Eight Acres

We finally planted our food forest one year ago (you can read all about it here). It was a long time in the planning. We had to get water organised before we could plant. But when we were ready, I already had plenty of trees in pots ready to go.      We were originally going to put the trees further from the house, but then decided to set up the food forest between the house and the sheds. This gives us a lovely view through the kitchen window out over the food forest and will block our ugly power pole eventually. It also means that we walk through the food forest to get to the sheds and the veggie garden, picking things and weeding as we go. Its a perfect Zone 1 location . If you're still wondering "what is a food forest?", pop back over to my post about starting our food forest to learn more. In summary, it is a collection of trees, shrubs, herbs and perennial vegetables arranged like a forest rather than an orchard. Our layout is three rows of trees spaced 2m apa...

Each year as the weather cools, I get the urge to pick up my knitting needles and crochet hook again. I usually rummage through my unfinished projects until I find one that I want to work on again. This year the first project to grab my attention was a shawl that I started in September 2018.     I had found the yarn at the haberdashery stall at the local market. It is called "winter linen" - 26% linen, 46% wool and 26% acrylic in 50g balls of uneven chunky weight. I didn't have a pattern, I just played with it for a while and then freestyled a shawl mostly using a modification of the crochet pattern I use for lap rugs: Row 1: two doubles, two chains until end of row Row 2: two doubles into the chains of the previous row, two chains until end of row     I started with a chain of 10 and followed the stitch pattern without skipping the first stitch when starting the next row - I had made this mistake when first learning crochet, so I knew this would make a triangle. I u...