final piece of felting

I finished my felt piece. I added some muslin on the back, so i could hang my artwork. Overall I am pretty happy with the final outcome.
And fittingly my daughter donated her walking stick that she found whilst we were camping at the Timbarra river.

some beautiful things

I just wanted to share some pictures of my work, I feel very lucky.

The challenges of parenting

Recently, I had to deal with a certain situation, that I was very unprepared for. My daughter is eight years of age. From what I can recollect as a child, adult conversation and topics were just not part of my world.
Whether I could master the cris cross, roller skating trick the neighbour taught me was. In saying that, my childhood was not all  fun and games.
My parents were struggling with their own journey of being in a foreign country and their marriage was a turbulent one, I guess that why being outside and at the neighbours, was so inviting.
And that saying, 'it takes a village to raise a family', well that was definitely true for myself and my sister, our extended family did a lot of caring for us.
I guess this doesn't really happen much anymore. I had very little support when our children were young, but that was very much my own doing. I was discovering the way I wanted our children to be raised, and well they were not exactly on par, with what other people's opinions of parenting.
At times, it was challenging, but I totally absorbed myself in my role as a mother. I wanted to enjoy every waking moment of my daughter,whether I was sleep deprived and my house looked like a bomb and gone off in it, all I wanted to do was, lay with my daughter  and watch her. I knew, these moments were going to be etched into my memory, I adored her, and I still do. When her little brother came along, I thought you could not feel anymore love, but your heart just swells even more. And watching how my then toddler, took her her baby brother as her own, just melted my heart.
I kept a diary of milestones, when my children were young, just to remember them and remember the emotion, at the time.
As a parent, I want my children to enjoy their childhood. I do not want the adult world to impose itself on my children, however this can be hard to maintain.
Commercialization of children is everywhere, and it is extremely difficult to monitor and. I am not trying to wrap my children in cotton wool, but I believe children, can not understand certain topics and comments with underlying definition. You can monitor what's seen in your home, but you can not control other environments or other people. My children are quite emotive little people and are slowly showing resilience.
They are growing at a rapid rate, but I am grateful they can talk to me and I have  a relationship with them that is open. And throughout very stage of their development, I have had to  to let them go, at times I do that with ease, other times I feel myself getting overwhelmed with emotion, but I am ok with that.

wet felting part 2

I was happy with the end result, the landscape did not move around too much.I decided to stitch over the top, to give it more definition and to keep the silk tops in place. This is the second stage, I stopped after being on the machine for a while. I hope the pictures are clear enough, so you can see.

wet felting

Ok so I have been collecting wool tops for a while now. With time i have gradually built up a pile(much to my husbands disgust, he thinks I'm a hoarder).

I have wet felted, with my children before, but I haven't had the inspiration to do anything. Recently we ventured bush, camping.That trip fueled my imagination, on many levels.
The photos below will document my wet felting process.Please share your crafting journey with me, I hope you get inspired to do that project, that's been sitting in the corner.

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                                     my supplies

                                              laying my design

Seldom seen country

With my little family in toe, tranquility and bush is our destination, with only ourselves as a source of entertainment and limited, only by our own imagination.
A environment, lush and tantalizing with a motley of greens and browns.
Red colored dirt.
And with a climb, your senses are challenged, dry baron land, white snowy mountain gum, protruding from the hill tops.
Gorges that carve up the landscape, they hold tales of a ancient land, once connected.
Living things, unique only to this land.
To breath the scent of eucalyptus, trees hundreds of years old. I am humbled to be amongst these giants.
Whilst surrounded by this  raw beauty, the affects humans have had on this landscape, emotionally provoking that brings a heaviness to my heart.
The city that sets in your pores, is washed away in a river pristine and pure.
And to see the wildflowers in full bloom, I am intoxicated by their obscure detail and beauty.
On my last night, as I lay on the banks of the Timbarra, I sink deeper and deeper into the ground and stare out onto a sky, with a abundance of dancing stars, I embrace the now, and etch this journey into my soul.

