Gathering bits

It's lovely walking now in the cold freshness of midwinter. I took the dogs for a slow circuit of Victoria Park.

Soft walking on the dirt tracks and puddles to look into or splash through.

We enjoyed every puddle.

Loreto College was all misty through the trees. What a pleasure to be too old to have to go to school. How lucky to be able to wander through the park instead.

I gathered lichens for dyeing cloths, a whole bagfull of branches and twigs broken off and tossed through the park by the squalls of wind over the last few days.

Now I just have to find a glass saucepan or two.

The dogs were so grateful to get home they curled up at once and have slept through the day.

kitschen

I'd like to say that our kitchen is brim full of good taste, but it has a few quirks that Yin stoically puts up with.
I confess to being delighted by the nostalgic good cheer of 1950s and 60s Aussie kitsch. Look at this koala teacosy from Bendigo. Doesn't it just warm the cockles of your heart - even without any tea in the pot?

And what about these beaut little budgies from the Anglican Opshop in Sydney Road? Just waiting for a frame or a cushion.

Until recently I've had Aussie souvenir tablecloth curtains over two windows, and I've had a sheet up for two years over the third window, waiting, because these cloths have suddenly become too popular with people who cut them up and transform them into (possibly) more beautiful objects. They are really quite hard to find.

Knowing my weakness (but not actually sharing it) a good friend found me the third linen tablecloth, while cruising Benalla, to finish curtaining my kitchen windows.

So I'm pinning and tacking and hemming (but not measuring because I never do that).

I may show you the whole set when I've finished. I'm still looking for kookaburras, swans, kangaroos and assorted cockies, galahs and rosellas because there are more rooms and more windows in this house.

Not that I'm obsessed in any way.

Hot bread quickly

When mornings are blurry with mist and rain, the best breakfast is hot bread,  freshly baked just before the dogs are walked, with leatherwood honey or black cherry jam - and a couple of sweet mandarins from Mildura.

I always make flattish bread because then I can be sure that it will cook right through and I won't have to find the bread tins (that have been missing for over ten years now) and finally that it will cook really, really quickly.

I am an impatient cook. I admit it.

Proper socks

Aren't these stylish? Fairisle socks for a new baby!

I saw these at Buninyong market and couldn't resist them. Luckily there is just the right new baby nearby to give them to. Maybe I should start my sock knitting career with baby socks. So charming, and such fun to make.

Coffee

7.10 am of a rainy morning and I went down to Sturt St. to get a cup of coffee.

The scent of coffee in cold wintry air is magical.

Still dark at 8.30 - but I'd had my coffee and was going to spend the day reading and watching the rain fall down.

It was a great cup of coffee.

Winter sun in my room

The sun is so bright and warm after the morning mist. The geraniums are happy to sit inside, out of the cold, so they are all flowering. They don't care if the window is a bit grimy - and neither do I, I guess, as I've only just noticed.

It's cold in the corners out of the sunlight.

but my work table is glowing.

I love winter.

(Gloves help).

Vermilion Pears

The Reader

All night I sat reading a book,

Sat reading as in a book

Of sombre pages.

It was autumn and falling stars

Covered the shrivelled forms

crouched in the moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,

A voice was mumbling, "Everything

Falls back into coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,

the melons, the vermilion pears

Of the leafless garden."

The sombre pages bore no print

Except the trace of burning stars

In the frosty heaven.

                                                   Wallace Stevens.