Conquering the garden - another section completed.

This section of the garden goes down the East side of the house. So it gets morning sun but quite a bit of shade. As it is under the eaves it was really dry and the only thing growing were dahlias.

The great thing about conquering the garden for me is that it is free!! I knew when we moved that I would be wanting to do things so every time I cut something, I just stick it in the ground to see if it will grow. The photo on the left is one of 4 gooseberry plants just grown from pegging the branch to the ground. The plant on the right has a gorgeous root structure (you can see if you look hard) and is one of many many many rosemary plants.

The photos left to right show gooseberry's planted at the back and rosemary to hedge at the front. The middle photo is Ugni berry (in New Zealand people call it NZ cranberry) as a hedge to be. I have left the dahlias in the back to deal with the dry conditions and have moved a struggling miniature rose in at the left. It should do better there. I have been careful not to put prickly plants around the hose access.

Then further up are two white currant bushes, again from cuttings that I just stuck in the ground when trimming and some very large rosemary plants as I want to have it hedge at least half way up this brushwood fence. What I do need to do yet is to move a beautiful red climbing rose into the rosemary hedge area. It is in the shade and not doing well where it currently grows. Then it will cover the top of the fence. I am going to purchase one thing though. A pear tree. As I have decided to make an Arch into the back garden from two pear trees.

The lovely gooseberries grown from cuttings.

Crafting day with my sister.

My finished boots

Cutting and planning

My sister and I spent a day making Boots / Slippers from the woolen blankets that I dyed and the leather I got from the dump shop. The pattern is amazing and is from Twig and Tale. They are New Zealand designers and makers and their products and patterns are amazing. Very clear and easy to follow and these slippers stitch up so fast.

My sister 

My sisters finished boots. She finished first!

My finished boots

In progress

Linking to these places.

Baking up a storm

Lately I have been trying out a lot of new recipes. Some of this is driven by the fact that I am bored with making the same thing all the time. I am also trying to use what is in the cupboard and fridge etc. Plus we are having a Midwinter Christmas Fair at school and I am on the baking stall.

This first slice is Chelsea Winter's peppermint and chocolate slice. Wow it is yummy. One lot I topped with blocks of peppermint chocolate and one lot I topped with Creme de Menthe sticks that were in the cupboard. For the recipe - Chocolate Peppermint Slice - click on the name. It has fresh mint in it too. Some process photos are below.

When I was visiting my parents I also popped in to see my cousin. We had a walk and talk and then came home and she gave me some muesli slice with a cup of tea. It was yum. So I made some of that.

The NZ House and Garden magazine had a lemon and custard slice in it. I lost the recipe but adapted one that I already had. It uses 1 cup of lemon honey (lemon curd) and I found an old jar of lemon curd in the fridge, so decided to make it. Gorgeous!! I doubled the biscuit base and made half with the lemon (on the left) and half with condensed milk into caramel, to make a recipe we call Tan Square.

The peppermint filling

Fresh mint chopped for the mint filling

The chocolate base.

Strip patchwork quilt top finished

I finally added a few more strips to make this new patchwork big enough for a single bed. I have the batting purchased and now just need to sandwich it together. This will be another quilt for the orphanage - Hope Homes International.

This quilt has now emptied one of my scrap bags, finally!! The bag was for strips of material only and now, with three quilts for the orphans, it is finished. I love being able to say that!

When I was out and about recently I found these gorgeous leather pieces at the dump shop. Exciting things to make with these. Am already channeling the thought of leather and wool! 

Linking to these places and Crazy Mum Quilts.

Wool blanket dyeing day.

Having finished work and with a few weeks before study started, I set out for a day of craft fun. I went to Hanmer Springs and had a day with Jane from Stash Palace. I wanted to learn how to dye wool blankets. Wow did it make a mess, but what an exciting process it was. Watching blankets turn into gorgeous coloured felted wool was just inspirational. 

This is the blankets drying all around the Stash Palace studio. Jane has a special room all set up for the dye splatter which makes it fun being creative without having to worry about staining the carpet, the walls etc.

All the gorgeous pieces. I dyed the equivalent of about three blankets and got half of them dry in the day.

The trip up to Hanmer Springs was slow. I traveled behind a 3 bedroom house being relocated to Waiau for temporary housing, post the earthquake. 

A random photo of a river walk we did after church recently. Gorgeous winter day.

Linking to these places.

Upcycled cot mattress, now a bench seat

Woo Hoo - Thrilled with the finished project.

Quite a while ago I made a seat from a bed head and end. But I just had a pile of cushions on it for comfort.

At the Op Shop (Thrift store) I found a really good condition, thick foam cot mattress. I could immediately see that this would work as a cushion for the seat I made, with a new cover.

About 20cm had to be cut off the end to make it fit. Then as per usual, I procrastinated about recovering it. No reason as I knew I would make a patchwork cover using all the furnishing fabric scraps I had.

