winter moments

Hello after a big winter hiatus!  I'm at the point where I'm through the conference and teaching preparations and back into semester two...where did the time go?!
Winter is idling along...it's been so very chilly...but punctuated by lovely moments that can only happen at this time of the year.

There is broccoli in the garden and I'm looking forward to Spring and time to plan and plant!

I'm still crocheting away... thinking about the anatomy of known forms.

afters

When I haven't been around here for a bit you can most likely guess by now that there has been some demanding stuff going on PhD wise.  I was told by my lovely hairdresser today to update the blog (ta S xx), so here I am!   Our graduate research conference was weekend before last and I spent all of last week in recovery mode.   It took some serious wrangling in the last month or so to get ready to present my work, but the most interesting thing I got up to was making a sampler constructed out of this stuff...

Anyone for box chain?!

I will show what I made...just haven't got around to photographing it yet, but as a teaser, I will tell you that it is all about revisiting my making skills from my previous incarnation as a fetish wear designer!
Part of my post GRC recovery was spent on sock knitting...my feet have been so freezing during this very chilly wintery season that I decided to use some of my sock yarn stash to actually make socks rather than the usual baby cardi's.

This is the first time I've attempted sock knitting...so far so good, I'm nearly up to the heel shaping.

Other stuff...the lovely drawing salon semester finished last night...I'll get around to showing some more drawings soon...and the magnificent Ms Rehe is going on a drawing adventure to New York, so do stop by Patsyfox in the coming weeks to see what she is up to.

Not much happening garden wise...some winter planting and planning for hopefully a better warm season in a few months...I did pick some carrots yesterday...they were yum :o)

back in not so black...again!

Back towards the beginning of my bloggy happenings I moved away from blackness and into blackness with the blog layout...for a while I've been tired with the black, and even though it is less lit pixels, a pal pointed out to me that a difficult to read screen isn't very sustainable either!   So I've taken the plunge to start redesigning the blog page in line with some new directions I'm taking...it's a work in progress...watch this space!

As I mentioned in the previous post, the uni semester started last week which takes me away from all routine things, and this week has been about developing a new routine...which is kind of nice - means some jiggling of priorities and attending to the really important things.

I didn't touch the garden last week...it has been a very disappointing season with the lack of a real hot stretch and all of the pests (aphids and rats!) that have just caused almost everything to fail.  Even the last hope for apples is out the window as these late season sturmers have been munched away at (I think rats...again!)  When I went to take a pic I discovered european wasps sucking away at the flesh too!

But I did manage to pick one, the last with no rat chews...and looking at the woodbridge link, it's reassuring that my apple looks the same as theirs, even though it is insanely early compared to the june/july ripening time that they predict...

There are always some lovely things in the garden though, like this orb weaver on one of the rose arches....

And the zucchinis and cucumbers I planted to replace those pulled out during the dog vs rat debacle are doing well...even though they are late in the season, hopefully I'll get a crop...

I'm starting some experiments with making vegetables in the studio...not sure where it will go, but I'm doing some plastic crochet Marjorie Bligh style with a twist.  I'm doing some hyperbolic crochet to make some lettuce forms...in this case using glad wrap from a bunch of organic celery...


From sheet to form :o)

new things

I have some new beginnings lately...although I'm not really sure where I'm heading!
I finished the latest baby cardi...a friends new bub is just about here :o)

I got onto my elbow patch project, using an old well loved printed cardi, and some of the crocheted grannies I was working on here.  This cardigan was my favourite "go to" cardi around 7 or 8 years ago (my fav now is a big oversized machine washable grey woolly that came from the op shop).  There's a nice narrative of remnants and mending within it...

I swiss darned across a little ladder in the cuff, and used the granny squares to stitch over the elbow holes.  These particular grannies were made using the remnants from first of the sock yarn cardies which I made for my niece.

In this last pic you can see the previous mending - the darning which my mum did lots of years ago.

I'm taking my everyday craft practice into other projects...using leather remnants stitched together to make a thick leather yarn which I have then crocheted into a massive granny square using a 20mm hook...

I'm unsure how this will be applied to a garment form at the moment.

New things are popping up in the garden like these dwarf beans, the last for the season...I hope we have some continued warm weather for the last of the summer crops...

And the water tanks (1 in the front garden, and two in the back) now have a wire mesh covering to grow some lovely plants on them.  This one behind the workroom is filled by the water from it's roof, and connects to the watering system for the adjoining patch which you can see in the pic above.  I planted two old fashioned noisette roses next to it - Lamarque, and Mme Alfred Carriere in the winter, which now are able to be tied up away from the trampling doggles!  I'm hoping that next spring will see them flourish and bloom and eventually creep over the workroom roof to create some nice living insulation :o)

update...canis vs rattus

Gem and Hugs had a crazy hour tonight at a bushy park that we specially drive them to (for local peeps, darling park, malvern which gardiners creek runs through)...plenty of rats there which they flush out, and sometimes catch.  No success tonight though (don't worry, they're feral rats, we check for the long tail!)

