Putting a hex on your pincushion

No, I'm not referring back to this brilliant act of crafty voodoo. I'm playing with some hexagons for Kate's mammoth pincushion swap.

I have so many ideas in my head for making a little pincushion... As usual I'm jumping in without a clear design, but after checking out the 'creative vibe' of my (to-remain-anonymous) swap partner, these last precious scraps of Aunty Cookie are speaking to me:

I've played with hexagon paper piecing before and hope to do a fair bit more, so I treated myself to a little product which might just cut out my least favourite part, the initial shape basting. 

Now I just need to think about size, shape, design, filling and so forth, and I'll be able to get making!

Everything other craft project I have on the go is turning out to be a bit of a slow burn, so my intention is to make this one a project of the more short-and-sweet variety.

So please, no hexing my pincushion, ok?

Running For The Kids

On Sunday, along with around 30,000 other people, I participated in the Run for the Kids, a fun-run held in order to raise money for the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. Affectionately known in my household as the 'run from the kids', I've been gleefully dashing out the door 2 or 3 mornings a week for the past four months in order to ready myself for this race.

I opted to run the long course, which took us on a 14.38km route around the Docklands precinct in Melbourne, including going through the Burnley Tunnel and up over the Bolte Bridge.

I'm thrilled that I ran the whole way. My focus was on endurance, on making the distance comfortably, not on speed. I'll never be about speed.

That said, I was happily surprised by my time. I kept a very cautious, slow pace throughout the race, constantly dropped myself down a notch in the exertion department, and tried to ignore the speedy demons rushing past (as well as the runners dropping off like flies as we approached the long inclines).

I can't say that I was in the 'Zone' while I ran. It was hot. People were smelly. It got boring. In fact I had to give myself a good talking-to at various points along the way to stay motivated and keep going. It was more of a mental than a physical battle, somehow.

However, the euphoria I felt as I ran over the finish line was unbeatable. So is the euphoria I continue to feel in knowing that I set myself a goal, I kept to it, and even I exceeded my own expectations.

Five months ago I could run for one minute. Now I can run for 1.5 hours. 

If you're interested in running, but think you have absolutely no chance of ever getting off the couch, I really recommend reading the very motivating John Bingham's  No Need For Speed. 

The rhythm of life

I love the sense of possibility that Monday morning brings. Today, for the first time in a while, the clutterpunk household is starting the week fresh and sparkly, with a tidy home, sunny weather and no illness. I'm looking at the week ahead and feeling alive with possibility and optimism.

It helps, when staring down the barrel of a new week, that we're getting into a bit of a rhythm with our days. For the small boys and I, our week days are now defined by a predictable morning activity, a time of 'rest' (ha!) in the middle of the day, and then a home-based afternoon period while we all wait eagerly for the man of the house to return.

Monday is home day. After a busy and often very sociable weekend, it's good to have nothing scheduled and to focus on domestic life a bit. We hang around at home, wander up to our local shops for any needed supplies, perhaps visit the library, and generally enjoy the neighbourhood.

This was us this morning, riding up to get some fruit. Do you like my Curlypops teatowel tote?

Eating blueberries together... best treat ever!

Tuesday is care day. The boys spend three hours at the local neighbourhood house in 'occasional care', and I use the occasion to care for myself! During this time I avoid all responsible activity, taking time to savour a coffee, ride home to an empty house to do some sewing, or browsing my favourite op-shops at leisure.

Wednesday is adventure day. On Wednesday mornings I try to get the gang a bit further afield, which means a trip to the zoo, the Melbourne museum, CERES, or visiting with friends (aka trashing someone else's house). In recent weeks, my gorgeous God-daughter has come adventuring with us to give her lovely mum (my friend and fellow crafter Anna of Dillpickle) some time to study. She spends her time watching my boys in a bemused fashion and being delightfully placid.

Last Wednesday we visited my dear friend Kirsty. I made little aprons for her three little girls, and together with my kids they decorated cupcakes, ate too much sugar and generally ran amok, while Kirsty and I enjoyed the solidarity of parenting side-by-side, and ignored all the crumbs being ground into the floor around us.

Thursday is creche day. We ride over to my church, where the boys spend a wonderful hour and a half playing with friends while I get a chance to chat, pray and study the bible with friends. Win-win - soul food of the most important kind.

Friday is playgroup day at our local kindergarten. It's great to be going along to a playgroup which gives us access to interesting activities, outdoor equipment, and an opportunity to watch my boys interacting (or not!) with other children.

