January weather was amazing & we spent time most of our days just hanging out & going to the beach to swim which was superb & is really all I ever want to do in summer anyway.

By the time February arrived I was well rested & ready to do some explorations into using NZ native plants for dyeing fabric & fibre.

The harakeke seed pods were at their best for harvesting for making a dye bath too & I was lucky enough to have my friend, Isla, walk me thru the process, which is very easy but it is a process which takes a few days.
Here's a link to a post on Isla's website which outlines the process we used; natural-dyeing-with-harakeke-seed-pods

In the dye bath I made from the pods I had harvested I dyed a few lengths of muka, 3xDMC cotton embroidery threads of various thickness, a 60cm square of calico, a 30cm square of cotton drill & various sized rectangles of cotton drill fabric I had cut out with a view to sewing a purl soho boxy tee.

It seems the harakeke pods are high in tannins so no surprise with the colours the cottons & cotton fabrics came out but it was lovely to see the variation in the colours of the muka fibres.

Rather than dyeing a single large piece of fabric which would have been awkward to fit in my dye pot, I pre-cut the pieces of fabric for my sewing.

What I hadn't considered was the extra shrinkage of the fabric courtesy of simmering for an hour in hot water.
I had already washed & dried the fabric BUT I do cold washes & line dry ! What a bastard trap for rookies !

I sewed up my top anyway & fortunately the pattern makes a generous size garment so the only problem area is the armhole depth which is a little too tight to be comfortable.
But I have a plan !
I think I'll open that seam, on each side, & insert a gusset just to give me a bit more space.

And now, finally, we get to the point of why I wanted to sew this particular top.
It's all about the bottom panel. Which is a separate piece.
A beautifully proportioned rectangle of fabric which lends itself to embellishment.
I was watching Sashiko Stitching taught by Lisa Solomon on Creativebug & in one part of the class she is wearing a top she has made with a sashiko embroidered bottom.

I had the fabric : I had the threads : I had the pattern I wanted to embroider & now I have a top which is the memory piece of my very 1st foray into dyeing with harakeke seed pods.

February has become my favourite time of the year.
It's as if the year just pauses for 28, or, as is the case this year, 29 days, & rests. 

The days are still long & the temperatures are stable, still hot enough to feel like summer without being oppressive. 
The wind is a light breeze, if at all present.
The night time temperatures are lower too which means sleeping is easier. 
And the light, both day & night, the light has been astounding. 
The angle of the sun is changing rapidly now which makes the evening light truely magical.
The moon is as ever the moon is, but somehow the stars have seemed brighter, courtesy of the clear skies I guess.

The birds are completely at ease, no frenzy needed to attract a mate, build a nest, hatch the eggs nor feed the voracious, constantly squawking, young. 
The insects are the same; unhurried but still busy. 

It's been an amazing year for our trees which is evident by the masses of ripening fruit both on our native trees & our fruit trees. 

​The water temperature at our local beach is the highest during February which means swimming is really enjoyable & the ocean has been clean & clear. 
Most days are calm & unhurried. 
The evenings have an air of serenity.

January was just a blur of heat, noise, dust & sunshine (well mostly sunshine). 

Hugh took part in Te Kupenga's biennial Stone Sculpture Symposium which is held on the foreshore here in New Plymouth. Go here to see a gallery of his work from boulder to sculpture. 
This year sculpting started on January the 1st & ended on the 22nd January. The completed works were on exhibition onsite til the event culminated with a public auction on Jan 30th.
It was a fabulous event with up to 25 artists participating.
There were 6 international artists who came from the UK, Italy, Slovakia, Australia, Belgium & Taiwan.
Go to Te Kupenga's website here to see the awesome day to day onsite photo galleries, here for the international artists galleries & here for the national artists galleries.
​

Now this all brings me back to the December daily diary experiment ! 
Hugh & I were pretty heavily involved in aspects of 'making stuff happen' for the symposium this year.
Hugh very much so as he was involved as both a member of Te Kupenga's executive in addition to being a member of the symposium organising committee.
Me, less so as I had the distance afforded by being unofficially involved, which meant I could pick & choose what I wanted to do. One of the things I chose to do was to make Te Kupenga's website work to the best of it's ability to keep people outside the region connected to the event. 
I had the absolute pleasure of coordinating with 3 superb local photographers who generously volunteered their time, energy, enthusiasm & skill to make available photos via dropbox which I was able to upload with the utmost ease into galleries on Te Kupenga's website.
So that was the experiment !
Q. How do I get a large volume of photos onto a website in some semblance of order WITH the minimum fuss & bother.
A. Create an EASY system using labeled folders in Dropbox, share this folders with the relevant people, who are working with clear, succinct, uncomplicated directions, upload daily to galleries created as hidden pages on a free Weebly website & press publish. 
Everyday I took delight in uploading some really fabulous images & also watched as the website stats climbed.
It works people . . . it really works !
The feedback has been fabulous & people really did enjoy seeing the photos.

I am thrilled to have been involved & so appreciative of working in collaboration with dedicated, passionate photographers, seriously, without whom this totally would not have worked.

Thank you so much Peter Florence, David Fitness & Kerehama Waru your photographs made it possible xxx