tiny happy

The holidays are pretty great but I do feel as though an awful lot of food has been made and consumed… growing kids and their friends tend to do that, don't they? 

A favourite new thing we have been making and eating these holidays are these savoury pinwheel pastries. They are super-easy and quick to make, contain no special ingredients and get wolfed down very quickly around these parts. Especially with cheese and marmite/vegemite filling, which I realise is not to everyone's taste. Especially if you weren't born in the Antipodes. You could always put some chopped veges, or pizza-type fillings inside them if you'd rather.

Cheesy pinwheels

You'll need:

– 1 cup plain flour

– 3/4 cup wholemeal flour

– 1 1/2 tsps baking powder

– 1/2 tsp salt

– 50 grams butter, cut into small pieces

– 1/2 cup milk

– Something to put inside your pinwheels (marmite perhaps?) plus a good handful of grated cheese. Otherwise you could try finely chopped onion and tomato with crumbled feta cheese, or pesto and cheese, or anything else you can dream up.

Sift all the dry ingredients together into a bowl. Add the chopped butter and cut it in with a pastry cutter or your fingers, until breadcrumb-size. (Or you could make the entire dough in your food processor.)

Stir in the milk and knead on a floured surface until you have a nice dough. Roll the dough into a long rectangle, spread thinly with marmite (if you like it) then sprinkle your grated cheese over. Roll the rectangle length-wise and cut into pieces about 1-2" wide. Place cut-side up on a tray lined with baking paper, and bake at 200 degrees Celcius for about 10-15 minutes or until golden.

I've been collecting these vintage pudding bowls for a few years now. They were made by Crown Lynn in 1960's NZ, along with a lot of everyday utilitarian ceramic ware, and are now collected and prized by many people. You can still find some of the patterns in op-shops and junkyards, but most of the good quality stuff is traded online and in antique and design stores.

Anyway, this week I took inspiration from some of my favourite Crown Lynn patterns in my embroidery and worked these designs in vintage embroidery yarn. I made some wool-embroidered cases for today's shop update. The case on the bottom right you can see in the photo was embroidered with berries, a bit like the popular pattern 'vintage' of which I have a few ceramic pieces. The other cases were not so directly inspired. 

Hope you're having a lovely week so far. We've just been to the library and come home with an armload of books to read which is pretty heavenly.

Here's a bit of botanical-inspired stitching based on plants from around the garden.

We're in the first week of school holidays here, and the children have been doing a little bit of helping out with weeding and other gardening chores, and the rest of the time making more mess to be sorted out later. A 'hut' or hiding place under a tree where they can spy on grown-ups and hide their shell collection. And 'camellia wars' where they (and their friends and neighbours) throw rotting flowers at each other. It's all action around here.

Some more rabbits (a bit like this one) made their way out of my sewing room over the weekend and were quite happy to pose for these photos on the mantlepiece. I was asked to make one for a sweet new baby, and thought I'd make a family and the other two are in my shop. I do so love embroidering their faces and making those long soft ears.

I hope your weekend was a good one- ours marked the beginning of our annual Arts Festival here in my town, so it was busy and I got to hear some great live poetry and folk music, with more interesting concerts coming up in the next week. I love this time of year.

I also discovered this beautiful new album by Feist- you can stream four tracks from it for a wee listen here. Or find the first single to listen to here.

I've been admiring the tree fern which grows outside the bedroom window this week. It is so intricate and changes each day, and there's something about the long skinny tendrils it sends out that makes me think of an octopus. Isn't that central koru something quite amazing… spirals within spirals and a protective hairiness like a blanket keeping everything safe. I found a great little book at the second-hand shop, The Flora of NZ by W.Martin. It's from the 1950s, but should make a good reference book for finding out more and doing some watercolours.

In other fern news, isn't this artwork beautiful? And this botanical ceramic, too.

I found some chamomile-printed fabric at the Recycling Centre recently and it made me think of these daisy flowers we have growing happily in the garden, as well as all the baby chamomile plants that should be flowering by summer, too. 

I wanted to make a bag that featured the fabric (and a few others I had waiting) so I designed this 'big pocket tote' which is a very simple bag made from a plain fabric, with the big lined pocket on the front for extra usefulness. The pockets are lined and interfaced for sturdiness and they have a velcro closure so everything stays safe inside. I made a few for my shop update today, but have cut out one for me, too because i'm quite keen on having such a bag with a place for my ipod and book (and maybe some chocolate) on the front!

I hope your Wednesday is a lovely one, friends.

The rain seems to stretch on and on here but I do quite enjoy the misty grey sky and light it creates outside. The look of the spring blossoms and branches against the grey clouds inspired these small embroidered pieces- one on blue linen and the other worked on some new dark grey I found in my local fabric store.

I'm enjoying the idea of monochromatic stitching and wondering what colour to try next- perhaps lots of fine black stitching on white linen? Or red embroidery on cream fabric? 

In other news, I was excited to find this beautiful food blog the other day- Indian Simmer. Perhaps my dreams of mastering some Indian recipes might come true, after all?

This NZ Christmas ornament swap looks like fun (via Louana) and here is another which is open to international participants too. Eek- Christmas talk already? This year is flying by so quickly.

It's misty and rainy here today- it was all weekend, too. It seemed the right time to crack open my new ceramic paints and work on this pair of coffee cups, spurred on by the forget-me-not flowers gathering along the edges of our garden. I've always loved those little blue flowers- they're to be found almost everywhere, but they're still seem delicate and special. I found a pinky-purple version of the plant at the top of a hill a couple of weeks ago, and sneakily took a cutting for our garden. It seems to be doing well, but the flowers almost instantly changed colour, back to blue.

It's probably a bit early in the year to be making summer dresses, but I finished this black linen one the other day, and it's making me feel excited about the warmer season ahead.

I used a length of crispy black linen with quite a nice weight and crumple to it, and a pattern that I drew up myself and am mostly pleased with. I was going for a kind of vintage-style day dress look, except a bit more loose and organic in feel, and the result is pretty relaxed and less fitted than it could be- I should probably have made it a bit smaller. But that's okay, it will be extra comfortable to wear I suppose. The bodice is shaped with long vertical darts in the front and back, and lined in black cotton lawn, with a zip up the side.

The hem has four rows of hand-stitching in different coloured threads- it's what I was working on here a couple of weeks ago. I would have posted a picture of me wearing the dress, but my legs are whiter than those lilies up the top there, and the contrast was a bit much, (but don't  you love that wild clump of lilies amongst the weeds in our garden?)

I hope your weekend will be a lovely one. Ours will include a party, a ballet show, extra children and some painting (hopefully.) See you next week.

Did you know I'm unable to crochet? Believe me, I've tried. Probably about 58 times, with the help of different books, videos and patient people. And yet, my efforts still resemble a crazy tangle of yarn, rather than something neat and flat. And I won't lie, tears are always near before I throw my crochet hook across the room in anger (although I'm getting better at remaining calm these days, you'll be pleased to hear.)

Luckily I'm always finding other people's crochet pieces on my travels around the junk shops, and I like to rescue them. I can barely believe the work and skill that goes into them, and it doesn't seem right that they end up in the Recycling Centre or somewhere else, in a drawer.

Here are some things I made for my etsy shop update today featuring some old crochet work- a linen bag with a big pocket on the front, a smaller bag and some pincushions. They were a great way to use small antique pieces, and they're backed with Liberty lawn for extra old-fashionedness.

p.s. crochet dreams…