So it sat looking like this for ages.

The finished cover.

Just a little bit of sewing required (well it took me about two hours all up) to make the patchwork top and then turn it into a box cover. It is removeable so I can wash it. The underside is just one material - an old Laura Ashley furnishing fabric that I picked up from somewhere.
Linking up to these place and crazy mum quilts and Sew, Stitch, Snap and Share

This uses the scraps from other projects like my hall seat and my ironing board cover. This did not use all the fabric ends I had in furnishing weight. So need to think of another project!!

Conquering the Garden...bit by bit

Sometime I have been feeling that our section and garden is just too big and too much. That is when I am tired or not feeling so well. Then when I get time in it I start to enjoy it again. What I have discovered to stop me feeling overwhelmed I have to just think about bits of it and not the whole. 

So I have been concentrating on fixing up the area in front of the hot tub. I have grown the two Feijoa trees on the left and middle from cuttings and the one on the right I bought. I am slowly making a Feijoa hedge here. At the end of next summer we will be able to remove the two tall trees that do not fit with our style. I also rounded out the garden bed as it had a weird kink in it.

Now I am working on this side just a wee bit further round from the bit before. I have  pear on the left side (just past the rose) that I am going to stake forward and start making a pear arch. I will plant a pear on the left to join it. This is my next "bit" of the garden. By doing bit by bit I feel I achieve something.

Winter has well and truely set it and this is the look in the TV room most days after school!!!

Woo Hoo - what an Op Shop find

Wow so thrilled with this $4 spend. A fabulous breadmaker book, the NZ Gardener book on preserving and a huge pile of amazing leather pieces. Looking forward to using them on all sorts of projects.

Another charity quilt finished

This quilt has taken so long to get done. I get inspired, then life takes over, get re-inspired and life takes over again. I am still up and down on days with energy or not and this probably has a bit to do with it. I have also been made redundant effective next week, which is a roller coaster ride, even though it is a positive move for me.

The quilt is made entirely from donated material and the back is very apt as it is bright material with stylised children all over it. This was just a case of sewing all the odd strips of material I had, once I had put them in piles of similar sizes, then adding row after row. 

                         

I have been wanting to get better at actual quilting for ages. Often  by the time I get to quilting I am a bit over it and just want to get it finished. But this time I used it as a practise for feather style quilting. I feel it is still a big messy but it was getting better by the time I go to the 

So Hope Homes - here comes another quilt for an orphan.

Linking to all these places.

Not your normal Mother's Day

For Mother's Day this year I asked to tramp with the boys. Not a request I would ever have done in the past. I never thought walking / hiking / tramping would ever be something I could do or enjoy again. It is hard to explain. I am exhausted at the end and often feel totally overdone. But in a "not fit" great way. Rather than in a medical emergency way that was occurring.

The rest breaks on the way there looked good.

We walked into Anti Crow Hut. Which is the weirdest name ever!! But there is an Anti Crow stream right near it.

I was shattered by the time I got there. A lot due to the mental thought of having to do it all in reverse and being time pressured with the short winter day. 

The hut in the background

When we were half an hour short of the hut Aaron and Eli raced ahead to boil the billy and give us some hot food. We worked out the break could only be half an hour, this was a great idea as we got hot good food, which gave me some fuel for the return and made me feel amazingly more positive. I am learning a different tramping. As before I could just keep going. Now I have to have breaks, food, rest. So I need to adjust to new expectations.

Not a great photo but the return rest breaks were quite funny. Hard to get up from and thrilled to collapse when we finally took a stop.

Loved loved loved it.

Knitting in places that don't need wool

Well I have been knitting in the oddest place, Rarotonga. 10 days where it did not fall below 26 deg C and was normally 28 - 31. Loved it. But sometimes the sun gets too much and retreating to the room is needed. This is a laceweight merino that is multi dyed. I had a different pattern in mind when I bought it. I have started and unpicked twice as it just did not work for me. This time I am just doing a straight scarf using a lacy pattern and 5mm needles. I love it.

Leaving the hotel

Last swim in the warm ocean.

On our last day we had until 2pm and mucked around in the ocean on canoes. Had a huge swim just with Aaron while the boys were in the pool. Trying to get four of us on one canoe was hilarious and a great family bit of laughter.

This trip I used the canoes much more than I had ever before. The weather was consistently fantastic and it was just good to be on the water and a bit cooler. The water was so warm that it did not matter if you fell in. Also as my health was so much better I had the omph to be able to do physical things.

Aaron and I had a few date nights

The hotel from the water

Eli and I canoed every day and we started going right out to the reef and surfing the waves in. The water was so calm that we had to head way out on all except one day.

This trip was warmer than any of our other trips. I did not get to wear my fancy dresses in the evening much as it was just too hot, loose cool clothing only. Three nights were cool enough for me to wear my glad rags and I enjoyed dressing up.