Of all the stories to come out of 2021 that start with “remember that time”, some we’ll remember with a vague sense of dread, some with a hangover of long-past-but-still-felt terror, and others…others we will laugh at our delight at our own hubris. Possibly we’ll never again smell homemade bread without thinking of the sourdough craze of lockdown 1.0. Very likely we’ll always panic when

Back in November, I promised myself I would be good. I saw all these amazing advent calendars, and I tried to resist. I really did. Then the unboxing videos started, and the FOMO set it. Past me had made a terrible life choice. Thankfully, one of the calendars had been on my list opened up a final round of parcels, and I jumped on the

Two Christmases ago, I started cross stitching vignettes from Deck The Halls by Satsuma Street. Vignette one saw me through bushfires and packing and moving. Vignette two saw me through the first pandemic lockdown/stay at home orders. Vignette three was a 2021 school table stitching, when I was at a loss for a project. Vignettes four and five have since been cancelled, because I did

After a two year hiatus, it has been an absolute joy this week to be back in the whirl of drama productions. The pinball whirl that is final rehearsals, keeping costumes clean, pressed & all together, running home and racing through hair styling, using half a can of hair spray to transform a grungy 2020s covid-era teen into a slick, suave 1920s mob-era theatre agent

Sometimes, the funnest projects can come out of abject failure. Part of being a crafter is knowing not everything will turn out as planned, and you have to lean in to the pivot. At the minute, I’m knee deep in prepping a 12 Days calendar for the Minister, and trying to come up with 12 items that are small and easy to make, that reflect

It seemed like such a great idea at the time. “We should do a 12 Gnomes of Christmas”, goes out the call. Because I’m a sucker for anything a) challenge related and b) Christmas related, and because I was in ned of a new handwork project, I was head first down the Etsy rabbit hole and had patterns in my downloads folder before I could

It is a long standing tradition around here, that I make the children a Christmas themed outfit.It’s such fun sourcing the fabric and narrowing down what the children would like me to sew them, and getting stuck into getting them made up. It is never far from my mind, though, that the days of getting all four children in matching outfits is rapidly coming to

“Iceberg, straight ahead!” …and so began a century long fascination with the “unsinkable” ship. Would the Titanic have become part of collective consciousness, I wonder, if they weren’t quite so ostentatious in their claims? If it wasn’t supposedly unsinkable, would it have faded away like innumerable other wrecks? There was a whole lot going on in the decade or two surrounding the sinking, and yet

Over thirty years ago, a bunch of scrawny kids in shiny new school uniforms met in a great big terrifying playground. Seventeen years ago, we kicked off Very Grown Up Adulthood with the first wedding of the group. Saturday night, we all came together once more (well, most of us – it is 2021 after all, and travel isn’t what it used to be) to

It has been a funny kind of spring. A few hot days, and then over the weekend, in the middle of November, we had the fire on, two nights in a row. I’ve been thinking about spring sewing since the beginning of October, but it hasn’t really seemed necessary – between the few summery bits I made earlier in the year, and my winter me-made