February 2009

February 26th, 2009

dear universe…



Thank you very much for listening the other day when you and I had some serious words. Thank you for materialising work for Kevin so I can stay at home with the girls. Thank you for dropping some money from the sky when we so seriously needed it. Thank you for making sure Edith was ok. Thank you for miraculously returning me to less than my pre-pregnancy weight after only five weeks. And thank you for turning up with a nice letter full of petals yesterday.

I’m going to keep adding to this. But for now I desperately need to apply some lip balm, make tea and eat some cake.

And tomorrow is my favourite day. February the twenty seventh. If I could declare a special Charlotte statutory holiday that would be it.


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February 22nd, 2009

dusty plum





Dusty plum. Not only for the colour, but for the texture. This cashmere is wonderfully dry. I’ve never come across dry yarn before but really it’s the only way to describe it. Chalky almost. It’s the only time the Knitting Goddess has ever managed a solid and we were the fortunate recipients. But it’s a solid that changes in the light. One moment deepest darkest plum, but a shift in light – and Astrid’s wearing a different colour altogether.

This is the fourth in my raglan series. It’s taken all winter to make. In between knitting projects. To replace the Pear Tree one mummy felted only two weeks after making it. Don’t put Pear Tree in the machine no matter how gentle the cycle.

The Pattern is based on the raglan from The Baby Knits Book – I’ve just upped the measurements to fit Astrid – and made everything much longer – even when to scale.

The past couple of weeks I’ve also baked more cakes. It’s all Astrid will eat right now along with pasta tuna and pesto. And cornflakes. I realised about myself that I go through phases of things in intense bursts. I do the same thing but adapt it – like the cake – same base but a different one every week – summer fruits and coconut – raspberry, poppy seed and sunflower seed – blueberry, walnut and dark chocolate.

Then there’s my Robe Rouge wardrobe. I’ve so far made seven dresses and three pairs of pyjama pants – all from one of three patterns – none in the same fabrics so they all look quite different. Astrid’s wardrobe of smock tops and trousers– same two patterns every time.

Ditto the raglan phase. Which I am now well and truly over.
Until someone needs a new jumper.

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February 20th, 2009

Rosie Flo’s colouring books











Funnily enough, in my favourite little studio next door – the one I see out the window of my little room, were once produced the Rosie Flo colouring books (which are more than just colouring in books because you draw faces, arms and legs and backgrounds too).

I found this out the other day when helping a neighbour with a book he’s publishing – and the first thing I saw upon arriving was a display stand of lovely colourful Rosie Flo books. It would transpire you see, said neighbour is involved in the running of the Rosie Flo publishing empire. Yay for that.

So of course I left with an armful of books, some of which are now in little packages ready for their journeys around the world, but I’ve saved one or two for the blog, so if you’d like one please just leave a comment and I’ll draw a winner or two in about a week.

There’s an AMAZING japanese book too which you can buy easily enough from Amazon – it’s marvellous – it includes illustrations done by famous Japanese artists and drawing and colouring in space for you too.

More Rosie Flo goodness at Amazon.

51 Comments »

February 19th, 2009

sfgirlbybay interview

There’s a little moi-interview over at sfgirlbybay today and a house tour too.

And tomorrow I have an exciting story to tell about Rosie Flo’s colouring books. Stay tuned.

8 Comments »

February 18th, 2009

The family annuals

A job I finally did while we waited for Edith to arrive – a time when I had a couple of spare days on my hands – the two blurb books I’ve had sitting in the to-be-done pile – one for over a year now – our family annuals.

We chose landscape softcover with premium paper – and for those of you in the UK keen to avoid any postal taxes they’re shipped from the Netherlands, so you’re safe! Each is 120 pages and we thought pretty good at £17.95 each. What we think of that when we’re back in NZ remains to be seen.

These shall most certainly be an annual event – so much fun to put together – and really tremendous books.



from the 2007 book :















from the 2008 book :

















A friend sent me an email asking whether I had any design tips for making a blurb book to which I replied, well of course I do :)

I like to keep things consistent and simple. I made most spreads one full image on the right and one large image with white space on the left. Some I did use more photos, but I made sure to use only simple layouts – no fancy collage stuff or lots of different sized images – things like three by three small boxes and also pages with two images the same size were good. Nice even stuff. No mess.

There’s no text apart from an introduction / overview of the year at the beginning with a full page image opposite. I have used helvetica as the typeface (or swiss 721) – regular and bold – arial would suffice if one didn’t have either or those, and i’ve used lower case throughout. I think the body copy was 9.5 and the headings 11 points in size.

My design style is to keep everything as simple as possible and let the photographs do the talking. No need for colour, crazy fonts or any fancy design at all. So really, not much designing to do at all.

Note – the photos make the book look square but we got standard landscape shape.

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February 17th, 2009

02



Yellow melamine bowl £2 from Habitat after my interview at the Beeb this morning. And as soon as I get some money Astrid gets one of these.

7 Comments »

February 16th, 2009

01



I just stumbled upon yellow week at Erin’s. Funnily only yesterday I was thinking to myself there’s something about yellow here as we got the train to Richmond, leaving our daffodil filled house, avec child clad in yellow and yellow pram bag. Heck, I even wore my citrine necklace for the first time in over a year.

Yesterday Astrid decided to wear, as well as her yellow raincoat, a yellow handbag, her yellow dress and she also pointed at the yellow pages in a book. So Astrid knew all along it was yellow week.

Clever girl Astrid.

2 Comments »

February 16th, 2009

Hello 44

We’re back kiddos.



www.44timestwo.com

1 Comment »

February 14th, 2009

our house

After everyone left yesterday I had about five minutes to race around taking a few photos before we had to put the house back to (toddler proof and messy) normal and collect Astrid from childcare (so quickly I entirely forgot to shoot the living area and any part containing nice furniture). Look out for the best photos which I’ll be putting up on 44 times two – starting again for the year this Monday.

entrance :






living / dining:









kitchen :





(secret painkiller stash in the cake tin!)





my room :













bathroom :



bedroom :













17 Comments »

February 13th, 2009

Astrid says







…how many cakes have you baked since the last one?
A: quite a few.

Astrid likes cake. Especially the new ones mummy has been baking. From her new cookbook – Off the Shelf. The recipe for raspberry and peach tart that mummy has totally changed, using almond meal and spelt flour and different berries each time. And she puts chocolate into them too. So much better than any other cake I’ve ever had says Astrid.

Today some nice Japanese people came to our house for a few hours and took photos. And we talked about lots of stuff like life and baking and cake and sewing and knitting and babies and Hampstead Heath and flickr and blogging and heaps more stuff. They took a photo of me holding plates of cake and I had to smile. I lost my last hairclip this morning which meant I had to wear one of Astrid’s (big red felt flower) hairclips. For a photo in a book. Yes, so this week I’ve been cleaning.

Not a consistent cleaner – I do like a clean house – but I’m not really prepared to put the work in because I want to do other things – so this has been a rare ocassion. A delight. A treat. So tidy was it that even during the shoot we totally messed the house up again just by having a cup of tea and some (blueberry, walnut and dark chocolate) cake. Yvonne told me what to do. Dust, vacuum, flowers and fruit. I would have worked that out eventually, but it’s much easier to be told by someone who knows what they’re doing.

This week also, I made cushion covers, bags, more cake, knitted some cashmere sleeve and went out on my own, on the train, to a meeting – out in the big wide world. Back in Love with London. Mummy is about to have some fun.

10 Comments »

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