chook food and cinos

Took a trip to town for more chook food and library books. The cook book section is a bit hit and miss but today we found a whole volume of pudding recipes by Phil Vickery. Lucky the hens are laying again! We managed to sneak in a 'cino as well.

funny old day

A funny up and down day. Got dressed up to go out and have a great day at the Antiques Fair, only to realise, when we got there, that it was yesterday. Ate ice-cream, came home, felt cold and sad. Caught up with neighbours in the afternoon, drank tea from fine china and admired Cheryl's splendid chooks, roses, recipe books and veges. In between we grew wings.

slowness

I am slow. Too little sleep (thanks to Medium ending with 'to be continued') and too much french toast. Still, we managed to make it to the 'tunnel' this morning and not even any piggybacking.
Some strangely coloured wool (dyed with acorns) is waiting to be spun, but not sure if my mind is steady enough for four hands and feet at the wheel. Plus the house is full of autumn flies. I don't feel inspired with flies in my ears. Maybe we'll plant snowpeas instead.

lying about

We were meant to have visitors today but mysteriously they never arrived.
We didn't mind - we were happy to talk less and instead rest and read the paper after our week of coughing and wasp stings to the head.

A proud man and his compost bin

We love compost around here, but we've never had much success with producing our own. We have a mulch heap, but it's also our repository for green waste from the garden and the chooks love to scratch around in there too. The end result is a scattered heap of passionfruit prunings adorned with old Twinings teabags. Neither have we ever really taken the time to learn about the science of composting. The idea of there being a 'right' way to dispose of last night's dinner scraps has never really sat well with me. However after glimpsing the world's most perfect compost bin ever (or so we surmised) on an episode of that new backyards show on Sunday nights, Mark was inspired to create...this.
Two compartments, on stilts above the ground and with lids (to foil the rats), with wire on the bottom, which will allow the compost as it's formed to fall into a neat and elegant pile on a platform underneath the bins, from where it can be easily shoveled into a waiting wheelbarrow. In theory. We know there are no certainties when it comes to the dark art of composting, especially if you're as slapdash as we are. But we're hopeful. If nothing else, we have finally managed to engage Martha with the world of decomposing organic matter (isn't this every parent's dream?). We're not sure yet whether this will prove to be a good or bad thing. I guess this will only become obvious in a month or two...once she has learnt how to clamber up those slats.

PS No, Martha did not retrieve that piece of cake from the slops!

Brown baby

Her parents are pale and slow to tan, but this one has inherited her maternal grandfather's olive skin.

Obi one

In the last seventeen years I have used my sewing machine exactly five times. Four of these times have been during the last fortnight*. Sitting down and sewing...it's a good feeling. But why now? I think it's a combination of having the machine now permanently set up, having at my fingertips a whole bunch of lovely bits and pieces of fabric that I emancipated from Mum's sewing room, reaching some kind of peak in my long held desire to make my (our) own clothes, and seeing this, which of all the beautiful things I see in my travels around the blogosphere, somehow managed to trigger something in me that said, yes, I could have a go at something like that.
So, this is my second attempt at a 'scarf'. Actually, it's kind of weighty, so maybe it's more of an obi, or even a turban if you're feeling adventurous. (Whatever it is, it needs a good iron). It was fun to make, and I learned a lot. Such as sometimes when you think you're sewing in a straight line, you're really not, and that there is a really good reason that you can use different thread colours for your spool and bobbin.

*Mark's response on reading this: 'And all this time we've been carting that damn thing all over the country?!'