Dancing on the Ceiling ...... Not

The last day of summer and the Mission concert have arrived. All day it rained and rained



........... and rained. We prepared our picnic of soup and bread and chocolate, wet weather food. We got out our rain gear and gum boots. My rain cape looks a bit like a giant duck costume. And set off to sit in a muddy field for a few hours.
When we arrived in Taradale, ready to boogie on down to Lionel Ritchie, Peter noticed that everyone seemed to be walking in the wrong direction. The concert had been cancelled, we did not even get out of the car. There was to be no dancing in the mud. We had to turn round and head home to eat our soup.

Today's Daisies #78 - Christchurch

My eldest started University in Christchurch last week. I went down with him for a couple of days, thinking we could spend some time together, exploring the city. On arriving at the Halls of Residence he decided that he wanted to spend time with his mates exploring his new environment. Great I thought for two reasons, firstly that he was keen to get stuck into university life and secondly I got the day to myself visiting things I wanted to see. I am so happy that he is at Uni and full of the enthusiasm of a first year student. I feel like some where along the line I must have done something right. So no tears for me when we parted, I am just so proud of him. I do miss him tons now I am back at home, especially in the evenings when I am cooking supper and he is not around to come and talk to me.

Anyway, back to daisies. On my wanderings around the sights of Christchurch I came across quite a few daisies. Some quite surprising.

You can't tell me this window in the Cathedral does not look like daisies, even though it is called a rose window.

The walls of the Cathedral are covered in the most beautiful mosaics, which feature lots of daisies ......
........ and interesting motifs. I was very shocked to see swastikas in the Cathedral, until I read the notice below.

Isn't it sad that something that represented good luck could be so misused and come to symbolise something so awful.

I found this wonderful piece of lead lighting in the Arts Centre, which used to be the old University of Canterbury before it moved to its current campus.

This wonderful piece of work I found in the Canterbury Museum. Most unusual, can you guess what it is made off?

Did you guess! Hair! What can you say, I had no idea that people would make things like this out of hair.

Plaster daisy on the outside of the Museum.

Last of all a beautiful sunny yellow daisy from the Botanical Gardens. If you want to see more pictures of Christchurch, I will be posting them to a new blog I have an idea for. I will let you know when I get it set up.

Simply worth the wait

At last after a long wait of months and months the 14th February arrived. I was sooo excited. And it was so worth the wait. An absolutly brilliant concert, Simply Red did not disapoint at all. The band was excellent and Mick's voice was incredible. I think the enthusiasm of the performers for what they were doing showed through and infected the crowd. We took our picnic, bought our bottle of wine, sang along at the top of our voices and danced till our legs fell off (well not really, but it felt like that the following morning). I had such a good time. I came out wanting to go and see them again and again and again.

And to think that the organisers of the mission concert thought that Simply Red were not a big enough band for them, hmmm. I know who I would choose to go and see if I had a choice.

Roll on Billy Connoly tomorrow night.

Changes

The end of the summer holidays arrived and along with it big changes in our household. My eldest is off to University, which we have been preparing ourselves for for ages. He still has a week before he goes. My middle child is also finished school and has started at EIT the local college. One of the things he required was steel toe capped boots, above. No more school uniforms for him, just boots and overalls. And after one week of stripping down an engine, he is in heaven. I would have prefered him to stay on at school, he is very capable, but at the end of the day he is doing what inspires him. If you have to do a job for the next 40 odd years then what is important is being able to enjoy the work you have choosen.

Since we were in the shoe shop buying big boots, I thought I should splash out on some new jandels. Red with polka dots.

There was one change which kind of snuck up on me. My youngest is now in the senior part of primary school. He gets a real desk and a proper full size chair. No little chair and tables anymore. Good job as he has lost most of his name from his chair bag, and grown about five inches over the summer. It seems like one day he was a little boy and all of a sudden he isn't, he has grown up into the next stage and I was so busy with the older two and forgot his life was about to go through a change too.

