Three homely things today: a bit of weeding in the garden (brought the ferns and daisies in with me afterwards), some 'winter branch' embroidery and a feijoa tart. The feijoa trees in my parents' orchard just keep on giving… I think they're into their third month now of harvesting these little beauties. We had about…

Thanks for all your well-wishes for me over the weekend- I had lots of fun at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair, and it was lovely to meet so many blog readers and friends. So thank you for coming to say hello, if you did. It was a busy place, the Aotea Centre, with a…

I got a few of my watercolour paintings made into prints for my stall at the fair this weekend, including these 'bird portraits'. I wanted to have a whole flock of native birds but only ended up painting two: the ruru (morepork) and riroriro (grey warbler.) I chose those birds because they have such great…

I used the wintersweet branches on our mantlepiece as inspiration when designing some new coffee cups. I want to take a few pairs of these with me to Auckland on the weekend for this fair. It's pretty fun to draw over plain ceramic ware- I've been collecting the cream cups for a while on my…

In a post last week, I mentioned that I was enjoying discovering the Art-Nouveau botanical watercolours of C.R. Mackintosh. Then over the weekend, I was kindly sent a collection of his prints by a blog-reader, Jo. Aren't they beautiful? I love the flock of birds emerging from the bouquet in the second photo. Looking through the…

The Handmade symposium was a brilliant event- I had a great time in Wellington over the weekend. It was fun to show groups of students how to make a few items, and help out with a bit of stitching along the way. The best part for me was the obvious delight as a needlebook was…

Autumn and spring at once: a dried sunflower head, the seeds pearly and hard as porcelain. And the first narcissus of the season which could be made from paper. Little delicate faces looking out. Isn't it amazing that those sunflower seeds are so geometric, so mathematical? Plants are very mysterious, in my opinion. Have you…

The HANDMADE symposium is happening this weekend in Wellington, so I've been getting organised for that over the last few days. I'm teaching a few classes, and (while I'm actually quite nervous about the teaching) I'm looking forward to meeting lots of crafty people and soaking all the handmade goodness and Wellington atmosphere. Aren't those…