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Thank. You.

I’m far too tired to be making much sense really.
Firstly a beautiful white Christmas. A lovely time at home. Time to just be here and be together, quietly.

Astrid and I went out for a long walk in the snow on Saturday and ended up getting caught in a snowstorm. It took us by surprise. That’s the second time in two weeks I’ve found myself caught up in something so unexpected so easily. Two weeks earlier I was caught up in student protest in Russell Square. I managed to get out swiftly but it was astonishing how easy it is to just walk into something with no way out and it can happen so quickly.

Secondly. Thank You. Thank you to you who still carry on reading my blog from fun times to shit times. From being prolific to being barely here. Thank you. And thank you to the amazing Dallas Clayton for sending me a copy of his brilliant new book. An Awesome Book of Thanks.

Astrid can’t wait to get her hands on it (and she can now I’ve written this). Yet more brilliant unicorns and magical creatures. More wonder. More pure imagination. Good for Dallas for being so ace. Good for Dallas for bringing a bit of strange mad himself into the world to make us smile. Thank You.

So, what did you do today Charlotte?

Forgotten Tales from Hedgehog Fibres – I love this

Well, I dropped Astrid off at Lorraine’s, went for coffee and knitted a couple of inches of Astrid’s wrist warmers. Then I came home, sent an email or two, during the course of which I wrote a list of things I wanted to do and things I had to do. Got the post and spent the next half hour trying to convince myself my new plum cashmere custom yarn is a semi-solid. Then I put the bugaboo and the maclaren on ebay. Then I wound yarn â€“ with a winder, but still no swift, which involves unwinding the wool in little trails over a chair and around my tiny room, wind, repeat, avoid playful cats.

I ordered some lovely camel for a christmas hat, as in present, not themed. I made another cup of tea and sat down with a Biona maple syrup waffle biscuit, decided to take photos of said wool and current knitting projects and then I sat down to write a long overdue blog post which isn’t about any of the blog post subjects I’ve been mulling over the past week at all. And then put everything on flickr and ravelry for good measure.

Yesterday on the other hand I made a dress, finished a bag and little pyjama pants and a blanket and a little hat.

Little gumboots

and other random thoughts for today

Little chopsie boots from mini boden

There’s been more raglan jumper knitting going on. I was over cautious with the neck on the one I sized up for Astrid though, so I’ve gathered it up with some linen cord while I wait for my eBay elastic purchases to arrive. (I went to order elastic and some lovely leather and bamboo buttons from MacCullogh and Wallis but I went to check out and their postage is a flat Â£7.50 â€“ Loop has been spoiling me with their honest and precise postage costs).Â

The sleeves are super long, for folding back and growing into. As is the super wide neck. Mostly I make Astrid’s things far too big. We’ve recently been marvelling she’s been in the same pyjamas for over a year now. Time for new ones though now.

And time to knit another raglan too. The current one’s newborn size (in the pear tree 8 ply blush) so much much quicker to knit up. I’m working on a raglan smock dress too for Astrid. Then I think we’ll be set for winter clothes. Possibly. Apart from the felt coat. And the grey jersey knit long sleeved smock dress. And the new pyjamas.

Also some jolly good news for us regulars at amazon.co.uk, as of today free delivery is for all orders over Â£5. Think I can manage that then. Family Knits has been reduced so I might have to get myself a copy of that.

This week too, I couldn’t resist getting one of these for Astrid for Christmas. Although I think it might have to live in my study for now. As will one of these calendars that arrived today. I’ve bought a few for Christmas presents, although buggeration the pound has gone down bringing to a grinding halt all overseas purchases for now (that statement is half possibly a lie).

I have no idea

…where this came from. I think a little flax-berry eating bird must have sent it.

Which means I had now really better sort myelf out and start sewing. And I really do have to say the grey forest double knit is just heaven. All I want to do it hem the whole three metres and turn it into a blanket. Seriously, this is cotton jersey, lined with super-fine cotton jersey. Oh!

