Winter wardrobe

I've decided to make some new clothes for Tahi, since winter is coming and he's slowly growing out of the ones he's wearing now. I also feel bad about not making more clothes for him, since that was what first inspired me to set up my little Etsy shop . I love seeing him in what I make, especially because I make them with him in mind. And also because they are what will be left of this "making" spurt when he grows old, my own handmade heirlooms that he will hopefully pass on to his kids or cherish for what they represent. Here are my latest creations from the sewing room, with a couple more pairs of pants to come. I made three singlets out of some very nice lightweight merino (bought on TradeMe) and some canvas pants.

One side of the pants are from an upcycled pair of adult pants (the dark material) and still have the original pockets, and the other side is a piece of light grey wool suiting. I used some real feathers to do the prints, which is why they are all different. It was great to finally try using a new medium and I'm very happy with the result. I have some screens that are just waiting to be cleaned and used, and I'm hoping soon I will have the funds to start screen printing this design and others on my creations.

I sometimes wonder when I will have time to make things for me, but that's unfortunately at the bottom of my list at the moment. Here are the top five:
- Fuse plastic (About 6 or 7 shopping bags of plastic in the garage waiting to be fused, I'm amazed at how much goes through a household, even when being careful)
- get the vege garden ready for winter
- Winter clothes for Tahi
- re-upholster our lounge suite (photos to come soon)
- An evening dress or other present for my best friend's wedding

I found a comment on an older post today from a lovely woman who started a blog called Kiwi Mummy Blog , asking if I wanted to be included in the list of "mother bloggers". It's a great initiative so of course I said yes!

Tahi's granny is visiting from Auckland and spending a week with us. It always makes us feel special when people choose to spend their holidays with us! (even though she really is doing it to see her grandson!) Josh and I are looking forward to sneaking out to see Boy at the movies. I've never appreciated dates so much than now that I have a kid.
And finally, Tahi and I have been keeping an eye on our swan plant, and finally spotted on big caterpillar, and a few other smaller ones!

Post markets

Back home, we had a great time at Womad and Tahi did really well on the drive too. We stopped halfway at our friends' farm. They have 3 kids, 4 chooks, 5 dogs and lots of sheep and cattle, so there's always something going on. Tahi gets to play with lots of different toys and we get to catch up around a lovely dinner and a few glasses of wine (and bottles of beer for the gents).
Womad was a good festival, with great musicians from all over the world playing at the Brooklands park in  New Plymouth, right in the middle of town. Pretty cool. The place was buzzing with people of all ages, walking from one stage to another, having a nibble in the food area, browsing the Arts and Crafts stalls and having a great time. My two favorite bands were Babylon circus , an awesome french band (you should have seen how they got the crowds moving... and New Zealand crowds are hard to move!) and Nortec , a very cool mexican electro band.

Our stall was in a quieter area called the "sustainable area", where they had a stage called "Taste the world" (various artists performing a cooking show, great place to be!), Gyuto monks performing meditation, making a Mandala and cooking, and some stalls selling sustainable goods or charities like "Save the children". The whole thing was a bit out of the way, in the Kunming gardens, so it was a lot quieter and a lot of festival goers probably never even ventured there. Not so good when you're trying to sell goods, but great when you've got kids roaming around!
Business wise, I didn't sell as much as I was expecting, probably 1/4 of my stock, and since the first 2 days were cold and rainy, the yoga pants didn't do as well as at Splore. But I made enough to cover for our expenses and make a bit of extra. I also got lots of great feedback, so in all I think it was definitely worth it.

Waiting for me back home was a great little magazine called World Sweet World , in which my first tutorial was published: how to make a wallet with fused plastic. I was pretty excited to see it printed! Unfortunately, this was the last issue , but they are keeping the blog running, so I'm looking forward to suggesting more crafty ideas. Along with posting some here as well of course.














I have just finished a custom order: a cute mid season dress for a 3 year old lucky girl. I made 2 and am pretty happy with both!

On my bottomless list of to-do things, another couple of custom orders, reviewing my patterns, taking pictures of all the new stock to put it on Etsy and Felt, organizing a local craft market, making art for art's sake, looking after Tahi and of course making more stuff! I have just received some beautiful merino fabric and some organic fabrics too, which I'm looking forward to turning into some cute kids' clothes!

Etsy treasury

I finally got to make up my own treasury on Etsy. For those who are not familiar with that website, the treasury is a "member curated" selection of some of the millions of items for sale there. They are usually centered around a theme, mine was inspired by a song I love by Magic Dirt titled "I love the rain". Easy to guess what it's about.
It was fun and stressful at the same time, since it was my first time I was in a hurry to get all the items, in case there was a time deadline, plus Tahi (my 2 year old) was running and decided kicking the dog was great fun. I also had trouble with the technical process: I copied the whole URL code into the little windows and couldn't understand why no images showed up.In the end I found a very helpful post, and managed to get it going. It was a real pleasure to find so much inspiration and I'm sure there are many hidden treasures that would fuel just that one theme for pages and pages.
View it here .