TAKE what you NEED

After a week of grey "porridge" weather we have woken to a glorious morning!

I've been thinking about how I bang on about the weather, but it really does affect me.

  I'm OK about getting my head down and bum up and working away when it's grey and horrible, but I feel infinitely more cheerful when the sun shines.'

I've found this really cool new time-wasting device called "Pinterest " - you  may have heard of it ;).

I can spend hours looking at all of the pretty things and getting inspired while pretending to watch TV with the Toy Boy.  He also pretends to watch TV with his lap-top on his lap, but he cruises cars and machinery and blokey stuff.

I was inspired this week by a picture of a simple sign, and decided - for once - to act upon my inspiration.

I pinned this on a little noticeboard between the workroom and the Organic Grocery Store it's been really uplifting to watch people stumble upon it.  Even if they don't physically take a "gift" , they smile.  I wonder how many "gifts" will have gone when I get in this morning?

 There has also been lots of work going on to stock the Stitchbird's new store in Wellington.

 Being back into my work is good! 

{Share your bliss! Scatter your joy in a comment below or link up at LivLane.com!}

It was Time for a Break

We're just home from a wonderful two week holiday where we did a loop of the South Island of New Zealand.  We traveled down the beautiful wild West Coast, passing through Nikau Forests in the sub tropical north.  We stopped at the pancake rocks at Punakaiki...

where the sea was disappointingly calm so the blowholes were quiet...

but the cheeky wekas were busily begging from the tourists...

This wee fellow almost got into the car!  There was a gang of three working the car park like rather hardened operators!

We stayed a night with family at Moana on beautiful Lake Brunner and went bushwalking there.  The peace and quality of stillness there is exquisite.

This collection of old English cars at Dobson is so typically old West Coast!  The Toy Boy is a bit of an old petrol head, so we had to have a "scenic" shot here!

The drive from Moana to Queenstown was long but very diverse and beautiful - from poor pasturelands and stony beaches, through dense rainforest, past the glaciers and into the dry, rocky interior.

The purpose of the trip was a visit with Number One Son and his partner MM.  They live on the shores of Lake Wakitipu in the very busy year round tourist town of Queenstown.  

It's quite a place, with the picturesque old town nestled on the side of the lake in amongst towering mountains.  We had a little flash of snow on the tops while we were there, but in a few weeks the whole town will be focussed on magnificent world-class skifields.  

Number One Son has always been a mad keen fisherman (check out queenstownfisher.com )

and he took us for a drive up the lake to Glenorchy and the Dart River.  We stopped off so he could have a quick fish, and lo and behold he caught a lovely brown trout!  There was great excitement as the fish was landed and safely returned to its home!

The Toy Boy and I bade a reluctant farewell to the kids and headed off towards Moeraki on the East Coast (the place where those beautiful boulders are born).

 

I love the look of the dry, brown-cloaked hills of the inland country.

Our road trip was topped off with a couple of nights at Hanmer Springs and a day soaking ourselves wrinkly in the hot pools, then quietly home.

It was a lovely break, and it's good to be home!

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!

A Weekend in Wellington and a Wedding

As I think I may have mentioned once or twice, friends of ours got married in Wellington last weekend, and we were among the very fortunate guests to share this fantastic day.

My little sister The Stitchbird and her family live in Wellington, too, so it was a great opportunity to spend some time with them as well. 

She has a stall at the Frank Kitts Market in the central city so we went along on Saturday morning before the wedding, because we are market connoisseurs, naturally!

She is the Toy Boy's Wellington outlet, too!

*****

Our friends wedding was held at Zealandia in Karori, which is a beautiful predator fenced bird sanctuary.  The groom calls himself a twitcher (with a wicked little smile on his face ;)) - which means that he loves to see and catalogue birds, and the colour scheme for the whole day was based on our beautiful native bird, the Tui - he has richly coloured blue/black/green feathers on his wings, and a white bobble at his throat.

They are among the cheekiest of all the cheeky birds in the New Zealand bush, and have the most amazing song - they actually have two voice boxes which they alternate and use as their own symphony!

The wedding was an exquisite affair, complete with a sting quartet in the garden before the ceremony

The couple are so delighted with one another that their joy becomes quite infectious!  The vows brought tears to the eyes of most of the group - it was a real privilege to be there to see them made.

 Once again, apologies for the awful photo - I only took my phone, and not my camera!  However, happy faces are always a pleasure to look at, right?

You can't see the bride's jewellery in this shot, but they're lovely Erinite and Indicolite Swarovski Crystals very simply done.  They reflect the colours in her accessories and in the groom's outfit.

Arohanui, Janet and Ken!

*****

Sunday was spent helping my sister at the Craftea Market at the Mirimar School Hall.  This is a really cool little market which is held quarterly - well worth a visit if you're in Wellington when it's on.  

I found some really gorgeous little fabric brooches for gifts.

*****

We had a break in the middle of the day and went into the central city to the Farmers Market - the weather was glorious for the whole weekend and as their slogan says "You can't beat Wellington on a good day!"

 

 

Green and Red Broccoflower

My brother-in-law took us with him to buy their weeks produce - the choices were fresh, varied and colourful!  The market is held on the waterfront and there was even a small fishing boat pulled up selling fish directly from the boat - trimmed and filleted right there and then to your instructions.  

 

There's something very jewel-like about fresh vegetables in the sunshine!

Food stalls from all corners of the world were really tempting, too, and we had delicious indian roti rolls.

There was only one flower seller that I saw, but don't you love the colour of these?

I've come home quite inspired and renewed and ready to create!

A Little Something for Moi!

...said Miss Piggy!

We have been invited to a friends wedding this weekend and I've been enjoying planning my outfit.  You may be surprised (or maybe not!) to hear that very little thought goes into my wardrobe mostly - I just choose random colours and shapes that appeal to me at the time and hope like hell that it all goes together when and if I ever need to dress up.  So to plan an outfit from scratch was quite a challenge!

First, I chose a short tealy green dress that I can add layers to as the wedding is outside in Wellington, not known for it's balmy weather...to use an understatement.  Then I got a black leather blazer - lovely and soft and warm, some black tights and tall black slouch boots.

THEN...I planned the beads (the fun bit).

They are really chunky and a bit outrageous, but well, you know...FUN!

So here it all is...I have to confess to being a bit disappointed with the colour of the dress - I LOVE colour and would have loved something much more...colourful!  But this is what I got...

I'll take another pair of black shoes for dancing in later, too.