tiny happy

I've always thought of violets and pansies as being like small faces, looking forwards or upwards. These little ones came out of the garden. I think the person who planted the garden before we arrived liked the colour purple, because we also have stasis, lavender, violets and some other purple plants whose names are a mystery to me.

They inspired some hand-sewn pins for today's shop update. I'm thinking this will be the last time I update my shop for the year. It's getting close to the cut-off date for Christmas postage overseas (a couple more days, they say) although there's a bit longer to order anything within New Zealand.

Thank you very much for your support of my work throughout the year! I love being able to do what I do, even if the man in our local post office gets tired of me occasionally. Maybe I will make him a Christmas cake.

Spent a bit of time this morning playing around with papers from the recycling bin. A little bit of collage-therapy in a busy week.

Hope your Tuesday is going happily.

Here are some photos I took on the weekend. Here, where early summer is in full swing, everything is humming, buzzing, unfurling. We had sweet peas climbing, icecream melting, a cousin from the north island staying, sundresses on the beach, a tea party in a rose garden and a late-night movie date. 

All the while feeling so grateful for everything we have. My heart goes out to the miners and their families on the West Coast– you're always in our thoughts.

This is an Antipodean-style summer wreath I made a while ago as a project for Extra Curricular magazine, the fourth issue of which has just now arrived in local bookshops here. Extra Curricular is a beautifully-produced little book put together by Ellie in Auckland, (I was lucky enough to be featured in the first edition) and this issue comes with an extra little booklet of holiday activities. The wreath I made originally (from branches and leaves of the bottle brush tree, before it flowered, and a paua shell and strawflowers for colour) has now rather dried out as its been hanging in a very sunny part of the house. But the branches now make a good frame for tucking new foliage and dried flowers into. 

I wish you a happy and peaceful weekend. See you on Monday.

We have a bottle brush tree growing like crazy in our garden at the moment- aren't the flowers kind of outrageous? It's not a tree I'd think of to plant myself, but now I have one, I really like it. It's covered in bees and smells gorgeous, and I love the seed pods that grow on the branches and look like tiny wooden bells. 

I found some vintage barkcloth in my local op-shop recently that made me think instantly of bottle-brush flowers. I made a bag from it which is part of my etsy shop update today. 

Hope you're having a good Wednesday, so far!

I was excited to be asked to contribute to the third Spoonful zine, which is published in Australia by Anthea Krook and has just been released into the world. I submitted a project ('sprout pins') and some of my photographs, and it was a thrill to get my copy in the letterbox yesterday and see them in print. There's also illustration work by Anna Emilia Laitinen, whom I greatly admire.

Spoonful is a sweet little publication, with poems, artwork, prose and inspiring thoughts. There is also a Spoonful blog here, and an etsy shop, too. Thank you, Anthea, for inviting me to join in this time.

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And now for something not so lovely. Please send any thoughts and prayers to our 29 coal miners who are currently trapped underground on the West Coast. My heart goes out to them and their families, friends and co-workers. Please let them be okay. Thank you.

It's about the time of year where I start to think about sending small gifts and cards to my friends living overseas, and that means trying to send everything before the Christmas-crazy-panic sets in around here. I made a watercolour + collage card last week, inspired by the leaves of a tree we have in our garden, then took them downtown to get professionally printed. We've no pines or mistletoe in the backyard here, nor snowflakes falling, but there are always plenty of green leaves and old pieces of crochet work for inspiration. 

These simple little clay ornaments were made to hang in the window for Christmas-time. They were very simple, as you can see. Just a disc of polymer clay, smoothed and rounded, with some sort of decoration and embroidery thread for hanging. I tried pressing pieces of old lace into some of them, but the pattern diminished after the baking process. I also tried pressing a piece of pine branch into one, and some forget-me-not flowers (the last photo above.) These are great fun to make with kids.

I have a recipe up on Jessica's blog today- she is featuring lots of sweet treats from around the world.

I hope you have a lovely weekend! I'm hoping to do some gardening and some socialising. It sort of feels like it's been a long week. See you on Monday.

I don't think I'm suffering from sadness this week, but I am enjoying the calming nature of all these blues around me. Truth be told, it all started when I rediscovered this amazing blue herringbone linen on my fabric shelf. I had set it aside for a summer dress, but there's still enough of it to make other things as well. I used it to make some things for my shop update this week. I love the look of white (especially old, white crocheted things) against it. A bit like the edges of waves as they break out at sea.

I was sent some vintage embroidery books by Ellen, thank you! They are from Holland, and date from the 1970's. I love looking through them and dreaming of having my own cross-stitched tea-cosy. The designs are really beautiful and intricate- geometric but with feeling, if that makes sense. I love them. I'm thinking that one of these European cross-stitch patterns will be a great project over the summer holiday.

I noticed that quite a few of the cross-stitched designs were worked in blue and white- and inspired by this, I tried embroidering some jasmine from the garden onto blue linen- I realised that I almost always stick to the same old colour palette of green and natural. But I like the white on blue.