Living Chocolate

Our new favourite Australian chocolate
livingearth
Hopefully our local store will have more in soon...............

Solstice

We had a lovely Solstice celebration with some friends yesterday, sharing a meal together, and later heading to the beach. It was a pleasant evening, albeit noisy with music and singing coming from all directions at the beach. We had a spectacular thunderstorm, in the distance, for entertainment too. We watched the clouds roll in, and were hoping for rain, but none appeared where we were.

Happy Solstice where-ever you are!

End of Year

Well we've finished the majority of our homeschool activities now for this year, except for a couple of craft things Willow needs to finish. It feels good to be done! We finished highland dancing and choir last week, and next term will be much quieter- we're taking it easier with the heat. And we've finally finished reading The NeverEnding Story- don't let the movie put you off, the book is amazing.

Arden is now one, amazingly enough, and now share's his birthday with two friends. One turns 36 and the other is now around 11 days old.

Gabriel made a beautiful Steiner style doll for his final class 1 craft project for the year.

And now it seems to be party season- birthdays, Christmas, solstice, etc,etc.

Interesting Events

A couple of weeks ago, on the way to our swimming, I met a man on the bus who invited me along to see Don Tolman. We'd been chatting about my kids, and he mentioned about a man coming to speak on health and education, and then he offered to email me the details. I was slightly intrigued, and these days being more open minded, I thought why not? So with the free voucher I received in the email, I headed to the Adelaide Hyatt to hear him speak.

And I'm really glad I attended, it was well worth it. Much of what he had to say about food I was already aware of, but there were a few new things, and his story was fascinating. I think that is something, that is important to me, is to have a good story for a life. None of this, I was born, went to school, worked, retired and died. I think that may be why I dislike living in Adelaide, I suspect that, that is still the general ambition here.

Also Damien had an odd occurence recently. He saw a lady struggling with a trolley, whilst riding his bike, and went to help her. She said that she was fine, and as he was riding off, she said, whilst holding out her hand waving something, "Do you want it?" He wasn't quite sure what it was until, saying thanks, he took it. She gave him $5. He was very surprised.

So again it's worth saying thanks to the universe.

Thanks!

What's Been On

Well, it seems like it's about time I sit down and do another post on here.

We are coming to the end of our organised school year, and it's such a relief to be nearly done, particularly this last term with all these extra things we're currently doing. At present we're spending Tuesdays at Burnside pool, Thursdays at choir and Fridays at Highland dancing. Everyone has been enjoying it alot, but it is rather tiring with all these extra activities to do!

The choir sang in the lead up to the Christmas Pageant, and they did a marvellous job. All the children deal with it so confidently, it's nice to seem them so self assured.

Last weekend we attend the Alliance Francaise's French festival. I must admit it was a little lacking compared to a couple of years ago, but the music was still good this time. I particularly enjoyed Zaza Fournier. The food was rather lacking this year, as was the variety of beers according to Damien.

Soaked Chocolate Pudding

75g butter
75g rapadura sugar
75g rapadura dark chocolate
100g spelt flour
25g cocoa
2 eggs
2 tablespoons liquid whey
teaspoon bicarb soda

sauce
50g rapadura sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa
35g cocoa nibs
300g dandelion coffee drink


Cream the butter and sugar, until light and fluffy.
Melt the chocolate, and stir in with the flour, cocoa, eggs and whey.
Cover the mixture, and leave to sit overnight.

Heat over at 170celsius.

Remove the cover, and add the carb soda, mix well. Place in baking dish.

Blend the sugar, cocoa and cocoa nibs and sprinkle over the top of the pudding.
Make the dandelion drink, and pour over the top.

Place in oven and bake for 30mins.

Recovery

Finally after an ongoing bout of illness, everyone is getting better! First it was Willow and from there it spread, so that each week seemed to be someone else! I am almost totally recovered now, and unsurprisingly there's lots of housework to be caught up on.

In between bouts of sickness, we did actually manage to get to the Art Gallery for the silk screen printing session. The kids printed some lovely bags, and did a beautiful job. Unfortunately the butterfly planting session was missed, so I decided to buy the Attracting Butterflies to your Garden book. Definately looks helpful, so hopefully we can start to attract more butterflies to our garden.

Willow finished her weaving today, and did a beautiful job!

