Christening

I got a beautiful pair of wellies for Christmas and yesterday they got christened, only on the back deck but they did get wet.

Christmas dinner

Last Christmas I celebrated with a ham sandwich and a glass of champagne sitting on the deck in the sunshine. This year I was back in Sydney for the full traditional feast.

Turkey, ham, veg and all the trimmings...

and pudding that has been flamed and smothered in sugar, brandy sauce and cream and if you are really lucky you strike silver. That is 2 sixpences that will get soaked and scribbed and put into next year's pud.

and in case you hadn't noticed all served on the best china with the best silver and proper glassware. You can also just see the reamins of fresh lychees and cherries - one of the advantages of a summer christmas!

Heading to Aus!

Shopping, baking and presents heading to Sydney tomorrow afternoon! If I'm careful I might also be able to fit in a change of clothes and my toothbrush. Seriously I've got plenty of room, I just hope my packing skills are up to the task of getting it all there safely.

Mega Advent Calendar

We have turned our building into an advent calendar. Each day from Dec 1st a new art work goes up and you can walk around the outside and see the calendar grow.

I have two in my windows including this lovely one from Mimi School

"Summer weather"?

If you take the first day of summer as Dec 1st (some say it's the solstice on the 21st) then we have had 13 days and the weather has been changable - not in a good way.

The count so far:

• fog bad enough to close the airport - 4 days
• tipping down rain - 3 days
• drizzle/showers/general dreariness - 4 days
• proper sunshine - 2 days

Most of this was accompanied by a cold south-westerly, not a gentle summer breeze but don't bother with an umbrella it will only end up inside out type wind. You know when you are in the presence of serious weather when you see trees like this! It's not called the wild west coast for nothing.

Breaking out the tree

Last year I pretty much skipped Christmas, the tree stayed under wraps and I don't think I was really sure where the decorations were. But this year I'm back in the swing. The tree has gone up, I'm well into the shopping, baking is soon to follow and if I get myself totally together cards will be in the post tomorrow. Yay!

What the?

The previous post "Share me" was a test for the new Puke Ariki web site. Clicking the link might not take you anywhere because it's in the internal testing phase but at least we know the share function works!

Share me

Share me

Posted using ShareThis

How do you celebrate?

It's my first anniversary. I've been here a year. So how to celebrate such a milestone?

Work late, ditch the gym, order pizza, have a nice glass of wine and finally the first wear of the colossal squid T-shirt. Honestly, how could I not buy it.

Where have I been?

Wellington for the National Digital Forum. Two days of fabulous speakers, both local and international on all things digital for people working in libraries, museums, archives and galleries. It was held at Te Papa which is a wonderful museum worthy of far more time than the 20 minutes I managed to squeeze in. So here are some more "not your usual conference photos'.

The first time I've ever seen a recycle bin in a hotel room

Lovely bones - Phar Lap and a blue whale

The Colossal Squid! I logged on to SquidCam when they were defrosting it (sounds icky but was a wonderful geek moment)

Coat racks - obviously not just a Christchurch thing

and finally a wonderful pub that we passed on our way back to the hotel

A house passed me today

On my way back from Sth Taranaki.

Note to self: take seriously the bloke leaning out of a ute waiving a stop sign, even if you can't see anything worth stopping for.

New specs!

According to the expert I am exactly as blind as I have been for the past 2 years so I could have just stuck with my current specs - then he showed me these.


Blue arms...

That click off ...
(a little scary the first few times you do this because...well...you know...glasses are supposed to stay together)

and then you click on your new colour...






and you have a whole new look!

What geek girl in her right mind wouldn't buy them?!?

Spot the difference

You have seen this view from our tea room before but there is a significant difference. Can you spot it?

The Wind Wand is missing. It took 12 guys, a very large crane and a helicopter 3 hours to take it down and fly it off for cleaning and a new paint job. It's 7 years since it's last clean and weather permitting it will be back, all sparkly and fresh at the end of next week.

