tiny happy

It's been a week of hand-sewing projects here, as I get another set of embroidered project bags made for Loop in London. I've been quite slow with this batch, but I hope to post them off this week. 

Another hand-sewn project I worked on recently was the little cat you can see in the second photo above. I made this for my niece who is nearly four. She came to stay with us recently, so I had this ready for her arrival. The pattern is called 'Fern the Cat' and I found it in my copy of Making Magazine (Issue 4: Lines)

I really love to make miniature things like this and it was fun to make Fern's dress and satchel, and knit her a shawl, too. I used my finest knitting needles and some silk yarn scraps.

Erika Barratt designed the beautiful wee pattern and you can also buy it separately from her website. She makes the most amazing handmade ornaments and toys. You can see more of her work here.

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I've just finished reading Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life, by Yiyun Li. The writer begins, “What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance?” and explores big questions about life and literature. It made me think deeply and I loved it. The next book on my bedside table is Blue Self-Portrait by Noemi Lefebvre, which was a gift from my brother and sister in law, and I'm looking forward to opening that this evening.

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It's quite a busy time of year, with finishing up work projects and end of year parties and kids' events, etc. As always I have ideas for a hundred fun craft projects swimming around in my mind, but I am trying to accept that I'll only be able to achieve a couple of them! I hope you are well and not finding these weeks too busy and overwhelming. 

See you next week! XX

I thought it might be nice to share with you some of the very beautiful materials that have come my way in the past little while.
I always enjoy seeing others' supplies… it's a type of vicarious making, I think. So hopefully you don't mind me chatting all about this crafting-to-come!

It was my birthday recently, and my Mum (who is also a lifelong passionate maker) gifted me some of her great handspun yarn (you can see that in the last photo above). It's a gradient, beginning with a deep blue and melding into shades of honey-yellow. 

I think it would make a beautiful version of Elizabeth Zimmerman's baby surprise jacket, and i think it should be the perfect amount to make one for my new niece or nephew who we are expecting at the end of summer. I've wanted to make one of these cardigans since someone kindly made one for Keira when she was a baby.

Mum also sent me an amazing knitting book: Rowan: 40 years, which is a big hard-cover volume filled with stories about the history of Rowan and patterns from the past four decades. I've snapped two of my favourite designs: the colourwork dress because it is glorious but I will probably never make it, and an asymmetric seed-stitch cardigan design called 'Mist' by Kim Hargreaves. Even though the pattern was published in 1999 (the year I left home!) I really love this and can imagine wearing it all the time. But do I want to knit that much seed stitch though…?

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The fabrics you see above are some that I bought myself. Not that i needed any more presents! But I couldn't resist them. The striped linen was bought with the idea of making a top (the 'Array Shirt' from the most recent Making magazine) and I had the idea of making pillowcases with that beautiful Liberty lawn print. It's black with small flowers, bamboo and ferns and the print's name is Stanley. There's a good chance I will find it hard to cut into.

Finally, my generous and clever friend Nikki gave me two skeins of her beautiful mohair-silk in a deep inky-blue/grey. The colourway name is 'Grey that will go with that other grey.' She knows me well! I'm not sure what I'd like to make with this yet, but a big part of the joy is thinking about the possibilities. Thank you, Nikki!

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In other news, I found a beautiful new-to-me podcast on Youtube: Ina Knits: One month of Hygge which is a series of videos by a crafter living in central Norway. Ina says this November project is a way for her to enjoy the best things about an otherwise rainy and dark month where she lives. Watching these clips was like travelling back to Norway for me (we lived there for a year and half ten years ago) and even the plants, buildings and frosty grass looked familiar and brought back memories.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

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Hello! I hope you're well and this week has been a good one for you and yours. 

It really feels like the beginning of summer here right now – and that just coincides with a warm winter sweater I've just finished knitting for my partner Tom. My timing is always a bit strange. Never mind, summertime in Wellington does have its wintry moments.

Tom chose the pattern and yarn. The design is Fort Sweater by Brooklyn Tweed and I bought the yarn (Cascade 220 100% wool) at my favourite shop: Holland Road Yarn in Lyall Bay. You can find more details about the pattern on my Ravelry project page.

I couldn't be happier with the finished sweater, and am so pleased I measured and swatched several times (I really wanted it to work out once I realised how long it would take me to complete!) Tom is also happy and has worn it nearly every day since it came off the needles. He appreciates my knitting so much – it makes me want to knit lots of other things for him. 🙂

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In other spring-related news, I found a great old 1970's basket at our local op shop. I remember these from my childhood and always associate them with kind mums, nice snacks and interesting craft projects waiting within and have secretly always wanted one. So far I've only taken it shopping once, but maybe I will keep my new project in it, ready for weekend picnics and bus trips. 

