A full weekend

Hanno and I spent a peaceful weekend together working away on our various chores and watching a couple of TV shows that I recorded through the week. I really have no patience with TV now and find it difficult to watch unless I can fast forward through the advertising. I have to admit too that I find it difficult to understand sometimes. I have never watched the popular programs like Sex in the City or Lost and I find that if I come across them in a promotion, I wonder what on earth they're talking about. Maybe that's my age playing a part or maybe it's a cultural thing because sometimes I do have problems understanding an American accent, especially if it's being spoken fast, as a lot of what I hear is. I mean no offence to any of my American friends. I find I can always understand the southerners, is that because they speak slower?

Anyhow, my favourite programs at the moment are the ABC's The Cook and the Chef and the Book Show, and Time Team, that strangely addictive English program about digging up the ancient past. So my love and I settled in together to watch those programs as the rain fell on the roof, and there under the fleecy rosebud quilt he gave me for my birthday, and with our hot cuppas and just cooked banana and walnut cake, we enjoyed a couple of hours away from the wet coldness outside. I finished off one dishcloth and started on another and Hanno flicked through the Weekend Australian as we watched.

As usual, there was hot bread for lunch, mine with brandywine tomato and fresh cucumber, Hanno's with quark and avocado. You can see Saturday's loaf above, I was just finishing off the rolling out of it when my sister Tricia rang from Sydney to say goodbye. She left for a holiday in Germany and Sweden yesterday so we talked about her plans while I fumbled the dough into the bread tin and placed it in the oven. When the bread was baked there was that big bump coming out the side that you can see in the photo above. Very odd.

And here are the brandywines and cucumbers just after they were harvested. I brought in about 5 kilos (10.5 lbs) of them as well as six cucumbers and a cauliflower.

I did a few lines of sewing on Shane's quilt and hope to have it finished by his birthday, July 15, so we can take it with us when we have lunch to celebrate his 28th birthday. He lives about three hours drive away from us, in a very cold part of the country that is generally below freezing on winter mornings. I think he will welcome an extra quilt and I hope he sees the special things I've sewn into it for him. Actually, for those of you in the south east of Queensland, Shane was on TV last Saturday afternoon. He works at the Peppers Spicers Ridge resort and was filmed in the kitchen cooking, as part of a segment on the resort. You might have seen him.

I made soap on the weekend too. Most of this will go to my sons. They both love my soap and it will be part of their birthday gifts. This one is a olive soap and copha soap. (Copha is a solid block of coconut oil and soy lecithin.) It's the first time I've made soap with copha but it worked well. It took longer to reach trace - about 15 minutes - but it's made up into a nice soap that has a good firm feel to it. I'll dry it on this rack for a couple of weeks, turning it every two days, them wrap it up with raffia and special personalised wrappers.

And here is the new soap form Hanno made for me using an old mitre box. It worked really well as I wanted these long thick blocks of soap.

I have been feeling pretty lazy lately as I haven't done anything about my book, even after all those wonderful comments you all made when I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. I thought by now I would have sent off a couple of letters, with examples of my work, to some publishers, but no, it's still undone. Hopefully I'll get to it soon. When I do I'll let you know.

Today I'm back at my voluntary job with all the hard work, organisation and effort that takes. I adore my job, it gives me much more than it takes, and I think it keeps me on my toes. I work with a lot of young people there, as well as families and the aged, so it keeps me grounded and well informed. We are in the process of building a new building to house our Centre so there is a lot of work going on with that - meetings, phones calls, letters etc., but there are also the day to day things, like lighting the fire in the morning and providing hot tea and hospitality to our visitors, that give me a lot of joy. I am the manager of the Centre so there is a lot of responsibility that goes with the job but it is a part of my life that I embrace as life affirming and significant. We look after the homeless and disadvantaged and as many of our clients are the same age as my own sons, I try to create an atmosphere of acceptance and love that I would like my boys to find if ever they needed this kind of help. I am ever thankful they don't and I show my appreciation for that by helping provide it for others.

I hope you have a wonderful week full of satisfying work and some quiet time to balance it and regenerate you. To all the new visitors, and I'm always surprised how many of you arrive each week, I welcome you and hope you find what you're looking for here.