Lately

I've been feeling a little disconnected to my poor blog lately, and I'm determined to remedy that. I enjoy writing, and I find when I get out of the swing of it, it's hard to get back into it. So here we go - a little post about what's been happening around here lately to try and get my mojo back - also serving as an excuse to share so many photos. I hope you enjoy it!

The wattle tree that I planted two years ago has started to bloom. Last year it gave a few bunches of flowers, and as it grew so much over summer I have been looking forward to seeing the flowers it would grow this season. It's really starting to burst into bloom, and it's just lovely. I love my tree, and I think wattle flowers are one of the loveliest Australian natives. I can smell the honey on the blooms when I stand on the verandah and it's heavenly.

Saturday was an incredibly cold day, perhaps the coldest we've had this winter. I ended up putting on my Clara Bow Sweater as being wool it's about the warmest thing I own. With my own hand knit jumper on, coupled with my Baa-ble hat and woollen socks I was lovely and warm. It's just the best feeling to walk around the house wearing clothes you have knitted from head to toe - renewing my desire to have more me-made jumpers in my wardrobe for coming winters. Having said that, I haven't been doing any knitting on my cardigan. I've gone off it for the moment, but plan to make myself do some work on it this week. Perhaps I'll take it along as the only project to craft group, and then I won't have a choice but to knit it?
Speaking of crafting, I'm still travelling along spinning. The yarn pictured above is one that I spun from some white and coloured merino rovings, but much to my distress when I finished it I found that I'd over spun it. After plying the singles together, the yarn is wound onto the swift to make a skein. When you take it off the swift, it's time to see how good a job was done on it. Well, my skein volunteered to twist around all by itself, and parts of it scrunched themselves up like a telephone cord.
It turned out the yarn wasn't as bad as I thought though, and after following the advice of my lovely spinning friend I washed the skein and hung it out to dry with a kilo of onions hanging off the bottom. It was a beautiful sunny day and so I washed my hand knits too.
The weight of the onions hanging from the yarn straightened it as it dried, and when I removed the onions the yarn stayed straight. I'm going to see if I can knit with it soon.

I've been making extra sourdough lately when I bake and putting loaves into the freezer. I find it very convenient to have them in there to grab out on busy days for an easy dinner of cheese toasties, or even to get out the night before to defrost if I won't have time to cook fresh bread for lunch.
It just so happens that it's my eBook's first birthday today. I remember very well sitting down on the 1st of August last year and uploading Spelt Sourdough Made Simple, and emailing off the pre-ordered copies. I still can't quite believe that I actually managed to write and publish my eBook some days. One year on and I have plans for second sourdough eBook, one filled with more recipes that I've created since publishing SSMS.
If you still haven't got a copy of Spelt Sourdough Made Simple you can celebrate it's first birthday with 15% off until Saturday (5th August) with the code 1STBIRTHDAY at checkout.
I've loved the conversations I've had with so many people since publishing the eBook, seeing the bread that had been created with my recipes and the excitement as new baker's sourdough starters escaped their jars. It's been absolutely lovely - I'm so glad I took the plunge to publish my own eBook and am so grateful that so many of you have purchased copies.
I wonder what another year of sourdough writing shall bring?

Now, what's been happening in your world lately?

I've also been having the fun of putting Beanie Boxes together for my shop, and am going to do some more today. I've always gotten immense enjoyment out of putting things in boxes and paper bags. As a child, I thought it would be fun to work in a bakery, just so that I could use the tongs to put pastries into paper bags. 

Yes, it's weird, I know.

Have a lovely day!
Sarah x

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