lyttel stitches and a giveaway.

The latest edition of extra-curricular is out with an article on the heart stitching that happened here in Lyttelton after the February earthquake. This issue has a stitching focus so lyttel hearts project and sharing the goodness that happens when people gather together and create is a perfect fit for the "crafting for good" section of this little mag.

A tutorial on making a gorgeous foraging bag by Melissa of tinyhappy is also in the issue.

Perfect for the Spring treasure gathering that is about to begin.

I have one to give away so click over to the lyttel-town.blogspot.com and leave a comment and I will draw a winner at the end of the weekend.

celebrating anyway

Just so you know.....

You won't be seeing many broken pictures here from the recent earthquakes.

After Monday I am really over broken.

We see 'broken' every day and this time it fills me with sadness and loss, more so than February.

I don't want it reflected back to me in this space.

You can see plenty of broken images here and here.

It is reassuring to see how quickly people begin to adapt to change.

Here we begin to try and imagine living with these quakes into the future and this will take us time but in the meantime we will celebrate anyway.

With Matariki and Winter Solstice upon us and the Festival of Lights postponed, a good local crowd decided to gather and celebrate what we have - an awesome community full of resilience, imagination and creativity.

Friends had already bought ingredients for a warming chai tea and had organised a yurt to put up on the old Ground site. Music folk from The Harbour Union played and everyone rejoiced to see a bunch of us stitching hearts and came and joined in.

The lovely Paige, local belly-dancing goddess brought delicious cakes to share with families. She confessed it had been a personal therapy to get through these shaky times; an ancient way for women dealing with crisis.

We all encouraged her to continue this particular therapy and share the results.

Community therapy through baking and eating.

This is Ruby's element. She is on fire in the midst of a party.

We left her there all afternoon and she headed back down in the evening with Gunt.

She made chai, offered food and chatted with lots of friends. I couldn't help thinking that school would just cramp her style.

And Sky also was in her element; singing and playing by herself, happy to be on the fringes -

a moment after this photo was taken a couple of men in high-viz vests asked her to come away from this mostly-collapsed wall. Um yes, with all the shaking, good thinking guys.

crafting with our hands.

We are nearing the end of The little House series.

This is Ma pregnant.

As with the big 6.3 quake in February this time around we continue to find comfort in crafting with our hands.

Lately it has been handcraft central here with Ruby falling in love with the immediacy of finger knitting and Sky the immediacy of needle felting.

We at last cracked the way to finger knit fast.

H..e..l..l..o. The secret is to stand on the long end of the wool and let it run under your foot as you knit. I know this may seem obvious to all you veteran finger knitters but not to us.

Since Ruby has discovered this she has been making bracelets, necklaces, pot stands and flowers, belts and handbag handles.

Sky on the other hand is deeply into making broaches and wands with her felting needle

Cut a star or oval out of a piece of felt or a blanket you have (a thicker one gives more strength to the form.) Needle felt wool onto this. Sky is still enjoying playing with the colours swirling into each other but it could also be a letter or a picture. You can add beads or buttons if you wish. Stitch a safety pin on the back for a broach or a stick on the back of a star for a wand.

Looking toward next week, Ruby is particularly keen to begin spinning with a drop spindle as in here and here.

We both like the idea of it being 30,000 years old.

Basically I've been putting her off and investigating spirals instead to connect with the form and movement of spinning.

Well that's what I tell myself; I think it has mostly just been putting her off.

We've had a lot on.

I'll keep you posted.

As for tomorrow we are heading down to London street to stitch hearts.

This is just what I need after little sleep last night and a day of wondering what is around the corner.

The Winter Street Festival was planned for tomorrow night, but because of the possibility of falling buildings (not that there are many left to fall) it has been postponed.

We thought the stitchers could be a presence anyway, stitching in public (during knitting in public week)and sharing the love again here among the brokenness.

inside/outside

The cold snap last week had everyone lighting their first fire of the season.

It was a perfect reminder that Winter is just around the corner and to get outside as much as possible. We are living at the foot of one of the local cemeteries - a perfect place for an early morning walk and climb. We have been finding some magnificent mushrooms but need to find someone to show us the ins and outs of how to identify edible varieties.

What we do so miss at this time of the year is being at the beach. With sewerage infrastructure still being repaired from the earthquake damage, some of the local beaches are a horrible sight and all of the water isn't safe to swim in. So it is indoor swimming at this stage.
With many pools condemned, we are just thankful for some cool water to go wrinkly in and I'm especially happy to have a stretch of a couple of hours to catch up on a little project for our community blanket.

still stitching.

Even when we are not stitching hearts for others at the farmer's market or in the schools, the girls still choose to sit by a window in our new home and stitch in the sun. For Sky, a small wallet that she gets to practice blanket stitch on, for Ruby, a stitching bag to hold her treasures and me, a wee woolen bunting to be stitched onto the Lyttel Stitches blanket.

Woolen blankets are not surprisingly my new favourite material to play with.... phone pouch, slippers, new hottie covers and a warm skirt requested by Sky are all on my list.


Stitching continues to provide that small calm spot in the middle of the day as we regain our rhythm once again.

autumn equinox

The seasonal year turns another notch and we find ourselves back at the edge of autumn. I must say I am a little nervous as we head into this next phase of the year. There will be some confronting times during the coming cold and dark days for people in this community.

The weekend brought us:

• Time in the garden - In the still of the early morning Gunter and I spent some quiet time in the garden.We thought we would make a start on the potato harvest before breakfast. A dozen handsome pumpkins (a little early but sometimes you need to just bring it in when you can), arm loads of tomatoes, cucumbers and corn, and 22 kg of spuds. One bed done; three to go!