What is this?

Does anyone have any idea what this is, if you do please leave a comment.

Waitangi Day

Yesterday was Waitangi day. New Zealand's national day and a public holiday. It is also or would have been or is, the birthday of my first son, who if he was still with us would have been 20 years old. Unfortunately he did not even make it to one year old. This is a sad thing that happened and is past, please do not feel bad for me, I have three brilliant sons now and appreciate them so much. Anyway I decided to spend the day doing things I enjoy and put off all those other little jobs for another day

My eldest son needed to be dropped off at his friends very early as they were going to work in a Vineyard. Which is a whole other story. So there I was in the garden at 8am pottering around in the cool of the morning. Any other time here is just way to hot. I had a great time, I love gardening.

I had a very late breakfast on the veranda in the cool, enjoying the view of our tidy garden.

Then I spent the rest of the day sitting in the shade sewing and listening to a play from the BBC radio 4 website. Perfect.

Don't turn your back

Courgettes at last. For a couple of years, I have not been doing to well with courgettes and I love them in salads, with spaghetti and roasted in the oven. I usually manage to grow a lot of leaves, a lot of flowers and only a very few odd shaped things with yellow ends. This year at last I have managed to grow some courgettes. But, I now have just too many courgettes, even eating them at every meal I just can't keep up. And if you turn your back for two minutes the lovely little courgettes turn into whopping great big enormous marrowey things. If you know of any good recipes for courgettes, please leave a comment.

The apples are in the picture just to give perspective and because they are the new seasons first apples and they are delicious.

Today's Daisy #78 - and a little suprise

Today's daisies are flowering prettily in Clive Sq, Napier. I could not resist stopping and taking some snaps.

The colours were just amazing. Not ones you would think would go well together, but they did.

The bees were out and buzzing around. But the surprising thing I found when I downloaded the pics from my camera was that each of the daisies has daisies on it, how cute is that.

Too hot

Below is the latest readings from the met office web site. it is a bit on the hot side, even the wind feels like a hair dryer is blowing on me. I have had to resort to ice cream lollies.

at 2 pm Sun 1 February
Hastings AWS
Temperature:
37 °C
Wind Speed:
n/a km/h
Wind Direction:
...
Rainfall (last hr):
0.0 mm
Humidity:
11 %
Pressure:
hPa

Did I really do all that knitting

Jess over at Button Beauty is having a little giveaway for her one year blogaversery. She was reminiscing about fashion from the 80's and 90's. I had a wonder through my photo albums but could not find too many pics of my fashion faux pas, I was obviously not a very adventurous dresser. What I did find were lots of pics of me wearing stuff I had made myself. I obviously used to do a lot of knitting and I had forgotten how much. Above is a pic of my and my brother (sorry Bryan hope you don't mind to much). I am wearing one of the icelandic jumpers I used to knit. I think I knitted hundreds of them and could knock them out in a couple of days, all on circular needles.

The cardi in the pic above of me and my stepdaughter Lisa, is one I loved to knit and I loved to wear. It is a two colour fair isle. I used to love knitting fari isle in two colours, holding one colour in each hand, great fun. I am also wearing a skirt and shirt I made myself. I think I made nearly all my clothes, how did I have so much time.

Above are a couple of fashion faux pas. Leggings, why did I think they would make me look thinner when I was 8 months pregnant. I was so glad when they disapeared and a bit shocked when they started to come back into fashion. Then there are the lovely huge glasses that just about covered my face. I could not wear my contacts when I was pregnant, as I had so much calcium whizzing around my body, I would build up calcium deposits on my lenses with in hours. Glad those glasses are gone for good.

Another fairisle jumper I knitted with a skirt and shirt I made as well. My final fashion faux pas a curly perm. I have attempted to have my hair permed loads of times and it never ever works and I end up looking like a poodle who needs clipped.

