What can you do when you're being treated for cancer? Crochet pink skull scarves for your friends!

When I first found out the likely trajectory my cancer treatment would take, I was freaked out on many levels, for many reasons. One of my main fears was being out of action for an extended period of time. As someone who, for better and/or for worse, derives a large part of my self esteem/sense of satisfaction/deep joy from Getting Stuff Done, a mastectomy (8-10 weeks recovery - no lifting with my left arm!!) and 12 weeks of chemo (a whole lot of feeling quite ill and immuno-compromised to the point where chicken farming and gardening are completely out of the question) was a pretty terrifying prospect. That's even if I momentarily forgot the fact that it all involved GETTING MY BOOB CHOPPED OFF and POISONING MY BODY!!!

Ahem...

Sage words of wisdom came from my Dad's partner, Connie (a cancer survivor herself) who told me to stop focusing on the things I couldn't do, and start focusing on the things I could do. Given that the main things I can do are crocheting, reading, writing, and the odd bit of preserving, it's actually not too shabby, really, and I'm kind of enjoying having a bit of a rest.

Once I resolved to focus on my new crocheting opportunities, I went to town (actually, the internet-town, but you know that I mean) searching for crochet patterns. In the melee, and quite by accident, I stumbled upon a pattern for this cute-as crocheted skull. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to make one for my pal Carly (seen here looking pretty bloody gorgeous in the graduation dress I made for her). I dunno why, I just thought she'd dig it.

Can you see? You thread the scarf kind of through the skull, to keep it snuggly-secure round yer neck...

After much deliberation I decided to make it like a neat little skull and crossbones, where the skull itself helps to keep the scarf secured in a snug kinda way. The scarf is just single crochet where the rows form the length of the scarf, and I did some chunky triple crochet shells at the ends to form the 'knuckles' of the 'crossbones'.

The skull bit was surprisingly easy to do, I think due to the fact that Kirsten's instructions are SO AWESOME. And funny. And low-key. And descriptive. And the photos are completely ace-balls. It's the kind of crochet pattern I'd hope to make myself, if I ever crocheted anything in an organised-enough way to actually write down what I did. Like my sewing, my crocheting is extremely organic/haphazard/experimental, depending on which way you look at it.

Look how cool she is! Oh and the scarf's pretty sweet too

Anyways, I was super pleased with the results, and I think Carly was too. And now I'd like to propose a toast to focusing on what you can do rather than what you can't. Words to live by, methinks!

Shallots forever

At our last community food swap (which was outstanding, by the way - sausages! Lemon butter! Bread!) I was lucky enough to snavel a massive bunch of shallots, and was talking to our friend Anneke about our method of planting the root bit of veg like shallots and leeks. To my surprise, she was highly dubious and highly suspicious of the practice - she'd never heard of such a thing! Given that she's basically the queen of Bega Valley Seedsavers, and a well-known guru of all things to do with propagation (if you've seen Pip magazine, you will have seen Anneke's gorgeous house), I was super-shocked, as it's something we do regularly, and have had great success with. I thought I'd better do a little post to spread the good news, in case some of you are also unaware of the awesomeness of the perennial leek and shallot action that you can get for FREE, by saving your cut off ends from the compost.

The cut-off shallot root ends, headed to the garden for infinite re-sprouting

Basically, by planting the chopped-off root bits of your leeks and shallots, you'll get another leek or shallot. If you cut this one off at ground level, rather than pulling it out, you'll get yet another. In this way, you can pretty much have perennial shallots and leeks. The leeks do get skinnier with each successive re-growth, so won't go on indefinitely, but we have a few shallots in a pot out the front that have been going for well over a year. So next time you get shallots or leeks from the shop, market or your local food swap (if you don't have one - start one!), take the root bits out into the garden, make them a little hole, and bury them, roots down, with the soil level just above the cut top. They're great, because they don't take up much space, so you can just tuck them 'round the place as the root-ends avail themselves to you. Within a week, they will have sprouted, and you shall have shallots forever. 

Olive the mulching queen

I love eggplant pickle

Today was a perfect early-winter's day. A little windy, gloriously sunny, a little cool but also kind of warm in the sun. I spent the majority of the day on the day bed out the front, resting and sipping kudzu elixir and bone broth, crocheting and willing my body to recover from the annihilation that is chemotherapy. Around me, Pearl and the kids bustled, collecting kindling for our brand new fire, cooking a slow-cooked beef stew, tending chickens, playing, making pancakes, creating, and stopping by my bed every now and then for a story or a cuddle. It was pretty beautiful, and when we did our regular dinner-time round of "what was your favourite thing about today?" there was no shortage of stories and we all had to tell our second and third favourite things too.