Becoming a parent

When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I was picking mangoes in the sunshine hinterland. At the time I was convinced it was the mosquito lavae in the tank water!! oh how naive of me. 
Once the test confirmed that no, it wasn't the lave but a baby, a sense calmness had taken over me, I knew instantly I was going to keep this baby. At the time we were on our travelling journey around Australia, even though we had talked about having kids, it was not in our immediate plans.We stayed on in Queensland for a couple of months, we were living in a caravan, on a property whilst we were picking. We had decided to come back to Melbourne and settle to be around family and friends.
I worked until I was about five months pregnant and then decided to stop and focus on myself and my baby. I walked everyday, did yoga at home, meditated, read books, and educated myself on all things baby.
It can be a trying time, preparing yourself for the unknown, I mean how do you really do that? At the time none of our friends were having babies, it was just us.
There was one thing I knew, I wanted no drugs, I was determined to have the baby naturally, unless there was complications.
I had decided that knowledge was power and I needed to know everything about birthing and labour. So I read books, got in touch people that had babies, read some more. 
I had discovered like I'm sure some of you have that, there are more horror stories out there about labour then positive.
The conclusion I drew was, it was how you looked at it, if you thought of labour as painful, it would be painful, it you thought of it as hard work, it would be hard work, if you attached negative emotions to it you will have a negative experience.
Through meditation and visualisations I taught myself to think of my labour as  a spiritual journey, and that's exactly what I had.
I was in labour for sixteen hours. My mind was elsewhere.
I had found endurance that I thought I never had, I let my body do, what it was meant to. I let go.
I know this might sound far fetched, that is why I am writing it, you can make your birth and pregnancy what you want it to be, and I wanted to share my story, because it is a positive one.

Culture,what's it mean

The last week or so, I have been pondering over my family history.
My family has been through some turmoil in it's time, and at times it has been a treacherous journey.
But now that I am a parent and I look back at my upbringing, I question what is culture?
When I was growing up, at times I felt like, here I was, compared to some of my friends of Anglo Saxon decent, my traditions, be it food, or language or festive traditions, they were polar opposites. And yet we all seemed to get along.
And within my families history and my own cultural background, what am bringing forward to the next generation, to my children.
 When I was growing up and my mum used to try and get me to watch her cook. Me being the self obsessed tween, just wanting to hang out with her friends, had no time for cooking these extravagant Macedonian dishes.
But now I crave them, now I want eat those dishes, that fragrant smell that will take me back to memories of mum cooking a abundance of food, the concept that there is nothing put to waste, recipes that had been passed down, from generation to generation, from daughter to daughter.

Within the Macedonian community there can be a this judgmental mentality, where by you have to look a certain way, behave a certain way and have materialistic gain. At times  it can be superficial.
That side of things I'm not interested in, and never have been. I always have looked the way Ive wanted and been who I am, I do not strive to material gain, I strive for self knowledge, and awareness.
A sense of culture can come through in multiple facets, it doesn't necessarily have to be your ethnic background, to me culture is a common thread you have with people, it can be  social, ethnic or behavioral.

It's the perception of belonging.

I have taken what I wanted from my cultural background, a sense of family and community, and a sense of spirit.

Pruning a wild Jasmine

As the moon is in waning this week, there is no planting or sowing in the garden.Ive decided to tackle the untamed jasmine that is growing. A few months ago in a crazy wind storm, it got blown over to the other side of the wood oven (see pic below). The problem with the Jasmine is it has quiet a few climbing roses intertwined in it. So it's getting a haircut and some kind of support structure to stop it from blowing around.
I have a a gardening question.There is a amazing climbing rose,(see picture below), it has these black brown spots on it and I don't know what they are, I found little bugs on it but they are all dead.Any idea on what it is and how I can get rid of it would be great.

painting

My daughter and I spent some time together, we decided to paint,this was the outcome. I really love her painting.

