Little Bear Skirt

I love the texture that hand stitching brings to a garment and I love the slow process of sewing something by hand. But I also love being able to quickly put something together with a sewing machine, so I've been finding myself more and more using a combination of both hand and machine sewing when I'm making things.

This skirt came together really quickly, I finished all the edges with the over-locker and then relaxed in the sun room watching TEDx talks and slowing stitching the hem and waist band. I like using bright embroidery thread to highlight the hand stitched detail and I chose yellow to compliment the gold detail on the bear print.

My little Peace Warrior was very happy to have a new skirt. 

Tinctures

I've long been a lover of herbal medicine and have incorporated herbs into my health and healing protocol for longer than I can remember. In recent years I've become more interested in concocting my own medicines and herbal products and have been learning about both cultivated and wild grown plants. I've experimented with tisanes, decoctions, salves, syrups, herbal vinegar extractions and encapsulation as a way to extract and take herbs for a variety of acute and chronic ailments. Tinctures have been on my mind for some time and I have only once made a tincture before now when in my pregnancy/ breastfeeding days of no drinking I decided to throw some elderberries into a lonely looking bottle of gin. For the most part I've tended to prefer other extraction methods but I'm keen to experiment and find out if there are some tinctures that will be invaluable to my personal apothecary.

With the cooler weather setting in, the wild chickweed has started to run rampant in my pot plants and garden beds and as this little gem of a plant only grows in the cooler months I've been keen to capture and store the healing benefits for use in the months when it lies dormant. Chickweed is rich in a variety of minerals and is soothing and healing for skin conditions like eczema. I stuffed a jar about 2/3 full with freshly picked chickweed then filled the jar with organic vodka. I needed to weigh the chickweed down to keep it under the liquid so I used the first thing I could think of- a couple of chunks of amethyst.

I've been working through the ups and downs of having hypochlorhydria (low stomach acid) for a few years and I'm prone to developing protein deficiency due to the my body struggling to digest it, my acquired aversion to high protein meals, and the number of food allergies I have as a result of vaccine injury. Hypochlorhydria has been a hard one to kick due to the self perpetuating nature of it.  Although I have come a long way in my healing and for the most part I can function normally these days in regards to feeling like a normal human, I'm not there yet and I'm always searching for remedies that will heal my allergies and fix my digestive issues. So this is where this tincture comes in. I rarely get around to making decoctions at the moment so I was thinking a digestive bitters tincture might be the way to go.  I half filled the jar with burdock root, dandelion root, ginger and fennel seeds and then filled to the top with organic vodka. I just used what I had on hand in the cupboards so I'm looking forward to trying this one in a few weeks time.

Lavender Dream Pillows

I harvested the lavender from my pot plant recently. I enjoyed watching the bees buzz around the flowers as I sat looking out the sun room window with my coffee or my knitting, but the time came to chop it back and dry the flowers once they had all set seed.
The lavender is beautifully fragrant and I got a decent sized harvest for just one pot plant so I was able to made a little lavender pillow for each of my kids to take to bed with them. I made use of some lovely Japanese inspired fabric scraps from previous projects- making a dent in my stash is always a good thing. I also had enough left over to make a lavender bag to hang between my wool dresses.

Mio's Skateboard Dress

I usually find it really hard to find a pattern I like for a particular fabric I have so I just end up making what's in my head. As I'm totally amateur in my fashion design skills it almost always doesn't turn out perfectly. This is one of those not quite perfect designs but I'm pretty happy with how quickly it came together. 

Mio LOVED the skateboard fabric in the shop and insisted I make her a dress out of it. I made a skirt first because it's pretty hard for a rectangle of fabric and some elastic to go wrong.

Her happy little face just makes my day, what an absolute delight!

I'm going to try get my head around the improvements I need to make because I really like this simple, practical dress.

Slow Living

Bread rising, calendula drying. This is what makes me happy. Slow living, cooking from scratch, growing and harvesting my food and medicine.

Drying and Storing Wild Nettle

Wild harvesting this nettle was such a beautiful experience of getting back to nature in our urban neighborhood. After washing and hanging our plentiful nettle harvest in the spare room I forgot about it for a few weeks while it dried. Mio was keen (briefly!) to help me to pull the leaves off the stems for storing.

It was messy but such a big harvest, countless cups of tea right there!

The stalks didn't go to waste as I boiled them in a pot of water and made a hair rinse. I poured the warm tea over my head as I leaned over my newly planted tomatoes. The cooked stalks then made it to the compost, so all in all it was a successful multi use harvest with many months of stored nettle leaves to use in tea and soups. 

