One Gorgeous Week!

It's been a good week.  Firstly, the weather, apart from one day of rain - which the garden really needed by the way - has been drop-dead-gorgeous.  I mean perfect day after perfect day!  It was so clear the other day that we could see Mount Ruapehu from our living room.  Now this may not seem remarkable to you, but Mount Ruapehu is hundreds of kilometres away in the middle of the North Island!  We couldn't believe our eyes!

Dawn at Pohara - Mount Ruapehu is the little cone in the distance

We had friends in for an evening meal three times this week so I was able to potter away in the kitchen to my heart's delight making meals that we wouldn't usually bother with.  It's been great to catch up with old friends, though I think the waistband of my jeans is a little more snug that it was.

My gardening friend brought me a gift this week - do you remember the gorgeous flower I showed you late last year?

She brought me some "pups" - apparently that's what they call succulent cuttings - already potted up and ready to sprout.

Epiphyllum "Flamingo"

I love having precious little treats in the garden - I love having  treats whatever the context, really! AND I have the body to prove it!

Speaking of bodies, I had a Cranio-Sacral treatment with local naturopath Carolyn Simon this week and it was absolutely AMAZING!  Don't ask me how it works, but I'm here to tell you that it does.

The movements are so subtle that as my body moved and relaxed into the treatment I kept asking Carolyn "How did you do that?"  and "How did that happen?"  She finished off with a flower essence treatment which was also really fascinating - I had essences of New Zealand native plants which relate back to the chakras, which are a particular passion of mine.

My head has been buzzing with ideas for beads this week - well, with ideas for jewellery to be more precise. 

This is something a bit different for me and as I was making it I kept showing it to visitors to the workroom, asking for their opinions.  They were all really positive, but I still feel a little unsure about it.  Does it lack texture?  I love the colour wash of purples and teals and I like the weighting of the beads, and it's quite dainty... Is this a new direction for the work?

I also made a set of plain ivory beads a couple of weeks ago - they're heavily graduated and round.  The ivory glass worked differently across the piece so it has a little subtle variation.  I'd like to make something similar, but I'm not sure what colour to use.  Perhaps lime green?  I made these for Julie, who is a redhead and they look fabulous on her.  She calls them her glass pearls.

Some friends of ours have been doing loads of fishing lately and have been keeping us in beautiful blue cod - our favourite fish - piquant and fine textured - perfect fried in the pan with a little butter!

Look what they found in the gut of a fish they caught - they are so beautiful that it's hard to do them justice in a photo!

Exquisite!