Lucy Patterson HANDS-ON

Beach therapy

Yesterday afternoon (bank holiday Monday), my friends and I went for some good old fashioned beach therapy. We walked along Karekare, another of our wild West Coast black sand beaches. (Karekare was the location for scenes in Jane Campion’s Oscar winning film The Piano.)

As we turned left and headed south, the beach just swept open. It felt like we had the whole world to ourselves.

I can’t walk on a beach with out collecting a few little treasures along the way: a tiny purple shell, a yellow kowhai seed, the spiral from inside a deep sea squid, and a white seabird feather.

We came across the sad sight of a magnificent albatross lying dead on its back. You can’t really tell from the picture how big it was. Its beak was as long as my hand. And the wings! I just read that albatrosses fly an estimated 200,000 km (about 125,000 miles) per year. Wow.

As we returned to the car park, smoke from a bonfire was rising between the bush covered hills…

…and the sun was setting into the sea.

We left feeling happy and rejuvenated.

Posted in Friends, Nature, Where we live | 1 Comment

Kimono Paper Craft illustrations

These past couple of days I’ve been enjoying working on some new Kimono Paper Craft illustrations which will be included in a booklet I’m putting together. Here’s some work in progress.

Posted in Artwork / Illustration / Design, Craft projects, Kimono, Kimono Paper Craft | 5 Comments

Hill Tribe women in North Vietnam

I thought it was about time I started sharing some photos from my trip to Vietnam with you. These pictures are of Hill Tribe women from the northern mountain town of Sapa.

There are more then 50 different ethnic minority peoples in Vietnam. ‘Hill Tribes’ refers to various different groups of people who migrated from China over the past few centuries and settled in the mountainous northern regions of Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Burma (Myanmar). The women in the first four photos are from the Black Hmong people, and the last two are Red Dao (pronounced Dzao). The name of each ethnic group usually refers to the distinct clothing that that group wears.

I took all these photos in Sapa market where I spent many happy hours with these lovely women, shopping, laughing and just hanging out.

I bought some of these beautiful embroidered bedspreads, rolls of batik indigo hemp fabric and neon embroidery, some silver jewellery and various pieces of traditional clothing.

I had dreamed of going to Sapa for many years after seeing photos from my brother’s trips there, and receiving gifts of these beautiful handicrafts from him.

I’ll show you more photos over the next little while of our trek and village homestay, and also some of the goodies that I bought from the various Hill Tribe markets that we visited.

Posted in Hill Tribes, Markets, Shopping, Travel, Vietnam | 3 Comments

Kumara harvest time again

Over the weekend Mum and I harvested our kumara crop (Maori sweet potatoes). Unlike previous years, this year we only grew one variety. With a deep fuchsia skin, poporo kumara go the most amazingly deep purple when baked and they taste like sweet, rich roast chestnuts. I’m sure they’re highly nutritious too.

We get our young kumara plants from Koanga Institute who do a fantastic job of preserving the old varieties of food plants here in New Zealand through seed saving etc.

The tops of the kumara plants (leaves and stems) were gathered into a a great bundle…

…and fed to Alice the kunekune pig. She was very appreciative!

Posted in Food growing, Gardening, Nature, Our family and animals, Where we live | Leave a comment

Palm Springs

My man and I have both been feeling the impact of too much time spent on computers lately. Too many late nights and long weeks. So yesterday afternoon we took a break and headed north of Auckland to Palm Springs Thermal Pool in Parakai.

Palm Springs is an entirely unglamorous, unpretentious place with a sort of faded retro charm to it. I love it. When you first step down into the hotter of the two big pools, sink right up to your neck and just let go… Oh, it’s heavenly!

We came away feeling completely exhausted and heavy in our bodies, but in a peaceful, relaxed and contented way. Just what the doctor ordered! I slept so well last night.

Wishing you all a happy, contented and peaceful weekend.
Lucy x

Posted in Where we live | Leave a comment

Wall collections

Here are a couple of little collections I have on my walls. The first is a pairing of a brass hamsa (Hand of Fatima) that I bought in Fes, Morocco, with an old postcard featuring a Japanese print of a fish which I inherited from my grandparents. I like it that these two objects work together because of their colour, shape and size, even though their materials, style and subject matter are so very different from each other.

