tiny happy

We have a lot of chamomile tangles in our garden. It's been growing really well since Susie gave me my first plant last year. Lots of self-seeded plants and feathery leaves are all popping up all over the herb garden, so I thought I'd make some tea. I have a bunch of these stems drying in a cupboard but I read that you can use the fresh flower heads to make really flavoursome tea…. and you can! So the word 'chamomile' in ancient Greek originates from 'little apple', and when I was steeping the tea it gave a really strong apple scent. And just a few flower heads produce the most amazing yellow colour. I wonder, with a mordant, could it be used for a textile dye, as well? The chamomile flowers and leaves featured in my all-over embroidery for the week, too. 

Hope this finds you well and happy. See you tomorrow!

An old merino wool sweater was recycled to make this new cardigan for miss K. I did a bit of cutting around another garment of hers that fits well, and incorporated the existing hem and sleeves to save me having to sew those. I made some bias tape from the leftovers of this coat lining, to trim the neckline and front, added some embroidery and a big chunky dome button for fastening.

I'm feeling pretty depressed about our national election result over the weekend. We now have three more years of right-wing governance and it seems the gap between rich and poor in our country will only get wider, and our traditional egalitarian values are no longer a priority.

We had to distract ourselves by gardening, listening to lots of music, and going to see the Samoan film The Orator, which had the most beautiful cinematography.

Hope your weekend was good one!

How is your Friday going so far? I've just gotten back from a school trip to the library with K's class… we saw some amazing new paintings and made angels from clay. What better way to spend the morning? I thought I'd show my new mountain vase. I first saw the idea in an online magazine a couple of years ago- can't remember where though, sorry. Then I found this plain glass vase at the op-shop but it was a bit scratched up. I found a picture from my box of old papers (The Rocky Mountains, with an old car in the foreground) and adhered it to the front of the glass with glue and a layer of clear contact paper.

And the other photos are of some Christmas decorations I made late one night- simple doves from coloured wool felt, with silkthread embroidery.

I recently discovered this great album- Fatou by Fatoumata Diawara from Mali. She's beautiful, isn't she?

NZ friends, thank you for voting in the election tomorrow, I wouldn't want to tell you who to vote for, but you might like to watch this video first, if you haven't already. I'll be voting in the hope of an egalitarian and kind country for our children. 

Have a lovely weekend, wherever you are in the world. See you next week!

You might be getting tired of me writing about macaroons, so I'll make this my last post about them. But I felt I simply had to report back on some coconut macaroon experiments!

A reader mentioned in the comment section a while back about how they like to dip their baked biscuits in some chocolate, and I liked the sound of that. Very much, in fact.

So I made two more batches of these, as a gift for some new neighbours. To one batch I added lots of lemon zest, and was considering sandwiching pairs of these lemony macaroons together with zingy citrusy icing. But in the end laziness won and they remain plain lemon macaroons.

The other batch was half-dipped in melted bittersweet chocolate, and placed on baking paper in the freezer for a few minutes to set. Homemade chocolate biscuits. I recommend them.

I was up way too late last night and found myself perusing this great website, The Hairpin, which is like a women's magazine but more thoughtful and witty. And that is where I found this amazing comic strip- The League of Ordinary Ladies by Esther C. Werdiger. In case you've not seen it already, check it out. I especially like Gym Time, which reminds me of my fleeting past experience with physical exercise.

So the pieces of fair-isle knitted wool that I wrote about back here are still waiting patiently in my workroom for me to do something with them… so in the meantime I used some of the smaller pieces to make these items for my etsy shop update today. Two soft hot water bottle covers and a cushion cover too… I think they show off the great fair isle design pretty well and it's satisfying to use to make something (hopefully) useful from the knitted pieces. Plus, today turned out to be fairly grey, cold and wet, so sewing up some wintry items seemed like a cosy activity.

I think this might be my last shop (or perhaps second-to-last) update for the year, as I hope to spend December working on other projects, most of them Christmas-related of course. Just in case you were wondering, the last date for sending parcels overseas guaranteed in time for Christmas is December 2nd or the 19th if sending within NZ.

I think I have an obsession with fairisle these days… I was looking through my 'dream clothes' folder on Pinterest and found no less than nine fairisle garments collected there. The next step is to take a deep breath and try and knit one myself!

I was standing amongst these wild daisies whilst hanging out the washing early this morning. Inside they came, to have their portrait taken with needle and thread.

Have a lovely Tuesday!

I was lucky over the weekend- I was given an armful of the most beautiful roses from my Mum's garden (thanks Mum) AND an iPhone that was previously Tom's, because he received a new one from his workplace. I must admit I'm pretty excited about this new technology but it will take some getting used to, especially because i've never really used a cellphone in my everyday life (it always seemed too hard to look after, along with everything else and my old phone had a habit of sending all sorts of people strange messages from the depths of my satchel).

I think my friends will be safer from such correspondence now that i have this swish little gadget, and, with all the extra features, it should also come in handy for the kids the next time we're waiting in the post office line. I used Mum's garden flowers for inspiration and made a cosy home for it (embroidered in hand-dyed silk threads on black wool fabric and padded for safekeeping.) I like the marrying of new technology with old-school stuff like embroidery. 

Happy new week to you!

This morning, I'm …

baking biscuits for children- peanut brownies and macaroons (my recipe is pretty similar to this one but with the addition of a little flour and vanilla extract)

admiring this amazing botanical installation by German artist Regine Ramseier

embroidering some forget-me-nots onto linen

working on illustrating some pairs of vintage coffee cups

getting distracted by all the spring colour outside my window

listening to this amazing new Kate Bush album on NPR (I have pre-ordered it but I'm impatient!)

the world is so loud, keep falling

i'll find you….

Have a great weekend, blogfriends.

I had a big clear-out of my supply cupboard the other day and found heaps of papers and cards and old maps and pages from fallen-apart books. I find old maps very aesthetically pleasing and have been known to frame them for wall art in the past, but these had seen better days, so I made some notebooks with map covers. To make them, I cut lots of papers to the same size (most of the pages are recycled newsprint), held them together with pegs and used an industrial-sized needle on the sewing machine to stitch down the spine. I will set aside most of these for my table at the Auckland Art and Craft Fair in December, but the others will be little gifts, I think. I made some similar books last year-  but these are a bit smaller, with more pages and faraway places on the cover for day-dreaming purposes. Christmas in Svalbard, anyone?

Here are some things I made for my shop udpate today- I was inspired by two old kimonos from my fabric stash. The first was a very old (and fallen-apart) silky one that I bought from an opshop about 10 years ago- I finally used up the last pieces to make a couple of small cases. And I had another old kimono that I bought online, thinking i might use it as a dressing gown. When it arrived, some of the seams had come undone and the fabric was a bit too stiff to wear, so I made some bags from it instead. The fabric is a very dark blue, almost black, and features a lighter blue and red ikat pattern which I love. When making the larger bags I kept some of the original seams as features- in particular the hand-stitched seams because they are so neat and lovely.

Have you ever seen Sri Threads? I think it was a visit to this blog (recommended by my friend Rachelle) that got me all addicted to old Japanese textiles in the first place. The worn and careful beauty of them. This piece in particular.

Hope your day is going well so far. See you again tomorrow.