My name is Tanya and I live in the  beautiful, rural community of Feilding New Zealand with my partner Gavin and our 3 beloved alpacas!

Olive House was my grandmother, and she is the inspiration for the creation of my company.  Olive was a wonderful grandmother to us all, and was also an incredibly talented crafter - she sewed, knitted, crocheted and even tatted, and always had a project on the go. It was at her house, pictured above, in the small town of Te Puke, New Zealand, that she passed on her love of craft to me, and where she taught me to knit.

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Olive had lived through the Great Depression and a World War, and as a consequence didn't waste anything - she unravelled and re-knitted woollen garments, darned and mended, and saved and reused buttons and fastenings.  As a little girl, one of my greatest joys was to play with her "button box", sifting through and sorting the buttons into colour and design, and admiring the patterns and different textures. Today, I have that very button collection, and wherever possible, I try to use these buttons on my garments.  I couldn't think of a better way to honour her memory!

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Getting alpacas meant that I suddenly had a lot of fleece on my hands, so what better to do than turn it into yarn for knitting, and turn my love of knitting into a small business ?! As any spinner knows, preparing and spinning alpaca fleece, along with hand knitting, is a time intensive process and very much a labour of love, so I hope that you enjoy the end result as much as I have enjoyed making these tiny treasures.  Just like Grandma Olive, I also have a large stash of other beautiful yarn, so I often draw from this collection as well to make some of the other garments you  see on my site. 

 

With Olive's House, every single garment  and soft toy is unique, and completely handcrafted with love.  I often tell people what Grandma Olive used to say when she knitted something for others  - Think of every stitch as a little kiss or hug. 

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Enjoy !

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Tanya

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