But I do know where this all came from… thank you Melissa, such a lovely parcel full of useful and very pretty things :) And everything seems to match so nicely too. Love!

And this weekend I shall be getting some outbound post ready. For blog contest prize winners; Caroline, Kirsten and Megan (even though she didn’t enter â€“ see I said it would be random).

Time for catching up

You know what. I think the morning sickness is over. The tiredness is over. I know this because we must be in trimester two so the pelvic problems can kick in. But at least I’m awake.

So today after a little burst of energy I have some photos to show and some things to tell. So what I’ll do is upload all the pictures and then I’ll come back and write about them. Ok… right. Done. Now I think I need a cup of tea. This is what I’m like at work. Big burst of energy. Then I need to go and distract myself for a bit.

So here are the little books from Yvonne – I love dirt, which is a fab little book for people with kids, full of fun ideas for outdoor nature activities – like cloud racing! And London Children’s Rooms, well of course I had to have that!

And because Yvonne knows I have a bit of a thing for Shinzi Katoh â€“ she also sent some neat stationery and some Japanese fabric which I love.

As I mentioned quite some time back I put a skirt and top on lay-by with Alison. And because I didn’t work for two months it was quite an extended lay-by, but following my first pay day Alison popped them in the post along with some over yummy goodies including some yarn which you’ll see in a minute.

Di’s housewarming gift came not long after we got here and the washcloths were put to immediate good use, meaning they’re far too busy to be photographed right now. And as Astrid took a shine to the needlebook and ferreted it away to some secret corner in the house it too is unavailable for today’s shoot. So what remains to be photographed is one moleskine notebook making very good use of a liberty print that’s now really rather well travelled :)

For weeks, if not months I’ve been tormented by the fact I’ve made so much stuff and not photographed any of it. I’ve made two nani iro / robe rouge dresses, two bunnies, little baby wraps, organic waffle hand-towels with nani iro bias binding, lunch bags, nappy bags, hand bags. Anyway, lots of stuff! I thought I could make a big pile and just take a photo, but I seem to have forgotten to do that.

Instead here are the current knit / crochet projects; these three small ones are for the morning and evening journeys to and from work and include a pink scarf, a blue scarf and a brown scarf. The pink scarf was going to be a washcloth but I couldn’t stop, the blue scarf was going to be a square for the baby blanket but again I didn’t want to stop. The brown one is using the merino Alison sent â€“ with the suggestion it become a scarf for Astrid so that’s one project with a concrete destiny.

This is the big blanket I am crocheting. It started out as a scarf but I didn’t want to stop. Currently the size of a beach towel we think it’s going to be a fairly expensive blanket. I’m using Savannah DK, a blend of organic merino, cotton and linen. Every weekend we make a trip up to Loop to buy a few more skeins of yarn and to make use of their winding facilities.

Since we arrived I’ve had a select few of my snaplock plastic bags of fabric kept out on my shelves for the next project. Whilst at work I make little notes in my notebook â€“ little ideas, plans, things I want to do. Every week I write down red linen bag, makeup bag, new pencil case, trousers for Astrid. Every week I carry that over to the next page.

So today I took my absolute favourites out of their filing bags â€“ the purple linnet chambray, the grey organic cotton and the nani suzuran field â€“ and added to that a special piece of Lotta from Leslie and I believe I have my makeup bag and pencil case sorted.

The red linen has been waiting for red cotton for weeks and weeks and weeks, so yesterday Kevin was in Soho and I grabbed my opportunity to send him to Kleins for some thread and to Cass Arts for some form of pattern paper. Since then I have found MacCulloch & Wallis stock dressmakers pattern paper.