So, that is our week. But before you start thinking that it's all so very peachy... I confess that afternoons are still a bit of a struggle. I don't quite know how to ride them out. Our days begin around 5am, and only my younger boy naps (sporadically) during the day now. After a morning out and about, I run out of puff, and all I want to do is read blogs and craft books. If the boys' 'free play' is not going well, it is tempting at this time to resort to endless hours of ABC television to get myself some space. I happily employ the TV for an hour or two in our long long day, but when it's more I feel rotten about it.

So I'm trying hard to make the late afternoon our time for visiting the park and wandering the neighbourhood. This works really well, if the weather is decent and dinner is organised already! When we start heading for winter I'll need to be more ideas for ways to engage my energetic, attention-deficit little toddler-aged boys. Suggestions are so very welcome.

How's the rhythm of your life?

My creative space... portable therapy

My creative space today needs to be portable, therapeutic and able to accomodate a distracted mind.

Today, I will be sitting for a few hours in hospital while my wee Charlie boy undergoes a small procedure to open his blocked tear ducts. It's very unclomplicated and very painless - we've been through it before for William - but it does require a general anaesthetic. Now I'm the type of (relaxed? overly casual?!) mama who applauds or rolls her eyes when her boys take a tumble, who says 'pick yourself up sweetie' when they fall, and who made inappropriate jokes with the anaesthetist about finally getting some peace when we went through this last time. But oh, there will be something so heart-stopping about holding my baby while he breathes in the gas and watching that little body go limp and be wheeled away for his "big adventure". I know he'll be fine, but there will be an appropriate lump in my throat all the same.

I have a variety of hand-sewing projects on the go, which are both portable and therapeutic but require some measure of concentration and accuracy, which I know I won't possess. Thankfully, a recent addition to my works-in-progress list has been my floral scrap yo-yo project.

So today, I'm grateful for

my large Clover yo-yo maker

the stack of Japanese craft books that arrived in yesterday's mail, just in time

my basket of wonderful floral scraps

 and craft that helps the time go by.

More spaces at Kirsty's house...

decluttering the grocery shopping, 2010: menu planning

It's been a month since I first posted about the main clutterpunk household goal for 2010, 'decluttering the grocery shopping'. The brief: I want to move our household into a pattern of general food consumption that is low on waste, in line with the espoused social and environmental ethics of my family, and good for the family's health, wealth and use of time.

Easy, no?!

Well, there are lots of things I'd like to implement in our household. But in the spirit of eating the elephant one bite at a time, I've been trying to focus on better meal planning as the first thing to really work on. Many people who commented on my first post stressed the importance of planning their shops and menus in order to stick to a budget and cut back on waste and excess packaging. From the little I've done, I agree.

I can also see that planning the shopping in particular will help me to stick to certain ideals I have but don't always follow through on, such as
- buying only fairtrade coffee and chocolate products
- avoiding exploitative brands
- supporting Aussie-owned and made  
- Eating less meat
- (eventually) moving entirely to organic meat/poultry
to name a few.

But... I find that I have a big problem with meal planning. You have to, um, PLAN. Not only does it take me hours to decide on a balanced array of family meals (without including all my favourite expensive ingredients), but also hours to figure out quantities, make sure that ingredients are seasonal and available, account for left-over bits and pieces, remember the regular items AND try to fit it into a budget... yuk! It takes a mere mortal like me half a day. Or it would, if I didn't just chuck in the towel and resort to the default on-the-fly-5pm-shop-visit-with-two-screaming-children style of 'meal planning'.

So, instead, I'm trialling something which actually does all of that hard work for me:

Webiste HERE.

The Table Tucker meal planning and recipe book is quite something. The deal is that the author, Penina Petersen, decided to plan a full year of dinner menus, with the aim of reducing cooking to three nights per week whilst still enjoying varied, balanced, seasonally-appropriate and frugal dinners. The book includes menus for 6 dinners per week, 52 weeks in the year, as well as annual, seasonal, monthly and weekly shopping lists so that you can choose to buy in bulk and be prepared.

Now before you think this is some paid promotion, and before you head off and buy it, let me say that we're still in our early stages of trying out the Table Tucker system. Prior to our recent travels and illnesses, we decided to use it strictly for two weeks. We don't have any dietary restrictions in our house so we felt free to try each recipe as it came.