My Culture

I grew up in the west of Melbourne, during the 80's. We lived in public housing for a very long time. It was a melting pot of cultures back then, people from all over the world, were your neighbours.
Life was never dull, to say the least, what I remember vividly was, the sense of community. Sure you had your interesting characters, but everyone looked out for each other, especially the kids. And we were out and about until the sun set, riding our bikes, rollerskating or skateboarding, without a care in the world.
However it wasn't all peaches and cream, life presented it's challenges.
My first language was Macedonian, my parents spoke very little English, in fact hardly any at all. I look back now and I wonder, how they did it, to migrate to a country where they didn't know the language, didn't know the culture and they didn't have their family or community. 
When I got to school, I could speak English, but I struggled. What was hard for me, was having parents that couldn't help me. In fact, I was teaching them. Hard gig for child.
In the primary school years, we moved around a fair bit, until we settled into a house in a suburb further west.
I guess why I'm writing this post, is to get people talking about, trying to fit into a society when you come from a different cultural background.
For me I found it extremely difficult, my parents strict Macedonians.
Through high school I had friends from a variety of cultural backgrounds.We all got along, each of us having issues with our parents, which teenager doesn't!!
The struggle I had, was trying to live with the values my parents tried to instill in me from their culture and trying to incorporate that into Australian society. Everything I came across, made me question, what my parents were telling me. It was a confusing, confronting time. It felt very restricting, and I pushed the boundaries. I wanted to extend my frontiers, and in a way, I still am.

This is just the beginning of this post, but I want to hear from you. Where do you come from? What challenges has your culture presented to you? And how did you manage.
Cheers or na zdravje!!

Gardening

My role at my work consists of running a gardening program, with children aged 3 and 4 years of age.
I  know a little about gardening, as I have always had a veggie patch going, just not on such a large scale. My love for nature was born, on my travels around Australia.I always thought of myself as a naturalist, even as a young child, helping my parents in their patch,growing huge tomatoes. But actually working the land, when I was working as a picker, definitely fuelled my desire for knowledge on the natural world.It also pushed me to brink of my sanity,both mentally and physically, and only when you have worked as picker,you would understand what I mean.
Anyway, back to my current garden.We have 10 raised beds.There is also a ancient fig tree in the other part of the garden.My challenge is to try and get

things growing in and around the fig tree. Another challenge I have, is a embankment between two peppercorn trees.There had been a few natives planted there,but they are not thriving.I can post some pictures.

At some stage, I would like to incorporate a bush foods garden, now that I am excited about.
So if you are a gardening/landscaping guru, or anyone with gardening tips, I would love to hear from you, or just tell me about your garden.

Parenting

For those of you that  don't know me, I have two children, my daughter is turning 8 in a couple of days.I have a son who is 5.
 Many years ago my partner and I ( husband now) packed our kombi up and began our traveling, working journey throughout Australia.Whilst picking mangoes in Queensland, I fell pregnant. I can write countless posts about that part of my life and I will at a later stage.

Many years later, here I am, about to host a 8 year olds first sleepover, birthday party!!!
How has 8 years pasted, I could not tell you,  the cliche that everybody says, blink your eye and you'll miss it, holds validity when it comes to watching your children grow. I could write and write and write about this, but I have a eager little miss waiting for me to start preparations for the festivities. I would love to hear, how parenting has changed you.


 

Little crafty things

I have not been very crafty lately, however I do want to share with you, some things I have made in the past.These little folk, I made for a gift.
I sourced the pattern from a http://weefolkart.com/content/freebies-home.

New job,exciting times

This week I started a new position, I am running a garden program within a Steiner kinder. I am very excited, it brings together two of my passions, caring for children and gardening. In saying that I am far from being a expert in the garden, I know a little!!
I guess that is what is exciting about it, I am learning as I go and having to be creative in a way I approach it so I can engage 3 and 4 year olds,they can be a tough audience.
I'm fairly new at this blogging gig,I'll try and post a photo if I work it out.