Just a quickie...

For the Aussies: Spotlight has 20% off homewares today until 9pm, and I just picked up three 3 litre preserving jars for $8 each.



I normally buy preserving jars second hand - I use them for storing my bulk nuts, seed, dried fruits etc - but it's difficult to find large glass storage jars and I have never come across square-sided jars as large as these in my travels (they also had 4 litre jars which were round-sided). When storage space is at a premium, square-sided jars which pack together more efficiently are a huge plus!


Cheers,

A change is as good as a holiday.

A few weeks ago, whilst staring dejectedly at the piles of stuff I still have sitting around the house with no permanent home since we turned our study/office into a bedroom, it suddenly occurred to me that just because a room is labelled "lounge room" on the house plan, it doesn't mean it has to actually be used as a lounge room.

And now you're all going "Well, der", but in my defence, when you've had rooms all set up for particular functions for 9 years (floor finishes, curtains, paint etc), it isn't immediately obvious to just change their use :-)

So, with some trepidation, I casually suggested to hubby one Saturday afternoon that perhaps - you know, if we had nothing better to do - we (meaning mostly he) could swap the entire contents of the two front rooms of our house with the entire contents of the two back rooms of the house!

Fortunately, he agreed that my cunning plan was actually a good idea and we spent the rest of the weekend dragging furniture, books & toys from one end of the house to the other. Phew! It all came together really well though and now our 'new' lounge room can take better advantage of the cool summer evening breezes, I no longer have a formal dining room that all visitors refused to sit in (because they wanted to be in the kitchen talking to me at the breakfast bar) and I've created an area where I can do my sewing and craft in the same space as my kids are playing! Awesome. And, as an added bonus, in the move I freed up a whole wall for future storage!




Now, everyone who knows me well (hi Mum!), knows that I am NOT known for my patience; as a classic Gen X-er I want things now, thankyouverymuch, so idea of waiting for a suitably large storage unit to arrive into one of our local second hand stores (or be listed on eBay), was - I'll admit it - kinda excruciating. Especially when I still have those aforementioned boxes still sitting around waiting for a home.

But, as every good thrifter knows, you never find what you are after unless you aren't actually looking for it. I tried using this reverse-logic the past few weekends, casually dropping into op-shops and second hand furniture stores with the premise of looking for tea cups for Miss Seven's birthday party, but anything vaguely suitable in the storage furniture line was already sold.

Unusually, I have the car today (and no kids) so I used the opportunity to take a load of clothing and toys to my local clothing-only Salvos store, but they weren't accepting donations today so I decided on a whim to drive to the next closest store and drop it all off, with the actual intention of looking for more tea cups.

You know where this is going don't you?

Yup, the Salvos store I went to also had furniture, and ta da! There they were - two huge timber cupboards! Squeeee!





Not only that, but they had a very lovely fit-but-retired couple who do deliveries for them, heading out to my suburb right then.

Ah, serendipity indeed.

Now I'm about to give them a once over with some beeswax furniture polish, line the shelves with some op-shop fabric and then load them up with my fabric stash and our craft supplies! Yay. My hope is that by having all this potential permanently on display in the kids' main play area, they'll be inspired to get creative every day (and therefore less likely to want to watch TV).

Now, where's that polish?

P.S. Do you like my new banner photo? I snapped it yesterday :-)

Cheers,

You guys are so great.

I'd no sooner posted yesterday, whinging about my sinus infection, when my inbox started filling up with emails from you lovely people passing on your favourite remedies. Thank you!

Unfortunately, I've tried most of them - with varying degrees of success - over the years. The ones which do work, only tend to work temporarily, but it's enough to get through the day usually (over the counter medication makes me feel totally spaced out and high, particularly the ones which claim to be "non drowsy").

One herbal remedy which helps to drain my congested sinuses is Phytolacca Ointment, made by local Hunter Valley herbalist Pat Collins.



I was lucky enough to attend a home remedy workshop by Pat many years ago, and I often refer to the workshop notes and one of her books (A-Z of Ailments) which I also bought at the time. Some of her self-published books and herbal remedies are also sold by my organic grocer, who also host her workshops occasionally, which is convenient :-)

Incidentally, I've had her latest book, Useful Weeds at Our Doorstep, on my Wish List for as long as I can remember but haven't gotten around to buying it yet. That's going to change with my next grocery order! In it, Pat outlines 40 common weeds found in the Hunter Valley (and around Australia) which can be eaten or used in herbal remedies.

