Fossickers' Booty.

A bit of  opshopping in the last weeks of the holidays , all by myself  , is always an indulgent feeling. No-one saying things like; "can we go now..!" Or (always a killer) "what will you do with that? " 

Do you have to do something  with it?

 Is there a committee that needs a report on one's purchases' use and sensibility  ?

What if I just like to look at it and feel it so now and then.

Or simply marvel at something from a bygone era , and wonder who she was who made it...

So here some flowery cottons from 30 years ago. They go marvelously well with the polka dots in yellow and brown.

 And how can I go past these shoe stretchers, especially the ones with the little flowers on it. Maybe I will get bunions later in life and thank my lucky stars that I had the wisdom and fore-sight to stock up on these un-fashionable gadgets.  
  And I simply fell on to this apron after I saw someone else hold it up and put it down again.

What gorgeous scraps she used , and laid out quite balanced. There is only one stain in the pocket; she probably grabbed her hanky when her fingers were covered in gravy.  

All the seams have been embroidered with coloured floss in either a herringbone or a fly stitch.

And the whole apron is actually lined! Yes ,with an old flour bag , Oamaru flour with a snowdrop emblem. It is the back of the fabric with the printing showing through.

 Did she use it a lot? She took so much care with her stitching , was it for serving up the Sunday roast? She liked blue , then , so long ago.
  

  7 little Beatrix Potter books were staring at me in the ( oh my gosh!) free box at my local St.Vincent de Paul op-shop. Yes they were well loved , and the spines were pretty tatty. But how gorgeous each page...

If anything I could make some nice postcard out of them.  Although the strange Mrs. Tiggywinkle is my fave , I do have a weak spot for the handsome Jeremy Fisher.

 The back ground material?  It is a plastic  sheet with pictures of painting cats. I'm positive it's the "colour kittens" from the little golden books series. 

It must have been quite a durable plastic , since there isn't a crack in it. What could I make with it...? It was 50 cents , lol!
After some young guests had stayed the night , I suddenly realized that I was pretty short on flat single sheets. I have plenty of fitted ones that I got from my Mum . She also gave me 2 old fashioned pure cotton ones years ago , with embroidered ribbon at the top. Heavy , close woven

good quality from the beginning of her marriage , still in great nick after hundreds of washes (in front loaders may I add). 

That's what I wanted! In the beginning of my marriage or flatting I certainly couldn't afford those , and just kept replacing the cheap flimsy pollycotton sheets every few years. They look great until you wash the starch out of them. 

Sometimes you could find the old heavy ones in opshops.  So I went out expressly to search for them. And in the second op-shop that day (the Cranford hospice shop) I hit the jackpot! 2 identical single flat sheets with 2 matching pillowslips each , still in their plastic cellophane wraps! Never slept under!

The glue of the label has left a slight stain after 30 years in someone's cupboard, but this does not bother me . In the next shop ( red cross) I found another 2 sheets , white and peach , used this time but clean.

Yeah and a crocheted doily , just because it was super sweet.  I spend $20 in all. 4 percale sheets and pillowslips, great. And a new teacup for myself ; Maxwell & Williams no less.

So write that up in your usefulness committee report !

Past Creations.

Just to show you that so now and then I actually do go into my lovely studio and make stuff! These I made end last year , I love the idea of bunting , it is great for parties ; kids or grown-ups. Or to just decorate your porch or rooms. I've seen some very simple examples where only one piece of fabric is used , and no seams. I'm not sure how long those would last flapping in the wind. So mine have 2 sides , sometimes the same , sometimes not ; depending how my Muse whispers to me . ( She floats above me in the studio , I'll show her one day )

