november on a page
Somehow, it’s November. The entire month whisked by in a busy blur and I thought I’d spent most of it working, but looking through the photos I took, I can see November had a lot of goodness.
My favourite thing about this month is the intensity of the green and pinks of springtime. It’s very hard for me to resist posting too many flower pics so I just went with it. Other joys: live music, markets, garden walks and exhibitions. Visitors and coffee meet-ups. Plus two trips to Tamaki Makaurau - Auckland to celebrate family, friends and art.
Earlier in the month I went to see Anne Noble’s exhibition ‘Hidden Lives: the work of care’ at Te Papa. Noble documented the everyday activities of some families in Wellington in the 1990s and the black and white images are so moving, especially because they’re accompanied by quotes from the women in the pictures about what it means to care and be cared for. You can find more of the images here.
Other beautiful experiences this month:
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory - (who wants to live forever? my favourite to hear live)
Yiyun Lee’s Things in Nature Merely Grow - a devastating read but one I’ll never forget
A fresh take on a classic Aotearoa play at Circa Theatre: Every Kind of Weather
Discovering this Kate Bush song for the first time - an amazing unreleased B-side from Hounds of Love
Not so much in the way of making and creativity of my own. But I’m feeling inspired to do some summer sewing so there might be more in my next post. Tom gave me the new Nani Iro pattern book for my birthday and I’ve made the first, simplest pattern from it - a summer top. I’m really happy with the shape and know I’ll make more from this design. It can be surprisingly difficult to get the perfect fit with a sleeveless top.
November is also the month each year when our local woollen mill has its annual open day and sale to the public. They offer a factory floor filled with cones - all different fibres, weights and colours, with a focus on possum blend yarns. This year I bought three lots - I could have taken home much more, but am mindful of my growing stash! I’m thinking that one or two of these will be Christmas gifts for keen knitters in my family, and with the green, I’m planning a raglan sweater for next winter.
I hope you’ve had a great month of making, listening, reading, and all the things you love to do. Would love to hear what you’re enjoying in the comments section!
M X
cottagecore
Last weekend I helped host an open day for Wellington Heritage Week. I belong to a Trust that runs a writer’s residency in a little cottage built in 1867. Once a year we open it up to the public for afternoon tea and poetry readings. It was a beautiful day this year and I finally remembered to take a few photos from this cute house! It has very low ceilings and plenty of floral wallpaper and curtains, wooden furniture and blue and white china.
I also did some baking, including this heritage classic - Louise Cake.
Apparently, Louise Cake (which is really a slice) first appeared in community cookbooks in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 20s and was probably designed to coincide with a royal wedding.
It’s very typical of NZ baking in that it features the classic combo of coconut, meringue, jam and far too much sugar. But it’s probably not too bad if you keep the pieces quite small.
I used this recipe by Annabel Langbein.
In other cottagecore news, I’m knitting a soft, oversized jumper with big roses on it. The pattern is Rosie Sweater and I’m making this in entirely the wrong season, but I don’t mind. Here are my Ravelry notes, including yarn choices, etc, so far.
sky lines
A perspective from above the clouds to the kitchen windowsill in the same week.
I enjoyed making this new piece from some grey linen I’d been saving for a while. The pattern is the Skyline Dress and I bought it as part of a Palestine fundraiser a while back. I really like Syd Graham’s designs and that they’re designed to suit a wide range of fabrics, sizes, aesthetic choices. If I can get my overlocker up and running again, I’d love to make a patchworked version for the summer - a bit like this beauty.
This design is clever because the straps thread through the back neckline and are super-adjustable by way of a tie at the back of one shoulder. About 20 years ago when I started sewing clothes for myself, I drafted a similar design but for a top, with a wide channel to thread a wider strap through and tie at each shoulder. I loved that pattern, and made quite a few as gifts, too. But I do think this dress version is superior!
The designer also provides fantastic walk-through YouTube tutorials for her patterns, as well as written instructions, making them very accessible for new makers.