But today was busy, with us seeing off my brother, Justin, who is heading back to Germany for another year, or so. So we headed off to Adelaide Airport for a farewell, where he arrived late, and pushing a bike! He'd decided that he was going to see if he could get his bike on the flight! And (I think) because he was late, he did! He was extremely happy to manage that, as he rides frequently.

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2025

Willow really enjoyed weaving, and I later bought a vintage square loom off ebay for her to use to make a blanket.

This link takes you through to her trying out the loom.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/05/some-highlights-from-this-past-week.html

This one shows the lap blanket finished.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2014/12/2014.html

Princess Irene, SpaceShips and Mandalas

Princess Irene version 1- by Willow

Version 2-also by Willow



Spaceship for the Storm Troopers by Gabriel

And my own Mandala

Activities

We've been very active round here the last week with all sorts being planned and happening round here.

Willow and Gabriel's cousin Dale came for a sleepover last week, so there was much excitement and late night chatting for that. Whilst that was going on I managed to finish making Gabriel's felt slippers, and I was really happy with them, since it was my first try. Willow wants a pair now too.

We celebrated the Spring Equinox last night with a lovely dinner, and a candle making ceremony. We had collected and pressed flowers for it months ago which we pressed into the wax. The candles were melted in hot water for a minute, the flowers were pressed in, and the candles were put back in the hot water again. We're probably in need of practise to get a really nice finish, but we were satisfied with our results.

This week there are some interesting things to try, so we've booked in for the Butterfly Plants session at the Botanic Gardens, and the Art Gallery is doing a workshop on Screen printing, so that should be good too. We were thinking of trying Cirkids this term, but everyone now is keen to try Young Adelaide Voices, so we're off to their trial evening before making a decision. Willow would like to try horse riding, but that may have to wait til next year, if we do the singing. And finally we're all planning to give Scottish dancing another try, we really enjoyed it before, but I was anaemic for part of Arden's pregnancy, so we only did it for a little while before stopping. So many things to do!

Plus presently we've been weaving and learning about fabric's and making fabrics, and clothes, in our current homeschooling activities. The weaving projects are quite simple at this stage, and for our first sewing project we're going to handsew Willow a pair of pyjamas- still early days in the pattern but it should be very interesting!

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2025

This was the beginning of our singing journey with Willow!  It's so interesting to look back at it, and feel satisfied that we achieved her goals for her education with performance.

Willow did  a few Gilbert and Sullivan performances over the years.

Pirates of Penzance
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/05/pirates-of-penzance.html

Iolanthe.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2016/06/iolanthe-has-take-over.html

She also learnt to play violin and flute, did a lot of musical busking, learnt a variety of dancing styles- ballroom, swing, rockabilly, rock and roll.  

Instead of completing year 12- she studied a Diploma in Music industry (classical voice) at WAAPA-the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.  There's a small discussion on her acceptance into tertiary education here.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2017/02/

Baby Hugs

Plus! Yesterday it was so funny watching Arden, who is now 9 months, and his nearly12month old cousin, Correa, yesterday. They crawled up to each other, had a hug and a kiss! It was quite a sight, and they did it three times. We all laughed and laughed over how cute they looked.

Abundance in the Air

Over the last week, Damien and I have been taking Christmas Bell, one of the Australian Bush Flower Essences. The essence itself relates to manifesting abundance, and I've been curious to see what sort of abundance we would start to manifest.

Well some little things had been shifting here and there, but today was full of events. This morning the kids had soccer at the Life Be In It centre, so we headed for the bus. We were late for the first, so jumped on the second. Damien realised we needed two tickets, and mentioned that to the driver, who asked how many of us were travelling. After abit of discussion the driver said, to just get one ticket and used it as a family pass, and if we were questioned later to pick up a second ticket. So that was that and we went to soccer.

After soccer we chatted with some friends, and headed off to get the train to our niece's birthday party. Along the walk we bumped into a lady we met last year, that we'd not seen since I was pregnant last year. We chatted for a while, and she offered us a plant from her garden. We were now a little late for the train and rushing to make it, which we luckily did. Just as we approached the station, that gates went down for the cars, and we ran up in time.

