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.

Can you help me relocate a blog?

I knew I'd forgotten to note down some good blogs in the SMS frenzy! I'm hoping that someone might be able to help me with this. The blog was giving away a pattern that was for various items of women's clothing, like a rather sexy-looking nightgown, a singlet, etc., all essentially variations on a theme. I could have sworn I bookmarked either the shop (etsy?) or the blog but nope and I'd really like to go back and look at the pattern as I'm in the market to make some nightgowns and so-on. Any suggestions gratefully recieved and in the meantime I'll go back to slowly making my way through the giveaway lists again!

I'm almost finished the first Clothkits skirt - I went with the Trellick Tower one. It's taken a bit longer than I'd hoped as I've had to do some adjusting to get it to fit, like curving the back seam to fit into the small of my back, and darn if that isn't hard to do on yourself! I think I've got it sitting nicely now though.

Felt mask for a little superhero

I've just discovered that Hazel is simply the mild-mannered alter-ego of Super Hazel!



She was running around with a little mask she'd made herself out of paper so I offered to make her a bigger one. And of course I couldn't just do a paper one could I? Oh no, it had to be a felt one. I managed to finish before she completely lost interest in the whole operation, so probably in under half an hour. Hazel was dead keen on the star eyes on the paper masks at Creative Kids at Home , but they were too small so I made them bigger as much again. The mask itself is just two layers of felt fused together with Underwonder and reinforced with stitching. We went through every single stitch my machine does before settling on this one - thank goodness I have a fairly basic machine! I've put up a tutorial for the mask in another post, or you can download the full tutorial and pattern here or just the pattern here



I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and she really likes it. I'm still not sure about those star eye holes, but she assures me they're the right size and she can see out fine so who am I to argue?

I often feel like a bit of a fraud putting up photos of Hazel because of course I choose the nicest ones, and while she's really very photogenic, it doesn't really give a true representation of the range of dreadful photos I have of her as well. So here's one to balance things up a bit:



How typical that this one has much better lighting! I must admit the awful photos are becoming more frequent because she assumes these odd expressions for photos these days - grimaces, frozen smiles, tongue sticking out etc. etc. It's at the point where I have to trick her and take photos when she's not expecting it. Bring back my smiley baby!

A commission!

Photo scale bag WIP, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

I'm going to have to change my profile blurb, Mat's asked me to make him something! He needs a bag for his photo scales - that red and white stick there. Important archaeological tool that! This is a photo of my supplies - jeans to cut up for the outside, green for the lining, gingham for the pocket linings. I need to make some inner pockets for a notebook and pen, calculator and compass. I've got the design roughed out and I'm ready to go! But when exactly?

I'm having huge problems allocating time right now. I have four projects that have roughly equal urgency in my mind - the quilt, the bunny tutorial, a clothkit skirt for me (but which one?!), and this bag. Oh, and a paper to write to present at a conference in Wellington next week! So how do I decide what to work on? I guess really the paper needs to come first - that's a hard-and-fast deadline and I'll be standing behind the podium on Thursday next whether the paper is done or not! And I need clothes to wear while I'm up there (now there's a stress dream if ever I heard one) so I need the skirt. Mat's beginning to harass me about the bag, so I suppose that's next - which leaves the quilt last AGAIN. It keeps getting pushed back and Amy keeps getting bigger in the photos. I need more time in the day!

An Auckland winter

Hazel at the window, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

When the southerly came through on Sunday the temperature dropped, the rain lashed the living room windows, and with the heater on in the living room the condensation appeared almost instantly.

Hazel covered the panes with her name, or in this case, Santa Claus. Oh little girl, you have a long wait ahead of you! Poor thing, with a Canadian for a mother she's so full of ideas of snow at winter that she can't quite get her head around the idea that it never snows here and that it's summer when Santa comes. I'm determined to get her down to the snow this winter though, it's her birthright! It's crazy how much I miss snow. Snow and mountains. Of course I'd probably get my fill of snow in a couple weeks, but I can never get enough of mountains.

Life must go on

I know that life after the SMS give-away does exist, but it seems strangely empty and without purpose. ;) I was so excited to finally be able to draw a winner for my bunny, and even more excited to win something myself! Oddly enough it was the first give away I entered, and I was the first commenter on it too! I won a lovely linen pouch with a wee orange square on it from Pascale over at //Between the lines//, one of my favourite blogs.

One of the huge benefits of having my giveaway, was that I included the little note that I was going to turn the bunny into a tutorial and now lots and lots and LOTS of people know this so I have to actually do it! I'm sure I would have got around to it sometime, but there's something very motivating about sharing your plans with a crowd. I don't know, maybe something to do with the fact they actually expect you to do it. :D It works wonders for other aspects of life too - like inviting someone over for dinner if you really need to get the house clean but lack the motivation. So anyway, I've begun the bunny tutorial - look!


Bunny pattern WIP, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

I'm reasonably confident I've got the pattern right so I've committed to using some of my very small stash of pure wool felt. Ooooo I know! It's like gold down here, and just about as expensive! Mat's said he'll help me draft the pattern up in Illustrator (or irritator as he calls it) and then I'll have to figure out where to put it up. I don't think Blogger hosts anything other than images?

Give away winner!

And the winner is, out of 219 entries (!!)...drumroll please... comment number

I know, all those lovely lovely entries and it's lucky #7 :) Not that I'm really complaining because I only had to count up to seven and I didn't even run out of fingers. So the winner is:

Leanna who said "The little bunny is too cute! I'm from around Dallas, TX -- where it's hot almost all of the time! =)" Well Leanna, this bunny is going to be really glad to be sunning his toes near Dallas and away from this miserably cold Auckland weather :) I've sent you an email.