towards another summer

Scenes from a sun-soaked Te Tau Ihu - Top of the South Island over the summer - the land of lush gardens and coastlines, hydrangeas and honey. Feeling very blessed after a couple of weeks spent with family over the holiday period.

I knitted away on some socks, crocheted some squares in the sunshine and finished a linen top for Keira for Christmas - it’s the Tegna design by Caitlin Hunter. I have one of my own in a sage green and love to wear it. Keira’s is in the same yarn (DMC Natura Linen) but a slate grey/blue shade. My Ravelry notes are here.

I put a fair few hours into the lace portion of this top, but it was all worth it to see Keira wearing it with joy over the summer holiday - below she’s contemplating a Rita Angus painting at the Suter Gallery.

I also mentioned, in my last post, about a light, queen-sized summer quilt I’d made for our bed. At the time, I made two more as Christmas gifts for dear friends. As with my quilt, I used three metres of hand block-printed cotton fabric from India and a lightweight cotton batting. I backed each quilt with soft recycled cotton and pieced together bindings from other scraps. Some of the leftover block prints feature in the bindings so our quilts all coordinate in a small way.

It’s also been a summer of Janet Frame for me as I read her 1979 novel Living in the Maniototo (wonderfully strange, and still I think groundbreaking despite its age) and have begun The Carpathians. And this weekend, I’m planning to re-watch An Angel at my Table (a favourite film of mine since I first saw it as a teenager) - have you seen it?

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I feel very grateful to have had some time off this summer and to finish a project or two! I hope you had the same chance, wherever you may be in the world. See you again very soon,

M