In the mean time, I need to make an appointment with an acupuncturist and get myself a Neti Pot apparently. I have been using a saline nasal spray, but do any Novocastrians know where to get a neti pot locally?

Thanks again guys :-)

Garden Snippets II

Hello everyone.

Sorry for going all incommunicado, but I've been struggling with a sinus infection all week. Today I am totally shattered after three nights effectively sans sleep, not helped last night by our neighbours & their visitors sitting outside our bedroom window, chatting away until 4.30am. I give them credit for trying to be quiet but at night everything is amplified, and their outdoor entertaining area is literally three metres from our bedroom windows. You've no idea how much I want to move to an acreage right now!

Anyway, I can't think coherantly enough to do any useful work and I'm not game to use a sharp knife in the kitchen, so here I am at the computer sorting my photos and generally fluffing about. That makes you all the lucky recipients of a photo-heavy post after a wander around the garden early this morning :-)

Firstly, hooray! We're in business with the garlic again! I picked the giant Russian garlic and these Melbourne Market bulbs yesterday, and I still have the Australian White to come out of the ground. Yum!

The Pink Iona grapes are forming into some lovely-looking bunches. They should be ready for picking in January.

The Gardenias are flowering and their delicious scent is heavy in the air.

The last remaining Butternut pumpkin seedling has survived snail-ravaging and is coming away nicely.



And the Golden Midget watermelon seeds are up and away.

I am once again without parsley, as it has all bolted in the heat. A little Spring weather this year would have been nice.

The Carambola (Starfruit) is flowering already as a precursor to the main crop which is harvested in May/June.

Heat stress caused half of the dozen peaches I had to drop off my dwarf peach trees :-(
If I hadn't recently transplanted them (and therefore wasn't expecting any fruit this year) I would be even more sad - I love peaches.

The Passionfruit is still producing lots of flowers but no fruit set yet. It's filling out the trellis nicely and I'm hoping for a little summer shade over the top this year.

The second generation of self-seeded White Icicle radishes are flowering and going to seed.

Apparently all six Rainbow Chard seedlings I germinated & planted out are ruby coloured. I was hoping for some yellow as well, but no matter, it all tastes good.

The first of the female flowers have appeared on the Lebanese cucumbers.

The recent hot weather has stopped the strawberries flowering so this will be the end of them for the season I suspect.

Self-seeded Amaranth is coming up everywhere.

Having stripped the mulberry tree, the birds are moving onto the unripe apples, pecking holes in them. This is not helped by the discovery that one of our dogs is also helping himself to low-lying fruit! Bad dog!

The beans are bursting forth out of the ground and winding their way up all available supports.

The Heritage raspberry bushes are flowering and setting fruit. The main crop is in Autumn, but we get a few in Spring as well.

Almost all my leafy greens have bolted to seed, including the curly endive with it's pretty mauve flowers.

The dwarf Catui coffee bushes are about to flower.

My new black pepper vine (Piper nigrum) has berries. In defence - just as I was about the throw in the compost bin - my old, defoliated vine has thrown out two tiny shoots.

My very first Youngberries - dang, they are good! Sorta like a blackberry & raspberry mixed together. And look how huge they are!

Happy gardening,

Almost good enough to eat...

Rebatched wheat germ & sunflower oil soap: pure soap, grated, mixed with wheat germ & sunflower oil and enough boiling water to just combine, rolled into balls and dried for 48 hours before use.

Noice.



Cheers,

Garden snippets

The Russian garlic is ready to harvest (all five surviving plants ;-) The Melbourne Market and Australian White won't be far behind.

Baby figs are forming on my baby fig tree...

I finally managed to find some French Tarragon seedlings (as opposed to the less-flavourful and infinitely more common Russian Tarragon)...

The Youngberries are coming along nicely. They should go a dark purple when ripe (I tried one this colour and it was very tart LOL...

Peanuts! The packet advised slow germination & about 50% germination - around 50% have germinated but they did so within 5 days so I must be doing something right. They'll go out the front in the hottest garden bed as they like long hot summers I'm told.

The Chinese Water Chestnuts are poking their heads up above ground...

And the Passionfruit vine is flowering, although no fruit has been set yet as far as I can see.

Happy gardening everyone :-)

What a little beauty!

