tiny happy

My friend Helen sent me a pad of watercolour paper made up into postcards: blank on one side with address lines and a stamp-square on the other side. Something about those little pieces of lovely paper made me want to get out my paints, so I made some postcards to send to friends. They are faux-scientific cards: I tried to draw in a very controlled way, but it didn't last for very long.

The poppy card was inspired by my garden: the first poppy in there opened up today. It's so big and dramatic and still a little wrinkled from its weeks spent tightly folded up in the bud. I don't have tansy or violets in the garden, but I can dream.

I've had this tree-silhouette fabric sitting on my shelf for a while now, and finally let myself cut into it. I love the natural tree print combined with rather fanciful colourings: pink, rust-red, blue and grey. I used it to make these cushion covers for my shop update this week. They have matching backings made from wool fabric. 

Is it too early to be thinking of Christmas presents? (Sorry for mentioning it, if it is!) I was thinking that I might try and find more of this tree-fabric to make pillow covers for friends. In addition, I'm hoping the children will design some more of these, so we can make finger-puppet families of animals for their cousins this Christmas. If I start now, it might happen…

I found the picture of the lovely woman surrounded by flowers in a vintage gardening book: the 1958 edition of Yates Garden Guide. It's a great book, filled with lots of helpful information and some pretty interesting photos of people holding vegetables and flowers. I fell in love with that picture, and the way the lady is just plonked there amongst all the hydrangeas, as if she's part of an interesting wedding decoration.

I'm planning to plant a few of these hydrangeas myself in a shady spot in our garden. But it needs a bit of tidying up and digging over first. Until then though, I did some hand-sewing and made these hydrangea-inspired hairbands. The petals are wool felt sewn to black velvet ribbon.

I did a quite a bit of work in the garden this weekend, and the end result of that was a giant pile of weeds/wildflowers ready for the compost heap. Even though the dandelion plant seems to be the most pervasive in our garden, I can't help but admire it, anyway. I think it's beautiful and I like the downy seeds, patiently waiting inside the closed bud.

I kept a few flowers to draw, and designed these tea-cups from the drawings, using yellow and black ceramic ink on vintage Crown Lynn mugs: they are cream-coloured with a speckled pattern that makes me think of farm eggs.

The biggest project of the school holidays has been finished: sewing curtains for the house. Well, just three pairs, but they were large windows. This was a big job and I'm very relieved to have finished. I used a kind of thick, slightly textured cotton in a natural shade, and lined them with a fine white cotton. I knew I wanted to hand-print the curtains in some way, and I was hoping to achieve a kind of simple, airy effect (we have dark wooden floors and lots of wooden furniture.) In the end I settled on a set of drawings I'd made of fern fronds found in my parents' garden. I drew these on to freezer paper and my dear, sweet and patient Tom cut each one out and used them as a stencil on the newly sewn curtains. We printed the ferns in white ink, running along the bottom of each drop. I found this book recently at a library sale, and the chapter on simple lined curtains was useful to read before beginning.

Actually, this project was quite fun- not at all as bad as I imagined it would be. It helped that we listened to 90's pop songs and drank black coffee while we were working, though. Even so, I think I might take a (long) break before starting work on curtains for the other rooms.

Hope you have a good weekend ahead.

Here are some photos I took whilst walking along the track in this National Park yesterday. It was one of those extremely bright and shiny days- everything seemed to glow in the sunlight. It's lovely being able to take the children walking now that their legs are a bit longer- even though a little bit of chocolate was still required as an incentive. As well as the golden-sand beach at the end, of course.

A tangle of jasmine from the garden and another plant, which I think is called a hardenbergia. And two new second-hand finds: this amazing old framed embroidery featuring a swan and some rushes, and an old Crown Lynn milk jug. The mantlepiece is happy.

We're planning a walking trip into our nearest National Park tomorrow, so I'll take a short break from the blog and etsy. See you later on in the week!

On the weekend we got so excited about October arriving, that we set up a little outside area for eating and reading on the front deck. After a month or so of searching for some outside furniture, we decided to go for the recycled option, and bought this old 1950's mint-green formica table from the Recycling Centre. We also found four old chairs (wooden with chrome frames) and a palm-leaf printed sun umbrella complete with tassled edging- I think the whole lot cost us $20. The table is quite easy to move around, so we can pop it inside the shed if it rains. 

After giving it all a good scrub and stringing up some fabric flags for good measure, we joyfully ate dinner outside last night. Even if we did have to wear warm jerseys and hurry back inside as soon as we were finished eating. 

I was in our local bookstore the other day buying a gift, and couldn't resist getting this book for our own shelf: 'Seasons' by Blexbolex/ Albin Michel Jeunesse and reprinted by the NZ company Gecko Press. It's a seriously beautiful book, to hold and to look at, and has been enjoyed by Tom and I and the children equally. It's one of those children's books for grown-ups, or vice versa. The prints are quite simple, but I find the colours and textures of them unexpected and special, and the language that accompanies them to be thought-provoking. I've posted a few more pages from the book in my flickr stream, too.

I'm not sure how the prints are made- perhaps they're screen or block-printed- but having this book sitting on our coffee table has encouraged me to unpack our lino-cutting tools and make some prints of my own. Hope you have a great weekend, blog-friends.

It's cold and somewhat dark and misty outside today, and when I went for a walk around the neighbourhood, I noticed how delicate all the plants and trees looked amongst the grey. As if each leaf and branch was shivering in the half-light.  I made some things for my shop update that i think are rather delicate-looking: antique lace-covered purses and two embroidered pins.

I hope you're having a good day, blog friends. I'm planning on spending the next couple of days making curtains: wish me luck!