The little flags above are made with what I call Green Garden fabrics from my stash. All recycled ofcourse , including the ribbon.
 And these are made from checks and stripes and bright colours. No pink so that it can work for any child.  I personally hate it that some colours have become gender loaded. Retail clothing  stores sometimes seem to push that whole issue , in which one section is pink overload and the other side is navy, green and brownish. We used to find it difficult to find girl's clothes that didn't have pink and hearts or otherwise a glittery princessy slogan on it. My girls hated it and still do. Often we got shorts and shirts from the boy's department. They have never liked being pushed into an assigned role. It makes me feel very proud of their attitude!
That's not to say I don't like pink. I do. It just isn't my uniform. Here is a super feminine shabby chique bunting , using 70's sheets , 60's and 50's tablecloths , and gorgeous hand embroidered doilies . It sold within a week! I like putting all the colours together , but it takes ages on deciding which fabrics to use.  I like  to make them between 3 and 4 metres long , that gives more scope for decorating.
This was made on seeing a tiny picture in junkmail. So I grabbed my hook and rescued yarn and away I went. I felted it afterwards in the washing machine to make it stiffer and sturdier. I keep thinking of Little Red Ridinghood when I was working on it. It is just a small handbag size, but a pleasing shape.
Another pleasing shape is this bucket bag. This time I did use a pattern and rescued acrylic yarn for strength. It has a round bottom. I loved making the flowers. Plenty of space in this one.

Crochet is a lovely thing to do while watching something on tv or waiting for an appointment. It is very portable as well. There is something soothing in the repetition of the stitches and the feeling of the fibre in your hands. And although you are working away , you actually get more and more  relaxed . 

I wish you happy Summer's days ahead! 

Lazy Summer Days...

A few days after Christmas our family foursome went on a holiday to York Bay , which is on the other side of Wellington Harbour. We were being luxurious this year and rented a cottage for a whole week. Thank goodness for my job... We planned on doing a bit of shopping , reading books ,eating easy meals , no obligations to anyone and relaxing. It worked brilliantly! I spend my pocket money on secondhand clothes; very good outlets in Wellington , mainly Rebound. I have a whole new wardrobe ,including 7 shirts and tops , 4 gorgeous floaty skirts , one of them silk , hush puppy shoes , 2 handbags and a green beret. Also a pair of glasses , the frame of which suits me very well , so I'm going to have new prescription lenses put in them. That should save us 100's of dollars.  So all those items for about 110 dollars, I am well pleased with how I used my yearly xmas money.  Also found a felting book second hand.  We twice had a really good look around the Cuba street shops , some really imaginative boutiques and both the girls spend some of their money there. We ate in cafe's and an Indian Restaurant. We used the train and the bus service to get into Wellington , so no parking hassles. 

 And that is me in the outside bath , which had piped hot water from the house. I watched the sunset from there while 2 tuis fed their young in the nest above me in the trees. Absolute magic!!
We had marvelous views from our little house on the hill. The weather was great most of the week , one night of rain and high winds was all. Lovely sunsets in the west. Since we live on the East coast , this was wonderful to watch.
A large deck was on one side of the the cottage , which had every thing we needed ; bedding, basic cooking stuffs , cd-player with a drawer full of music , tv , woodburner , and a fantastic shower , washingmachine, comfy furniture. We'd love to come back. My brother and his wife came over one evening to catch up , and we had fish and chips together on the deck.
Wellington does look so good on sunny days! You can tell it is windy though by the way the trees are bend over. My love had 3 weeks off work in all , something he hasn't had for a couple of years due to him having changed jobs a few times. So he enjoyed himself  , I loved having him home all that time. 
Back home we went to the local auction house for a morning , and I "won" a cardboard box full of haberdashery , I never have to buy ric-rac or embroidered braiding again...!

Lush Summer Garden.

Some gardening news now. This is our front vegie patch .When my love and I look at this we both feel very satisfied with how this is going. Those worms sure are little miracle critters ; they just made the best compost. Every spade full was positively crawling with them. Those potatoes on the left; they came up by themselves , from the eyes in the peelings I threw out . So we left them ; to see how they go. I understand that we shouldn't use the eyes from the new potatoes again , since you lose some of the disease resistance in the next generation. The other potatoes we are growing are from seed potatoes, and they are growing in a stack of old tires down the back. Just look how everything has just shot up compared to the beginning of the garden in the picture below!
The one thing we are not growing is cauliflower , they are actually quite tricky without spraying poison , and have turned full of beasties and rot in the past. And the soil is actually to rich for growing carrots in , we found last year. They stayed very short  , the roots didn't need to go down far to find nutrients.
These  are our climbing beans. We got the original handful of beans off a friend about 5 years ago , we have no idea what they are , but each year we keep a few seeds and plant them again . They are very tasty , prolific ,and no strings ,no matter how long we left them on the vine . We also grow yellow butter beans, dwarfbeans and purple beans.
The tomatoes are doing their thing , lots of different varieties. I hope I will have enough to make pasta sauce , which will include courgettes , basil , chives and paprikas or bell peppers.
And the snowpeas I got from my father's partner. I was actually ready to pull them out ,when they just grew and grew without any flowers. I was afraid that she had taken seed off a hybrid plant , which the next time is infertile. She is Thai and her english isn't very good , and explaining about hybrids is kind of complicated.  However after we went on holiday for a week and coming back there were suddenly flowers and peas! Great for in the stirfry or boiled quickly. Yum.

