Monthly Archive

Hey! COOL!!! Just been catching up with the THOUSAND posts you guys wrote while I was away and I’ve been tagged for the FIRST TIME EVER by Di.
So, even if you don’t want to know them, here are six weird things about me (only six, cos that’s what the meme says)…

1. My little toenails are yucky. They are twice as thick as all my other toe nails and it’s not because I wear tight shoes or anything, they have ALWAYS been like that. Even when I was five. My son’s little toenails are like that too and He Blames Me. It’s always the Mother’s fault. Always.

2. A year or so ago I started having Night Terrors. You know - like toddlers have. I wake up from a deep sleep and have a hallucination that a man is in the room standing over me. I scream and scream and wake up Peter. Sometimes I even flail around and hit him. He still likes me anyway but now he wears an athletic cup to bed (that’s not true but it sounds funny).

3.I am an abysmal housekeeper. Really bad. B A D. But I am fussy fussy fussy about the way to fold the towels and if someone else folds them the Wrong Way I will re-fold them.

4.I hated veges right up until I was 22 yrs old and pregnant with my first son, James. I developed an obsession with broccoli which remained after he was born. Then, when I was pregnant with No 2 son, I became passionately enamoured of all orange vegetables. That lasted, too. Pregnancy No 3, with my daughter, was just more of the same. Now I could almost be a vegetarian. Except that I like meat.

5. I can live without sugar, but Fat is my enemy. If I remove all traces of fat from my diet, I lose weight pretty steadily. Sadly, All Things Yummy contain vast quantities of Fat. I try. Oh how I try.

6.I love people and I would describe myself as gregarious and extroverted. HOWEVER, I could happily live on a desert island with Peter for ever and ever. I have a strong streak of Hermit in me. I desperately need large quantities of Alone Time.

Hope that’s enough weirdness for you. Flibbertygibbet and Velcro, have you been tagged? You have now! And you, too, Caity. I tag you!

Of course, if you’re meme haters, I won’t get pouty or anything…

The last few days have been sooooo relaxing! Symposium was great (as always) but left me very tired (as always). I love teaching. Love it. Five days back to back wears me out!
So I’ve been back at Mum and Dad’s since Friday night doing N O T H I N G and I feel gooooood.

Cool quilts at Symposium. Lots of them. After I get permission from the quilters, I’ll post a few images. In the meantime, here are some pics I took on the journey there/home. New Zealand is beautiful everywhere you look. It is a photographers paradise.

This is Huka Falls. This is the birthplace of the Waikato River, very near the point where it first leaves Lake Taupo. This chasm is only about 10 metres wide. The colour and the noise are equally incredible…

These mountains are the volcanoes of the Central Plateau (middle of the North Island of New Zealand). The perfect cone is Ngaruahoe (Perfectly Unexploded!!!) and the one with snow sprinkled on top is Ruapehu (where we go skiing in Winter). It erupts on a fairly regular basis and New Zealand is currently holding it’s breath and watching the crater lake levels, waiting for the next lahar. Do I sound too fruity if I say that these mountains have such a presence that I can almost feel them breathing? They are so alive.

Thank you all soooo much for the Birthday wishes. It warms my wrinkling heart to know that you all think I’m still young! To put the record straight, so do I. I still feel like I’m sixteen and I don’t think my face is too ravaged yet

Tomorrow I’ll be on my way to Palmerston North to teach at the Manawatu Quilt Symposium for a week or so. It will be great to catch up with old friends and be immersed in fabric.
So I’ll be offline until around Jan 27 (which is one day after I turn 42 *gulp* 42!!!!!!!)

Here are an Old Woman’s latest photos……the chandelier in my parent’s living room.

I feel sick. Really nauseous. I think I’ve eaten about half a cup of jam. I know that was really dumb, but it wasn’t my fault. No, really. This is The Plum Tree.It lives at my parent’s house in what we call The Orchard (glorified name for a yard that happens to have a number of fruit trees). It was planted by my Grandparents when my mother was a child and it has always been in my life.I was thinking about it a few days ago - how can it be that a tree can be one of the Inhabitants of Your Life? And yet, it has been. And every year that I am at Mum and Dad’s, I wonder if this will be it’s last year. It’s one of those trees that has never been straight. It has twisted boughs that look precarious and fragile even before summer weighs them down with fruit. One good storm, you think, and this tree will be gone.
So, this visit, I took photos, so that when it’s all over I’ll be able to remember.

Interesting name for Taupe
Apart from my daughter’s cargo pants, these are glimpses of my sister’s studio walls and palette. She cleans her brushes against the walls as she paints and has made the walls beautiful with the crumbs! Even her palette scrapings are beautiful…

Poor Peter! He shivered his way through three weeks of New Zealand “Summer” and has now gone back to work. So, of course, just one day after he left to return to Queensland, Summer finally arrived here. The cicadas are almost singing, some of us have sunburn and dinner is being eaten later and later. One of the absolute best things about Kiwi summers are the loooong evenings. The sun goes down about 9 pm and the twilight lingers til 10 pm.We are definitely in holiday mode. We sleep until nine in the morning (some of us even later. cough.) and drink coffee all day, except for when we are shopping (clothes, shoes, earrings) , reading or watching movies. (Watched “Borat” a few nights ago. Oh My. We laughed SO hard. I thought my son was going to CRY he was laughing so hard. But I was glad that Mum didn’t come - it swings between the Hilarious and the Nauseating). Life is good.
Except that I have Flickr Woes! My cookies were deleted off the computer four weeks ago and I haven’t been able to log in to Flickr ever since. I sent an email. HAH!!! What a jokette! Got a reply three weeks later, saying,”Do you still want a reply?” Ah, yes. I’m sure I’ll get one eventually, but in the meantime I enjoy A Year of Colour vicariously ONLY Which also reminds me… sorry for the one-way communication of late. I still can’t send any emails. But I have been receiving them fine. Thanks for the comments! I love love love comments!!

I hope y’all had a great Christmas and New Year! We have eaten ourselves into a stupor, unwrapped a kazillion presents and generally exhausted ourselves. But we have also been going for lots of walks, so I don’t feel quite as guilty as I should.
Here in New Zealand it’s supposedly Summer. Yeah, right. It is SO cold! And it’s not just us Australian tourists who are complaining - even the locals are rugged up in Winter clothes and whining. Nevertheless, we have had some sunny moments. We’ve been catching up with friends (and “conveniently” visiting them at their holiday houses!). This is a river that feeds into Lake Taupo, next door to Wendy’s place. Cool, eh?

Peter bought a new camera on his way over here, so I’ve been taking hundreds of photos. My dad has worked for the local council for forty years and has been instrumental in the creation of many beautiful parks, walkways and gardens in my home town. So I’ve taken heaps of photos of his endeavours.This is in the Italian section of the Hamilton Gardens…And the rose garden is amazing.It’s just so very very beautiful here. I’d forgotten how bright green can be!

AAAAAGH!!!! I wish I could get this layout looking better, but I haven’t got time to mess around and there are so many more photos to be taken. Bye…