Wild Nettle Harvest

Spring has just begun here in Melbourne, winter seemed to fly by this year. On one of our walks around the neighborhood Mio and I discovered a patch of nettle growing. We came back with India equipped with gloves, a bag and secateurs so we could harvest some of this amazing wild food. Urban living at it's finest!

Little Bear Cape

I didn't plan on this little project, I just wanted to test out the hood design for something exciting I have planned for Mio's birthday. But after rummaging for some test fabric and sewing it together I decided to go all out and turn it into a finished piece. I used fabric from a bag of mixed bits that my in-laws gave me, so all it cost me was my time which is always a bonus.

Crochet Shorts

I love making crochet shorts, and kooky granny square shorts are the best. I have two pairs I made for myself that always get compliments from people in the street and I absolutely love them. I made these from the leftover yarn from all the rompers I knitted for her in her first year so it was a great way to use up some of the bits in my yarn stash.

Drawing Development 2 Years 10 Months

Mio is continuing to show her love and skill for drawing. Here's some My Neighbor Totoro inspired drawings she did this morning.

Totoro

Another Totoro (this was the first one she drew)

The Cat Bus

 

Gluten Free Focaccia

Creating gluten free bread and cake recipes seems to be my favorite thing to do in the kitchen at the moment. I'm really excited about this bread, it has a great texture and is really easy to throw together. It has a lighter texture than my buckwheat bread and is probably my favorite of the two. I haven't tried making it into a loaf but it works well as a focaccia, as well as little bread rolls made in mini muffin tins for picnics. I've tried other toppings like basil, garlic and cheese, and spinach and cheese which are both delicious.

The risen dough and the prepared baking tray.

The dough in the tray ready for the toppings.

Ready for the oven.

Bread

1 cup brown rice flour

1 cup tapioca starch

1/2 cup buckwheat flour

1 tbsp psyllium husks

2 1/2 tsp yeast

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups warm milk

Topping
3/4 cup olives and sundried tomatoes
1 cup grated cheese
fresh basil to sprinkle on top

polenta for sprinkling on the bottom of the baking tray

Measure dry ingredients for the bread into a bowl and stir to combine. Warm milk on the stove (you should still be able to dip your finger in and hold it there without burning yourself) and then add to the dry ingredients. Stir until well combined, the mixture should resemble a thick batter. Leave in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 230 degrees Celcius. Slice the olives and sundried tomatoes. Finely dice the basil and grate the cheese. In a 20x30cm non-stick slice tray sprinkle a small amount of polenta on the bottom.

Spoon small amounts of the dough evenly over the base of the tray and spread to cover. Cover the top of the dough with the olives, sundried tomatoes, basil and cheese and leave to rise for another 10 minutes.
Bake for 15 minutes and then leave to cool in the tray for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

My very patient 2 year old waiting to eat while I snap a few photos.

Little Pants for Mio

I found some cute corduroy fabric in an op-shop recently for $1.25 and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. Paired with some purple stretch fabric my in-laws gave me, I thought it would make great pants for Mio. I drew around the shape of some of Mio's pants for a rough pattern, altered the length for the leg bands and took a bit off the top for the stretchy waist band. The pants came together really quickly, I love little projects like this that are quick and easy. Now on to the thousand other clothing ideas I have swimming around my head.

Playing in the backyard kitchen.

Through the overgrown garden and into the cubby, life is full of wonder.  

Gluten Free Vegan Buckwheat Bread

In my 6 or so years of living with Coeliacs I've had countless baking failures in the pursuit of creating baked goods that are easy to make, don't crumble to bits, are free of thickeners and gums, don't contain eggs, and don't have a list of ingredients that's longer than my weekly shopping list. I know, that's a long list of ideals and gluten free baking is not usually the easiest of cooking endeavors but I've finally created a bread that I can make a sandwich with, tastes delicious, fulfills all my ideals, and has the added bonus of being really quick to put together.

3 cups Buckwheat flour

3 cups Tapioca starch 

1 Tbsp Psyllium husks

2 tsp Yeast

2 tsp Sugar

2 tsp Salt

3 cups Water (warm)

1/3 cup Olive oil

Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl then add water and oil and stir to combine into a thick batter. Pour mix into an oiled and floured bread tin and leave to rise in a warm place for 20-30 minutes before placing in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 50 minutes (will probably only take 30-40 minutes in a fan forced oven). Once cooked leave to cool for a couple of minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack. Leave to cool or slice while still warm.

My little munchkin blowing the bread to cool it down.