Kitchen confidential
I confess: I have a magpie-like attraction to shiny/colourful kitchen things.
jo drysdall
Organise your life
Moving, I have (re)discovered, is a big upheaval. Especially when you haven’t moved for seven years, and things have had a chance to “build up” a bit. Long gone are my student days of being able to fling my entire life possessions in the boot of a car in order to change digs!
Bicycle love
What is is about bicycles that they can worm their way into our affections? Whether we cycle in Lycra, frocks or seventies’ shorts and tee, we seem to want to personalise, decorate and remember with nostalgia our bikes, trikes, unicycles or bone-shakers.
First take your genuine medieval priory…
Reclaiming Style: using salvaged materials to create an elegant home
By Maria Speake and Adam Hills · Reviewed by Jo Drysdall
The title and cover of Reclaiming Style are promising: a clever storage space is finished with panels of reclaimed weatherboard, their timeworn surfaces creating a characterful finish and promising, with the superimposed text, a treasure-trove of ideas for outfitting your home in repurposed goodness.
Taking note
Hi, my name is Jo and I’m a notebook addict. I have notebooks in every room of the house, in every coat pocket and in every bag. They contain my plots and schemes, my dreams, my shopping lists and my to-do lists. They archive my house plans and garden plans, clothing designs and random doodles. They are a patchwork image of my brain, drawn in biro.
Home Sewn: a Kiwi design story
Home Sewn
By the New Zealand Fashion
Museum · Reviewed by Jo Drysdall
I still remember the thrill of being allowed to look through my mother’s wardrobe of home-sewn clothes when I was a little girl. As a fashionable young woman, my mother had sewn most of her own outfits: party frocks with fitted bodices and flared, flirty skirts, neat little shift dresses, and tailored, timeless Chanel-style suits. Home Sewn begins with a brief historical overview that places these homemade treasures in their Kiwi context…
Christmas… in the Halloween Zone?
Every year the Christmas paraphenalia seems to arrive earlier and earlier in the shops – and I, like many, am by no means reticent about having an annual moan on the subject. It’s the music more than anything, I think, and the oh-so frenetic version of Christmas to be found in so many retail quarters.
Which is why I’m finding my Felt-flavoured lead up to Christmas this year so much more enjoyable than past experiences.
Send us your Felt snapshot and be in to win!
Here at Felt we see so many lovely things make their way off to new homes. Now we’d love to know how they’re settling in – and we’d like you to send us your snapshots!
Felt – the fruits of our labours
Next Monday is Labour Day. To me it’s one of our most important holidays, commemorating as it does the struggle for an eight-hour working day. From this right, so many things are possible.
Future’s so bright I gotta wear shades…
When it comes to colour fashion, New Zealand is in an odd position – that position being, well, the southern hemisphere. What’s odd about living on the flip side, you say? Well, it has to do with the mysterious art of colour forecasting – and living neither in the future nor in the past…