Our first full on day of touring around Rotorua we did Wai-o-Tapu and Waimangu Thermal Park. Lots of steaming, smelly pools of HOT water. Lots of amazing colours. Lots of walking, which everyone forebear wonderfully.
These photos will probably be all sorts of not in order, but it's my day off in the middle of the week (ANZAC day, for those of you interested) and I don't want to be too picky about the blog right now as it's already enhancing the birthday knitting procrastination streak I'm on.
We were in Rotorua for Auckland Anniversary, a holiday Monday (which also was Nelson Anniversary too). So there wasn't a lot open. Not that it mattered - the Rotorua Mueseum was open and I wanted everyone to visit and get the inside scoop for the area from the displays. We spent the best part of the day there, which is easy to do with a huge Maori Battalion wing, the whole building to explore (it was a health spa and is quite fascinating on its own), a heap of information on the Tarawera Eruption to take in, great New Zealand/Aotearoa settlement history, and a changing gallery which this time had a Kiwi photographer's photos, mostly for Life magazine, on display.
About the moment we paid and put on our paid visitor stickers we wandered apart. Well, not immediately - we all watched the short movie about the Tarawera Eruption together. And then the parents headed off and took in a large dose of New Zealand history. And Alex and I took in the photo gallergy, explored the old building (Royal Doulton bathtubs that have seen better days but still made me want on).
After Alex and I did our wandering it took a while to locate both my mother and father. Then we looked around the last wing a bit and found the parents outside in the end. Ready to go back to our apartment and have some dinner.
Alex and I flew up early on a Saturday late in January to meet my parents in Rotorua. Since the parents were catching a bus up from Wellington we had the better part of a day to ourselves to get our bearings. Driving round the lake we saw that the Rotorua A&P show was on, so we went. And then we went the next day too because my parents like that sort of thing.
After finally meeting up with my parents and driving around the lake to our accommodation we treated ourselves to dinner at the onsite restaurant and crashed.
Sunday we went back to the A&P show and looked at more sheep, but even more exciting - goats! I seriously love goats. There were alpaca too. And horses. But the people that went with the horses were cranky and we left there quickly. (It was the English riding area where we got attitude, nothing but mellow and nice over in the Western arena.)
And yes, taking over a month to blog is what happens to me when I go away for two weeks and have no internet and can't be asked to sort through my billions of photos. Sorry for it. At least it means that this next week I have blog plenty catching you up on the images from our vacation.
Better yet - I've learned that after I export photos to the desktop I should put them in a folder of their own so that they don't go and get lost in the gazillion of photos on my external photo hard drive. I've been doing this since 2007 but only just implemented this stroke of brilliance. Sigh.
Here are my two best guys eating at the end of the A&P weekend:
I drove us to Kaikoura Friday night to meet up with all the family for a gathering the likes of which we won't manage until Alex's parents return from Mongolia later this year. While we didn't hit lots of traffic, once we got to the coast there was some awesome low lying cloud/mist - I actually quite enjoyed driving through it. Nelson has less weather than Kaikoura overall and I miss weather.
We stayed up and chatted with everyone when we arrived and I fell asleep around midnight, quite late for me really.
Saturday morning when I pulled aside the new black-out curtains (love those, can't wait for ours to arrive and block the evil street lamp outside the bedroom) I was delighted to see this soft, glowing sunrise in progress.
Of course I was the last person up...
The weather held and was highly enjoyed by everyone - Tom cleaned his newly bought car out, the bulk of the family went on fishing trips, Alex's Nana ordered huge cuttings and clear out of bushed and trees.
Alex's mum and I went for the two hour Kaikoura Peninsula walk after a girls' trip to the lavender farm, the fish caught was added to after Alex went diving for paua, and we hit almost no traffic on the way home.
You can't really see in the photos, but this yarn has sparkles. Nicey, nice, right?
Now, don't go thinking I've broken down and relapsed into a yarn buying frenzy. This yarn was traded for, thank you very much.
I had six 100g skeins of O-Wool Classic that I was not making good friends with after the ill-fated Diminishing Rib debacle got frogged. A woman on the Posh Ravelry board had come to the conclusion that she and 4ply were not meant to be close friends. A swap was born. I sent her my six worsted weights and she sent me four fingering weights. We were both pretty happy with the arrangement.
Two of what she sent me had sparkles, this and a Krafty Koala skein in lovely blues. The other two skeins were a pair of BFL predominant Posh skeins that I'm thinking will finally allow me to make a Haruni shawl (that's a Rav link peeps) without fear of not enough yarn or fear of yarn with not enough drape.
This particular sparkly yarn called out to me as it has the same name of a certain young cousin of Alex. My first idea was a Little House shawl, a bit of frill as a wrap but still enough body to make a warm scarf. He thinks she might be too active for such a thing though. So I'm still considering. (Mandy, if you are reading this, what do you think?)
On Christmas Eve Alex and I had the family to our place for a bbq. When the bbq was delivered from his parents' house we also received, for the afternoon, his cousin Scarlett - to give her parents time to catch up with the family and to give her and I a running start on our contribution to the next day's dessert.
We baked my old standby chocolate cake recipe out of the Good Housekeeping's Illustrated Book of Desserts, given to me by my Auntie Margaret in 1994, without a hitch. There might have been some chocolate found later on elbows and eyebrows, but it was all very above board. We wore aprons and everything!
The next day, being Christmas, we arrived to the family house bright and early for gift exchange and unwrapping. After a nice breakfast and after she'd inspected her haul, Scarlett and I set about making the chocolate frosting for our cupcakes.
I think the end result was rather stunning. And we all agreed it was very tasty.
Here's my helpful helper looking justifiably proud of herself:
Below left: nummy detail. Below right: frosting tester!
While you might think that our dessert would be enough on its own, you would be forgetting that my lovely partner makes a mean cheesecake. And brownie cake. And his mother made homemade icecream for the weekend.
It was maybe a bit much to eat all this. But I did!
Meet "Alo", short for Alowishus, my new pegacorn friend!
Isn't she lovely?
I'll tell you what makes her the most lovely thing I've knit to date - the five different yarns that she is composed of are full of loving memories. Friends, family, travels...that yarn can contain such things is amazing to me. Creating her for myself was a very good gift and I'm pleased as punch and pie.
See her horn? Florence, Italy - 1995 trip with Auntie Margaret, Uncle Kurt, and cousins Henry, Elspeth, and Ivy.
Green body? The main yarn of it was given to me by Angela, one of her better moments of best-friendship. It's magically filled out by a slender thread of laceweight gifted to me by Tava, my YarnMama.
Rainbow mane? Hand-spun hand-dye I picked up on my way out of Boise, Idaho after visiting with Skye in 2005.
Fluffy white wings...a ball I bought on impulse while visiting Deb at Village Yarn & Tea, a favourite person of mine as well as thing to do and place to do it.
In addition to making me squee, Alo is going to be my entry in the local bookseller's Knit Your Own Pet competition. I'll let you know how it goes.
The worst of last night's migraine has passed. But there is a lingering ache, some dizziness, and light sensitivity along with general discombobulation. So I came home early from working at the yarn shop. This little arrangement of things on the dining table pleased me, and a smile is worth a lot when you have a the echo of a migraine in your head. Hope that it'll bring a smile to you as well.
Book: Brave New Knits by Julie Turjoman
Knitting: Fingerless Garter Mitts by Leigh Radford from her One Skein book
Yarn: Knitsch 4ply in Cinque Terre colourway
Earwings: Made by my ever so clever Auntie Margaret - you can get your own pair if you live in or around Seattle and visit her at a craft fair
