"Mama, why do you always use the grey and black threads?," asked someone recently. So I'm trying to remember the other colours in my embroidery supplies tin. This free-form embroidery was worked one evening after dinner, by the fire, while supervising maths homework. (Not really supervising, the children left me and my maths skills behind…

Couldn't resist sharing some more vistas from our trip to the sea. These were breathlessly taken while hiking a precariously steep path, wondering to myself whether I really needed the camera and down jacket. The view at the top, and the childrens' delight at having trekked up there, was worth it. My favourite part: looking…

It's the school holidays, and Tom and I got the chance to take a couple of days off work and head out of the city with some friends. We stayed in a cabin on a sheep station at the edge of the sea. These photos were taken at dusk, shortly after my friend Jess looked…

These flowers were brought back from the park by a group of nieces, tightly clutched between hot fingers and tied together with ivy vine.  We had a pretty gorgeous time here over Easter, with so many cousins, aunts, uncles and friends in one house. Quite a bit of sighing (and washing) has happened since yesterday,…

Happy Easter, if you're celebrating this weekend. Such a golden, lovely time of year here at the bottom of the world. We have candles, walnuts, roast vegetables and wine, and a table laid for 14, and that includes eight young ones! They have chocolate eggs and rabbits instead of the wine.  Wishing you a happy…

In the absence of any sunshine today I thought I'd have a look back through my blog at what I was doing two Aprils ago. Makes me wish I was sitting down making stuff, and eating passionfruit, instead of catching the bus in the rain. Hope your April is going well so far. Did you…

I went to the local vege market over the weekend and admired the piles of field mushrooms, root vegetables, feijoas, new-season apples and kiwifruit. And we were lucky enough to have three separate gatherings over the weekend- so all in all, I've probably eaten a bit too much. How lucky we are to live this…

Rain, mist, wind and cold this week. I've been working on a few projects of the warming kind.  The second photo above shows the draught stoppers for our old sash windows I mentioned back here. I was inspired by the design in this Lotta book, and used a scratchy old wool blanket to make enough…

I'm looking forward to teaching the hand-carved stamps and printing class at Handmade again this year. You can read more about the event here. This will be my third year hosting this class, so I'm gathering together some new designs and resources ready for the students. Last weekend I carved a butterfly stamp (from some…

Inside an old book I found a collection of pressed leaves I remember collecting and carefully arranging with Keira a couple of years ago. We had forgotten all about them. Most are ferns and native shrub leaves, and they've retained their deep green and brown hues.  We did some sketches of the leaves, and I…