We had a nice time at our niece's 1st birthday party, eating cake, playing,etc until it was time to catch a train back. At the platform there was a Sheikh gently singing- it was very beautiful, though I didn't understand a word. When the train arrived we sat next to a group of noisy men from Penola, who were off to see Judas Priest. They were really friendly and lovely so we chatted to them the whole way, with one giving Willow advice on how to deal with mean people at school- they had been discussing why she was homeschooling. There was also a big sing-a-long of the Tigers theme song with the train driver participating by pulling the horn! It was hugely funny. When we got off the train, everyone waved to the guys, and the driver who waited for the kids to finish saying goodbye.

So at this point it's a bit late and we're off at Goodwood station, and we decide to wander up Goodwood Rd, to see if there's anywhere good for takeaway. After a bit of a walk we decide to get pizza at Savelli Brothers. We'd meant to try them before as the idea of quality made pizza to bake at home appealed to us. We ordered two, and were chatting away to the guy about quality of food, diet and ingredients whilst he prepared our dinner. It was quite entertaining and relaxing. At one stage he went off to get some oil, and was telling us about his truffle oil he'd been infusing, and that it was a secret recipe. Damien and I were both amused as we'd recently watched French Leave and there was an episode with truffles, so we'd been thinking about using them in food.

By now we were heading home with our pizza, and I remembered that there was $5 in my pocket left over from the show. I was thinking about what an interesting and amazing day we had when I thought I should offer the universe my $5, so I gave it to someone's letterbox. I hope it brightens their day.

And just to finish....................Thankyou!

The Magic Fig Tree

Forgot to add in my last posts, our wonderful local magic fig tree. It lives in the parklands near us, and we often walk past it and look to see what's happening in its world. Today we decided to stop under it for a short rest on the way home, and we were fortunate enough to see a tiny possum curled up asleep in its roots! We were very lucky indeed! We were all quite surprised, had a quiet peep, and then left it to continue its sleep.

Show day and Lemon Cake

We headed out to the Royal Adelaide Show yesterday, for a very long and very busy day.

We had a number of activities planned and did almost all of them. We watched the farriers, the woodchopping, the sheaf throwing, the shearing and the wool spinning. We had a look for Willow and Gabriel's art entries- Gabriel received two Merits for his work. We also watched the cars, motor bikes and fireworks in the stadium in the evening. It was a very long day.

Willow and Gabriel were both allowed to pick one lolly and one toy showbag, so there was quite a bit of discussion over the bags. Since we infrequently buy mainstream lollies (usually at the show, or a friend's party) we needed to discuss what some of the items were in the bags. Willow came home with My Little Pony and Violet Crumble, and Gabriel bought Hot Wheels and Sunny Boy. Usually the last few years I've bought Fruchocs, but since we are healthier now, and the Fruchocs bag is very large I went for a very small Freddo Frog. Definately enough for me, those few frogs were satisfying, but sweet enough to remind me why these days we buy good quality chocolate.

On that topic, we mostly brought our own food this year. I made baked beans and Damien made bread, and we bought some salad. Usually I get a really nice avocado boat for lunch, but apparently the avocado people didn't have a good crop this year, so no boat for me! The boat just involves half and avocado scooped out, mushed up, and put back in with a couple of corn chips for sails- very simple and very tasty! Overall the show has a reasonable choice of food these days, though it's still a bit lacking on the fresh side of the diet.

Anyhow the lemon cake I made for the day is as follows....

Lemon Cake (too busy and tasty to photograph)

125g butter
100g rapadura sugar
2 large eggs
200g spelt flour
1 lemon
1 tablespoon yoghourt
1 teaspoon baking powder


Cream the butter and sugar, gradually beat in the eggs alternating with the flour until completely mixed.

Grate the rind from 1 lemon, and squeeze the juice from the lemon, add both to cake mix. Also add tablespoon of yoghourt. Cover and leave to sit overnight.

Heat oven to 130.

Grease loaf tin.

Add baking powder to mixture, mix well. Pour mixture into tin, and bake for 1 1/2hrs. Test with skewer for readiness. Cool on wire rack.

Bon appetit!

Repairs and Catch-up

This week has been hectically busy with repair work, and getting through some neglected crafts. I had a pile of clothes and bits, that almost seemed to be breeding, and with the busyness of homeschool and baby had been ignored for many months. So since we had a week of doing nothing planned, I used it to get through my pile.

