tiny happy

preoccupied with thoughts of future projects

I hope October is going well for you and you're feeling the spring sunshine on your face (at least, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere!) 

I feel as though I've been preoccupied by two things, lately: work and wool! Work is self-explanatory, but on the wool side of things... I went to the annual sale/open day of local yarn factory Woolyarns just outside of Wellington last week. They have in the past produced wool carpets and other products, along with a range of different yarns, including Zealana yarns, which are some of my favourite because they blend possum fur with merino and other fibres. 

Anyway, the sale was quite amazing and there were cones and cones of natural wool for sale, as well as some blends. I bought a few cones that I'm planning to share with friends and family. Also for sale were lengths of machine knitted possum-blend yarn, made up in a fine moss stitch. The pieces had been cut apart with scissors but I managed to find a beautiful big piece in grey that only needed finishing along one edge. I did that and now i have a lovely soft, warm shawl from fine grey merino/possum blend yarn. It has a dusky-pink ribbed border on each edge. 

I had thought about hand-knitting something like this, so I'm very glad I never embarked on that particular project! With the rustic marled yarn I bought, I plan to knit sturdy slippers using this pattern (Tom and Arlo need new slippers for around the house and before we know it, it will be autumn.)

The hank of cream yarn you can see in the picture above is very rustic and I'd like to try some natural dyeing with it over the summer. I recently bought a punch needle (more on that in my next post!) and I think it would be fun to prepare my own yarn colours for this craft. My dream project for the pale grey/mauve yarn is this cardigan pattern in Laine magazine by Libby Jonson (Truly Myrtle).

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The Wool Lover is a new NZ online journal devoted to all things woollen. It has some lovely articles - I recommend it!

Also in the photos above, you can see some floral embroidery I worked on this week (clusters of daisies on oatmeal linen) and some beautiful real flowers I encountered today. Now that it's lighter and warm in the mornings, I'm trying to get up an hour earlier to walk up the hill before sitting down all day to work. Some days I'm more motivated to get up than others, and once walking I do tend to stop and look at plants on my way, but it is a lovely way to start the day.

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spring fling

It's been a little longer than usual since I last wrote something here, due to an extra-busy few weeks. But it always feels good to sit down and reflect on the nicest parts of each week. This blog is useful like that.

Friends came to visit and brought me the giant waratah flower you see in the top picture. It's a real beauty, glossy dark red with a sturdy, almost trunk-like stem. Thinking about Australian plants led me to the delicate illustration work of Edith Rewa - isn't it beautiful?

My sister also came to stay and she delivered a bag of juicy lemons from warmer climes (i.e. my parents' orchard in the South Island) and the first thing I made with them was this lemon slice. The best! I'm thinking the remainder of the lemons might have to become lemon curd, or perhaps this cake for afternoon tea in a few hours.

It's the school holidays at the moment, and while Tom and I have been too busy at work to go away anywhere, we have managed to do a few evening things together. The other night the kids and I took our dinner down to a rocky spot on the coast and seagulls swooped around us, desperate for leftovers. It was extremely windy and cold, but even so, brought a hint of Wellington summer evenings. We're all looking forward to longer days and being outside more often.

Tom had a suffrage-themed dinner to attend for his work, and asked me to make a white camellia pin for his jacket. Camellia flowers were a symbol of the suffrage movement in the late 1800s in NZ. Suffragists gave white camellia blooms to parliamentarians who voted to finally allow women to vote.

It was midnight when I got to work on it, so it's not quite as glorious as I'd hoped. But fun to make, anyway! I'm proud of being a descendant of women who signed the Suffrage Petition in 1893, so I might need to refine my design and make some more of these camellias for my own coat.

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I hope this dispatch finds you well, dear reader. See you next week!

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