Sweet Mary

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family! Hopefully your day will be filled with peace and love.

I said before that I like to make and bake so here are some of the presents I have made for Christmas. Three cushions for three very different people - I really enjoyed creating these items specially for family.

Making and baking are two of my favourite things to do and Christmas gives me the ideal oppourtunity to do major amounts of both. It was Christmas mincemeat tarts this morning, just a test run of one dozen to check taste and timings. I declare these ones to be perfect and as there are now only a few left I guess they were. Making your own mincemeat is easy with Delia to guide and I always make crumbly orange pastry - its a great combination.

Well, I didn't sell my beautiful cushion and I didn't sell my Angel garland but I sold other stuff so not all bad. What I did do though was reconnect with past and new cutomers and see my friends the fellow stall holders. I had not realised how much I had missed the social side of stall selling at markets. I have booked in to the next one on the first weekend of February so make sure you stop by if you are in Havelock North.

I have been beavering away making Christmas decorations to sell at my Sweet Mary stall which will be at the Craft and Design Market tomorrow, Saturday 15th. The market is set out around the Hawthorne Coffee shop on Napier Road in Havelock North. Starts at 9am and finishes at 1pm. There are bank cash machines nearby but no designated EFTPOS machine at the market so bring cash!

I have just spent a pleasant afternoon making this bunting to hang above my Little Vintage display table this weekend. I will be at the Ladies Shopping Afternoon held at the beautiful heritage villa, Endsleigh in Havelock North. Address:  16 Given Street                  Havelock North                  2 - 4 pm                  CASH / CHEQUE only. I have nothing to sell of course but lots to promote! Hope to see you there.

I wanted to show you my "before"photo but this new(ish) way of uploading photo on blogger totally frustrates me and I have given up trying to load the other photo. The one above is the finish of my mini makeover in the laundry this afternoon. Since we moved in two years ago I have hated the holes in the wall left by the dryer fixed to said wall and the super ugly white storage cupboard in the corner. Two years was also a long time to pine for my beautiful blue/green painted storage chest which had sat in the garage all that time. Today I swapped ugly for beautiful and covered the offending bit of wall with a patchwork of wrapping paper, cards and the odd doily. I also get shelves for bits and bobs and to store my jams and chutneys. Blissfully happy.

  Nicola handed over three of her precious plates in the hope they they would be returned as a three tier cake stand. Making templates to ensure a centre mark for the drill holes, I made sure I had water on hand whilst drilling to prevent the drill bit overheating. Its always a bit of a worry as the plates can crack or split, even more worrying when the plates belong to someone else.     It all turned out well !

  Yesterday we walked into the village to visit the monthly Craft&Design market and especially to visit the Coulter&Coulter stall to begin my Christmas shopping. Any excuse really to think about Christmas as I so enjoy it. Mostly its not far from my mind any time of the year, except maybe just after the big day when you have those extremely silly thoughts about never doing it again. Coulter &Coulter are my friends Nicola and Peter and they are pretty dam clever people. From designing and carving their own wooden stamps, sourcing the organic ink and vintage or organic fabrics to hand printing and sewing the fabric up into the most irresistable items, they come out tops! Nicola also prints onto vintage NZ wool blankets and  makes the cutest cushions from the not so perfect ones. The best kind of remastering happens at Coulter&Coulter headquarters. Click  HERE to visit their blog and then when you ...

Hello and welcome back to my Sweet Mary blog. Since my last post I have finished off a small number of quilts for special people, spent time sorting out my garden and organised my cupboards into a reasonable semblance of order. Funnily enough they don't look any different but I know they are! Mainly what I have been doing is starting a new business hiring out vintage tableware for "any special occasion" tea parties. Click here for :  Little Vintage on Facebook  and click here for the Little Vintage website Hope you enjoy having a look around. I will post occasionally on Sweet Mary but mostly I will work on my new sites.

Damson plums. Amy Butler fabrics. Last post - for a good while anyway. I have struggled with my blogging for quite a while now so have decided to give the whole thing a long break. I am not sure for how long but off the top of my head, maybe till next spring. Come back and have a look September time. In the meantime I will be sewing and making simple quilts for the joy of making. I may make a few damson plum crumbles too as I bought that lovely lot (top photo) at the Farmers market this morning.

Mid week in the Sweet Mary house and not much to blog about so I have just uploaded a few random photos. Parcels arriving at my door always cause excitment, especially when I am expecting new fabric. This little lot came from the US and is a lovely collection of reds and greys. Pretty greys, the ones I actually like, are hard to find so I am pleased with this lot. Its a grey day here today so its fitting to wash my new fabric and hang it on the line for a splash of colour. A little part of me wants to leave it there forever as I like the look. Last night I made risotto - Jamie's recipe and I just happened to have all the items listed so only took half an hour. Maybe its in his "30 minutes" book. Anyway, this one was online and if you are interested in having a go, click HERE . I put the courgette in but actually think peas would be nicer. Be careful not to overcook as I did a wee bit. It should have more of a sloppy texture. Lastly, a photo of the set of beautiful rose...

