Today's Daisies

Today's daisies flowering, in the sun on the last day of Winter, down the side of our drive.

Lunar Eclipse

A snap of last nights lunar eclipse, sorry about the wobbly image, afraid this was the best one of the whole bunch. One day I will have to invest in a tripod to get decent night images.

I have seen a very cool camera that I would one day like. A panasonic Lumix with a 12x optical zoom and stabilisers to stop camera shake. I now have a mental picture of me taking pictures with two push bike stabilisers sticking out of the sides of my camera. In actuality there are tiny gyroscopes in the camera that pick up the movement and adjust the image. Unfortunately it costs almost $1000 dollars. It could be a long wait or maybe a blue moon before I get such a cool camera.

Today's Daisies

Today's Daisies on some very cool japanese fabric I found on the web quite by chance. I was reading an email from Kerrian and noticed an ad at the side for a web site called Fabric Tales. Thought I would take a quick glance, who can pass up a visit to a fabric shop, even if the visit is only a virtual one on the web. Yummy fabrics, I can feel a Japanese quilt coming on some time soon. Now when I say soon, there is a large list of projects that are currently still underway, so that soon may be some time off. Which will give me a chance to start adding a few oriental fat quarters to my stash.

Today's Daisies

Today's daisies are hanging in my kitchen window. It has taken me nearly a year after finishing them to hang them up.

Can cats teleport?

We are pretty sure that our cat Rana can teleport. We have suspected that she could do it for a while. Quite often we open a cupboard and out she saunters, and I know nobody has been in that cupboard for days. Yesterday Peter and my eldest caught her at it. Peter saw her squeeze into the sideboard first. Then my eldest found her fast asleep, in a kitchen cupboard with the coffee cups, a couple of minutes later. Both of them were in the kitchen at the time and nobody had seen here appear out of the sideboard never mind climb into a kitchen cupboard (which she is not allowed to do). The only explanation is that cats can teleport, personally I blame Mr Schodinger, all that stuffing cats into metaphorical boxes.

The pic is of Rana assisting me when I was tidying the quilting room.

Pollen!

We had a bit of rain today, which washed all the pollen out of the air. As you can see in the snaps the puddles in the gutter were full of it. I have been told it is pollen from pine trees. No wonder my eldest son has been suffering from hay fever. The pictures do not really show up how bright and sulpherous the colour is. My advice is if you suffer from hayfever and need to visit Hawkes Bay at this time of year, make sure you have a lot of antihistamines with you.

What I should have been doing ...........

This weekend I should have been doing some gardening. Unfortunatly I have been knocked out by a nasty cold. As you can see in the pics the bits of the garden that I was going to attack still remain overrun with weeks. Maybe next weekend.

...... What I actually did

I have spent the weekend in bed or sitting in the garden suffering with a very bad cold. A good excuse to sit in the sun; listen to plays on Radio 4 via the internet and finish my quilt. I also finished reading the last Harry Potter book again, just as good the second time through.

Daffies

More signs of spring sprouting up all over the place.

Quilt as you go

Last weekend I did a "Quilt as you go" class with Linda from Craftlands in Napier at Thoms Moores. I thought we would make up the patchwork squares then quilt them to backing before joining them. But as you can see you actually do all three in one go. Exactly as it said in the name of the class. The backing and wadding were used in a foundation peicing type way, so for each patchwork seam you sew through the wadding to quilt the backing. This is a very fast method, during the class I managed to do 12 of the 16 blocks. Sashing is used to join the blocks together.

I am really pleased with the result. I wanted to use some of my stash of chicken fabrics, which I thought went really well with the checks and spots. I am a bit into spots at the moment. I wish fabric companies would print checks that were straight. Every time I line them up very carefully, cut them out totally in line to find out the reverse side is squint. I think in this case it kind of goes with the country look I was trying to get.

Watch this space in the next couple of days for the finished quilt. Hopefully I will manage not to stab myself on the nose again, like I did earlier today while joining up the strips of quilt.

