happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling
I couldn’t find any “weekend” pictures on my camera or phone this morning. I did find these beautiful sunsets though and I think these actually sum up our weekend quite nicely. We mostly sat and rested and enjoyed the view.
Hope you had a restful weekend too and wishing you all a great start to your week!
It’s so hot here right now… At first I thought I just wasn’t used to it anymore, after spending so much time in a much colder climate. But Meteo gives out yellow alerts and schools are closing early, so it’s not just me.
I had so many plans for “when we’re finally home”, but I’m letting go of those for now. My body needs rest anyway and my mind could do with a little less stress too. So I’ll be right here. Staying hydrated, knitting, and contemplating if it’s possible to knit in the swimming pool, instead of next to it.
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!
I’ve always had this list in the back of my mind. A list of baby things I’d like to knit, but I never had a baby to knit them for. My kids were little before the internet, which I think is mostly a blessing, except for the knitting and sewing inspiration I missed out on. My niece and nephews were also born before I started reading knitting blogs and well, sometimes we’d like more babies in our family, but it just doesn’t happen.
So I just admired them on other people’s blogs and hoped that one day I’d have a reason to make them. Well, that reason will be born in December, so here we go.
First on the list: a pebble vest (link to pattern). Amanda Soule made so many of these, I just had to try and make one too. Such a fun and easy knit! I will have to contain myself, but I would love to make many more of these (maybe in cotton they would be perfect as a shirt for little ones out here?).
The buttons I found in my collection (i.e. a big tin filled to the brim with old buttons) and I love how they look with the navy blue.
I can’t wait to see this on our little grandson!
Yesterday I did make it to the right Welcome Shop (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can read how that went last week here). And gosh, they did have quite the collection (it’s not a yarnshop though, but for a shop that carries just about everything – I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a kitchen sink hidden on the shelves – they had a lot).
But when I got to actually choosing what to buy, I found myself going for blue again. I don’t know, it’s just what I thought would look nice. I want to make a baby blanket for my grandson, and I know his parents like neutrals more than bright colors, so the brighter blue is a stretch already.
And if I change my mind… I can always go back for other colors. I know how to get there now (it’s actually really easy to find).
A few weeks ago, Chris asked if I had any house updates to share. Truth to be told, I’m not sure where I left off and my archives… well, that’s a whole other story (in short: I thought I had saved them, but I lost a lot of my pictures).
But when I was writing this post about the guests in our pool (see below), I remembered that I never really told you about that pool, even though it has appeared in some of the pictures lately.
So I thought I’d do a little update about that while I was going to talk about our pool anyway.
We’ve been thinking about if and how we’d want to add a pool to our home for… years, I guess. We do have a beach very close to our home (a 7 minute walk), but to get home, you have to walk up a steep hill. It is fun to swim in the sea, but it doesn’t help for a quick cool-down. So we decided we wanted a pool and started looking around. We had some experts tell us that what we wanted was hard to do (although we’ve seen it in many modern homes) and we’ve made calculations that would have taken all our savings.
But then T.’s brilliant out-of-the-box thinking mind got to work.
We had a few men that we know are great with building make us a level concrete base.
And then we ordered a simple Intex pool that was just the right size.
T. had made calculations that had made sure the pool was at just the right level to build a deck around it that is level with the porch, so we can walk into the pool straight from the house. He built the deck all by himself, making up the construction as he went.
And now it looks like this:
We’re so, so happy with it! Since we filled it up (last year October) we may have skipped two or three days, but (except for our months abroad, of course) we’re usually in it multiple times a day. Especially right now, since we’re in the hottest period of the year. It’s so great to be able to just jump into the pool when we start to feel overheated.
We’re not the only ones who think that way, it seems. We’re constantly saving bees and wasps. Wasps can actually swim and get out themselves if their wings stay dry, but bees just jump in and drown if we don’t get to them on time. It adds a whole new dimension to our swimming moments, but we try our best.
And last week we found another swimmer:
Yes, that’s a crab. A land crab to be precise. It must have walked in at night, so it drowned before we were able to get it out of there. I have to admit though, we weren’t too sad about that, because we both find them pretty scary. They’re rather big and those shears look impressive when they raise them. When they enter the house (they do!) we use a broom to push them out of the door. One of our builders said they are very tasty, but we haven’t brought up the courage to try yet.
The same goes for these guys, by the way. We both tried them (in a restaurant – they do taste like chicken), but we’re not eager to catch them. And come to think of it… I so hope that he sticks with eating the leaves of my moringa trees. I really don’t want to try and save a panicking iguana from our pool…
Today marks 32 years of marriage with that guy in the picture. It’s been a wild ride ever since, but I would do it all over again if I was given the choice today.
Happy anniversary, T.!
I’ve always had this romantic image of how it would be to have an actual really big garden (not just a little backyard). Heavily influenced by Soulemama‘s beautiful posts of course. I just pictured myself wearing a pretty sunhat and flowy dresses, moving mindfully around the beds, harvesting a bit of this and a bit of that.
Well…. I have a really big garden now. Or maybe garden is not the right word for it. We have a lot of space around our house and I’m slowly working on getting it under control. It was actually quite empty when we bought the property. I think they used poison on it. That’s what they do around here..But after a year things started growing and now, after three years, the soil is back to normal.
Anyway, instead of walking around with shears and a basket, most of my gardening is done using a pickaxe. It’s hard and sweaty work. Wearing a flowy dress would be really inconvenient and my sunhats always fall or blow off. But it”s all good. I love it.
And yes, there is harvesting too. Mostly when a plant, bush or tree that is medicinally or culinary valuable needs trimming, so no mindful picking just a few leaves. Nope. Buckets full.
I thought I’d show you how I process and dry them.
First I cut the herbs into smaller bits, or remove the leaves (in this case that’s hard to do, and the stems are medicinal too).
Than I rinse them three times (no specific reason for that number, it just feels right).
I let them sit in strainers for two hours, to get rid of most of the water.
And then I spread them out on towels and cover them with other towels. I let it sit like that for about two days or so.
This herb is called Puta Luange (Stemodia maritima). I’m still getting to know it, but my books and the internet tell me that it’s good for diarrhea, periodontitis and wounds.
After those two days I transfer the drying herb to paper bags. Not too much per bag. Made that mistake once, ended up with a moldy mess.
And then I just put them on top of my cupboard for a few weeks. I shake the bags every day or so and usually herbs are completely dry after three or four weeks. When they are completely dry I transfer them to jars, but storing them in paper bags would also work. I left some bags with herbs when we left in April and those herbs were perfectly fine.
I know a lot of people prefer hanging herbs in bundles, or drying on racks, but this works very well for me in this house and this climate. That’s actually another one of those romantic images I had to let go off. My first bundles of drying herbs got eaten by little lizards, got sunburned, accumulated an awful amount of dust or fell apart before I could properly save them.
Oh well, this will do just fine. And maybe one day, when I find the perfect cupboard, my herb collection, that is now cramped into the two bottom shelves of the kitchen cupboard, will look like the romantic picture of an apothecary that I have in my head. Nope, I’ll never learn 😉
Three things that make me happy this week:
NOT A STATION 