Sunny garden lunches and hydrangeas in the afternoon

THE FIRST: Our first ever collection finally photographed

Photography: Lillian Baker

Styling: Hannah Clement

Model: Jinx In The Sky

Garments: Doppelganger

My name is Lillian and...

 

I have a peanut butter addiction.

I eat it with a spoon. Straight from the jar. All the time. 

on a summer holiday

I've just returned to Wellington after a stunning summer holiday in the Coromandel. Gosh nothing beats a beautiful New Zealand summer! A good friend joined me for a few days and we had a mini tiki tour around Hahei beach and Cathedral Cove. Ahhhhhh!

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

i heart auckland

  

 

This is not a Merry Christmas.

wandering and pondering

 

"She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said."

- Brian Andreas, Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

the importance doing nothing

thanks Kinfolk magazine and Nikaela Marie Peters for sharing x

a lovely message from a very dear friend xxx

I had a dream about you last night. I was walking up and down all the hills in Wellington looking for you. I finally found you on the top of the highest hill and you were crying because you had made something so beautiful it hurt. I miss you.

a Sunday drive

some words are found while wandering

found here

here's a peek inside

New Zealand Quilter, issue #84

This is the NZ Quilter article that Anne Scott so very kindly published about my latest textile work and award win. If you'd like to read the article, it was first published by the DIA and you can find it online here.

ps. I'm just a little teeny tiny bit more than pretty excited!

in all the world

one of my most favourite things IN ALL THE WORLD is when you spend so long in the bath your finger tips turn into wrinkly raisins x

life is chaos!

Everything is happening all at once. Life usually does that. Ebbs and flows...

Hannah and I (mostly Hannah, but I took the photos so totally claiming it too!) have just been featured on a fashion blog about our project with NZ Eco Fashion Exposed. Pretty cool!

Here's the link!

a little project

Me and my dear friend Hannah have been working on a little project and getting involved with NZ Eco Fashion Week Exposed. It's just a TINY bit exciting!

Over the next few weeks... we are making simple garments with sublimate printing, natural dye, and shibori patterning. Hopefully!

At the moment... we are sorting out garment patterns (mostly Hannahs job thankfully!) and testing colour with natural dyes. Here are a few of my initial experiments x

Dye colour test swatches with a lovely pink from madder root 

Collecting onion skin from generous Mr. Wilson

Onion skins create a warm golden yellow 

Silver dollar eucalyptus from Mt Victoria

Soft orange and pink colours from the eucalyptus dyebath 

 And even softer colours with mordants

Have a look at us on Facebook!

I've been published!!!

My textile work has just been printed in these two beautiful magazines Yay!

Cover Magazine

New Zealand Quilter

I'll post photos of the inside of these very soon.

lots of things have been happening...

Are you ready for a few updates?

not too far from penniless and wandering the streets of auckland

"Money is what people think is the most important thing in the world. It comes from the Government."

found things make me happy

words for today and the rest of my life

image found here

Winning!

I just won the Australiasian Graduate of the Year Award - 1st prize!!!! BOOM! So excited! Hurrah!

There are so so so many amazing people that have helped me over the last couple of years and I'm just so grateful x

tuesday the fourth of june twenty thirteen 10.34pm

This day is a journey, this very moment an adventure.

- Rebecca Pavlenko

goodnight

sometimes i like to fall asleep mid-sentence with my hand on your heart and your lips on my forehead.

The smile of a great man

"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in your life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."


from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, page 49.

Pom Pom Pom

Last Sunday I visited a friend for the evening... we watched Cry Baby, drank coffee too late at night, and made things with balls of wool. I crocheted this tenny tiny hat for my cousins brand new little man, Tom.

Pom Pom Rug Update: No progress. But how cute is this baby hat with a pom pom on top?!

a handful of radishes

I'm a big fan of radishes. They're just so yummy and healthy. I think of them as beautiful winter strawberries.

welcome May

Oh Hello, it's May don't you know?

Have I told you how much I love Autumn? I really really do. And I think it's one of the very best things about it already being May. I just can't get over how crazy fast this year is flying by.

This was such a beautiful morning...

just after the dawn service on ANZAC day.

i have found only one very small good thing about you working nights... i get to sleep in the side of the bed i have warmed up.

after midnight in real life

The rain in Wellington today makes me think of this moment...

The Sunday before last, when I was home down in Christchurch, I took a little time away from everything to visit the '185 Empty Chairs' memorial on Cashel Street. There are no words, only a horrible aching silence.

i miss autumn

One of the things I miss most about living down in Christchurch is autumn. It's so beautiful to walk through Hagley Park, in the crisp April air, carrying a handful of crunchy leaves home in my pockets. I'm a little sad that Wellington doesn't have the same gorgeous Autumn leaves and I always find it surprising just how colourful the city becomes when I go home.

Pretty Autumn leaves in Tuam Street, Christchurch

One of my favourite words is 'autumnal' it just has a warm and soft sound and it's especially wonderful when my dear friend Laura uses it to describe something lovely.

Still... we do have stunning bright red pohutakawa trees all through summer in Wellington. It helps a little.

Then, shaken, her heart strangely stirred, her mind chaotic, she walked slowly homeward.

from Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie, p.82

earl grey and chapter twenty three

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
-  Alan Bennett

on sleeping with the hallway light on

so just lately, I've been reading a few too many murder mysteries. It started with old Agatha Christie and now that I've been introduced to the charming Mr. Lennox I shall never get away. I started 'A death in the Small Hours' by Charles Finch very quietly late last night. I'm on page eleven and it's wonderful.

An honest pom pom rug update: no progress... to busy trying to discover who killed the housemaid.

In the words of C.S Lewis, "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."