune front has collapsed. It’s quite easy to slither down, but getting back up again is quite a different matter. The whole dune face is quite unstable and still shifting, so clambering up that part is quite a challenge. But then when you get somewhere near the top there is a ledge of about 1.5 metres that you have to get over to reach the old stable dune. However, this ledge is sand, so as soon as you try to hang onto it, it collapses to join the rest of the fallen sand. It can take quite a bit of figuring to find a stable enough spot to get back up! And the little dogs need a helping hand!

We have been very busy this week sorting out the sheep. Ro has been working ever so hard to build a nice sheep handling yard, so we could send a bunch to market. We needed to eartag them all before we could send them in, so needed  a better way to handle them, seeing the original little paddock had pretty much rusted away and this made it almost impossible to get them in and hold them. Somehow, the whole rebuilding led to the next stage of cleaning up the shed paddock. (If you recall, this all started in preparation for the wonderful bonfire for Al’s 21st birthday party back in May). So Ro ended up spending many hours cleaning up, demolishing old fences, rolling up rusty wire and visiting the tip and we now have a beautiful tidy clean shed paddock and can handle the sheep much more easily. We sent twenty-six sheep to market, so now have a tiny flock of nine, plus the two alpacas and Lenny, the old pony. Very civilised!

And just for fun, here are some photos of the orchards and the veggie garden, because I keep hoping my kids might be reading this as a way of keeping in touch with home!

So that’s enough photos. I’ve also been doing some more weaving and some felting as well. I’ve made another cobweb scarf and a layered nuno felt scarf, and have a nice mohair/soy blend woven scarf in beautiful blue tones. I have almost finished a floor rug on the rug loom and am very close to the end of another cloak length, so will have to get busy cutting and sewing again.

I do hope all the dads have had a great Father’s Day and have been given lots of love and family contact. And those of us whose dads are no longer with us, I hope you have been enjoying loving thoughts of them. Love to all. Lorraine.