Rosalie creates tea cosies. With skilled fingers, hooks and needles she produces delightful cottage gardens and floral displays, strawberry fields and crazy clocks, beehives and birds nests.

Ask her how she does it and she will tell you the basic cosy is easy enough, just a beanie shape with holes for the teapot handle and spout. Then with a little bit of this and that, a whole lot of love and years of experience the shape is transformed.

Using fine threads and unravelled yarns, intricate crochet, knitting and embroidery, Rosalie embellishes each cosy. Each is different, each is beautiful.

MBW

The Elderberry Trees have  grown amongst the rubble of more than 12000 earthquakes we have experienced over the past two years.  Nature always bats last and  her bounty is all around.

The Elderflowers are blooming and I have captured their perfumed sunshine in a bottle.  Elderflower Syrup is such a delicious treat and full of healthgiving properties.   I have left many flowerheads on the tree for the autumn harvest of ruby rich berries when we will make Elderberry Jelly.

MBW

Men with heavy machinery dig in the street.  They have been there for months and will be there for many more.  The house rocks and rolls to the beat of their digging and there is nothing we can do but rock and roll with them.  One day, years from now, a new city will emerge.

MBW

In the 1990s there was a great British indie band called Catatonia. I still jig along to their music every now and then, especially one album called Equally Cursed and Blessed. The word catatonia came to mind recently when the obsessive knitter and I were talking about why we hadn’t written anything for this blog recently.

Now, obviously, dear reader, life gets in the way of writing sometimes (earthquakes, PhD applications, new jobs, etc.).

But what the obsessive knitter and I realised was that we had just lived through a catatonic period of writing. Both of us, eyeing each others’ writing up, wishing we could achieve what the other did. Tying ourselves up in knots and falling into a bit of a stupor.

What to do but laugh and get on with it. We hope you enjoy the future of this blog, whether it be cursed or blessed.

BDW

Taking on small tasks that can be completed, no matter how trivial they may appear, manufactures a sense of control and raises the spirits.

In the midst of shaking earth I have sourced such beauty: glowing colours in the raspberry canes; conversations with a dear friend.

MBW

Since the devastating aftershock in February that left close to 200 dead and the infrastructure of the city in chaos, I have had little interest in doing anything apart from the basic everyday tasks that keep a body alive.

One cannot reurn to a life that was because what was there is no more, nor move towards a future because the rules have all changed.

Sideways, up and down have also disappeared. We live in a vacuum, waiting for decisions to be made regarding the land we live on, the homes we live in and our city to be. We wait….. totally lacking any control of our physical worlds…. it is enough to wear away the soul, to lose the will to carry hope in our hearts. Apart from our attitude to the situation, to this mystery life we now lead, it is the small things that save a soul from falling into states such as depression.

The rich, the poor, the big, the small – we are all in the same boat.

Letting go of any sense that I can control my life can be quite liberating.

MBW

I spend my time tending the small patches of land that surround the house, not knowing when the Earthquake Commission will come to mend the house and tend to the splits in the earth. It does not make sense to expend a lot of energy digging and planting so I work on the areas I know they will not disturb, and use pots to plant out the vegetables. They can easily be moved should the menders come before the harvest.

I make compost, tend to the worm farm, collect seaweed, leaves and manure to feed the soil.

Next week, one of the fences will be mended, then I can ready the soil alongside it to make a tomato garden. The tomato seeds are beginning their life in the poorman’s hothouse, the hot water cupboard.

The earthquake pundits tell us we have had about 8000 aftershocks since September 2010 with more to come. It’s not over yet, they say. Enough, already, I say.

MBW

It’s a year since we experienced the 7.1 magnitude earthquake. More than 8000 aftershocks have followed since that early morning wake up call. The daily shakes just tend to make the house and land damage more pronounced. What was once solid is now unstable.

Nature has taken the reins and calls all the shots. It is, afterall, what nature does wonderfully, naturally. We humans are merely here for the annual free trip round the sun. We do not drive this vehicle, we ride in the back of the bus, blind to the wonders of the forces beneath us.

MBW

To Yohji Yamamoto, the dress maker, failure is important. ‘Failure makes strong motivation for next collection.’

Yamamoto speaks good English, but not perfect English, hence the sentence above being incorrect grammatically.

Yamamoto believes that if he believes a collection is a success, then that is not good (the contrary nature of the man surfaces). If this happens, then he believes he has lost his way ‘and you need to come back to yourself for a long time.’

Yamamoto reckons ‘we need education about beauty.’

BDW

The talk was good, so I have added some more nuggets of the ‘in conversation’ I heard between Frances Corner and Yohji Yamamoto at the V and A.

More thoughts from Yamamoto on fast fashion: he is all about designing clothes now that can be worn with clothes from past collections (you can see the timeless quality emerging).

Yamamoto has an innate belief in fabric, and listening to what the fabric has to say.

Tailoring, to Yamamoto, is craftsmanship.

Yamamoto believes in the ‘life button’: the button that is central to a jacket/garment, the button that the garment literally hangs from.

Yamamoto has a thing about sleeves. The human body dictates that the sleeve hole needs to angle forward, to follow the natural fall of the arm.

Yamamoto also has a thing about pockets on breasts, particularly women’s breasts. You can place a pocket high on the mountain, you can place a pocket at the foot of the mountain, but to place a pocket on the mountain is not really his thing.

BDW