I've just finished the ribbing on my winter hat which is very exciting as it means it's time to dig out the cable needle. The yarn I'm using, Cascade 220, is really nice to knit with. The knitting would be made a little easier if I didn't have a heap of plasters perched awkwardly on my index finger.
I managed to cut it at work tonight, right in the middle of a busy time. It would not stop bleeding (and in fact still hasn't) so I discovered I can make coffees, pour wine, open beer (just) and operate a till with one hand - the other wrapped in a wad of paper towels. For obvious reasons I avoided the food prep.
I'm so looking forward to Sunday, my day off. I intend to spend the day at home making croissants and in between resting the pastry, doing a lot of knitting. I have a pile of dvds to watch too. I finally joined the local video store.
Last night we spent a happy evening watching Mammoth starring my all time favourite actor, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Michelle Williams. On Sunday I'll be watching Blue Valentine - nothing like a Ryan Gosling fix to look forward to.
I'm hoping by the end of Sunday I'll be able to post a photo of a completed hat and scarf - still got to sew in those pesky ends, then it's done.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
If ever you need cheering up...
...just look at the face of a smiling foca.
That last one's not a foca. That's just how you can spot the kiwi in freezing cold Patagonia. Very appropriate choice of footwear.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
I've dug up some more photos...
For the last 18 months
I've had my memory cards full of photos from travelling stored at my mum's.
I've only had access to the ones I'd already put on facebook or my blog. I'm
planning on trawling through them all and backing them all up and printing a
whole lot out for the wall, so that is what I've been doing tonight. There are
so many photos I forgot I'd taken of so many beautiful places. I thought I
might do a few blog posts sharing a few that I haven't shared before.
Today: photos from my
week travelling on riverboats down the Amazon. It was one of the greatest
experiences of my life and I'm definitely going to repeat it again - but for
even longer next time!
Three times a day the bell sounds - time to line up for food. BYO tupperware and cutlery. Wash it out in the bathroom between meals.
Mmm lunch of rice, chicken and plantain
Relaxing in my hammock. Notice how my camera is on me and I am clutching my bag with my valuables in it. I actually slept with it underneath me like a pillow. Notice my pack peeking out from behind me - it's chained to a pole.
Dinner of rice, plantain, chicken AND beans. I appear not to change my skirt very often over the week :-)
Ooh that's exotic. Rice, plantain and fish! Same skirt.
It's best to pay a little more for the top deck - cooler (in a gets more breeze way) and less crowded
The boat doesn't stop that often - a lot of people/goods are transfered while it's moving via canoes/small boats from villages
If you're hungry between meals people come on board to sell snacks at each stop.
The cargo hold - so many eggs!
The riverbanks are MUDDY.
Gas and petrol exploration everywhere.
People actually live on this banana boat, like gypsies
Nice catch
Mototaxis at Nauta ready to take you to a depot to take a shared car down the highway to Iquitos
The boat justs drives right up to the river bank to park up. Gives you a heck of a fright in the middle of the night when your hammock goes flying when it hits the bank
Carrying precious cargo to isolated villages
freshwater dolphin - notoriously hard to photograph
For the last 18 months
I've had my memory cards full of photos from travelling stored at my mum's.
I've only had access to the ones I'd already put on facebook or my blog. I'm
planning on trawling through them all and backing them all up and printing a
whole lot out for the wall, so that is what I've been doing tonight. There are
so many photos I forgot I'd taken of so many beautiful places. I thought I
might do a few blog posts sharing a few that I haven't shared before.
