Organic cotton flannelette nighties

Once again I'm sewing winter gear in summer, but that's ok, our Northern Hemisphere friends are enjoying winter at the moment.  I've just updated my shop with some new organic cotton nighties, to go with the upcycled ones.  You can find them here.

Livinia is 5!

Happy Birthday Liv! 

Dance concert 2013

Just a few snaps from last night's dance concert, both girls were in it this year, and did very well.  Backstage was a bit more frantic than last year, thankfully the girls want to do swimming next year!

Ginger cake in the Sun Oven

 I made a couple of ginger cakes in the Sun Oven today.  I hadn't baked anything sweet in it before, and with a nice sunny day (amazing how many warm days have had too much cloud cover!), I thought today was a good time to try.  This is when I put them in, it had heated up to 180 degrees celcius!

 This is when they were ready.  I left them in for about 1 1/2 hours, it normally takes about an hour.  You can't burn things in a sun oven, so I was waiting to see if the dips in the middle of the cakes would rise, but they didn't.  Probably because of the moist rather than dry air in the Sun Oven.  A knife inserted into the middle came out very clean, so they were cooked.

And the finished result- a little dippy in the middle, but perfectly cooked otherwise.  Lunchbox snacks done for the week, and one cake for the freezer.

November garden part 2

 Strawberries- I have finally found the secret to growing good strawberries- lots of water!  I've just bird netted them too, as I've lost a few nice big juicy ones that I thought just needed one more day to ripen.

 Carrots

 Last of the broad beans

 One of the sweet potatoes- I hope it's not too wet for them, we had even more rain overnight.

 Some of the driveway garden with red poppies in bloom

 Grape vines covered in baby grapes

 First of the garlic harvest

 The largest of our zucchini plants, with flowers.  Perhaps a stroke of genius that I planted a border of catmint along this bed.  Even though it takes up some productive growing space, it is covered in bees which will help with pollination of zucchini flowers.  And it looks pretty.

Boysenberries starting to colour up

November garden

 Our first sunflower- a dwarf variety, that is very short!

 2 apple trees with new apples on them, the top one is a Gravenstein, the other is a Cox's orange pippin

 One of the many pumpkins that Liv planted a while ago when I cut up a pumpkin and she took off with the seeds.

 Potatoes on the left and tomatoes on the right

 A kiwi, surrounded by a weed infestation

And a peanut- one of Andrew's experiments.  We planted lots last year, and none came up.  This year 2 came up.  All still looking lush and green at the moment, we've had plenty of rain.  Hoping for an abundant summer!

Shop update

I've been working on a few new summer dresses since my very busy market weekend nearly 2 weeks ago.  The shop needed a little restock, so most of these dresses are ready to be custom made, up to girls size 8.

Climate Action Now!

 Evie & Liv with their signs

We attended the national day of climate action rally in Melbourne's Treasury Gardens today, and as you can see, it was a beautiful day.  We got to hear some great speakers, and be energised in a crowd of people wanting the same thing- action on climate change.  It's good to go to these events and see how many people care about our future on this planet, when it sometimes feels like no-one cares.  It's always heartening to see elderly people showing their support, and there were many of them there.  Looks like there were about 25,000 people there, HUGE!

National Day of Climate Action

Will you be at a national day of climate action event this Sunday?  We'll be at the Melbourne event at Treasury Gardens at 11am.  To find an event close to you, you can go here.

Market sewing

I'm making final preparations for my markets this weekend, yes I'm now doing two, one Saturday (school), one Sunday (kinder).  I've made a few of these doily skirts, up to girls size 8-9.  I'll have plenty of bargains on offer, so hopefully it will be a busy weekend!

In the garden this week

 All this spring rain has resulted in some lush greenness in the garden.  The potatoes are loving it.

 Our driveway garden is looking much more diverse than a row of Pittosporum trees now.  I've filled any gaps with tomatoes that came from the supermarket's bargain bin at 85c a punnet.  They were little seedlings not so long ago, now most of them have a few flowers.

New chook gate

My dad made up this gate for us out of offcuts from his work, that were destined for the skip bin.  It pains him to see good useful things thrown away, and rightly so.  The 2 cypress posts were also being thrown out.  Andrew spent a good part of the weekend getting it all in place, and now we have much easier access to the chook run.  It's a bit wet from the rain we've had, and we should oil it pretty soon.  Jonty approves, it's a new thing to climb on.  Thanks Dad!

If you agree that we should keep climate change denial on the editing room floor (of newspapers), and have a minute to sign a petition to the major Victorian newspapers, please go here.

Sweet potato slips- it worked!

 I started these sweet potato slips back in August some time.  They took a while, but sped up a bit when I changed to tank water rather than tap water, and put them on a sunny windowsill.  I took 3 slips off the sweet potato with the most slips last week, and the one below has quickly developed roots.

 I might wait until next week to plant it out, as this week looks like it will be mostly cold and rainy.

I hope to put at least 5 sweet potato plants in this year, as last year I planted one to see if it would grow, and it thrived even without much water.  It produced 5 good sized ones, and quite a few smaller ones.  I kept the smaller ones in a paper bag, and they are the ones I'm growing the slips from.  The variety is 'Beauregard', which is apparently the most common in Australia, as it only takes about 95 days to grow a crop, and can handle colder temperatures.  I followed instructions from here.