Sweet Mary

The first cut December 2013 Some of the lavender that I use in my fabric lavender hearts is grown in pots dotted around my home. Last week I cut my first bunches to hang and dry for a few weeks before stripping them to collect the sweet smelling rubbings for next years handmades. Only a week to Christmas day so now is the time to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and a BIG thankyou to my customers. I'll be back mid January.

Craft&Design Market Lavender filled hearts for market. Don't forget the amazing Craft&Design market this Saturday the 7th and also the following Saturday, the 14th. Click HERE for the Facebook page with lots of great photos and information - come along to shop for beautiful and individual Christmas gifts. There are lots of stalls and we spill all around Hawthorne Coffee shop so you can have award winning coffee while you browse.

Christmas decos I have been making and making all week, getting ready for the annual Christmas Market pop-up shop organised by the Made It Here crew. Come along, we will be there most of December, see the above poster for details.

Christmas deco making in October. A "special" night market. Christmas decos finished and ready for the night market. The Craft&Design night market is only held once a year, jammed packed with makers and artisans presenting their beautiful wares to sell. Carefully selected products and especially good for your Christmas shopping, not a mass produced item to be found. Food, drink and music too!

The Pop shop We unpacked and set up the Pop shop today, our third since August. Tomorrow we open at 9am so if you are in the village please pop in and see us.

Sweet Mary stall Pincushions Lavender sachets The market yesterday was so much fun, lots and lots of visitors and pretty good sales all round. If you missed it and want to shop for original and hand-made Christmas presents, make sure you come along to our extra Novembers markets. Click HERE for the home page of the Craft&Design Market and then click on 'dates' along the top bar. I can tell you though that we are there again, around Hawthorne coffee shop in Havelock Nth next Saturday, 9th November 9-2pm.

Sweet Mary will be there so make sure you are too!

Mehdi and Korreen This morning two friends and I took a very mini road trip out to Te Awanga to visit a gorgeous vintage store recently discovered through the "grapevine". The charming owners, Mehdi and Korreen have a wonderful eye and have filled this huge space with an amazing collection of eclectic vintage stuff, mainly found in France. Have a look at their Facebook page, click HERE and do call first as they will tell you their opening days and welcome you very warmly. And what did I come home with? Two treasures but only one can be shown (see top) as the other is a present for someone who sometimes reads this blog. Sorry the photos are not in the order I wanted and as I have little patience for this sort of thing, I just can't go back and sort it!

1970's Glamour Tomorrow, Saturday, is the last day (well, maybe a few hours on Sunday) of Pop , our pop-up shop in Havelock North. We three  friends have run Pop for going on two weeks and we all agree on how much we have enjoyed the face to face contact with our customers. Please click HERE for a link to our Facebook page and keep looking for details for the next Pop , not sure when or where but it will happen. Thanks again, its been lovely to see you all.

  I have been making more pincushions, bigger this time with lambswool fill and soft felt bottoms, each patchwork top is finished with a vintage button. Along with some of my collection of vintage buttons and other Sweet Mary handmades, they will be for sale at the October Craft&Design Market next to Hawthorne Coffee Shop in Havelock North this Saturday from 9am - 1pm. On the same day, Pop will be open 10-4 so pop along to the village this weekend and check us out.

Just four more days until we open the door to Pop . Click HERE for Facebook.

Last week a mini road trip with Nicola of Coulter&Coulter produced some great finds including beautiful retro New Zealand crockery to add to the goodies for sale in our pop-up shop due to open Monday 30th September - click HERE for details and to like us on our Facebook page.

Be there!

French vintage buttons Today was the first day I presented my vintage buttons collected from markets in the south of France. Thanks for all the hard work sis! The packets sat nicely beside the Sweet Mary button cards I make up from buttons found in Hawkes Bay secondhand and charity shops and others gifted by friends. It was a gorgeous sunny Spring day, lots of people visiting the market and a good few with an eye for the beauty of vintage buttons. I overheard myself being referred to as "the button lady" which was music to my ears really. Collecting and presenting the buttons is a joy but being appreciated is the icing on the cake! I sold mainly from "the button box" but also a few lavender filled doves and hearts and one or two other handmades. I missed the last monthly market so it was nice to be back in my usual spot, greeting the regulars and hopefully enticing the new visitors. Keep coming back to the blog as I will soon be posting up details of our ...

    I have jobs to do but still find myself moving slowly after having the stinkiest of head colds for the past 10 days. Even though I have felt pretty awful, apparently I have not had flu, just a cold! I have a quilt to finish for a special person but luckily not under pressure. Just handquilting to do so once I have sandwiched the three layers together I can get started, each night doing a bit more until its all stitched together. This is my favourite part of quilt making so I'm keen to begin. I made the quilt top last year with no-one in mind but a few weeks ago I realised it would be the perfect gift for a close family member. There are signs of spring throughout the garden, with a few tulips and daffodils flowering today in the pots under the dining room window. The grape hyacinths have produced lots of lush greenery but strangely no flowers this year. Lots of fat buds on the hydrangeas but none yet on my new limelight ones. I hope I didn't "trim" t...

