(not quite) wordless wednesday

I'm not feeling so wordless today. In fact instead I've got lots to share. My this week has been fabulous so far, how 'bout yours?

Sunday night, while skyping my lovely husband's family I made pesto...

It was hot hot hot 'round Melbourne town, so my lovely husband and I took little-miss-e to the beach on Monday morning. It was so much fun! She loved the water, and for the first time sat on the sand in with the little waves rippling over her legs and splashed and splashed!



Then, Monday afternoon, my sister and my lovely husband had conspired to give my an afternoon off! My sister came round and whisked me away to an afternoon of cafes and op-shops, whilst my lovely husband stayed home and looked after little-miss-e.

Yesterday was full of jam making, finally. I'm not sure how many figs I ate, but I only ended up with 1.7kgs of figs to make into jam. Its a sweet sticky messy process, but the end result 'little bird burnt fig jam' (named in honour of a new little bird we know) should certainly be worth it!

As for today, well - there's great stuff going on, but I'll tell you all about that another time...

Hope your week so far has been just as great!

its that time of year again...

fig emergency time of year!

My friend's abundant fig tree is ripening up and I was over there today picking these delicious figs (and more).
 
They'll be turned into burnt fig jam shortly, probably tomorrow. Otherwise we will have eaten so many there will be none left for jam!

nothing to do with anything

well, except graffiti and stenciling and knitting and jam and...

firstly: check this out! i rode past it yesterday and absolutely had to stop and take a pic 

i love stencil art! and this one particularly - the cards are real. such a fabulous design! so i just had to share. 

in other news, whilst i've been too busy to blog, i still have been finding scraps of time to get creative. i have put down the hook and picked up the needles for a bit - and learnt a new stitch - moss - its really easy and quite enjoyable and works perfectly with this wool.  
don't you think? who knows, maybe this year i will get addicted to knitting!

i've also been making burnt fig emergency jam - its fig emergency time of year-

and in other other news - 6 weeks to go. woo hoo!

cough cough, scrub scrub

one of the downsides of making burnt fig jam lies in the word "burnt". well, not so much in the word itself, but in the action it represents:

i've been soaking this pot since wednesday night, and given i am stuck at home sick today, i will begin the scrubbing process. last time it took three goes and use of dishwasher powder to finally get it all off...

but in other news check out this:

i found it at the beach. really i did. the sand and the waves made it. its so pretty, hey. i am thinking of giving it away. but its a big thing to give your heart away, so i am holding onto it for now...

can you smell that?

its the sweet sticky smell of fig jam burning (burning in a good way, trust me)

it fills our house, and very soon it will fill these jars...

 (i love abundant fig trees that belong to generous friends). 

fig emergencies

so finally, our internet is working again. it came back on friday, but then it sat in the corner and sulked for a few days, until we finally managed to coax it back into action. moody thing, our internet is.

but in other news: fig emergencies

one of my lovely friends has a fig tree. a very productive fig tree. it is magnificent, full of lovely ripening figs. and a week or so ago, she called me up. see, she had been sick all week and unable to pick all the ripe figs. so she asked if i would please please come over and pick the figs before they all got over-ripe and fell off the tree. 

so i went over to her house to help her with her fig emergency. i learnt a few things while i was there. like,

• even when picking figs in 35 degree heat, one should wear shoes - rotting figs are not that pleasant squishing between one's toes. 
• and, buttons can very easily get get caught in fig nets, which can lead to needing to rip the buttons off, to prevent one from ripping holes in the nets (untangling is never going to work).
• and, when closing the ladder, one really should keep one's fingers clear of all the moving parts. 

but despite this, my generous friend gave me all the figs i could pick... 

about 4 kilos worth

and so in the style of our favourite icecream, i turned the figs into 

burnt fig emergency jam.

so so good. i even made some burnt fig emergency icecream to take to my friend to say thanks for letting me help her out with her fig emergency.