The first half a dozen things were pants needing elastic repairs. Mostly this involved using my crochet hook to catch the elastic, from in the waist band, pull it back out and hook it over the button, to hold it in place. To be honest I'm rather feed up with these sorts of pants, so last week I also bought Gabriel a belt.

The rest of the pile was an assortment of toys and clothes, and now I'm nearly at the stage of being finished it's quite a relief to see it gone. There's still a doll, a jacket and a skirt, but I need to buy some thread for the doll, ribbon for the jacket and make a decision about the skirt.

I had also started making Gabriel some slippers out of felt a while ago, so I've been catching up on them, as well as Damien's jumper which has been rather neglected recently. I'm now over half way through the front, so definately heading in the right direction! Hopefully the slippers will be done by Monday, and the jumper will be done soon.

Soaked Orange Poppy Seed Cake

3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/3 cup poppy seeds
1 cup flour
1 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup almond meal
1 cup yoghourt
200g butter
1/2 cup sugar
rind from 1 orange
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Juice oranges, and place orange juice in large bowl.

Pour in almond meal and poppy seeds and half the flour, top with a layer of yoghourt, another layer of flour and remaining yoghourt. Mix together and leave to sit overnight.

Grease a loaf tin, set oven to 150celsius.

Beat butter, sugar and rind, until fluffy. Add eggs beat well whilst adding dollops of the preprepared mixture. Mix all the remaining mixture with baking soda.

Pour mixture into tin, and bake for 1 hr 20mins.

Remove from oven and allow to cool in tin before removing.

Spring and Frogs

Well Spring is definately here, and the weather is warmer, and since we had a real winter this year (cold and rainy) there are allsorts of beautiful flowers around that I haven't seen for the last two Springs.

These beautiful Snowdrops have been a lovely surprise, adjacent to the creek in the Parklands.I didn't know Snowdrops til we lived in Scotland, so it was a lovely surprise to see them. So now we've been singing the Snowdrop song for Springtime....it didn't seem at all appropriate to do it the last two Springs, as there were no Snowdrops near us, they were only in the hills where it's colder.

Also a couple of weekends ago we headed to the hills and visited our nearest Steiner children's shop- Head, Heart and Hands for the kids to have a craft session there with the lovely Luci. The workshop was for The Frog Prince, which we read first, so Willow and Gabriel would be familiar with it. I must admit I liked the ending when the Prince's assistant's bonds around his heart are free. It very much resonated with me, and a feeling of opening the heart! And how so many people need to do that after grieving, but unlike his assistant they keep their bonds. It's quite an inspiring story.

The kids made lovely puppets, and really enjoyed the session.

Here's the puddings

So here it is.....though unfortunately a bit fuzzy!
Must be fuzzy chocolatey love.

Flour, Cakes and Weston Price

Recently I've been experimenting with cakes recipes and soaking my grain, after reading about the benefits of soaked grain in our Nourishing Traditions cookbook. Much of the cooking in it takes a little planning, ie deciding what you will eat the day before you eat it, but overall I'm finding it very worthwhile as my digestion has totally improved. It seems according to much of the Weston Price research that soaked, or fermenting is what helps to make and grain, and in fact many other things, digestible for humans. This of course doesn't really suit industry, who threw many of these old fashioned practises out the window for speed, only now we're all suffering.

Anyhow I thought I'd also try varying a few recipes that I particularly like, by soaking the grains first, for those that are interested here's my first. If you're like me and not so keen on using loads of sugar, just use less, that's my plan for next time.

Chocolate Brownie Pudding
200g Butter
200g Spelt flour
330g Rapadura chocolate

3eggs
1 1/2 vanilla pods
200g unrefined/ rapadura chocolate

Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler and melt slowly until mixed. Take off heat, and add flour. Mix flour through thoroughly and place under teatowel overnight.

Grease loaf tin

Set oven to 160celsius.

Beat eggs, vanilla seeds and sugar together. Continue beating, and add in large spoonfulls of the chocolate mixture until all is mixed. Pour into loaf tin and bake for forty minutes.

The mixture will be ready when the top is set, but it should be soft and goopy in the middle. Take out of oven, leave to cool slightly in tin, and serve with raw cream/ ice cream for desert.

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2025

This is before we went down the GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) rabbit hole as part of our journey to heal Gabriel's digestive issues.  All up we did GAPS for a little over 2 years, finishing up  maybe a year after we moved to Perth in mid 2011.  The final thing that really helped Gabriel was having his palate expanded.

