If we weren't vegetarian, the goose would be fat....

Handmade Christmas

Lately I have been stitching Christmas. The shepherds in the fields.....

.... three crowns for my little kings and queen.....

....Mary, Joseph, and an admittedly lumpy and oversized donkey (well, I had to shrink him in the washing machine...)

...tree decorations. The pink bird was stitched by my five year-old son....

....three kings from the Orient....

... and here's my husband's beautiful contribution - a gorgeous wooden stable.

Mary and Joseph are journeying around the house until Christmas Eve, the kings are waiting in their castle (constructed from wooden blocks by my children), and the shepherd is tending his flock in a little felt field.

Today I have been dyeing pieces cut from an old silk sheet which I'm attempting to stitch into cloaks for the children, to go with their crowns. Husband chopped down a pine tree (he regards this as environmental assistance because apparently these trees are a pest here in Tasmania) and brought it home on the back of the ute. The children almost exploded with excitement before helping us decorate it with all the beautiful handmade things we've been gathering and making. I wrapped a little piece of tinsel round some of the branches but it actually spoilt it, so I've hung said tinsel along the edge of the mantelpiece above the fireplace, together with my eldest's fingerknitted Christmas strings. The paper angels from Lark are singing along the shelf, and the tin Santa we brought from London is standing in the middle of them all.

Making Christmas.... probably the best way I've ever done it.

Anniversary...

We've been living in Tasmania's beautiful Huon Valley for a whole year now. During that time we've discovered beautiful beaches, amazing old growth forests, magical caves, waterfalls, rainforest, mountains, quaint little country towns (which would definitely be known as villages if they were in England), and the paradisiacal Bruny Island. We've made some gorgeous friends with lovely people, and woven ourselves into the wonderful community centred on our school. Our veggie garden is bursting at the seams, our garden is rambling with flowers, and the rain is keeping everything green and growing. We've even started fixing up the children's cubby house, so they'll have their very own summer hideout.

After a year in Tasmania, we are so happy we made the decision to flee the heat and concrete of the city, and finally I am happier than ever that I crossed the world in the hope of a better life. I am grateful to say I have found it, and the best affirmation of that is watching my children run through the grass at home, chase the waves at the beach, delight in the wildlife all around them, and enjoy the friendships and the community we have found here. Their sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks, tangled hair and grazed knees say it all....!

Vintage Chaos....

Is it just me, or is anyone else slightly sick of blogs and lifestyle magazines featuring perfectly arranged interiors of vintage collections of this, that, and the other? I mean, I love an old biscuit tin or two, and I'll pounce on anything remotely folk, or handcrafted if it's knocking around in a bargain bin or an op shop, but do I showcase my pickings in beautifully positioned piles around the house? Do I artfully hang old white linens and lace in front of bright white window frames, stack pre-war china on ideally situated pine dressers, or fill up expensively tiled fireplaces with rusty old watering cans teeming with dried flowers? Er, no. I do have an old painted butterchurn in one of my fireplaces, but I also have three children whose chaotic trails of dolls, blocks, cars and books invalidate any attempts at tasteful presentations, even if we do clear up before bedtime. Not only that, but I also look around me and find that I have built up an utterly idiosyncratic collection of stuff over the years, from far flung places such as Mongolia, Iceland, Indonesia, and a variety of other continents and countries that are only characterised by fitting a folk description. There's nothing uniform about my tastes at all.

Now don't get me wrong. I do love vintage collections and often admire the displays I so often see inside, well, every single house, home and fashion magazine available (not to mention the blogroll). But I am beginning to think it's all (dare I say it) becoming frighteningly homogenous. Where's the individuality in all of this? And what about the constant emphasis on Stuff? Sure, we all like to decorate our homes and make them comfy and cosy and personal, but does anyone really need an entire room of vintage nightdresses, or a whole shed full of antique gardening tools? When do we draw the line and say - actually I have enough! And I am sick of shopping!

So - too much consumerism, too much materialism, too much old stuff which is, most of the time (if you choose to get your stuff from admittedly lovely, but frankly overpriced emporiums whose owners no doubt make regular trips to the tip shop and spruce up their findings...) simply superfluous. Not enough representations of real homes belonging to real people, with real messes and real lives. Not enough individuality. I really would like to see a change.... which is why I've posted the above picture of my distinctly imperfect, overly-cluttered, thoroughly chaotic workspace. Bring on the mess!

