Letters from Wetville

Well well well.  I didn't write for weeks because my life has turned into a workfest, and then blogger/google/gmail got so mixed up I couldn't access my account and now, wonders unexplained, I can access it again.  1. sewing.  I made a renfrew top which I appear not to have photographed.  I made a pile of alterations to the pattern before I made it up, and I think I'll make some more yet, and turn it into a frankpatterned mix of renfrew top and red velvet midriff and skirt.  I made another circle skirt for a 7th birthday present.  Brighid is modelling the twirl factor on it above, before we wrapped it and set off for the party.  I didn't have any bias binding and so hemmed with a single fold (looooong hem circumference) and zigzagged it which actually looked quite good. I hemmed two tiramisu dresses which have been worn unhemmed for ages.  I used steam a seam lite for one which was really good, except unbuyable at the moment as the factory b...

New patterns: Sewaholic Renfrew Style Arc Clara skirt I still haven't got my fabric buying and pattern buying and wardrobe needs in synch.  So I have gorgeous fabric in the cupboard in bold knit print for dresses or leggings.  But I have enough dresses and leggings for the moment and a need for cardigans in plain knits.  But I have wanted a cowl top for a zillion years to echo the RTW one I bought four years ago.  I tried a Khaliah Ali one and it wasn't successful.  The review and pics on the internet suggest the Renfrew could be the one for me.  This tutorial on doing an FBA on the Renfrew is going to be my mini-bible for the Renfrew project. I read Deborah Challinor's Girl of Shadows and loved it.  This would make a fabulous mini-series. Special find of the week: the digi-poem Hinemoa's Daughter .  Very beautiful.

I've long been a fan of Anne Else's writing.  Her books on womens history and particularly on the history of adoption in New Zealand, were really important to me as a postgraduate history student in the 1990s.  Last year I read Else's PhD online and for the last several years I've been reading her blogs http://elsewoman.blogspot.co.nz/ and http://somethingelsetoeat.blogspot.co.nz/ .  When her food memoir came out only as an e-book, I was disappointed, but ethically opposed to getting a kindle or other device as it reduced the pool of books to be sold second hand thus available to people who could not afford new books.  But all those concerns fell away last week when my lovely husband surprised me with a kindle for my birthday.  There is no going back!  The books are so cheap and to be able to choose exactly what I want to read at 11pm or 3am or Sunday morning or whenever feels really close to magic.  The very first book I downloaded was Anne Else's T...

These letters from the working mother to the stay at home mother and from the stay at home mother to the working mother are beautiful.  I want to print them out and post them everywhere. I haven't blogged about my fiercely intelligent brother who writes wonderful letters to the local paper.  The paper have gone a bit shy on him lately and I'm keen for him to blog his letters.  I haven't blogged about the wonderful book Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I haven't blogged about the garden, or work, or the alterations I've made to the stripey cardigan I rashly bought one cold day on holiday in summer.  I haven't blogged about our adjustment as a family to me being at work most of the time and how this week is better than last week because my kids are happier and how Favourite Handyman is the bestest support to me I could dream of. But when I read those letters via a facebook link tonight, I couldn't let them sit without sharing them eve...

When I started blogging, Brighid was seven months old.  Now she is seven.  She loves dressups and so I made her a princess dressup dress for her birthday.  This morning (day of the party), I was working on finishing the dress when I discovered I had nowhere near the right size zip.  In a small town where shops are closed on part of Saturday and all of Sunday, I was very grateful to get there in time for an appropriate zip. The party was a wonderful success, and after a short rest, we went to the 21st birthday party of a special young woman who has babysat for us, whose mother is my right hand woman who cares for our children when both of us are at work and who is a fabulous mother in her own right now.  All the celebration of youth and hope and joy and exuberance is so special and I'm appreciating it so much more as the flip side to the stories of struggle and decline we have been witnessing and sharing in our family in recent months. Super Uncle has been ...

The New Zealand Journal of History is online (bar the most recent two issues) and so I don't have to be a student or employee of a university to indulge my history desires.  Today I found this article: ‘I don’t care what it is going to cost, I am prepared to pay’ MEN’S VOICES AND ABORTION IN NEW ZEALAND, 1919–1937 which I found completely fascinating. I also sent off a draft of my review of Susan Upton's book on barmaids to an historian friend.  In and around ineffective attempts to get my daughter to eat her dinner or clean her room, I removed more rubbish to the dump, booked her birthday party venue, weeded more of the garden and sewed more of my hummingbird skirt .  I now have an almost complete skirt - it just needs hemming and a button and buttonhole.  It looks quite nice, very wintry but that will come quite soon enough.  But nothing presses my finished object buttons so much as a dress.  I need some more cardigans or jackets but the fab...

So very soon I start my new job, a job which I anticipate is going to involve 60 hour weeks with startling regularity. Beforehand, I'm all about the kind of nesting which prepares us for the long hours of me away by making food which cannot be bought, and planting food which cannot be bought at the same quality and freshness.  Last night I made another batch of muesli and put a chicken on the slow cooker to make stock.  This morning I made eggy courgette muffins from The Edible Journey Cookbook and then strained the stock and chopped up the chicken meat.  The kids and I did errands in town and then bought punnets of silverbeet and cavolo nero seedlings.  While Brighid danced, I took bags of things we have grown out of to A, the very wonderful leader of our local Tongan community.  After our town lost a mother and teenage son in a car accident before Christmas, my eyes were opened to need I had been far too oblivious to beforehand.  I weeded and water...