the trouble with ruts

After not knowing what to do with the other blog, I have kind of just given up without giving up. If you know what I mean. Too hard basket.

Sadly, I don't feel the love for the food blog thing anymore. I wish I did. But I mostly struggle to stay enthused with making beautiful nourishing food, let alone the all-consuming documenting of it. Probably because by the end of the day I am done, though the making of the adult dinner lies ahead. Also I think I spend too long making dinner (I have not really downgraded my standard of what is worthy of the 'dinner' descriptor since the boy arrived) and therein have grown to not really enjoy the process, because all I really want to do is sit down, spend some time with my beau and pour quantities of wine all over myself.

There are moments of spark though.

In the past fortnight I have made pumpkin and lentil burgers, vegie pasties (first time I have made shortcrust pastry since high school!), and a rad roasted beetroot salad with panfried beans, fetta and homegrown purslane. I recently made sourdough after a long lull (including making a new starter after our last au pair inadvertently binned my several-years-old starter >..<). And I smell meals with tomatoes in our future, courtesy our homegrown tomato glut.

When the householders urge me to get thy camera out, I dwell on the bad light and the prospect of picking up where I left off. You know that feeling that once you've let too much water go under the bridge?

Oh, and that brings me to thy camera. Has not seen light of day for many moons. My all-purpose lens is infirm. And it all got too much to carry a heavy baby, baby paraphernalia and a heavy camera when we went anywhere. And it is just so much easier to use the phone... thank goodness for the phone! Though I have been loving these posts and this (and her photography generally) and wanting to do so much more.

Reading, there is no time energy time mental coherence. I have a small stack of books and magazines purchased in quiet city-induced flurries of internal sunshine and hope. These get picked up intermittently and held for about three minutes and thirty seconds (including time spent discerning where I was up to after toddler has dislodged bookmark).
 
My hands miss knitting. My most 'recent' project - the boy's baby blanket (ho!) - is scrumpled somewhere in a dark cupboard after I backed myself into a corner I could not see clear of. And yet I have bought wool for future projects.

When I do get a moment, I either seize it for some physio exercises / yoga, get some chores done, or fluff around aimlessly because I don't have a project-that-I'm-not-totally-overwhelmed-by to get on with.

The trouble with ruts is that they are self-fulfilling.

I have high hopes though. I dream about blogging about creative stuff I am doing, without the technical difficulties that go along with creating stuff and blogging. Oh, utopian me!

I have resolved that rather than getting sucked into the nightly vaccuum of the lovely interwebs (but not actually doing anything productive on them because I'm exhausted, and going to bed way too late and waking up feeling hungover despite aforementioned quantities of wine being more occasional nowadays) I will spend my evenings creating, or if I'm too tired to create, relax. Seems simple. And obvious.

I have wondered whether I could morph the foodie blog into new terrain. You know, make it more about life generally. It seems like such a shame to let it lapse. I still occasionally get amazing emails and comments. Someone even offered to buy it! And did I mention the thing about being invited to have a few recipes featured in the ABC's Foodi iPad app? 

Perhaps I need to climb out of the food rut, and the photography rut, before I can get any traction on the blog rut. And probably, more generally, just start. I love this post about getting your creative spark back. 

Yes, I know this space is temporary. And this here, is my start.

paper & wood bits and bobs

Have been wanting for a while now to post some photos of recent domestic~crafty activity ... including my wonderful new kitchen shelves (a Christmas gift from K) which go a long way to solving the problems of an impossibly small pantry, and the ex science-lab drawers that QUT (fortuitously for our craft room) piffed out. Late last year I saw some floor-to-ceiling driftwood hanging things in Biome which inspired a small driftwood, paua-shell and stone mobile which now adorns our front door. And then there's the world's most ridiculously-labour-intensive paper crane mobile, which I made as a xmas gift (but ended up giving to myself, given the time frittered away making it) ...

oh glorious productivity

Yesterday was about the most productive day I have had in aeons. After dropping the pee-anywhere cat off to the vet bright and early, I had three whole hours to fill before my knitting class. After a quick look in the opp shop (and another el cheapo woollen jumper score), I headed to the Federal Coffee Palace and plonked myself by their open fire. With laptop and caffeine I proceeded to work like a madwoman. At home, despite being stationed behind a closed door, my day would be about one part work to two parts tending fire and sixteen parts engaging with domestic life that refuses to believe in my ‘absence’ (a Snuffle-upagus case in reverse?). Then there’s time spent in the thrall of the kettle, which, thanks to its perch on the always-on woodstove, graciously affords a constant stream of little breaks. (Much like the always-on internet.)

FCP is my saviour. I did a full 'Bingi day’s' work in two hours. I will come back often. So what if it’s a 40km round trip? So what if they don’t have wifi (actually that’s a good thing, since internet access would’ve thwarted my blitzkrieg). At the very least, I will move my homebound workspace to the big caravan on the property.

But that’s not all. Yesterday I also finished my beanie – my first knitted project EVER! (Every time I enter her orbit, my knitting yogi apologises for starting me off on such a not-quite-straightforward project.) See here.