A recent eBay acquisition is Astrid’s carpet. The minute it arrived she declared it hers. Not being a fancy shiny one, it was a bargain at Â£16 + postage; one slightly worn, handwoven pure wool, 7 x 9 foot Iranian carpet. Also to note Astrid removed her lovely grey top to reveal an outfit I wouldn’t usually dress her in, except that today her entire wardrobe is in the wash.

Also bought on eBay, and costing more than the persian rug, a vintage Roberts Radio which is permanently tuned to BBC Radio 4. Perfect for crocheting to. Miss Lady Bird the Cloud quite likes it too.

While I sit down to edit today’s photos Astrid tears the house apart. Evidence of where the child has been. Next she’s after the camera.

One quick last photo of our front courtyard out of the living room windows and I’m off upstairs to write this blog post. Then I might trawl eBay for a mahogany chest of drawers to replace the ugly pine ones and see whether I can find a copy of Yertle the Turtle on vinyl.

Ah, and as I finish proofing, babychops two wakes up â€“ I think I just felt a foot. Right, we’re off up to Pomona for salad and baps. We’re making burgers tonight.

Have a fun week!

Putumayo World Music

When Putumayo got in touch asking if I’d have a listen to some of their music and write about it on my blog I more than happily agreed. Putumayo is a very cool record label specialising in World Music. They also do kids music â€“ and I knew Astrid would love that!

I’m a bit music deprived sometimes â€“ since I lost my entire CD collection and then had my iPod stolen I’ve sort of learned to live without it. So it’s been lovely indeed to have some tunes to work away to these past few weeks.

I knew my favourite would be Women of Africa, and I’m also mad about the Paris CD â€“ well all of them actually â€“ world music is just so interesting to listen to. There’s a distinct possibility that Music from the Tealands â€“ and from Cairo to Casablanca will end up in my shopping basket very soon.

It’s going to make for excellent afternoons at our new place in London, reading the Guardian, sipping apple tea, the doors and windows flung open, the curtains gently rippling and twirling â€“ feeling as though we’re in a secret art cafe with our interesting music fluttering outside on the summer breeze.

I just can’t shake one of the kids songs out of my head, so all this past week I’ve been singing “don’t ever step on a snake… it would be a big mistake…”

The best thing about the Putumayo site is you can listen to little snippets of the music online. And the other nice thing about them, apart from their diverse array of music is that they support non-profits and have been for the last fifteen years.

Now that’s music worth supporting. You can find out more about them here.

Oh yes. Now I couldn’t keep all this goodness all to myself, so I’m going to randomly give a couple away. Just leave a comment below if you’d like one!

Enfant Terrible

My new favourite shop; Enfant Terrible. A shop with many carefully chosen and very beautiful items for babies and children â€“ to wear â€“ to play â€“ to read.

Inside the little parcel that arrived for Astrid today were some very sweet leggings by mor mor rita. I find it terribly exciting the label says made in Brooklyn. We’ve never had clothes from Brooklyn before.

Sweet little leggings â€“ perfect for running around on the Heath â€“ perfect for wearing under little dresses and skirts â€“ perfect for our next summer.

Our lovely morning

This morning we walked down to the Pyrenees for breakfast. A lovely stroll down the hill, through tree-lined streets, past elegant villas with pretty gardens and tall trees.

Mt Albert’s one of the early Auckland suburbs, complete with both Bowling and Croquet clubs. And quite a few two-storey villas. And lots and lots of trees (just none at the bowling club).

Down the second hill â€“ look babychops! There’s daddy pushing you in your pram.

Down the hill for a yummy mocha and croissant sitting at the big rustic, communal table where one may browse old books about Paris, or add delicious morsels to their shopping basket. A place to read the paper, or just to watch the morning go by. Astrid even gets to sit in a very nice highchair when we’re there.

On the walk back home we take a wrong turning and get to see even more lovely houses. Our favourite street is called Violet Street. Mummy also takes lots of photos of her feet in amongst all the autumness on the footpaths near Violet Street.

