tiny happy

I wanted to send a little handmade gift to a friend, so I made her a set of flower-collaged postcards so she can write to more friends! Snail mail forever. These pressed flowers are leftover from our late-winter garden and include hellebore, jasmine leaves and cyclamen. After arranging the pressed flowers, I covered each card in clear book seal and trimmed around the edges to neaten.

Tom and I took a mid-week break together last week which is a very rare occurrence! We went to Christchurch to listen to Zadie Smith in conversation about reading and essay-writing and generational understanding and so many other things. The trip was Tom's gift to me on my birthday last month and as well as a treat to hear Zadie speak, it was also lovely to escape 'normal life' for 24 hours. The next morning we went exploring around Christchurch and ventured as far as Lyttelton (which is my new favourite small NZ town) for coffee, a steep hill walk, some shopping and general old wooden house and garden admiration, before flying home again.

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Also pictured above: a new project I'm working on slowly in the hope of using up lots of leftover yarn from my stash. And creating a lovely squishy baby blanket in the process, of course! I got the idea from Stephen West's free pattern Garter Squish which is designed for 2 strands of worsted-weight yarn held double, to create a big blanket. My version will be more suitable for a baby, because i'm using one strand of DK weight possum/merino (from a cone I bought at the Woolyarns mill sale last year) held together with fingering-weight merino/silk yarns, of which I have many part-balls in my stash. When one ball of silk runs out, I just replace it with another colour and I really like the marled effect so far! The blanket has an i-cord edging along each side and I think it will be lovely and soft when finished.

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In the last photo, you can see my latest, extremely simple finished project: a new cushion cover. I made this to replace this one (with black swans) which I noticed had several holes where it had worn out! The new cover was made using a square of tree-print linen I found in a fabric market in Osaka when were in Japan earlier this year. So it has very good memories associated with it. You can't really see from this photo, but there are tiny gold buds on the ends of the branches of each tree. I used brown linen to create an envelope-style closure on the back of the cushion.

Have you heard Love is Everywhere? It's a newish song by Wilco that I first heard in a cafe last week. A new favourite that you might like too!

See you soon, lovely friends.