Wairarapa

We headed over the hill to the Wairarapa this weekend. It’s the most beautiful place I know of around here – sunnier, less windy, warmer (sometimes a little too much so) and the small town feel is like a balm after the constant rush of big city life. We were super lucky to meet Jannelle from Heart Felt. She is so lovely and made me feel much less shy than usual. Plus she has the world’s cutest little baby (you knew I’d mention that!) AND the view from her front door looks like this:

When I dragged myself away from playing with baby toes Dave took me to Waiohine Gorge. He’s tried to take me for over 3 years so I thought we best finally do it. Not sure it was a wise move. First he tried to coax me across The Swing Bridge of Doom:

It’s made of solid steel and is very sturdy I am sure but every step Dave took behind me the bridge bounced. I knew it was a swing bridge, I didn’t know that meant it would try to throw you off with every step. I’m not big on heights and as I inched along the trees fell away and suddenly I found myself about 1,000 feet in the air. At least. And Big Foot behind me didn’t help. It was with extreme courage that I let go my vice grip on the rail and turned around to go back to land…which proceeded to sway the same way the bridge had.

Next we went down into the gorge to the river where we paddled in the blissfully cold water. Unfortunately to get to the river edge you need to cross a beach of large, irregular and unstable rocks. The pain and embarrassment potential is huge. Plus, you’re paddling away and thinking how good it feels when you turn your head to see that bloody bridge:

See, I said it was 1,000 feet up and I was only exaggerating a little. I actually meant 2,000 feet. So we turned away and Dave tried to make me walk along this beach of moving rocks down to a swimming hole. It would have taken me easily 15 minutes to stumble that far…and that didn’t include the walk back. A large butt and clumsy feet doing that without falling? Oh no no no. We left the beach and headed for the car…then I realised my rookie mistake. Going DOWN a gorge means you need to go back UP the gorge.When we got back to the car I hugged the back of the seat and tried not to cry. In my defense though…the final bit of the path up I ran! I ran uphill. It must have only been 5 metres or so but I count that a huge victory considering my exhaustion. When Dave caught up he said “I bet you wish you hadn’t done that”. Considering I still had to walk back to the car he was right.

After I had pried my arms from around the car seat we drove to a friend of Dave’s who lives in the country. She and her young son moved in with her mum after her dad died in a car accident and they live in this small commune-like Utopia:

Apart from the fact that the building on the left is a long drop it’s utterly idyllic out there and since Rarotonga has proved too expensive (the trade off for buying a house we like so much) this is where I hope to get married early next year. Down the other end of the garden from the long drop.

Her son had a pirate birthday party last year and they were still flying this:

We found a shop that sells them locally and are absolutely going to fly one at our new house. In the back yard only. It looks a little odd to fly a pirate flag without a kid and we’d like to hide our wierdness as long as possible from our new neighbours.

(BTW this has been blogged on a laptop so can anyone on a PC let me know if the photo colours are too screwy. I’m still adjusting to the change in graphics. And excuse any typo’s, the keyboard is different to me)

Recent thrift finds

I am always the first to moan about how bad thrifting has been lately and 2009 was pretty dire for thrifting but 2010 is rocking so far. My best finds of the year so far:

Alfie and Pooh books. Cute!

Baby clothes…whats that you say? I’m infertile….yes I remember. I really must either become fertile asap or stop buying this stuff! But it’s so little and teeny weeny and cute. Clearly not buying it is not going to happen!

200gms of 4 ply wool – 90% NZ wool, 10% angora. Ohhh. And a lot less than the $12 on the tag. That’s one soft and cheap cowl I’ll be wearing this winter!

The actual basket used by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz….well maybe not but it totally reminds me of it (the real one had flaps though) and I plan to use it at craft fairs on my stall…just can’t think what to put in it yet.

I saw this at the thrift store on December 23rd, just before they closed for a few weeks. Not having a daughter and since it was $5 I passed on it and I regretted not buying it immediately. Stupid I know but this is the style of dress my gran made me as a little girl. She’s too arthritic now to sew and smock and I got nostalgic. Even if I never have a little girl of my own (my family is 95% girls, we are so due a boy) this will hang on the wall of my sewing room at the new house and remind me of my gran and those childhood dresses. $5 well spent for me.