Loaded Summer Trees.

And so we rolled into Christmas. I was late putting up the tree. The weather had been hot and the x-mas feeling just hadn't hit home. This year the whole Northern Hemisphere theme of snowmen and fake ice just didn't make sense. So I bought a big bunch of silk flowers from the cheapo dollar store in reds, pinks, purples, white and orange , 40cm of sparkly green organza  from Spotlight , and a new set of the cheapest non-flashing lights from the Warehouse . I then spend an entire evening and part of a morning ripping all plastic bits of the flowers  and pushing the fabric petals around the lights. I used an antique bone stiletto to widen the holes. Then I ripped the sparkly organza into long strips , causing my living room to be sparkly with glitter for days. And for some reason also the toilet floor... Also purchased this year was some new silver tinsel and 4 delicate silver glass baubles , and a 5- pointed silver star for the top of the tree , to signify the pagan symbols of the 4 elements and the spirit pointing upwards. Added some white vintage lace ribbon recently purchased for a dollar.  Hey and now that box of homemade lavender hearts from vintage linens and buttons; perfect! 
I asked my teenage daughters and their cousin who was staying with us for Christmas to use all these items to decorate the tree 4 days before  the big day. They did a wonderful job!! A few angels were added, since they are not a winter theme , but an every day reminder.

It is a perfect summer flower tree , and now I'm having trouble taking it down.. At night all the flowers glow in soft fairytale colours. And the lavender smells great , a good substitute for pine, plus it relaxes the senses.
Other ways to keep busy just before x-mas ( yeah right...!?) is to plant an apricot tree , the sort that ripens just around that time. A friend down the road owns an orchard ladder , very handy!  
This year I actually managed to bottle apricots without them turning to pulp straight away, also some pulp and the leftover juices went into sauce  , all flavoured with cinnamon , allspice and star anise seed. Apricot crumble will be beautiful in the winter!  Here are some of the jars I made , including apricot jam with orange juice and grated ginger. This year I put the cooked apricots through the little moulineux hand sieve to remove any of the hard fibres from the place where the pips sit against the flesh.  So it should be a smooth jam this time , and a jam made on purpose  , not because everything turned to pulp with the wrong sugar content.  A bit of a Domestic Goddess Moment for me at the end of the year...!
I love the crocheted afghan blanket I picked up at the Sallies for a mere $4 . I can't crocheted that for such a small amount of money. 

Christmas Day itself went very well , my father and his partner , brother, sister-in-law and nephew came for a lovely easy bbq with  yummy meats ,salads and fresh fruits and pavlova and trifle for dessert. We all sat outside by the swing seat and relaxed with wine and nibbles . After dinner we went inside  and chose our presents from the oxfam website. This is something we decided on doing this year , instead of drawing names out of a hat as we usually do. Combined we came up with $190 and that bought mosquito nets , a toilet , agricultural tools , seeds , schoolbooks , a baby emergency kit and last but not least ,a goat ! We all agreed that we should make this our new family tradition. We chose Oxfam , because they sponsor projects closer to home; in the pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea. So our Christmas was not as stressed with trying to shop like crazy, trying to think of things to buy , and hopefully someone else has now less stress in their day to day living with our few donations.

Pixies at the bottom of my garden.

Now I'll show you some reasons why my blog had to wait a bit. First of all a large group of Bushbabies were created for several orders. Here they all are just before some off them flew off to a new home. Eleven went to a birthday boy of 3 years , to live in his birdcage"dollhouse" and have wild adventures , no doubt at the bottom of his garden...! Will possum's baby run away? Will fantail rescue blossom from the treeclimb gone wrong? Will tui's and dragonfly's flying competition have a good ending?   I will never know...
And then spring cleaning hit me. My whole studio has been tidied and cleaned and sorted , I even managed to get tough on myself and throw some things away! Now I can walk from one end to the other again. And all that empty table space ; I  can't wait to get started on new projects and finish some u.f.o.'s. Everything has it's place again. I used photocopy-paper boxes , which I got through work , to store fabrics and doilies etc in . I glued old wallpaper onto their fronts to disguise the bright yellow labels which I didn't like. Each box is labelled with its contents . I have a kitchen step so I can easily reach them .