Towards the end of the day, I mustered the energy to jar the eggplant pickle I've been working on, intermittently, for the last week or so. Yes, that's right: preserving is still happening, it's just happening veeeerrrrry sloooowly....

For me, there are few things more satisfying than a bunch of hot, upside-down jars cooling (and hopefully sealing!) on the table. They go into the extra-satisfying category when they contain something as glorious as eggplant pickle. Eggplant pickle, if you've never had it, is an outrageously sweet and spicy condiment, which we mostly serve in enormous quantities on the side of dahl and curries. It is insanely good and I love it, and feel very sad when we run out.

Luckily for us, the last few weeks we've been looking after our neighbour's place while they're on holiday - goats, chooks, geese, ducks, a crazy (but cute!) dog called Ollie and a massive veggie garden. It's a nice little ritual to trot down the road each day and tend what needs tending. And here's the thing: the garden, when we took over its care, was fairly heaving with late-autumnal abundance, most notably in the form of eggplants and chillies. I ask you - what would you do with such a gift?

The recipe we used was adapted from Christine Manfield's Fire cookbook. For some reason her recipe is for only a tiny amount of pickle (maybe her neighbours' gardens aren't as bountiful as ours...) so we increased the amounts to accommodate a bucketful of eggplant, and made a couple of other adjustments along the way. This is a delicious pickle, and you should make some, if you can still get your hands on some eggplants. Here's what you do:

In the food processor, pulse about 30 red chillies of various shapes and sizes, 6 tablespoons of chopped garlic, 6 tablespoons of grated ginger, 6 teaspoons of ground tumeric, and 6 tablespoons of black mustard seeds into a chunky paste. If you don't have a food processor, you could just grate or finely chop everything.

Heat about 500ml of oil in a big pot, then add the spice mix and fry it up for a bit until it smells so good you almost start crying, then add a big bowl full of chopped eggplant chunks... Pearl reckons we used maybe 2kg for this quantity of spice.

Keep it cooking over a low-ish heat, and stir it so it doesn't stick.

When the eggplant is soft and has sucked up the spicy oil deliciousness, add about 2 cups of raw sugar, a couple of tablespoons of salt, and a stubby of home-brew-that-didn't-work-properly-and-turned-into-delicious-malt-vinegar. If you don't have the (mis)fortune of having an endless supply of (accidentally) home-made malt vinegar, then shop-bought is probably OK as well... Or you could come 'round to our place and get some of ours. We have a LOT.

Then all you need to do is simmer it up til it's gorgeous and gooey, then seal in sterilised jars. If you're feeling generous, you could even share it with your neighbour.

Grief and gratitude

It's funny how close grief and gratitude can be, how they can inform and weigh upon each other.

A few weeks ago, my Romantics students and I had a pretty great class looking at This Lime Tree Bower My Prison, by Coleridge. While I am by no means a die-hard Coleridge fan (I'm more of a Keats girl myself), I loved working through this poem with my students, and I was particularly touched by the notion that, if you're open to it, you can find beauty anywhere. This concept of openness is, I think, a useful one, and one that I try to engage with daily in my life, especially during challenging times.

The week after my encounter with the Lime Tree Bower, I started chemo, and my wise and beautiful friend Peta (who's had her own experiences with the Big C) somewhat telepathically reminded me that being in gratitude can be a powerful healer. And indeed it did help me, in the weeks after the chemo treatment, when I was feeling like I'd been run over by a bus, to focus my energies upon the things I was grateful for, both great and small, rather than just feeling sorry for myself. 

The love of my family, the care and compassion of my community, my gorgeous farming-lady, the surprise of finding a pair of pink borage blossoms among the blue, a day-bed in the sun on which to lie, abundance in the garden, a flock of galahs flying past the window of my hospital room making a LOT of noise, good food, happy chickens, a swan-shaped troboncini-squash, sunny days, kisses from my kids.

I had wanted to write a blog post about some of these things, but I have a strange relationship with gratitude, especially as it exists within the blog-world context, where it sometimes detracts from (or even stands in place of) rigorous or even thoughtful engagement with the reasons why we, in the privileged west, have the opportunity to be grateful and then write a blog about it. So I held off.

