A while ago I wrote about a fabric design course I was taking, and at the end of year we received our finished fabrics in the mail, all the way from Spoonflower in the USA. The course was taught by my friend Karuna, who is a clever textile designer originally from London. She offers short…

I made this birthday gift for a friend who has just bought a house with a big garden, and is about to get started with planting things. It's just a simple drawstring bag with a plant applique, and inside I put a vintage gardening fork, some seed-raising trays and a set of seeds from our…

So far this summer, I've been spending most of the time keeping children busy and fed and entertained. You know how it is. And there has also been some time with my sunhat on, digging around in the garden. The progress on that front is that we have a couple of new and large garden…

Here are some more of the things I made last year- these were finished between June and December. I certainly had a lot of fun in my workroom in 2010! But now I must have a thorough clean-up in there – I'm a truly untidy worker. I've decided though, that rather than being less messy, I…

things i made jan-june 2010, originally uploaded by tiny happy. I've been thinking about 2010, and how it was quite a busy one and somewhat stressful at times. But, looking through my flickr account (which I use as a kind of record of my projects) I see that a lot of that said busy-ness took…

Happy New Year to you, dear blog-readers. It's been a lovely long summer holiday here so far, with the days passing by in a blur of sunshine, sea-swimming, reading, seeing friends and eating berries. And lots of other foods, too, of course, because that's what a summertime Christmas seems to be all about, at our…

Dear readers, I wish for a very happy Christmas and calendar-year's end to you all. Thank you for reading my ramblings and craft obsessions this year. I appreciate you all very much.  Have a great holiday season, and I'll see you again in the New Year. Melissa XXXX

Here are a few last-minute gifts I've finished off this week, and now they're all wrapped and nestled under the Christmas tree. Phew. But just in case you're still looking for ideas for things to make for little ones, I thought I'd share these. I have a tiny and sweet baby newphew named Leo, and…

We're getting all Christmassy around here with baking and wrapping gifts and friends visiting. I made a couple of Christmas cakes- using the recipe I seem to mix up every year- it's a variation on this one. I always think I should try something adventurous, but we all love eating this one so it's no…

We had a quiet kind of adventure, staying with friends in an old and rustic bach a few hours' away. It was so nice to escape town just before Christmas. There was a storm and it rained almost the entire time we were there. So that was a shame but it didn't really matter, because…