tiny happy

Greetings from the end of October! I hope this finds you very well, blog friends.

I thought I'd stop in to share some of my recent makes and photos with you. Thank you, as always, for reading!

I had a birthday recently and took a trip to the South Island to see family. I always get overwhelmed with the beauty of what's outside the plane window. The bluest water, folds of land that appears pinched and pleated by fingers. Sparkling light reflecting off the clouds. And the thought that it's always up there, shifting and changing, but you don't think of it until you're in a plane and see it for yourself.

I was lucky enough to be given some beautiful handmade gifts for my birthday. I wanted to share some of them with you. Above you can see a collection of tiny vases, a gift from my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. The 'dipped' ones I think are from a Danish company called räder and came in a boxed set. And the other two are from Nelson ceramic artist Melanie Drewery. I've been having a lot of fun arranging them with tiny bouquets of flowers and ferns. 

My mum gave me a tea towel she wove herself from cotton thread. I think it's so beautiful, nearly too beautiful to be used if I'm honest. She insists it should be used though, so I will bring it out (and try not to get cross when someone uses it to pull a bubbling lasagne out of the oven – arrgh!) I love the pinks and oranges she chose for the design. 

Below that you can see those most delicate little crocheted earrings, kowhai stems. These were a gift from one of my oldest school friends, Sarah-Jane. They were made by a Japanese-born, NZ artist named Yoko Imai. I love kowhai and am completely in awe of the artist's fine work.

And in the top photo you can see a gift I made for my mum – a new project bag for her knitting. Truth be told, she already has quite of these, but then again she has a lot of projects on the go…

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Finally, I wanted to do one last shout-out to Soul Craft Festival, another October treat. I've loved popping in with my coffee and knitting over the course of each month to listen to the discussions and presentations. In the photo above, I was listening to Leeyong Soo talk about rethinking materials and re-fashioning second-hand goods. Really inspiring stuff.

In this post, I wanted to share with you my progress on the Stephen West Mystery Knitalong, as mentioned last time. But then I remembered that we're not supposed to post spoilers until the knitalong is finished. So if you'd like to see how mine looks so far, you can click through to my Insta post here. 

Take care, and I'll see you here again soon!

Melissa X X