And then one of the most unimaginable tragedies befell one of my most beloved friends: the loss of a child. My gratitude, instantaneously, was deepened, sharpened and tainted by grief. It's a multi-hued kind of feeling and it exists and operates on so many levels, and I am so so sad for so many reasons, not least of all because my dear friend is right now experiencing an unimaginable pain that I am so completely unable to ease. 

I am deeply honoured that one of the things I made for little Lucien is going to be used in his funeral rites, and I am crocheting and writing now to ease the pain in my heart and also to honour the love that his spirit inspired. I wish I could do more, but I can't.

This blog is a journal of sorts, and I felt that to continue writing posts about craft and building a cooking and living without acknowledging this tragedy and the shift of emotion it has provoked would be a betrayal. So here it is - a little garbled, perhaps - my musings upon sadness and love and grief and gratitude. It might not seem like it, but they're closer friends than you might think.

Craft really is the answer to everything

The day I found out I was going to have to have a mastectomy, I came straight home and started googling crochet patterns for prosthetic breasts. When I told our dear and beautiful friend Ruth this story, she laughed and said: "I love the way you think Annie - craft really is the answer to everything". This phrase has now become something of an ongoing in-joke around these parts, mostly because it's just kind of partly true! Craft (if you're craftily inclined), in times of crisis, can be soothing, mind-centring, distracting, pro-actively-taking-control-of-an-otherwise-crap-situation, beautiful, calming, fun, satisfying and (maybe my favourite) productive. Is that not COOL???

In the midst of all the medicalised insane-ness going on in our own family's lives at the moment, Ruth's beautiful family has also been wading through some pretty crazy intense medicalised crap of their own, involving her 7 year old daughter Edie. Now let's just say right here that Edie is a trooper. She's a friggin cool, smart, sassy kid, and we miss her. Because of the fact that she is cool, smart and sassy (and has pretty much the BEST parents in the world EVER) I know that she's going to learn from and grow with her particular situation, and come out tougher and cooler. She just will. Coz she's awesome.

But we wanted to send her a love package in the mail to cheer her up, distract her, and let her know we're thinking of her and we love her.

 In case you didn't realise, love packages are THE BEST and I strongly encourage you to send one to someone you love TOMORROW. We usually include: something handmade in the craft category, something handmade in the food category, some reading material, some music, and whatever else we find lying around at time of parcel assembly that we believe will tickle the recipient. Package carefully and well, and decorate the box nicely, then send it on its way.

Edie's a reader, like our Olive, so her love package is full of books she (hopefully) hasn't read yet, recommended by Olive. And I also made her a pair of reading gloves.

Reading gloves are my crocheted take on driving gloves. For some reason, in my mind, driving gloves are very sophisticated, glamorous things, fingerless, made from soft stuff like 'kid leather', and held together with little buckles and neat buttons. If you're very fancy, your driving gloves are monogrammed or personalised in some other nifty way. I'm vaguely attracted to them for the same reason I love sailing ships: I'm a highly imaginative person who has read way too many novels, resulting in romantic attachments to ideas, concepts and objects I actually know nothing about. 

Given that Edie is a reader, not a driver, I wanted to make her some reading gloves, which she could wear while sitting up in bed devouring novels, to keep her hands warm while also allowing her to turn the page with ease. And I wanted them to have all the (possibly made-up) things I love about (my idea of) driving gloves. 

The answer? Crocheted fingerless mitts, made appropriately in Edie's favourite colours, adorned with neat little buttons and personalised with a Scrabble 'E'.

I didn't have a pattern for the gloves, so made it up, embellishing with scalloped edges. While everything started relatively well (I remembered to count the stitches in my initial chain so that the gloves would be the same size) I forgot to write down several other things I did on the first glove, so the second glove is a little bit different. But I was still pretty happy with how they came out. They're basically just tubes, with little thumb holes and scalloped edges. If you're a beginner crocheter, I reckon they'd be an excellent first (or second) project - I'm sure you could find a pattern for some online, though I'm more into improvisation myself...

So Edie, lovely girl, here's to you and your amazing awesomeness. While the reality of being thrust into scary and potentially overwhelming medical situations is not so great, you will be OK. You are so so loved. I hope you like your gloves. May your warm-handed novel-reading lead to a rich and fulfilling life full of highly-romanticised and possibly not very accurate ideas about things. Always better than the real thing. 