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A few weekends ago I explored the historical Bolton Street Cemetery garden with Tom's mum Clare and Keira. It's quite a special place, steeped in colonial history with many heritage roses and other old plants. One particular grave was completely covered in tiny lily-of-the-valley plants which reminded me that my great-aunt Sylvia had once sent me one of these plants, dug up from her garden and wrapped in newspaper when I was quite young. It made me feel grown-up and important, that I might be able to look after such a special thing.

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Hello!
It's been a while since I wrote here… for some reason I couldn't seem to get started. Blog-writer's block? Or something. I hope you are well, dear reader, wherever you are in the world.

In the wintertime i bought some supplies for needle punching, after I got a strong desire to make my own rugs and mats from wool. I still want to, but so far I've only managed to make a small cushion with the tool I bought. But it does have poppies on it, and it's quite practical as a chair pad so I'm pleased with it.
 
I bought my Amy Oxford needle punch tool from this shop, after I met the owner Claire at Soul Craft in Melbourne in June. She was selling them along with lots of other lovely supplies. Tom has now made me a good frame for future needle punching (I used an embroidery hoop up until now which isn't ideal but does work) and I have lots of ideas of future projects. I'm just lacking the time, really. But that doesn't stop me dreaming about it!

Speaking of Soul Craft, I loved this recent post of Felicia's called Overthinking Our Stories. She writes about being brave and ambitious in our making lives. I love it!

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It was my birthday recently and I got some really nice gifts, including making-related things. Among them was the latest issue of Making Magazine which is like gold to me. Thanks Mum! 

Along with a great needle punch project in there, I am hoping to make some of the garments within its pages. I think I would wear the Array Shirt a lot in the summer (you can find some pictures, plus an interview with the designer here) and there's also a couple of beautiful knitted cardigan patterns. And a small knitted sheep. I'm now wondering if I have enough time to knit sheep for all my nieces and nephews for Christmas (along with these amazing toys, also designed by Susan B. Anderson.)

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I've also been doing some embroidery in the evenings of late – I had a little waiting list for project bag orders, and I wanted to get those done. Above you can see some colourful daisies embroidered in clusters, but I've also been stitching buillion roses and leaves, ferns and dahlias. For that sort of work I really like to have music to accompany me. I've been listening to the latest Kurt Vile album and Julia Holter.

I hope October is going well for you and you're feeling the spring sunshine on your face (at least, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere!) 

I feel as though I've been preoccupied by two things, lately: work and wool! Work is self-explanatory, but on the wool side of things… I went to the annual sale/open day of local yarn factory Woolyarns just outside of Wellington last week. They have in the past produced wool carpets and other products, along with a range of different yarns, including Zealana yarns, which are some of my favourite because they blend possum fur with merino and other fibres. 

Anyway, the sale was quite amazing and there were cones and cones of natural wool for sale, as well as some blends. I bought a few cones that I'm planning to share with friends and family. Also for sale were lengths of machine knitted possum-blend yarn, made up in a fine moss stitch. The pieces had been cut apart with scissors but I managed to find a beautiful big piece in grey that only needed finishing along one edge. I did that and now i have a lovely soft, warm shawl from fine grey merino/possum blend yarn. It has a dusky-pink ribbed border on each edge. 

I had thought about hand-knitting something like this, so I'm very glad I never embarked on that particular project! With the rustic marled yarn I bought, I plan to knit sturdy slippers using this pattern (Tom and Arlo need new slippers for around the house and before we know it, it will be autumn.)

The hank of cream yarn you can see in the picture above is very rustic and I'd like to try some natural dyeing with it over the summer. I recently bought a punch needle (more on that in my next post!) and I think it would be fun to prepare my own yarn colours for this craft. My dream project for the pale grey/mauve yarn is this cardigan pattern in Laine magazine by Libby Jonson (Truly Myrtle).

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The Wool Lover is a new NZ online journal devoted to all things woollen. It has some lovely articles – I recommend it!

Also in the photos above, you can see some floral embroidery I worked on this week (clusters of daisies on oatmeal linen) and some beautiful real flowers I encountered today. Now that it's lighter and warm in the mornings, I'm trying to get up an hour earlier to walk up the hill before sitting down all day to work. Some days I'm more motivated to get up than others, and once walking I do tend to stop and look at plants on my way, but it is a lovely way to start the day.

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It's been a little longer than usual since I last wrote something here, due to an extra-busy few weeks. But it always feels good to sit down and reflect on the nicest parts of each week. This blog is useful like that.

