Wellington Craft Crawl 2014

A few weekends ago, I took part in my first ever Wellington Craft Crawl organised by the Dreamstress. The Craft Crawl took place in the inner city, which is my home, so I  knew most of the places  we went to fairly well - but there were still a few surprises along the way.

The craft crawl started at Made on Marion which is one of my favourite stores in the city. I've taken a few courses here before with the Dreamstress (and I have another starting next week) and its the perfect place to get any crafty bits and pieces you need. For me these pieces generally relate to cross-stitch and sewing, but there is so many other crafty goodies here!

Everyone taking  part in the crawl met at Made on Marion and the our route for the day was explained. We were also told about a couple of games we were going to play - including craft bingo!

Our first stop was "Made it" which is a store that stocks all kinds of fun New Zealand made items, its a great place to buy locally made presents (or to buy awesome stuff for yourself). Rich bought me a terrarium for my birthday this year and he bought it from this store.

This is the kind of store where I could happy spend a lot of cash - but instead I limited myself to two pencils. The are pretty wonderful pencils though.

Next stop was Fabrics Direct - this store is very close to our apartment, but this was the first time I have been there. I think because its more of a store for curtaining and upholstery fabrics, rather than dressmaking fabric. It was fun to look around though - they had some fun notions and also a few vintage fabrics.

 Next stop on our trip was The Fabric Warehouse, I've been here many times and its just a wonderful place. The staff are super helpful and really know what they are talking about. Also how great is that flamingo print fabric?

Our next stop was Ziggurat which is not a fabric store, but a vintage store. I don't go there often as although their stock is beautiful its just too much money for me to spend on clothes. However, they  do have a small selection of vintage fabric that is pretty reasonable. 

I did manage to buy some pretty wonderful vintage fabric from here - it was one of those fabrics that just makes me happy when I look at it.

Final stop for me on the tour was Minerva - which is our local craft book store. This is one of those places I could spend hours in, it has so many amazing  books.

I also bought something here, I am a bit of a sucker when it comes to Japanese sewing books, but usually the sizing in these books is too small for me and I'm too lazy to grade up patterns. But on this shopping trip I found a Japanese sewing book that includes patterns in my size. It is very unlikely I will make them in black fabric though.

I left the tour around this stage, there were a couple of more stops, but I needed to go and meet Rich so I cut it short. But I did have such a fun time - it was a really great way to spend a Saturday!

Happy Saturday!

I have to admit that I have been down quite a bit lately - there has been a lot going on and the weather has been extremely cold and miserable. This is the first winter since we moved into our apartment where it has actually felt cold inside (our central heating just can't keep up).

However, this last weekend the weather was cold, but the sun was shining and I got to catch up with Ria for the first time in a long time (she has been busy working on a big show) and I had a genuinely awesome weekend.

So what did I get up to? Well I met Ria on Saturday and we went to the international food court that recently opened pretty much right next door to our apartment.

It's a really pretty food market and given its "sort of" open air it has been doing amazingly well in a Wellington winter. They have so much delicious food - Chinese dumplings, Korean street food, Malaysian, Filipino barbeque, Indian, roti wraps and that's just a handful of the businesses. If you are in Wellington you should really go and visit. On Sunday Ria and I choose to get some chili chicken noodles from the Vietnamese place and they were amazing.

There is also  a general market as part of the food market - at the moment its mostly vintage and a few other small businesses. I don't think the general market is doing as well as the food part, but I do hope that it becomes more popular. Maybe it will become Wellingtons first vintage market! Although I'm not sure having a vintage market and a market selling delicious food next to my house would be great for my wallet. I only managed to snap a couple of pictures at the market, nothing really grabbed our attention (although those buttons were super fun) so we headed up to Cuba Street.

After checking out a few shops we decided to stop off for what I consider to be the best chai in Wellington! It's worth buying chai tea here to make sure that you can see this fun caravan around the city. Once I was chatting to the owner of the caravan and he told me he was taught how to make chai when he was in India - so this masala chai is the real deal!

We continued along Cuba Street and eventually ended up at Recycle Boutique - where many clothes were tried on and some were eventually bought. Also I  had to share this knitwear with you guys - I mean seriously!

I did end up buying a couple of frocks - I had seen the green one at recycle boutique before but I didn't try it on. Turns out it fits perfect and looks awesome - it was meant to be!

We also paid a visit to Minerva which is a wonderful bookstore that sells loads of craft and sewing books. The books they sell are new, but they also have a small selection of vintage patterns and I was able to pick up this cute wee pattern.

To finish our day we decided to see if the Fabric Store was open, but we were too late. I thought I would share this mural with you all though. It's kind of fun right?

Finally we finished up our day out with a chai latte at Expressoholic - one of our usual hang outs.

I have to admit after this fun day out I was feeling  so much better. I also went to an amazing exhibition with Rich on Sunday (will share photos soon) and now I am also feeling so much better about everything. Plus I have Lux Festival of lights to look forward to, as well as a craft crawl and a trip to Auckland to see Conor and Sue and I will also get to catch up with Emi. It's going to be rad. I'm so happy I'm feeling more positive about basically everything again xoxo

Lady Date: Vintage Market

I'm going to be honest with you guys - my desire  to blog has pretty much disappeared lately. I can't say I'm exactly sure why, lets hope it returns soon. 

I did want to share with you all though a morning out Ria and I  had recently. One of our local Saturday markets, the Frank Kitts Market (or Wellington Underground Market as its officially called) occasionally has themed market days and last week it was a vintage themed market so we thought we would go and check it out. 

I try to never have very high expectations for vintage themed markets - often vintage markets seem to be selling stuff for really inflated prices or just don't seem to have anything that interest me. However, this one was awesome. There may have only been a handful of vintage stalls (as well a the usual stall holders) but they had such great stuff. 

It seemed that my camera wasn't really up to taking photos on the day, so many of them came out blurry. There were so many great stalls though, including one from Georgia from The Velvettes which was awesome. 

Much to my surprise, both Ria and I bought SO MANY TREASURES! Normally when I go shopping now something has to be exceptional for me to buy, as so often I think "But I could make that and I already have a pattern/fabric that's pretty similar" but this time - I hit the jackpot!

 Super fun 1960's shift dress - the patterns is perfect! I've already worn this one to work!

 1980's candy stripe dress.

 Awesome bright orange NZ made 1960s dress.

 Floral 1970s polyester dress, I need to shorten it a bit as it is the weirdest length on me (neither long or short enough to look right).

 Just look at that pattern - amazing!

 A super warm wool cardi in red - you can never have enough cardis.

 A blue handmade cardi - super warm.

This isn't vintage at all but I did get a couple of metres of cute floaty anchor and heart print fabric - turns out at least two other people I know have this fabric as well.

Finally, after the market Ria and I decided we needed a break for morning tea and went to French Cancan which has recently opened up near our apartment. It's little bit fancy!

Hope you have all been having a great weekend!