A week in New Zealand

We've just got back from a short holiday to New Zealand - kind of a long way to go for a party but we took a week and caught up with family and generally had a break. We really went because we decided not to go to Argentina - which is another post in itself. (How can someone do a blog post about why they didn't go to Argentina? Don't most people wake up every day, decide not to go to Argentina and not feel the need to explain it? Probably.) It was so nice for the cousins to get together ... and wrestle. Boys.

 So, what did we do? What any normal person would do in in NZ of course. Geysers and boiling mud.



Admired the view.



And another view. Apparently NZ national parks have these picture frames at scenic points. Isn't it a cool idea? And it was such a beautiful day.



We went up a hill in these.



And came down a hill on these.



Grandad took them fishing and they ACTUALLY CAUGHT FISH. Which we had for dinner.



And the best of all was on number two son's birthday - when we visited the Shire. Yep, we spent some time in downtown Hobbiton. More hobbit holes than you could poke a gnarled (yet magical) stick at. All that time spent watching the Lord of the Rings movies (them, not me, I find it a bit torpid) paid off.



So now we're back - tired and broke! It's ten hours door to door from my house to my sister's house in Auckland - which is a long day but not a major trip. It's only two hours time difference but I'm waking up a bit early, which means I can go into work and get something done before I fade away. Jet lag across the Tasman, how shaming.

I went to a PARTY

Goodness, I promised party photos on Tuesday and haven't done a thing. So here you go - three of my sister's four kids had significant birthdays in October and they had a family-friendly party. The twins were 18 and their older sister was 21, so lots to celebrate. Here is one twin - the big banana.

Marilyn Monroe was 18 too, and Pebbles turned 21. Aren't they pretty?

That is of course the genetic inheritance from their parents - Jane Jetson and the Milky Bar Kid. He mostly had a milky bar in his shirt pocket but people kept eating them.

And it is definitely not the genetic inheritance of their aunty - Cyndi Lauper and her dashing husband Shane Warne.

 

At about eleven I was having a few wines (and the leftover chocolate fondue) with the middle-aged women when I thought to check my children - they were lined up on the sofa with their ten year old cousin absolutely mesmerised by the drinking games. Not participating thankfully, but completely riveted ... who knew the world had such fabulously fun things in it? Another tick in my mother-of-the-year basket, and vital step in their education... cheers!

Twirly Shirley in action

And here is Twirly Shirley as it is meant to be seen ... with an actual niece inside. A slightly hungover but still gorgeous niece, on the sofa, with a big yellow quilt. I will be back with more photos of the party but in the meantime here is the closest I have to a quilt action shot.

Twirly Shirley

Here's a top I made a couple of months ago but just finished off the binding last week at quilters. It's part of my ongoing obsession with crumb blocks! This time made into half square triangles with yellow, lot and lots of yellow. Oh I do like yellow. This is all my hand-dyed yellow - lots of different ones because I can never seem to make quite the same colour twice! But necessity is the mother of ... of multicoloured quilts I guess. I had to take these before the sun came up because it's impossible to take decent photos with the bright sun on it; so the colour looks a bit more lemony than in life.



I've called it "Twirly Shirley" because of the quilting. Wobbly waves.



I went a bit denser with the waves on the border to give it some texture. Easy to do but really effective! I like this quilt - it's even more cheerful in person, if you can believe it. Sunshine on a stick.

Back to school

We had a quiet second week of the holidays - went to the movies (Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, not bad), bought some books, pottered around at home. The boys watched all of the Lord of the Rings DVDs (including the Hobbit) and most of the last eight series of Dr Who. I did a bit of sewing... shoo fly blocks for some reason. Nice big ones. Really just a small step up from the scrap blocks! I'm using different fabrics for each one.



And number one son and I had a little project - re-painting a bookshelf that had been relegated to the carport. It was dark and ugly and now it is white and pretty! Not exactly done by painting professionals but a good thing to do, we both had fun and it was quick enough that we didn't get bored.

Still dyeing

I've got a production line going at the moment - alwas a good idea to take advantage of the mood and have a dyeing bonanza while I still feel like it! If I go good and crazy I should have enough to last me for a few months, or until the mood hits again. I did some purples this time.



The bottom one I did a bit of splashing to mix up the colours a bit and make something more interesting. I don't think I should use pink for splashing. It looks a bit ... crime scene.



And then a new dye I hadn't tried before called "Moroccan Red". I mostly just use pure colours rather than mixes, but I must have bought this one a while ago in a spirit of adventure. I don't know if it's because I've had it too long, but it seemed quite weak ... needing a lot more powder to make the same intensity of dye strength. So some of these ones are a bit paler than I was hoping, and the one at the top was meant to be a mixture of black and the Moroccan Red - it's just black! Or rather grey. Quite a nice grey, but not at all what I thought.




I am also overdyeing one of my more spectacular disaster batches. I think a couple of years ago I was at the end of my enthusiasm so just dumped the leftover fabric and dye together and made about ten yards of this.



Isn't it ugly? Black is bad for splotches because it never looks very textured, and that horrible pale purple background with strange teal and darker purple bits. Icky. This one I overdyed with pink and I think it looks quite cool now. None of the teal remains.



And this one I did Moroccan Red - you can see what I mean about it being not very strong. It looks stained rather than dyed, not very attractive. But the wonderful thing is I can just overdye it all over again! Yay!

School holidays

It's still school holidays here and I've been off this week entertaining the children. No, that's not true, I have been distantly supervising them ... they are more than old enough to entertain themselves. But we did have an outing, to Floriade, which is Canberra's annual flower festival. Mostly tulips and bulbs, with some of the spring annuals to spice things up a bit. There is always a really lame theme that the designers torture themselves by trying to do flower beds in the shape of ... but really it's just lots and lots of flowers. This is from the top of the ferris wheel - there are definitely shapes. Of something.

Number one son is not very happy with heights. He didn't really open his eyes until we'd gone round a couple of times, and even then he peeked out while maintaining a strangle grip on the nice solid metal pole in the middle of the cabin. So when we got off he had to have some candy floss to settle his nerves. It worked very well.

Here's a pond with a big yellow duck in it. No, he's not about to fall in, he's just being an idiot. As you can see it was ferociously windy and not very warm. Typical Floriade weather!

I love the colours in this - pink and purple with just a hint of yellow. I took lots of close-ups of flowers, which I do every year, I don't know why. I never look at them again. It's just they are so very pretty en masse.

We did the flowers, then the rides (ferris wheel and slides), then the gnomes and the display gardens, before meandering around to the kiddy area. There was a reptile petting zoo which the boys loved and I stayed outside of! I don't mind lizards but I really don't need to see vast pythons slithering around ... and all the handlers seemed to have little snakes in their pockets or round their arms. A bit disconcerting, especially in a crowded tent. The albino snake was really disturbing, it just looked wrong.

Anyway, while I was waiting I saw this sign of upcoming events in the kids' area. Isn't this the most appalling attempt to make boring things interesting? Oral hygiene? Puh-lease.