tiny happy

good things

Here are some good things that are happening today:

1. Artichokes as big as trees growing happily in my friend's garden. 

2. A bit of drawing/painting while waiting for something.

3. Vegetable pie made from our first crop of silverbeet here in the new house. (Quickly and easily made, by cooking and chopping silverbeet and mixing together with 3 eggs, salt and pepper, handful of grated cheese, 1/2 cup milk, some chopped cooked potatoes and fresh herbs. Poured into a dish lined with filo pastry and baked 1/2 hour at 200 degrees C.)

4. Taking half an hour to sit in the sun and work on my knitting (a hat for a friend in a very cold place.)

Wishing you a lovely weekend, my friends!

rosy

Shown above is the very first rose I've ever grown: this little bud broke off in the wind so has been slowly opening from the shelter of the kitchen windowsill. I've always loved roses but assumed they were beyond my skills to grow. But then I was kindly given a rose plant for my garden and I think it likes it here. Hooray! I'm looking forward to seeing what it gets up to over summer. I noticed a bit of a rose theme in my etsy shop update today: some little rosebud shoes and a bag made from a really old tablecloth found second-hand. When it was drying on my washing line, it got caught on a rosebush (in a strange twist of fate) and got a bit ripped up, so I'm glad to give it a new lease of life.

Unrelated piece of news: There will be a Fabricabrac sale this weekend in Wellington- you can find more details here. It looks like it will be a great day for crafty people, with fabric galore, demos and talks, coffee and proceeds going to the Mary Potter Hospice.

Have a good Wednesday!

north island

I found an old map of the lower North Island of NZ in the paper bin when I was doing some recycling at our local depot. It was printed in 1974. Something about the colours of the map made me pick it out and it waited on my desk for a few weeks until I had an idea for it. And last week I finally cleaned it up a bit: ironed out all the creases and removed some of the marks. Then I did a bit of cutting and pasting to make these small giftcards and matching envelopes. It's such a simple idea, but each card and envelope set is completely different and features a few little spots from the North Island- some I've been to, and others I haven't.

Getting a closer look at the places on the map reminded me of a road trip that some friends and I took one winter when we were at University. We fed black swans in Rotorua, ate Chinese food in Shannon, stopped in Bulls to look at antiques, put on make-up and went out dancing in Taupo. Thank you, old map, for reminding me.

 

transferred

I've been collecting these pieces of old linen for a while now, from junk shops and our local recycling centre. They're cream and crisp in texture, and were printed with embroidery transfers- probably a long time ago. I washed them a couple of times to check the transfers were permanent, and they were, along with some of the old fold lines and other marks that show the linen's character and age.

I love the transfers- they're faded in some places and a deeper grey in others- and the patterns are so old-fashioned and lovely. Yet I know I won't get around to embroidering over the transfers, so I decided to use the linen as I would a printed fabric. On the weekend I sewed some of them into these drawstring pouches to give as gifts. 

I hope you had a good weekend!

hellebore

Hellebore flowers are not in season here at all but the other day i came across this photo of a hellebore that i must have taken last winter. I love those dark pink hellebores, and the greeny/cream ones too, that are sometimes tinged with red like flushed cheeks. 

Anyway, I got my watercolour paints out and then took the painting into town to get printed into postcards. I think I'll send a set to a garden-loving friend who is going into wintertime right now. 

I hope you have a lovely weekend, blog-friends.

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p.s. if you're in NZ, you might want to take a look at this interesting cultural competition: Mix and Mash. It involves 'remixing' works of art and poetry into your own, new works and there are lots of different categories (including visual art, educational resources, poetry, music, etc) and amazing prizes, too.

d.i.y cosmetics

Back when i was in primary school, I remember getting a book out of the library about making skincare products at home and triumphantly finding, amongst its pages, a cure for my freckles. (As far as I remember, that involved painting my face with lemon juice. I thought the freckles were slightly faded after that but noone else seemed to notice.) Anyway, I had a flash-back to those days when I tried out a recipe this week for deodorant. Yep, that's right, homemade deodorant. I've never been a fan of the store-bought stuff (there's some fairly sketchy ingredients in it, but you probably already know that) and hadn't had much luck with the crystal/natural types either. 

And then my clever friend Jenny shared with me her ingredients so I could make some myself (I think she ordered them locally here- which is the same place where i bought the supplies to make this soap last year.) She was inspired by this post at Angry Chicken and used a similar recipe. Here's Jenny's recipe version. Mine was pretty much the same, except I added some lavender essential oil because I probably need all the help I can get to smell nicer. Ha. I'm very pleased with it so far! And, of course, there is quite a satisfaction in knowing I made something so practical.

You might be wondering what that strange, unappetising brown stuff is in the photo above. Well that's my new body-scrub, also made from stuff in the pantry. I found the recipe in an old gardening magazine (in an article written by this lady), and it's just a mixture of 4 spoonfuls of brown sugar, 4 spoonfuls of olive oil and 3 of cocoa powder. It works really well as an exfoliater, and smells lovely, too, of course.

chamomilla

A kind friend, Susie, brought me some herb plants the other day, including this chamomile. I had to capture the way it was shining in the sun before I planted it into the garden. Chamomile always makes me think of Scandinavia, and also those Timotei ads from the 1980's. But I love drinking chamomile tea, so I'm looking forward to making my own from the dried flowers. 

Susie's chamomile inspired me to make a locket for this week's shop update with some chamomile flowers inside- albeit very, very tiny ones.

sweet things

On the weekend, we held a little concert for the children to perform some of the music they've learned this year in their piano and violin lessons with my Mum. All the cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents came along to listen. And then after all the hard work of playing, we ate some sweet things to celebrate. There was lemon and cherry cake, coconut rough and elderflower cordial. (My family has rather a sweet tooth.)

Arlo asked me to make one of his favourite sweet things: chocolate slice- and I was pleased to rediscover this old and easy recipe in my scrapbook. Thought I'd share it here, too, in case you feel like celebrating something.

Piano Concert Chocolate Slice.

Melt together in a heavy-based saucepan: 200 grams butter, 1/2 tin condensed milk, 3 Tb cocoa powder, and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Then remove from the heat and add: 1 packet of plain store-bought biscuits, crushed with a rolling pin, 1 cup coconut, 1/2 cup sultanas or other chopped, dried fruit.

Mix everything together well and press into a shallow tray or oven dish that has been lined with greaseproof paper. Refrigerate until set and ice with chocolate icing, or keep uniced. After a few hours, you can lift out the slice and cut it into small triangles.