the fruits of my labour

Wow. I can’t believe Isobel came into the world a whole six months ago. I swear they were the fastest six months of my life. I hope the next six are a bit slower, and that we can savour them more. Isobel has been a relatively easy baby, very placid and undemanding (almost to a fault). She has settled into our family very nicely and we’re all excited to watch her grow and change. Elliott loves having her around. Hopefully, for the most part, it will always be that way.

Happy first six months, Isobel! We hope it’s been at least as good for you as it has been for us.

I haven’t been able to find a lot of time for craft lately, sadly. But when I have (usually only minutes from bedtime, when everyone else is asleep and I’ve finished most of the pressing chores), I’ve been knitting. A few weeks ago I made Isobel this wool nappy cover. I followed the free Ottobre pattern here. I used 12 ply machine washable wool, rather than untreated wool roving, which the pattern calls for, because that’s what I had leftover from other projects and I’d read on the Oz Cloth Nappies email list that other people had used it successfully. It seems to be working quite well over a fitted nappy, although I haven’t been brave enough to try it at night. If you think it sounds crazy to use wool as a nappy cover (and I admit it is a bit counterintuitive) and want to know more about its benefits, especially overnight, and how to lanolise (a must) go here. You should know that we have been using these wool covers very successfully on Elliott at nights for months, and wish we’d known about them sooner.

This is the most complicated thing I’ve ever knitted, which is saying something, as it’s pretty basic. I found the hardest part was picking up stitches along the leg openings. How do you do that?! I just kind of made it up. It looks OK, but I’ll try to find a tutorial on it before I try it again. I’ve started another one in 8 ply, hoping I’ve correctly calculated the pattern adjustments. We’ll see! Again, I’m just using what I have.

And if that’s not enough knitting news for you, there’s even more to come soon, as I visited Sunspun the other day and bought some beautiful wool to make a couple of things for Chris. I just need to work on my technique, though, because I know it’s not right and it’s slowing me down.

In other craft supply shopping news, I received some fabric in the mail a couple of weeks or so from Quilt Fabric Delights. Here it is, all freshly washed and ironed:

It’s now waiting for me to do something with it, along with some natural linen from here. Hopefully that something will include some aprons for me, Chris and Elliott, and some fabric coasters. A couple of family members who shall remain nameless think the fabric coaster idea is nuts (”Why would you want to make coasters out of something you’d have to wash?“) , but I am desperate to make my first attempt at patchwork and maybe quilting, very much inspired by these, these, and these. We’ll see who’s nuts…

No, this isn’t knitting news as (almost) promised. As you can see, though, I wasn’t able to do any knitting last night, as I was at the Corner Hotel with the newly reformed Crowded House. Never having seen them live before they split up in 1996, it was great to be there last night in such a small venue. They were in fine form, but I must admit it felt a little strange without Paul. Liam Finn was the support and he had some good tunes (although we - Chris, Mum and Anna - missed the start of his set, as we unexpectedly had to queue to get in, despite picking up our tickets earlier in the day) and was quite charismatic.

And thanks to Victoria’s new smoking laws, I didn’t come home reeking and needing a shower!

At least that’s what I’m hoping. Elliott and I made some multigrain bread together the other day. I gave him a small piece of the dough to work with, in the hope he would knead with me and watch his dough rise before baking it in the oven. Here’s what wasn’t eaten by Elliott before the first rise:

Elliott had about three times that amount of dough in the beginning. Hopefully it’s obvious which is his bowl. I found that on the floor by the heating duct is a great place for proving dough during winter. (Yes, the floor does need washing.) I guess Elliott needed a smaller bowl, more in proportion to the amount of dough he had left, as his didn’t really rise much, whereas I was pretty happy with mine.

Anyway, it didn’t really matter, as I couldn’t convince Elliott to not eat that small amount of dough and put it in the oven instead (maybe next time), so this is what went in:

And this is what came out:

I was pretty happy with the results. Elliott was pretty happy I let him eat dough. Apparently it’s better than actual bread. Dinner was this soup, with homemade bread rolls. I really liked the soup and bread, Chris wasn’t such a fan of the soup. There’s really no accounting for taste.

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I hope my next post will not be about cooking or baking, although that is about all we’ve been up to lately, apart from the mundane. Knitting, fabric and sewing news to come, I hope.

I received this Meyer lemon tree from Chris’s dad for Christmas last year. You can’t see them all that well in this photo, but there were close to 20 small green lemons on it in December. Until recently there were 17, I think, big yellow lemons like this:

We’ve started picking them now, so I think there’s only about a dozen left. I would have taken a wider shot showing the whole tree and all the remaining lemons, but that would have revealed too much of our neglected backyard and I would be embarrassed to let anyone see it. We really need to spend some quality time out there. Anyway, I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to be able to duck outside and pick lemons off my own tree for our dinner. Especially when they’re for lemon delicious pudding:

So good. And a great way to finish the weekend.