Vintage Buttons Over the last few weeks, very interesting parcels have been arriving at my Hawkes Bay front door. Vintage buttons, mainly French and a stack of precious Soulieado offcuts, all found by a special sister living in Uzes , on a personal mission to top up my stash. When I have finished dreaming about these beautiful treasures, I am going to package some of them up to sell on my Sweet Mary stall. In the meantime I am off on holiday before taking part in the next Craft&Design Market on the first Saturday of September. Enjoy the spring weather!

Tea party pretties. Only one week to go until "The World and a Teacup" pop-up shop opens at 9am on Tuesday 23rd July. We three friends are only running it for 2 weeks so do make sure you put those dates in your diary. Click HERE for detailed opening times and days - closed Sundays and Mondays, same as The Photographers Gallery.

I had forgotten how many treasures I have to sell at our pop-up shop, opening 23rd July to 3rd August. I am busy pricing up tablecloths and fabric today, tomorrow I start on the china. Make sure you come along, put the dates in your diary. See a few pics up for details.

A scrap of embroidered linen found in a charity shop this week caught my eye as I searched for increasingly elusive vintage style buttons. It was unfinished, thread hanging off everywhere, a few marks and holes but very beautiful. The embroideries are of herbs and spices such as oregano, rosemary, cinnamon and cloves. I salvaged enough to make four lavender filled hearts, backed with plain linen. They will be for sale on my Sweet Mary stall tomorrow at the Craft&Design Market around the Hawthorne coffee shop in Havelock North. It runs from 9am - 1pm.

Today I joined my friends to oversee the recovering of their two beautiful chairs with some fabric from my stash. The tatty blue coverings had come to the end of their useful life and the wadding inside needed replacing, along with a restretch of the webbing underpinning the base. As I have a sore shoulder and neck, I stood around drinking tea, eating cake and saying positive things while my friends did all the work. Within the hour, one chair seat was recovered with a smart red check and the other will be done over the weekend I'm sure - go Al ! As a bonus, I came home with two more eggs from the girls.

Three friends, myself, Peter and Nicola are popping up as a homewares shop in Napier for two weeks from July 23rd. I will be selling off a chunk of my Little Vintage china collection, Nic will be selling her hand printed textiles and Peter will be selling his repurposed furniture. Click HERE for Nic and HERE for Peter. Its going to be lots of fun so make sure you keep looking at my blog as I will put photos up of some of the vintage items I will be selling there over the next few weeks.

First eggs from our chickens. First eggs, fried with bacon and baked beans. We are very proud that our girls, SJ and TJ have settled well with their new friends and have started to lay delicious eggs for our weekend breakfast treat. Go girls!

  My stall all set up last Friday ready for the lovely people lined up outside on a cold afternoon in Napier. The doors opened at 4pm and it pretty well hummed until we closed the doors at 7.30pm. A great atmosphere created by the organisers at Made it Here. There were goodie bags for customers and stall holders alike and hot chocolate and cake on tap. Live music just made the whole night extra special. We opened again on Saturday to more lines of people and finally closed up at 3pm. Everyone agreed it was a happy and well organised event so if you missed it, please look out for the next Made It Here pop-up market. Click  HERE for their website and put it in your favourites list.     I sold lots of my sweet smelling lavender decorations - all filled with my home grown lavender. Since introducing my 'Haberdashery Box' as a nod to my past family connections in the drapery trade, I have sold many of these cutely packaged vintage/vi...

Mid-Winter Warm-Up Craft Market. 14th and 15th June, this weekend. Asher Hall, corner of Tennyson and Dalton Streets in Napier. Friday from 4 - 7.30pm Saturday from 10am - 3pm. Over 35 stalls of quality handmade goodness from local creative makers. Limited eftpos so bring cash!

Its a celebration! My computer has been fixed and came home to me yesterday. My better half loaded it up again with all my "favourites" and here I am today surfing the web and breathing a big sigh of relief that I don't have to cope with the tiny mini ipad that he lent me. Just too small for me and I only had to breathe on it and the page would change or go completely. A very frustrating 2 weeks it was. Anyway, here I am and I have uploaded a photo of the baby hearts I have donated to the goodie bags that will be given out to the first 30 people to go through the door of the upcoming Made It Here craft market. It is popping up in Napier this Friday, late afternoon and then on Saturday. I will blog again tomorrow with a nice picture and a link to the site but in the meantime just google search Made It Here Napier and you will be there.