She took a lot of photos of her feet and a lot of photos of houses she likes, by which to come back and look at to remember the old neighbourhood.

This is mummy’s favourite house. And here are mummy’s feet again with leaves and different flowers in a different location this time. Nearly home.

But not until she trotted up the hill to take another photo of her also-favourite house.

And not until she’s taken a photo of this letterbox tucked neatly inside the local hedge plant whatever it’s called.

Back down the hill, around the corner and there’s daddy pushing the babychops up the road now. Up the tree-lined road that greets us every day on the way home.

And when we arrived home we found a lovely treat in the letterbox, all the way from Sweden.

And what a little treat it is. I think I love the packaging as much as the contents.

See the Manos post for more info. A lovely morning indeed. Hooray for no car!

Shinzi Katoh shopping

A friend emailed me a few weeks ago with a link to the Shinzi Katoh shop. I’d done a little research and visited the shop following Leslie’s amazing encounter â€“ but it’s always more motivating when you’ve had a friend tell you you really really must look, NOW!

So I had a proper look this time round, and was, to a degree, sensible, because I’ve handed all my shop money over to the Moving To London Fund. Which has put a bit of a dampener on the old shopping in Japan business.

I was going to make Astrid a bag with this canvas â€“ and I knew I wanted to keep a metre of my organic voile back for lining â€“ but I couldn’t for the life of me remember why at the time so it’s packed and gone. I am loving these linen tapes â€“ so cute â€“ and so many to choose from! And of course the fabric section is rather exciting too.

After I’d managed to check-out in Japanese I discovered there is an English shop â€“ which doesn’t contain the full range although you can ask for items from the Japanese shop. However if you want the full Japanese experience without knowing Japanese, I’ve made a tutorial here.

Please let me know if there’s anything missing. And if someone can enlighten me on what one should put under ‘furigana’ I would be most grateful. As I’m sure would be the Shinzi Katoh people who will get people saying ‘miss’ for that!

LINNET

I’m officially in Love. I knew I would be. LINNET is most definitely in my top ten shops in the whole wide world. No, make that top five.

My parcel arrived early this morning. It was probably more exciting than Christmas. Up we got Astrid and I, and out to carefully and slowly unwrap and examine the delights that lay within.

The calendar is lovely, with a different set of cute watercolours for each month. I bought this to inspire me to get my watercolours out and use them. I’ve already hung it next to my new inspiration board. So I’m feeing quite organised this year.

The linen I bought, tiny pieces they were, are of the most amazing quality I’ve ever felt. It’s by no means cheap but worth every penny. This grain-sack linen is so heavy and just exquisite.

What had initially led me to LINNET, my google search for linen ribbon, all simply gorgeous as well. Funnily, the day after ordering this I inherited a roll of about 20 metres of antique linen tape.

The yarn on the left hand side above is a very fine white linen. I was left my grandmother’s crochet hooks, amongst which were many lace hooks. So I also picked up some little crochet motif patterns – so I’ll now have a good excuse to actually sit down and watch a dvd tonight whilst crocheting some of these.

I’ve still got to finish the four bags I started making yesterday which I’ll do today. But for now it’s time to get ready for the day and head to La Cigale market where we’ll fill my new tote bag with gorgeous fresh produce then sit down with a yummy hot moccachino and watch the world go by.

The “lining the vintage-swedish-linen bags and purses with really cool fabrics” project

Today heralds the beginning of another new project. It ought to be noted this does not fall under the “delicate and natural” brief – that’s my other project.

Every evening over Christmas I sat down in my new reading nook with my favourite book and looked at everything over and over. Then I spent two entire days looking all the way through Reprodepot and Superbuzzy; adding things to shopping carts, removing them, adding them back, mixing, matching, considering. Back to the book. Back to the sites. There was no intentional matching, but on a subliminal level, of course.