 Maybe I should do something about the ironing pile next. Not as much fun I'm afraid....
I have a lovely view of the back garden and I can see the street side at the same time, while I'm sitting there sewing and doing other things. I always listen to the radio , or play c.d.'s. 
A close-up of the dragonfly child . I love the colour of his/her eyes.
And little short tail bat stretching it's wings. Probably thinking about Halloween. Although looking scary isn't working...

A little more trip and homecoming.

So after about 3 hours on the ferry , we still needed to drive 4 more hours to get to Christchurch. Our 2 teenagers were sleepy from seasickness pills, which they took just in case , and are listening to music in the backseat. We made a stop at Kaikoura , famous for whale watching, and the weather was still sparkling.  Check out the scenery we got to look at for a long time... We could actually see the wind blowing up the snow at the ridges so now and then. If you click on the photo you can see on the right of the left mountain top a small white stripe ; it is the jetstream of a plane coming from Antarctica , on a cargo flight. It's the only jetplane we ever get to see here in New Zealand. 

We spent a great week with our family in Christchurch , had many homemeals together , and lots of family photos taken. We popped into the city on the bus , they have a very good public transport system there , sniffed around in some cool little shops. I often avoid the main shopping streets because they are full of mainstream chainstores , and frankly we have those at home with the same things. I am far more interested in the little boutiques and quirky shops that you can find in big cities , with their own designers and individual tastes. There are a number of shops where they sell things made from recycled fabric and other materials , one shop (Cherry Blossom) sells vintage kimonos and things made from the silk. I bought a lovely 1950's dress from Tete-a-tete , which is a tiny upstairs shop that sells only vintage clothing, and then only very nice examples. My daughters , whom like to dress a little different than other girls their age , also fell in love with some items and bought gloves , 1960's 2 tone shoes and a 1960's dress with a little white twiggy collar.
And back on that ferry , luckily another easy cross over . I sat and stitched , and sold a fantail Bushbaby to the lady sitting at our table. (ka-ching!)  But now we all just wanted to have the trip over and done with. See our cats and sleep in our own beds. Still a few days before hubby had to be back at work.
And look what happened to the apricot blossoms from a month or so ago. I think I better keep all my jam jars from now on , because it is going to be a beautiful crop!
And now the garden is blooming . I used to love the autumn the best as seasons go , but spring here on the East-coast is warm and fresh and colourful. Yes , chilly in the mornings , but by 10 in the morning you can , more often than not, open the doors already and eat lunch outside. Most people are kind of waiting for real summer , but often it gets so hot , or rainy , the flowers have faded , and much dust. Spring is under rated. We have already had a b.b.q. at Labour weekend last week. 
So I made a new display in the livingroom with deep blues and much pink and purple.

That's my new wee-willy-winkie candlestick I picked up for $2 at a school fair last week. It is a multi coloured enameled piece. Well , I liked it..

Trip to the "mainland" in spring.

It's been a few weeks since my last post . I'll show you later some of the why's.

 Here a picture of our front yard. Since we have good soil it seemed a waste not to use it. Most people have a respectable lawn which only gets used when mowed. But these are our new raised beds from salvaged materials , and the worms in the compost bins have been working very hard with providing us with the best black compost , with help from my friend J's horses. We are planting them up in a "staggered" manner after the last dangers of frost have gone. Stuff the ancient veges in the supermarkets at daft prices...!
This photo was taken just before we hopped in the car to go on our trip to Christchurch. I just wanted to hug this gorgeous tree in front of our house , and hoped that I wouldn't miss the whole display by the time we got back. As it was ,I still enjoyed a week of it before the rain took care of it. I love the way it turns our street into a pink confetti party left-over.
After a 4 hour trip to Wellington, a night in a cheap camping batch , we boarded the ferry. Bye stormy Wellington . Love the clolour of the waves when it is mixed with airbubbles , aqua-blue.
Well ,we saw this brilliant ship just out of the harbour. An Argentinian naval training vessel. I grabbed my thick llama and wool coat and sprinted up to the deck and click ; I had it. Husband said he was sure we saw this ship before : in Amsterdam at Sail 1990. Not sure how he can tell one pirate ship from the next, but I believe him. You can really imagine the first colonial settlers coming to New Zealand like this. Not much of a harbour to sail into either. Probably had to load everything off with rowing boats onto the beach. What a pain it must have been to get your little leather button-up booties wet! And all those petticoats...
After a good 2 hours of steadily chugging along ( I did some sewing on my Bushbabies ,and saw a dolphin jump in front of the ferry!) we reach the lovely Sounds. Sun shining warmly, and checking the water for seals. Most people on deck ( I eavesdropped) were fantasizing about living in one of the  little houses along the coves with tiny private beaches. Nice for a holiday , but not so cool for supplies or in a storm , in my opinion.