I wanted to share this beautiful blanket my Mum knitted for me. She used her own hand-dyed, hand-spun merino in shifting, natural colours. The palette reminds me of her garden with shades of earth, lavender, roses, trees. It’s a great size for the sofa and i love it.
Some favourite things to share:
The Wellington Jazz Festival is happening at the moment, and some friends and I went to see Bumpy, a First Nations Australian singer and composer. Her music is gorgeous, uplifting, special! You can listen to a song here.
My friend Helen Lehndorf shares weekly thoughts, photos, art and poems over on her Slow-Small Media page. Her latest post, ‘53 thoughts’ on turning 53, is so simple yet meaningful. I loved reading them and you might too. In my experience, time is a spiral. Be a river.
Something I would love to start making this summer is a quilt from the Sampler Quilt Sew Along by Farm & Folk. The designer Sara has generously provided free patterns for all of the traditional blocks used in the quilt, and I’ve seen some beautiful examples of this on Instagram.
Thank you, as always, for reading. See you again soon,
Melissa X
city bubbles
City bubbles had another connotation during the pandemic, but I’ve used it for the title of this post because I came upon some proper actual bubbles while walking home from work the other night, thanks to a family with a bubble wand and huge bucket of solution. Their little children were running up and down a usually-busy street, joyfully trying to pop them and pleading for their dad to make more. Watching them, and trying to catch a few bubbles myself, was such a good way to end the working week.
I finished a baby blanket for a workmate of mine who has just had a new pēpē. To make this I used some DK possum-merino yarn in blue, pale pink, cream, brown and charcoal, and essentially kept adding new rounds as you would making a granny square until it was the right size. I finished it with a single crochet border in blue and pink.
And some weekend goodness - a rainy walk on the beach at Petone and time with books - I’m currently reading Amma by Saraid de Silva and have just finished A Beautiful Family by Jennifer Trevelyan. Both local writers and definitely worth your time.
And staying with local writers, I loved this short documentary (for free on RNZ) about Joy Cowley, and I think you will too - Joy, Full & Fearless. I was lucky enough to work on a project with Joy a few years ago and I pretty much adore her.
Sundays are for baking, and today I made a slice I’ve always known as ‘Autumn Slice’, so it’s seasonally misaligned for us right now but still great, and you can substitute any of the buts, seeds and fruit for whatever you have. This time I used dried cranberries, sesame and sunflower seeds and walnuts.
Autumn slice
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup rolled outs
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or other nuts
1/2 cup pumpkin or other seeds
1/2 cup currants or other dried fruit (optional)
1/2 cup soft brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Mix these ingredients together in a big bowl. Then, in a saucepan, melt together:
100 grams butter
2 Tbs golden syrup
until combined and starting to simmer. Then stir in 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. The mixture will froth.
Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well. Bake in a shallow slice tin lined with baking paper for around 15 minutes or until golden. Let the slice cool completely (it will become more firm after half an hour or so) before removing from the tin and cutting into bars.
squares space
I’ve started this new digital journal and it’s a bit like cracking open a fresh new notebook with crisp white pages. Where to start and how? A space of so many squares.
Its purpose is to share my handmade life with you, fellow makers and appreciators of textile craft. So I’m reminding myself to keep it simple.
Here’s a recent make - a big feather cushion made from small squares of cotton and linen fabric left over from other projects over a number of years.
Another square thing… a pincushion I made as a sample for an embroidery class i taught recently. I used cotton and silk threads on some recycled wool fabric. I also embroidered small squares of linen as a class sample, which I then patchworked together into a project bag for a friend.
More squares… this time of the crocheted variety. My plan for these is a large blanket based on the Battenberg design, which features colourful squares with every alternate block a cream colour to create a checkerboard effect. I’m using my mum’s hand-dyed handspun for the coloured blocks and a grey possum-blend recycled yarn for the unifying colour.
I think this project will take forever, or at least a very long time.
spring feelings
The days are getting lighter, literally - today we lost an hour to daylight saving, and woke with the sun streaming through the curtains at 6am. I do love this time of year, with its kowhai flowers, blustery gales, longer evenings and early morning tui songs the first thing we hear.