On Boxing Day morning a small twist of fate led me to the most marvellous treasures from my vintage linen lady and today the first two parcels arrived early at my door. After we’d breakfasted and I’d cleaned up the glass I broke Astrid and I began to slowly unpack and admire these new wonders and play a bit of mix n match.

The green and blues in both these fabrics are simply made for each other. I’m quite excited about this combo – no doubt there’ll be a bag in a few days time.

These ladybugs with lilac dots are absolutely gorgeous. It’s a linen so it will be rather heavy for lining don’t you think so we’ll see – but these two look cute together. Aren’t the orange apples sweet – and I think the red dashes are rather brilliant.

Oh and the purple wavy dots – simply simply extremely lovely in all their wavy loveliness. And what better to go with them than the spangly orange flowers?

This little discovery was the first in my line of finds. I love the harder style of illustration – yet it’s still very friendly and looks most happy with the also-friendly chocolate dots.

And this linen runner – well it vanished from the shop and then it came back I’m happy to say and it’s now in its rightful home soon to become a lovely purse with trees on the inside.

I’m just so in love with these fabrics I could burst! And I really must do some work now and sew tonight.

Some amazing fabrics and eye candy over at The Time Has Come. You can see their blog here. You must have a look. Really. Especially you Lottie if you’re reading this :)

To market, to market

Activity levels have been upped a bit in the past week to ‘as high as possible’ due to the upcoming ‘my first ever craft market’ at Coatesville on the 2nd of December – and again on the 16th for a twilight market.

There’s also a bit of a do up at The Cream of Matakana on Sunday for which they want my skincare range. Now that would have been easy, but a new certified organic preservative has only just last week come on the market and I’ve been waiting for that. So tomorrow is going to be one busy day. At least the hair care is ready and I’m bottling hydrosols today and Lavender is back in stock.

I’m having a massive Japan phase right now. My call for help to Japan did not go unanswered and I also found a service which is reasonably priced at tokyobuy.com for those who are interested. But as things go my usual sources turned up with some fabulous fabrics so I didn’t need to go any further. I just can’t wait for them to arrive. I’ve already used up half each of the two bolts that have come – making summery beach bags.

There’s a bolt or two of beautiful shibori fabric just waiting to become girls clothes. Astrid will be getting the first two skirts to come off the production line. Here’s the cut fabric sitting underneath a bunch of chirimen ribbon.

This whole shibori thing got me thinking I might dye some onesies because Astrid and white just do not go together. I did some research on indigo dye and found this – but still too much effort right now. So I found an indigo blue tin of Dylon and it looks pretty good to me. The red I think was a once off – but it actually looks really cute on!

Yars dahling, it’s not tie-die you know. It’s shibori dahling.

After spending days and days making these halter neck tops I decided I’d figure out an easier and faster way to make something similar. A simple 80cm length of yukata fabric, folded, sewn like a skirt with chirimen cord attached – and voila – an easy sun dress! All headed off to Coatesville craft market, and if not sold, then on to Matakana. If anyone would like anything here please email me as it won’t be going in the shop this time.

This is the best ever piece of yukata fabric I’ve found. I only got 80cm of it. I think it’s from around the 50s and the cotton is heavy, the weave a bit looser. Oooh it’s just divine. And I so love the colour. Here’s Astrid coupling the new dress with her indigo dyed onesie.

The Christmas project was started weeks ago. It’s so simple. All I need to do is cut out the lining and sew. But I haven’t got around to it yet. The blue linen is a vintage Swedish runner (of course) with natural linen from Martha’s as backing. I think I’ll just line them with white cotton.

Of course the Liberty delivery has been as well for the month. This is the latest loot!

The garden’s going great guns. The potatoes are huge and the tomatoes are growing like mad. The seedlings are all settled in now and I’m looking forward to watching them grow. It’s a bit hard to see, but things are happening!

Oh – and here’s the bunny I finished up at Sandy Bay.

Right. The printer’s about to come with a proof and then hydrosols await their bottling session. Hooray!

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