As modeled by Miss Olive

Number nine

Yesterday, the day after my first chemo treatment, was Pearl's and my ninth wedding anniversary.

I wasn't much up for celebrating, having been intravenously poisoned for 6 hours on Tuesday, so we didn't mark the occasion, other than to happily, though wearily, acknowledge the day and how happy we are to be together. Oh and of course, there was a little gift-giving of the RedPeg variety.

The thing about having an eminently talented jewellery-crafter as a good friend is that pretty much every single gift-giving opportunity calls for a glorious visit to a glorious shop. After much deliberation, I selected one of Gab's perfectly imperfect recycled silver bangles, and brainstormed how to personalise it for the anniversary occasion. We decided on stamped letters - A's and G's - randomly scattered on one side of the bangle, with two O's hidden in there for good measure. And Gab even let me stamp them myself, as Olive pottered away at Gab's work bench, which was kind of fun and exciting as I'd never done anything like that before.

It was nice to be chatting away there in the beauty of the studio, working and just thinking about the event being commemorated by the piece, admiring all of Gab's amazing trinkets and artworks, distracting myself from the terror that was chemo-eve.

Pearl and I had our wedding party at the Bundanoon Youth Hostel in 2005. It was a beautiful, fun, joyful day of emotion and deep love and happiness (a little bit more on this, and some pics, here). I love remembering that day - what it meant and continues to mean for us, how each year's passing, and each acknowledgement and remembrance of the day allows us (yes, even amidst the tumult of cancer scariness) a moment to pause and consider and be thankful for the life we have together which has grown, at least in part, from the words we said and the commitment we made on that day.

We had no "sickness and in health" in our vows, but we didn't need to. We've both seen each other at our lowest ebbs, and we've both pulled each other through with tenderness and love and as much strength as we can muster. I'm hoping that this experience of mine - a mastectomy and months of chemo - will mark a low point that we don't have to return to. But even if we do, I know it'll be OK. Because when you find someone who you can get through the shit with, and not just survive but also end up more in love than before the shit, you know you're on a good thing.

A few weeks ago, my grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Here I am, so elated at celebrating number nine, I can't even imagine how rewarding and satisfying it must be to look back over 60 years of joy and love and sadness and brilliance and big downs and utter crappiness and super-unmatched-awesomeness, all with the chosen person by your side. Something to look forward to, I say.

And in the mean time, all I can do is (literally) sit back and watch in wonder and awe as this lady I chose soldiers on through the shittiness of our current situation, tending chickens and dogs and ducks from dawn til dusk, feeding our family, loving our kids, and looking after me in all my bald, one-boobed messiness with a big smile on her face and so much love in her heart. I have to try hard not to wonder: How did I get to be so lucky?

A handmade wedding ring, a handmade anniversary bangle and a bunch of nasturtiums.

** For those of you not lucky enough to be living in the gorgeous Bega Valley with close proximity to RedPeg ecostudio, you can purchase Gab's creations online, or visit her at the upcoming Finder's Keepers Market in Sydney on the 6th and 7th of June. Make no mistake, RedPeg jewellery is the real deal - recycled silver, handcrafted, one-of-a-kind jewellery, which is TOTALLY beautiful and lovely to wear, and makes the most EXCELLENT gift for loved ones of all shapes and sizes.

A frock in action

One thing I love love love about making clothes for people is getting feedback on the clothes in action, seeing the clothes in action, and getting photos of the clothes in action - especially when the action happens to be on a stage playing beautiful music! 

A couple of days ago Hilary Blackshaw (the recipient of a rather lovely pregnant-singing-mumma-stage-frock) sent me these gorgeous photos of her frock in action, accompanied by the following words: 

"Your dress has been so comfortable to wear as my midriff has been expanding with our new bubba- I'm due on Tuesday, so your dress has served me very well so far! I've had so many lovely comments about it, too. And as you can see, it worked brilliantly well with my electric guitar ; )"

What better compliment than a dress working brilliantly well with an electric guitar?? I was so pleased to see the pics, and to hear that the dress had lasted the distance and performed its duties as an on-stage preggo dress, that I just had to share these pics. Makes me wish I was in a folk club, listening to Hilary and her Philosophers and sipping an ale right now....