tiny happy

Thank you for all your good wishes for the fair I attended on the weekend. It was really well organised and supported, and I left the big city feeling inspired by the lovely things I'd seen there. It looks like Auckland has a fabulous crafty scene, and i got to meet Heleen and Jennie, among other blog-friends. And thank you very much to those blog readers who came to say hello!

This blog post is really a little ode to the manuka tree that leans over our verandah. When I woke up on Sunday morning and looked out the bedroom window, I noticed it was proudly in flower and the petals were covering the ground like pink confetti. I love the contrast between the papery-delicate flowers and spiky, hardy foliage. Manuka is native to NZ and some parts of Australia, and is a useful plant: manuka products contain strong antibacterial properties. Manuka honey is the best. I love this tree very much. Thank you to whoever planted it.

I made some velveteen rabbits this week: two are blue and one is black with black and cream polka-dot ears. I love how long and touchable the rabbits' ears are. A few rabbits, and the illustrated cups were the last things i wanted to make for my table at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair tomorrow.

If you plan on coming along, please come and say hi! I've not been to the Auckland Art Gallery before, but am looking forward to it. Especially doing a bit of shopping- it looks like there will be lots of lovely things to buy at the show.

Wishing you a happy and relaxing weekend.

 
 After yesterday's post, I had a few emails asking if I could share my bread recipe. I do love to make my own bread, but I am also quite lazy. Luckily I have discovered a very easy and quick way to make a loaf of sourdough or ciabatta without too much effort or time. 

You probably know the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day which was published a few years ago and was subsequently featured on lots of blogs. The book is by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois (they have a blog here.) I borrowed my Mum's copy and was pretty excited by the whole process. I just make the basic recipe as given in the front of the book, which yields a big bowl of bread dough that you can keep in the fridge for up to two weeks. From this bowl I can make two medium-sized loaves of ciabatta which we eat with soup or for lunch with cheese and salad, etc. It also makes really nice bread for breakfast- it has that chewy, slightly holey consistency. 

Another way in which it it's a great recipe is that there's hardly any kneading involved, and you don't even need to wash out the bowl you use for the dough- you can just mix up another batch and it all adds to the sourdoughy goodness. I just keep a big sack of flour in my pantry and some dried yeast and sea salt, so I can make bread at any given moment. (I don't have a pizza peel like it states in the recipe- I just use an ordinary baking tray.)

When I was looking up the book to write about bread today, I discovered that the basic recipe I use is actually published online, right here. So now you can try the method yourself. I do recommend the book though, as it has heaps of amazing recipes and variations for all sorts of specialty breads (like wholewheat, baguettes, etc) made this way.

Happy bread-making and eating!

Tom's aunt Fini gave the children a great vintage book called 'Indoor and Outdoor Gardening for Young People' by Cynthia and Alvin Koehler (1969) along with a packet of cress seeds. These seeds have been Keira's pet project over the past week- she helped to plant them in a plastic container, water them and check on their progress all with the utmost care.  Fini kindly gave her a water hyacinth for her birthday in a special vase and that has also been very exciting. It's been sitting on a sunny windowsill, slowly unfolding. 

The little garden of cress grew very quickly and yesterday the children ate their first cress sandwich, which K declared to be delicious. The cress sandwiches reminded me of growing seeds inside eggshells when I was little- do you remember doing that too? We would draw faces on the shells and then the growing cress was like hair. I think those egg-heads should be our next indoor gardening project.

When I was packing for our house move, I discovered that I owned a lot of ceramic pieces- especially jugs and cups. Really, lots of them. I was brave and donated many to the second-hand store, but kept my favourite ones. 

Turns out they fit perfectly on the mantlepiece and noone seems to mind me making collections of things around the house. I love creamy-coloured things, especially when the sun shines through the living room window onto them.

Hope you're having a good day today.

It's been a busy weekend here- I managed to get some things made for my table at this show on Saturday, including some new needlebooks and a collection of pencil cases made from brightly coloured linen. 

The house was filled up with children for a good part of the weekend- running around and playing games and consuming lots of crackers and mandarins. Some friends of ours with young children live next door and it was so great to see the kids running from house to house and playing in the park altogether. We even had a visit from their sweet dog, Chevy, who we've loved for a long time. The girls placed him on the sofa and wrapped him in quilts and blankets. He was very patient.
 

I've been doing a bit of embroidery today, inspired by bits and bobs from the winter garden. Slowly but surely making some linen needlebooks for my stall at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair. I've been feeling a little reluctant to venture into my sewing room these days – it's much warmer by the fire! 

Wishing you a happy and restful weekend.

 
The children and I discovered a rough walking-track near our house which had recently been cleared. Growing wild next to a tree stump, I found a strawflower plant. I haven't seen these flowers in a long time, but I remember them growing in my Mum's garden when I was a child. They are so brightly coloured and the petals are crisp, like straw. They're sometimes called 'everlasting flowers'.

Back at home, when I was looking through a folder of papers, I found this image that I'd torn from last year's calendar (which featured botanical paintings from Japan)- I do believe they are also strawflowers. I love them.

Speaking of wildflowers, I have a guest post published here at bliss in a teacup today.

Also- I'm honoured to be featured here on the blog for the Auckland Art and Craft Fair which I'll be attending on the 24th of July. It looks like it will be great: it will be held in the Auckland Art Gallery with Frankie magazine as a sponsor. If you live nearby and are planning to come along, I'd love to meet you.

A good thing about our new house is that it has two lemon trees in the garden and they're fairly laden right now in midwinter. The kids are on holiday from school this week, so we've been doing a bit of baking. This morning we made lemon cookies with our own lemons. 

We used a recipe from New Zealand Gardener magazine (their annual 'Garden Diary') and the finished cookies were rather like lemon-infused shortbread. I found this recipe online which looks pretty similar. 

The kids enjoyed cutting out the shapes and icing them. (I made up a little bit of topping by mixing icing sugar with lemon juice and then we sprinkled grated lemon rind on top for 'more yellow' and flavour.) 

Don't forget to add Keira's favourite song-of-the-moment for extra happiness: Nina Simone singing Here Comes the Sun.

Keira's been asking to learn the violin for months now, so I bought a tiny 1/4-sized one online and my Mum has kindly offered to give her lessons. So far she is practicing holding the bow and instrument, putting rosin on the bow, and opening and shutting the case. It's all very exciting.

When I was growing up, my mother, brother and sister all played the violin and I remember the soft silk scarves they would so carefully wrap them in between practices and when packing them away. Keira and I took a trip to our local antique store, and she chose this lemon-yellow piece of silk. It's very old and almost threadbare around the edges. I wonder who it used to belong to?