tiny happy

Hello! Signs of spring are starting to appear here. I love these little blue flowers, the names of which I always forget. They don't seem to mind though and cheerfully come out of their bulbs regardless. The days are getting a little longer too, and the general bite of winter is not so sharp. 

I hope you are well, dear reader? Thank you for the lovely comments on my last post. Interesting that knitted rabbits are on your mind, too. I have started work on my angora version and will report back soon.

I also made the kimono jacket I mentioned in my last post. I used the Kochi Kimono design by Papercut Patterns and some drapey linen and it's already proven to be a useful garment to wear to work.

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This week I've re-discovered some music I hadn't heard in a long time: Joanna Newsom's Divers. I love this album, and was very pleased to find the entire thing online as I seem to have lost all the music I purchased on i-tunes a few years ago. 

I'm reading Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton partly because of the beautiful cover design and the fact I love hearing about other people's clothes, and partly because of a terrible Guardian review that made this book compelling reading for me. 

Do bad reviews tempt you to read or listen to something, too? I'm not sure if this is a normal reaction.

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I wanted to tell you about some very simple, but delicious biscuits. I recently found a copy of this book that I thought I had lost. It's filled with recipes from old community cookbooks from around New Zealand. The recipes are lovely, and remind me so much of my paternal grandmother, who was a proper old-school Kiwi baker. But the scanned pages of old books, and historical insights are what make Ladies, A Plate extra special.

Anyway, I made some 'coconut whispers' from it which are very simple little cookies, a bit like macaroons. You can find a very similar recipe here. I flavoured mine with the scrapings of a vanilla bean. But you could use anything – almond extract or lemon or maybe rosewater? You can see them above in a great old biscuit tin that my friend Anna gave to me. Old-fashioned biscuits in a proper old tin. Must be time to put the kettle on.