When we got home, even though u might think their rat chasing desires have been fulfilled, they were straight to the veggie patch.  To prove what I was saying earlier, here they are...

Reiterate note to self: must get smaller gauge mesh!

have beans

Where have I been?  I hardly know myself...too many everyday things and holidays getting in the way!
We went down to P's families holiday house for "Oystralya Dai" (last Thursday, quote Pen!), and spent the weekend...I didn't get back till Monday night...

But we had lots of fun, and did more renos which are now nearly done, yippee!  But onto beans now...firstly a bean shaped Gemma pet on the bed at Rye (couldn't resist!)...

But what I really want to get to is the beans in the garden.  We had lots of broadbeans back in December...

Which were yum when I cooked them with my meatball dish

The purple king beans growing alongside the espaliered citrus trees on the back of the house were growing beautifully at the start...

And we were picking some lovely beans too...

But a few weeks back I noticed that not many more beans were coming and the leaves were looking poorly with some browning off.  On close inspection I discovered tiny aphids on the undersides of the leaves.  I've never seen these ones before, they were almost invisible and almost like a coating of sticky green.  I'm not into spraying at all, even with a soap spray and I'm glad I didn't because some ladybirds moved in and then a week later I could see their larvae, which are so small it's hard to take a pic of them!

These beans are pretty much a write off now, but there were a few flowers that are developing into beans now, so fingers crossed!

I have the next lot of beans planted out the front, and they are looking good, so it doesn't really matter so much.  I have the attitude (and this is true of the ratty issue and this seasons plum situation too), that I'll take what I can, or reasonably should, and if other creatures or plants in the system need to do this too, that's ok, it's a bit of give and take.  Having said that, it is just as well that I'm not relying on my garden for absolute subsistence!   But I'm learning from what does and doesn't work, conducting the garden activities in a more orderly manner now and documenting the process, which should all help as I trundle along.  Oh, and mentioning the rats again...the games continue as when I came back from Rye all of the half developed corn cobs had been stripped from the stalks.  When the dogs are away the rats will play....oh the woe of these before and after shots!

The doggles have been going nuts trying to get into the fenced garden now...my bet, clever rat knows it's the only place in the garden they can't get to!   Gems and Hugs can get their heads quite a way through this mesh if they want to and are now destroying whatever plant matter within reach in the effort to get to rattus.  Note to self...need smaller gauge mesh!

birthday, baby cardi and beans

I'm amused that absolutely no-one has taken me up on my christmas giveaway offer of a plum jam recipe...maybe no-one else has any plums either!

I've been distracted by other bits n bobs anyhow...my lovely pal Belinda held a birthday party for her little boy who turned 3...she put on an amazing lunch and spread of party food...here's my origami'd birthday card, envelope made from a page from the weekender mag and the wrapped pressie using some of my gleaned paper remnants from my digi printing...

The pressie was an origami book and paper set :o)
I also made a start on the next sock yarn baby cardi...another pal is having her bub number two in february so I'm getting in early!

And I picked the first of the purple king beans which I have growing alongside and twining up the meyer lemon which is espaliered on the back wall of the house.  Not a bad weekend!

garlic plait

Back in the middle of May among the conference/GRC/exhibition chaos I managed to find time to plant some garlic...I planted 8 bulbs/heads of a few sorts from the Diggers Club...

 Four heads of early purple...

Two of the early white...

And two heads of the italian red...you break the head into cloves and plant each one which grows into a new bulb...

The first that I pulled up a month ago I think must have been the italian red (I forgot exactly which ones I put where and was a bit too frazzled then to document it properly)...it was in a sunnier spot so it died down first, but the label also said it's the earliest variety at Heronswood.  I attempted a garlic plait, but there weren't many bulbs with stems, a lot had broken off, so I didn't try too hard!

I pulled up the main harvest last weekend...this would be the early while and purple, all mixed up...(notice that the packets said to plant march/april...I planted in may, so I'm harvesting about a month late too)  This time I had plenty to make a good plait...my first attempts were dismal, so I googled instructions and found a great tutorial here...silly me, I was trying to plait from the top of the leaves down...doh!!!

My plait looks lovely on the back...I put the big garlic first at the bottom and gradually moved onto the smaller ones...

It's now hanging in the kitchen...although it isn't as pretty as the lovely one in the tutorial...I didn't trim the roots and only brushed the loose dirt off...but I think it has rustic charm!