Yarn Along and a bit of babble.....

Hello!

I am joining in with Ginny's Yarn Along today, and am still hooking away at the Cutie Patootie Pants.  

I am not sure if stripes were the best thing to do for these pants, as I didn't realise the pattern changed stitch widths within the rows, so my stripes are going to be thicker on the backside than the front.  

Oh well, I will see how they turn out anyway.

It was my birthday last week and I received a couple of lovely books, one of which was this one, 

'Whole Larder Love' by Rohan Anderson.  

(I seem to be reading a lot of non fiction, practical type books at the moment, ones you can dip in and out of as you like)

This cookbook is full of gorgeous photos and lovely little snippets of story telling about his food love affair.  I am not sure if I will actually cook a lot of the recipes, they are quite adventurous for a house of fussy, plain eaters, but I love where he is coming from with the food he makes.  

I am passionate about growing as much food in our garden as we can, and just love knowing I have been able to provide parts of our meals from outside the backdoor.  

We are a long way from self sufficient, (and am happy to support our local farmers for things that are beyond our capabilities), but I think there is so much satisfaction and sense of 'worthwhileness' in food gardening, I really don't know why everyone doesn't give it a go!!  It makes me really happy!

But I digress, back to the book, there are a lot of recipes for wild game 

(rabbit, hare, venison, duck, yabbies)

which is something I don't cook (or hunt, for that matter), but you never know, maybe if I'm feeling a little wild I might give the duck risotto a crack!  

Speaking of books, I have gone a little crazy recently on Book Depository, and seem to have parcels arriving every few days with lovely, interesting books for me to pour over, so I thought I might do a 'book sharing' post one day a week till I have shown you what I have bought.  

Trust me, there is a lot of lovely, colourful, inspiring, booky goodness coming your way! 

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Well, it has been a rather emotional, draining and long couple of weeks around here, but we got through the funeral and gave Jack a send off I think he would have loved. 

 Some positive things come from such a stressful time too, the strong bonds of family and friends, and a deeper appreciation of how lucky we are to have one and other,  and the great lives we are actually living right now. 

I'll be stopping to smell the roses of life and giving thanks for just being here in this moment, in this family, in this place.  It is a lucky feeling.   

I was feeling a bit nihilistic, the other day, you know, 'what's the point to doing anything, nothing really matters in the big picture, our lives are so fleeting, why bother with anything, there is no meaning to doing anything....'  that kind of depressing thinking.  Not like me at all.

I lost my purpose briefly, and so now I am trying to make sure I focus on the good, lucky life I have, and that the purpose of life is to actually get out there and live it, see where it takes you and make the most of each new day. I am sure that is what Jack and my grandpa would want. (my grandpa died on the morning of Jack's funeral, how's that for timing!) Lucky for me Gary is a very positive husband and keeps reaffirming all the good things we have got going for us.

Ok, getting a bit deep (morbid) there, time to finish up I think!  Sorry about that little tangent, I don't usually write about this sort of thing, but it's kind of how I am feeling at the minute, I am sure I will be back to my happy self shortly, I am going to crochet my way to happier days!

Oh, and thank you all for the fantastic response you gave my Christmas decorations, you are all so nice and supportive in this crafty bloggy community.

And yes, I will put together a tutorial on how I made them so you can all have a go at a bit of

 Crochet Christmas Cheer. Keep an eye out for it soon.

Um.... I think that's all for tonight, 

see yay later!