**OK, so I warned you that an image-heavy post was coming LOL. Forgive the quality of the images though, it's been overcast here the last few days and the light is pretty awful.**


Anyway, as I mentioned the other day, I finally managed to snag Miss Seven's birthday present on eBay. Hubby picked it up for me on Wednesday night and I'm so thrilled with it! See, I've been looking to buy her a very simple second-hand sewing machine to learn on, so that she doesn't accidentally break mine - not that mine is anything expensive or complicated.

I was originally going to let her learn on my grandmother's old Singer, but a friend pointed out that her feet may not reach the treadle, which they don't when we tried (thanks for the tip Nicola :-).

Although I wasn't specifically looking for vintage machines, in my searching then I came across another old Singer, operated with a knee lever which I thought may be suitable but a quick eBay search brought up an even better option:

I present to you the fully-operational, hand-operated vintage Singer 20 'toy' sewing machine!



How cute is it?! It's about 25-30 cm high I suppose and about the same width. It's in perfect condition, considering it's age and came with the original G-clamp to attach it to the table to stop it from moving around.

I didn't even know such a machine existed until I did a search for sewing machines within 50km of my place on eBay - not only did I find this one in near-pristine condition, it came with copies of the manuals AND it was being sold just one suburb away from hubby's work. Serendipity in action.




As you can see from the back, it's pretty simple and it only does one straight chain stitch & like my (grandmother's) Singer 201k, has no reverse, so you need to tie off the thread at the ends, or manually turn the fabric around and sew back a little way to finish off.

This particular model was manufactured in New Jersey in the U.S, although they were made all over the place over the years. They were first manufactured after World War I, then on until the 1950's, and were briefly resurrected in the late 1970's for a couple of years.

From my brief research, the rounded base and the seven spokes on the hand crank on my model suggest that it dates from the mid 1920's or early 1930's - it is commonly called the '1922' model. The 'toy' models don't have serial numbers on them, unlike their big sisters, for more accurate dating.

Check out the bright chrome finish on the base plate. Not a speck of rust! Note also the big fat guard around the needle on the foot - it makes it slightly more difficult to thread, but it also means no little fingers can be inadvertently sewn to the fabric! The doohickey with the screw on the right of the base plate is an adjustable seam width guide.

The seller obtained copies of the instructions & adjuster's manual, and two packets of spare needles are included with the machine as well. Although the machines were originally sold as 'toys' for little girls to sew doll's clothes (early Brand Awareness marketing at work - get them young!), it was later marketed to women as a handy portable machine for mending and small sewing jobs.

It produces lovely even stitches (the wobbles are all my own). The stitch length is adjustable with a simple lever underneath the base plate. Because it is operated with a hand crank, Miss Seven will be able to go as fast or as slow as she pleases, with more accurate control than an electric machine's foot pedal, meaning that there should - theoretically - be less chance of a broken needle.

The back, showing the single-thread chain stitch detail. The machine does not have bobbin, something I often wish my machine didn't have!

Now, don't ask me what I paid for it as it was about 3 times what I was prepared to pay for an old electric machine (ahem) - plus you have to factor in a bit of collectability - but I LOVE that it is so solid and simple that it should be still around for her to gift to her grandchildren.

I think she's going to be just as stoked with it as I am :-) Now I just have to find the perfect sewing basket at the oppies to go with it!



Cheers,

Chilli Sauce

I've run out of this yummy sauce, and I can't for the life of me find an old photo of my last batch, so I'll have to update this post when I make my next one!

Like all chilli products, adjust the heat level to your own liking by upping or lowering the amount - or type - of chillies you use in it. I used Birds Eye chillies and it was lovely - but way too hot for the kids ;-) I'm waiting for my Jalapeno chillies to grow and fruit this year before I make my next batch - yum.



Ingredients

6 fresh red chillies, finely chopped
1 tsp cayenne pepper (or chilli powder)
3 cups sugar
375ml (about 12 ounces) vinegar
2 tsp ground cumin
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tsp grated ginger
1 tbsp tomato paste
250g or ½ pound sultanas or raisins


Method

1. Place all ingredients in a saucepan, bring to the boil then simmer 30-40 minutes until the sultanas are very soft.

2. Cool, and process in a blender or use a stick blender.

3. Bring the mixture back to boiling for 5 minutes and pour into hot, sterilised bottles and seal, or process in a waterbath according to the manufacturers instructions.

Store in a cool, dry place. Makes around 3 cups.



Cheers,