Gingerbread

Recently, my children's school, Tasmania's beautiful Tarremah Steiner school, held its annual Spring Fair. With such a big emphasis on community, parents are invited to come on board to help create this magical event, and consequently Gingerbread houses have featured in my life for several weeks now. On the day, we secured this cute little dwelling for the wild things, who were seized with a bout of artistic gusto and set about decorating their confectionary as soon as they got home (5pm, after a good nap in the car...). Such anarchic flair is rarely seen after the age of five, so I saw fit to capture it. Everyone was terribly excited and terribly proud, and we began nibbling away at it today. I can see that this is one tradition that may continue for years to come....

Summertime....

Spring is settling in across the Huon Valley, despite last week's snowfall. The days are warming up so much we no longer need to light the woodfires, and the garden is heavy with blossom and thick with grass and daisies. Bees are humming among the blooms, and the air is full of the heady scent of jonquils. Daffodils, California poppies, irises, forget-me-nots, camellias, and lately an arum lily or two are scattered all around, weaving a woodland sanctuary among the huge oaks, the silver birches, the eucalypts and the fruit trees, and the children are once again busy digging, planting, cycling, shouting, running and discovering fairy gates within the lower branches of the trees. It's a magical time of year, with everything waking up to a whole realm of new potentials and possibilities.

I'm feeling it too. A slow unfurling and awakening, an inner warming up, a quiet receptivity to opportunities I haven't noticed or perceived before. Consideration and contemplation of new and different ways of doing things. And I'm also feeling a strong, silent pull to return more fully to the writing that has always sustained me, the writing that earned me a living for a good decade back in England before I switched careers, and before I became a mother. I'm wondering about new ways of writing and new ways of weaving writing into my present life, and like the garden, my mind is blossoming with ideas and inspiration.

Strangely though, all this springing has made me feel a little nostalgic for home. In so many ways, I couldn't be happier than I am here in Tasmania, but when the seasons change I sense a wistfulness and a longing for the northern hemisphere. On the brink of summer, I am thinking of the luminous green of England, the meadows and woodlands abundant with wild flowers and the low cooing of wood pigeons, the humming of bees, the scent of freshly mowed lawns, the ever-present possibility of rain and the beautiful scent that follows that rain in a summer garden. And the beaches of Suffolk and Norfolk which inspire distinctly English writers such as Esther Freud and Raffaella Barker. Listening to Kate Bush's Aerial, with it's ethereal, hazy, summer evening soundscape hasn't helped.

Recently two English friends of mine who live locally, bemoaned the lack of village pubs, stirring up another longing - for those quaint old evocatively named 16th and 17th century English drinking establishments, usually positioned on a slice of village green (in somewhere like Lower Slaughter, Little Sheeps Bottom, or Upper Pigs Ear...) where you can sit outside on a creaking wooden table and drink pints of beer with names like Old Peculiar and Old Roger..... And no, of course there aren't any where we live, here in Tasmania, which is a crying shame. So, we've decided to offer up our very own gazebo as a kind of private alternative. I'm already harbouring visions of jugs of Pimms with fresh mint, gin and tonics, local sparkling wines with strawberries, and homebrew for the menfolk, all served with a smile, in my very own back garden. Frocks might have to be obligatory, even if we are in Australia.....

Forgotten Anniversaries and Love's Labours....

This year I almost forgot my wedding anniversary. Well, no, I did forget it actually. Again. Small children consume me and I fail to remember these things.... but not my husband. He bought me a beautiful red merino wraparound dress in honour of our seven years together, which, traditionally, is marked by wool. So, feeling not a little guilty for completely neglecting the occasion, I decided to knit him a jumper. I chose a delicious Jo Sharp blend of cashmere, silk and merino in a rich chocolate brown, and found a pattern from a lovely book of men's sweaters, and set about stitching. It didn't take long, and now he has something to replace the one and only jumper he's had for almost those entire seven years - a beautiful deep brown cashmere knit I bought in Mongolia ten years ago, which the moths more or less devoured on their way across the world with it from England to Australia back in 2006. He's warm, he's happy, he feels nurtured, and the children can't stop cuddling him, which isn't unusual as it goes, only now they luxuriate in the softness of the jumper as well as the loving arms of their daddy. It's definitely been worth it! A labour of love I guess you could say. And only a couple of months late....