The pohutukawa is kind of like our Antipodean Christmas tree, and this bright one in the neighbour's garden inspired me to do a bit of embroidery in bright red and pink. I made this miniature framed embroidery and fitted it into a small metal frame. I made a few more for gifts this year, they…

I've finished my journalism course for the year, so I don't have to make the early-morning walk into the city for a month or so. I spent this morning doing some pretty dull household tasks, but the truth is it feels amazing to be thinking about Christmas, summer, holidays, etc.  It was so warm and…

Thank you for all your kind words on my last post and the emails too. It's an amazing feeling to have finished (most of) the work on the book and I'm glad you like it.  I've been thinking for some years about publishing my patterns and this seems like a good way to do it:…

I've been writing a book! Sweet and Simple Handmade is what I've been working on for the past 12 months, and today I can finally let you in on the secret.  I'm happy to say everything's finished now and it will be released in April next year. The book features 25 projects for you to…

Here are some rabbits, made from various fabrics- linen, cashmere and velveteen. They have very long ears, lined with soft cotton for strokeability. There are just four of these- I ran out of time to make more! The rabbits are the last things I've made for my table at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair…

After making the hawkweed collage last week, I was inspired to make an entire series of summer botanical collages, all inspired of course by the great Mary Delaney's own paper garden. For this set, I made paper versions of some of the plants I've been seeing on my walks to town each morning, sometimes growing…

No, I don't mean flowers made of hair, although I did see some of those once at an art exhibition, and they were attractive and unpleasant at the same time, if you know what I mean. These are much less adventurous: some flower hairclips I made from scraps of wool felt. They are based on…

We had some rhubarb in the garden so I tried a rhubarb recipe from this beautiful book by Jamie Oliver. It's 'rhubarb and sticky stem ginger crumble' and I can highly recommend it if you're a R fan- or a ginger fan for that matter. We ate it hot, with some whipped cream. The recipe…

I got out the tiny silver scissors again and did a bit of collage last night. I made this one inspired by a weed that's all over the garden, and my wildflower identification book tells me it's called hawkweed.  That's a kind of tiny dandelion-type flower, of which 300 different specimens can be found in…

There's a new issue of Extra Curricular out now, and I'm very excited to have a bit of work inside. I did some watercolour illustrations for this Field Guide written by Anissa. This, the 10th issue, is all about self-sufficiency and there are articles on keeping bees, community gardening, making clothes as well as iceblocks, terrariums…