There were some amazing benefits. These included:
- Shopping purposefully and quickly for specific items (I definitely spent less than usual)
- The great sense of time and freedom I found in cooking only 3 nights (even though I cooked two meals on those nights)
- Far better mental space for my boys in the hours before dinner, as well as time for them (we went for adventure walks around the neighbourhood)
- Far less food waste.

That said, I do have some reservations:
- It is so planned that I didn't want to think about deviating, which felt a bit restrictive
- It only plans dinners, no other meals
- Some of the meals we've tried are a bit odd to my taste
- There is a reliance on certain prepackaged foods like 'quick rice' which I dislike for lots of reasons
- Some meals are for 4-6 people, others are for 2 people, which is confusing

However, I think that my reservations will probably be overcome if we keep working with the system but learn to play around with the ingredients and flavours a bit.

So, this week we're getting back into the swing of it! Tomorrow I'll be checking our supplies and stocking up on the month's non-perishables, then getting this week's fruit, veg, meat and dairy. Where I get all of these and how, I will leave for another post...

Do YOU meal plan? How does it work in your house?

My creative space...

...is not going to be defeated by what seems to be a second wave of gastro, darn it! I have a deadline and I'm going to make it.

Behold: ten tea-towels, ready and waiting to be folded, packed and posted, once they've had their final threads snipped. Most of my swap-mates are not regulars here at clutterpunk so I don't think I'm spoiling anything by showing you:



Yes, some of you will recognise that this is an old idea of mine from creative spaces past. I knew when I signed up for this tea-towel swap that I was not going to try reinventing the wheel or trying out new techniques. And of course, then there were all those little green offcuts lying around from the dreaded green quilt.

This time I was keen to add some text but unsure how to do so. The plan was to 'write' it on with the sewing machine, but after a few trial runs it became clear that the lack of ability to truly 'free motion' on my sewing machine was going to make it a painfully slow, and potentially needle-snapping process. (For sewing nerds... my ancient Brother's feed-dogs cannot be lowered, and my attempts to do the next best thing and find a compatible darning foot/plate option have been sadly... fruitless). So I was going to hand-embroider, when I came across some printable fabric out of the blue...

I've added a label, which handily doubles as a loop for hanging on a hook or nail.

 

Over the green yet? I might give you a break from it next week :-)

Thanks Kirsty for hosting once again... add your creative space link over here.

Just a minute... in February (ish)

I'm sorry Jenaveve, if you're still out there reading. I just can't move on from this meme. It's always provided the best opportunity to clear my head.

Celebrating... the launch (today!) of the book I co-edited, a centenary history of the theological college where I spent some years studying, 'back in the day'. It was such a great project to work on, and I hope more editing opportunities present themselves in the future. But I'm not going to go out looking for them... I have too much sewing to do!

Sewing... Aprons, the green quilt top (now fully pieced), and some applique/thread-sketchery on tea towels for the great Tea Towel Swap-o-rama!

Reading (in hardcopy)... various books to help me sort out my sustainable ethical family-friendly grocery shopping priorities. I'll save the details for another post, but I'm gaining clarity and have a plan of attack!

Reading online... these newish blogs:

Light Shade of Green: Sonia is on about lots of things close to my heart sustainability-wise, and she articulates them so well. I've been enjoying reading back through her posts.

Apron Strings: 'Calamity Jane' is a self-professed cow-girl, renegade and cookie baker who is reclaiming housewifery! I've found her posts provocative, amusing, sometimes a little close to the bone. She's currently got me thinking about radical homemaking and feminism...

Running... like a trouper. Yes, yet another blogger outs herself as a running junkie. The year before I first got pregnant, I got the running bug and was a frequent (short-distance) pavement-pounder. In November last year, after a 3-and-a-half-year hiatus, it was finally the right time to get back out there. I started getting out three times a week, mostly walking but adding in spurts of jogging (I like to call this combination 'woggling'). I've continued building up gradually, getting out no more than three times a week, often less depending on how the family is situation.

Yesterday, I ran 15km. The longest I've ever run in one burst. For me, Ms Stumpy-legged 'No Good At Sport' girl, a big achievement. I'm still on a high.

Obessessing over...

Coffee and coffee sacks. I have both in my possession :-)

Thinking... that I'm going to try posting more frequently in March, because I have so much that I wish to document and process and workshop and all that, and 2-3 posts a week isn't enough right now. But don't feel obligated to read :-)

What has your February been full of? What does March hold?