Wednesday 3 January 2018

Happy New Year

Here we are, mid Christmas.  We're somewhat tireder than that now, having had the pleasure of Mum, Dad, Michelle, Michael, Paul, Sam and Riley to stay in batches over the last couple of weeks.  It was wonderful to see you all xx
Now we are doing NOTHING but relax for the rest of the week ha ha
I forgot to get my camera out over Xmas as per usual, but here's a few... here is Paul, midway through a game of Uno. 
 and Michelle with her dad.  She is wearing the elf hat I made her, love the ears!
 Here is a close-up of the hat.  Cute hey!
 My god we ate, so much food and so much variety.  This was a new thing, a glazed ham that we started on Xmas Eve.  I've never done one before, it was yummy!
 This is the Nutella Xmas tree that seven year old Riley made.  Isn't it pretty!  It was gobbled up in record time.
 Here is Riley's unicorn hat that I made her, I was very relieved to see that it fits okay!
 And this is an in-progress photo of Stevie's Wonder Woman bag in the making.
 And here is the finished bag.  Hope you like it Stevie :-)
 Paul brought down his impossible jigsaw that with lots of perseverance was finally conquered EXCEPT there was a piece missing!  Thankfully when Paul got home he found the missing piece so hooray, it was finished :-)
 Over New Year I got my crochet hook out again and made myself a crochet hook roll after spotting a pattern for this one.
 It will be very handy, it has slots for my crochet hooks and I've managed to find a spot for my scissors, and wool needle, stitch markers and a pen.  So as long as I don't forget the crochet roll then I'm all set.
 I went into town yesterday, the first time I've set foot out of the house since before Xmas.  Waiting for me at the post office was my Christmas present to myself...the pattern and the yarn for the next blanket I want to make.  This time I am going with the colours suggested in the pattern instead of choosing it all myself, I adore the look of this blanket, which is smaller than the one I made last year, it will be perfect for snuggling under to watch the tv. 
 Outside, things are growing well.  This was today's harvest, 5kg of nectarines, 1 1/2kg of beans and 5 eggs.  My goodness we've had eggs, I think we used about 80 eggs over the Christmas fortnight and we still have a couple of dozen in the fridge.  Total of the nectarines was about 8kg which we are thrilled with.  This is the early tree, the Flavortop, we didn't get any last year.  The next fruit that will ripen will be the Angel peaches, flat, donut peaches with white flesh...maybe in a week or two.
 We have giant zucchinis! My goodness we have had a lot of giant zucchinis.  I've ended up cutting them up for the ducks and chickens, who are all very partial to a bit of zucchini.  We will use the smaller ones.
 We harvested our garlic mid December.  After letting it dry out then cleaning it up and trimming roots and leaves, we ended up with about 2 1/2 kilos of very nice looking garlic.
 These are some of the bigger ones, we have a variety of sizes of the globes.  They are tucked away in a basket in the pantry and we so enjoy using our own garlic for cooking.
 On a different note entirely, my little silkworms all spun their silken cocoons, hatched out into these ever so cute moths (just look at the gorgeous little face) who then got together and did the wild thing for days, then laid many many many eggs, then kicked the bucket!  So, I have a container covered with eggs and not sure what to do now.  I read somewhere that you put them in the fridge until you are ready to have them hatch, I must read more.  In the meantime if I notice they are hatching then I'll start feeding them again.
 We are having to be careful at present and take stock of who is where when going out in the paddock, there are a lot of big male roos here, following the females around.  The one on the left is Ben, who until recently was the alpha male, but he got into a huge fight with Ano who I think has taken over as boss man.  Poor Ben has quite a nasty wound on his throat, presumably Ano bit him, so he's been feeling a bit sorry for himself the last few days. 
 Flowers, birds and bees abound as usual, much to my delight.  Isn't this pretty, it's a mini fuchsia, called Ballerina I believe.  The flowers certainly look like little dancers don't they.
 And this photo is for our reference, showing the water we have in the tank as at January 1st.  Steve keeps records of our water and rainfall but we are adding a photo on the 1st of every month to make things easier to remember.
Until next time xx

2 comments:

  1. Great post Dy. Yours are always so full of interesting news. I bought the very same wool pack for myself, so we can crochet together over the internet.

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    1. Thanks Liz! MW has also bought the Eastern Jewels pack so the three of us will be making it together, how nice :-) I'm holding off starting mine for a few weeks I think.

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