Dyeing yarn with kool aid

I’m calling this colour Candy Floss because that’s what this stuff reminds me of – or cotton candy as you may know it. 50gm of merino wool, 2 sachets of old pink lemonade kool aid from my trip to the US and viola, pink. This stuff only comes in offwhite, black and several shades of grey but I just love how good it feels to crochet with so I decided to try dyeing it. I am in love with pink lemonade but not so much with the kool aid version. Even if I only added half or less of  the recommended 1 cup of sugar to it I still felt terribly unhealthy so I never finished all the stuff a friend sent from the US after my trip there left me missing a few things unavailable here. I actually ended up selling the rest of it to other people to dye THEIR wool with and now I am interested in dyeing I could kick myself!! Am going to have to buy the local version of kool aid and see how that works out. I can see myself buying and dyeing a LOT more yarn while the weather is nice and warm to dry it.

It’s not 100% perfect, the dye didn’t get absorbed properly around a couple of the ties so there’s some streaky white bits….but I meant it to do that obviously. We’ll just call it a little extra visual interest and hope my crochet book I ordered gets here asap so I can start making those baby booties. Ooohhh and pink, grey and off white….would be a pretty scarf or cowl for me….oh boy, new expensive addiction alert! Might have to start selling it on etsy to pay for my habit. The sooner I start selling it the worse you know my dyeing habit is.

Panic and shock and utter speechlessness

So…we just bought a house! And not just any old house but the very first house we saw and wanted. We got such good vibes from it and hoped so much that we could get it…and we did! Woohoo!! It was at our absolute upper limit so if anyone local has any jobs available I’m looking!! We had a little mad money budgeted for new furniture etc but that’s all gone. But I’d rather have crappy furniture in a nice house than nice furniture in a crappy house you know?

Moving Day is March 12th, a week after a craft fair and a week before the next one. Oh eek! I went a little weak when I realised that. Guess what the last stuff to be packed and the first to be unpacked will be?

I’m still a little in shock and I think Dave is panicking over the huge steps we’re taking…home ownership….rates (council taxes)….mortgage payments…..I don’t think I will sleep well tonight at all! I must find my paint cards to get planning. Trying to breathe deeply. I never in my life thought I would be able to take this step and Dave was the same.

Sooo…this blog is utter rambling isn’t it? It’s 10pm here and too late to call anyone so I thought that the only way to get any sleep tonight is to blog about it! Hopefully I will have some pictures to show you soon. It’s a hard house to photograph and real estate agents take the worlds worst photos. Here’s a bad photo of about 2/3 of the yard (It’s enormous!):

Hi ho hi ho house hunting we will go

We got approved for a mortgage today! Yay! Another piece of the enormous puzzle falls into place with this step. We’re trying to get them to approve a little bit more though so we can go for our dream home….well our dream home within our budget! I’m sure we could dream better than that given a chance! We find out if we can borrow more tomorrow and then we’re signing the house offer tomorrow night and then the agent will submit it to the owners. So fingers crossed and if you’re a praying type say one for us please! This is the house I want to raise a family in!!

While I jiggle up and down and drum my fingers and chew my lips and try in vain to focus on doing anything here’s some cheerful domestic favourites – colours, candles, cats and other happy things:

Crochet paper chain pattern

Thank you for the crochet paper chain love! It makes me happy that it makes other people happy! If you’re interested in making your own here is a little pattern. Bear in mind this is my first attempt at sharing a crochet pattern so it might be rubbish.

I used a 5mm hook and 8ply (dk weight) yarn. Acrylic might be fun, but you could also make a felted one. Using a bigger hook will make it go a lot faster too. I like the sc look of the ridges it makes in this project but try dc or a combo or whatever!

Ch7, sc in second ch from hook, 1 sc in each ch in row  (6sc)

ch 1 and turn

Row2: 1 sc in each sc (6sc)
Repeat until it’s as long as you want  (I think I did about 38-40 rows. Each strip was 6.25″ long if that’s easier) and finish off – whipstitch or slipstitch ends together – slipstitch will look a lot neater but I didn’t think of it until near the end. Duh! I just slid the ugly whipstitched ends to the inside where they are totally hidden.

Weave in ends. Thread next finished piece through and stitch shut.

This would look really look with just 2 or 3 colours so it doesn’t have to be too expensive. Red, pink and white for Valentines maybe? Red, white and blue for the 4th of July? Red, white and green for Christmas….you get the idea.