Rhodofest

Officially it's the Taranaki Rhododendron & Garden Festival and I finally got to some of the gardens on the weekend, well 2 actually plus the carvers who are part of the Fringe Garden Festival. Yup, 51 official gardens are not enough, there are also 72 fringe gardens, studios and the tractor trail. Te Kupinga Stone Sculpture Society create stunning carvings out of the local andesite - art meets power tools!

Then I went to the Japanese Tea House. It is a beautiful little tea house built of traditional materials in a backyard with a fabulous view of the mountain. It was a bit cloudy but if you look carefully it is there.

Then on sunday I went to Tupare which is an historic home just 10mins from town but it feels miles away. You come in at the top o the ridge and the gardens go all the way down to the river.

Most wonderfully there is a field at the bottom full of daisys and buttercups! Just like going to the zoo to see the pidgeons, my favourite flowers were the ones growing wild.

It's cracker night!

It's Guy Fawkes night and every second backyard in New Plymouth is lighting up with fireworks. Cracker night stopped in Aus ages ago because of the fire risk (Nov being the beginning of the bushfire season) and it's illegal to sell fireworks everywhere except the ACT. Here you can go into your local variety store and buy a whole range of things to light up for the 3 days prior to Nov 5th.

So...there have been sparkly lights of a non-alien nature in the sky all night since sunset - nice!

What's worth getting up early for?

Well not early by some standards but it was a Saturday. Anyway... a Steam Train!! It brought a load of people up from Wellington for the weekend to visit the gardens during Rhodofest and left from outside Puke Ariki at 8.30 to take them round the mountain for the day.

And just in case you were wondering, no there isn't a station just level pedestrian crossings so it was all a bit rustic for those getting on. It's actually a freight line so the trains don't usually stop which added to the novelty.

Long weekend

Labour Day is back where it belongs!

For the 6 years I was living in Melbourne I got caught by Labour Day being in March not October. How you can forget a long weekend I'm not really sure but I can only claim that my brain refused to process any holiday in March apart from Easter. One year I really did put a Postit note on my steering wheel saying "don't go to work" as I'd spent the whole of Friday trying to get things set up for Monday only be be told about 100 times that no-one would be there.

The flip side of that is I would get to late Sept. and be really, really looking forward to an extra day only to have my hopes dashed when I realised it wasn't going to happen. We did get Melb Cup day off but somehow it's not the same, especially as it's a Tuesday.

So it's Monday, I'm home relaxing and my mother was right, the weather is horrible - a cold wind and tipping down rain. Apparently one of the very few predictable things in life is this, Labour Day Monday will be wet.

Flowers - real and not so much

Rhodofest starts next weekend and I have my own little festival happening in my front yard. Hot pink camellias and a purple rhodo which has been in bud for about 6 months and finally came out last week.



On the no-so-real end of the scale I have a very nice little collection of woven flowers from the conference in Christchurch. Te Roopu Whakahau (the Moari Librarians Assoc.) had a stand at the trade show and for $2 you could buy a raffle ticket for a hamper and you also got to pick a hand woven flower to wear. Within half a day they were the hot ticket item and the crew manning the stand were working their fingers to the bone weaving more.



What makes them totally funky is that they are made from book binding materials - cloth binding tape and buckram.

But wait - there's more! I won one of the hampers (yeah) and as well as some yummy consumables there was a book on weaving flowers. So below (and a little hard to see, sorry) is my first attempt.

In the spirit of recycling and because I don't have ready access to flax I have used packing tape which in Aus tends to be blue but here is mostly white. Not bad for a first go I think and there will definitely be more. No suprises what might be in some Christmas parcels this year if I can get myself up to giving away quality.

Not your usual conference photos

Countdown to the Rugby World Cup - only 99 weeks, 3 days and 17 hours to go!!!

Coat racks at the conference centre - it is Christchurch after all

Music and...