Birds and beads. I found the framed Japanese bird and magnolia print at a flea market for a dollar or two. The prayer beads were bought in Morocco by my father in the 70s or early 80s. I was given the stone rooster by a friend of mine who knows how much I love my chickens! I found the feather on holiday up North – I think it might be from a rosella. The little silk brocade pouch is from a temple in Kyoto. I was given it by my Reiki Master when she visited Japan some years ago.

Posted in Collections, Where we live | Leave a comment

I love stamps!

I received a little package of things I’d ordered in the post from China yesterday. Look at the stamps! Don’t you just love stamps? Individual miniature works of art. I think it’s a tragedy that stamps are getting replaced by those ugly stickers they print out at the post office for you.

I still feel a sense of childlike delight when I receive something that has physically travelled across the globe to me, as opposed to all these electronic communications that we make each day.

Long live stamps!

Posted in Artwork / Illustration / Design | Leave a comment

Old photos: my grandparents in the 50s

I just came across some old photos of my grandparents in the 1950s. I love seeing them as young people and imagining what their world felt like. Isn’t this a great photo! I think the story behind it is that my grandmother was telling the photographer off (perhaps her brother) for taking the photo before my grandfather had finished brushing his hair!

With my mother (crouching) and my uncle Alan. I love the expression on Mum’s face. In her own little world!

My grandmother, Hildegard, hanging up the washing with my uncle Robin. I love the atmosphere of them under the billowing sheets, with my grandmother bending down and them carrying the basket together.
My handsome grandfather, Richard! He wore his hair in this classic short-back-and-sides (with a side part) until the end of his life, in his 80s.
My grandparents were amazing people. So full of compassion and care for other people, and always busy putting that compassion into action. My earliest memory of my grandparents is on a Christmas Eve when I was very young, sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders singing Christmas carols together at the local train station to raise money for homeless people.

Posted in Old photos, Our family and animals | 3 Comments

Shop update: Paper Fan Inspiration Cards

I updated my online shop this morning with some new sets of Paper Fan Inspiration Cards that I sewed kimono purses for last week.

Here’s what it looks like when I’m collating the 22 different cards that go into each set. I developed the illustrations from vintage kimono prints. The messages on each card are my own words. People often ask how I came up with the words. To be honest I don’t really remember! They are words that I find useful myself in reminding me how to live a more peaceful, joyful, mindful, harmonious and creative life.

Each set of cards comes in its own kimono fabric purse, which I sew myself. The fabrics that I use are reprints of girls’ kimono fabrics from 40 years ago. They are hand-printed using stencil patterns that were kept in a Yuzen (traditional kimono dying) factory in Kyoto, Japan. I love them. Such beautiful colour combinations and exquisite scenes of nature – blossoms, water, fallen leaves, and graceful cranes.

The purses fasten with a coloured, flat-woven elastic strap that slips around the back to hold it closed. I enjoy choosing which colour of elastic goes best with the fabric of each purse. Simple pleasures!

Here are a selection of the purses that I’ve put in my shop today.

For a while I used to pick a card each monday and write about it on my blog. You can read those posts here.
Enjoy!
I hope your week is filled with inspiration.
Lucy x

Posted in Kimono, Monday's inspiration, My Shop | Leave a comment

Autumn Matryoshka

We’re in the middle of a fierce, Autumn storm on top of our little hill here. It got me thinking about my ‘Autumn’ Matryoshka Russian dolls. She was inspired by purple thunder clouds, fallen leaves, wet bamboo and watery golden sunlight. Here’s a bit about how I created her.

My Autumn Matryoshka focuses on four vintage kimono fabrics. Each of these pieces of fabric came into my collection as one-off scraps, no bigger than a postcard. Sometimes I try to image what the original kimonos might have looked like. I wonder what other details were contained in the full fabric designs. Aren’t they beautiful?

The faces for my matryoshkas were created using a combination of hand drawing and Photoshop. I think of the ‘Autumn’ face as being Japanese, with her deep brown eyes, warm skin tone, soft cherry lips, and salmon cheeks.

For the print on the back, I selected four colours and two little swatches from the kimono fabrics and combined them into a diamond print with my logo across the lower centre.

I’ve made her (and her ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ friends) into cushions, keyrings, postcards, magnets and bead strand kits. You can see them all in my Etsy shop. You can also see more photos of my Matryoshka’s here, in my flickr photos. Enjoy!