Friends came to visit and brought me the giant waratah flower you see in the top picture. It's a real beauty, glossy dark red with a sturdy, almost trunk-like stem. Thinking about Australian plants led me to the delicate illustration work of Edith Rewa – isn't it beautiful?

My sister also came to stay and she delivered a bag of juicy lemons from warmer climes (i.e. my parents' orchard in the South Island) and the first thing I made with them was this lemon slice. The best! I'm thinking the remainder of the lemons might have to become lemon curd, or perhaps this cake for afternoon tea in a few hours.

It's the school holidays at the moment, and while Tom and I have been too busy at work to go away anywhere, we have managed to do a few evening things together. The other night the kids and I took our dinner down to a rocky spot on the coast and seagulls swooped around us, desperate for leftovers. It was extremely windy and cold, but even so, brought a hint of Wellington summer evenings. We're all looking forward to longer days and being outside more often.

Tom had a suffrage-themed dinner to attend for his work, and asked me to make a white camellia pin for his jacket. Camellia flowers were a symbol of the suffrage movement in the late 1800s in NZ. Suffragists gave white camellia blooms to parliamentarians who voted to finally allow women to vote.

It was midnight when I got to work on it, so it's not quite as glorious as I'd hoped. But fun to make, anyway! I'm proud of being a descendant of women who signed the Suffrage Petition in 1893, so I might need to refine my design and make some more of these camellias for my own coat.

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I hope this dispatch finds you well, dear reader. See you next week!

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Hello! It's a beautiful spring day here as I type this, and a baby tui is singing outside from the power line. I hope you are well and you've had a good week.

I'm so grateful for these lighter and brighter days. When the sun is shining, it feels like everything is simpler and more possible.

In my last post I mentioned a jersey I had started making for Tom. You can see my progress in the photo above: it's constructed from the bottom up, and I've mostly finished the body knitting. The pattern is Fort Sweater by Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed and it's just a simple design in a checkerboard stitch (which i think is the same as double seed stitch?) In any case, it involves a lot of knitting. But I'm enjoying the project so far and it's quite fun to make something for someone who is excited about wearing the finished garment. When it's my turn to wash the dishes, he says, 'oh no that's okay, I'll do them so you can work on my jersey instead,' which of course is fine with me.

I've also been doing a bit of embroidery when time allows – I have a great new lamp on my worktable which makes it easier for me to stitch at night time. I am planning a small etsy shop update on Sunday September 30. Just a few things, and I'll try to have them listed by 10am NZT.

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Some things I've been enjoying this week are:

The latest collection of clothes by Australian label Nancybird. I absolutely love this online shop and have ordered a few pieces over the years, including a best dress and a big bag that I use everyday for work. But the latest collection is something really special I think – the designs are all inspired by the work of one of the world's first female architects – Marion Mahony Griffin and employ lots of earthy colours like olive green and orange. I ordered a treat for myself last week: the 'lace t-shirt' in a pearly grey knit. (You can see the lovely reusable packaging in the photo above).

This interview with my clever friend Elizabeth Barnett. Lizzie's latest collection of paintings, 'Preservation', is currently exhibiting at Modern Times gallery in Melbourne. In the interview she talks about her artistic process as well as the thinking behind these paintings and her favourite music. You can also glimpses of the work. I found it inspiring!

Castle Rock, a great but fantastically creepy TV series based on the stories of Stephen King and set in Maine, USA. It's on the edge of being too frightening for me to watch, but I feel compelled to keep going now I've started it.

Gratitude, a book of essays by neurologist Oliver Sacks, published shortly after his death in 2015. The writing is beautiful and uplifting, and sad of course, because the author knows he is dying, and is looking back on what has made his life meaningful. 

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We have some hellebores in our garden but their season is ending. I love them a lot. I went to embroider some but instead the thread became something that looks more like dahlias, but that's okay because I love them too. 

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Speaking of embroidered flowers, I'm planning a small-ish shop update with a spring theme. I'm thinking early October, but I'll give an actual date in my next blog post. Thank you to everyone who has emailed to ask about this and also to those who have expressed interest in buying my work – I really appreciate it! When it comes to making and selling my work, time is not on my side during the working/school year. But I have a few things in progress and it will be fun to celebrate spring by making a small collection of work for the shop.

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This week I made a soft corduroy bear for a new baby, and wrapped it up along with a book that was a favourite when my kids were smaller – The Kuia and the Spider by Patricia Grace. The illustrations are by Robyn Kahukiwa and are really evocative, I think.

