The Elephant in the Room

There's a bunny on the bookshelf...

A puppy on the floor...

A cow upon the kitchen bench beside the laundry door...

There's an elephant in the lounge room made from a cardboard box...

 And a little girl with a bug in her tum asleep with her favourite fox.

iKnit

I had a massage today. That's not something that happens very often. It was a gift voucher given to me - wait for it - two Christmases ago. (Thanks, sister-in-law! It expires tomorrow. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute.) I was given chamomile tea on arrival and ushered into a dimly lit, near-silent oasis for an hour of pampering. Bliss.

Not wanting the feeling to end, I took my desert-lime and mimosa scented self to a favourite local cafe for a soy latte. I should probably have ordered something cleansing and herbal, but old habits die hard. Besides, I still had to survive dinnerbathbed. I sat at the window bench and retrieved my knitting from my handbag. My iPad was in there so I grabbed that too. I've been a bit to reluctant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, but I have one that I started reading on holidays and promptly dropped once real life resumed - The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.

And so I sat, sipping my glorious coffee, clickety-clacking away on another hat, and reading. Yes, reading. I'm not new to the knit-read combo, but I've always had to choose carefully. Something that lies flat. Something that doesn't need to be re-arranged every time you turn the page. Something with large-ish type.

It wasn't until I'd 'turned' three or four pages seamlessly - just a quick tap of the screen - with minimal interruption to both the knitting AND the story that I realised what I'd hit on. Are the Apple people even aware? The perfect device for the multi-tasking knitting reader. Or reading knitter.

I am delighted.

My book shelves may suffer as a result, but my 'book shelf' is about to get some new additions. What next? Audio books, no doubt.

Joining in with all the other lovely knitting readers and reading knitters here.

I did seriously consider getting my knitting out for the sitting-up foot rub part of the massage. Too much?

Kitchen Garden

Today we were gifted a bag of fresh broad beans. And a head of perfect new garlic. And the silver beet in our own garden was getting a bit out of hand. And a certain young lady thought it was high time we picked the snow peas that had suddenly appeared on our vines and were, even more suddenly, enormous.

I blanched the shelled broad beans, then cooled them and removed their little pale green jackets. The snow peas went in for a quick blanch. Then I fried off a little of the garlic and some chopped anchovies in their oil, and threw the beans and snow peas back in for a final hurrah. Meanwhile, I cooked off a huge bunch of the silverbeet and chopped it finely, then kneaded it into a dough of flour, yoghurt and baking powder. I rolled out balls of dough and slashed them, then threw them on a hot grill plate to cook. 

Smashed garlic and anchovy beans and peas on green flatbread. We ate it before I could take a photo.

I do have these photos of some hummus I made on the weekend. Roasted pumpkin and coriander hummus. I blitzed a drained tin of chickpeas with some roasted pumpkin, a crushed clove of garlic, a tablespoon of tahini, some ground cumin and fresh coriander. I added a thin drizzle of olive oil and some lemon juice. We've been eating it with Lebanese bread doused in olive oil, salt and cumin, baked until crispy.

Oh, how I do love to eat.

PS Did you see Eulalie in her Typically Red pixie hat? How gorgeous is she!

Sunday Lovelies

Some lovely from the past week:

1) They saw me making this and wanted to join in. I've been calling it 'Jane Austen Hour'. (It lasted five minutes).

2) Washing instructions...or should I say 'firm orders'!

3) Shadow puppets.

4) Blue times three.

5) It started out as a lunchbox snack and ended up as show and tell.

6) Practising her P's. P for Pearl, that is.

Hoping the coming week is full of good things.

Ornamental

My Christmas ornament for the swap is complete, finished, done. I took Tania's wise words into my day yesterday as I embarked on my third attempt at getting this right. I'm far from a perfectionist, but I got the yips once it really dawned on me that it was going to hang in someone else's home, not just here at my place with all the mess and chaos. So instead of "aiming for a look of perfection", I've got wonky and funny, but loveable nonetheless. 

It should be said that I am neither an embroiderer nor a patchworker. But of course I thought I'd give both a bash. Tis the season for trying new crafts at the end of the year when you're really quite busy and really should have gone with something you know like knitting...tra-la-la-la-la...la-la-la-la.