Reading Detour

Both my Amazon orders arrived today, so I was quite excited....piles of books that I'd been waiting weeks for! A few interesting cookbooks on raw food, and one from the Weston Price Foundation, some good homeschooling ones,........and The Princess and Curdie!

Everyone was very excited, we were enjoying The Never Ending Story, but enthusiasm for George MacDonald won. So we're back to him.

Water Works

I had planned today rather nicely that we would go to the anthroposophical bookstore buy a birthday present for a party tomorrow, come home and do some school work. We had brunch- we all got up late today, and got ready to leave. Unfortunately at this point my plan went wrong, as I discovered that I had no idea where my house keys were (and actually I still haven't found them). So, since Arden was asleep I got

Willow to do her activities while I searched. First she had a four form drawing to do (and still no keys!) and then she painted the tower of Babylon (and still no keys!!!). By now Arden is awake, and I've given up having phoned Damien and asked him if he knows where they are, and so we headed out to the garden to make a water way.

We got the idea from a fabulous little book called "Earth, Fire, Water and Air"  by Walter Kraul,I bought recently from the Anthroposophical Bookstore, and it has so many simple clever ideas- though we need to get a better saw. The kids did some of the hammering, and the wood was left overs from a furniture store around the corner, combined with some branches and coconut shells and we had a mini-garden stream. Everyone had loads of fun, and Gabriel is trying to invent his own simpler version now.

The Neverending Story

We've just started "The Neverending Story", and from what I've been told it's much better than the movie, so I'm looking forward to seeing it progress.

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2025

I've read this to everyone, and it is one of my favourite books.  It's so imaginative and Michael Ende is an amazing author.  Momo is also by him, and is another great read.

The Last Week

This week we've been doing allsorts of things. The main thing was our homeschool review, which fortunately was successful and is over and done with now til next year.

Otherwise we've tried a bit of wet felting with mixed results. We'd done beads before but we tried to do some felt sheets and although they felted the results were patchy. In the end, I think the multiple attempts on the same bit of wool didn't help for getting consistent results. It was fun though, especially when Arden decided to chase our soapy water around the room!

Crocheting wise I've just finished the scarf and hat for my brother, and I'm quite happy with them. So hopefully he is too. Now I need to get back to Damien's jumper, I did two more rows last night, so there's still a small chance he might get to wear it for this winter.

We went to The Bead Hive today for our homeschool outing and everyone made beautiful jewellery. The kids made some great pieces, and it was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. I picked out a few beads to add to a hat I'm planning to crochet for myself (I already have the wool). And I think we might have to do it again...though it'll have to wait a little while, as I'm starting to gather a bit of a list of interesting homeschooling activities.

Finally we finished The Princess and the Goblin (Puffin Classics - the Essential Collection), it is one of the best kids books I've read. It's only a small book but everyone loved it, and I think we finished it in around 2 weeks. I've just order the next book, The Princess and Curdie (Puffin Classics) off Amazon, so we're rather keen to get into it.

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2025

The Bead Hive was the first home school excursion that I organised.  I learnt a few things from it, and my further excursions over the years.  Get people to pay in advance.  Quite a number of people, half I seem to recall, decided not to turn up that day.  It was a beautiful sunny winter's day, and people decided it would be nice to be out in it.  The shop had put on extra staff to cater to our activity, and fortunately for me, they didn't ask me to pay for those that cancelled on the day.  

Over the years since then, I have discovered that this isn't unusual.  Whilst living in Perth I've organised quite a few excursions to performances, or classes, and there's always some people that just find other things to do, especially if something is free.  It seems at some point people stop valuing certain things, if they are free.

Ballet and Alice

Earlier this year we read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass , and today we were lucky enough to head out for a children's ballet performance of the book. We went out for lunch, and noticed on our walk through the mall that Starbucks had already disappeared- it would be even better to see McDonalds go too.

Then we headed to the Festival Centre for the performance- it was quite busy, and there were a few nice touches, with the characters dancing through the audience, and the children being able to meet them at the end.

Willow and Gabriel said hi to the white rabbit and Alice at the end, and really enjoyed the performance.

