What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 This blog is brought to you with help from Gemma.  She is excellent at holding the lap top bag in place while I'm tapping away.  And it makes such a good place to have a comfy snooze.

Gemma is a big help

Our four days in Christchurch seeing my son Michael had come to an end, so then it was time to hitch the caravan up to the car and travel slowly back up to Picton to catch the ferry again.  We had nearly a week to do this, so we planned several stops along the way.

One lunch ...

 Our last night in the South Island was quite a worry.  A storm came rolling in as the day wore on, and was fully fledged by night time.  We could swear that the thunder was right over head, and each noisy clap spooked Gemma.  She ran around the van looking for a hiding place, hunkering down on the carpet at the foot of the bed, with the overhanging duvet giving her the illusion of cover.  Lightening cracked around us, torrential rain came down, and the caravan was buffeted all night by strong wind gusts.  Dear oh dear, what would our ...

Do you ever look back and wonder where all those years have gone?  My son Michael's  birthday is fast approaching, and he will be turning 60! That's certainly hard to come to terms with.  I certainly can remember his birth, the toddler years, then schooling - how on earth did he get to be 60?  And how old does that make me?  I was 18 when he was born, a couple of months off 19, so a young Mum indeed.  And 12 months later I did it all again, when his sister  Nicky was born.  Those were the days ...

 What's on the table today?  It's one of my "holiday" tableclothes which was started during our 2018 summer caravan trip touring the South Island. 

Ooops, Blogger wont let me turn the photo

 I prepared little blocks using New Zealand designed fabrics, with plain cream to write messages on.  Each evening after our adventures, I wrote where we stayed, and places of interest that we visited. 

These are the blocks I prepared for our trip

While we were travelling around I started stitching the New Zealand floral wreath blocks.  I can remember sitting outside under the caravan awning, stitching ...

Now we have been back for a couple of weeks from our South Island Odyssey, it’s time to look back.   We were away for 10 weeks and traveled 5220km, 3019km was towing the caravan, and the other 2201km was spent exploring while the caravan was safely on site.  All this travel cost us $1582 for diesel.  As well, we spent $226 on LPG (6 fills) to run the fridge, stove and hot water cylinder when we were parked on non power sites.  In fact, we were only on power at three of our stops.

We were away for 77 ...

The last stop on our South Island Trip was Koromiko – where we started our trip back in mid December, all those weeks ago.  This is a beautiful place, surrounded by totara trees, and the cicadas were having a fine old time, making plenty of noise in the trees while looking for mates.  We were to stay here for two nights while we waited to board the Inter Island Ferry on Thursday.

Staying at Koromiko

It’s no secret that both ferry companies have been having maintenance problems.  We received a text telling us our trip the following day had been ...

We are heading back up the east coast of the South Island, making our slow way back to the Ferry Terminal.  Staying at Christchurch for a couple of days gave us the opportunity to catch up with son Michael again.  And I had so enjoyed our previous visit to Sign of the Kiwi Café on the Port Hills last time we were here, that we collected him from his home and went there for lunch.  It certainly was a long and winding drive up the road.  There were plenty of people there already there enjoying their lunches in the fresh ...

A week on from Cyclone Gabrielle's arrival in New Zealand, there are still communities cut off and towns struggling for food, water and communications.  Auckland was hit hard, the wind and rain compounding problems wrought by the floods two weeks earlier - but the brunt of Gabrielle's power was felt mostly by the eastern North Island, in particular Hawke's Bay and Gisborne.  Roading, railway lines  and bridges are damaged, houses and farmland  have been flooded, cars washed away, landslides, power and internet  is still out to many thousands of households, and the pictures on the news are full ...

Isn't this such a lovely looking shop?  Heading back north, we stopped at Ashburton once again for an overnight stop.  We whizzed right past Annie's when we were heading south down the island, so I was determined to call in for a visit on our return trip.  And I wasn't disappointed.  Annie’s Country Quilt Store is based in a 100 year old pioneer cottage, and is chocker-block full of delights. 

Annie’s Country Quilt Store

I had forgotten about owner Rachel’s love of egg beaters, and there they are, still hanging up on a rail ...

We went out exploring one afternoon, driving an oval shaped route from Gore and back through the countryside, a road we hadn’t previously traveled on.  And goodness me, on reaching Clinton we discovered this sign, we had just driven along the Presidential Highway!

This stretch of highway between Clinton and Gore acquired unexpected fame in the 1990s when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were respectively president and vice-president of the United States. When President Clinton visited New Zealand in 1999, a photograph of the road sign was presented to him by the United States ambassador, Josiah Beeman.

Hello, Mr ...