Today: photos from my
week travelling on riverboats down the Amazon. It was one of the greatest
experiences of my life and I'm definitely going to repeat it again - but for
even longer next time!
 |
Three times a day the bell sounds - time to line up for food. BYO tupperware and cutlery. Wash it out in the bathroom between meals.
|
 |
| Mmm lunch of rice, chicken and plantain |
 |
| Relaxing in my hammock. Notice how my camera is on me and I am clutching my bag with my valuables in it. I actually slept with it underneath me like a pillow. Notice my pack peeking out from behind me - it's chained to a pole. |
 |
| Dinner of rice, plantain, chicken AND beans. I appear not to change my skirt very often over the week :-) |
 |
| Ooh that's exotic. Rice, plantain and fish! Same skirt. |
 |
| It's best to pay a little more for the top deck - cooler (in a gets more breeze way) and less crowded |
 |
| The boat doesn't stop that often - a lot of people/goods are transfered while it's moving via canoes/small boats from villages |
 |
| If you're hungry between meals people come on board to sell snacks at each stop. |
 |
| The cargo hold - so many eggs! |
 |
| The riverbanks are MUDDY. |
 |
| Gas and petrol exploration everywhere. |
 |
| People actually live on this banana boat, like gypsies |
 |
| Nice catch |
 |
| Mototaxis at Nauta ready to take you to a depot to take a shared car down the highway to Iquitos |
 |
| The boat justs drives right up to the river bank to park up. Gives you a heck of a fright in the middle of the night when your hammock goes flying when it hits the bank |
 |
| Carrying precious cargo to isolated villages |
 |
| freshwater dolphin - notoriously hard to photograph |
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
If I could only knit this blanket...
I really really love this blanket. Not the colours as such, but the simplicity. The yarn it's knitted in, Spud and Chloe, is divine. I have two skeins already. This blanket uses 8. Skeins sell for $24 each. So that's a $192 blanket. I wish I could justify that sort of yarn expenditure. Maybe next winter... I guess I could buy a skein once a month until I have enough to make it...
Quick knitting update
There's nothing like getting in an hour's knitting before work in the morning. I could've done more but I'm really not a morning person, although I'm working on it. I've just finished another ball of my scarf which leaves only one to go, unless I find another ball hiding around the house somewhere. Exciting! Hopefully by tomorrow I will have a warm scarf to wrap up in. And I can use those needles to cast on a hat in cashmerino. Now that, I'm looking forward to wearing!
Sunday, June 3, 2012
HANDMADE 2012
Wow. What a fun weekend. I am so exhausted but so excited to be working the day shift tomorrow so I can come home and get cracking on some crafty projects.
My mum came down to Wellington and we spent the weekend at Handmade. The weekend started with a Friday afternoon visit out to Stitchbird's new shop in Kilbirnie. I was already a huge fan of the fabrics they stock having bought them before from the Underground market. On Friday I walked out with half a metre or so of an owl print in black. Around the corner is the Kilbirnie sewing/knitting shop. I don't know how I hadn't visited it before but I'm kind of glad I hadn't as now I have huge yarn buying temptation only a 20 minute walk from my house. It seemed they stocked everything - a full range of Touch, Naturally, Indiecita etc etc.
We'd booked a room at Rydges for a couple of nights. It had a great view out over the parliament buildings. Not such a nice view in this picture of the early morning fog but at night, 12 floors up, the lights were beautiful. Had dinner at the hotel restaurant. Buffalo mozzarella bruscetta to start, venison wellington with mushroom duxelle and beets, then tiramisu. Delicious! I also tried my first ever oyster. A glass of Squealing Pig Pinot Noir washed it down well.
All that was rather lovely but my evening was topped off with a bath. My flat is bath-less so whenever I get the chance to soak in a hot tub, I will take it!
Both Saturday and Sunday I spent rushing from one class to another (each 2 hours long). First up was cushion making. My invisible zip wasn't so invisible (didn't get the foot anywhere near close enough to the zipper on one side) but you can't really tell as I cannily placed the zip on the bottom of the cushion . Here's a picture of the finished product. I'm so in love with this print...
Next had a masterclass with Ruth Pretty about celebration cakes. It was really interesting, at times funny, and at the end we got to taste cake. Not just a little cake, a huge plate full of cake. Each. I could barely move afterwards but had to get to my next class.