One might fairly surmise I'm not much chop when it comes to drafting a five-pointed star either. Wonky? Uh-huh. 

But loveable.

My recipient claims to like Christmas, and Christmas to me means red and green. And although it mightn't be apparent, the patterns on the embroidered side were traced from some Christmassy cookie cutters. It doesn't get more yuletide than that.

I hope my far-away swap partner likes her funny little star. It shall be winging its way to her tomorrow. I hope it arrives in time.

Thanks again, Christina, for organising this fun, only slightly stressful, event!

(Amazing woman she is, she's now launching a fantastic 12 Days of Christmas Giveaways. Do go and check it out - a prize a day for 12 days!!! And I have some inside info that there will be some very, very nice stuff on offer.)

Oh, and because I know you'll ask, the beautiful button is part of the latest haul from my dealer, the Craft Queen herself.

For Kids

The Bumpy Bonnet for kids is available in the shop now.

Toddler and baby sizes are there too.

20 Years

Last weekend, I travelled back to my home town for my 20-year high school reunion. Let's hear that again - my 20-year high school reunion.

It's ludicrous.

It was only a few years ago that I finished that final exam, flounced my way through the graduation ball, then headed off with my high marks and high hopes to university.

It was only a few years ago that I left university - with a creative arts degree instead of the law degree I'd set out for - and fumbled through a few useless auditions while polishing my waitressing skills in the big smoke.

It was only a few years since I filled a backpack and headed north, landing on an island in the bluest of seas, to further enhance those waitressing talents and fill my bank account with travelling cash.

A few years, only a few, since, weeping and jittery, I farewelled my mum and sisters at Sydney airport and boarded a plane for Europe where I would spend the next two years working and travelling, working and travelling, and wondering what to do with my life.

Only a few years since the awful phone call from the other side of the world telling me my brother had died.

A few years since returning home, a little lost, to discover two years in Europe might sound good over a few beers at the pub, but didn't look all that impressive on a CV.

It was only a couple of years ago, I'm sure it was, that I was stumbling around doing film courses, journalism courses, writing plays, producing plays, trying to tell stories that people wanted to hear. And still waitressing.

A couple of years ago living alone in tiny inner-city apartments, scrounging to pay rent, making day-before-pay-day decisions between 'loaf of bread' and 'packet of ciggies'.

A couple of years since falling into a great job, one that I loved, and paid well, and let me have sick days and holidays and finally release the word nerd that had been trying to get out.

Only a couple of years - surely only a couple - since being introduced to a handsome Greek bloke at work one morning. Only a couple of years since we got it together to go out, start a relationship, move in together, go overseas together.

A couple of years since he made some poetic association between lighthouses and right directions when he proposed to me at dusk looking over the water at Santorini. 

And I said yes.

And I'm sure it was just the other day that my mother walked me down the aisle of a Greek church in Sydney, stepping on the bay leaves that remained from the Easter just past, and a crown was placed on my head, joined with a ribbon to the one on his head, and we circled three times behind the priest.

Only just last year, I'm sure, that we got married, mortgaged and pregnant, all in the space of a few months.

And only last year, I know it was, that our Lola arrived to make us a family, a few months ago, it couldn't be more, that we went from one to three kids in a single leap, just last week that we followed our hearts out of the city to this tiny village in the hills.

It's just not possible that 20 years have passed since that first, enormous leap into the world.

Sunday Lovelies

A small selection of lovely from the week:

1) Kitchen helper.

2) From my mother-in-law's garden.

3) A dear friend's new bub (don't worry, his eyes survived the poking).

4) A birthday cake for her godmother got stuck in the tin. We served it with a spoon and called it pudding.

5) Necklace-making.

6) A little modelling - the camera was playing up but I quite like the result.

7) Everywhere I turn, shoes.

Hoping your week is a lovely one.

Some new stock will be going into the shop this week. 'Like' Typically Red on Facebook if you want to be the FIRST to find out.

this moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.

Via Soulemama.

Today

Today I have been experimenting in preparation for Christina's Handmade Ornament Swap...

Upsizing an old favourite...

Getting busy in the kitchen, cooking, writing and taking photos...

And playing with fabric and trims for an exciting project in the pipeline.

If I had to spend all my days like this, I wouldn't complain.