I must have made fifty of these toys over the years, for nieces, nephews, my own kids and friends. The pattern is in this book. The design is purposely simple, to allow for maximum customisation (or not). My niece Phoebe sewed some fetching linen pants for her bear and I've also seen one with a beautiful hand-knitted scarf. I usually 'under-stuff' them so they're soft and squishy and nice to hold by the hand.

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Thank you for your podcast suggestions in the last post! Here is a list of them. I also want to add one I like, it's called Art, Life, Music and it's a Radio New Zealand programme featuring interviews with artists and writers who talk about their favourite music. I especially liked listening to Dunedin artist Kushana Bush – and have you seen her paintings? Amazing. 

Here is our collaborative podcast list (please feel free to add more in the comments section):

Journalism/news/crime

Caliphate
This American Life
Teacher's Pet
My Favourite Murder
BBC World Service: Documentary and Witness
The Daily
Stay Tuned with Preet
Gone By Lunchtime
Black Hands
Dr Death

Humour/comedy

The Guilty Feminist
The Alice Fraser Trilogy 
Adrift
Answer Me This
No Such Thing as a Fish

Arts/science

On Being
Love Stories with Dolly Alderton
99 percent Invisible
Radiolab
Dispatch to a Friend
Tea and Tattle
The High Low
Dispatch to a Friend
Lost in Translation

Music

WTF with Marc Maron
Song Exploder
Desert Island Disks
NPR's Fresh Air
Art, Life, Music

Craft (most of these are on YouTube)

Pompom
Fruity Knitting
The Green Bean
Curious Handmade
Yarnchix
Yarns at Yinhoo
Kammebornia
Truly Myrtle
The Gentle Knitter (this is one of my all-time favourites!)

It's properly spring here now – the first week of September – but we've had stormy weather with bitterly cold winds along with slightly lighter mornings and evenings. I hope you've been keeping warm, wherever you are!

My newest niece M had a small party to mark her 100th day on earth last week. I knitted her a hat from some pale pink alpaca yarn I'd been hoarding for just such a thing. The pattern is a free one from Tin Can Knits, called 'Barley', and comes in every size from newborn to extra-large-headed adult. I'm really pleased with how this tiny little hat turned out. Might have to make myself one to match.

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Tom has requested a handknit jumper and on the weekend we called in to Holland Road to choose some yarn. Tash kindly popped my purchase inside this great tote bag – yarn noodles + needle chopsticks! I know it will get lots of use.

And in other yarn-related news, I bought this beautiful Norah George hand-dyed yak/silk/merino on a destash page and have just had it sitting on my desk, admiring the colour (its name is 'mustard seed', which I think is perfect) 

I'm thinking this yarn would make very lovely socks, or maybe fingerless gloves? Haven't decided yet. And besides, that man-sized sweater is going to take me a while.

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This week I finished reading The Kindness of Strangers which is a memoir by New Zealand writer Shonagh Koea. I've read all her novels because I love the unusual style of writing – but think I loved her memoir even more, as it explains the non-fiction roots to her fiction, if you know what I mean. 

And I've been listening to the excellent and beautiful album LUMP, which is Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay. Thanks to Flora for alerting me to it.

In the comments section of my last post, Deb asked if I knew of any good podcasts at the moment. I'm afraid I'm not much of a podcast listener, because I like audiobooks if I ever have time to listen quietly, and music when there's no time or space to concentrate on a story. But I have enjoyed the Guilty Feminist and Tom is currently listening to one called Teacher's Pet. And I hear The Alice Fraser Trilogy podcast is good.

Do you have any suggestions for Deb? Please leave any recommendations in the comment section. Thank you in advance!

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This week I finished a knitting project that I've been working on for months. I'm quite a slow knitter! But I'm very happy with my new cardigan, which I made from this alpaca and merino yarn in a darkish shade of silvery-grey. The pattern is designed by Joji Locatelli and is called 'Lanes'. It appears in the very first issue of Laine magazine. I hope to make my way through more Laine patterns eventually, as they're all very beautiful! Maybe I will within the next 20 years…

You can find a link to the pattern, yarn, and other details on my Ravelry page here.

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Another very small project: a pair of earrings, made by taking apart an old necklace and a broken pair of earrings. It couldn't have been a simpler or speedier project (quite the contrast from the cardigan), but I love wearing them.

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This week, Tom and I stayed up way too late watching the latest season of Orange is The New Black, which I think is such an excellent show. I found it really laugh-out-loud funny and cry-spontaneously sad at the same time. I really hope they make another season, so we see some kind of new resolution for the characters (especially, my favourite, Taystee!)

And I've been listening to an old song: The Rip, by Portishead. It's ten years old now, but just as good now in my opinion.

Have a lovely week ahead, and thank you as always for visiting here. X X X X X