This next class, two handed stranded knitting was probably my favourite of the weekend as it was really challenging but by the end of it I think I definitely got the hang the new skills we learnt. Basically it's a way of knitting that makes colour work easier. You hold and knit one colour with your left hand and hold/knit another colour with your right. Knitting with my left had felt incredibly weird but I see how with a little more practice it should become second nature. We also learnt how to secure the yarn every few stitches if you are carrying one colour along of a bit without knitting it. I had been most scared about this class but managed to keep up with everyone :-) It was taught by Morag of Vintage Purls.
Then it was time for spinning with a drop spindle. It was tricky! I spent the whole time laughing at my attempts. Even funnier was my flatmate sitting there with a giant scowl on her face after she got much the same results as me. By the end of it I wasn't getting any better but found it really enjoyable. I'll definitely try keep it up until one day I spin a useable piece of yarn!
First up today was cheese making. We learnt how to make camembert, quark, cream cheese and whey ricotta. The camembert process was quite involved but I can see myself making the others regularly.
I learnt how to make croissants next. We stood at rows of tables, simultaneously rolling pastry into long rectangles, folding it over into an envelope before rolling it some more. The purpose is to get lots of layers of pastry with butter in between to make a delicious croissant. I think ours ended up with 108 layers. Not bad! We didn't have time to shape them in class but I learnt the different ways to treat the pastry to make croissants, pain au raisin and pain au chocolat. I have the pastry sitting in the fridge now to roll one more time and shape but I'm not sure how well it'll turn out after it got quite warm and squashed while I did other classes this afternoon. Croissant making is really fun in a setting like that with a handsome teacher with a gorgeous accent hehe.
After a quick coffee and lunch it was time for our Lynda Hallinan masterclass. She passed around some damson plum gin which was delicious. The talk was about the best things to grow in your garden and ways to use them. I think I'll definitely give the quince vodka, pumpkin and date loaf and zucchini jelly. It was really cool having her speak to us as I am a big fan. I get the newsletter each week, watched the gardening TV show she did on Prime multiple times and follow her blog.
My final session of the weekend was sock owls. I didn't actually quite finish one but I'll post a picture later in the week when he's finished. They are quite simple and super cute.
My mum did a class where they made frangipani flowers. I'm totally going to knit one to wear in my hair! I also bought a kit to make an albert toy. With all these new ideas and inspiration and my already long knitting backlog, I'm going to be pretty busy in my free time this winter.
So that was that. Handmade 2012 been and gone. It was money well spent. I might have booked and paid for Knit August Nights tonight. It's a knitting weekend in Napier in August. I've signed up for classes on short row knitting making this hat, finishing garment and blocking. It should be a good weekend. I'll have time to squeeze in some wine tasting too!
My mum came down to Wellington and we spent the weekend at Handmade. The weekend started with a Friday afternoon visit out to Stitchbird's new shop in Kilbirnie. I was already a huge fan of the fabrics they stock having bought them before from the Underground market. On Friday I walked out with half a metre or so of an owl print in black. Around the corner is the Kilbirnie sewing/knitting shop. I don't know how I hadn't visited it before but I'm kind of glad I hadn't as now I have huge yarn buying temptation only a 20 minute walk from my house. It seemed they stocked everything - a full range of Touch, Naturally, Indiecita etc etc.
All that was rather lovely but my evening was topped off with a bath. My flat is bath-less so whenever I get the chance to soak in a hot tub, I will take it!
Both Saturday and Sunday I spent rushing from one class to another (each 2 hours long). First up was cushion making. My invisible zip wasn't so invisible (didn't get the foot anywhere near close enough to the zipper on one side) but you can't really tell as I cannily placed the zip on the bottom of the cushion . Here's a picture of the finished product. I'm so in love with this print...
Next had a masterclass with Ruth Pretty about celebration cakes. It was really interesting, at times funny, and at the end we got to taste cake. Not just a little cake, a huge plate full of cake. Each. I could barely move afterwards but had to get to my next class.
This next class, two handed stranded knitting was probably my favourite of the weekend as it was really challenging but by the end of it I think I definitely got the hang the new skills we learnt. Basically it's a way of knitting that makes colour work easier. You hold and knit one colour with your left hand and hold/knit another colour with your right. Knitting with my left had felt incredibly weird but I see how with a little more practice it should become second nature. We also learnt how to secure the yarn every few stitches if you are carrying one colour along of a bit without knitting it. I had been most scared about this class but managed to keep up with everyone :-) It was taught by Morag of Vintage Purls.
