To everyone, everywhere, may your day be merry and bright!

After the success of the outer-suburb Craft Crawl, and after letting out pocketbooks recover from it, the lovely ladies of the Wellington Sewing Bloggers and I convened to do the CBD half of the  Craft & Textile Lover’s Guide to Wellington as a Craft Crawl. This one was quite fun because it really was a crawl (well, a stroll) – you can visit every one of the delicious crafty shops in central Wellington in one easy walk. The craft crawl started out with just myself, Gemma of  66 Stitches  (who writes exactly like she talks – and it’s adorable and always makes me smile!  You have to imagine it in a very strong but quite attractive Aussie accent) and Juliet  of  Crazy Gypsy Chronicles  (who keeps the sewing awesomeness of the WSB going in Palmy).  At Stop 2 we were joined by  Zara of Off-Grid Chic  (Yay! A repeat from CC Part 1)  and on stop 5 we picked up Sophie-Lee of Pins & Noodles  (who manages to be a doctor and a talented seamstress …

In researching for the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge #6: Fairytale, I came across all the versions of Donkeyskin/Allerleirauh. It’s an old fairy tale based around the premise that a Queen dies leaving a daughter, and her father the King declares/promises he will only marry a woman who is as beautiful/wise/kind/etc as his first wife.  The daughter grows up and is the spitting image of her mother, so the King decides he will marry her (yes, really.  It’s sometimes called The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter).  The daughter puts him off by saying that first she needs a dress as golden as the sun (or something equally as un-obtainable), and when this is procured, a dress as silver as the moon (ditto), and when this is managed, one as dazzling as the stars (you get the idea), and finally a coat made from the skins of one of each of all the birds and beasts that exist/the skin of her father’s prized donkey that poops gold (no, I didn’t make that up either!).  When …