tiny happy

assorted treasures

So many treasures to share with you in this post! It was my birthday recently and because I'm very spoiled I received some beautiful gifts, some of which I've shared above because I think you'd love them too. 

My friend A gave me a beautiful wee bud vase by Wellington ceramicist Wundaire. The design is called Fleur, which just happens to be my middle name and the colours in the ceramic are derived from plant dyes, I think! I love it and it was the perfect home for the last freesia of the season. My sister Tamsin sent me the most beautiful little suncatcher for our kitchen window. These are made by Hydrangea Ranger in Auckland. Aren't they beautiful? (As an aside, I love all things HR and have bought many sets of earrings from her for gifts!)

Do you know the Shetland Wool Adventure journals? I've admired them on Insta but not actually leafed through one of them until Arlo and Kee included issue #3 in my birthday gift. It's a beautiful wee book, with lots of knitting patterns that I'm keen to cast on. You can see all six here on this Ravelry page. I think I'll start with the 'Blosta Hat' (pictured above) - in hopefully exactly those colours!

Last year, I discovered that my whānau on my mum's side has (distant) Shetland Island heritage. Mum's great-grandmother was from born on Fair Isle into the Eunson family, and moved to London as a young woman, probably the first in her family to leave the island permanently. As knitters, it was an exciting discovery! Especially for Mum and I. She had known of Orkney ancestry for a long time, but not specific details. I'd love to learn more about this side of our family sometime, and of course, a long-term dream would be a Shetland trip!

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In the last two pictures above, you can see a bit of patchwork I've been doing. I couldn't close the lid of my fabric leftover box (and believe me, it's a big box) so I decided to pull out some pieces and make a quilt top. I settled on a simple nine-patch design and chose only solid colour fabrics, some of which are dyed with avocado and other plants. It's currently king-sized but I might trim it down a bit to make the next steps a bit easier to manage! 

I do love the way the solid bright colours look together - they almost sing to each other. It would make a great quilt for our bed this summer.

I still love to experiment with cyanotype printing on the occasional sunny weekend day! I've included a snap of some cards I made recently for a friend. The exposure wasn't super successful because the sun went behind a cloud as soon as I took the prints outside. I used watercolour paint to bright them up instead.

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In truth, I haven't been finding as much time and energy for my making practice as I usually do. It's mostly to do with having work and other commitments that are taking up lots of space in my mind! But I'm hoping that with the longer days ahead and a bit of time off over summer, I will get back into it. I've no shortage of projects in mind! Some plans include:

- Finishing the nine-patch quilt, which will involve some simple hand quilting and binding the edge. 

- Knitting up a linen top of some sort for summer (I have some of this yarn in a soft green, and am thinking about the Tegna pattern for it)

- Making some Christmas/summer gifts for friends and family. I still haven't decided what, exactly! Will report back soon...

I'd love to know what's keeping you busy and inspired these days!

Lots of love, 
M

october sweetness

The photo directly above is a bit of a boast. I found all these wonderful books in one recent visit to an op-shop. So lucky! I've started the Lorde collection, finished both the Carol Ann Duffy poetry books (which I adored) and had a go at knitting some of the stitch patterns. The novel by Witi Ihimaera, The Parihaka Woman, is on my bedside table ready to be read very soon. I'd love to know what you're ready these days? 

Now it's late in October - how did that happen? I'm so enjoying the lighter mornings and evenings, even though there is still a bit of a chill to the Wellington air. Tom and I recently walked up a hill in our neighbourhood, and I picked a handful of wildflowers on the way home. You can see them in my first pic above. It was a surprise to find so many beauties, just growing along the side of the road. My favourites are those creamy little roses that grow along hedges.

Also inspired by spring growth, I made a pair of prints for our spare room, which we've been slowly renovating over this past year. I just need to find some frames for them now. I used my cyanotype printing set and pressed tansy and coriander plants picked at the height of last summer.

This month I knitted a vest for myself, using a skein of mohair-silk dyed by Nikki of Dark Harbour Yarn, held together with some Zealana fingering-weight possum/cotton/merino blend. It was a free pattern called the Sara Vest from Ewe Knit Toronto, and used exactly one skein of the mohair with just a tiny bit left - phew! I don't think I'd knitted a vest for myself before but I really like wearing it - it's been handy over dresses and when it's not cool enough for a proper sweater or cardigan. More details about this make can be found on my Ravelry page here.

Crazy hair photo courtesy of Keira and the Wellington wind!

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Another good thing from the past month or so is that I've joined our local chapter of Good Bitches Baking. With the overarching goal of 'making Aotearoa NZ the kindest place on earth,' the Good Bitches join a roster to bake for various organisations and charities around the city, such as homeless shelters, community drop-in centres and other programmes. GBB provides white cardboard boxes that we put our baking in for delivery, as well as a little notepad to write a message and ingredients on for the recipients.

It's a wonderful team to be part of, and I have really enjoyed baking and delivering treats over the past six weeks or so. I love to bake but with no more school lunches to prepare and trying not to eat quite so much sweet food myself, it's a great way to spread the sweetness around to our wider community.

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Other October sweetness has included a trip to the City Gallery to see the Joanna Margaret Paul retrospective exhibition, Imagined in the Context of a Room. I've loved Paul's paintings and poetry since I first encountered them about 15 years ago, so it was real joy to be able to see everything collected together in this way. If you're going to be in the capital before February, 6, I highly recommend you go and have a look.

October is also my birthday month, and this year I was lucky enough to hear some live music to celebrate. A group of friends and I went to hear soul/folk singer Frazey Ford and her band at San Fran. It was such a treat. Here's a song for you.

Take care,
Melissa X