Walking and sewing and writing papers

We went for a great walk up in the Waitakeres on Sunday morning. The weather was only marginally sunny, but it was so wonderful to get out of the suburbs and into the bush. When I only spend time around the neighbourhood or in the city it's easy to forget that New Zealand is a wonderfully different and strange place compared to Canada, and the bush never fails to make me feel both a foreigner and in awe at the same time.



The only problem with wanting to take photos of this amazing place is that it's So. Dark. under the canopy, most of the photos came out blurry or murky. Or both! Perhaps the best way to experience it is to watch Lord of the Rings ;) I have the utmost respect for those professional photographers who can take photos in the deep bush and have them come out! I guess they lug around lighting because seriously, there is no other way. In this one I had to overexpose the sky to get the path to show up. I can't resist the tree ferns and nikau palms against the sky though, like architectural lace.



And a nice stream to walk beside


Hazel had a great time, walked for an hour and a half with no complaining and even a bit of running at the end. Ah to have the energy of a kid! Her main concern was that there might be bears and foxes out there, which we were able to assure her didn't exist here. Here we are at the end of the track, before I collapsed gratefully into the nice warm car. :)



On the home front I'm alternating between working on my talk for the NZAA conference in Wellington on Thursday, and sewing up the Clothkits skirt. It's taking me longer to do the skirt than I anticipated, but it's come together really nicely. The fabric is a lovely heavy yet drapey cotton so I think it'll look fabulous when it's all hemmed up. The talk isn't taking me as long which is worrying me! It's only 20 minutes, but actually that can be harder than doing an hour because you have to edit ferociously.