Reading

We are now into our latest read "The Princess and The Goblin" by George MacDonald. I was doing some reading about Tolkien and CS Lewis when I came across George MacDonald's name, and discovered that he wrote kids books. So far this has gotten everyone entranced. Around the World in 80 days, was excellent but some of it was a little dry for Willow and Gabriel.

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2025
George MacDonald is now one of our favourite children's authors.  We have read quite a few of his books and our favourites are "The Princess and the Goblin", "The Princess and Curdie", and "At the Back of the North Wind".  "The Light Princess" is one of his adult books, and is very interesting to read, and appropriate for children in this era too IMO.

Activities

Recently we've tried out a few different activities. In my corner I have a multitude of repair work, and other things to do. Willow and Gabriel have some pants needing to be fixed, as do I, and there are a few other bits there too. For my brother, Justin, I am crocheting a hat as a very early Christmas present, before he heads off to Germany later in the year. I'm also still in the middle of doing Damien a jumper- I'm now onto the front, but unfortunately with all this other work I'm not quite getting through it quickly enough for him. On the plus side I have finished the corduroy pants of mine that I was redecorating into 3/4 pants, so that's one thing off the list.

Homeschool wise we've been trying out a few things. Last week we made pompoms, with varying success depending on the thickness of the wool. I read it works better to have a very fine ply, but we wanted to try a few colours, and some of the thicker ones really didn't work all that well. Still it was a fun exercise, and they look quite nice hanging in our carport.

Today we tried out making our own felted sheets. We're not sure yet if it was a success- they're still drying, so time will tell. I found a method using sushi mats, so since we have an abundance of them that seemed perfect. It was a bit tricky with Arden, he was very enthused to join in, and help with laying the wool. If it comes out nicely I plan to use some on the slippers I'm making for Gabriel.

Gabriel has just felted his first bit of knitting and sewn it into a beautiful pillow for his doll.

And Willow is still working on knitting her baby booties, they're coming on a little slowly, but very nicely.

Farmer's Market

Historically, we rise late and slowly on Sundays. However the last two weeks we have managed to make it to our local farmer's market, much to our kids pleasure, in time for the kids cooking session. Funnily enough one has wanted to bake one week, and the other the following week, but neither both together, and I'm not at all sure why.

Yesterday, Gabriel got to make a hamburger, from all local ingredients, and last week Willow made orange poppyseed muffins. It's lovely getting them to participate in a cooking session there with the growers, farmers and their produce.

Current Reading

Our latest afternoon read is by Jules Verne.  "Around the World in 80 Days."

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2025
Jules Verne's books are generally well loved in our family.  Gabriel in particular has enjoyed his stories, although I must admit, I have yet to get to them with Irving.  Irving is getting a much more blended fiction and non-fiction education via reading, than the older two did.  In particular he and Arden have had quite a bit of adult non-fiction, or historical fiction read to them, compared to Willow and Gabriel.

the things I made

I made a pompom today.

• A blanket for my grandma's cat

• a recorder bag

• two rice bags

• a necklace and some earrings

Shopping

After a nice relaxing two weeks off school, we headed off to do some shopping for some bits that we needed around home.

The first stop was The Conservatory, our local nursery shop, to purchase a Blood Orange tree for our garden. Gabriel was suggesting a lime, but it cost a bit more, and I love blood oranges. Earlier in the week, we'd planted our Kumquat, since it is looking much happier again, after the hot March we had. It struggled along during the heat wave, sitting in the pot, and it only seemed fair to plant it. The poor thing was rather neglected after the birth of Arden, and didn't get nearly enough water when the heat finally arrived. Anyhow we found a nice home for our Blood Orange in the back corner, just along from the Kumquat, and provided it with some Devic Essence to help with it's move to our garden. I haven't tried this out on my plants before, but there was some discussion on the idea at the White Light Essence course I attended, so we decided to give it a try.

After the tree planting we headed to town, and into Lincraft, where I selected some ribbon and lace to add onto a pair of old corduroy pants of mine that I'm presently revitalising. I have cut the ends off, and added some stitching, and also was in need of something extra for them, which is why the lace and ribbon was needed. I was happy with the selection, but disappointed with the service at Lincraft. I had noticed before, but commented on this occassion, that it seems they no longer neatly loop up and tie lace, ribbon, etc. The girl agreed, and I commented that I would prefer to pay a bit extra for quality service rather than have my pile of ribbon and lace shoved in a bag. I think I'll have to find somewhere else to shop, maybe even on the internet. The two big shops here Spotlight and Lincraft seem like craft shops with the quality of a $2 shop. I must say that I miss buying my craft supplies at John Lewis where everything was so neat, and the service was pleasant and helpful.

