I got some card sets printed with a yellow floral theme, since that is my favourite at the moment. In each set, there are two chamomile cards (taken in the South Island over Christmas) and two cards with this yellow South African Leucospermum flower, which smells like manuka honey.
Happy new week, friends.
The coriander plants have quickly gone to seed in the summer heat. They are coordinating with the wallpaper print in the kitchen.
Have you seen these beautiful photos? A mother in Russia captures her two young children with their animal friends.
I made this simple garment with the office in mind. It was actually something I had been looking for when out shopping: a plain black linen top. It was a happy moment when I realised I could just make one and there was even some linen waiting on the shelf (love it when that happens- but it is rare.)
I copied the gathered-yoke bodice from a dress I made years ago and used some tissue-weight linen which was extremely difficult to work with, I have to admit. I had to suck it up and make French seams to stop the whole thing from completely unravelling. Here's hoping it holds together for a while- and the weather does too so I can happily wear it before the autumn!
I'm going through a passionate '80s Peter Gabriel phase' at the moment. This is my favourite song right now- I think it's beautiful but I don't understand the cabbage-themed video clip at all.
a) a tangle of wildflowers in a field at my sister's place
b) I made this new summer blanket: it's a secondhand candlewick cotton bedspread, washed a few times, then mended in a few places with Liberty lawn patches. Cosy and cool at the same time.
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful comments and emails about my last post. I'm working my way through replying to them all and feel so grateful to have so much support.
And hooray for keeping archives- I've already been consulting old pages for recipes and notes on projects. As predicted, cake recipes are my most looked-up information.
I'm looking forward to the new year that is stretching ahead.
Happy New Year, friends. Hope you had a happy end-of-year break and you found some time to relax.
I had a nice holiday with the family, and managed to do some reading, some walking and some thinking. Also I spent time by the sea, including the place you see above, which is somewhere I've been visiting for as long as I can remember.
You might have noticed I have a new blog banner- one with my name on it. For a while now, I've been pondering the direction of my creative work and what I can bring to the blogging world. The 'tiny happy' name very much represents a time when I had small children and its purpose was to reflect a simple, d-i-y domestic life through writing, projects, ideas and photos.
That blog was established in 2006, and it's now 2014. I'm 'making' less, and working as a journalist in an office. Those toddlers have grown into long-legged and inquiring older children who are constantly reading and writing stories themselves. They don't take kindly to posing for my camera, and would rather I played a card game with them than work on a sewing project while they sort buttons into coloured piles.
In addition, I want to explore my own creative path through writing, textile art, pattern design and photography. I considered deleting 'tiny happy' altogether in order to have a complete change and new space for my creative work.
But in the end, it came down to my complete lack of technical skills. I couldn't work out how to redirect the URL to a new site, and so many of my networks are built around this blog. Not to mention, it provides a useful record (for me) of many recipes, patterns, ideas, etc.
So I've kept the same address, and just made a new title for the site- my own name. I hope I still have something to offer for my readers, but in a way, I aim to focus less on what my perception of what an audience might look like or desire.
I would love to stay in touch with you as I find my way along this new path.
Most importantly, thank you for the years of support and interest in my work- I can't properly express what they mean to me.
We've spent the day making and gifting shortbread, eating apricots, wearing our sunhats outside and stringing up lights: must be proper summer here now, and holiday time.
I'm having a blog break because we're heading to the South Island for Christmas. I plan to be back here in this space in mid-January.
Thank you for reading this year even though my blog has been erratic at times. I really treasure the interaction and community to be found here.
Wishing you a very happy Christmas, and a peaceful New Year.
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This lovely old flowery fabric was given to me several years ago by Helen. I have admired it for a long time, not daring to snip into it. But I finally decided to, and made this dress for summer.
The pattern is this one, and the fabric is a vintage drapey rayon/cotton type. With a good, serious floral pattern. The best things about this dress include: the useful pockets, the length (I often find the dress patterns I use are a little too short in the end, but this one is just below the knee on me) and the drapey, assymetrical bodice. I am looking forward to wearing this with sandals over summer and with a fair isle cardigan in the autumn. After all, why stick to one busy pattern when you can have two?
Do you remember this Japanese fabric I mentioned the other day? I gave it a gentle wash, and realised it was a very long length of fabric indeed. Long enough for a dress, but not really strong enough, if you know what I mean. The fabric had worn patches, holes mended with loose hand-stitching and darning.
I imagined sewing a delicate, drapey dressing-gown from the silk and wrapping it in tissue paper for an especially dear family member at Christmas. So I set to work, immediately regretting cutting into the fragile and slippery fabric and realising the width was too narrow for any of the pattern pieces, so I had to sew pieces together like patchwork to achieve the width necessary for each piece.
There are quite a few places where some very old rows of hand-stitching are prominent, such as along the back of the gown, which I like. As if I've collaborated with a mystery silk-preserver.
But I've decided I didn't do a good enough job of the sewing for it to be a gift: it can be my summer dressing gown instead. Upon reflection, I should have lined the entire thing in a fine cotton lawn or similar, to protect and hide the interior seams. Next time..!
This is what I've been working on over the past couple of days: a small floral design. It's just free-form embroidery on natural linen, in an all-over pattern. The colours were inspired by a pair of paper fans from Japan on the mantlepiece at a friend's house. I was sitting at her kitchen table the other evening when I noticed them and set aside the threads to match. White, turquoise, red and light pink.
My plan for the finished piece is to sew it into a keepsake pouch for a family member, as a Christmas gift. She doesn't read my blog so I think I'm safe in writing about it! I'm only making a few of my Christmas presents this year. How are you going with yours? Are you making anything?
The kids and I had a spare hour to spend so we tried making marshmallows. They liked the idea of including them along with some other little treats as teacher gifts.
I have been thinking about making them for ages, since seeing this post over on Angry Chicken one Christmas. We used rosewater to flavour our batch, and squeezed some blueberries for colouring.
But our marshmallows were not very good: they were much too soft and didn't hold their shape well (not the recipe's fault but maybe we skipped a step or didn't have quite the right ingredients.) So we won't inflict them on the teachers after all.
They were fun to make, though! The kids are showing quite a lot of interest in mixing and cococting these days and they even have a few dishes they can cook independently, even if they are variations on scrambled eggs.
Anyway, we also had fun thinking about the packaging of potential edible gifts. I found some polka-dot cellophane bags a while back and Keira and I spent quite a while last weekend folding origami boxes + lids from the pages of an old gardening magazine (instructions here).
Sometimes the process is better than the result.
tiny happy 