a souvenir giveaway : natural dye and block printing - NOW CLOSED

I thought about you a lot on my travels, you know. Wondering what you were all doing and whether you would like me to bring you back a souvenir .. that kind of thing. So I decided to bring back a token from each of the three cities I visited.

In Vancouver there is an amazing shop on Granville Island called Maiwa. I discovered it last summer when we were there, so made a bee-line there once again. Twice in fact. It would have been more, only the family already knew what I was up to! The supply store is a treasure trove, filled with all sorts of goodness to get the textile creative juices flowing; be it knitting, crochet, felting, sewing, painting, natural dyeing or printing. It was the latter two that had me transfixed mostly and I thought it may be of interest to you, too.

I picked up a special natural colour kit that the shop had put together on the back of one of the courses it runs. The set comes with nine pre-blended colours, all from natural plant dyes and extracts such as logwood, madder root, cochineal, lac, henna, chlorophyll and pomegranate, together with alum which is used to set protein fibres such as wool and silk. However, if you got yourself some tannin, you could also use this kit to set linen, cotton and other cellulose fabrics. There is a concise instruction sheet, which will help you through your experiments, and it is completely safe to use in the kitchen and get the children involved. Also included is a natural dyed/block printed organic cotton tote (chosen by the Model) and a leafy hand carved wooden print block (as carefully chosen for you by the Boy). And just to prove it was a completely family affair, the Husband picked up the bill. Ha!

Secondly, the seriously fabulous and groovy Space Needle celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, so from Seattle comes a retro 60s style tin filled with mints. The perfect for your handbag tin was made especially for the Space Needle to commemorate the iconic landmark's milestone this year.

And finally, from Portland comes a Larabar. Now, this may seem an odd thing to include but, believe me, these things are seriously delicious. So much so that we ate our way through the entire range and back during our visit. We even ended up bringing home a box each of the apple pie and cashew bars to keep us going until we can send the Husband back again for more. Free from gluten, dairy, soy, peanut and added sugars but unfortunately not available in the UK, you can choose which flavour you would prefer. Believe me, if it were up to me I'd include one of each but there's no way the kiddos will buy that idea. Not a hope!

So if you would like to win this souvenir, all you need do is leave a comment on this post. If you put the button on your sidebar, or mention it on your blog/twitter/facebook, then let me know and I'll enter you a second time. I am prepared to send to anywhere on the globe and will leave the giveaway open until midnight GMT on Saturday 12th May. A winner will be announced on the Monday. Good luck!

The Model has an important celebration on Friday so I must put all my energies into that now. See you next week!