On the plus side though I did finally find some nice wooden buttons for the cardigan I knitted last year. I have been wearing it for quite a while, and it will be so much better to be able to button it up. Actually Willow found the buttons, and they weren't the colour that I had envisaged, but they suit the cardigan nicely, and I will certainly be feeling much warmer!

Birthday Crafts

Recently our neice and cousin, Elly, celebrated her fourth birthday. Since they were staying in Adelaide it was the first time we've been able to attend her birthday party- they reside in Mt Gambier. So since we usually have a rule where we don't give presents for cousins at birthday time- there are too many of us- Willow, Gabriel and I had a crafting session to make a present for her.

We recently bought a knitting book called 'Usborne's How to Knit' which has some nice simple patterns for children learning to knit, with simple instructions to help them learn to follow a pattern. So I decided to give a try felting some wool, that was in my basket, from when we lived in Scotland. Unfortunately I had no idea as to what type of wool it was- ie if it would felt, so I knitted a few pieces to see what would happen. The result was one unfelted yellow piece, one felted magenta piece, and one stretched and much more fluffy purple piece. Gabriel and I used the magenta to make some shapes- his were placed in the gift box, whilst I sewed mine onto the purple which had made a very nice small scarfe shape through all the washing.

Meanwhile Willow had been hard at work knitting a party bag from the same knitting book, and after some dedicated knitting finished it in time for the party. We thread some ribbon through just before it was time to go, and everything looked lovely!

Knitting

Since we mostly follow a Steiner based curriculum at our Unicorn school, both Gabriel and Willow have been learning to knit. To teach them to knit I also had to learn. To be honest that isn't entirely true, I actually learnt to knit when I was six, and then spent the next four years knitting my dad a scarf- it was a nightmare, and that combined with my mum taking forever to knit anything, totally put me off knitting.

Anyhow further down the track, and Willow is at the Glasgow Steiner School, and loads of the parents knit, I didn't really feel ready to face knitting, so instead I learnt to crochet. I crocheted a variety of hats for everyone in the family, making them up as I went along. After leaving Glasgow, homeschooling, returning to Adelaide, messing about with schools, we decided to homeschool again and I had to learn to knit to teach the kids, so now all three of us are busy knitting a variety of things.

Gabriel has only started to knit this year, and this has been challenging for me, as I knit left handed, and I had to teach him to knit right handed. Obviously essentially it is the same, but reversed. Apparently my Grandma taught me to knit left handed using a mirror, but since I've learnt most things by watching and reversing them, I figured I could do the same to help Gabriel. Now I'm able to knit both right and left handed, but I am much faster knitting left handed unsurprisingly. Willow ended up being taught by my Mum. She went for a sleepover one weekend with her Grandma, and came home being able to knit. So for the last couple of years I've mostly helped her with dropped stitches, and showed her how to purl, but on the whole it was much simpler, as she already knew the basics.

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June 2025

Since then  I have taught the younger two children to knit too.  Another one, Arden, is left handed like myself, but I chose to teach him right handed knitting for the convenience of following patterns, if he should choose to knit more.  So far he hasn't chosen to do that.  ATM Irving and I are knitting together- I am working on knitting Gabriel a Harry Potter "Weasley Jumper" and Irving is doing his first full knitting project; a black hat for himself.

This post is back when Arden learnt to knit, and when Gabriel made himself socks.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2014/12/2014.html

Willow regularly does craft work still, and probably did the most out of all the kids, so far, in her homeschooling journey.  This is when she was 15, and we were learning to sew, and she was also busy making herself a beret.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/05/pirated-away.html

This link is a must read if you are interested in knitting, or Steiner education but wonder about the relevance in a modern education.
http://pyrites.org/publications_files/Knitting%20begets%20thinking.pdf

If you use the search bar, there are more posts on our knitting over the years, for your inspiration.

Welcome to our Unicorn and Crafts School Blog

Willow, Gabriel and Myself have decided to start our own blog based around some of our homeschool activities. Enjoy our adventures.