Slowly but surely, my Noah’s  Ark stitcheries are coming along.  In between traveling and sightseeing I’ve enjoyed some stitching time outside in the warm weather.  Or I should say “hot”, as some of the afternoons have been very hot indeed.  Here is my latest little finish, two lions and two blue birds  waiting their turn to climb aboard the Ark.  I must say that they seem to be a pair of rather strange looking lions indeed.  But Noah chose them, so they must be OK.

Stitching outside in the afternoon

The lion block is the fourth one I ...

Something ticked off the Bucket List, and what an adventure we had.  We are currently in Te Anau (which means place of swirling waters) and recently enjoyed a Coach/Cruise/Underwater Observatory combo to Milford Sound and through the Homer Tunnel.  Our adventure started in Te Anau when we boarded the big red coach – with several photo stops along the way.  The scenery here is spectacular. The very pretty Mirror Lakes were just off the roadside, and it was a nice easy 5 minute  boardwalk there and back.  People everywhere, we certainly weren’t the only bus in the car ...

Why stick with one knitting project when you can have two going at the same time?  Actually, I’ve got a third, but I haven't started that one yet, can’t be too greedy, can I.  I've been knitting away on my second project from time to time for a change in pace.  This one is a little boy’s baby/toddler jumper, using up some spare wool I had at home.  Because it is small,  I’m knitting the back and front at the same time.  I’m almost at the front neck shaping so I’ll ...

There is plenty to see on our South Island trip, and we are slowly moving on.  The scenery down here in the South Island can only be described as majestic, with the Southern Alps thrusting up like a backbone, down the length of this island.  So what have we been doing?  We spent a couple of  days in Fairlie, home to the famous Fairlie pies.  Yes I know, our holiday does seem to focus a lot on food.  But that’s half the fun of being on holiday, isn’t it.

We knew the pies were popular but I couldn ...

Where have we been since we last chatted?  Moving on from Christchurch we traveled south to Ashburton, a nice straight drive down SH1, and we drove over the longest bridge in New Zealand at 1.7km over the Rakaia River, another braided river.  What is a braided river, you may be wondering? A braided river consists of a network of multiple shallow channels that diverge and rejoin around  braid bars.  This gives the river a resemblance to the interweaved strands of a braid.  This part of New Zealand, Canterbury,  contains 60% of the braided  river habitat in New Zealand.

Driving ...

We have moved on to Christchurch, mainly to catch up with my son Michael, and also to see what changes had been made since our last time here in 2018, when the city was still in recovery mode.  On February 2011, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake caused severe damage in Christchurch and Lyttleton, killing 185 people and injuring several thousand.  This earthquake occurred on a shallow fault line close to the city, and the shaking was particularly destructive.  The earthquake brought down many buildings damaged in the previous earthquake in September, especially older brick and mortar buildings,  and two-thirds of ...

Any Homer Simpson fans out there?  We stayed the night at Springfield, a small town in Canterbury, at the foot of the Southern Alps.  Believe it or not, Springfield is famous for a large pink donut, but where did it come from?    The  movie studio 20th Century Fox presented a giant pink donut to the town in 2007  to promote the premiere of The Simpsons Movie.  We are not really Simpson fans, but even we know that Homer Simpson loves donuts.

That’s a very big donut

Just 10km down the road was Sheffield, home of the world famous in ...

There is an awful lot to see down here in the South Island, as we are traveling around.   We spent several days in Blackball, an old mining town.  The most famous building here is undoubtedly the pub which has an interesting story about it’s name,  called “Formerly the Blackball Hilton”.  Built in 1910 it was named The Dominion.  In the 1970s the owners changed the name to The Blackball Hilton, as the main street is called Hilton after one of the early mine managers.  However, a threat of legal action from the overseas Hilton Hotel chain caused the name ...

There’s no doubt about it, as we drove past this cute little shop on the way to Greymouth, towing the caravan behind us, I remarked that we would have to return to this shop the next day.  Bright and colourful on the outside, I was sure it would be just as nice inside.

Pink Possum Quilt Shop

I was after some backing fabric for my second piece of traced out stitchery.  Yes, Sue had some of that and cut me a piece, then I had a look around the shop to see what else took my fancy.   There were ...

We have moved on to the tiny settlement of Barrytown and I had an hour or so sitting under the shady awning doing a little stitching. We are camped up on a hill and have a wonderful sea view.

Not only did I finish this tiny little dove from Noah's Ark stitchery, but worked a little longer to start the next design – two kangaroos waiting to hop onboard the ark.

Just a small finish

Sitting outside in the balmy evening with our camping neighbours, we were chatting away and waiting for the sun to go down into the horizon ...