Wishing you a very happy Christmas and new year season. It's the end of the working year here, so I'm signing off for a few weeks.  Thank you for visiting my blog this year. See you in 2018. Melissa X X X X X X X X 

It feels like life has sped up over the past few weeks, and now both kids have finished school for the year and all the events that came with that are done and dusted. Hooray! Tom planted a small native daisy when we first moved into this house, and over those years it's sat on…

Hello! It's most definitely flowering season here, but there hasn't been much rain to keep everything thriving. I hope this finds you well and keeping warm (or cool, depending on your hemisphere). Last week I found an old wooden flower press in a second-hand shop and cleaned it up for a friend who has been…

Hi there, I hope this finds you well. It's December already! Despite having a thousand things on my 'to-do' list this weekend, I found myself sewing together all the scraps of fabric that were stacked in piles on worktable (to be fair, 'tidy up worktable' was on my list) which took the good part of…

This last part of the calendar year is really speeding along, isn't it? The sun has been shining brightly nearly every day here in Wellington, although it's a bit cooler and cloudier today. I thought I'd share a few pictures from this past week, or should I say, mostly show off a beautiful bunch of…

Hi! Happy new week to you. I finished a pair of blue socks a while back but just realised I never posted them here. They're to be a gift for someone close, and I really enjoyed making them. I used beautiful hand-dyed Knitsch sock yarn and a pattern I made up as I went along, which…

Good morning!  Last week I finished a knitting project that had been languishing in the basket for too long: a lovely soft possum yarn jumper for Keira. I had started it as something for myself – but realised it was going to be too small when I was about halfway through. Then it sat in…

Hello! Hope you've had a good weekend with some time to relax.  This past weekend has come and gone in a flash – they do that, don't they? Keira and I had found ourselves with a free Saturday morning so we did a bit of sewing. K's keen to learn to make some clothes for…

It's been quite a beautiful spring here so far, with some typical wild wind racing through, but also some calm warm days. And of course all the best flowers are out – blossoms, poppies, and roses. The roses in the top picture are growing in a wild tangle up a trellis beside our front door.…

I wanted to show you some of the treasures that came home with me from our recent trip away. As you know I love to check out second-hand and antique shops, especially in small towns. The kids don't love it so much – but they had books and their phones, so didn't seem to mind…