On the whole, I'm quite chuffed. I'd like to wear it with the roll-up bit rolled down, but because it's got a bit more headroom than I can use, wearing it like that makes me look Smurf-headed. So I plan to tweak the design and make another. After I finish the scarf I also started yesterday.

bumps, lumps, watersheds

Under the influence of the needles, I've begun to muse how my current knitting jag is a metaphor for my life right now. I’ve been clinking along something like this: knit a row, gather speed and confidence, blink, mysteriously lose the bundle, get dispirited, give up and slunk off in the direction of the habadashery. Two days ago I tried carrying on from the point of give up. Somehow, miraculously, I resurrected the critical mess I’d made. A watershed.

Since then, I’ve been knitting like a steamtrain.

Though riddled with errant purls and unidentifiable stitches, beanie is swiftly evolving into something that resembles the beginnings of a garment. And I am snowballing. For example, I mysteriously completed a row with 103 stitches instead of 100, and then identified and ditched the three extras in the following row. Just like that. For two nights in a row I have corked my needles because it was time to go to bed… and not because I’d done my blink and lose it trick.

I will try not to gloat, since the task before me now requires changing to a new pair of needles. Then knitting a whole row and purling a whole row, instead of knit one, purl one, and I'm afraid that if I can schwing the needle swap, my hands will revert to autopilot. I smell doom. (Feel free to jump in here with any advice - please!)

Anyway, perhaps the metaphorical stuff is a little subtle. Suffice to say that learning to knit, with all its bumps and lumps, is spookily similar to the pursuit of life after desk. And perhaps by the time I finish the beanie, I’ll have found the warmer climes of my dreams and can lay my hat. (Literally, because I won’t need its woolly warmth!)

knitting for dummies

I’m writing in the flush of learning a new skill… knitting! (Not the most intuitive segue from the chainsaw, but a segue nonetheless, by a former desk-drone endeavouring to become at least mildly practical.)

Recently a friend in Briswegia sent me a granny pack - four balls of yarn, a pair of needles, photocopied instructions and good luck vibes. I quickly discovered that knitting is a left-brain activity and submitted to the wisdom and white hair of the Yarram Spinners – the local spinning/knitting/crocheting group.

That was last week. I emerged from their clutches with two new sets of needles, some grey tweed wool, the suggestion of a grey tweed beanie and a contact list including two Beryls.

When I got home, I set straight to work in a determined attempt to maintain momentum. That's when I discovered the super-meditative qualities of knitting and got into a positivity thought-loop that went something like: for $3 a pop, I can learn to knit, make something to keep me warm AND enhance my inner calm! I was so deep 'in the zone' that when something house-bound hoiked me back, I must've blinked and dropped a stitch… or something equally dire. Pursuing the buzz, I continued in denial, only to discover ten minutes later that my ‘knit one, purl one’ was completely out of whack. I was purling where I should have been knitting and my beanie had turned all poo-shaped. My zen calm shot to bits, I corked my needles and noted the need to learn how to un-knit.

During my Melbourne interlude, my knitting nanna called to check my progress. Since the group only meets once a month, she suggested I seek help from the local habadashery. Which I did today. The beanie is back on track. I feel confident. Because next time I fluff it, I have my knitting nanna's phone number. And the amused attention of the local habadashers. Who, I suspect, don't yet realise they've just become my personal Knitting for Dummies support group.

sunshine good, freeloading bad

The sun came out this week. On consecutive days! After days of icy chill, rain, hail etc, I cushied on my bedroom floor, ugg boots against sunlight sneaking in through the window. I cushied on the verandah, sans uggies. And remembered what it felt like to be outdoors without thermal assistance.

I frolicked outside with dirt, lettuce, parsley, coriander, rosemary, chilli, thyme. I even poured a very unseasonable glass of sav blanc, a little celebration to accompany an improbably perfect lunch of leftovers: potato, zucchini, feta and dill polpettes with risone (I want to kiss whoever invented risone, the most perfect pasta to eat with nothing but olive oil and fresh parmy). Accompanied by green leaves with grapefruit and kalamata olives.

Bliss, I tell you.

Sunshine also made me reflective. Have been feeling a bit hopeless lately about the quest. (You know, the quest, the all-consuming search for meaning/fulfilment beyond the desk that occasionally involves some form of income.) The freelancing thing is proving v demoralising, especially as a pitch to one of the section editors from the (formerly?) reputable metro daily resulted in … two of my ideas (one of which was fresh fodder, largely uncovered to date by any media outlet) appearing in their online version two weeks later. Gives new meaning to freelancing...

Freelancing: verb, to give away sale-able story ideas and then impale oneself on own sword upon seeing ideas in print, with someone else's name on the byline.

Am channelling all the Buddhist detachment I can muster. And yes, it could have been a coincidence. But grrrr!

Anyway, since the editorial gods are not going to play (or play fair), I’ve decided to direct energies craft-wards. Landing in a cold/flu quagmire this week, I turned the bedroom into a craft den. See here,

feather deckled notebook (from reclaimed paper & fabric)

My floor is mere cellophane offcuts/rogue cotton wool fluffs away from resembling a kindergarten play-room.

Am also working on some photo cards which I’m hoping the local gifty-type estabs will snap up. See here,

I’m quietly hopeful for a little success, quest-wise, once we’re over the solstice hump.