Could be better

We got the house money today. On Monday we will apply for a mortgage and with luck on Tuesday we will get approved and be able to make an offer on a house. We are going to view it again on Monday and ohhhh my photos will make you so jealous! A bright orange bathtub. Pure 70’s kitsch from the tassled lampshades to the arched doorways. On our budget it is a choice between a fixer upper that would make you vomit or an well cared for but heinously tacky ‘dated’ house.

You’d think though that the appearance of many dollars (the most in our life EVER really) in the bank would put a smile on our faces but woah, it’s been one of those ‘uphill in rollerskates’ sorta days. Sticky heat has made everything annoy me more than it should too I think. Thankfully tomorrow is a new day This is how today is ending – broken:

The hook part not only snapped off, it vanished off the face of the earth too. My kitchen floor mat has ground to a halt and I am darned if I am working on my only other WIP – a scarf -  in the scorching heat!! Ever get the feeling the universe is trying to tell you to go back to bed and try again tomorrow?

Crochet paper chain

Well this has to be one of my maddest ideas ever! I saw a beautiful crochet chain in a shop knitted from Noro or something equally not the right shade and the concept was so cool but the end result was dark and dull. Yet another (insert many expletives) failed knitting attempt meant that I would have to try crochet one. I didn’t find a satisfactory tutorial online so I made it up as I went along and although I know how I will make the next one better this one is awesome! It’s so cheerful and bright and although it photographs like crap it looked amazing hanging in a tree.

It also looked pretty good hanging on my neighbours rusty washing line:

It’s one of those perfect whimsical things that I look to look at and go “Wow, I made that myself!” and it makes me smile to know that I make cool things

I swear the second I get some free time (it might happen one day!) I am so going to make one for myself. I could pretend it’s for my future child but I’d so be lying. It’s totally going to be for me. You can never have enough whimsical, fun things in your life.

Houses of the poor and not famous

Robin Leach is nowhere to be seen, these houses are SO not his style. These are the tackiest decorating jobs I have come across house hunting online. Of these 3 ‘beauties’ only one ever got a visit. Mostly because…well you’ll see.

Room 1 is a vampires bedroom. Maybe a goth lives here? The really odd thing was that the other two bedrooms were clearly decorated by an old lady. One had an enormous ugly stuffed lion on the bed, very 80’s. The other was all pink and frillys and flowers with porcelain dolls and stuff like that.

Room 2 is the most searing shade of green ever. Because seared corneas are exactly what you want in a slippery wet bathroom right? This house is not in a great location so we skipped viewing it. And we just plain want to keep our eyesight. Imagine the headache you must get after a shower.

This one is a stunner right? The photo shows dayglow yellow and green. We actually viewed this yesterday and I can thankfully report that while I still believe that old ladies should never ever be allowed to decorate without assistance this room is not quite as bad as the photos. Oh it’s still real bad but it’s not dayglow in person. Of the three houses we did see we are very tempted to put an offer on this one. One house was pokey, one was just so awful it actually made me feel quite sick for several hours but this one…we really felt like we had come home. Insert soppy music here. We’re hoping to arrange to go back tomorrow for an indepth look at it. There’s an open home on Sunday though so nobody better put an offer in then because I can see us growing to this house. After we paint that room obviously.

Life has been a bit of a blur lately. On Sunday it was literally a blur because of the crazy fog. A weird annoying midsummer cold snap:

We’ve started viewing houses which is driving me nuts. I don’t want to relive the madness but it’s enough to say that we have driven our chosen area at least twice from end to end. We’re going to view three houses tomorrow night and of those only one has definite potential. Ugh. It’s still a buyers market but first you actually have to find a house worth buying. We did find the perfect house but someone already made an offer which we can’t do until at least the end of next week. Poop.

I’m still walking every day and it seems to have paid off already. I have gone down a pant size!! It’s not 100% flattering but progress is progress and it means…I’m not in the fat section anymore! I can now fit back into the normal range rather than only fitting the plus size clothes! This is a huge self esteem boost for my weight loss plus every bit of weight I lose just might be the bit that gets my body ovulating. The less fertility barriers we have the easier conceiving will be once I finally meet their weight target. Plus it’s just stinking hot and I wish I was thin enough to look good in a skirt.