apricots, sewing delight, and a few late nights

'fo shizzle, from brenneman.

So after a several busy busy weeks of sewing I still had more projects to do. Each one I finished made two more open up. But that all of that had to wait because food and I needed to touch base again.

Wow. I have made rice paper rolls, spinach pilaf with lemon, we've made trifle (and meringues as you do after you make custard and end up with a whole lot of egg whites), we've had shepherd's pie, stewed apples, apricot couscous (with agave syrup). And, in attempts to distract phoenix from pancakes we've had crêpes. Again.

Some of the cooking was necessity, though. Our fruit trees are are beginning to bear down and drop a lot of fruit, so you have to work at the tree's schedule not your own. They're apricots, of which many have been shared. We can't make use of them all. Fruit leather has been made and eaten and more is being dehydrated as I write. This fruit leather is amazing, just cook it a little and then puree and spread out the puree on these special trays. Even Phoenix who doesn't like apricots will eat heaps of this.

Apricots also made it into the trifle by Aaron. He spent all afternoon on it, we watched it all pile together into beautiful layers. Then he took it to work and they ate it all.

The apple tree is beginning to litter the path with all of it's first not-so-good apples. There is a lot of clean up to be done with just these two trees, I won't even mention our enormous fig in the back yard which looks to give many fruits this year.

In amongst this and that, I was two children short for a while last week, that was different. Sewing was allowed!

I had sent my ten year old on her way to Tasmania on a Friday evening with a just-made pair of yellow pj botttoms, my new favourite colour.

My son then went camping for four days on the Sunday after, I remembered then what it was like with just two children. (It must be said though that a newly walking, climbing baby is like in five places at once so I think she made up for their absences.)

My nights came sooner. The bit of the night that is mine, that is. Sometimes I barely get any, but now there was no "I can't sleep" from my ten year old, no "Water, please" from the little one.

Ohhh the things I got done.

 the wrap skirt

My wrap skirt got finished, and that skirt is one from my special projects, so Yea! to me. I had real trouble at one stage trying to work out sewing the finished sides of the skirt. This book sometimes skips a step or two, but I wasn't sure. I looked and scratched my head and looked again, and pretty soon 45 minutes had gone by with me just standing there.

Aaron was laughing and cursing me to just do something, anything. He said it would be faster to do it wrong and unpick it than to just stand there. He eventually left me standing there with my head in my hands while he went off to read.

I cursed a little bit too, after he left. Bloody wrap skirt! I even gave a little stomp.

I was suddenly dumbstruck. Wrap skirt. I held it against me, and if I sewed the sides together it would be as big as a house. Wrap skirt, darrrhhh. So there was some unpicking and some "rahhh rahhh" going on, but I ignored him.

My only excuse is that it was 1:30 in the morning.

The next day my neighbour and I had a sewing afternoon at my place, that was such fun. Having someone else round seeing what they're making, getting help and giving advice, it's priceless.

This skirt got finished that morning. It did entail a waist band with a tie connected to it, this was "very long" as the pattern stated, but once done I felt like I'd really accomplished something. The instructions for the hem were a little odd, laying hemming tape over the raw edge and then just sewing over that 1 cm from the edge, mmmm not sure if there was an error there, I am guessing maybe.

My neighbour and I got to try on our new wares and even eat dinner out in the garden, she in her citrus toned patchwork belt and me in my orange and green wrap skirt, how perfect.

We thought of how we ought to get all our crafty neighbour folk in on our little sewing buzz and have craft night. Coming soon!