tiny happy

The pohutukawa is kind of like our Antipodean Christmas tree, and this bright one in the neighbour's garden inspired me to do a bit of embroidery in bright red and pink. I made this miniature framed embroidery and fitted it into a small metal frame. I made a few more for gifts this year, they were fun to make- although the fitting in bit can be tricky- and this was the least perfect of my efforts so it's destined for my summer dress.

I wanted to show you some of the end-of-year gifts and treats, etc that I've been making this week but I am really just doing the same things I do every year. I am a creature of habit, and now I've been blogging for. ahem, years, all my December-making traditions are well and truly blogged by now. 

If you're looking out for ideas, here are a few from previous Decembers:

2011- memory books, peppermint bark, jam, apricot balls, gardeny gifts, shortbread squares

2010- peace cards, handmade wreath, teacher gifts, paper globes, notebooks

2009- gifts for small girls, soap, woodland wreaths

2008- wool felt pins, pepperkake, paper doves, paper wreaths

I've finished my journalism course for the year, so I don't have to make the early-morning walk into the city for a month or so. I spent this morning doing some pretty dull household tasks, but the truth is it feels amazing to be thinking about Christmas, summer, holidays, etc. 

It was so warm and sunny yesterday, I sewed this very simple stripy skirt. I had about a metre of stretch cotton in a grey and pink stripe, so I cut a bit from the side, sewed up a rectangle, hemmed it then added two rows of narrow elastic to the top. Pretty simple and should be comfy to wear too.

I have grand plans of making a dress or two before Christmas, but I might be dreaming.

I hope you are well- enjoy your weekend.

Thank you for all your kind words on my last post and the emails too. It's an amazing feeling to have finished (most of) the work on the book and I'm glad you like it. 

I've been thinking for some years about publishing my patterns and this seems like a good way to do it: sharing them in one big collection. I'm not sure I want to sew small things for the rest of my working life, so it's good to be channelling more energy into writing/designing.

Although of course I do have a deep love of actually making things, and i'm looking forward to trying some different projects in the near future.

Thanks too for your interest in pre-ordering the book. My publisher tells me this can be done through either their site or amazon/book depository and I also found this NZ-based site where copies can be ordered too.

Although it is being published in the USA it will also be readily available in NZ bookshops and I'll try and get some copies to put in my etsy shop.

The title of this post was inspired by my new favourite album- Silver and Gold, the latest Christmas songs by Sufjan Stevens.

I bought it yesterday and walked around the city today accompanied by the Christmas Unicorn. Beautiful stuff, especially the Joy Division tribute at the end.

I've been writing a book! Sweet and Simple Handmade is what I've been working on for the past 12 months, and today I can finally let you in on the secret. 

I'm happy to say everything's finished now and it will be released in April next year.

The book features 25 projects for you to make for the small ones in your life. It's a collection of all the designs I've been selling in my etsy shop for the past five years and have been getting requests for the patterns ever since I started this blog.

There are patterns for baby shoes and corduroy pants for all ages, as well as coats and bags. There are also some new designs that I dreamt up especially for the book: a starry quilt, baby bonnet and recycled knitwear among others.

The book will include tissue paper patterns and detailed instructions on how to make all of the designs.

Sweet and Simple Handmade is being published by Stash Books in San Francisco, which is an imprint of C&T Publishing. Stash Books have been wonderful to work with and they allowed me to keep my own aesthetic as much as possible.

I took the styled photos and the C&T studio photographed the detail and progress shots. So, as well as learning a lot about writing and pattern-making, I had to upgrade my camera and learn more about photography, too.

This year has been rather an amazing one with many late nights and not-so-relaxing weekends, but I am very excited to share this new project with you.

Here are some rabbits, made from various fabrics- linen, cashmere and velveteen. They have very long ears, lined with soft cotton for strokeability. There are just four of these- I ran out of time to make more!

The rabbits are the last things I've made for my table at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair tomorrow. You can read more about the event here. If you'll be in Auckland tomorrow, I'd love to see you.

Wishing you a happy weekend. If you need some new music, I came across this great list of good songs from 2012 on NPR. It includes some favourites and some I've never heard of. There's also a list of their top 10 classical albums of the year. Should keep my ears busy.

See you next week- I've got some exciting news to share with you…

After making the hawkweed collage last week, I was inspired to make an entire series of summer botanical collages, all inspired of course by the great Mary Delaney's own paper garden.

For this set, I made paper versions of some of the plants I've been seeing on my walks to town each morning, sometimes growing wild and sometimes cultivated in gardens. Poppies, dandelions, pansies and the most common on Wellington hills: a scrubby purple daisy that my wildflower book suggests is 'sea aster'. Isn't that a beautiful name?

I got the collages printed into sets of postcards- some for my shop and some to take to the Auckland Fair on Saturday. 

Sally, a kind reader, sent me a link to this short film which she thought I might like after seeing these botanical collages on a black backdrop. The film is Le Faune which was made in 1908 by the Pathé brothers. It's a kind of ballet set against a black backdrop, with hand-tinted colours and music by Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir. I read that these works were sometimes called fairy films and the hand-colouring was often done by women.

No, I don't mean flowers made of hair, although I did see some of those once at an art exhibition, and they were attractive and unpleasant at the same time, if you know what I mean.

These are much less adventurous: some flower hairclips I made from scraps of wool felt. They are based on the designs I used for these pins.

I made some for K to help keep her hair under control as it's not quite long enough to tie back. And then I couldn't stop making them, so I made some pairs to take with me to Auckland this weekend.

I'm having a stall at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair which will be held at the Aotea Centre at 11am on Saturday the 8th. I signed up for my table quite a while ago and have recently begun to wonder why as the days and weeks filled up with many other things. But now I'm looking forward to it, especially staying with friends I don't get to spend enough time with throughout the year.

We had some rhubarb in the garden so I tried a rhubarb recipe from this beautiful book by Jamie Oliver. It's 'rhubarb and sticky stem ginger crumble' and I can highly recommend it if you're a R fan- or a ginger fan for that matter. We ate it hot, with some whipped cream. The recipe is posted online too- here.

In other British inspiration news, I found a quote from Stephen Fry a few days ago and it's stayed in my head since then- here it is. Brilliant and beautiful, I think. 

“I suppose the thing I would most like to have known or be reassured about is that in the world, what counts more than talent, what counts more than energy or concentration or commitment or anything else, is kindness. The more in the world you encounter kindness and cheerfulness, the better the world always is. All the big words, justice, truth, are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness.”

– Stephen Fry

I got out the tiny silver scissors again and did a bit of collage last night. I made this one inspired by a weed that's all over the garden, and my wildflower identification book tells me it's called hawkweed. 

That's a kind of tiny dandelion-type flower, of which 300 different specimens can be found in the British Isles, but it always seems to be the same type around here.

My paper hawkweed was cut from various pages in a Vogue magazine, glued to black card. 

Thanks for entering the Extra Curricular giveaway. I drew a name at random- it was Matariki. 

There's a new issue of Extra Curricular out now, and I'm very excited to have a bit of work inside.

I did some watercolour illustrations for this Field Guide written by Anissa. This, the 10th issue, is all about self-sufficiency and there are articles on keeping bees, community gardening, making clothes as well as iceblocks, terrariums and homebrew. Something for everyone, I'd say. And accompanied by beautiful words and photographs, as always.

You can buy copies of EC from here (NZ) or here (other countries).

Ellie has kindly given me an extra copy to give away here. Would you like your own copy of one of NZ's best creative magazines?

If so, please leave a comment below and I'll draw a winner in a couple of days.