Then it was time for spinning with a drop spindle. It was tricky! I spent the whole time laughing at my attempts. Even funnier was my flatmate sitting there with a giant scowl on her face after she got much the same results as me. By the end of it I wasn't getting any better but found it really enjoyable. I'll definitely try keep it up until one day I spin a useable piece of yarn!
First up today was cheese making. We learnt how to make camembert, quark, cream cheese and whey ricotta. The camembert process was quite involved but I can see myself making the others regularly.
I learnt how to make croissants next. We stood at rows of tables, simultaneously rolling pastry into long rectangles, folding it over into an envelope before rolling it some more. The purpose is to get lots of layers of pastry with butter in between to make a delicious croissant. I think ours ended up with 108 layers. Not bad! We didn't have time to shape them in class but I learnt the different ways to treat the pastry to make croissants, pain au raisin and pain au chocolat. I have the pastry sitting in the fridge now to roll one more time and shape but I'm not sure how well it'll turn out after it got quite warm and squashed while I did other classes this afternoon. Croissant making is really fun in a setting like that with a handsome teacher with a gorgeous accent hehe.
After a quick coffee and lunch it was time for our Lynda Hallinan masterclass. She passed around some damson plum gin which was delicious. The talk was about the best things to grow in your garden and ways to use them. I think I'll definitely give the quince vodka, pumpkin and date loaf and zucchini jelly. It was really cool having her speak to us as I am a big fan. I get the newsletter each week, watched the gardening TV show she did on Prime multiple times and follow her blog.
My final session of the weekend was sock owls. I didn't actually quite finish one but I'll post a picture later in the week when he's finished. They are quite simple and super cute.
My mum did a class where they made frangipani flowers. I'm totally going to knit one to wear in my hair! I also bought a kit to make an albert toy. With all these new ideas and inspiration and my already long knitting backlog, I'm going to be pretty busy in my free time this winter.
So that was that. Handmade 2012 been and gone. It was money well spent. I might have booked and paid for Knit August Nights tonight. It's a knitting weekend in Napier in August. I've signed up for classes on short row knitting making this hat, finishing garment and blocking. It should be a good weekend. I'll have time to squeeze in some wine tasting too!
Friday, June 1, 2012
Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa/Samoan Language Week
Did you know that Samoan is the third most spoken language in New Zealand? I hear it around me all the time - mostly at the supermarket when the mums are telling their kids "Soia!" or "Aua!" (don't/stop it!). In all seriousness I live in a suburb with a large PI presence. I take Samoan language classes every Wednesday night just for fun really and because it is quite a beautiful language (and a beautiful country).
Today's also the 50th anniversary of Samoa's independence from New Zealand. Not many Kiwis know that they did actually have to fight for this independence. In the 1920s a group of peaceful demonstrators were actually shot and killed by the New Zealand Police over there.
So happy Independence day, Samoa and manuia le vaiaso o le gagana Samoa.
I know a fair bit of vocabulary now but am only just starting to learn how to put this together into sentences with the correct structure. That's next week's class. Here I'll share some of the basics that you'd use/hear if you went on holiday over there.
Malo/talofa.
Hi/hello.
O ai lou igoa? O lo'u igoa o Jessie.
What's your name? My name is Jessie.
O fea ete sau ai? Ou te sau mai Wellington.
Where do you come from? I come from Wellington.
A i alu i fea? Ou te alu i.....Apia/le fale Sa/le maketi/fale kalapu
Where are you going? I'm going to Apia/the church/the market/the club.
Fia ai?
You hungry?
I oe/Leai.
Yes/no.
Ete fia inu i le vai malulu?
Do you want a cold drink?
Tu'u se vailima i totonu o le pusa aisa fa'amolemole.
Put some beer in the fridge please.
Kuka mai sau fuamoa.
Cook me some eggs.
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