Bikkies and thistle leaves

Tonight I sat down in our kitchen and made a skirt. Nothing at all unusual about that - it is by far and away one of the most lovely ways to spend an evening, sitting and sewing in my favourite room in the house, with Pearl by my side cooking/writing/reading. What could be better?

But tonight was special, because tonight Pearl was baking mountains of macadamia, honey and white chocolate biscuits to feed to our house-building friends who are all arriving tomorrow. Unbelievable excitement!!! Even through the exhaustion!

Pearl worked all day today, cooking at Evolve, so I was on kid duty. We did the usual kinds of things: perusing Bega Ag Supplies, perusing Bega Bolt Barn, perusing Mitre 10, eating some junk food and half-price easter eggs, perusing the op-shops and then heading up to the land to Build Some Stuff. Awesome. Under construction today was a frantic last-minute shelter for the composting dunny my dad is bringing with him tomorrow. This was one of those jobs that desperately needed attending to, but that just somehow never quite made it to the top of the list. So today, with 48 hours to go, I decided that the best I could do was hammer 4 star pickets into the ground (with my brand new, bright red picket-driver) in a vague square shape (no measurements or levels were involved in this highly technical piece of construction) with the intention of draping a sheet around to provide some semblance of privacy for those using the composting loo. Loo with a view to be 'completed' tomorrow using the very fetching yellow and orange striped sheet I picked up at the op shop today for a buck. Hopefully no prudes on the work crew...

Kids played happily on piles of sand and Olive very attentively made sure that all pieces of gravel were safely in their place within the confines of the bottom plate.

It was beautiful, and for the first time in... well, weeks, I felt pretty relaxed!

The maca/honey/white choc-infused skirt is for a lady who hails from Castlecrag, who was lucky enough to come across a horizontally-oriented teatowel in her travels. If there are any teatowel enthusiasts reading this, you'll well know that horizontal orientation in teatowel design is pretty rare. I can't work out why this is, as they're pretty awesome, and especially great for making skirts out of.

This teatowel is particularly unusual, I reckon, on account of the outrageous level of detail the artist has included in her rendering of The Vegetable Garden at Heligan, including the names of all the vegetables in the rows and, most awesomely, the manure heap.

Fundamental to the health of the garden! Though I'm not convinced about those fanatically neat rows...

Teamed with a bit of dusty blue corduroy, pink ric rac and a print called 'thistle leaves', it makes a pretty cute skirt, which will hopefully also be comfy, on account of its wide stretchy waist-band.

Here's hoping the skirt and its owner enjoy many an outing to a rambling garden with an abundance of manure-heaps!