A small highlight from the colder months was a short trip with both our kids to Whanganui - a place we enjoyed visiting when they were small. The rugged beaches, big skies, small galleries and strong coffee provided the perfect university break for them, and time away from the capital city for Tom and me. Whanganui is also an excellent place to go second-hand shopping and I bought a favourite-since-childhood Joni Mitchell album, a long, colourful dress and more than a few books along the way.
This has also been my year (perhaps belatedly?) of discovering the beauty of making my own sourdough bread. My sister Tamsin gave me some starter mixture in February, and I’ve been making her seeded loaf recipe ever since. The recipe is very similar to this one from Nicola Galloway’s excellent website, except without the rolled oats. I change the seeds each time, depending on what I have in the cupboard. I usually use a mixture of plain and whole-meal flours, and either linseed, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin or chia seeds, or a mixture of them.
Tamsin’s recipe is also great because it makes two loaves at once, meaning we can eat one fresh and freeze the other for the following week. Let me know if you’d like me to share the exact recipe here and I’ll check in with her!
Clockwise from top left: seedpods and flowers from my Tamsin’s garden, drying in the kitchen since summer, arranged into winter bunches for friends; a shrine to daphne, surely the winter’s best scent; mid-winter bedroom window view; a lantern I made from a recycled jar, pressed hydrangea flowers and mod-podge glue/varnish.
This was one of my favourite finished projects from this year: a fairly plain button-up vest! But I’ve had heaps of wear from it and I’m considering making another, perhaps in a cotton or lighter-weight wool blend for the warmer months. I’ve layered it over long-sleeve dresses for work, paired it with corduroy pants and long-sleeve merino tops for gardening, and added it to blouse-skirt combos for everyday wear. The pattern is the Maggie Vest from Petite Knit, and I knitted it using a cone of fairly sturdy merino yarn from a local wool, in a slightly flecked shade of dark grey. More details on my Ravelry page here.
Wishing you joy in your creative life, whatever that means for you these days. If you’re not finding time for the things you love to do, I hope you can carve some out soon.
Thank you, as always, for reading!
M