I’ve been working on a few small projects, mostly gift-related. The crochet blanket you see above is for a friend’s new baby. This is just a big granny square, worked up in various yarns I had plenty of - mostly possum-merino from cones I bought at last year’s Woolyarns sale. I’m enjoying the way the colours work together - I’ve combined a peachy pink, chocolate brown, dark blue, and black. The cream yarn is leftover from a top I knitted last summer and is the only different fibre- a cotton/silk blend. If I have enough of this, I’ll use it to crochet the border on this blanket. I’m planning something about 36” square, which will hopefully be useful for pram and car-seat purposes.
This past winter was my hooded scarf era! I made two - one for Keira and one for her cousin, using the pattern ‘Sophie Hood’ by Petiteknit. I also helped Keira knit another for her friend, in a peachy pink shade. I think these scarves look so great wrapped around the head and neck on a freezing winter’s day. I am keen to have one myself, but definitely need to have a break from this much garter stitch for at least 6 months.
And more makes for small people! I unravelled a sweater I knitted myself a few years ago but rarely wore, and re-used every last bit of the yarn to knit this little set for a new baby of a work colleague. I had held together one strand of mohair-silk and one of a cotton-merino, both in a soft grey-blue shade. The mohair had lost most of its fluff in its first iteration as a sweater and so the resulting yarn was very soft and smooth. I think it makes a lovely lightweight but warm fabric for the baby set.
The patterns I used for this set were:
Garter-stitch cardigan by Erika Knight (from her book ‘Simple Knits for Treasured Babies’)
Baby socks by Kate Atherley (a free pattern on Ravelry)
Baby bear bonnet by Knitting for Olive.
You can find the links to these patterns on my Ravelry page here.
There was a little bit of yarn left and so I used it for this little cat’s jumper and scarf. I was inspired by this pattern on Ravelry to make this little guy for my niece who turned 2 last month.
I loved making this and will no doubt knit more in the future to donate. This pattern, called the ‘Izzy Doll’ originates from Canada. Master Corporal Mark Isfeld was a Canadian peacekeeper whose mother created the Izzy Doll so he would have something to give to children he met while on missions. In 1994, Mark was killed by a land mine explosion while serving in Croatia, but the tradition of making and donating these dolls to children affected by war continues.
Lately, I’ve returned to some beloved music for comfort and peace:
Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock (full albums), Talk Talk
Roads, Portishead (new Together for Palestine recording)
Oxygen of Love, Emma Paki (a favourite of mine as a teenager)
Lark Ascending, Vaughan WIlliams (Hilary Hahn performance)
And signing off, praying for peace in Palestine. This is an Aotearoa-based fundraiser to help provide absolute basic needs for those suffering in Gaza and it would be amazing if you wanted to contribute or share the link.
With love,
Melissa
haere mai, welcome
Haere mai, welcome!
Welcome to my new journal of all things handmade. It’s lovely to see you here.
Many moons ago (in early 2006, to be exact), I pressed the publish button on a fledgling blog I called ‘tiny happy.’ There, I documented my days as a new parent and someone rediscovering their childhood love for plants and flowers, painting and embroidery, writing, music and making things.
That digital journal evolved into a warm community of like-minded people, woven together through our shared love of textile crafts and art, gardening, reading and other simple joys in this life. The platform I used for that blog was shut down in September 2025. I have published an archive, which you can find here.
This journal is a new home for my projects and photos, and I am grateful you’ve found me. You’re very welcome here.
It wasn’t possible to easily move over those 19 years of blogging to this site. Instead, I’ve chosen some projects, recipes, and other things to move over, which you’ll find by clicking the ‘projects’ tab above.
My hope for this site is to share my creative projects and hopefully encourage others to live their best creative life too, whatever that might look like for you. I’m also hoping to offer real-life and online classes here later this year, and maybe even a small shop, if time allows.
Thank you so much for reading and please do get in touch if you are inspired to!
With love,
Melissa
