Thank you for the well-wishes re. the chicken pox! K is feeling much better now, after a quiet weekend. She'll have a few more days home from school yet, though. I've been trying to think of ways to entertain her- so far we've been painting, drawing, watching films and making bead necklaces. I…

      K is home from school with the chicken pox. Not fun. But we have been finding some ways to distract from the itchiness. So far they've included staring out the window at the birds eating from our bird-feeder and trying to identify which birds they are from a NZ bird book. We…

    I bought a set of four matching oak chairs from a second-hand store last summer, and last week I finally got around to recovering them. It was a pretty quick and easy job, I'm not sure why I put it off for so long. The fabric is a cotton canvas that I found…

    I wanted to make the kids some small bags in which to carry their toothbrushes, etc when they stay the night at their grandparents' or friends' houses. I was thinking about what I could use to make them waterproof when I came across an old plastic tablecloth in the op shop. Do you…

      A couple of weeks ago at the flea market, I found an amazing old eiderdown- the one in the top picture above. It's made from a silky cotton that is soft with age and has a row of small shell buttons along one edge. I love it very much. After a good…

      Thank you for entering the competition for the calendar over the weekend. I used the random number generator to pick a winner, and that turned out to be Megan of Mousehouse. Hooray! The photos above show a few of the things we've been up to at our place over the last week…

    A couple of nights ago I made a new cover for our coffee plunger, (as well as one for a friend and one for the shop). The beloved coffee press is something I use every day- I made my first cover for it a few years ago now, and elastic was starting to…

    In honour of the beautiful blue skies overhead this week, I made Keira a new blue dress to wear to school. After a bit of experimenting with vintage patterns, I think I finally found a pinafore i'm happy with- it's a combination of a few different designs. It has a zip in the…

    I found a couple of old books at our local Recycling Centre/rubbish tip. The covers had done their dash and the pages had all come apart, with lots of scribbles, etc, so I decided to rescue the good parts and made up some notecard sets. They were the most popular thing on my…

    I was sent a copy of this new publication to review- Cloth magazine, which is published in London four times each year. It's fun to read- with colourful and bright layout and lots of projects to make yourself- from shoulder bags to needlebooks… even a floral-printed bikini which is something I've never thought of…