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Today's Daisies

Today's Daisies on a hexagon quilt. Sarted in the 70's by Ros Lusk and waiting to be finished. A friend of mine in Scotland once took I think it was 40 years to finish her hexagon quilt. I am sure all quilters have a few UFOs in among their quilting store, I know I have. All of which I intend to finish this year. "Yeah right!" says a little voice at the back of my head.

Yet another Camellia

The camellia's are so beautiful at the moment and they are everywhere. So be prepared there may be a rash of camellia pics appearing on my blog in the next week or so.

Fantastic Bra

Two of the members of my quilt group, Judy Barnes and Ros Lusk, entered the wearable arts competition last year. In the Fantastic Bra catagory. Definatly not a T-shirt bra then!

Did the earth shake for you

As I was typing my last post we had a little bit of a shake up. I thought it was just some logs falling on the fire. Peter pointed out that it may have been an earthquake as his chair in the kitchen was jolted. So I looked it up on the GeoNet website and there it was.

More quilts and today's Daisies

Some more quilts from the exhibition at Keirunga. Including some sun flowers that can be considered as Daisies.

Hidden Gems

Hidden in front of the house, under all the overgrowth that I removed earlier this year, was this beautiful little camellia. Last spring I had no idea that it was even there, let alone see any of its blossom. Eventually the lavender underneath will grow up to make a nice little hedge for the camellia to bloom out of.

Spring is in the Air

It has been a beautiful Hawkes Bay winter day today. A crisp and frosty morning then bright blue skies and sun shine. There is blossom popping out all over the place.

Keirunga Quilters Exhibition

Some of the quilts from the Keirunga Quilt Exhibition, with Ros Lusk as the featured Quilter. My favourite quilt is the tiny little Chicken quilt.

Today's Daisies

Today's Daisies on a quilt at the Keirunga quilters exhibition.

Holiday

At last we have had a chance to get away for a long weekend. It seems like ages since we last did anything all together as a family. So off we trundled up to Taupo then along to Taurangi and the house we rented in Tokaanu, see more below.

Unfortunatly the weather was not that kind to us, as you can see from the photos. We did see the occasional scrap of blue sky, then the clouds would drop down around us again. But we all had a brill time anyway. See more about that below also.

Only thing missing was a daisy to take a photo of.

I was suprised by the mosquitos, never thought I would get mosquito bites on a skiing holiday, just goes to show you should be prepared for anything.

The Old Post Office Tokaanu

Some snaps of the holiday house that we rented for our long weekend break. It was a place full of character, converted from an old Post Office. Each bedroom had a theme.

Skiing

The reason for our holiday was to go skiing. My two oldest kids can ski, but Peter and I had only briefly tried it as teenagers and my youngest is also a beginner. At first it looked like the weather would be good. But as we drove further up towards Rauapehu the cloud cover got lower and lower and visibility got worse and worse. I had hoped to get lots of pictures of Ruapehu and the surrounding area. No chance, at one point we could not even see the other skiiers two feet in front of us! Out of three days there we only managed half a day on the slopes in almost white out conditions. On Sunday even the beginners area was closed.

Maybe next time the weather will be better and I will get the photos I would like.

Tokaanu Thermal Village

Some images of Tokannu, a lovely small village just outside Taurangi on Lake Taupo.

Geothermal Pools - Tokaanu

It has taken us two years of living in New Zealand before we have managed to see some geothermal activity. Behind the thermal hot tubs at Tokaanu there is an area of geothermal springs and mud pools, which you can wander around, sticking very carefully to the path. It is a very pleasant walk with no unpleasant sulphur smells. In fact as you walk around the village of Tokaanu steam rises from pools in just about every garden. Not sure that I would like to live with the prospect of new geysers appearing in my garden.

We had a quick soak in the mineral thermal pools after the walk. An new and interesting experience. It never crossed my mind that they would actually be outside, with just a little shelter to get changed in.

The mud pool just looks like a muddy hole in the ground. Every time I turned around I heard it bubbling and just missed a snap of a mud bubble.

Steamy Trees

Trees and steam at Tokaanu. I could just imagine a dinosaur appearing throught the steam.

Tivaevae

I loved this tivaevae bedspread in the house we rented in Tokaanu. Wish it belonged to me.

Tivaevae is pronounced "Tiph i vi", I think.