...and fast-forward - happy birthday lee!

my little sister lee turns 30 today (hard to believe...) and i made this card to go with the apple & bee bathroom bag that was part of her present. i love the designs apple & bee come up with - such gorgeous patterns. i also love that they're an austalian company, carbon-neutral and use fabrics like organic cotton, hemp and bamboo silk blends. (quite partial to the reusable drawstring unbleached cotton cloth bags they're sold in at the moment too.)

for her card i wanted to make lee something that tied in with that organic look, so i used a very handmade looking base card bought from a little shop called namaste, and set about making a vague copy of the pattern from the bag then gluing mohair to the pattern. looks so simple but took hours and hours. a true act of love.

press rewind for a second - january 2009

if 2009 was the year of beanies, then 2008 was the year of cards. at the beginning of the last year my cousin di married her very special man dan. i sent this set of cards along for her hens night 'pink party' (don't ask me, i still don't understand!)...had such fun picking all my best pink flower photos to go together in a set, making up some cards and then and covering a box to match. loved the result and it made me somehow feel a little more part of it all seeing i couldn't be there in person. very very pink and lots of happy thoughts and blessings for the bride in there.

crochet gallery (a small selection)

and then came crochet...

also in march, i had a visit from a primary school friend i'd reconnected with - anna -who showed me the basics of crochet. neither of us had any idea at the time what she was starting! my months became marked by a production line of beanies - many for birthdays of special little people in my life. and a few extra-special creations for newborns as well.

lots of the mohair yarns i used i picked up on ebay at bargain prices and my favourite trim became a silk sari thread made of pieces recycled from the cutting room floors. on some occasions i've also used yarns brought back from the US by my mum before i was born (as in the one pictured above - my somewhat amusing first attempt!).

raiding the archives - march 2009

while i organise myself and recover a little from the busy-ness of the last weeks i thought i'd take a look back through last years photo albums...

in february beautiful jax was born to family friends, and to celebrate i embarked upon my first sewing project in many years and made her a teeny-tiny dress. i found the free patten at http://madebyrae.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-itty-bitty-baby-dress-pattern.html, some old material (left over from making a nightie for my sister when she was little) at the back of a cupboard, and bought a little coordinating bias....it all looked sooooo simple! of course after so long away from the machine, and working through headaches, it wasn't - but hours of frustration later this was the result. it was so rewarding to actually have completed a project and to do something creative again. and it did look very very cute on jax.

(i wrapped it in a piece of repurposed striped cellophane that came around some flowers, tied with a little bit of leftover bright pink mohair wool and used a card i'd been unable to resist at one time or another )

letter of resignation

dear ebay and etsy

i've had the most wonderful adventures with you but feel it's time to take a break. i need to focus on creating not consuming so i will be canceling my communications with you for the meantime. i don't expect this to be easy but know it must be done...will miss you.

with love
kp

history repeating

so, after years of not seeing the saying again in a packet of fortune cookies suddenly i find two (strangely, different versions) in the last week. i think the universe is telling me to get on with this!

(which turns out not to be chinese at all)

using the wonder of google (well, actually, ripple - another story for another time) i finally seem to have found the origin of my fortune cookie proverb - seems it is maori. which only adds to its appeal for me...my heart belongs in the land of the long white cloud.

fortune cookie wisdom...

a while ago now i came across a fortune cookie with these words inside:

'turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you'

...such wonderful imagery. and it struck me as such a beautiful metaphor, reminding us to place our attention on the things in our lives that give us pleasure and joy and to turn (as much as we can) from those that we would rather were not there.