Bicycles at Sol Square - for me a tiny reminder of Melbourne's funky lanes

And finally the condiments on the table in the Fish and Chip shop in Sol Sq, note the formica table and that's an old glass milk bottle with our water in it. The food came wrapped in newspaper and it's the best fish & chips I've ever had.

The joys of flying

I have just got back from 3 days in Christchurch at the Lianza (Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aoteroa). This is an annual get together of the whole profession from right across the country.

I flew from NP to Christchurch, via Auckland last Sunday - the day of the AirNZ meltdown. Their whole system went down for almost a whole day on the last day of the school holidays, at first estimate that makes for 10,000 locationally challenged flyers. I am now the proud owner of two beautifully hand written boarding passes and an enormous amount of respect for the positive thinking power and endless good humour of the AirNZ flight crews.

As for the trip home??? Well - fog, driving rain, fierce cross winds and the very real possibility of landing in Whanganui (a two hour drive away) instead of NP. Nuff said.

Rotorua in the rain

One of the things I love about working in Libraryland is that we like to move things around. This means that you get to see places that you might never get to otherwise. Rotorua is not exactly on the 'need a good excuse to go to' list but it was great to have a meeting to go to so I could go over early and have a look around.

One small problem with that plan - it rained all the way there, the whole time I was there and most of the way back, apart from when it snowed.

Despite that I visited the museum on Sunday afternoon. It's in the original bath house which is a beautiful old building set in the Government Gardens.

"It was a game of two halves"

That's a wonderful footy quote and perfectly describes my Friday night.

I started at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery for the launch of their Len Lye book, covering all his fabulous work. He was an artist and film maker and specialised in kinetic sculptures - he designed the Wind Wand that has features in a few of my photos. I had a great time as well as a glass of red bubbles and some deep fried mushrooms.

I then adjourned to Yarrow Stadium and watched Waikato beat Taranaki by one point. This is a traditional rivalry so it was hotly contested both on and off the field. The ref got equal amounts of 'assistance' from both sets of fans. The loss was softened by a bag of freshly made mini doughnuts with cinnamon.

So all round a very balanced evening.

Where do you get your news from?

Sitting here in NP, I saw in my Google news feed a link to a BBC report on fierce dust storms in Sydney.

Check it out here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8270104.stm

Intersting isn't it, how news travels. The same article also mentions recent fires, hail, storms and earthquakes. Needless to say I'm phoning home this evening!

Flying farm equipment

Yes. Specifically a tractor and a thresher.

They were hoisted onto the forecourt of the museum yesterday morning (this is the thresher)

pushed into the museum

and are now installed in the foyer.

Almost as exciting - I have discovered the video function on my camera so here is a flying tractor (you have to wait about a minute before it moves but it's worth it!).

Is there any such thing...

as too many books? Answer: No!

Every year the Friends of the Opera House run a second hand book sale. They took over the basketball stadium last week sorting, pricing and stacking 12 months worth of donations and then at midday yesterday (Friday) they opened the doors on their 20th 24 hour book sale. Yup, you read that right - 24 hours. They sell right through the night.

I went out at 7.30 last night and left at 9 and by no means looked at everything. I did well though! I took one shopping bag and promised I would stop when I filled it. I am a very good packer and it's amazing what you can fit into one shopping bag if you really put your mind to it.

How do you know it's spring?

At this time of year in Australia every wattle tree in the country is going nuts and everywhere you look there is yellow blossom.

Here there is no wattle but the kowhai trees are in flower. I didn't actually notice that they were out until I started seeing carpets of yellow flowers on the footpaths like this.



Then when you look up you see these wonderful dangly flowers.



So it does feel like spring!

Fog

Today started out foggy, clear and sunny at my place and 5mins away you couldn't see very far at all. This is the view of the wind wand from work - you can see the wand but not the ocean right underneath it. Believe it or not there are waves right there and a horizon.


And this is what it normally looks like on a clear day, lovely sparkly sea.