• Packages from afar - Touched by a special package in the post filled with buttons, lace and woolies to be stitched onto this week's hearts. There is so much herstory in those little packages

• Some sign language learning- and while "you-tubing" for more signing inspiration finding this sweet little film which made me smile.

• A bit of reading - here
• A bit of viewing - here
• And, no surprises, more stitching. Even Prince William himself was handed one on Memorial Day. I hope he's wearing it!

friday

This last week we have been with the children, visiting one of the local schools in the lunch hour and offering a bit of certainty in a simple project.

For some who are struggling with fear and/or lose, the stitching project has provided a safe place to retreat to. They may have visited regularly at the coffee corner and return to us in their lunch hour.
For some it is something a little special as they transition back into being at school. Possibly back to a school without their friends as families choose to move away.
For some it is a chance to love and heal a beloved "baby."



Focusing on the next stitch, their bodies relax just a bit and tension falls away. Bodies are tired from broken sleep and adrenal glands are depleted from the aftershocks.
Focusing on the next stitch, their mind is present with the task and can let go of the worry of what is to come.

Then I awoke this morning to Sky telling me that she planned to make a penguin today.
The original inspiration was a cut-out unicorn gifted to her earlier in the week which has been helping her to sleep.
She scoured the bookshelves for penguins, drew a penguin picture she was happy with and then copied it onto a plain woolen blanket. We had it cut out and half stitched before breakfast. She finished it off at the coffee corner where she could show off her handiwork. Puppets are on the list.

The meditation in stitching and the very act of creating something beautiful continues to heal our community, one stitch at a time.

Check out http://www.5inabed.blogspot.com/2011/03/craft-love.html to see the love and beauty that is coming to us from afar.

wednesday

Growing resilient young women has always been central to the choices we have made as parents.
Amongst the qualities that are essential to growing resilience is a sense of agency; agency to make positive change in your life and in the world around you.

As a family, our lives are sped up right now and we are hardly at home compared to our usual pace, but these are extraordinary times and we have found the small drop of positive change we can make at this particular point.
So that's where we are.

There is no better place to learn about agency in your own life than to be responding to the need before you in a way that sings to you.
Each day the girls stitch a bit, help a bit and give the hearts away.
Chatting, singing, drawing and scootering are threaded throughout.
As they are part of creating the change, they watch, listen and have agency in a community dismantling, repairing and revisioning itself.

monday

Another day to learn more about what an open heart looks like:

• the woman who dropped the container full of buttons at the stitching corner. Old vintage buttons, cute character buttons and iridescent glass buttons have kept everyone under their spell for days and kept the creative juice fresh. Apparently after picking them all up after two quakes, she was now done with them. Hundreds of dollars worth of buttons given away on stitched hearts.


• the endless food provided by many. People contributing how they can.





• Gus, a guy visiting from the North Island with 2 large boxes of freshly smoked fish to give away. Just because "he felt like it."
• All the blokes that are stepping up, picking up the needle and stitching a heart.

For the whole time that we have been holding vigil in the main street the girls have been taken care of by the village. They chat, help out, take off with someone for a while, sing, stitch, listen and watch. Their life and what they need to learn unfolds before them. They don't need to wait. They are present within their life and respond accordingly.

Their mama marvels a little that they are here infront of her, aware of the devastation in Japan and the possibility of loss in each day.

Japan, there are no words.

lyttel homecomings

It's been over 2 weeks now since the Earthquake.
At times it feels like time has stopped still since the 22nd February.
But some things are moving forward and the two local schools reopen on Monday.
Families are steadily arriving back in town after having taken a break away from the aftershocks and the chaos.
We have had a steady stream of homecomers today at the coffee corner.
Families finding a way to reconnect with the community, catch up on news and gently find there way back.

It's a way of us looking after each other.
Rather than returning home and facing the mess and chaos of the 22nd alone, people are seeing us gathered on the corner as they head up the hill and pull over to see what's going on.
What a warm homecoming.
A handmade heart to gentle the fragile heart inside.

Thanks to those individuals and groups that have offered to either send supplies or make hearts for us. We are here for as long as it takes and visiting schools next week for those children who need a wee stitching project. Big love to your support.

street schooling

Some things are slowly resembling something like "normal."
For instance, this morning we had our piano lesson.
After super inspiration last night and a bit of a stitch marathon, we busied ourselves with some loving on the way up the hill to our lovely piano teacher's home.



Yesterday, as we were stitching, the girls were asked by a passerby whether they were looking forward to going back to school.
A friend laughed.
"Can't you see? They street-school."
I like it.
Street schooling.
It's a bit like that right now.

what we need right now.

The hearts are growing day by day.
We have been stitching full time for the last week.
This morning we were at the Community Recovery Building giving them to Civil Defense workers and people coming in for assistance.
This afternoon we were at the coffee corner.
Next week we will be in the local schools as they reopen providing a bit of time-out space for children who need it.

But we need supplies.
We want this to remain an exchange of love and support with as little money as possible changing hands.
So do you have any spare buttons, old pale blankets, thin wool or fairly thick needles?
We could do with any you can spare.
Send me an email on watchingkereru at gmail dot com and I'll send you the details.

lyttel stitches

For the last few days we have been stitching madly anywhere that people are gathering; mainly at the coffee corner outside the library.
A crafty friend began with the idea on the 1st March and we have been stitching ever since.

Simple hearts.
An upcycled woolen blanket, wool, thread, whatever buttons we can find and a safety pin.
Stitched with love.


People come and join us. A chance to sit and chat, take a breath together and focus on a small project.
Imagine - even the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Captain of the All Whites each have one of these lyttel hearts decorating their chests.


A small way that we can spread love in a chaotic and uncertain time.