I did start to wonder why I stopped doing all this sewing and knitting. Firstly I had children and secondly I used to run a craft stall making clothes for children. I would make thousands of dresses, dungarees, hats and scarfs every year. There was no time to do any knitting, and by the time I decided to stop the craft business I really did not want to see another sewing machine ever again. Sewing as a way of earning money took a lot of the fun out of it for me. Thankfully as the kids are growing up and flying the nest I am getting back into thinking about sewing more again. Don't know if I will ever want to knit again, did try to last winter but I could not find any patterns that interested me and the rather short sighted Man in the knitting shop told me nobody knits any more so they don't bother getting any interesting patterns in!

Summer Hols

We have been on a short holiday to Mt Mauganui in the Bay of Plenty. Above are some snaps of things that caught my eye as we were wondering around the town.
We spent a lot of time splashing around in the pool and the sea.

Walking on the beach at sun rise. Amazingly beautiful.

There were a lot of sea gulls.

Some beautiful shells on the beach.

And a cool walk around the the mount. We were too lazy to walk up the mount, but the views walking around the base were so beautiful, I don't feel so guilty. Especially the little shell beaches that we would never have seen otherwise.

And a lot of sitting in cafes enjoying the view, and yes I do mean the baldy guy sitting opposite me.

the small things #3 and today's daisy #78

The taste of strawberries, one of those little things that make life so sweet. Driving through the Hawkes Bay sunshine eating the strawberries (before I get home).

BTW, the fabric was in a parcel that my brilliant Mum had sent me. Thanks mum.

Sunrise

I had trouble sleeping last night and found myself wide awake and ironing at 4am in the morning! At least that was one job out of the way. After taking a few pics of the sunrise I staggered back to bed and managed to get a few hours sleep, before heading off to the market.

Late again the last day of a colourful week

I started late and I am finishing late on the week of colour run by Curious Bird. The last day, yesterday, was stripes and plaids. Here are some stripes and plaids from my fabric stash. They are going to one day be a red and white log cabin table cloth. One day live will give me a little space to work on some of the projects I want to do. Of course, I would have more time if I was not so hooked on playing on line scrabble at Lexulous.

Waves

Some wild waves. Difficult to get a point of reference, but those waves were twice my height and the rip looked so powerful. I stood well back.

Think Pink

In a week of colour pink has got to be my most challenging colour. I am not a pink girl and I have three sons, so no pink there. Our house has can very definatly be called a pink free zone. Only one teatowel that happened to be draped over the drying dishes (our dish washer is still not working). Maybe it is time for me to unleash some pink around the house, or may be not.

Colourful Week - Day Three Yellow and Today's Daisy #78

Today is Yellow in Curious Bird's week of colour. When it comes to yellow it has got to be a daisy, obvious really.

My secateurs are also yellow, so that I can find them when I lose them in the garden, which is quite often.

And of course some of my honey pots are also yellow.

Another colourful week - day two Purple

Today's colour in a colourful week, run by Curious Bird, is Purple. I know there is a lot of purple in the garden, but all I could think of in the house was my rocking chair. When I was 14, I think, all I wanted for my birthday was a rocking chair! No idea why. So my wonderful Mum found the chair below. I think it must have needed some TLC. She stripped it down, re varnished it and recovered the seat. She made a great job of it because 30+ years later it still looks good.

Even the cushion on the chair has a story. My Mum made it and gave it to a raffle as a prize. Guess who won the coushion back again, yes my Mum. So she gave it to me and I think it looks perfect on my chair.

Thinking there was not a lot of purple in my house I then noticed the beautiful scarf that Peter's Mum gave me for my christmas.

Turning around again I then noticed the little quilt, made by guess who, my Mum. It is pinned on my notice board and it looks great. Then as I was about to download my pics I spotted myself in the mirror, yes there I am wearing a purple tshirt for purple Tuesday without ever noticing it.

If you want to see some more purple why not visit Curious Bird.