Two patchwork lavender hearts, two of the many Sweet Mary items now for sale at Coco and Co in Hastings. I have also listed a few more items in my Felt shop - click HERE.

Te Koha organic, biodynamic wool, fresh from the sheep. Cleaning and sorting the wool to use in my lavender and wool filled pincushions, see the previous post. One gorgeous pile of the softest, sweetest smelling wool for me to use. Now to the story which my friend Bev, of "French Street Plum Jam" fame, told me last week. I have typed it out exactly as it was written: I was five years old when my mum invited me and my five siblings to go wool picking and the wool would be made into half-quilts for our beds. Mum would make a picnic of fresh homemade bread, butter from our churn and delicious plum jam made into sandwiches and a bottle of cordial for each child which we stuffed into our leather school bags and slung over our shoulders. In our hand we each carried a sugar sack to gather our wool in. We walked up hills and around the fence lines picking the wool off the barbed wire fences where the sheep had stopped to scratch, leaving behind little tufts of wool snagged on the...

If you walk down to the left, outside Bay Espresso in Hastings city centre (Market St. South) you will find a fabulous shop called Coco and Co. Its the latest venture by Jess and Jo of Fruit Bowl Craft Jam. The contents are an eclectic mix of vintage and vintage style homewares, clothes, gifts, toys etc. There is just so much to look at and bring a smile to your face. Shop hours are 10-3 on Thurs,Fri and Sat. each week. Click HERE to see the website. From late next week I will have some Sweet Mary products for sale at Coco and Co., including these beautiful pincushions stuffed with wool and lavender. There is more of a story about the wool but that is for my next post in a day or two.

Yesterday turned into a jam making day as I had not been able to resist these two pots of freshly picked blackcurrants at our local organic growers shop. Click HERE to go to their website where they also have a link to a short YouTube video - the little shop is right at the end of the video. I call in every few days to see what they have and if you go there, buy the juice, its delicious. They also have wonderful looking garlic at the moment and apple cider vinegar. I love that little shop. I used THIS recipe but cut it down to quarter measures as I only had 500gms of blackcurrants. I also used raw sugar as thats what I have and didn't do the initial washing, just picked them over followed by a quick rinse. Warm homemade jam is something else and I know this because I ate quite a bit of it yesterday.

Its Monday morning and fortified by one of my husband's excellent coffees, I am now at my computer writing this. My favourite beans are Mojo from Wellington and my personal barista produces a fantastic cup every time on a very basic machine. Nothing fancy here, its all done in the hands of a natural coffee extractor. Although, I did give him a burr grinder for Christmas which has improved the brew and the authentic sounds within the coffee lovers home. Yesterday I made two new Sweet Mary hearts, lavender filled, to put in my Felt shop. Click HERE to have a look. Whilst finishing the lavender hearts with some hand stitching I decided to watch this DVD I had bought a while back. Sophie Dahl is famous in her own right but what most attracted me initially was the memory of the wonderful books that her very famous grandfather wrote. We all loved these books as our children were growing up, not only to read but to play on long car journeys. The joys of the BFG ! The D.M.D's DV...

Remember when I planted up my strawberry bags last November? Well, here are the strawberries, growing well, fruiting fairly well and tasting very, very good. I pick about this amount each day which is enough to top our breakfast muesli or add to a fruit salad after dinner. The very pink bags faded quickly in the sun and of course were pretty soon covered in the greenery. It was a great idea to put the bags on top of the old day bed and my husband artfully arranged bamboo sticks around to hold the bird proof netting. All this "strawberriness" puts me in mind to make something for my Felt shop (see Felt icon to the right) but I will need the weekend to think about what that might be. So, have a happy two days and see you back here next week.

I have just listed some tablecloths for sale in my Felt shop - click HERE to have a look.

The really excellent thing about hot days is that they often end in balmy nights. Less than an hour ago we sat down to this meal in our garden and unlike last night, the flies stayed away this time. Maybe they prefer steak to chicken. Or could it be the two delightful but odorous young men who shared the meal with us!!!

Happy New Year to you all - family, friends and fellow bloggers. I do get excited by the beginning of a new year. Its the sense of all the new things you may do or even just think about, a sense of positivity and what may be. Weirdly, I get a similar feeling on Friday nights, thinking about the weekend to come. We had a busy but fun Christmas with family and friends joining us in the celebrations. Probably a little too much to eat and drink but so nice to sit around and talk and laugh. I personally received all my favourites as presents: books, craft magazines, fabric, Christmas decos, candles, soap and hand cream. Oh, and bubbly and pretty coloured glasses to drink said bubbles from. My husband gave me a new outside chair which lasted 3 days in the rain before the paint started to peel so that went back to the "big red box" for a refund. Refund was then spent at the garden centre on new plants for the garden so not a bad outcome. I'm happy.