More in my next post.

Felting all weekend!

I seem to get very busy during the week these days. After I come home from my part-time job , it's lunch then another load of washing , some household chores , some days I run an errant, and before you know it the girls are home from school and it is time to make coffee and  to have a sit down with my hubby. Then take the washing down and start dinner. While they do dishes , I usually fold the clothes and put them away. This week I had an order to fill for some Bushbabies so I then stitch all evening. Somewhere along the line I need to get more studio time in. Preferably in the afternoon. Which means I have to just leave some of the chores to later in the day. Which makes me feel kinda guilty. At the moment I pay my eldest to vacuum clean. My youngest is now helping with the dusting , since she complained of not enough spending money. This really helps ! But I have these self made rules ; I should have my chores done before I get to play. But as everyone knows ; a woman's work is never done. I've kinda set myself up for failure there... 

So last weekend I was asked to give a workshop in a felting technique by the extension group of the local embroidery guild. I taught about 15 talented stitchers how to make 3-d felted flowers. We all had a fun day.
          All these busy hands! Kneading and shaping and rubbing.
            And they all had success ! And these lovely flowers lend themselves so beautifully for embellishing and embroidering and beading. I'd love to see them after these ladies are completely finished with them.
                  Quite a few ladies bought my little wool kits and were not scared at all in trying my black and white and red colour mix. As a matter of fact , you could really notice that they were the extension group , not panicked by mistakes; instead they either tried to fix the mistakes by themselves, having already worked out how you can adhere wool to other wool , or they creatively used the mistake as part of their design. But there were not many mistakes made. 
        The felting class was held in our local Rudolph Steiner school . A wonderful building with a lovely feeling.  On a gorgeous spring day too.

On Sunday there was the HB Felting group at Keirunga , which I run. A lovely lively informal group of felters, who like to come together to work on their own projects , and help each other and inspire each other. This time there were no beginners that needed tutoring , which was really nice actually , this way I could work on my own thing and socialize. 

Last week of school term and then we go to Christchurch for a family visit. Looking forward to it. I shall take some stitching with me. 

Threads and Dewdrops.

My lovely bloke put some absent bids on a few things in a local auction. He likes to tinker with bicycles and sound equipment. And we saw these bobbins of thread on a fairly unclear photo on the auction house's website. So he put in a bid on them too.  And won them. It was an astounding amount of new sewing thread; 78 bobbins still in their wrappers! For $20. All swedish molnlycke.  My Dutch bargain brain is trying to work out how much money I have saved.....! Not that I had it in the first place of course.  I love it when people don't want their stuff anymore.  This week at school, where I work part-time, I left my merino cardigan in another classroom . When I returned to collect it, 2 teachers said to me  , "oh was that yours. We were looking at the label and thinking that we couldn't afford that on our wages." So I said "neither can I , I got it at an opshop , they provide my labeled clothing."  lol!

Some other beautiful threads in our garden on a misty morning this week. Sparkling and shaking in the morning breeze. In the background are the yellow star flowers of the forsythia , which is just brimming over this year.
And I have finished the first kowhai pixie this spring. I just love the boots on my bushbabies ; I think it gives them a bit of attitude , as if it really is quite possible they are rummaging about at the bottom of my garden. 
This is the poppie plant coming up by my washing line. There had been some spring showers that morning . What the picture doesn't translate is how each droplet shimmered with a rainbow of colours when I moved my head ever so slightly.  Just a bit of everyday magic.